THE CHAMELEON SYNDROME

THE CHAMELEON SYNDROME
Each and every one of us has the tendency to exhibit the chameleon syndrome . we often are drawn in the direction of our  association and surroundings. we seem to be easily, almost naturally influenced by our immediate environs and closest associations. Oftentimes, we want  to be like the people that we see succeeding even to do the same thing we see them succeeding at..... drawing our success definition from the compare game.
  I dare you to be cognizant of your chameleon propensity and  fight it to the finish. Stand out, be original, be YOU  and continuously reinvent YOU.
    When you always look outside for inspiration like a chameleon, you can never move beyond the environment  of competition; but when you look within you , you awaken to unprecedented ideas and receive the endowment to dare!
In the sphere of competition, someone is bound to loose while in the sphere of originality, loses are a mere mirage; they do not exist , we just awaken,dare and reinvent originality ......, getting better as the days go by .
   Would you rather compare and compete  or awaken and dare?
The choice is yours . clone forever or live original ? your choice validates. your best output when you clone is the clone of whoever you cloned!
Never let the compare- game  imprison you  because it  does......
    Be aware of your chameleon propensity and fight it utterly .
     Rock the world with your vogue
    Creation waits !!!!!!!!1

OLYMPIAN AUCTIONS OFF MEDAL TO HELP YOUNG CANCER PATIENT

Olympian auctions off medal to help young cancer patient   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Piotr Malachowski (POL) celebrates winning the silver medal in the men's discus throw event at Estadio Olimpico Joao Havelange during the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but was not interested in hanging on to the medal. Instead, he chose to auction the medal off, hoping to raise funds for Olek Szymanski, a three-year-old boy battling eye cancer.The auction was a success. On his Facebook page, Małachowski excitedly announced that the medal had been bought by Polish siblings Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk, raising the necessary funds. Roughly translated, Malchowski said:

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“Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk just declared their willingness to buy my silver medal for the amount which enables you to complete the treatment, what I wanted most. Thus, we end the bidding and the medal will go into the hands of Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk.”

This is certainly a great gesture from Malachowski, who reached out to help a boy who obviously needed a lot of it. It’s also a great move from the Kulczyk’s, estimated to be worth $3.4 billion. They’ve shown a willingness to use their money for great things.
This is not the first time a Polish medalist has done something like this. In 2004, Otylia Jedrzejczak won the 200 meter butterfly event and auctioned off her prize to help children fighting leukemia.
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THE CAMEL TRADER OF BABYLON

THE CAMEL TRADER OF BABYLON

The hungrier one becomes, the clearer one 's mind works- also the more sensitive one becomes  to the odors of food.
  Tarkad the son of Azure , certainly thought so. For two whole days he had tasted no except two small figs purloined from over the wall  of a Garden. Not another could he grab before the angry woman rushed forth and chased him down the street. Her shrill  cries were still ringing in his ears as he walked through the market place .They helped him to restrain his restless fingers from snatching the tempting fruits from the baskets of the market women.
           Never before had he realized how much food was brought to the markets of Babylon and how good it smelled. Leaving the market, he walked across to the inn and paced back and forth in front of the eating  house. Perhaps here he might meet someone he knew; someone from whom he could borrow a copper that would gain him a smile from the unfriendly keeper of the inn and, with it, a liberal helping .without the copper he knew all too well how unwelcome he would be.
    In his abstraction he unexpectedly found himself face to face with one man he wished most to avoid, the tall bony figure of Dabasir, the camel trader . Of all the friends and others of whom he had borrowed small sums, Dabasir made him feel the most uncomfortable because of his failures to keep his promise to pay promptly.
   Dabasir's face lighted  up  at the sight of  him. "Ha! 'Tis Tarkad, just the one I have been seeking  that he might pay the two pieces of copper which I lent to him before that. we are well met. I can make good use of the coins this very day . What say, boy? what say"
   Tarkad stuttered and his face flushed. He had  naught in his  empty stomach  to nerve him to argue with the outspoken Dabasir . " I am sorry, very sorry." he mumbled weakly, "but this day I have neither  the copper nor the silver with which I could repay."
     "Then get it," Dabasir insisted . "Surely thou canst get hold of a few coppers and a piece of silver to repay the generosity of an old friend of thy father who aided thee whenst thou was in need ? "
      " Tis because ill fortune does pursue me that I cannot pay.''
"Ill fortune! wouldst blame the gods for thine own weakness . Ill fortune pursues every man who thinks more of borrowing than repaying. Come with me , boy, while I eat. I am hungry and I would tell thee a tale."
    Tarkad flinched from the brutal frankness of Dabasir, but  here  at least was an invitation to enter the coveted doorway of the eating house.
 Dabasir pushed him to a far corner of the room where seated themselves upon small rugs.
When Kauskor, the proprietor, appeared smiling , Dabasir addressed  with his usual freedom , "Fat lizard of the desert , bring to me a leg of the  goat, very brown with much juice , and bread and all of the vegetables for I am hungry and want much food. Do not forget my friend here . Bring him a jug of water. Have it cooled, for the day is hot."
     Tarkad's heart  sank . Must he sit here and drink water while he watched this man devour an entire goat leg? He said nothing . He thought of nothing he could say.

 

Man gets 40 years for pouring scalding water on gay couple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burn victim Anthony Gooden gets help with his injured hand during a break in a trial for Martin Blackwell in Atlanta, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. ATLANTA (AP) — A judge sentenced a Georgia man to 40 years in prison Wednesday for throwing scalding water on a gay couple sleeping in an apartment, leaving them with severe burns that required surgery.
Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes before finding Martin Blackwell, 48, guilty of eight counts of aggravated battery and two counts of aggravated assault in the February attack on Anthony Gooden and Marquez Tolbert.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Henry Newkirk said the evidence was overwhelming and that Blackwell had behaved in a soulless and malicious way. He noted that it "takes a long time" for a pot of water to boil.
"You had so many outs where the voice of reason could have taken over," the judge told Blackwell, who had faced up to 80 years in prison.
Prosecutors said it was a vicious, premeditated attack. Tolbert testified that after pouring hot water on them, Blackwell grabbed him as he jumped and screamed in pain and told him: "Get out of my house with all that gay."
Georgia doesn't have a hate crime law. The FBI said in March that it had opened a hate crime investigation, but spokesman Kevin Rowson said Wednesday that the agency isn't commenting on that probe.
Blackwell's defense attorney acknowledged that he poured water on the pair, but asked jurors to find that it was reckless conduct.
"It's not about hate. It's about old-school culture, old-school thinking," Monique Walker told the jury.
The defense didn't call any witnesses and didn't present any evidence. Blackwell, who remained stoic throughout the trial, did not take the stand. He showed no reaction when the verdict was read.
Blackwell was a long-distance truck driver and lived with his girlfriend, Kim Foster, at her sister's apartment in College Park when he was in town. Gooden, who is Foster's son, and Tolbert had been dating about a month and were sleeping at the apartment Feb. 12 after working an overnight shift when Blackwell dumped scalding water on them.
Blackwell's attorney said her client felt the young men's behavior was disrespectful and that there were certain things people sharing a house shouldn't do.
Prosecutor Fani Willis scoffed at the idea.
"We're not going back to when you get to treat people differently because of who they are," she said in closing arguments.
Walker said Blackwell often made inappropriate comments to various members of the household — asking about their sex lives and calling them derogatory names — and throwing water on the pair was just an extension of that reckless behavior. He didn't intend to hurt the young men, he just wanted to get them to stop their disrespectful behavior, she said.
The prosecutor said Blackwell's actions were well thought out. He took the time to select the biggest pot in the house, filled it with water and waited for it to boil. That gave him plenty of time to think about what he was doing and the consequences, Willis said.
Gooden, 24, spent about a month in the hospital, two weeks of that in a medically induced coma, and Tolbert, 21, spent 10 days in the hospital. Both men suffered severe burns that required multiple surgeries and skin grafts.
They both testified Tuesday that they suffered great pain and were unable to perform even the most basic everyday tasks — eating, bathing and using the bathroom — without help when they got out of the hospital.
"I'm ecstatic. I think justice has been served," Tolbert told reporters after the verdict. He was nervous before the trial, but once he testified about what had happened he felt a weight lift, he said.
Having gone through such an ordeal makes him realize that life is precious, Tolbert said, and he's ready to move on and focus on going to school to study architecture with a minor in computer engineering. He and Gooden remain friends and check in on each other to see how the other is healing, he said.
Prosecutors asked jurors to find Blackwell guilty of aggravated battery for disfigurement and loss of use of body parts and guilty of aggravated assault for dumping the hot water on them.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Trump ‘wrestling’ with how — and whether — to deport 11 million people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© AP Photo/Gerald Herbert Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets the crowd as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Fredericksburg, Va., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016.

Aides to Donald Trump suggested Sunday that the Republican presidential nominee may be reconsidering his campaign promise to round up and deport 11 million people who are in the United States illegally.

His new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if Trump still wants a “deportation force” to remove everyone in the country illegally.

“To be determined,” she said.

Trump is “wrestling” with how to remove those in the country illegally, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., an adviser to Trump on immigration matters, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The aides’ comments appeared to be the latest sign that Trump’s newly installed management team may be trying to broaden his appeal to stem his steady fall in the polls with less than three months until Election Day.

Trump has never explained how he intended to find, detain and deport millions of people, many of whom have built businesses and started families in the U.S., or how he would pay for it even if it passed judicial scrutiny.

He has compared his proposal to “Operation Wetback,” a controversial program carried out in 1954 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. More than 1 million people were apprehended, mostly from border areas in Texas and California, and sent back to Mexico.

Any easing of Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration — which also includes building a wall along the border with Mexico and temporarily banning Muslim immigrants — could alienate some of his most ardent supporters.

After a year of using harsh rhetoric against Latinos, such as calling Mexican migrants rapists and repeatedly attacking a federal judge as unfair because his family was from Mexico, polls show he faces intense opposition among Latinos.

His campaign thus has moved in recent days to soften his edges and to try to shift attention past the turmoil caused by the shake-up of his top management team last week.

In Charlotte, N.C., Trump announced “regret” that some of his heated comments — he didn’t say which — may have caused personal pain. In Fredericksburg, Va., he said the Republican Party must “do better” to reach out to African American voters.

And in New York City Saturday, Trump told his campaign’s newly named Latino advisory council that he wants to find a “humane and efficient” solution to deal with illegal immigration.

He “did not make a firm commitment” to the group on how deportations would work, Sessions said.

Trump is expected to speak about immigration policy Thursday in Colorado. Conway said he will be more specific on his immigration plan “as the weeks unfold.”

“What he supports is to make sure that we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for well-paying jobs and that we are fair and humane for those who live among us in this country,” Conway said.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has called for providing a path to legal status for some of the people in the country illegally.

A bipartisan immigration reform bill that would have boosted border security while providing a path for citizenship passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the Republican-led House.

TRIBUNE WASHINGTON BUREAU

 

Wrongfully arrested and jailed because of her name

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 When agents with guns banged on her front door at the crack of dawn one morning in May, Maria Hernandez felt confused. She was being arrested for insurance fraud. She tried to explain -- although… LOS ANGELES - Half-awake and barefoot, Maria Elena Hernandez hurried toward the loud banging on her front door.
It was before sunrise, and she hoped the noise wouldn't wake her 14-month-old granddaughter. As she cracked open the door, dressed in a sheer nightgown, Hernandez, 62, saw six California Department of Insurance officers staring back at her.
"Are you Maria Hernandez?" one of them shouted.
Yes, she answered. A female officer yanked her arm, twisted it behind her back and tightened handcuffs around her wrists.
"Why? Why? Why?" she asked. "Let me go. You're arresting the wrong person."
It would take more than two months before authorities realized they had, indeed, arrested the wrong person.
Incarcerations of innocent people mistaken for wanted criminals represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 16,700 people locked up in L.A. County, and they have declined sharply from a decade ago. But, from May through July, records show, at least six people were released from jail in Los Angeles County after authorities determined they had arrested the wrong person. (That does not include people, such as Hernandez, who bailed out before authorities realized the error.)
Officials introduced reforms to reduce the problem after a 2011 Los Angeles Times investigation found such cases had occurred nearly 1,500 times in five years. The mistakes usually involved the victims of identity theft or people who shared the same name as suspects listed on outstanding arrest warrants. The problems were compounded when police agencies and jailers failed to properly check that the fingerprints of people arrested matched those of the accused criminals.
But extra checks by the jail would not have helped Hernandez.
Her arrest warrant was issued after the California Department of Insurance confused her with an insurance fraud suspect, who had used a false date of birth as well as a first and a last name that matched Hernandez's. Last month, the district attorney's office asked a judge to dismiss the fraud case, and an insurance department spokeswoman said officials have tried to reach out to Hernandez to apologize. "The department deeply regrets the error," spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said.
Hernandez spent nearly two days in the county's jail in Lynwood before her family managed to bail her out. Her family now owes $2,000 to a bail bonds company. And Hernandez, who cleaned homes for years but is now retired, faces another bill of $1,470 for a medical exam conducted at the direction of jail staff.
The events that led to her arrest began in the summer of 2013, when a woman made a phone call to Access General Insurance saying she'd been the driver of a car involved in an accident. She identified herself as Maria Mercedes Hernandez, according to investigative records.
An insurance investigator had a hard time tracking the woman down, but when he finally found her at her South Park home, she verbally confirmed that her name was Maria Mercedes Hernandez and said her birthday was May 2, 1954, though she did not produce proof of her identification. After prodding from the investigator, the records show, the woman admitted that she hadn't actually been in an accident. She'd agreed to say she had been, she explained, after meeting a man at a nightclub who promised to give her a cut of the insurance money.
Before leaving the home, the insurance investigator took the woman's photo.
When Department of Insurance detectives interviewed the woman at her home a year later, they said they recognized her from the photo in the case file and said that she, again, identified herself as Maria Hernandez. Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, said she had given a fake name and birth date. The spokesman said it was unclear if the woman had picked the name and date of birth at random or if she had deliberately used the arrested woman's identity.
Exactly how insurance investigators mistook her for Maria Elena Hernandez is unclear.
The Department of Insurance spokeswoman declined to explain, citing an internal investigation being conducted by the agency. The district attorney's office also declined to detail what led to the mix-up or comment on whether detectives know the suspect's real identity but said the auto insurance fraud investigation is ongoing.
Hernandez's daughter, Roxanne, criticized the mistake. Investigators, she noted, had the real suspect's photo. And although "Maria Hernandez" is a common name _ there are 1,300 registered to vote in Los Angeles County _ her mother has a different middle name and address. Investigators arrested Hernandez at her Mid-Wilshire home, which is seven miles from the neighborhood where detectives had previously interviewed the fraud suspect.
"It's just shocking how they confused this person with my mother," Roxanne said.
So much of the arrest is still unbelievable to Hernandez. When her 25-year-old son stepped toward the detectives to ask for official paperwork justifying the arrest, an officer pointed a gun at his head, Hernandez and her daughter recounted.
"If this had happened in a different area _ say Beverly Hills _ it wouldn't have happened like this," Hernandez said. "These people were harsh to me and my family. No one deserves what I went through."
Kincaid, the Department of Insurance spokeswoman, said law enforcement officers are trained to have their weapons drawn from their holsters "until entry has been made and the residence or individuals have been secured in a safe manner."
As Hernandez was led away in handcuffs, she recalled, tears filled her eyes and she felt like she needed to scream. She tried to encourage her children using a common Spanish phrase: "He who owes nothing fears nothing."
As the officers drove toward the jail, she pleaded for answers. If this is an auto insurance fraud case, she explained, it can't be me. "I don't even know how to drive," she told them. Maybe it's a case of stolen identity, she suggested.
At the women's jail in Lynwood, things only got worse.
She was too frail to climb into the top bunk bed and gave the lower bed to a woman who had just given birth, she said. Hernandez ended up sleeping on the floor.
She felt her faith in the concept that she had used a couple days earlier to reassure her children _ owe not, fear not _ start to shrivel.
"I thought, 'I will die here,'" she said.
Finally, someone called her name.
"Maria Hernandez. You're going to leave."
She learned that family members and friends had scraped together the $500 deposit needed to hire a bail bond company to post bond. Her daughter said she visited the bail bond company recently and was told the family had to pay what was still owed under the contract she signed.
Hernandez is also behind on hospital bills stemming from the arrest. After arriving at the jail, but before she was officially booked, she explained that she has high blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as circulation problems. Jail staff decided to have her taken to Coast Plaza Hospital.
She had her finger pricked for testing and got her blood pressure taken. When she peeked at the machine, her systolic rate was in the upper 170s, nearing crisis hypertensive levels.
Hernandez said she was shocked when – not long after her release – a hospital bill came in the mail. "I've suffered and paid, and am still paying," she said. ___ (Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.)
LOS ANGELES TIMES

DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN EXPENSES MORE THAN DOUBLED LAST MONTH

DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN EXPENSES MORE THAN DOUBLED LAST MONTH

 

   

  Donald Trump's campaign expenses more than doubled last month, even as the Republican presidential nominee held his payroll to about 70 employees, aired zero television advertisements and undertook no significant operational buildout across the country.
Instead, about half of the campaign's $18.5 million in spending was vacuumed up by Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm new to national politics, Federal Election Commission filings show. It's a crossover vendor from Trump's real estate organization.
The campaign paid Giles-Parscale $8.4 million in July, about twice what the San Antonio firm had collected from it over the course of the preceding year. Brad Parscale, the president, is the campaign's director of digital marketing.
The big expense came as Trump put a new emphasis on online fundraising, after paying for his primary run mostly out of his own pocket.
Millions more went to air travel. The campaign paid about $2 million for private jets other than Trump's own TAG Air, which also collected $500,000.
Some of Trump's consultants are also mysteriously well-paid.
Chess Bedsole, the campaign's Alabama state director, was paid $64,000 last month for field consulting. His last campaign payment was for $15,000 in December.
Yet the campaign's payroll remained thin, and there did not appear to be much new in the way of office leases across the country, including in critical battleground states such as Ohio.
Trump has relied heavily on the Republican National Committee for conventional campaign infrastructure. And he's boasted of holding the line on his campaign spending. But he's running critically low on time to build an operation that can compete with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In addition to being ahead of Trump in polls in key states, Clinton has maintained a staff of about 700 for months, opened up offices across the country and already spent $67 million on general election ads. Trump put out his first ads days ago, spending $5 million to air them in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Her campaign spent $38 million in July, about double his spending.
Clinton can afford to spend more than Trump, the July campaign finance reports show. Her campaign raised $52 million while his brought in $37 million for the month, including a $2 million contribution from Trump himself.
The candidates also raise money for their parties, enabling them to ask for contributions far higher than the $2,700-per-donor limit to the campaigns. Overall in July, Clinton raised $90 million for her campaign and Democratic partners, while Trump raised $80 million for the campaign and Republican groups.
 GOP nominee Donald Trump holds a rally in Fredricksburg, VA on August 20, 2016 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Trump did bring aboard some new campaign consultants in July.
He paid $100,000 to Cambridge Analytica, a deep-dive data firm that did business with GOP opponent Ted Cruz. Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who contributed $2 million to a pro-Trump super political action committee in July, is an investor in Cambridge.
The Trump filings also show some old ties.
Two weeks after the ouster of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign cut his firm, Green Monster Consulting, another $20,000 check. That's about the same amount it had paid him each month while he was running the campaign.
At the time of the latest payment, Lewandowski was already on the payroll of CNN, where he is a political contributor.
The campaign also paid Trump Organization employee Meredith McIver, who has worked as a Trump ghostwriter over the years. She took credit — and then blame— for writing Melania Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention that included similar lines from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
The campaign valued McIver's time, accounted for as payroll from the Trump Organization, at $356.01.

WASHINGTON POST

WITH A COMFORTABLE LEAD, CLINTON BEGINS LAYING FOUNDATION FOR HER WHITE HOUSE AGENDA

 

 

With a comfortable lead, Clinton begins laying plans for her White House agenda

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 Clinton speaks at a voter registration rally, August 16, 2016, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton’s increasingly confident campaign has begun crafting a detailed agenda for her possible presidency, with plans to focus on measures aimed at creating jobs, boosting infrastructure spending and enacting immigration reform if current polling holds and she is easily elected to the White House in November.

In recent weeks, as her leads over GOP nominee Donald Trump have expanded, Clinton has started ramping up for a presidency defined by marquee legislation she has promised to seek immediately. The pace and scale of the planning reflect growing expectations among Democrats that she will win and take office in January alongside a new Democratic majority in the Senate.

While careful not to sound as if she is measuring the draperies quite yet, Clinton now describes what she calls improved odds for passage of an overhaul of immigration laws — the first legislative priority she outlined in detail last year — and what could be a bipartisan effort to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system and ports.

She also could be immediately confronted with a choice about a Supreme Court vacancy that could set the tone for her relationship with Congress, and she plans to immediately champion new measures on campaign-finance reform and ending legal immunity for gun manufacturers.

Her campaign’s to-do list includes assembling a Cabinet that has women in roughly equal numbers to men and that otherwise reflects American diversity, and lobbying has intensified for those and scores of other jobs that Clinton would fill in her administration.

Some Clinton boosters remain concerned that, with an election focused so heavily on Trump’s deficiencies, she could enter the White House without a clear mandate. But Clinton’s team is hopeful that a trouncing of her Republican opponent in November could soften the ground for a robust set of proposals that could be implemented both with and without congressional action.

“There’s nothing like winning to change minds,” Clinton said this month.

How she builds relationships on Capitol Hill, especially with Republicans, will be one key measure of success in the first year or so, Democrats said. A second crucial element will be how effectively she organizes a White House staff to keep the focus on her policy priorities and minimize the controversies that long have dogged Clinton and her husband.

The most significant unknown — and one that would determine to a great extent her ability to govern successfully — is how poisonous the political climate might be after a defeat of Trump, who has already begun complaining that the election system is “rigged” against him.

“Her greatest challenge will be the environment in which she comes to office,” said a former Obama administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid view. “I don’t think any president has come to office underwater on their favorable image. This would be uncharted waters coming to office as an unpopular person. You don’t have a wellspring of goodwill to draw on, even in the first 100 days.”

Clinton named a five-member transition planning team last week — headed by former interior secretary Ken Salazar and including other familiar names in Democratic circles — that would eventually oversee the selection of Cabinet secretaries and thousands of lower-level officials. She also moved some top policy advisers over from her campaign to her transition team, a move that reinforced the notion that she is getting ready to govern.

Trump, who also has a transition team at work, trails by double digits in some national polls. No candidate in more than 60 years has come back to win after being so far behind at this point in the general-election campaign. Trump also is losing in surveys taken in battleground states where he is staking his campaign. Among those states is Virginia, where he has a 14-point deficit, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published in the past week.

Clinton has lately been telling Democratic audiences about her growing support among Republicans and touting what she says is a record of successfully working across the aisle to get things done. Her campaign regularly trumpets Republican endorsements and GOP disavowals of Trump.

It was a subject she treated gingerly during the toughest months of her primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), who challenged her from the left. Still, some liberal voters who backed Sanders in the primaries eye Clinton’s legislative priorities with a mixture of suspicion and high expectations.

If Clinton wins, she will be “under great pressure from the left to move on a whole host of issues. The pressure is going to be enormous, more so than on President Obama,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic consultant who was a senior aide to Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.) when Reid was Senate majority leader.

Manley said he is highly skeptical that Clinton will be able to get some of her more liberal proposals — such as raising taxes on millionaires — through Congress, even under the rosiest of election scenarios for Democrats. That tax is key to paying for the massive jobs-and-infrastructure package at the heart of Clinton’s promise to help rebuild the American middle class.

Manley is also less bullish about immigration reform — Clinton’s other signature issue — which has repeatedly failed in Congress. And he cautions that if Clinton seeks to implement her immigration agenda through executive action, as Obama has sought to do, she could immediately sour relations with Republicans in Congress.

Clinton has predicted that Democrats will retake the Senate and narrow the Republican majority in the House, a result that would potentially ease but not guarantee passage of some Democratic initiatives.

Democrats are unlikely to retake enough seats to amass a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate, meaning Clinton would need Republican votes for nearly any important achievement.

Clinton has pledged to tackle an overhaul of what she calls a broken immigration system within her first 100 days in office and also has promised that the fix would include a means for illegal immigrants to gain U.S. citizenship.

“I’m hoping that the outcome of the election, which I am working hard to ensure [is] a victory, will send a clear message to our Republican friends that it’s time for them to quit standing in the way of immigration reform,” she said at a gathering this month of Hispanic and black journalists in Washington.

She also has promised to seek a multibillion-dollar package of infrastructure investments combined with various jobs incentives in the same time frame. Also on the 100-day list is introduction of a constitutional amendment that would seek to reinstate campaign finance rules swept away by the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. And Clinton has said she would seek legislation to end legal immunity for gun manufacturers right away — in what would be another immediate test of overcoming Republican resistance on the Hill.

“She has put out fairly detailed proposals, so in that sense, she has been very direct with the voters about what she could accomplish,” campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said. “If she wins, she will be able to point to the fact that she campaigned on a very specific set of policies in order to seek to hit the ground running and enacting as much of that platform as possible.”

But no one is drafting legislation now, Fallon said. “There’s a part of the process that can only come after she wins.”

Among other pledges, Clinton has said she would expand affordable housing, repair schools, rehabilitate failing water systems and connect every household to high-speed Internet by 2020.

She pledges to guarantee equal pay for women and improve affordable child care.

And a big, expensive one: make college tuition free for most families and debt-free for all while refinancing current student loan debt.

If Democrats do retake the Senate, longtime Clinton ally Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) is expected to become majority leader. He shares Clinton’s impulse to seek common ground with Republicans, said a Democratic aide familiar with their past discussions.

Already, for example, there has been talk on Capitol Hill about whether Clinton should pair her infrastructure plan with an initiative more palatable to Republicans, such as corporate tax breaks.

Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate partly for his record of bipartisan cooperation and good relations across the Democratic spectrum. As vice president, Kaine would be tasked with pushing many parts of Clinton’s ambitious list.

Clinton has borrowed some of her economic policy agenda from the liberal Roosevelt Institute in New York, where president and chief executive Felicia Wong said the group has worked for six months to compile a list of “multiple hundreds” of people to recommend for administration positions.

“There’s no way to execute on that kind of ambitious policy agenda without excellent leadership,” Wong said, adding that she hopes that by pushing jobs and infrastructure first and getting bipartisan legislative victories, Clinton will be in a stronger position to push other parts of her agenda in Congress.

Similar lists of recommendations are coming in from other quarters, but Fallon declined to discuss any personnel plans.

Of roughly 4,000 political jobs to fill, more than 1,000 require Senate confirmation. Internal vetting, security clearances and ethics checks can take months.

Former Utah governor Mike Leavitt, who served in Republican President George W. Bush’s Cabinet and oversaw transition planning for Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign, said it is not too early to begin identifying candidates for roughly 300 jobs that are deemed “critical,” many of which require Senate confirmation.

“The first task is you have to put a team on the field,” Leavitt said, “and the task of getting a senior person into the job goes far beyond just choosing them.”

WASHINGTON POST

 

THE VARIOUS AGE GRADES IN ABATETE (BOTH PAST AND PRESENT)

 THE VARIOUS AGEGRADES IN ABATETE(BOTH PAST AND PRESENT)

An age grade (ogbo in Igbo language) is a form of social organization based on age within a series of such categories through  which individuals pass over the course of their lives. So far Abatete (especially Owelle Aka n'ato)has witnessed 17 age grades since the inception of the age grade inception in the town. For posterity sake I would like to mention them.
(1) ogbo isianwu (head of a bee was the first age grade)
(2) ogbo irugo     ( face of an eagle was the second age grade)
(3) ogbo otakagu ( was the third age grade)
(4) ogbo Akamma ( head of a matchet or cutlass was the fourth age grade)
(5) ogbo Ekwueme  (was the fifth age grade)
(6) ogbo Anamekwulumma (was the sixth age grade)
(7) ogbo Okona ( named after district commissioner O'Connor during the colonial era was the 7th)
(8) ogbo Umumma (was the eight age grade )
(9) ogbo Umuoyibo (was the ninth age grade )
(10) ogbo Osoagha or obialun'agha (formed after the civil war was the 10th)
(11) ogbo Obialunego (was the 11th age grade)
(12) ogbo  Udoka        (was the 12th age grade)
(13) ogbo Njikoka      (was the 13th age grade)
(14) ogbo Oganiru     ( was the 14th age grade)
(15) ogbo Igwebuike  (was the 15th age grade)
(16) ogbo Ifeadigo     (formed when electricity was first installed in Abatete was the 16th) 
(17) ogbo Ekwueme (II) ( was the seventeenth) 
please I stand to be corrected if there is error in what I have written .somebody who thinks he knows our various age grades better should tell us. Thank you.

UBUNTU

UBUNTU




A  heart warming story from Africa:
The motivation behind  the Ubuntu culture......
An Anthropologist proposed a game to the African tribal children.....
He placed a basket of sweets near a tree and made the children stand 100metres away. Then announced that whoever reaches first would get all the sweets in the basket.
When he said 'ready, steady, go!....
Do you know what these children did? They held  each other's hand, ran together towards the tree, divided the sweets equally  among themselves and enjoyed it.
When the anthropologist asked them why they did so, they answered 'ubuntu'.which meant - " how can one happy when the others are sad?'
Ubuntu in their language means - ' I am because we are !
 A strong message for all generations. Let all of us always have this attitude and  spread happiness wherever we go let us strive to have an Ubuntu life.
I AM BECAUSE WE ARE

10 R'S THAT MAKE A LADY AUTHENTICALLY FEMININE AND IRRESISTIBLE

10 R'S THAT MAKE A LADY AUTHENTICALLY FEMININE AND IRRESISTIBLE

The  feminine essence is more than fragrance, tastes and energetic feelings. Contrary to what the world trend purports, there are qualities that make a lady authentic, radiant and have almost uncanny ability to draw people with seemingly little effort. These are.....
(1) RECTITUDE- This is the state of being honest and having moral integrity.. Can this be downplayed? Not at all. Who can find a virtuous (morally excellent, rectitude) woman? for her price (worth) is far above rubies.
(2) RECEPTIVE- Its that  warm disposition emitting from the woman to the people that makes them come around her. it is better to live in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.
(3) RELIABLE-   Is she reliable? it's about being trustworthy . confidence in an unfaithful woman in times of trouble is like a broken tooth, a foot out of joint.
(4) RESILIENCE - The power or ability to return to the original form, position etc. after being bent , compressed, or stretched. It is the tenacity of not giving up  and bowing out on life no matter what it throws on one .Naomi the wife of Elimelech would have swum in self pity at all her challenges such as the death of her husband and sons , no grandchildren from not less than  ten years of her son's marriages all in the land of Moab but she courageously went back to Bethlehem. it takes resilience to do that.
(5) RESPONSIBILITY: God has richly endowed women with multitasking abilities which ought not to be undermined. Responsibility grooms the woman  and differentiates her from the commoners (commoners are ladies who retreat to procrastination and excuses ). Whatever thy  hand findeth to do . Do it with all thy might!
(6) RESPECTFUL: This is our ability to show deference to a person or position/ office. it is a collaboration of both body language and words. A woman who shows respect puts herself  in a good position to receive favour and honour in return. Respect works hand in hand with love and kindness.
(7)RICHNESS: Productivity can only produce this richness. it's first a state of the mind. One cant produce  beyond the capacity of her mind. Always remember that the land wasn't cursed for eve. Your land (sphere of influence) is supposed to yield harvest.
(8) RADIANCE: God spent some extra hours in the feminine production. We should give attention to that. Nobody wants to hand out with a dull woman. Smiles  and laughter are not expensive but creasing your forehead with frowns is  because it makes you age faster. Run from masculine colours and understand who fits you . You need  to bear in mind that you are an epitome of God's beauty . Don't treat yourself less.
(9) RESTRAINT: A woman should be self controlled , self disciplined and reflect moderation through her actions . Temper , tantrums and bouts of depression are examples of behavior where self control and discipline are required. In Proverbs 11:22 the scriptures compares a woman without control or moderation to a gold ring in the snout of a pig. This means that a woman should give attention to her behavior at all times.
(10) REVERENCE: This is a basis on which every other qualities  stand. It takes a deep walk with God to have reverential fear for him. " Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."

2000 DISMISSED IMMIGRATION RECRUITS PROTEST IN ASO VILLA

         2000 DISMISSED IMMIGRATION RECRUITS PROTEST IN ASO VILLA                                                                                    ​▼                                                                                                  No fewer than 2000 recruits of the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, whose recruitment into the Service were suspended in September 2015, by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led admininistration, on Friday, stormed Aso Villa, the seat of power to protest their dismissal. See photos below: NIS2000 during the protest in Aso Villa on Friday NIS2000 during the protest in Aso Villa on Friday NIS2000 during the protest in Aso Villa on Friday NIS2000 during the protest in Aso Villa on Friday NIS2000 during the protest in Aso Villa on Friday

MY SISTER PRAYS DIE, DIE, DIE EVERY NIGHT FOR HOURS ON END

‘My sister prays die, die every night for hours on end’                                                                                                       A woman visiting her daughter for omugwo from the South East Nigeria had her first baptism of fire the first night she slept in her daughter’s home when during the midnight hour, she overheard somebody in the next apartment shouting die, die, die. Praying hands She listened briefly to be sure of what she was hearing and the shout of die, die, die continued and it was too close. Just the next flat. She checked her time and it was 12:30am and she began to panic, thinking somebody was being strangled to death nearby. She rushed out of the guest room to the room her daughter shared with her husband and knocked frantically at the door. When they opened, she almost jumped on them in fear. “I think somebody is being killed in this compound. It must be armed robbers”, she lamented but her daughter calmed her down. “They are praying, Mama”, she explained. But her mother was disturbed. What kind of person would be praying for others to die, she wondered. She listened again and the prayer was still on. She shook herself in disbelief as her daughter walked her back to the guest room. Throughout the night even till about 3am, the shout continued. The woman soon realised that it was going to be an everyday ordeal. Her daughter carefully explained to her that pentecostal churches pray like that and that nobody was being killed. ‘He who comes to equity must come with clean hands’ Charles, an engineer in a communication company narrated how he made a call to a female friend and obviously the person he called was supposedly praying in the church. “What I was hearing at the background was Die, die, die. Any person who is against me shall die, any person who is against my progress shall die. God let my enemy die and the person told me she was in church. A male voice would say it (apparently the pastor) and she would repeat it. A day later, I got this woman on phone and I told her what I heard her say in prayer and that God does not answer such prayers. I told her that it was better to pray to God to touch her enemy and change him or her so that the world will become a better place. She became angry, telling me not to question her over her religious beliefs. I have always known this woman to be dating married men. I simply said to her: “What if all married women pray that God should kill all women who sleep with their husbands? The call went off and the conversation ended there. A woman who is having an affair with a married man and at the same time wearing the toga of a pentecostal Christian of a church where she was shouting die, die ,die! Tell me, what manner of prayer is that, especially when it was coming from a woman like that who goes after married men? Even if she has enemies, shouldn’t she be praying for their repentance? Who does she want to be dead? Pastor praying for church faithful “I may not know the Bible like they do but I know the Bible said: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Galatians 6:7-9 “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands. Is she binding herself or someone else? Because if you ask me, she is a cheat of a Christian.” Have you ever prayed for someone’s complete ruin? That God would destroy them and wipe them off the face of the earth? It doesn’t seem very Christian, does it? ‘Kill them’ brand of prayer Nevertheless, these kinds of prayers are first recorded in the Bible especially in the Book of Psalms. Prayers that call for the death and destruction of others are called imprecatory prayers. You may not have given much thought to this kind of prayer before. Or have you? Those who read the Bible seriously can’t ignore the passionate plea for the violent destruction of enemies. Check out a few of them for yourself in the following Psalms: 5, 10, 17, 35, 58, 59, 69, 70, 79, 83, 109, 129, 137, 139, 140. When asked why his church prays the ‘die’ prayer all the time, a pastor of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, MFM, said people from outside the ministry misconstrue the concept of MFM prayers and therefore cannot judge the church. “Nobody prays for anybody to die. In life, people do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. When a sick man comes to church to pray for healing, it is the contrary powers that inflicted the sickness that was being addressed. “People face all kinds of challenges in their everyday life and those challenges weigh them down. They come to church to pray for such forces to releases them. The concept of death in these prayers is spiritual because it is the spiritual that controls the physical. “But unfortunately, people who copy prayer styles don’t understand and they inject other meanings to it. That is their problem, not MFM’s problems because many people who don’t understand the prayer points of MFM pray them without understanding. Nonetheless, we pray violent prayers because these are the end times and strange things are happening in the world everyday. The Bible tells me that from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. That is just the truth.” ‘My sister prays die, die every night for hours on end’ Chinonye, a broadcaster said she actually wanted to start worshipping in one of the branches of the church but was shocked by the reception she got from the branch she went to. “I had just finished my NYSC in Calabar and came to Lagos to live with my sister. We were Catholic but inclined towards Pentecostalism. My sister told me that since I’d finished NYSC, I needed to undergo deliverance before embarking on the search for work. She also decided to join me in the deliverance programme and so, early on a Monday morning, we set out to the nearest branch of the church. My sister and I are both very fair and needed spiritual intervention because her marriage was not going well. I just came back with long braids, fixed nails recently done and we headed to the church. We were barely at the entrance when some ‘holy’ people rushed at us with jars of anointing oil and shouts of ‘Holy Ghost Fire, Holy Ghost Fire.’ They almost blinded us with the oil as they shouted ‘marine spirit. Die, die, die.’ We were overwhelmed and flabbergasted. Then my sister asked them whether it is the way they welcome new people to the church. We didn’t understand when we became marine spirit. They asked us to pull everything, including jewelry, and almost barbed my hair. “I have no qualms if that is their way of doing things but at least, they should allow a new member to sit down before explaining their doctrine and definitely, not the way they did. They were too aggressive. Somebody who had no knowledge of God will never go to any church after that experience. Well, I left the church and didn’t go back. I joined Redeemed Christian Church of God and I have no regrets. It is indeed a loving church because they accepted and welcomed me with love and made me feel at home before taking me through the doctrine of the church. My sister is still in the die,die,die church and because of her fair fine looks, they have not accepted her completely. My sister is one of them but they still complain about her but she will always tell them when they complain that God is sees her heart. “There are some good ones who encouraged my sister to keep on when she becomes completely overwhelmed. She told me there are many bad people inside the church even when the Founder is a good man. And she also prays the ‘die’ prayer. You won’t believe it, midnight hours are her prayer times. It’s like she prays die, die, die every night for hours on end. “The die prayers work from what I can see in my sister’s life. We dread her because she’s very spiritual and prayerful. Now, she sees visions and knows the thoughts of people and she said she is not praying for anybody to die but for her problems to cease.” A leader of the female evangelism team of a Pentecostal church said her church also prays the die prayer. Evangelist Tinuke said she faces her ‘enemies’ squarely because the holy book says ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ‘The soul that sinneth shall die’ “I was married for fifteen years without any child. My husband and I separated many times and reconciled. He is the only son and you can imagine the predicament of not having any child. It was as if their generation was ending with him. That was when I went Pentecostal. The first deliverance service I attended did it all. The doctors had said nothing was wrong with my husband and I. “So, that night in the church, I prayed with everything in me. I poured out my heart before God. I prayed the die prayer in a special way because I got a seat and sat the enemy on it. I used clubs and anything I could lay my hands on in the fight. I didn’t know whether anybody was responsible for my predicament or not. I was just praying and fighting whoever or whatever. “When I got home in the morning, my husband and I got a call from the village that his mother’s sister was seriously sick and confessing unto death. She equally confessed she was responsible for my woes because since I got married to my husband, I was never paying her attention, that I didn’t greet her on my wedding day despite all her contributions to the success of the wedding, that I was proud. She died after her confession. Did I kill her? The soul that sinneth shall die. I was praying for God to take away my problems and if somebody somewhere is responsible for it, too bad for him or her.” ‘The best form of defence is attack’ Reminded that such prayers contradict the teaching that said ‘Love your enemies’, Evangelist Tinuke shook her head and said the best form of defence is attack. “If I pray for my enemies, I would be pouring hot coals of fire on them. So, its the same thing. My prayer against the enemy worked. My enemy died even though I didn’t know she was an enemy and today, I have three children. Anybody who has to die for me to make progress should die. Isaiah said ‘In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.’ “Dear journalist, Isaiah said King Uzziah had to die for him to see the glory of God and that is my prayer. If anybody has to die for me to see the glory of God, let him die. The enemy will not destroy my life and later repent. He will die before he destroys me and so, the die, die prayer has to stay.” One of the biggest problems Christians have with such prayers is that Jesus’ words seem to contradict the idea of praying for the destruction of your enemy, like in the following: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Mat 5:43-45 But Pastor Ayodele of the CAC who claimed the die, die prayer originated from it said: “I don’t believe that either of these solutions work well. Neither Jesus nor any of the other New Testament writers specifically corrected the prayers that asked for the punishment of the enemy. In fact there are some New Testament texts that also seem to be like that. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, those martyred cry out to God: “They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev 6:10) “No prayer is about personal revenge. When a man’s soul is troubled and he cries out to God and He shows mercy on him, He could kill for the person. Yes, Jesus said we should love our enemy and pray for those who persecute us but He made it clear that when we pray for our enemies, we pour hot coals of fire upon them. “Churches like MFM that pray the die prayer in English and interpret in Yoruba spring from CAC. Daniel Olukoya was a choir boy in CAC. He is well read and understands the issue of prayer and demons very well. But you cannot vouch for everybody in the church. There are all comers amongst the pastoral hierarchy just like Jesus had Judas who betrayed him. You cannot use the bad behaviour of few bad eggs who claim they attend a particular church to judge the rest of the people inside the church. No. “But no matter what you say, prayers are for different purposes. They may be calls to God for healing, guidance, or even a bit of rain to drench a drought-ridden field. Some prayers of petition are meant to kill.” ‘God may respond by choosing to kill someone’ Pastor Goodluck of Gloryland Assembly said God can answer prayers by killing someone. “An acquaintance who suffered abuse from an alcoholic father once said that, as a child, he prayed for God to kill his dad. And in some religious narratives about prayer, specifically those found among certain kinds of evangelicals who practise spiritual warfare, God may respond by choosing to kill someone, regardless of whether the human who made the prayer wished such an outcome. “I first became acquainted with spiritual warfare several years ago, when a student came into my office, sat down, and told me that he was very tired from being out late the previous night. He told me that he had been out all night on a “prayer walk”. He was part of a small group of evangelical students who had walked the campus and town, using prayer to discover “demonic strongholds”, and then praying and reading Bible verses at those spots in an attempt to banish the pesky resident demons. “One tale that the student shared from the spiritual warfare conference described how a “witch” died when they prayed persistently. So, spiritual warfare marks boundaries, divides pure from impure, distinguishes orthodox from heretical, and separates godly from satanic. And, sometimes, within this religious imaginary, prayers can kill. “The truth is, answered prayer may have many more consequences than you have ever thought about before. You may not even pray for anybody to die but in the process of answering someone’s prayer, God can kill. “Consider this, everything we do has consequences. Every decision we make influences our own future and the future of those whom our lives touch. The same holds true with answered prayer. If God answers a prayer and makes something happen that normally wasn’t going to happen, everything else is going to change after that answered prayer. People will live and die that would have died or lived in a different way. You can’t change something without changing everything. That is, unless we can imagine God keeping track of all the answered prayers and continually manipulating happenings so that the answered prayer really doesn’t affect anything else. This would make answered prayer infinitely more difficult than just, for instance, healing someone who was supposed to die. That person who should have died now takes up space that he shouldn’t be in. He will affect other people’s lives just because he is in that space. Everything is different, infinitely.” ‘The die, die prayer has become part and parcel of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria’ The book “Prayer is Good Medicine” by Larry Dossey, tells a story about a man who was injured in an automobile accident. According to him, “Stephen was involved in a near fatal auto accident and sustained serious injuries. We immediately marshaled several prayer chains in our church and the other churches as well. His surgeons were astonished that he survived the operations to save his life, calling his response a miracle. As the man’s recuperation continued, so did our prayers. But, although he had been a successful businessman and ideal father and community leader, things were not the same. He seemed to have lost his vitality and zest for life. He was apathetic, as if he didn’t care. He was argumentative, grouchy, and hard to tolerate. This was a complete change from his previous jovial self. He was indifferent to his wife and children. Nothing seemed right. Ten years later, he died of natural causes. Several days after Stephen’s death, I was startled in my meditation by his presence. He stood in front of me laughing his previous happy demeanor and said, “I finally won out over all of you.” And then he was gone. As I pondered this, I could come to only one conclusion, Stephen hadn’t wanted to live or perhaps hadn’t been meant to live. But the power of all those prayers for his recovery had bought him back. “In the Pentecostal churches where they pray die prayer, I know for sure that those who understand the true doctrines may not specifically be asking anybody to die. Nevertheless, the die, die prayer has become part and parcel of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria. In His bid to answer prayers, God can kill and that is a fact.”

VANGUARD