WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS ... YOU TO CAN BECOME AN ASSHOLE!

THEY SHOULD BE GREATFUL AND THANKFUL FOR THOSE WHO PROTECT THEIR RIGHT AND OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIENCE THE AMERICAN DREAM ... EVEN WITH AN 8TH GRADE EDUCATION YOU CAN BECOME A MILLIONAIRE!

HIGH WIRE ACT, THE PRICE ISN'T RIGHT ... OLD DOG NEW TRICKS

TRUMP TEACHES AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS ... SURE LOOKS LIKE TOM PRICE WAS A SWAMP CREATURE ... THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR --- TRUMP WILL NOT TOLERATE WALLERING IN THE MUD LIKE OTHER SWAMP CREATURES!  THERE'S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN!

Tom Price only has himself to blame (Technically, Price offered his resignation and Trump accepted it. But come on.)

Considering his disregard for taxpayer money and his arrogant lack of humility, now-former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, had to go.

Trump was elected on a promise to "drain the swamp" of special interest-cronyism, so his decision to fire Price is unsurprising.
Indeed, of all the president's men, Price should have been astute to the need to avoid the appearance of cronyism. After all, Price has epitomized those special interests in recent years. In repeated stock trades that generated vast short-term returns, Price gave off an aura of cronyism. Then, in his ensuing legislative action to advance his stock interests, Price wafted with a stench of insider pay-to-play style corruption.

FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST ... YUP YOU'RE FREE TO MOVE ABOUT THE COUNTRY ...

Still, it wasn't until Price became HHS secretary, and jaunted around the world in private and military jets, that his inability to serve became self-evident. As I noted earlier Friday morning, it's easy to understand why Price quickly fell in love with using military jets: he liked flying for free in five-star hotel-style luxury!

Yet it is exceptionally hard to understand why Price kept up his extravagant living when his boss, the president, prioritized a public relations message of saving taxpayer money. Did he think the media wouldn't find out what he was doing?

That said, it was Price's awful appearance on Special Report with Bret Baier on Thursday evening, that hammered the final nail into his HHS coffin. Questioned by Baier as to why he flew so many times at such unnecessary expense to the taxpayer, Price offered a mix of pathetic excuses, half-hearted apologies, and genuine confusion.

For Trump, enough was enough.

AERIAL ADVENTURISM ... 
So what now for the short-lived Cabinet official? Well, Price should now dip into his stock earnings and pay back the government for his aerial adventurism.

BLAZING SADDLES, NFL AND PLAN B "THE MORNING AFTER PILL"

AFTER ANTHEM PROTESTS, N.F.L. PLOTS ANOTHER PATH FORWARD ... OFF THEIR KNEES ... NEXT CRAWLING ON THE BELLIES ... THE N.F.L. AND OWNERS SHOULD KNOW BETTER!

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, left, with Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, before a game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium earlier this month. David Goldman/Associated Press

Faced with the prospect of another wave of sideline demonstrations at N.F.L. games this weekend, the league’s owners and players are wrestling with how to plot a path forward from one of the most divisive weekends it has seen.

As they do so, they are weighing the players’ desire to rebuff criticism from President Trump and to kneel or lock arms during the national anthem to raise awareness of social injustice, while accommodating fans who would prefer football to just be about football.

Even as the president continues to fire almost daily barbs, league officials and a group of players met this week to discuss how to proceed. At least one team, the Denver Broncos, announced its players would stand during the anthem while several players on other teams expressed the desire to kneel or said they were discussing what to do. On Thursday night, players from the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears locked arms on their respective sidelines during the national anthem before their game in Green Bay, and asked fans to do the same.

The meeting this week at league headquarters, first reported by NJ.com, included Commissioner Roger Goodell, several prominent owners and about a half-dozen players. No concrete measures came from the meeting, and the league did not explicitly try to put a stop to the protests, even though one player who attended said he felt it was the owners’ desire that all players stand for the anthem.

The issue has pushed the N.F.L. into an unusual dilemma of balancing respect for the wishes of its players, who often are critical of the owners on issues of health and labor agreements, while taking into account some signs of a backlash among many fans.


It is clear from interviews with N.F.L. officials and more than a dozen teams that owners and team executives would prefer that the protests end, both for personal reasons and because it risks inflaming the president, who has been a friend and ally of many of the owners, and alienating fans and sponsors. But they are also wary of appearing heavy handed and upsetting the image of unity that the league sought to project last weekend.

What has emerged in meetings across the league this week — from locker rooms to N.F.L. headquarters — is a strategy of not pushing back at an unpredictable president. Instead, the players, with input from team officials, are seeking to shape a message that shows their desire to stand together while still addressing the original intent of the protests: raising awareness of police brutality against African Americans and racism in general.

“The players have a right to speak their minds, but on the other hand, it can make it difficult because there isn’t anyone in America who doesn’t want to honor America,” Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, said in an interview. “You talk to other owners and the commissioner, they feel the same way, they support the players.”

But in a league with 32 teams, 2,000 players and a wide range of political views in the locker room and owners’ suites, finding consensus has been difficult as myriad conversations have taken place throughout the league.

From left, Adrian Amos, DeAndre Houston-Carson, Deon Bush and Josh Bellamy of the Chicago Bears knelt on the field during the national anthem before Thursday night’s game against the Green Bay Packers. Benny Sieu/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

In Charlotte, several players visited the house of Jerry Richardson, the team owner, to express their frustration with what they perceived to be restrictions on their ability to speak on social issues. In Kansas City, Chiefs wide receiver Chris Conley said that teammates respectfully told him they disagreed with his decision to kneel during the anthem last Sunday. The Steelers are still dealing with the fallout from their decision to stay indoors when the anthem was played last weekend; the starting quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, later said he regretted not appearing on the sideline for the anthem.

And on a personal level, Delanie Walker, a tight end for the Tennesee Titans, wrote in a post on Instagram that he and his family had received death threats since he spoke in support of the anthem protests. “The racist and violent words directed at me and my son only serve as another reminder that our country remains divided and full of hateful rhetoric,” he wrote.

At the same time, several owners, including Blank and Shahid Khan of the Jacksonville Jaguars, have said they will not be present on the sidelines for the anthem in the future. Some teams, like the Broncos, have sought to deflect questions by quickly deciding quickly what to do on the coming game day. The Packers, which had three players sit in recent weeks, had said Tuesday they would only lock arms as a team on Thursday.

Goodell and his advisers have looked to soothe sponsors’ concerns, speaking to them from league headquarters in Manhattan. Though Nike and other companies have issued statements in support of the players’ right to protest, DirectTV, which sells the Sunday Ticket package of every N.F.L. game, reportedly will allow fans to receive refunds if they cite the anthem protests as a reason.

The league is also monitoring fan reaction, especially on social media, where videos have surfaced showing people burning N.F.L. jerseys. Nearly every team has been fielding hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of calls from fans, most of them opposed to the protests. Some have even turned in their season tickets.

“We understand there is anger out there,” Joe Lockhart, a league spokesman, said. “We understand some of it is based on political agendas, but some of our fans’ anger is based on their own principles. We get that and we understand that.”

In some ways, the N.F.L. can afford to wait and see what happens. With tens of millions of viewers each week watching games on networks that have long-term, multibillion dollar rights deals with the N.F.L., sponsors are hesitant to cut ties over a single issue, even one this volatile. On average, about 70 percent of a team’s revenue comes from these television and sponsorship deals, which ensures that every team turns a profit.

Still, the league wants the focus to remain on the field, something President Trump is eager to exploit. On Wednesday, he needled the league again, saying that if N.F.L. did not crack down on the protesters, its business “is going to hell.” On Thursday, he said the owners were “afraid of their players.”

Though Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner, spoke to the president, league executives said they have not reached out to the White House. For days, Lockhart, the league spokesman, has not responded directly to Mr. Trump’s comments, though on Thursday he did call the president’s statement that the owners were afraid of their players “inaccurate.” One league adviser compared the N.F.L.’s approach to the strategy of letting a boxer punch himself out.

Chase Daniel, a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, stood with his hand over his heart as the anthem played before a game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, while many of his teammates sat on the bench. Bob Leverone/Associated Press

“When he thinks he’s winning, he doubles down and doubles down, and there are very few entities that have the skill, desire and thick skin to take it,” the advisor, who was not authorized to speak for the league, said of the president. “So it’s a war of attrition.”

The league and its owners are also afraid that fighting the president will distract their players, who are already spending hours discussing how or whether to protest, from preparing for games or working out.

“While we feel like we’re a political sideshow, we still have to win football games,” one team adviser said.

Still, teams are trying to let the players come to an agreement themselves. Many players who knelt last weekend say they have made their point and are ready to resume standing for the anthem. Those who were previously vocal about social activism are unlikely to stop, because they do not want President Trump to claim victory.

Then there are the Seattle Seahawks, in their own category. More than any other team, they have been at the vanguard of social activism, with three of their best players — Doug Baldwin, Michael Bennett and Richard Sherman — using their platforms to condemn racial injustice and police brutality.

After vigorous and emotional debate last Saturday, the Seahawks resolved to stay in their locker room while the anthem was played before their game the next day at Tennessee. Not wanting to be left on the field alone, the Titans also stayed inside.

The anger over the protests came directly to the Seahawks’ front door on Tuesday when a small group of military veterans assembled outside the team’s practice facility in Renton, Wash. Bennett stopped to talk to them, and a woman who lives nearby witnessed the interaction, and wrote about it on Facebook.

“I was just driving and I saw protesters, and for me, it was like, it could be dangerous to walk in front of people because you never know what people are thinking,” Bennett said Thursday. “For me, you just have to believe that people are good.”

If the intent last week was to make a statement — to show that they would not be bullied by President Trump, as Sherman said — then the Seahawks this week are grappling with how to proceed Sunday, when they play the Indianapolis Colts at CenturyLink Field in Seattle. Baldwin said they have had brief conversations this week in the locker room but have yet to discuss the matter as a team. Their coach, Pete Carroll, said he was confident in his players’ ability to compartmentalize, but there is still plenty of time before kickoff to continue debating.

“There’s still more to unpack,” Baldwin said in an interview at Seahawks headquarters. “But maybe it’s easier for us because we’ve had practice at unpacking those things and maybe the conversations would go more smoothly. It’s to be seen.”

THE NEW CLASS ROOM FOR THE VIRTUAL COLLEGE ...

Alternate Site for Conferences: Movie Theaters ... 

The American College of Radiology is a frequent user of the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center. Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

She said the big draw at the mandatory meeting is the technology and screen visibility. During presentations, quizzes appear on the screen. When a speaker from the National Credit Union Foundation in Madison, Wis., asked what percentage of Americans lived from paycheck to paycheck, participants could check answers they keyed in on their mobile devices with the actual answer on the screen. (The answer is nearly half.)

Ms. Downey said the theater rental is “probably a little cheaper than the hotel, but not a lot.” Conference room rental fees and audiovisual requirements cost a couple of thousand dollars at a hotel, she said. At a movie theater, those fees are included in the rental.

• Christina Panos, chief marketing officer at the Corcoran Group, a real estate company with offices in New York, the Hamptons and Florida, said the company chose the Ziegfeld Theater (now closed) to present a website redesign in November 2012.

The 900 sales agents came “came to theater expecting entertainment,” she said, not to be focused on their BlackBerries, the prevailing technology at the time.

The theater setting provided additional motivation. “It’s been home to amazing entertainment,” she said.
While movie theaters are gaining acceptance among meeting planners, they probably will not replace traditional meeting spaces. Mark Cooper, the chief executive of the International Association of Conference Centers, said in an email: “The use of unusual venues for events is not new, but also often offers an environment that has a novelty appeal but lacking the ideal facilities (acoustics, lighting, furniture and technology) required for effective meetings and conferences. They are used more for evening corporate events rather than serious meetings and conferences in my experience.”

But Mr. Jouaneh, the Amex executive, said technology was transforming meetings, allowing planners to adjust content. And he said using theaters allows for a hybrid approach, with a combination of face-to-face meetings and extending meetings to a broader virtual audience.

For Ms. Downey, there may be another reason for the popularity of movie theaters among employees. She said she had received high praise both for the central location and the ease of parking. Parking downtown for the hotel meetings “was a bear and expensive,” she said.

THE APPLE DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE ...

The Communist Family Tree of Valerie Jarrett ... 
 


Valerie Jarrett's late father—a physician named James Bowman—had a lengthy showing that he who often collaborated with other Communists based principally in Chicago. In 1950, for instance, Bowman communicated with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who later fled the U.S. to Prague when he was indicted on espionage charges that were ultimately confirmedbeyond doubt—specifically, he had conspired to transmit military and political information to the Soviet Union. Bowman was also a member of the Association of Internes and Medical Students, a group that, according to his FBI file, engaged in un-American activities and “has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line.”

So much for dear-old-Dad.

Valerie Jarrett's mother is the early-childhood-education author Barbara Taylor Bowman (born 1928), who in 1966 co-founded a Chicago-based graduate school in child development known as the Erikson Institute, named after the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. In 1950 Erikson became a hero to the Left by choosing to resign from his professorship at the University of California rather than sign an anti-Communist loyalty oath as the school required. The Erikson Institute's radical orientation is reflected in the fact that its board of trustees has included such figures as Bernardine Dohrn, wife of the former Weather Undergroundterrorist and lifelong Marxist Bill Ayers, and Tom Ayers, father of the same lifelong Marxist.

Okay, so much for Mommy.

Jarrett's maternal grandfather was a Chicagoan named Robert Taylor, the first African-American head of the Chicago Housing Authority. In the 1940s he was involved with such Communist fronts as the American Peace Mobilization and the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee. A fellow member of these groups was Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist journalist who in the 1970s would mentor a young Barack Obama. An FBI document shows that Taylor, like Valerie Jarrett's father, was believed to have been “in contact” with the aforementioned Soviet agent Alfred Stern “on a number of occasions.”

Oh dear. So much for Grandpa.

Well, how about Grandma? Remember going to your own grandmother's house on Sunday afternoons, years ago, for fresh-baked pies, sweet jam, and lots of hugs? Valerie Jarrett's maternal grandmother, Dorothy Taylor, was an activist with Planned Parenthood in its early years. Planned Parenthood was founded in 1942 by Margaret Sanger, a member of the New York Socialist Party and a eugenicist who favored the use of use birth control to limit the reproduction of society's “least intelligent and fit” members. Toward that end, Sanger in 1939 created the so-called “Negro Project” specifically to prevent black people from breeding. Her Birth Control Review magazine once published an article emphasizing the “urgent need” for “eugenic sterilization.” That piece was penned by none other than Ernst Rüdin, who, as Jonah Goldberg points out, was Adolf Hitler’s director of sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene.

Okay Grandma. Thanks for the pie and revolutionary politics. See ya next Sunday!

Eventually, the time came for Valerie to explore love and marriage. In 1983 she wed Dr. William Robert Jarrett, son of the Chicago Sun-Times reporter Vernon Jarrett. And Valerie got along just splendidly with her new father-in-law, who surely must've reminded her very much of Daddy and Gramps.

You see, in the 1940s Vernon Jarrett had been the first nationally syndicated black columnist for the Communist-influenced Chicago Defender, where he wrote pieces extolling the Communist poet Langston Hughes and lifelong Stalinists like W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Also in the '40s, Vernon Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy—the youth wing of the Communist Party USA. Moreover, he served on a publicity committee for the Packinghouse Workers Union, a Chicago-based entity dominatedby the Communist Party. In each of these endeavors, Vernon Jarrett had close contact with the Communist Frank Marshall Davis—who, as noted above, later became Barack Obama's mentor.

According to his FBI files, Vernon Jarrett was a leading Chicago-based Communist. “For a period of time,” reports Judicial Watch, his name “appeared on the FBI’s Security Index and [he] was considered a potential Communist saboteur who was to be arrested in the event of a conflict with the [USSR]. His FBI file reveals that he was assigned to write propaganda for a Communist Party front group in Chicago that would 'disseminate the Communist Party line among … the middle class.'”

There were lots of tears when Vernon Jarrett died in 2004, but also many laudatory remembrances. Not the least of those was a glowing salute in the pages of People’s Weekly World, the house organ of the Communist Party.

These, then, are the people who raised and most heavily influenced a young Valerie Jarrett; the people who made her who she is today. Is it any wonder, then, that she gravitated so quickly and eagerly to Barack and Michelle Obama when she first met them in the late 1980s? Is it any wonder that when Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, he appointed Jarrett to a prominent position in the new Administration: Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs?

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tells us that Valerie Jarrett's connection to Obama is “deep and personal,” calling her “the real center of Obama’s inner circle.” Milbank describes Jarrett as someone in a “position of unparalleled influence over the president.” Obama himself has acknowledged that he solicits Jarrett's input on every decision he makes.

Jarrett, for her part, puts it this way: “We have kind of a mind meld. And chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.” “I kind of know what makes them [the Obamas] who they are,” she adds.

Truer words have never been spoken.

JIHADI ONE STOP SHOPPING ... DELIVERY EXTRA!

Jihadi bomb kit like one used for Manchester Arena terror attack bought on Amazon for £95 – without proper security checks

Amazon has been labelled “the terrorist’s best friend” after selling all the parts required to build a deadly nail bomb — without proper security checks.

The ingredients, which could make an IED like the one that killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena, were purchased by The Sun in a single order for £95.






The Sun

12 Components bought to make a deadly nail bomb kit are readily available from Amazon for £95

Amazon did nothing to halt the purchase or alert officials.

Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke said: “It shows once again that internet firms aren’t playing by the rules. I would go as far as to say that Amazon is aiding and abetting terrorism.”

The Sun has decided not to detail the components for the "Mother of Satan"-style IED in full.

Similar bombs, with a TATP explosive favoured by ISIS, were used in attacks at Parsons Green Tube station and the Manchester Arena.

Yet Amazon did nothing to alert authorities or halt our transaction.

Former Military Intelligence explosives expert Major Chris Hunter said: “The fact that The Sun has managed to buy all of this in one go is truly terrifying.

The Sun shows how the ingredients for a deadly nail bomb can be purchased on Amazon



The Sun 12 The Sun has chosen to obscure some of the chemical purchased from the online retailer

“With relaxed security like this, Amazon really could be considered the terrorist’s best friend.”

He added: “This is really nasty stuff. The Sun’s managed to obtain lethal quantities of these chemicals that, when put together, could kill dozens and maim many more.

“Looking at all the material acquired, I estimate you’d be able to produce a device similar to those used on 7/7 which were able to destroy Tube carriages and a bus.

“How a multi-billion pound corporation can sell this without flagging it up to intelligence services beggars belief. They need to take a look at themselves and ensure it never happens again.”

The Sun launched its probe on the day of last week’s botched Tube attack at Parsons Green, South West London, which saw the terror level raised to critical.



The Sun

12 Sun man Jonathan Reilly picking up the components for a 'Mother of Satan' nail bomb from a depot



London News Pictures

12 A similar style nail bomb was used at the Manchester Arena terror attack which killed 22 people

We used an account on Amazon set up that afternoon and bought the items, flagged on ­government warning lists.

No system kicked in to link our list of purchases and their potential use in making an IED.

It had taken our team ­minutes on Google to find details of ingredients required for a bomb.

Some of the chemicals we had delivered to an anonymous South London lock-up were used in both the 2015 Paris attacks and last year’s outrage in Brussels.

One item, hydrogen peroxide, is restricted for sale by the Home Office. But we were able to buy a repeat order on the site.


12 The components to make the 'Mother of Satan'-style bomb were bought in one go from the online retailer



The Sun

12 Former Military Intelligence explosives expert Major Chris Hunter said Amazon should be more responsible with its selling of DIY bomb kits



The Sun

12 He said the ingredients bought would make for a quick assemble of a deadly device



Reuters

12 Loopholes exposed by The Sun show Amazon is legally allowed to sell similar Manchester Arena DIY bomb kits

Our purchases also included component parts including a pressure cooker, batteries and fairy lights.

The Government introduced extra checks to clamp down on the sale of suspicious chemicals after London’s 7/7 attacks.

But loopholes in current guidelines exposed by The Sun mean Amazon is technically free to sell and deliver the DIY bomb kits.

Will Geddes of security consultants ICP said: “The fact you have bought these things is terrifying.

“I’m astounded you got them from one source in a single batch. Amazon should have a system where, when these items are bought together, they notify the authorities.”



The Sun

12 The expert said the components are the same being used by ISIS and Al-Qaeda to make deadly high explosive devices



The Sun

12 Fairy lights were also bought which when combined with the other materials would make for a deadly and potent device



The Sun

12 Major Hunter said if the components bought on Amazon were made into a device the impact would be on par with the deadly London 7/7 bombings

Explosives expert Simon Trundle said: “The difficulty is when someone orders a known recipe for an IED and there is no trigger alert.

“To detect such purchases, online retailers would need to know the recipe for home-made explosive and write an algorithm to do so.”

Amazon said all the items we purchased were available legally and can be widely bought elsewhere.
For more on this story listen to Julia Hartley-Brewer



12

Listen from 10am on talkRADIO on DAB or via the app or online at talkradio.co.uk

A spokesman said: “We only sell products that comply with UK laws.

“In light of recent events, we are reviewing our website to ensure these products are presented in an appropriate manner.

"We also continue to work closely with police and law enforcement agencies where we can assist investigations.”
HYDROGEN peroxide has been classified as an “explosive precursor” since March last year and its sales have been restricted. People hoping to buy it at super-strength or in bulk need a Home Office licence and photo ID. But this is harder to check online.

Mother of satan

EX-Army bomb disposal expert Chris Hunter said last night the ingredients bought by The Sun were exactly the same as those used by al-Qaeda and IS to make deadly weapons. Chris said: “This kind of device is known as the ‘mother of Satan’.

“It is a very dangerous high explosive mixture that should not have been bought in a single order.

“In my professional opinion you could construct, relatively quickly, a device that would be on a level with the 7/7 bombings. If this device was on a tube, it would be carnage.

“A rapid expansion of heat, gas and light would hit people as if it was concrete.

“The algorithms Amazon uses help us as consumers to get the best products that we want and need.

“But when it comes to this, more needs to be done and Amazon needs to take more responsibility.”

'WE ARE ASTOUNDED'

Uber come out fighting over ban as 187,000 sign petition backing firm

SIGH OF THE LAND

Creepy ‘breathing’ road terrifies locals following Mexico’s lethal quake

BARGAIN CHUCK IT

Clip shows 'horrid practices at KFC branch including selling old chicken'

'WORST DECISION EVER!'

Uber users go into meltdown over London licence decision

END IS NOT NIGH

Conspiracy theorist pushes back end of world by one month - to October 21

STATE DEPARTMENT HOP SCOTCH ... STONEWALLING

HE WROTE A CHECK ONLY HIS BODY WOULD CASH ... A HERO AND WARRIOR SHALL NOT BE FORGOTTEN!

There's nothing more to say or add that this photo doesn't already say a thousand times better!

 Tell all the overpaid NFL protesters to put on this uniform ...

Then they might understand why we stand when the National Anthem is played!

WHAT IS: SUSAN COLLINS - MITCH MCCONNELL - JOHN MCCAIN ... RINO EXCREMENT SANDWICH WITH THE FIXINGS

The Trump White House is gearing up to lay blame for a series of likely failures this week squarely at the feet of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to sources in and outside of the administration.

On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Alabama are poised to reject Trump and McConnell’s preferred pick for the seat, Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL). The next day, a Republican-authored last-ditch attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare is almost certain to go down to defeat, if it comes to a vote at all.

• The dual setbacks could have profound ramifications throughout the party, forcing it to reckon with a Republican electorate deeply upset with its inability to move an agenda and its own inability to get that agenda moved. The rush to assign responsibility for that failure is taking place before it even occurs.

One senior Trump administration official told The Daily Beast that the president is “well prepared to” shovel blame onto McConnell if and when the latest Obamacare repeal effort goes down in flames later this week. Another Trump confidant noted that the president regularly vents about “Mitch’s” seeming inability to get “anything over the finish line.”

A White House official joked that it has proven a winning “formula” for Trump to go after the unpopularity of top GOP brass, including McConnell, ever since the campaign. Trump even spent the last few days hammering home the point that Strange (who is locked in an election fight against former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore) isn’t even all that close to McConnell politically or personally, and that Strange would be “fighting Mitch” in the Senate as an authentic conservative.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss strategy.

Tensions between the president and Senate Republicans—McConnell in particular—have been building for months. Last month, Trump reportedly berated McConnell during a phone call for refusing to “protect” the president from federal and congressional investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. According to The New York Times, the call “quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.”

• Furthermore, Trump has tweeted angrily about McConnell many times, including about how he has “failed” as a Republican leader. “Can you believe that Mitch McConnell, who has screamed Repeal & Replace for 7 years, couldn't get it done,” @realDonaldTrump posted last month.

But this week could bring those tensions to full-scale boil. Not only is the president looking to pre-ascribe blame to the Majority Leader, but allies outside the administration are planning to turn the upcoming congressional elections into a referendum on McConnell’s leadership.

“If he can't get the job done he needs to go,” Fox News host and informal Trump adviser Sean Hannity told The Daily Beast. Hannity has made no secret of his disappointment with McConnell in the past, having accused him of “not leading” and suggesting recently that it might be time for McConnell to “call it a career."

Pro-Trump media is already planning to amplify these points should Obamacare repeal fail again and Strange end up falling short. A source close to Steve Bannon, the former top White House adviser who now runs the Trump-boosting, Moore-supporting Breitbart News, said the goal would be to make support for McConnell’s continued role as leader a component of future intraparty fights.

“This is the kind of thing that could take off a debate in the Republican primaries in 2018,” said the source.

In declining to comment, Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, noted that neither the Alabama primary nor the vote on the health care bill authored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) had yet to occur. But he did take a shot at the Senator’s critics in the White House for not putting their names on their takes. “All anonymous sources, right?” Stewart asked, adding: “#brave.”

A source close to McConnell, meanwhile, argued that if blame is to be cast it should be on the White House political shop for not working in advance to avoid a primary fight in Alabama. Far from helping Trump pass his agenda, the source added, a Moore win would imperil it.

“The only two things that I heard [Moore] talk about from a policy perspective is his opposition to Graham-Cassidy and his opposition to his budget that doesn’t balance, which doesn’t lend itself to tax reform,” said the source. “And unless I missed something, those are the two things on Trump's agenda.”

• In the Senate, few if any Republicans were willing to blame their leader for the two impending defeats. Asked how much responsibility McConnell would bear if health care fails and Moore were to win, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) held up fingers to make a “zero” sign.

“He can’t control the Alabama race,” Hatch explained. “And everybody knows [Graham-Cassidy] is going to fail. You don’t have one Democrat vote for it, so it’s going to fail.”

But while McConnell may have been unable to turn the tides on health care or a primary, what remains undeniably true is that in the modern Republican Party, he is more unpopular than Trump. Operatives in Alabama have said that the Majority Leader’s meddling in the race hurt Strange more than it helped, making it easier to blame him for a likely loss.

“Watch how Strange and Moore do in Mo Brooks’s district,” advised Alabama conservative commentator and former GOP congressional candidate Quin Hillyer. “If Roy Moore does really well up there, that’ll tell you just how badly Mitch McConnell’s folks hurt Luther… by literally running an ad saying Mo Brooks was an apologist for ISIS.”

Though groups like the Senate Leadership Fund, a McConnell-linked super PAC, provided extensive air cover for Strange, they may eventually prove a political liability, Hillyer and others predicted. Being Washington’s chosen candidate doesn’t sit well with Republican voters. And though Trump is now Washington, his followers are more plentiful and forgiving than McConnell’s.

“Remember, there is always a different loyalty to a president than to a party. I think Trump is out there seen as fighting for us and pushing. He has distinguished himself from the legislative body,” former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), an ally and ex-surrogate of Trump’s, told The Daily Beast on Monday afternoon. “We used to laugh at the base voters of Clinton because he was a guy all over the place. But what we found out is that to the base, if they think their president is trying, he won’t take much blame over all.”

I'VE GOT MY iPHONE BUT NO ONE TO CALL ... CAN'T EVEN TURN IT ON

Puerto Ricans hunt for precious Wi-Fi and cell signals ... 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Margarita Aponte and her relatives cleared the road in front of her house with two oxen Sunday, then drove an hour from her devastated hometown in central Puerto Rico to the old telegraph building in the capital of San Juan.

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE ... 

There, thousands of Puerto Ricans gathered for a chance at a resource nearly as precious as power and water in the wake of Hurricane Maria — communication.

“It’s ringing, it’s ringing, it’s ringing!” Aponte, a janitor, screamed as her phone connected to free Wi-Fi and her Facetime call went through to the mainland.

• Her eyes filled with tears as she talked with nephews, uncles, brothers and sisters in Florida and Massachusetts for the first time since Maria destroyed nearly every cellphone and fiber optic connection on this U.S. territory of 3.4 million people.

The low murmur at one of two free Wi-Fi hotspots is occasionally interrupted by the cheering of someone getting through the largely jammed network. Most spend hours frowning at their phones, unable to connect.

“There’s no communication. We’re in God’s hands,” Yesenia Gomez, a kitchen worker, said as she left a message for her mother in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Dozens of other Puerto Ricans opted to pull over to the side of the road along various highways where cellphone signals were strongest.

Carlos Ocasio, a maintenance worker, picked his way through tree branches and broken glass bottles as he found a spot with a good signal. Soon, he was able to reach his brother in New Jersey.

• “My throat got a little choked up and I couldn’t talk for a minute,” he said. “They’re calling me from everywhere, asking when I’m going to arrive.”

WITH AN EMP THERE WILL BE NO RADIO!

Others in Puerto Rico and abroad called a local radio station to provide names, numbers, exact addresses and pictures of their loved ones in hopes of reconnecting.

But for hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland, there has been only silence from the island.

Shirley Rodriguez, a resident of New York’s Brooklyn borough, said she has more than 30 relatives in Puerto Rico but she is especially concerned about her 66-year-old mother, Mildred Rodriguez, who has diabetes and pulmonary hypertension and lives in Hormigueros on the island’s west coast.

Rodriguez last spoke to her family before the storm and her relatives were planning on being together for it. Since then, calls to their cellphones have gone to voicemail.

“I’m absolutely numb at this point. It’s a rollercoaster of emotion,” she said. “Not knowing is extremely agonizing.”

Her mother-in-law is in the San Juan area and somehow managed to connect with someone who works for the mayor of Hormigueros, who was able to tell Rodriguez that the area where her parents live escaped flooding. But she still doesn’t know what the actual conditions are like.

Some in Puerto Rico expressed anger over what they said was a lack of communication from cellphone providers about which towers were working so they could drive in that direction.

“They’re not giving us any information,” said Ricardo Castellanos, a business consultant. “We’re in a state of emergency.”

Castellanos visits the Wi-Fi hotspots twice a day to try to reach his two daughters in the central town of Gurabo and has been able to send a few pictures to friends on social media of the devastation the hurricane left behind.

As people continued to search for a connection in silence, some occasionally spoke up to offer unsolicited advice. “I didn’t move my phone around, and I got a signal,” said one woman to a man complaining that he was in a dead zone.

Nearby, retiree Sylvia Calero tapped her phone with impeccably manicured bright orange fingernails as she tried to reach three brothers and three grandchildren in the hard-hit coastal town of Aguadilla in northwest Puerto Rico. She spent an hour walking up and down the upscale Condado district unable to find a signal before driving to the free Wi-Fi hotspot.

“Zero communication,” she said.

Leaning against a boarded-up window, illustrator Avalon Clare from Colorado worried about getting off the island. She and her partner were supposed to fly out of Puerto Rico on Saturday but the flight was canceled. It was rescheduled for Thursday, but Clare said she had no way to confirm whether that was still the case.

“The only think I can do is text,” she said. “We’re trying to leave because we can’t work without internet ... We only have half a tank of gas. We’re running out of cash. It’s just getting harder.”

Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative in Congress, urged people to remain calm, noting that the towers of one cellphone provider that had constant coverage after the hurricane collapsed Sunday.

“Don’t become desperate,” she said, adding that if anyone was in danger, local officials would have been notified by now.

Only about 25 percent of towers were working in the San Juan metro area.

Cell service provider T-Mobile said it reached a deal with other providers to help reconnect their customers, saying callers should use the roaming data option to find a connection. Officials said customers would not be charged extra.

Claro was installing 40 generators to power up its towers, and expected 50 more generators to arrive from the Dominican Republic once a ferry from the neighboring island is operational.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello said a major underwater cable had been repaired, which would allow people to make long-distance calls and improve internet service. Two planes from Spain’s telephone company also arrived over the weekend to help re-establish services.

Persistence paid off for many who waited up to three hours to find a signal, including Wanda Nieves, a government worker who stood at one of the free Wi-Fi hotspots.

She heard about it on the radio and drove 30 minutes to reach the site. Nieves spoke to family in Florida and Michigan and did not plan to return for more calls or messages.

“We’ve already given signs of life,” she said. “Now we just wait for Puerto Rico to recover.”

HAVING READ THAT NOW THINK ABOUT AND EMP ... 

Nuclear bombs trigger a strange effect that can fry your electronics — here's how it works ...

An illustration of electromagnetic radiation. Shutterstock
Nuclear blasts trigger an effect called electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

EMP can disrupt or even destroy electronics from miles away.
Blasts miles above a country like the US might severely damage its electric and telecommunications infrastructure.

A nuclear detonation creates plenty of terrifying effects, including a blinding (and burning) flash of light, a building-toppling blast wave, an incendiary fireball, and radioactive fallout that can drift for hundreds of miles.

But there's a lesser-known consequence of a nuclear explosion that can drastically expand its damage zone: an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

EMPs are rapid, invisible bursts of electromagnetic energy. They occur in nature, most frequently during lightning strikes, and can disrupt or destroy nearby electronics. However, nuclear EMPs can cover an entire continent and cripple tiny circuits inside modern electronics on a massive scale. The power grid, phone and internet lines, and other infrastructure that uses metal is also prone to effects that resemble those of a devastating geomagnetic storm.

Savvy readers called this to our attention after we published expert advice on why you should never get in a car after a nuclear bomb is detonated. Brooke Buddemeier, a radiation expert at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, suggested sheltering deep within a building instead, and tuning in to a radio for instructions.

But a reader named Taylor K. pointed out that "radios, computers, anything that use[s] electrical transmission to power itself will be effectively neutralized" by the bomb's EMP.

He's correct — but fortunately only in certain situations.
How electromagnetic pulse works

Nuclear explosions don't make EMPs directly; the effect requires a couple of key ingredients.

The first is a nuke's invisible burst of gamma rays, a form of light typically emitted by the "hottest and most energetic objects in the universe," according to NASA. A small fraction of a bomb's energetic yield — between 0.1% and 0.5% — is emitted as gamma rays. These slam into air molecules, knock off electrons, and accelerate the negatively charged particles to about 90% of the speed of light.

Earth's magnetic field then shuttles many of these high-speed electrons toward the planet's poles in a corkscrew-like pattern. The electrons respond to this movement by letting off their newly acquired energy as a powerful soup of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves.

This is a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. It happens within a fraction of a microsecond, and the surge of energy can overload or "shock" sensitive electronic devices — especially the kinds we heavily rely on today.

A nuclear test blast. Public domain

"[T]he radiation can be collected by metallic and other conductors at a distance, just as radio waves are picked up by antennas," according to an unclassified 1977 report from the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. "The energy from the EMP is received in such a very short time, however, that it produces a strong electric current which could damage the equipment. An equal amount of energy spread over a long period of time, as in conventional radio reception, would have no harmful effect."

When EMP passes through metal objects like a phone, computer, or radio, they can "catch" this incredibly powerful pulse. This can generate a rogue current of electricity that moves through a modern device's tiny circuits and can disrupt or even destroy them. Power transmission or telecommunications equipment, meanwhile, can overload from the excess current, spark, and fail for miles around.

If you've ever turned on a microwave oven and noticed your phone's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection momentarily drop out, you've experienced disruptive electromagnetic waves — and had a very small taste of what could happen with an EMP.

The intensity of a nuclear detonation's EMP is about 30,000 to 50,000 volts per meter — thousands of times greater than the one your microwave bleeds off.

Fortunately, not all nuclear blasts are created equal when it comes to EMP.

Why altitude is everything
Nuclear detonations that occur dozens or hundreds of miles above Earth could have devastating consequences compared to those that happen on the ground.

At a high elevation, gamma rays can more easily spread out, hitting many upper-atmosphere air molecules over a large area at once. The low density of air allows electrons to move more freely and maximize the intensity of an EMP.

In fact, a 2008 report by the EMP Commission suggests that the right nuclear device detonated at the right altitude could bathe the entire continental US in EMP, disrupting telecommunications and power grid infrastructure to "catastrophic" effect.
But if an explosion were to occur closer to the ground, many of the gamma rays would slam into the earth. Those rays would have a harder time creating a large electric field that could generate widespread EMP. And the greater density of air wouldn't help, either.

An illustration of a nuclear blast in a city. Shutterstock

The US government actively plans for 15 disaster scenarios, one of which is a terrorist-caused nuclear detonation that occurs close to the ground with a yield of about 10 kilotons — roughly 66% as powerful as the Hiroshima blast.

This setup is the one we discussed with Buddemeier, and in that case he says the nuclear blastitself would give you a lot more to worry about than bricked electronics or power loss.

"[T]here would be some localized EMP effects," he told Business Insider in an email, "but if you were close enough for you equipment to be damaged by EMP (within a couple miles), then you are also close enough to be significantly impacted by the blast wave."

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Put another way, you may not survive inside this zone, which can stretch a couple of miles in diameter. And if you did, you'd have to worry about climbing out of rubble before checking to see whether your radio still worked.

It's more likely, Buddemeier says, that within about 5 miles of the blast "you may have a disruptive impact, which doesn’t 'fry' your equipment, but can cause 'latch-up' (e.g., like the endless spinning hourglass on your phone) until restarted."

There are hundreds of variables that determine whether or not an EMP affects electronics, Buddemeier says, including "the size and orientation of your device, the structure of the building you are in, plug-in or battery, if it is behind a surge protector," and so on.

Because many radios have simpler, less sensitive circuitry than a phone, they're likely to be a first line of information after a ground blast.

"There is a good chance that there will be plenty of functioning radios even within a few miles of the event and that radio transmission towers outside of the impacted area will still be able to send information on the safest strategy to keep you and your family safe," Buddemeiersays.