THE EU’s days might be numbered with Italy about to vote on a referendum which could send shockwaves across the continent.
By SIMON OSBORNE
PUBLISHED: 10:10, Sat, Nov 12, 2016 | UPDATED: 11:32, Sat, Nov 12, 2016
Analysts believe the outcome of the ballot on constitutional reform could have massive global implications.
With many European leaders already coming under severe pressure from anti-EU parties ahead of elections next year the significance of the Italian result is huge.
Defeat for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi could lead to even deeper social turmoil in countries already struggling with austerity, immigration problems and a growing contempt for Brussels.
HÉNIN-BEAUMONT, France — It was a moment of intense French patriotism on a sunny Friday, Armistice Day. A band blared “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem. Shouts of “Vive la France!” filled the chilly November air. And there, too, was Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, beaming.
Before Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory in the United States this week, Ms. Le Pen was considered a disruptive political force but far from a true threat to become president herself when France votes next spring. Not anymore.
Since Wednesday, French news outlets, along with Ms. Le Pen’s mainstream political rivals, have been repeating the same thing: It could happen here.
And Ms. Le Pen is not alone. From the Balkans to the Netherlands, politicians on the far right have greeted the election of Mr. Trump with unrestrained delight and as a radical reconfiguring of the political landscape — not just in the United States, but in Europe as well.
WASHINGTON — Paul A. Volcker, the Federal Reserve chairman, received an urgent warning two weeks after Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election. Some of the president-elect’s advisers, he was told, wanted to abolish the central bank and replace it with a computer program that would manage interest rates and monetary policy.
Today, a Democratic Fed leader is once again bracing to see whether victorious and emboldened Republicans will try to overhaul the central bank.
In almost three years as the Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen has led an aggressive campaign to stimulate economic growth. Donald J. Trump, the president-elect, has embraced criticism that the Fed is causing more problems than it is solving, and he has surrounded himself with advisers who would like to rein in the institution that has the greatest influence over the direction of the nation’s economy.
Mr. Trump can fill a majority of the Fed’s seven-member board with his own nominees over the next 18 months, including replacing Ms. Yellen in February 2018. He also could work with Congress on new constraints, including some form of an old idea on the right that a formula should dictate the Fed’s movements of interest rates.
Ridgewood NJ, Who Was John Jacob Zabriskie? The Zabriskie family is one of the original settlers in Bergen County dating from the 1600s. John Jacob Zabriskie of “Hohokus” is one of many in a long line of descendants who had a decided impact on the way of life in Bergen County. This presentation will correct some historical and biographical misinformation to see who he was & what accomplishments, professions, lifestyle & other details are known about John Jacob Zabriskie. All welcome, Belcher Auditorium. Speaker Stanley Kober
Monday at 7 PM – 8:30 PM
Bolger Heritage Center, Ridgewood Public Library
125 N Maple Ave, Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
The Republican civil war was supposed start this week.
Instead, a ferocious struggle has erupted on the left over the smoldering remains of the Democratic Party.
Liberals are seething over the election and talking about launching a Tea Party-style revolt. They say it’s the only way to keep Washington Democrats connected to the grassroots and to avoid a repeat of the 2016 electoral disaster, which blindsided party elites.
Progressives believe the Democratic establishment is responsible for inflicting Donald Trump upon the nation, blaming a staid corporate wing of the party for nominating Hillary Clinton and ignoring the Working Class voters that propelled Trump to victory.
Liberals interviewed by The Hill want to see establishment Democrats targeted in primaries, and the “Clinton-corporate wing” of the party rooted out for good.
Location: Woman’s Club of Ridgewood, 215 W Ridgewood Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450 Cost: $50 per person
Kennedy & Jessica Odede will be stopping by the clubhouse to discuss their book, Find Me Unafraid and for a Meet & Greet with Questions. Interviewed by Larry King, Nicholas Kristof, and Christiane Amanpour, this couple has built a foundation that helps bring hope to the urban poor in Kenya. Amazing Story.
“Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor…with their foundation called Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO).”
“The alchemy of their remarkable union has drawn the support of community members and celebrities alike—The Clintons, Mia Farrow, and Nicholas Kristof are among their fans—and their work has changed the lives of many of Kibera’s most vulnerable population: its girls.” –
Goodreads
Looking to find the best food in and around Ridgewood, NJ? Ridgewood, NJ is home to some of the best restaurants in the country, and even in the world. Whether you’re in the mood for fine dining, sushi, southern fried, or BBQ, Ridgewood, NJ offers dishes that will not disappoint.
Finding a place to eat in a new city can be daunting. Don’t settle for a quick meal at one of those chain restaurants. Did you know that most of the food served at chain restaurants come fresh out of the freezer? Yuck! Take advantage of the great restaurants located around Ridgewood, NJ. Your taste buds and significant other will thank you.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – The largest, brightest full moon in nearly seven decades will be on display in the coming days, promising Earth-bound sky-watchers a celestial “supermoon” spectacle.
The full moon will come nearer to Earth than at any time since 1948, astronomers said. At closest approach, which occurs at 6:23 a.m. EST on Monday, the moon will pass within 216,486 miles (348,400 km) of Earth’s surface, about 22,000 miles (35,400 km) closer than average, they added.
The moon’s distance from Earth varies because it is in an egg-shaped, not circular, orbit around the planet.
If skies are clear, the upcoming full moon will appear up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than usual, making it what is called a supermoon, according to NASA. A supermoon occurs when the timing of a full moon overlaps with the point in the moon’s 28-day orbit that is closest to Earth. About every 14th full moon is a supermoon, said University of Wisconsin astronomer Jim Lattis.
The next time a full moon comes as close to Earth will be in 2034.
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood has joined a growing chorus of North Jersey towns opposing the Pilgrim Pipeline.It passed a resolution, 4-0, with Councilwoman Bernadette Walsh recusing herself.
The Village now joins over 28 towns along the proposed Bergen County route to oppose the controversial Pilgrim Pipeline .
Pilgrim Pipeline LLC has proposed a brand new oil pipeline across northern New Jersey that would connect Albany, NY and Linden NJ.
The Sierra club has harped on safety issues in claiming the , “This bidirectional pipeline would carry corrosive, volatile Bakken crude oil through our communities.”
From the The Sierra club website , “Pipeline construction would have deleterious effects on both the open spaces and urbanized communities through which it would pass. In the Highlands and other sensitive areas, we would see wetlands destroyed, drinking water and critical habitats threatened, endangered species leveled to the ground, and impacts to waterways from more erosion due to construction. The pipeline would pass through environmental justice communities that have already seen too much air and water pollution as a result of the fossil fuel industry.”
The go on to say ,”The pipeline will carry North Dakotan Bakken shale oil. Produced through fracking, it is one of the most explosive types of oil in the world. In February the *Wall Street Journal* compared oil from 86 locations around the world and found Bakken crude oil to be the most explosive. Bringing this fuel into our state endangers our families, property, and environment.”
Sounds like a lot of anti-growth , anti-fossil fuels mumbo jumbo that the left uses in this country to stall progress.
The reality is there are zero recorded instances of crude oil exploding while being transported via pipeline in the United States. The differing levels of volatility inherent to different types of crude are rendered moot during pipeline transportation, as there is no air pressure or jostling that occurs inside a pipeline – the necessary factors for an explosion to take place. Bakken oil is already being transported between Albany and Linden by river barge and train; Pilgrim would transport this same oil by pipeline, the safest mode of transportation for these energy products.
The Pipeline Pilgrim is proposing will have an overwhelming majority of the projected pipeline route run along existing rights of way. In New York, as it heads south from Albany, the pipeline would run along the New York State Thruway within the existing highway easement. Landowners on either side of the Thruway may receive survey letters per NY state regulations requiring land adjacent to the proposed route to be reviewed for a variety of reasons, including environmental, archeological, etc. – a standard requirement for permit applications. The same is true of New Jersey, where the vast majority of the route would run along existing utility rights of way, and surveys must be conducted per New Jersey state regulations that mandate a standard land review requirement for permits. Depending on local geography, the range of review in both states is between 50 to 300 feet to either side of the centerline, which is why property owners receive survey requests. The footprint of the pipeline itself is only about 5 and ½ feet.
As of 2013 nearly half a million carloads of crude oil were transported by rail in the United States. In New Jersey alone, there are approximately 2,400 miles of rail freight lines. In recent years there has much fear about transporting oil through populated areas ,like Ridgewood by rail .
Moving oil and gas by pipeline was 4.5 times safer than moving the same volume the same distance by rail in the decade ended in 2013 in Canada, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute public policy think-tank.The study concluded pipelines are likely to experience 0.049 occurrences per thousand barrels of oil equivalent transported and rail will experience about 0.227 occurrences per thousand boe transported.
In The Wall Street Journal piece ,”How to Transport Oil More Safely”, “Pipelines are typically the cheapest, and in some cases quickest, way to move crude in the U.S., and they spill less often than other transport methods. In 2014, pipelines delivered 3.4 billion barrels of crude oil to U.S. refineries, according to Energy Information Administration data. The Association of Oil Pipe Lines says it has a 99.999% safe-delivery rate on these shipments. “On an apples-to-apples basis, pipelines have less accidents, cause less environmental damage and cause less harm to human health than do railcars moving comparable masses of oil and gas,”
In the New TYork Times article ,”Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train” Today about two-thirds of the production in North Dakota’s Bakken shale oil field rides on rails because of a shortage of pipelines. And more than 10 percent of the nation’s total oil production is shipped by rail. Since March there have been no fewer than 10 large crude spills in the United States and Canada because of rail accidents. The number of gallons spilled in the United States last year, federal records show, far outpaced the total amount spilled by railroads from 1975 to 2012.
While nothing is fool proof , it would be wise to do some honest hard work on the issue instead of passing silly resolutions based on one-sided politically motivated sources of information .
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Professional Firefighters FMBA Local 47 reminds residents that Kidde Recalled Combination Smoke/CO Alarms Due to Alarm Failure.
The alarm can fail to continue to chirp when it reaches its seven year end of life if the batteries are replaced, leading consumers to believe it is still working. This poses a risk of consumers not being alerted to a fire or CO incident in their home.
Remedy:
Replace
Consumer Contact:
Kidde toll-free at 855-239-0490 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or online at www.kidde.com and click on “Product Safety Notice” for more information.
Ridgewood NJ, High winds toppled a large tree located in wooded parkland along Grove Street in Ridgewood on Friday morning, 11/11. The fallen tree crushed a chain link fence and blocked motor vehicle traffic on Grove Street between South Irving Street and Van Dien Avenue for over two (2) hours. Ridgewood PD provided traffic control until the tree was removed by a Village of Ridgewood tree crew. No injuries were reported.
I really do not understand why people would feel so depressed over an election. The people spoke and one candidate won. Will this vilified new president really be having such a negative impact on people’s lives? Or is it just like a sport, your team lost a final game and you’re hung over a couple of days! As for myself I enjoyed the election night. Democrats got what they deserved. Their pushy attitude, intimidation of Trump sympathizers (or better said intimidation of those who didn’t like Clinton) and especially the media bias in tandem with the “celebrity” support pushed many independents over the fence. I bet this is what happened to millions who decided to vote the last minute. Don’t blame Trump for winning, blame Clinton and yourself. You pushed many independent people to vote for what they perceived as the lesser evil. In addition the democrats with their stupid agenda did a great disservice to our country by handing full control of our government to the republicans. And this is worrying. However the best outcome is that both parties are in disarray and I hope they understand that they need a major revamp if they want to get the support of the people.
Her reliance on Hollywood endorsements reflected a deeper problem in the Democratic Party: superficial progressivism packaged as real social justice.
BY SARAH JONES
November 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton will not be our first woman president, a symbolic blow made more painful by the fact that she lost to a raging misogynist and sexual predator. Donald Trump is now set to preside over a unified Republican government deeply antagonistic to abortion rights, marriage equality, and healthcare access. This will almost certainly be disastrous for women, but according to exit polls, 53 percent of white women voted for him anyway.
The shock and anger over Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House has triggered a flood of calls on Twitter and other social media outlets for the president-elect to be assassinated — and authorities will investigate all threats deemed to be credible, The Post has learned.
Trump met Thursday with President Obama in the Oval Office, with the Republican businessman calling the hour-plus session a “great honor.” Obama said they had an “excellent” and “wide-ranging” conversation while urging all people to “now come together.”
But that message of inclusion was apparently lost in social media circles, particularly Twitter, where a simple search can reveal dozens and dozens of calls to gun down the next leader of the free world. Some posts called for both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to be assassinated, and there’s even an #AssassinateTrump hashtag.
There is an affectionate term for the planes that helped win the fight against Hitler: warbirds. I saw all the warbirds of World War II in our recent visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where my new book, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, was launched the evening of October 27.
This Veterans Day, it’s easy to think about the boys who stormed Normandy’s beaches 72 years and 5 months ago because they’ve been memorialized in the neat and tidy The Longest Day, and in the stunningly realistic Saving Private Ryan, and as one who sees and hears and feels and smells and tastes history, I don’t know how they did what they did that day. You know how you blanch when facing headwinds and slanting rain and the natural sense is to squint from it and recoil and run for cover. Well imagine the raindrops are eight-ounce parcels of lead coming at you like slanting rain. We’re all waterproof so the rain can’t really hurt us although we act as if it could. None of us are bulletproof and for thousands of those guys that day, the rainstorm ended in instant death or worse.
Where do the warbirds fit in this story? Well, I didn’t know before writingMission exactly how the war had played out up to the point that the LSTs hit the beaches of France. I knew there was an air war and a ground war in Europe, but it didn’t sink in that the air war came first and made the ground war possible, which means that for Americans over a two-year period, the front lines in the war for Europe were manned by flyers of the U.S. Army Air Forces. They climbed into their warbirds every morning not knowing if they’d ever walk the earth again. They’d give a thumbs-up and take off not into a glorious sunrise but into pea soup because, after all, this was England and the English weather is usually dreary.
And the warbirds themselves; yikes. Sure you had your sleek and nasty fighter planes, your Warhawks and Thunderbolts and Mustangs and the kids who climbed into them fought like the glamorous swashbucklers they were. Theirs was the grave responsibility of guarding and defending the most unglamorous of warbirds, the heavy bombers. And that is the core story of Mission.
Two heavy bombers flew for America in WWII, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator. The relative beauty of the 17 and its lethal firepower made it the media darling of the war. Think Memphis Belle. The 24 was described as “the packing crate the B-17 came in.” It was boxy; it was decidedly unglamorous. Imagine this as a verbal portrait of your airplane: “On the ground it looks like a slab-sided prehistoric monster wading through swamps.”
But the boys assigned to the B-24 Liberators loved their airplanes. They cared for each as if it were a hotrod, as if the thing wasn’t a flying death trap. The Liberators Jim Stewart flew exclusively in the war had real problems, like controls that required muscle at all times, and leaks in the fuel lines that would, all of a sudden, cause them to blow up in the air, usually on ascent when loaded with gas and bombs. Ka-BOOM! Ten men obliterated over friendly skies because of spark meeting fuel leak: pilot, copilot, bombardier, navigator, radio operator, engineer, waist gunners, ball turret gunner, tail gunner, all gone. This happened to Lt. Earle Metcalf and crew of Stewart’s squadron one morning. There one moment and vanished the next, with no trace ever found.
On each mission to Germany, missions sent up every possible day, hundreds of planes would take off from a cluster of bases each five miles from the next in eastern England into that pea soup I described earlier featuring low cloud cover. If the pilot didn’t fly precisely in that cloud cover, as in, fly straight for 47 seconds after takeoff while climbing to 5,000 feet at an air speed of 150 and then on the 48th second turn right to a precise compass heading, ka-BOOM! Two bombers both flying blind would collide—loaded with gas and bombs—and not 10 but 20 men would be erased from the roster. That happened more than once on missions Jim commanded. He would hear the deafening explosion close by, muscle the controls as the shock wave hit his plane, and know that a score of fine flyers alive five seconds ago were now dead. Young men he had just seen and eaten breakfast with.
Dear readers, we haven’t even left friendly airspace yet! This was the easy part before hitting an enemy coastline that featured hundreds of anti-aircraft batteries aimed at Forts and Libs lumbering straight and level across the sky as if targets in a carnival shooting gallery. Each plane held 10 males somewhere between 19 and 26, except for Jim, the old man of 35. They were kids, so very young, so very brave, so very skilled who died by the hundreds and thousands for the two years leading up to D-Day in an ongoing effort to smash Hitler’s ability to manufacture weapons of war. Not until they had succeeded in the task of fighting and fighting and fighting on endless brutal missions to knock out enough of the German air fleet did D-Day even become possible.
I spend a great deal of time in Mission driving home the point that, yes, Jim was a hero, but the band of brothers he flew with every day were people who lived and breathed. Each represented the best the United States had to offer. On the morning of a mission, they rode out to their slab-sided reptile of an airplane, a beast that might turn around and bite them at any moment. They struggled inside it while loaded down with flying gear. They held their breath through a lumbering takeoff, each focused on all the tasks essential to keeping that plane in the air for a flight to and from Germany. For many, too many, something would go wrong and they would fly on to glory.
I am writing about the men of the Eighth Air Force today, but I think of them every day. They inspire me to be an American worthy of their bravery and sacrifice.
Robert Matzen is the author of seven books, including the bestsellers Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 andMission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe. Connect with Robert Matzen on Goodreads, Amazon, Twitter,Facebook, and at https://robertmatzen.com/
Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe [GoodKnight Books] is available via Amazon and in brick-and-mortar retailers across the U.S.
