Rather than rewarding the public acknowledgement of wrongdoing or the sincerity of an apology, apologies are now used as a weapon of political submission.
The new political divide lies between those who support our liberties as free people, and those who wish to curb ever more of our rights under the mantras of ‘diversity’ and ‘social justice.’
BATON ROUGE – Olinde’s, a Baton Rouge staple known by many for its catchy commercial jingle, sold its operations.
Olinde’s was purchased by a furniture showroom operator based in Memphis. The new company has a footprint in ten states.
“Everything has it’s day and there’s always a time for change and I think this is the right thing to do for our employees, for our company, for our shareholders,” Tom Olinde said. “It’s a little bittersweet, but I’m glad we’re handing it off to a world class company.”
Specifics of the sale were not released.
Olinde’s dates back to the 1860s in Baton Rouge.
The deal includes its two furniture stores and nine Ashley Furniture brand stores but does not include Olinde’s Mattress stores.
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Contrary to assurances from Trump's National Security Advisor, neocon John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who suggested earlier this week that US troops would remain in Syria for at least a little while longer, the Associated Press reported on Friday that the US has begun the process of removing the 2,000 soldiers based in northeastern Syria.
Citing information provided by activists with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the withdrawal officially began Thursday night local time. A convoy of about 10 armored vehicles and some trucks left the town of Rmeilan into drove into Iraq. Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the coalition fighting the Islamic State group, later confirmed that the US has started "the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria."
Trump's abrupt decision last month to order US troops out of Syria angered former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned over the decision, and stoked fears that Trump was abandoning the Kurds to a massacre by Turkish forces, who have vowed to pick up the slack in Syria when it comes to fighting ISIS.
"These have been folks that have fought with us and it’s important that we do everything we can to ensure that those folks that fought with us are protected," Pompeo said of the Kurds while visiting Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, after talks in Baghdad.
After launching a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS in 2014, President Obama deployed troops on the ground the following year to combat ISIS, which at the time controlled large swaths of northeastern Syria. Since then, the group has been beaten back, and now control only 1% of their former territory.
Initially, Trump had said the pullout would be complete within a matter of weeks, but plans became murky after the Pentagon requested four months to complete the withdrawal. Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that the withdrawal would begin immediately.
Scores of ground troops are headed toward Syria to help move troops out, and a group of naval vessels headed by the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge is headed to the region to back up troops at the vulnerable moment they are leaving the country, the officials said. The Kearsarge carries hundreds of Marines, helicopters and other aircraft.
"Nothing has changed," one defense official said. "We don’t take orders from Bolton."
To account for shifts in plans, the military will stage the personnel and equipment needed for a possible withdrawal, rather than move the U.S. forces out. Troops tasked to help with the eventual withdrawal already are in the area, in places like Kuwait and al-Asad air base in western Iraq.
After expressing his immense displeasure with the US's walk-back of its withdrawal plans, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who recently resorted to threatening the US over their plans to linger in Syria - will no doubt be glad to hear about this.
President Donald Trump, facing the prospect of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, is considering declaring a national emergency that would likely escalate a policy dispute with Democrats over his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall into a court test of presidential power.
A San Diego TV station is claiming that CNN reached out to them, asking if they could provide one of their reporters to offer a “local view” from the U.S.-Mexico border — but declined when they discovered that the reporter, and the station at large, are pro-wall.
KUSI — an independent station owned by McKinnon Broadcasting — says that they were contacted by CNN on Thursday morning asking for one of their reporters to offer the perspective from the border. The network, in response, supplied reporter Dan Plante, whom KUSI says has filed “dozens” of reports from the border.
CNN, according to the San Diego station though, abandoned their request.
“We believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most Border Patrol Agents we have spoken to told us the barrier does in fact work,” a report on the station’s website said.
“A sign of the times in this debate,” said KUSI anchor Anna Laurel.
Watch above, via KUSI.
UPDATE 10:40 a.m. ET: CNN has issued a statement — declaring the matter to be standard operating procedure and noting that the network previously booked a guest from KUSI to discuss the border wall in November.
We called several local stations to book someone for a show. We didn’t end up booking any of them. That happens many times every single day. We did, however, book a reporter from KUSI for a story on immigration and the border wall in November. This is a non story. #factsfirst
Enlarge / At the November 2018 walkout, some protestors shouted, "Time is up!" (credit: Cyrus Farivar)
Alphabet's board of directors was suedtwice in California state court on Thursday by different investors making largely the same claim: that the company breached its fiduciary duty when it allowed alleged rampant sexual misconduct by top male executives to persist.
In particular, the lawsuits called out the way that Andy Rubin, the celebrated creator of Android, was ushered out of the company in 2014. (Alphabet is Google's parent company.)
Despite being credibly accused of sexual misconduct against a co-worker, Rubin was still given a $150 million stock grant, to be paid out over several years, along with a $90 million exit package, according to a New York Times report from last year.
The British government has failed to deport more than 50,000 rejected asylum seekers in a seven-year period, with most asylum claims being made by economic migrants rather than genuine refugees, a report has found.
The remains of six unidentified Holocaust victims will be buried in a formal Jewish funeral more than 20 years after an Auschwitz survivor found them at the site of the former death camp.
U.S. consumer prices fell for the first time in nine months in December amid a plunge in the cost of gasoline, but underlying inflation pressures remained firm as rental housing and healthcare costs rose steadily.
Astronomers think a bright flash observed by telescopes last summer was created by a collapsing star.
Astronomers have recorded a mysterious "repeater" fast radio burst signal from the single source, a galaxy located 1.5 billion light-years from Earth.
