Cuckservative Leader (((Sarkozy))) Announces Bid To Retake French Presidency

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he's running once again for the presidency — years after a failed re-election bid that was seen as a rebuke to his leadership.

The conservative politician announced his decision to run in 2017 elections by publishing on social media an excerpt from his soon-to-be-released book. Reuters has this quote from the announcement:

"I felt I had the strength to lead this battle at a troubled time in our history. ... The five years that come will be full of danger, but also of (((hope)))."

Sarkozy, who was deeply unpopular when he left office, had been taking aim at President Francois Hollande's record on security leading up to his announcement, "urging France to get tough on immigration, crack down on suspected Islamists and halt the erosion of France's secular identity," Reuters reports.

The Guardian adds Sarkozy has veered right in an attempt to win over far right voters.

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Full article: here.

What the new planet Proxima b says about life in the universe

The newly discovered planet Proxima b is about to change the focus of astronomy for decades to come — and maybe longer, if it reveals signs of life. The planet, some 25 trillion miles away from our own, is like a twin to Earth, but one separated at birth and living a very different kind of life.

The discovery, which was announced in the journal Nature, represents by far the closest habitable planet to Earth — near enough that humans could take pictures of it, if not with today’s telescopes, then with ones that will come online soon. If the planet is like Earth, these near-future telescopes could pick up hints of vegetation and sunlight glinting off the ocean.

And Proxima b looks a lot like Earth. It’s only a little bigger than our planet, according to scientists’ calculations, and it sustains about the same average temperature. The star it orbits, Proxima Centauri, is the sun’s closest neighbor. Significantly, astronomers believe the planet, like ours, is in the “habitable zone” of its star, which means liquid water could exist on its surface. And liquid water could mean life.

Studying this planet could reveal something important about the timeline of life in the universe, and whether we earthlings are early to the party. That’s because stars like Proxima Centauri are the future of the universe. Called red dwarfs, these make up the majority of stars in the galaxy, and they live about 1,000 times as long as our sun.

In a paper made public last month, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb looked at the cosmic implications of life surrounding red dwarfs. Loeb calculated that if life is just as likely to form around these stars as sun-like ones, then the vast majority of life in the universe has yet to be born, and we earthlings are not just early, he said, but “premature.”

That’s because scientists believe eventually, all the raw materials for star formation will be used up and all the stars will die, leaving a dark universe of dust and black holes. For most of the trillions of years stretching between now and cosmic darkness, red dwarfs will be the only game in town.

Why wouldn’t red dwarfs be just as good at nurturing life as stars like the sun? There are many hazards. The main requirement scientists use for habitability is the potential for water to remain in liquid form, since all life on Earth requires it. But because red dwarfs are dim, their planets would have to orbit so close that they get “tidally locked,” with one side of the planet roasting in permanent daylight and the other trapped in perpetual darkness. This is what happened to Mercury, the planet closest to our sun.

Still, while planets like Mercury are hellish, tidal locking isn’t necessarily the end of the world, according to planetary scientist James Kasting of Penn State University. With enough air and water circulation, even a locked planet might sustain life.

The other, slightly more serious problem is that red dwarfs start out very hot when they are young and then cool off. As an analogy, University of Washington astronomer Victoria Meadows says, think of turning on a gas stove. That initial burst of high heat would likely boil off any water and destroy any atmosphere on nearby planets.

Still, that doesn’t mean life couldn’t exist on a planet orbiting a red dwarf. Planets can move around in the early stages of a forming solar system, she said, so it’s possible Proxima b was at a safer distance when the star was firing up.

A pair of papers on the potential habitability of Proxima b came out alongside the announcement of its discovery. One author, Villanova University astronomer Edward Guinan, said he was surprised life looks to be possible there. “When they first told me about it, I thought 'This doesn’t have a chance,'” he said. Not only is the star hot in its first billion years, it would bombard the planet with hundreds of times the intensity of X-rays and ultraviolet light that our planet gets from the sun. But scientific models showed that a protective magnetic field could preserve an ocean and an atmosphere on the planet.

The scientists say that until they look closer, they won’t know if Proxima b is a desert planet, barren as Mars, or perhaps overheated as Venus. But they can’t rule out the possibility that it’s lush, watery and blue. Scientists may learn more from the successor to the Hubble, called the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched later this decade. Greater hopes are pinned on a couple of enormous ground-based telescopes, one planned for the high desert in Chile.

If there is life on Proxima b, it has a better future than Earth, which is already more than halfway through its habitable existence. The sun won’t actually die for another few billion years, but scientists say that a billion years from now it may brighten enough to sterilize our poor planet. Proxima b’s star is just a child, by contrast, with trillions of years stretching into its future. If the planet turns out to be a nice place, said Harvard’s Loeb, we may end up moving there.

Europeans ABANDON Merkel as embattled ZOG chancellor proves less popular than Putin

ANGELA Merkel’s support with European citizens has plunged as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin raced ahead in a new popularity poll

This latest survey has shown Merkel’s support among voters in the Czech Republic has slipped to 18 per cent from a level of 70 per cent last year as the chancellor visits Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and President Milos Zeman in Prague to discuss the migrant crisis.

Czechs are put off by the 62-year-old’s “welcome policy” towards migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, according to the poll by German newspaper Die Welt.

Up to one million refugees surged into Germany last year.

Protesters lined the streets as Merkel entered Prague, demanding the chancellor steps down over her role in the migrant crisis.

One angry demonstrator told local media: “I read in the newspaper that she’s coming. “But honestly speaking, I don’t need her here. “We’ve all had enough here of Mrs Merkel.”

The shocking figures come after a suspected assassination attempt was foiled in the Czech capital on Thursday.

Czech officers stopped an armed man in a black 4x4 Mercedes as he tried to infiltrate the German Chancellor’s motorcade during her visit.

Police spokesman Josef Bocan said: “The perpetrator has been detained. “He is suspected of attempting to cause a crime – specifically an attempt to use violence against an official.”

Officers found a baton, a canister of tear gas and handcuffs in the suspect’s car.

The suspected assassination attempt comes as countries across Europe are on high alert following a string of high-profile terror attacks over the past few months.

And the beleaguered chancellor has been urged to listen to voters after it was revealed a whopping 81 per cent of Germans want to ban the burka.

In Hungary, award given to writer fined for defending Whites

Zsolt Bayer - Speech on White Genocide

(co-founder of the Fidesz political party)

More than 50 laureates of one of Hungary's highest honors have returned their awards after Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government decorated a journalist who's been repeatedly censured for inciting hatred against refugees, Jews and the Roma.

Zsolt Bayer, a founding member of the ruling Fidesz party and a close ally of Orban, received the Order of Merit of the Knight's Cross on the weekend for his "exemplary journalistic work," according to the official gazette Magyar Kozlony. The recipients who returned their awards included academics, writers and actors, according to a list compiled by news website 444.hu.

Andras Heisler, the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary and a previous recipient, handed back his award, saying he didn't want to be "in the same community with a person who is racist, antisemitic, and whose display of ardent hatred for the Roma is contaminating Hungary." The opposition Socialist Party issued a statement calling the choice of Bayer "a shame" and two other opposition parties called for the medal to be revoked.

The granting of the award, Hungary's second highest, underscores Orban's contentious position in Europe's growing debate over ethnicity and culture that was brought to the boil last year by the arrival of more than a million refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East, as well as terrorist attacks in France and other countries. Orban was one of the first of several European leaders who have refused to accept Muslims into his country, building a barbed-wire fence and sending police to the border to prevent immigrants from entering.

Bayer has been repeatedly fined by Hungary's media regulator for antisemitic and racist comments, including calling members of the Roma community "destructive animals" and writing that all migrants over the age of 14 are potential murderers.

He has also attacked Member of European Parliament Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Hungarian politician Andras Schiffer, who are Jewish, writing that "unfortunately they weren't all buried up to their necks in the Orgovany woods." The comment was a reference to a 1919 killing of dozens of people suspected of being communists, many of whom were Jews.

Bayer rejected the criticism of his detractors.

"I don't really understand how some people can be so locked up in their closed, narrow, and sad world," Bayer told commercial TV station RTL Klub, in reaction to others handing back their awards.

Antisemitic and anti-Roma comments are also not unusual in Hungarian right-wing media, and in 2013, the government asked television journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo to return a state award after drawing international criticism for such remarks.

New Planet Found 'Which Humans Could Colonise'

The planet, called Proxima b, orbits Proxima Centauri - the closet star to our solar system - and is about 1.3 times bigger than Earth.

Because Proxima Centauri radiates much less heat than the Sun, the planet occupies the "habitable zone" where temperatures are mild enough to allow liquid surface water.

Proxima b is only four light years away from Earth and Professor Abraham Loeb, from Harvard University, has raised the possibility of humans one day colonising the planet.

"The lifetime of Proxima is several trillion years, almost a thousand times longer than the remaining lifetime of the Sun," he said.

"Hence, a habitable rocky planet around Proxima would be the most natural location to where our civilisation could aspire to move after the Sun will die, five billions years from now."

Proxima b is only 7.5 million kilometres from its parent star - some 5% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun - and it takes just 11.2 days to complete one orbit.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is planning to send a fleet of miniature interstellar probes fitted with cameras there on a 20-year mission to search for alien life.

The £75m Breakthrough Starshot project - which is backed by Professor Stephen Hawking - aims to accelerate the tiny one gram "nanocraft" to 20% of the speed of light using "sails" pushed by a powerful laser.

Prof Loeb, who chairs the Breakthrough Starshot advisory board, said the aim was to launch the "nanocraft" towards Proxima Centauri within the next two to three decades.

"It will take 20 years to reach Proxima and four more years for the photos to get back to Earth," he added.

Meet "Adonis": Europe's oldest known living inhabitant

Adonis, a Bosinan pine, more than 1,075 years old, living in the alpine forests of the Pindos mountains in northern Greece

A Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1075 years old. This makes it currently the oldest known living tree in Europe. The millenium old pine was discovered by scientists from Stockholm University (Sweden), the University of Mainz (Germany) and the University of Arizona (USA).

"It is quite remarkable that this large, complex and impressive organism has survived so long in such an inhospitable environment, in a land that has been civilized for over 3000 years" says Swedish dendrochronologist, Paul J. Krusic, leader of the expedition that found the tree. It is one of more than a dozen individuals of millennial age, living in a treeline forest high in the Pindos mountains.

"Many years ago I read a thesis about this very interesting forest in Greece. In our research, we try to build long chronologies to construct climate histories, so finding living trees of old age is one of our motivations. To age the tree, we needed to take a core of wood, from the outside to the center. The core is one meter and has 1075 annual rings" says Krusic.

The scientists hope the annual variations of the tree rings from trees like this and those fallen in centuries past, yet still preserved on the ground, will provide an informative history of climatic and environmental conditions, going back thousands of years. Considering where the tree was found, and its venerable age, the scientists have named this individual "Adonis" after the Greek god of beauty and desire.

"I am impressed, in the context of Western civilization, all the human history that has surrounded this tree; all the empires, the Byzantine, the Ottoman, all the people living in this region. So many things could have led to its demise. Fortunately, this forest has been basically untouched for over a thousand years" says Krusic.

The millennium old trees were discovered during research expeditions conducted by the Navarino Environmental Observatory (NEO), a cooperation between Stockholm University, the Academy of Athens and TEMES S.A. The observatory studies climate change and its impact on environment and humans in the Mediterranean.

Timeline:

• 941 - Adonis is a seedling. The Byzantine Empire is at its peak. From the North, the Vikings reach the Black Sea.
• 1041 - Adonis is a 100 years old. In China, a book is published describing gunpowder. A man called Macbeth is crowned King of Scotland.
• 1191 - Adonis is 250 years old. The universities of Oxford and Paris are founded. The third crusade battles Saladin in the Holy Land.
• 1441 - Adonis is 500 years old. The Ottoman empire conquers Greece. Many Greek scholars flee to the west, influencing the Renaissance. In Sweden, the first parliament is held in Arboga. Johannes Gutenberg is about to test his first printing press.
• 1691 - Adonis is 750 years old. Isaac Newton has formulated his Laws on Motion. Ice cream, tea and coffee are introduced in Europe.
• 1941 - Adonis is a millennium old. World War II is ravaging the world. Greece is occupied by Nazi Germany, Italy and Bulgaria.

China’s new quantum satellite will try to teleport data outside the bounds of space and time

This week, China launched the world’s first quantum satellite. So what exactly does this mean? 

“[T]he satellite is designed to establish ultra-secure quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground,” Xinhua, China’s state news agency, wrote after the equipment was launched on a rocket from the Gobi desert.

“It could also conduct experiments on the bizarre features of quantum theories, such as entanglement.” Uncrackable keys? Bizarre features? Both true. This satellite is designed to literally teleport information, to distances 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) away.

It’s pretty wild stuff. We asked Spiros Michalakis, a mathematician and researcher at Caltech’s Institute for Quantum and Matter, to walk us through it.

Quantum theory: the basics

Here’s a quick refresher in case you haven’t thought about physics in a few years, because this story is cooler when you understand these basics. Skip ahead if you’re already a quantum geek.

Most human technology is built around the classical physics that Isaac Newton and his inheritors came up with (equal and opposite reactions, that sort of thing). When engineers hit on electricity, Michalakis says, they perceived it in aggregate as a kind of a force; it’s either on, or it’s off. This understanding led to electric switches, which became transistors, and when you put all those transistors in a box and start turning them off and on with instructions encoded “11010001101”… it’s a computer.

But as scientists were developing electric computers in the 20th century, theorists beginning with Max Planck were ripping up the rule books. Their experiments with light suggested that something about classical physics didn’t quite add up. Soon they developed mathematical proofs to explain that the tiny particles that make up matter—protons, neutrons, and electrons—don’t necessarily behave like you would expect particles to behave. They can act as if they are in two places at once, for instance. (That’s one of those “bizarre features” the Chinese are talking about.) This is quantum theory. The first and most famous application of these ideas came in nuclear weaponry and energy.

Physicists are still trying to agree on how classical and quantum physics come together coherently. But quantum theory already underlies a lot of modern technology; the transistors on a silicon chip, in fact, wouldn’t work without it. Now engineers are trying to apply it to more futuristic things.

Spooky action at a distance

Let’s say that you take a very small particle, and set it up so that it could be in either one of two states. Let’s call one state “up,” and the other one “down.” (Quantum computers do something like this, using single atoms trapped in a magnetic field to represent either a “0” or a “1”.)

If you do this, quantum theory says that two things will happen. The first is that, although the particle will always be either “up” or “down” if you look at it, when you’re not looking, it will be in a kind of combination of the two, called a superposition. In quantum mechanics, the act of measuring something changes it; the superposition “collapses,” in the parlance, to either up or down.

The second thing is that two or more of these particles can be put in a situation of “quantum entanglement,” where they form a single superposition together. Then their physical properties are correlated. For instance, you can set them up in advance so that if you look at one particle and find it’s up, then you know, without looking, that the other must be down, and vice versa.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Let’s say you entangle two particles. Then you move one of them far, far away—to the other side of the planet, or to the moon. No matter the distance, quantum mechanics says, they remain entangled. If you look at the first one, and in doing so change it—collapsing the superposition—you will also change the other one. And this will happen instantaneously, however far apart they are.

Let that sink in, because this technique, called “quantum teleportation,” is crazy to think about. Light has a speed limit, and normally information cannot travel faster than light. Quantum teleportation is, in a sense, information traveling outside of space and time. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.”

Tangled up in space

Scientists have done experiments with quantum teleportation already. They have instantaneously exchanged information about the quantum states of photons, which are particles of light, transmitted 143 km between two of the Canary Islands.

But testing quantum teleportation at extremely long distances requires going to space. It’s the easiest way to set up laser communication between two distant points on the earth’s surface. That’s what the Chinese satellite, developed in cooperation with the Austrian Academy of Science, intends to do.

The satellite contains a machine that generates entangled pairs of photons by shooting a laser beam through a specially designed crystal. Each entangled pair will be split up and beamed down to stations on Earth approximately 1,200 km apart. If all goes as planned, researchers at those stations will share access to an entangled system. Any measurement on one of those photons will be instantaneously reflected in its opposite number at the other station.

A US company had partnered with researchers in Denmark and Singapore to launch a small satellite, or cubesat, with similar goals, but it was destroyed when the rocket taking it to the International Space Station exploded in 2014.

The key is the key

Besides demonstrating a super-long entanglement, the scientists working with the satellite want to test new communications technology. It’s important to realize that we can’t send information like “Hey, how are you?” through quantum teleportation, much less teleport actual things. But smart thinkers realized that being able to share basic information about the state of atomic particles across distance could create a powerful encryption tool.

This is where the unbreakable code comes in. Perhaps the most powerful method of encryption is the “one-time pad,” where messages are encoded using a private key known to both parties; theoretically, if the key is random, is as long as the message, is never reused, and is kept completely secret, it cannot be broken. Which sounds really good, code-wise, but it has long been impractical to ensure that two parties can always access a key that meets those standards.

Quantum entanglement could help. If people on two ground stations share access to a large enough set of entangled photons, beamed to them from a satellite in space, they can generate a sufficiently long, random key by teleporting quantum information between the entangled particles.

Nobody would be able to detect the transmission of the key. “It’s very secure from the point of view that if your eavesdropper wants to listen in, usually they are within space and time,” Michalakis says. “The data is not transmitted through space time, it goes underneath in mathematical subspace.”

Once the people in the two stations have created a key, using their entangled particles, they can use it to encrypt a message. This can be sent by whatever method they want. “You can use a telephone the moment you are sharing a key that nobody has access to,” Michalakis says.

But what if someone managed to intercept the laser beam from the satellite that had originally shared the entangled photons between the two stations? Here’s what is truly amazing: Thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics, any attempt by a third party to measure the particles in the entangled system would be immediately detected by the other two, making them aware that their code could be broken.

Quantum supremacy

The field of quantum information is still in its infancy. As we continue to learn the fundamentals of how quantum phenomena work at a large scale, the data collected will help physicists understand “the process that takes you from the quantum richness of the universe to the classical world we see around us,” Michalakis says.

It may be easy to see in this shades of the Cold War race for technological dominance, but Michalakis is confident that research will be shared within the scientific community. His hope is that this experiment is the first step toward a global network of research facilities sharing access to entangled particles beamed down from space—a kind of global, cloud-based quantum computer.

Michalakis, for obvious reasons, is particularly excited about an announcement from the White House last week that the US needs a plan to invest in quantum technologies in a serious way; while US labs have done groundbreaking work in the field, there hasn’t been public funding on the scale available in Europe and Asia.

“Come on, this is for the US, we have some of the top institutions working on this, we have some of the best people, it makes no sense for us to not take this seriously,” he says. “There are economic reasons, and a matter of pride.”

At the moment, though, it’s China that looks like the pacesetter.

Presidential Politics and Current Status of the Judeo-plutocracy…

Those who do not accurately present historical context are doomed to misinterpret political shifts. With the recent enhancements to Donald Trump’s campaign team there’s a great deal of erroneous reporting and various opinion articles that are disconnected from historical accuracy

The addition of Kellyanne Conway (campaign manager) and Steve Bannon (campaign CEO) to the Trump campaign caught many people off guard, CTH included.  The connective tissue between Bannon and Conway is billionaire Robert Mercer, and to a slightly lesser extent his daughter Rebekah.

Mercer purchased an $11 million stake in Breitbart Media, essentially becoming the financial backbone for the enterprise.  Mr. Mercer also took out a large stake in Cambridge Analytica, a data firm.  Cambridge Analytica set up a Presidential Preference poll on the Breitbart website to gather the information of visitors and political followers.

Steve Bannon is Chairman of the Breitbart Media group, and as such he was responsible for managing the intent of Mercer’s investment.  To facilitate this objective Breitbart Media took on the role of promoting Pro-Cruz media almost exclusively.

As more and more people came to the Breitbart website (2014-2015), those who took the presidential preference poll became part of the collected data of Cambridge Analytics.   After approximately a year of this data gathering, Breitbart Media and Ted Cruz began soliciting donations for the Cruz campaign using the captured content and using the Breitbart Banner in their email requests for contributions.

Simultaneously, Robert Mercer had also established over $10 million into a Super-PAC (Keep The Promise) to benefit Ted Cruz.   Steve Bannon managed the pro Cruz investment in Breitbart, and eventually Kellyanne Conway was in charge of Keep the Promise Super-PAC.

This is the factual political structure put in place by billionaire Robert Mercer, before Donald Trump was even a consideration. 

There have been numerous outlines into the motives Mercer held therein, however history -and events during the GOP primary- provide us with an ability to understand.

♦  One of the key events which delivers a greater understanding of who, what and why, can be found if you simply revisit the Sea Island Georgia meeting of high ranking politicians and billionaire political donors.

The Sea Island meeting itself was entirely “anti-Trump”, the gathering was almost exclusively discussions about how to rid the primary process of the outside insurgency that was Donald Trump.

A few of the billionaires and representative for the billionaire class included: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Arthur Sulzberger publisher of the New York Times and billionaire Philip Anschultz who owns Sea Island.

It is critical to accept who the political attendees were – including: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), political strategist Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (AR), Cory Gardner (CO), Tim Scott (SC), Rob Portman (OH) and Ben Sasse (NE).

There were many more “#NeverTrumper’s” including: Energy and Commerce Committe Chairman Fred Upton (Michigan), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), Representative Kevin Brady (TX), Cathy McMorris-Rogers (WA), Budget Chairman Tom Price (GA), Financial Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (TX) and Rep. Dianne Black (TN).

Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, also attended. In an emailed report from the conference, he wrote:

“The key task now … is less to understand Trump than to stop him. In general, there’s a little too much hand-wringing, brow-furrowing, and fatalism out there and not quite enough resolving to save the party from nominating or the country electing someone who simply shouldn’t be president.” 

What you see from this meeting is the neo-conservative (war-at-all-costs) / interventionist segment of the UniParty aligned against Donald Trump.  No-one who attended this meeting could ever be considered as trustworthy for a Trump administration or Trump legislative agenda.

Now, go back and look at the names again, and you will see how each one also evolved to become a member of the #NeverTrump movement (openly, or through deceptive undermining).

These are the same aligned voices behind the various GOP groups who are currently speaking out against candidate Trump’s foreign policy, “America’s interests first”.

♦  How does all of this connect?

As soon as the mid-term 2014 election was over a web-ad appeared.  The graphic might even be familiar to you as it was placed quite extensively into multiple media platforms.  It was a simple question and a graphic which directed the reader to a data collection site:

Look familiar?  Probably because it was widespread in 2014 through the spring of 2015.  If you don’t understand or accept the DC UniParty the next part might be challenging to understand.

Much like the Breitbart Presidential Preference Poll, this Clinton/Bush web ad was being used to capture information on behalf of the political financial class, i.e. Wall Street.

The people who put this ad into place are the same people who designed the original “splitter strategy” to carve up the GOP party electorate and give Jeb half of the presidential nomination with only 20% support.  (Hillary Clinton is the other approved half)

Billionaires, the same people who attended the Sea Island Georgia meeting, the same people who fund the UniParty, the same people who create Washington DC’s legislative priorities, were constructing a Clinton/Bush win-win scenario.

However, a few billionaires, notably Robert Mercer (for this example), wanted a different legislative approach and so he (they) chose to target the religious/social conservative elements around a Ted Cruz candidacy.  [*Note* even with candidate Cruz it’s still UniParty, but with a different emphasis on the legislative outcomes.]

Robert Mercer is more libertarian-minded than the electorate base he was targeting/funding on behalf of Cruz, but the political ends justify the means…. or so it was going.

Until Cruz went off the deep end with the religious right, snuggled up in bed with Looney Glenn Beck, and became an unelectable candidate whose only path was reduced to proselytizing as an electoral strategy.

As soon as whacko Beck began telling everyone that God had anointed Ted Cruz to be the savior of America, things went way, W.A.Y, off the rails. All of the historical re-writing of history by Mark Levin (et al) won’t change that reality.

Ted Cruz became the personification of the batshit crazy religious loon the left side of the UniParty loves to talk about.

Cruz’s preachy campaign echo-chamber only made matters worse.

Mercer (both Robert and Rebekah) apparently couldn’t bring themselves to authorize Kellyanne Conway to spend any of that Super-PAC funding on a religious nut; they knew it would be a futile endeavor.  History shows, their hunch was correct.

♦ How Mercer Evolved To Trump

From mid-year 2014, through all of 2015, and into the spring primary of 2016 Breitbart Media was in an evolution from “Rabidly Pro-Cruz”, to “heavily Pro-Cruz”, to “Pro-Cruz” and eventually to “ambivalent for Cruz” – each phase lasting approximately three months beginning in July 2015.  [The total Cruz period was about about 20 months +/-].

The final phase saw many of the secondarily funded Cruz advocates leave the Breitbart enterprise.  (Wilks Brothers funding The Daily Wire for Shapiro, Salem Communications funding almost all others – Super-PACS paying for #NeverTrump via Ad Revenue etc.)

Candidate Donald Trump announced in June of 2015, almost a full year into Mercer/Breitbart’s endeavor to create candidate Ted Cruz.  Essentially during the height of the “rabidly pro-Cruz phase”.

There were indications early in the 2016  primary race that Mercer (both) saw Trump as a more likely candidate to win the entire contest.

There were also indications that Trump was talking to Robert and Rebekah Mercer (wouldn’t be too challenging with Rebekah living in Trump Tower).

As stated, Robert Mercer is more aligned to a libertarian outlook, so there’s a connective tissue to Trump’s more pragmatic political perspectives which would be favorable to Mercer – who appeared to be operating within the UniParty structure (vis-a-vis Cruz) only because there was no alternative to Clinton/Bush.

Well over a year later and this graphic still factually captures the entire status of the presidential race in 2016:

The remaining vestiges of the #NeverTrump are what they have been all along: (1) neo-conservative foreign policy interventionists who want endless wars and the profiteering therein, and (2) the far-right ‘moral-authority-wing’ who hide under the auspices of labeling themselves “conservative” while ultimately also supporting endless wars so long as the nation state of Israel is placed as the first consideration in all U.S. policy and objectives.

The useful UniParty ideology of both group¹ and group² was carried by the people who attended the aforementioned Sea Island Georgia meeting.  Their collective interests are directly tied to Wall Street’s corporate interests, including the media; and as a direct consequence their preferred legislative outcomes are more in alignment with a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Veteran ZOG mouthpiece Dan Rather: Trump Hired Far-Right "Zealots" To Use Right-Wing Radio Rhetoric To Boost White Vote

Dan Rather: "They Think If You Say It Often Enough, They're Convinced That Will Get Donald Trump The White Votes He Needs"

RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): Do you think, Dan, that we are going to continue to see -- one of the things I've been highlighting is the way there's these references, and there's use of material from the very far right?

The reason I did that Center for Immigration Study segment at the top is because that ought to be a nuclear reference in presidential politics, at least in terms of racial extremism. And we've seen that a bunch of different times from the Trump campaign. If they really are trying to maximize the white vote, do you think we'll get some of this fringe, sort of racialist stuff?

DAN RATHER: I think you may get a lot of it, rather subtly put, perhaps not as straightforward. But look, the campaign is being run, not entirely -- is being run by Donald Trump, but he's taking aboard candidate people, workers who are from the fringes.

There's zealots from the fringes of the party, who are now helping him run the campaign. And they're going to say the kinds of things that they previously were saying on right-wing radio, because they think if you say it often enough, they're convinced that will get Donald Trump the white votes he needs, the big white turn-out that he needs. I think you're going to see an awful lot of that.

[...]

RATHER: He's turned himself over to a lot of zealots from the fringes of the party, and we'll see how that goes.

Merkel warned voters WILL back pro-White AfD over 'refugee and terror' worries

In an unexpected turn of events, the AfD is only a few percentage points behind

Ahead of a state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a leading political scientist has warned Angela Merkel's government must rush to address fears which are gripping the nation. 

The race may be a state election, but the results could indicate another EU nation is leaning towards far-right leaders.

In the election 71 seats in the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will be contested with the governing grand coalition between the SPD and CDU is campaigning to defend its majority. 

Oskar Niedermayer has warned politicians in the country both the terror threat and rising numbers of refugees in the nation must be spoken about clearly.

Ignoring the issues, he warned, will only profit the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Now, the country's oldest party, the Social Democratic Party and the liberal-conservative Christian Democratic Union are running neck and neck in the state election.

But in an unexpected turn of events the AfD is only a few percentage points behind.

Mr Niedermayer has warned left-wing politicians they will lose support if they continue to run negative campaigns - which fail to address the most important issues.

He also warned the CDU will be wounded by Chancellor Merkel's decisions.

He said: "Because of her refugee policy, Merkel is no longer as highly rated as she used to be. 

"Therefore I do not assume that Merkel and the CDU will be as strong again as in 2013. And the SPD doesn't exactly have the ideal top candidate with Gabriel either.

"Fears of the population cannot simply be argued away. These fears are there, and if we don't accept this it will cause a defence mechanism of the affected: They will drop us. 

"They were lifted and know nothing about our real problems. This will then lead to even greater solidarity, and that can be dangerous.

"In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern politicians have to make it clear that the state is in control of the refugee crisis."

Niederbayer also argued left-wing politicians must stop demonising anyone who supports AfD.

He warned calling them 'Nazis, all-right populists' or 'crazies and yokels' will not put them in the public's good graces.

Merkel was hugely popular in Germany, being seen by many as the key to the CDU's success in the country.

The chancellor was increasingly seen as a "crisis manager" but the support is dying away after the influx of over 1.5m migrants in Germany in 2013.

Events which later unfolded including the Cologne sex attacks and terror attacks in Munich, Cologne and Ansbach have enraged voters.

Merkel is largely blamed for her invitation to Syrians to come to her country, which she gave via the world's media.

F*ck yourself: German ZOG vice-chancellor ‘flips bird’ to pro-White youths who call him traitor

A handful of noisy far-right youngsters tried to disrupt an event of German Social Democrats in a town of Salzgitter, shouting insults at the party leader, Sigmar Gabriel. But the political heavyweight did not get flustered and fired back.

A video that emerged online on Tuesday, shows a group of young men in black jackets shouting “People’s traitors!” at the vice-chancellor and his aides while holding placards reading “Who betrayed us? Social Democrats!”

Gabriel then tries to bring his angry staff to reason, smiles and all of a sudden gives his middle finger to the far-right protesters.

Accompanied by his staff, Gabriel turns his back and slowly walks away.

The incident happened on Friday in the town of Salzgitter, central Germany, where Gabriel had come to support the Social Democrats’ electoral event.

“Man, your father loved his country, and what are you doing? You’re destroying it!” they yell, referring to Gabriel’s father, who was a member of NSDAP party until 1945.

In mid-June, Gabriel gave a stunning interview to several German newspapers, telling reporters that “I’ve already heard everything what they [the far-right] say from my father, who was a Nazi until his last breath.

“There’re people … who want the old West Germany of 1960s back, where women sit at home, gays and lesbians are unseen and old Wehrmacht songs are being sung in beer bars,” he claimed, according to Die Welt. "Terrible." 

The video has been uploaded by a group called ‘Antifa Kampfausbildung’, or ‘Antifa Combat Training’, who said the far-right youngsters belonged to a youth wing of National Democratic Party (NPD), founded in early 1960s by former Nazi party members and Hitler’s military officers.

In Germany, NPD is often viewed as a neo-Nazi party, given its openly-racist agenda and uneven appellation to the Third Reich’s history.

Gabriel, in turn, is accused of supporting Angela Merkel’s refugee policy and promoting the so-called ‘welcome culture’. Earlier, he insisted the successful integration of migrants into German society only favors the country’s diversity, sparking a barrage of criticism from the far-right.

Refugees should be sent to islands outside Europe, says German pro-White leader

A German pro-White leader says Berlin should send rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to "two islands outside Europe", in an apparent a reference to Australia's asylum seeker policies.

"Illegal migrants and asylum seekers whose applications are rejected will be accommodated on the two islands outside Europe that are protected by the United Nations," Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leader Frauke Petry told local media.

Ms Petry did not name the two islands she had in mind.

The influx of over one million migrants last year fuelled support for the AfD, which now has seats in eight of Germany's 16 state assemblies and is expected to make a strong showing in state votes next month.

German media has interpreted Ms Petry's remarks as a reference to the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where Australia funds facilities to hold asylum seekers and refugees.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has called for the transfer of refugees and asylum seekers out of those centres, describing the policy as "immensely harmful".

"I propose the transformation of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees into an office for emigration, which ensures that all illegal migrants leave this land as soon as possible," Ms Petry added.

The refugee office has been overwhelmed since last year with hundreds of thousands of asylum applications.

Known for her fiery speeches to AfD supporters, Ms Petry sparked an uproar earlier this year when she called for German police to be allowed to use firearms against illegal migrants.

Most of the more than 1 million migrants who arrived in Germany last year are refugees escaping war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Swiss pro-White SVP seeks referendum to assert Swiss sovereignty

ZURICH (Reuters) - The pro-White Swiss People's Party (SVP) submitted a petition on Friday to cement Swiss sovereignty on legal matters over most international law, insisting citizens needed this to wrest back control from the political elite

The SVP said its "Swiss Law, Not Foreign Judges" drive, which would force a referendum if the nearly 117,000 signatures on its petition are certified, would counter what it described as efforts to thwart Switzerland's system of direct democracy.

Critics, including the main business lobby, said a vote in favor of Swiss courts would undermine participation in the European Convention on Human Rights and harm the economy by making it harder or impossible to uphold trade pacts.

The SVP, the biggest party in parliament and the most popular in opinion polls, has often championed a Swiss-first approach, such as a successful 2014 referendum that demanded quotas on immigration, including from the European Union.

Negotiations with Brussels on how to implement that measure without violating bilateral economic accords guaranteeing free movement for EU citizens are going down to the wire.

The SVP sees such talks as an example of efforts by politicians and courts to frustrate voters' wishes by citing international law. "The intent is clear: direct democracy, a Swiss specialty in which the citizens are sovereign, should be curtailed or even cut off," an SVP statement said.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has indeed issued decisions that trumped Swiss court rulings.

One example, in October 2015, was ruling that a Swiss court had violated a Turkish politician's free speech rights when it fined him for denying that Armenians in Turkey had been victims of genocide a century ago. The politician, Dogu Perincek, made the comments during appearances in Switzerland.

Swiss anti-racism laws, the European court ruled, infringed on Perincek's right to voice his opinion.

Right-wing figurehead Christoph Blocher and allies fired a salvo last week against negotiating closer ties, saying it would be a strategic error to join forces with such a crisis-ridden entity and let EU courts decide any disputes that arose.

New German pro-White group comes under ZOG surveillance

The pro-White Identitarian Movement is growing in popularity in Germany to the extent that the ZOG intelligence agency has placed them under surveillance

Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland

Up until this point, the movement, which originated in France and has been present in Germany since 2012, had been observed by spy agencies at the state level.

“We are seeing in the Identitarian Movement indications of efforts to undercut the democratic order,” said Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution - Germany's domestic security agency.

REALITY CHECK: "DEMOCRATIC ORDER" = ZOG TYRANNY

He added that the group seems to have become more radicalized in its anti-asylum efforts in the time since Germany started accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees last summer.

“Immigrants with Muslim backgrounds or people from the Middle East are being slandered by them in the most extreme fashion. Therefore we are also surveilling this movement,” the spy chief stated.

REALITY CHECK: "BEING SLANDERED" = DEFENDING THEIR VOLK

The Identitarian Movement is active against what it describes as “multicultural madness”, “uncontrolled mass migration” and “the loss of our own identity through foreign infiltration”.

State level spy agencies are already surveilling the organization in nine states including Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Recently there have also been media reports of contact between the Identitarian Movement and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party.

But the spy chief said he had no evidence to support this, adding that, even if there was evidence of talks between the AfD and the far-right movement, this would not necessarily be relevant to the intelligence agencies.

“It depends if the party in question - in this case the AfD - has its political orientation changed to an extremist one through certain people. We act when such people start to have an influence on the party.”

He said there was no evidence this was the case with the AfD.

Pro-White Freedom Party gains MORE support in Austria

A pro-White party could be accelerated into public office in Austria after a wave of terror attacks across the European Union

As Austrians gear up to take to the polls again fear hope is spreading through the country the Freedom Party’s candidate Norbert Hofer could become their next leader.

The right-wing politician was narrowly defeated by former Green leader Alexander Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old economics professor, in one of the closest presidential elections the country has seen in recent history.

After the contest in which the Greens won by less than 0.5 per cent of the eligible voters the country's - Constitutional Court announced a fresh vote was needed.

The announcement just days before the inauguration ceremony shocked the nation but accusations of procedural errors could not be ignored.

Since the vote, pro-EU Van der Bellen has gained further popularity following the uncertainty brought about by Brexit, but attacks across the west in France Belgium and Germany are pushing voters towards the Freedom Party.

Austria has been described as a "divided" nation with studies showing urban areas and cities having totally opposing political ideals.

Some social commentators are speculating the country's relationship with the European Union is behind the split, as well as the migrant crisis and the EU failure to stop attacks.

Lea Eisinger told the Guardian people have "lost hope" in the country.

She said: "I’m from Vienna, where Norbert Hofer has a lot of support in the city’s working-class districts.

"They feel the Social Democrats have turned their back on them, and it is quite clear that the SPÖ failed to take the worries of the working classes seriously. 

"They have now become the largest group of FPÖ voters."

Hofer is critical stand of the EU for its handling of the refugee crisis and over national sovereignty, while Van der Bellen made an explicit case for more integration. 

Easternmost areas closer to the borders voted for the far-right leader - suggesting the flow of migrants and vicinity to other struggling nations is swaying voters.

Support for the Green leader comes from the north of the country and the two westernmost provinces of Vorarlberg (58.6 per cent) and Tyrol 

The western provinces that are known as conservative strongholds with a traditionally weak left have produced a Green majority. 

But after the persistence of violent incidents across - the appeal of Hofer’s demands for national demarcation are being heard.

The re-run will be held on October 2.

The far-right party, whose motto is “Austria first,” holds 40 of the 183 seats in the National Council.

When did the lights turn on in the universe?

The universe lived through a prolonged "Dark Ages" until hydrogen reionized. Now, researchers are closer to figuring out when that happened

A map showing the history of the universe, including the shift from neutral to ionized hydrogen resulting in the universe we see today.

The early universe hides behind the cloak of its Dark Ages, a period of time light can't seem to pierce. Even the length of those unseen years remains uncertain. As part of its efforts to probe the secrets of those hidden years, the European Space Agency's Planck Satellite recently announced the most precise constraints on the universe's evasive era, for the first time revealing that the first stars and their galaxies are enough to light up the darkness.

Trying to pierce the veil of darkness has been a decades-long struggle to look back in time nearly 14 billion years. After the Big Bang Seed, the hot universe quickly cooled down, and the simplest atomic particles formed. The protons and electrons of the early universe constantly collided, creating a hot soup that kept light from passing. The Dark Ages had begun.

As the gas cooled down, and the expanding galaxy stretched space-time, the particles recombined to form neutral hydrogen. Like the rising dawn, the universe grew gradually more transparent, its gradual glow imprinted on the radio noise scientists recognize as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The universe remained dark, however, because nothing produced visible light.

Gravity worked hard to change that. It didn’t take long for the force to begin pulling material together, forming the first stars and galaxies. Bright galaxies know as quasars, whose central supermassive black holes produce powerful jets of light and matter, also populated the early universe. Heat from the young objects broke the neutral hydrogen apart over time in the process known as reionization, with slow-sweeping bubbles of light spreading outward from the bright objects. As the bubbles grew and overlapped, the universe once again became visible, and the Dark Age ended. (The change of state in hydrogen that allowed a visible universe is called the Epoch of Reionization.)

Perhaps one of the most challenging attributes of the Dark Age is the difficulty inherent in nailing down just when it ended and how long it lasted. Because light didn't shine from the start of the Dark Age, scientists must rely on the glow from the CMB to provide them with clues to when recombination brought particles together to make the universe gradually more transparent. Observations of early galaxies and quasars, the brightest objects in the universe, help narrow down how long the lights were off.

Planck's most recent results suggest that the time of reionization, when light from the first objects began to break apart molecules once again, occurred about 55 million years later than previous studies placed it.

"It is certainly clear that we are now measuring a later onset of reionization," says Planck Project Scientist Jan Tauber said by email.

Planck Scientist Graca Rocha, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stresses that Planck's measurements have become more precise over time. Rocha, who presented a portion of the research at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, California in June, pointed to the error bar in the calculations, a number that has grown smaller over time. The most recent results have an error of less than nine-thousandanths.

"We are narrowing the range of reionization, when the first stars start to form," Rocha told Astronomy. "People are thrilled about the shift down."

Strange objects begone

The first early estimates suggested that reionization wrapped up extremely fast, requiring unusual astronomical bodies to clear the darkness. Tension mounted as the scientists sought to reconcile multiple forms of observation. Planck's new numbers helped to relieve some of the pressure as the more precise calculations suggested that novel things were unnecessary after all.

"Those early measurements required 'strange objects' to reionize the universe, but those concerns have now been dissipated by Planck," Tauber says.

"We now know that the first galaxies that we can already observe are enough to reionize the universe at the time shown by the [Cosmic Microwave Background]."

Since its launch in 2009, Planck has probed the early universe, seeking to learn more about when the Dark Ages started and ended. Over three quarters of a decade, the spacecraft has helped to improve the understanding of the unseen era by penetrating the veil of darkness around it.

The more sophisticated analysis reveals that the first objects didn't begin to separate the fog of particles until "quite late," Tauber says. Planck reveals that the universe was no more than 10 percent ionized by the time the universe was 475 million years old. It also demonstrated that the process wrapped up quickly, within about 250 million years.

"This model is very consistent with observations of the earliest galaxies," Tauber says.

These galaxies allow scientists to estimate the total amount of light available to the early universe to split the particles once again.

Recent events show nationalism on the rise again

2016 will be known around the world as the year of nationalism’s revival

BY BLAKE DEAL

Whether it be the massive demonstrations in Poland, the United Kingdom’s recent exit from the European Union or even the possibility of Japan amending its constitution for the first time ever, developed countries around the world are turning back to nationalism and are becoming increasingly skeptical of liberal democracy. Though this may cause some left-leaning media outlets to become alarmed, the rise of far-right movements  around the world, and especially in Europe, provide a helpful basis upon which we can evaluate recent social crises and the merits of liberalism.

These recent geopolitical events call into question the veracity of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis found in his 1992 book “The End of History and the Last Man.” Fukuyama predicted that with the fall of communism, all nations around world will become liberal democracies, characterized by globalism, free elections, political representation and the Western European theory of universal human rights. By the time current UCLA students graduate in the next few years, we will have entered into a completely redefined era of American and European politics.

We will continue to witness even more radical changes because nationalist trends show no signs of slowing down. Contrary to Fukuyama’s predictions, the reason why the resurgence of nationalism in the United States, Europe and Japan is not a fad that will soon succumb again to globalist liberal democracy is because these far-right movements are rooted in cultural identity. Nationalism is not a mere fluctuation of a bad economy, but a reaction against perceived hostile forces that threaten one’s safety and culture. These forces often come in the form of mass immigration, terrorism and radical changes in demographics. 

For instance, within a week there were four deadly attacks committed against Germans, all of which were perpetrated by supposed Syrian refugees, ethnic foreigners and those claiming allegiance to the Islamic State. In the same span of time, two Islamists murdered a Roman Catholic priest in France during Mass by cutting his throat, taking place less than two weeks after a man killed 84 people in Nice. These events are just the latest sample of what Europe has had to endure for the past few years.

A common tendency among political parties and citizens throughout these countries is their return to unapologetic self-determination. Rather than catering to foreigners or global perception, they desire to put their people first, maintain their own unique traditions and establish laws reflecting popular sentiment. No longer will these groups concede national guilt from previous generations, but are instead seeking to reassert themselves in the face of cultural opposition.

For instance, Hakubun Shimomura, a member of a Japanese nationalist organization called Nippon Kaigi, wants Japan to reject its supposed “masochistic view of history” and to instead view its citizens as victims of World War II, not as evil aggressors. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a member of Nippon Kaigi, agrees with Shimomura, along with most other Liberal Democratic Party politicians. In addition to their rejection of Western European historical narratives and natural human rights, many want to reinstitute state Shintoism and emperor worship.

On the other side of the world, Nigel Farage, Brexit extraordinaire and leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, persuaded the majority of his fellow British citizens to leave the European Union after decades of membership. The manner in which he and his party accomplished this feat was largely through promises of restored national honor and negative portrayals of immigration.

The story is no different in our own country. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, delivered a powerful speech at the Republican National Convention, promising to put America first if elected president. He said Americanism, not globalism, will be our nation’s credo.

As these examples demonstrate, in contrast to liberalism, nationalism is characterized by an immediate concern for one’s nation and people, not the entire world. Leaders of nations place their people first. Only when their people are taken care of will they consider foreign concerns.

Talk of universal human rights or vague abstractions about “the common humanity of all people” is easy when people are not subjected to terrorist shootings, suicide bombings or being hacked to death on a train. Abstractions like these do little more than cause benevolent wars in the name of “freedom,” give preferential treatment to some and not others in the name of “equality” and allow politicians to harm their electorate in the name of “human rights.”

Liberalism is on the decline. Instead of adhering to general platitudes that harm themselves culturally and sometimes economically, justifying everything from mass immigration to the rape of one’s own citizens, people increasingly want the state to preserve their own best interests instead.

Opponents associate these movements with “hatred,” “racism” or “xenophobia.” But these labels belie the fact that nationalism is fueled by a series of political judgments, not just emotion. The reason opponents castigate nationalism in such odious terms is to portray it as nothing more than a dangerous pathology and thus unworthy of any real evaluation.

Given our current trajectory, such criticisms no longer work and in fact even bolster opposition. Nothing else can account for the success of Trump, or conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos for that matter. The more people who dismiss Trump or European far-right movements around the world by calling them racist, the more people will jokingly embrace the label or otherwise chalk it up to some pernicious notion of political correctness.

In the long run, these recent events both at home and abroad pose new and interesting developments and unexpected challenges. Fukuyama’s prediction was wrong; radical changes in culture and demographics have now caught up with his overly hopeful post-communist expectations. Hopefully, the newly emerging sociopolitical milieu will avoid excesses on all sides of the spectrum. Whatever the outcome, we should embrace these changes and use them as a tool to reevaluate the direction of our political evolution.

Despite a week of media attack frenzy, Trump pulls even with Clinton in new poll

Republican nominee for president of the United States Donald Trump is rapidly gaining support among likely voters against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was released this morning by Reuters. The poll, which was conducted from July 31 to August 4 and included 1,154 likely voters, had a margin of error of three percentage points. With the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention in the rearview mirror, it appears as though things may be balancing out after each candidate received a boost from their respective convention.

“About 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton, to Trump’s 39 percent, according to the July 31-Aug. 4 online poll of 1,154 likely voters. The poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points, meaning that the results suggest the race is roughly even. Among registered voters over the same period, Clinton held a lead of five percentage points, down from eight percentage points on Monday, according to the poll. The reasons behind the shift were unclear. Clinton had pulled well ahead of Trump on the heels of the Democratic National Convention last week, where she became the first woman to accept the U.S. presidential nomination from a major political party.”

While Clinton is still ahead by three percentage points, the margin of error is three points. That means Trump and Clinton should be considered even. During a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was taken from July 25-29, 41 percent of likely voters favored Clinton, and 35 percent favored Trump. The margin of error was four percentage points, so Clinton was in the lead by two points last week.

It is currently unknown why Trump has narrowed the gap over Clinton in the last week. As usual, Trump has involved himself in numerous controversies. While Trump was originally reluctant to endorse the re-elections of Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain, he finally ended up doing it last night, as the New York Times reports. Regardless of Trump’s endorsement, it shows the current instability of the Republican Party.

Additionally, Trump started a feud with Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen United States soldier. Khan, who is a Muslim, attacked Trump at the Democratic National Convention. While Trump could have simply ignored Khan, he spent days defending himself. Regardless of Khan’s apparent attack, Trump probably took things a little too far. Instead of focusing on Clinton, Trump instead made derogatory comments about Khan’s wife, Ghazala, and the fact that she did not speak at the Democratic National Convention.

In addition to Democrats and undecided voters, Trump’s comments about Khan and his family have also made Republicans uneasy. Many people believe that the president of the United States needs to have composure, and it appears as though Trump has a short fuse when it comes to being attacked. Despite Trump’s recent blunders, it appears as though he is still very much alive in the race with Clinton.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, the Reuters/Ipsos poll recently made a change to their methodology. While the poll previously allowed participants to select an option of “Neither/Other,” Reuters/Ipsos removed the option “Neither.” Since both candidates have low likability ratings among potential voters, Reuters claimed that the change would not favor either candidate.

Breitbart believed that the change in methodology was put into place to favor Clinton, but last week’s poll, which showed Clinton up by six percentage points, was conducted online. Since it is thought that potential voters are reluctant to tell a live telephone operator that they favor trump, the methodology change should not affect online polls, which last week’s poll was. The poll released earlier today was also conducted online, so the methodology change was probably not a factor in the two latest polls.

With November’s election only three months away, the polls between Republican nominee for president of the United States Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are likely going to continue to be volatile. If Trump can stay on topic and cut down on his personal attacks, there is a real chance that he could regain his lead over Clinton in the coming weeks.

MORE HERE.