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News/Politics 8-9-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

First up, I can see a judge issuing a gag order to witnesses. What I can’t see is why you threaten the families with loss of benefits if they don’t play along too. A military judge in a court-martial has no such authority over civilians. So where did the order to families not to talk to the press come from? DoD, or the White House?

From RedState  “Autumn Manning, wife of Army Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning who was wounded in the Ft. Hood terror attack, is speaking out on Twitter. Manning claims that the Department of Defense has “slapped victims of violence with gag orders” and is preventing them to discuss denial of benefits and other developments in the wake of the attack.”

“Why would the DOD gag families, especially those who aren’t serving thus not obligated to comply?”

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The military won’t be the only govt agency used for social experiments by the Obama admin. Introducing the new and improved HUD.

From FoxNews  “In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of  Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds  to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change  those it deems discriminatory. 

The policy is called, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” It will  require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single  neighborhood and try to remedy it.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP  convention in July.”

“Data from this discrimination database would be used with zoning laws, housing  finance policy, infrastructure planning and transportation to alleviate alleged  discrimination and segregation.”

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If you like that one, you’ll love this one.

From CNSNews  “Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday the formation of the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, which will be headed by Shaun Casey, a former religion advisor to President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and a liberal professor who last year touted the end of ‘civil religion’ in the United States.

“I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” Casey said at a discussion last year at the Center for American Progress focused on “God and Politics” in the last presidential election.”

“Kerry cited the Bible’s New Testament in describing the new office’s mission, which he said would seek “common ground” between “all religions.”

“One of my favorite passages from the Scripture sums up what Shaun and I think this effort is really all about,” Kerry said. “It’s a familiar Gospel of Mark in which Jesus says to his disciples, ‘For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many.’”

And there you have it. I’m not sure exactly what IT is, but there it is.

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Additional indictments from the Boston bombing case.

From Reuters  “A U.S. grand jury on Thursday indicted two students from Kazakhstan on obstruction of justice charges, alleging they helped hide evidence related to the April Boston marathon bombing that killed three and injured 264.

Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both 19, were college friends of surviving bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.”

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Next up, “Phony scandals?” Depends who you ask.

From FoxNews  “Benghazi. Snooping on reporters. The IRS and NSA. The White  House dismisses them as phony and fake scandals. Americans do not.

A  Fox News national poll released Thursday finds that 78 percent of voters  think the questions over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack  on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi should be taken seriously. Just 17  percent call it a phony scandal.”

“Meanwhile, 69  percent of voters say the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance  of everyday Americans is serious, while 26 percent call that a fake scandal.”

And there’s more. Looks like a message fail for Obama and Dems all the way around.

Oh, and since we’re talking about them scandals…..

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted..

In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special “secondary screening” because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.”

“In a transcript from the committee provided to Secrets, a Ways & Means investigator asked: “If you saw — I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group — a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?”

“The agent said, “At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy.” The committee staffer then said, “So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?” The agent admitted, “Based on my current manager’s direction, uh-huh.”

Phony. Sure. 🙄

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Waste. Fraud. Abuse.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “A Maryland woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges related to setting up at least 15 false businesses in six states that received government contracts despite often being registered to people who did not exist.”

“The conspirators typically operated under a particular business name for a period of six to 12 months until the business was either disqualified from the FedBid marketplace or was otherwise burdened with lawsuits or liens,” the plea bargain said.

“The conspirators initially used their true names and addresses to register their businesses, but later attempted to conceal their true identities by using aliases to register the businesses and by renting commercial mail box store fronts.””

“The case illustrates how little federal officials know about where goods and services they purchase come from, with one Whitehead firm selling ammunition to the Army, according to government contracting records, thus raising questions about whether bullets of dubious quality wound up in soldiers’ hands.”

And it just gets worse from there.

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Lastly today, 2 abortion stories. First Wendy Davis, and the ignorance from Dems like her in the abortion debate. And of course you can’t talk about that without mentioning the media who enables it.

From HotAir   “This spring and summer has seen the media bias in full bloom on abortion.  The national media couldn’t be bothered to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell, which they initially dismissed as a “local” news story despite its potential impact on the national debate over abortion, while they thundered down to Florida as a herd to cover the George Zimmerman trial … and to Arizona for the Jodi Arias trial, whose national implications were apparently “pretty girl kills boyfriend and denies it.””

“When Texas followed up on the Gosnell grand jury report to better regulate abortion mills to ensure that they operated as ambulatory surgical clinics and limited abortions to 20 weeks, the media only took an interest in the woman who tried to block the bill that had support from 62% of Texans and 61% of Texas women.  The same national media who couldn’t be bothered to report on the Gosnell horror without being shamed into it — and then mostly focused on whether or not it was a real news story at all — hailed Wendy Davis as a heroine for her opposition. In fact, they gave Davis three times as much coverage in three weeks as they gave the Gosnell trial in eight weeks.

Oddly, though, they never actually pressed Davis to explain why she opposed regulating abortion clinics, given the horrors of the unregulated Gosnell clinic.  When John McCormack of the Weekly Standard asked her about the majority support of women for late-term abortion bans in light of Gosnell, Davis replied that she was mainly ignorant of the Gosnell case, but claimed women overall were ignorant of the lack of risk involved.”

“Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed.  Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria.”

And the second is here. I’d be surprised if you’ve seen anything about this on the so-called news.

From LifeNews  “Leading pro-life advocates marched in downtown Washington, D.C. to the doorstep of ABC News’ Washington bureau to accuse the network and other mainstream media outlets of bias and censorship on abortion.

Fifty six days after the grisly trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell began, ABC broke its self-imposed blackout and finally offered coverage.

Lila Rose, the head of Live Action, which coordinated the event, said “Enough is enough. It’s time to report the news. It’s time to stop censoring the news.”

“She was joined by pro-life leaders like Jill Stanek, Ryan Bomberger and Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life.”

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18 thoughts on “News/Politics 8-9-13”

  2. Chas, In the past the government has put subsidized housing projects in upper-middle class suburbs. It doesn’t end segregation. The residents of the suburb just sell their homes and move further out.

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  3. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July.

    Wow, that has it all. Pandering, overreach, nanny-statism, race-baiting. Sheesh, no shame with these folks.

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  4. Wasn’t this what Section 8 was suppose to do. We have a couple of Section 8 houses on our street. No one seems to stay in them long. Some were nice people I was sorry to see go and some, not so much. One person was the daughter of a university professor. Racially, they seems to be about 60-75% black.

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  5. Common Ground between Islam and Christianity?

    Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?

    If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

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  6. Gag orders are becoming far too common lately. AJ reports on an DofD gag order. In the fracking protests in the northern midwest whole families have been given gag orders on the effects of fracking. In both cases we see the financial interests of the corporate state being protected.

    Most public housing complexes here are mixed housing. Some pay full rent while others pay rent geared to income (RGI). I lived in one complex for about 5 years. I was RGI when I moved there but then as my income increased I paid full rent for the last two-three years. We had a real mix of people .. single moms, married graduate students, immigrants, assisted housing for handicapped adults, independent living for the blind, and then regular working people. Public housing works if managed well. In the area where I teach, we have public housing complexes on the outskirts of middle class suburbs. Similar to my experience, its a real mix of people whose kids go to school with middle class kids from the suburbs. (and no one moves out because of it).

    Faith based initiatives — didn’t Bush jr try something similar? An other piece of evidence in the “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” meme of US politics. The parties aren’t that different. Government should stay out of the religion business and vice-versa.

    I’d treat the NSA revelations far more seriously than the other two. The NSA is a threat to American democracy, Benghazi is a lesson in why gov’ts shouldn’t open their mouths until the facts are in and should develop a better cover story for the gun running operation the CIA was hiding. As for the IRS, I thought Tea Party groups were political advocacy groups.

    Waste — Its the free market. The gov’t and other groups need to operate on buyer beware and not insist on more bureaucratic oversight. This is free market and self-regulation in action and if you want to eliminate it, advocate for more gov’t oversight and regulation.

    Finally, abortion …. I think both sides stop listening to each other years ago. Wendy Davis has no clue where the pro-life groups are coming from and vice-versa. The media prefers if the story went away. Reporting abortion stories is a no win situation. They get complaints either way. The Davis incident was easier to report. The media reports that a legislator spoke until midnight to stop legislation. They can report that without actually discussing the ins and outs of actual abortion.

    Here’s an article from Salon which actually does discuss abortion specifically the issue of pain and 20 weeks. The writer believes it would be more accurate to push it forward to at least 24 weeks. At least here is a discussion of not abortion rights (although there’s some attempt at emotionalism) but of actual abortion and fetal development.

    http://www.salon.com/2013/08/07/fetal_pain_is_a_lie_how_phony_science_took_over_the_abortion_debate/

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  7. Here’s an interesting exercise in satire.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_oa_VEnNlA

    drivesguy
    Conservative Christians do have common interests with Islamic groups. In Canada and Europe, these two groups work together on issues such as abortion and pornography. They may disagree on who is going to heaven but while on earth they can work together to lobby the gov’t on issues they agree on.

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  8. HRW,

    I read the Salon piece yesterday. Was not impressed. I’m not going to take the word of an abortionist who makes a living off of the practice. There are many stories out there from former abortion workers that completely destroy her opinion on the matter. Many Doctors agree on the 20 week time frame as well.

    So color me unimpressed.

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  12. In general the pro-choice argument centers on doctor-patient relationships, women’s rights and health choices whereas pro life centers their argument on nature of the fetus that is they claim its human and therefore a legal person. Neither side listens to each argument anymore. Nor do they attempt to argue on the other group’s terms.

    An anti-keystone pipeline ad was rejected by an NBC affiliate in Washington DC. Apparently they didn’t like the portrayal of the TransCanada CEO … not a very liberal media.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/video/reject-keystone-ad/article13681251/

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  13. I’m at a loss as to what pro-lifers don’t understand about pro-choice arguments. I’ve been closely associated and involved with pro-life groups for years, and nobody, nobody, doesn’t know that abortion rights groups argue on the basis that you mention. Nor do I know any pro-lifer who doesn’t have concern for women having “rights,” etc.

    But over and over, to this day, I hear abortion rights proponents frame the debate around canards–like “pro-lifers only care about babies BEFORE they’re born,” and on and on.

    There are strange fringe-group arguments from both sides. I don’t count those.

    Each of the literally hundreds of pro-lifers I’ve read or discussed the issue with acknowledges women’s rights and medical privacy concerns, and sincerely wants to reasonably preserve those. They simply believe that preservation of human life is the *primary* concern. There’s nothing closed-minded about having a hierarchy of principles. Pro-lifers recognize the principles of both sides. Pro-abortion rights groups more frequently do not.

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  14. One of the problems with trying to talk to pro-abortion folks (other than the obvious baby murdering thing) is that they keep saying they want abortion to be safe, legal and rare, but they fight any attempt to make them safe and rare.

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  15. Good point, KBells. I also disagree with the idea of making abortion “safe”. We don’t make other types of homicide safe. The risk associated with committing a homicide sometimes saves the life of the intended victim.

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