What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Looks like a budget deal been reached.
From TheWashingtonPost “House and Senate negotiators unveiled an $85-billion agreement late Tuesday to fund federal agencies through the fall of 2015, avoiding another government shutdown and ending the cycle of crisis that has paralyzed Washington for much of the past three years.
In a rare display of bipartisan cooperation, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) stood side-by-side in the Capitol with Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to announce the deal, which would cancel half the sharp spending cuts known as the sequester for the current fiscal year.”
“I am very proud to stand here today with Chairman Ryan to say that we have broken through the gridlock,” said Murray, calling the agreement “an important step in helping to heal some of the wounds here in Congress and show we can do something without another crisis around the corner.”
Ryan called the agreement “a clear improvement on the status quo” that protects the Pentagon from fresh cuts set to hit January while trimming deficits by more than $20 billion over the next decade.”
Call me unimpressed.
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2. I told you the other day about Holder’s DoJ was steering settlement money to community organizers. Seems the USDA has a similar program to steer large piles of cash to questionable individuals and groups.
From TheBlaze “Between 2008 and 2011, the U.S. government awarded roughly $6.12 million in federal farm subsidies to several groups in the Chicago area, including a charity owned by Louis Farrakhan’s The Nation of Islam, according to a report released by government watchdog group Open the Books.
The report, titled “Farm Subsidies and the Big Dogs,” is based on data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture & information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The report examines total farm subsidies that have been paid into selected cities and urban areas.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, federal farm subsidies are being poured into several non-farming metropolitan areas, including New York City and Chicago, according to the report.
Several entities in Chicago, for example, “receive the federal subsidies at their downtown loop office buildings or residential mansions,” the report reads. “Nearly every neighborhood in the city receives federal farm subsidy payments — including the Gold Coast, Downtown — Loop, Lincoln Park, and even the President’s neighbors in Hyde Park.” A total of 930 entities in the Chicago area received farm subsidies between 2008 and 2011.”
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3. A Dem pollster has been shocked to find no racism in Tea Partiers. So they had to make some up. 🙄
From Mediaite “The Democratic pollster Democracy Corps, commissioning research from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, recently dug into that foreign species commonly referred to as “the conservative voter.” In a dispatch that reads like the curious field notes Charles Darwin scribbled while observing the natural wonders of the Galapagos, the Democratic pollsters have found that the family Republican is made up of a variety of genera, including moderates, tea partiers and socially conservative evangelicals.”
“We know that Evangelicals are the largest bloc in the base, with the Tea Party very strong as Well,” the memo reads. They feign shock at the notion that Republicans view President Barack Obama as a “liar” and a “manipulator,” two designations that the majority of American voters would agree with but to which the Democratic base’s Pavlovian response is to point and shriek “racism.”
Indeed, the pollsters even confess that they “expected” to find more racism among Republican voters. “We expected that in this comfortable setting or in their private written notes, some would make a racial reference or racist slur when talking about the African American President,” they confess. “None did.”
“But this response by the voters they surveyed is viewed by Democracy Corps pollsters more as a clever evolutionary response to a history of predation. The Republican voter, the pollsters declare, harbors racial consciousness that is only masked by an effective camouflage:”
They couldn’t find any, but just know it’s there. Why else would they be against Obama, right? 🙄
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4. More Common Core indoctrination masquerading as education.
From EAGNews “Next month, the organization, Creating Balance in an Unjust World, will hold its annual conference on “math education and social justice”.
The conference is sponsored by Radical Math, an organization founded by Jonathan Osler, a math and community organizing teacher at a Coalition of Essential Schools high school in Brooklyn, NY.
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the progressive education reform movement expanded by President Obama and domestic terrorist William Ayers through their work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 90′s.”
“Radical Math’s website provides over 700 lesson plans and other resources covering a wide range of political and social issues (with extreme bias), including globalization, the redistribution of wealth, and various ways the poor are discriminated against and oppressed by whites, banks, corporations, the rich, and the government. One such resource, Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, contains chapters titled, “Sweatshop Accounting”, “Racism and Stop and Frisk”, “When Equal Isn’t Fair”, “The Square Root of a Fair Share”, and “Home Buying While Brown or Black”.”
Yeah…..
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5. Hey Canada…. what gives, eh? 🙂
From MyFoxNY “Canada plans to make a claim to the North Pole in an effort to assert its sovereignty in the resource-rich Arctic, the country’s foreign affairs minister said Monday.
John Baird said the government has asked scientists to work on a future submission to the United Nations claiming that the outer limits of the country’s continental shelf include the pole, which so far has been claimed by no one.
Canada last week applied to extend its seabed claims in the Atlantic Ocean, including some preliminary Arctic claims, but it wants more time to prepare a claim that would include the pole.”
“Countries including the U.S. and Russia are increasingly looking to the Arctic as a source of natural resources and shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says the region contains 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of oil. If Canada’s claim is accepted by the U.N. commission, it would dramatically grow its share.”
Will Santa’s workshop be in the claim too? 😯
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Wandering Views 
Would that make Santa Claus Canadian? Ho, ho, ho, eh.
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Forgot to add the 🙂
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I think the country that is willing to exploit the gas & oil should get it. If EPA won’t drill in Alaska, the there is no point in claiming other areas.
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This made the rounds on FB the other day, about how we’re all, apparently, racists: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/12/08/i-am-a-racist/
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Anon,
Excellent piece. We’re all racists now.
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And homophobes, too, don’t forget. 🙄
Mohler on wedding cakes:
http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/12/11/a-moral-revolution-at-warp-speed-now-its-wedding-cakes/
“The momentum of this revolution is breathtaking, and it’s threat to religious liberty is plain for all to see.”
Or so you’d think — I doubt too many of my liberal friends “see” this as any kind of religious liberty issue at all.
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After reading this, watching the sign language ‘interpreter’ in action on video is a pretty funny experience:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/12/11/mandela-memorial-interpreter-deemed-fake/
—- “A man who stood close to President Barack Obama and other heads of state while providing sign language interpretation at Nelson Mandela’s memorial Tuesday was a “fake” who was making up his own gestures, sign language experts say, raising questions about the security at the event.
” ‘[He] was moving his hands around, but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for,’ Bruno Druchen, the Deaf Federation of South Africa’s national director, told The Associated Press Wednesday.” —-
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Regarding #2 on farm subsidies, this is obviously some strange usage of the word “farm” that I wasn’t previously aware of.
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The scariest thing about the Obama cartoon story was the was not the comments but the way the university caved so quickly and to completely.
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Donna, I saw that interpreter story. A Facebook friend said it sounded like a Mr. Bean skit. 🙂
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Can someone explain the Obama cartoon? I don’t get it. (I love the piece that cited it, though.)
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😀
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(that was for the Mr. Bean skit)
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Kevin, “farm” means whoever the president says it is.
Don’t bother with the dictionary. It won’t help.
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Which is the “cartoon story?” Number, please. Thanks.
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Linda,
It’s not up, see Anonymous at comment #4 for the link. 🙂
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It is also posted on my FB accounty
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You didn’t know Santa Claus was Canadian? His postal code is H0H 0H0.
I’m not surprised farm subsidies are given in urban areas. Farm subsidies are a huge cash cow and one where people can sneak pork in with little chance of criticism. After all who doesn’t like the family farm (never mind that most farm subsidies go to corporations)
This site tries to keep track of it all; http://farm.ewg.org/index.php
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HRW
😆
I think food stamps are part of the farm program. It was the farmers who promoted it most.
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I didn’t get the cartoon either, at first. I think it means that Obama charges over anyone to get his own way.
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No the joke is more along the lines of when Bush was President she was Hannah Montana under Obama she is Miley Cyrus.
Under Bush Alabama won all the games. (not really) under Obama Auburn is winning. It’s a joke. 😉
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That sign language thing is both hilarious and a little scary. That’s actually a pretty good practical joke, to get on international TV in such a casual way that few people would think to question. But obviously a pretty big security breach, too.
I heard many years ago that the way to get away with just about anything is to look like you belong. One of my favorite stories was told by a father of one of my roommates. He’d tried multiple times to reach someone high up in government or in some company, I don’t remember the details. The secretary always screened his calls. Finally one day he called, and the secretary asked, “Can I ask why you are calling?” and he said, “Not unless you have a code NC-7 clearance, you can’t.” (I don’t remember what numbers or letters he used.) He got patched through, and had a productive conversation. At the end of the conversation, the big guy asked, “By the way, what is an NC-7 clearance?” “I don’t know. But it got me through to talk with you, didn’t it?”
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Cheryl, that’s funny. Remember the story behind the film “Catch Me if You Can” (and another similar tale that was a popular book in the 1960s, I think).
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