What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Disgraceful.
From HotAir “And they’ve been waiting a long time, too. The Associated Press reports on an internal audit from more than 700 VA facilities shows that 57,000 veterans have waited 90 or more days for their initial medical appointment, let alone for any advanced care that might be needed. Another 64,000 have been enrolled in the VA health-care system for more than ten years without ever getting to see a doctor:
The Veterans Affairs Department says more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial medical appointments at VA hospitals and clinics 90 days or more after requesting them. An additional 64,000 who enrolled in the VA health care system over the past 10 years have never had appointments.
The audit confirms that 13% of scheduling staff received instruction in how to fraudulently cover up the horrendous wait times and access issues. The rest of the wait-list issue gets chalked up to a “complicated” appointment scheduling process and “confusion” among staff on how to manage it.
Will anyone buy that? It’s important to remember that this is the result of an internal audit run by the VA on orders from Eric Shinseki before he resigned under an avalanche of public pressure on the VA scandal. No one has yet conducted an outside audit, although the Inspector General is conducting an independent investigation of the Phoenix facilities which became the epicenter of the scandal. For an idea of why an internal audit may not produce the whole truth and nothing but the truth, read Lindsay Wise’s McClatchy report on the internal culture of the VA and the complete lack of effort at reform over the last several years:”
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2. The crisis created by the Obama admin’s refusal to enforce border laws is worsening.
From TheDailyMail “Obama instituted an immigration policy that the GOP says enticed tens of thousands of Central American children to cross America’s southern border illegally without any parents to guide them.
More than 33,000 have been picked up in Texas alone since October. The U.S. border patrol says its forces are overwhelmed, and the courts are bracing for a flood of immigration cases from children held in temporary detention facilities designed to handle a fraction of the numbers. Sanitation problems are beginning to rear their ugly heads.
Obama rolled out a controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, allowing many illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to escape deportation for two years. The White House gave them another two-year window last week.
As a result, say some GOP leaders, America’s system for handling illegal immigration has been strained to the breaking point and is attracting hundreds of new illegal-immigrant children every day. Compared to the year before Obama’s policy took effect, twelve times as many kids are coming north illegally this year.
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3. And there appears to be no end in sight.
From FoxNews “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday she is “disturbed and outraged” after she was informed by federal officials that not only has the government been shipping illegal immigrants out of Texas and “dumping” them in her state, it has no plans to stop.
Federal officials told Brewer Friday that the practice will continue for the foreseeable future, and this weekend more than 1,000 illegal immigrant children will be “dumped” in Arizona. Adults and family units will also arrive, though Brewer was not told how many, her office said.
Reports first surfaced last week that scores of illegal immigrants in Texas were being flown, bused and then abandoned out of state in Arizona and elsewhere. After learning of the practice, Brewer sent a scathing letter to the president on Monday posing a string of questions about the policy. Brewer said Friday what little she has learned since then has made her even more concerned.
“This is a crisis of the federal government’s creation, and the fact that the border remains unsecure – now apparently intentionally – while this operation continues full-steam ahead is deplorable,” she said in a statement.”
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4. News of this first leaked from a story on photos taken at the border by agents. So they get the treatment all whistleblowers get nowadays. Threats and intimidation.
From TownHall “Last week, photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol processing centers overwhelmed as thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America continue to need shelter and resources. The photos show hundreds of children sleeping in crowded, chain linked cages. Agents have described the situation as a humanitarian crisis.
In response to the leaked images out of Arizona, Patrol Agent in Charge Leslie Lawson is cracking down on the use of personal technology by agents in the Nogales Border Patrol processing center.
“Due to the recent unauthorized use of a personally owned electronic device in the Nogales Processing Center, the use of such devices will be restricted to locations outside of detention areas,” Lawson wrote in a June 6 memo to all employees at the Nogales station. “Effective immediately, the use of personally owned cellular phones, cameras, or recording devices in the Nogales Detention Facility and the Nogales Processing Center is strictly prohibited. All personnel working or visiting detention facilities at the Nogales Station will be required to turn off these electronic devices and store them in a locker other secure location prior to entering the detention area.”
According to sources, agents have been threatened with firings if found to have leaked the photos to media.”
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5. “America’s rising “progressive clerisy,” and the march toward McCarthyism”
Also from HotAir “Is there anything more intolerant than the Tolerance Brigade? At the Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin agrees with Bloomberg’s Stephen Carter on the rise of a new McCarthyism, this time imposing penalties for dissent from progressive orthodoxy rather than tolerating debate on a broad range of issues. Both use attempts to silence argument in academia as the flash point that exposes this thought-police mentality. Carter recently wrote about the attempts to intimidate Douglas Laycock, an opponent of same-sex marriage and explicitly invokes McCarthyism as the dynamic in play:
A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.
This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up.” But even when a professor holds opinions off at the far margin, to target him or her for intimidation is an affront to the freedom that makes the academy worth cherishing.
Kotkin blames this on a rising “progressive clerisy” that has formed at the highest levels of government bureaucracy, the entertainment industry, and academia:”
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6. And here’s a look at one example of what those 3 groups are accomplishing together. Brainwash kids into compliance. This is much easier than having to deal with differing opinions from free thinking adult folks later on. Best to squash that while they’re young.
From, appropriately, Moonbattery “hand reports on situations unlikely to be exposed on the evening news. This email from a concerned parent is a prime example:
I am a parent in Oakland, California and I have a kindergartner in public school. My child came home [Thursday] and told me about the MANDATORY assembly for gay “pride” month. Parents had NO idea this was going to happen and I’m totally blindsided by it.
There is a video on the school’s website showing the assembly… It was nothing more than homosexual indoctrination about the meaning of the rainbow flag and “queer” history. On stage was the rainbow flag but NO American flag. And then a “gay men’s chorus” sang songs about homosexual “freedom.”
This is an elementary school and children as young as 5 were present. Like I said, parents were NOT informed in advance. My child brought home a bookmark with the rainbow flag on it and a quote from radical lesbian poet activist, Audre Lorde, whose work includes a book called “Uses of the Erotic.” This is for Elementary School! …
You can watch the assembly yourself and decide if the origin of the rainbow flag and “queer history” are appropriate discussions to have with elementary students, or if it’s even has any educational value to begin with, at the link.
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Wandering Views 
I need to stop watching the news at night.
I get agitated and need to settle down before hitting the sack.
I don’t know why. I can’t do anything about it.
Except vote. And I do that. Even in the primaries.
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Thanks for picking up the Stephen Carter item, I’d seen that yesterday on ‘progressive clerisy’ and the new McCarthyism. So, so true.
And Andree nails it in this column about the role of the entertainment industry as well :
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/06/how_hollywood_drags_culture_along
“New sexual mores will be set before your eyes in every episode until you are so familiar with them and OK with them that you will be won over to them without even being aware you were reprogrammed.”
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I’ve mentioned it before, but this subtle (and not-so-subtle) push by the entertainment media has been going on a long time, among the most prominent ‘pushers’ being Law & Order and other popular, mainstream dramas. Whether the issue is homosexuality or abortion — or simply how oddball creepy Christians really are — the writers of these shows have put forth a drumbeat of messages that, I believe, have had a major influence on most of our population.
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Well Donna,
They don’t call them “sheeple” for nothin’. 🙄
Some folks are just too easily mislead. 😦
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Chas, I am in the same boat as you. I am on a strict diet of sports and old movies. You and I are always going to vote for the right persons, but news is only going to stir us up.
Donna J, You are right about the influence of popular culture. Since I only watch really old movies, I am increasingly tempted to start wearing a fedora.
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The result: a recent poll of Harvard freshman revealed that fully 15% self-identified as homosexual, bi-sexual or some variation thereof. Once we understand that “born that way” is a lie, we can logically conclude that there is no limit to the number of people who can be seduced into that destructive lifestyle.
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Viewers who are grounded in Scripture can watch these shows and immediately see what’s being done. Those who do not have much of a foundation morally or ethically may have a vague sense that some of these behaviors are ‘wrong’ (via common grace),. But they don’t really know how to argue against them — and they certainly don’t want to be called a bigot. So eventually, by osmosis, they go along and the behaviors become internally accepted as normative.
Meanwhile, there’s been another school shooting. Aside from all the arguments we’ll again hear about guns and mental illness, I see the frequency of these shootings essentially as further evidence of a culture in decline. 😦
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