Month: June 2014
News/Politics 6-23-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The Democrats in Congress are trying an end around on local abortion restrictions.
From LifeNews “Few Americans are aware that a “Gosnell Prerogative Act” has been introduced in Congress. This bill would permit the grisliest abortion providers—like the now-convicted murderer, Kermit Gosnell—to set the standard of care for abortion.
Unsurprisingly, this bill is not actually called the “Gosnell Prerogative Act”—instead, S.1696 is deceptively titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act.” However, it is difficult to imagine a bill less protective of women and their unborn children.
In spite of court interference, we have made great strides in the enactment and defense of state legislation that regulates and limits abortions since Roe v. Wade, with approximately 160 laws enacted across the country between 2011 and 2013 alone.
Now, imagine the laws in 32 states requiring varying degrees of informed consent prior to an abortion invalidated overnight. Twenty laws prohibiting partial-birth abortion – gone. Twenty-nine state laws requiring abortion clinics to meet some degree of safety standards—gone. Other abortion bans, admitting privileges requirements, regulations on abortion-inducing drugs, ultrasound requirements, and limitations on the use of public funds and facilities for abortions and abortion training–all gone. Imagine the vast majority of pro-life laws wiped out with the enactment of a single piece of federal legislation. That is the purpose behind S. 1696.”
Must protect their Precious, and the blood money it gives them. Disgusting.
______________________________________________
2. This one’s not shocking. More govt. waste, fraud, and abuse.
From TheTrib “A new federal report says the government program that funds school lunches for low-income families nationwide misspent about $996 million, or 8 percent of its budget, last fiscal year.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made several steps in recent years to prevent ineligible families from receiving free and reduced prices in the lunch line, but more can be done, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office report.
Wyoming recently tightened the way it enrolls students for these benefits to increase the system’s accuracy, said Tamra Jackson, nutrition supervisor for the Wyoming Department of Education. The state requested $14 million in federal funds to reimburse free or reduced-price lunches for roughly 34,000 students during the 2012-13 school year. “
A billion dollars is no big deal, right? After all, it’s for the children. 🙄
______________________________________________
3. Further proof that the IRS scandal originated in the White House.
From TheDailyCaller “An IRS official whose emails were “lost” visited the White House frequently during the agency’s targeting of conservatives and met with a top assistant to President Obama who exchanged confidential information on conservative groups with the IRS.
The IRS recently claimed that it lost emails from Nikole Flax, who served as chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller. Flax was one of seven IRS employees including ex-official Lois Lerner whose emails to and from White House officials and other Obama administration agencies were purportedly deleted and could not be handed over to congressional investigators.
Flax held personal meetings with a top assistant to President Obama and also colluded with Lerner to prosecute conservative activists.
Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax’s visits started in the early days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013.”
______________________________________________
4. The good news in ObamaCare only applies to the poor. Everybody else just gets to pay for it.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “To hear administration officials and their supporters in the press tell it, this is a great time for Obamacare. People who signed up for coverage are actually paying for it; more insurance companies are joining exchanges; some consumers have more choices than originally envisioned. “The news surrounding the Affordable Care Act has been so good this week, it’s almost hard to know where to start,” wrote MSNBC‘s Steve Benen in a recent post headlined “Everything’s Coming Up Aces for the ACA.”
Not so fast. Yes, Obamacare is a big help for those now receiving something substantial from the government — large subsidies for the lowest-income Americans who purchase coverage on the exchanges, free health care for people eligible for the expanded Medicaid program.
But for millions of other Americans, it’s a different story. In fact, one respected analyst worries that Obamacare, while helping some, is actually “creating a chronically uninsured class” of those ineligible for its taxpayer-paid assistance.
Of the much-discussed eight million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare, the “vast majority … are receiving financial assistance,” according to a Department of Health and Human Services report released this week. What that means is this: Of the eight million, about 85 percent, or 6.8 million, actually paid for coverage. Of those, about 87 percent, or 5.9 million, receive taxpayer-paid subsidies to help them pay.”
______________________________________________
5. The blame game has started over the White House created crisis at the southern border.
From TheWashingtonTimes “Central American governments are beginning to feel heat from Washington, which is increasingly blaming leaders in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for failing their own citizens — forcing many to flee to the U.S., banking on uncertain promises or rumors of legal status.
Democrats urged those governments to “tell the truth” to their people, even as Vice President Joseph R. Biden prepares for a Friday meeting in Guatemala with representatives of the three nations.
That follows what one participant described as a “very testy” meeting Wednesday between Hispanics in Congress and ambassadors for the three nations, who exchanged blame for what all sides say is a humanitarian nightmare.
“I do not see the countries of Central America stepping up to take responsibility for the danger, dysfunction, death and despair in their own cities and towns,” Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, said Thursday.
______________________________________________
6. Democrats can pretend they had nothing to do with it. But they orchestrated it, and knew it was coming. This, from January, proves they were preparing for it.
From TheConservativeWife “On January 29, 2014, the Federal Government posted an ad on their BizOpps website seeking escorts for unaccompanied illegal alien children. If this doesn’t prove that the entire mess with all the illegals flooding our country was planned by this administration, nothing ever will. Here is the entire document that lays out the “requirements” to become such an escort:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has a continuing and mission critical responsibility for accepting custody of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from U.S. Border Patrol and other Federal agencies and transporting these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States. ICE is seeking the services of a responsible vendor that shares the philosophy of treating all UAC with dignity and respect, while adhering to standard operating procedures and policies that allow for an effective, efficient, and incident free transport. The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: “
______________________________________________
Our Daily Thread 6-21-14
Good Morning!
Happy Saturday!!!
And today is the first day of Summer. 🙂
Today’s header photo is from Cheryl.
_____________________________________
On this day in 1788 the U.S. Constitution went into effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
In 1893 the Ferris Wheel was introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL.
In 1939 Lou Gehrig quit baseball due to illness.
And in 1985 scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.
______________________________________________
Quote of the Day
“If you live for any joy on earth, you may be forsaken, but, oh, live for Jesus, and He will never forsake you!”
Matthew Simpson
______________________________________________
Today is Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach’s birthday. From drnypianostudio’s channel
Today is also Justin Cary’s birthday.
And it’s Joseph Rojas’ too. This one’s loud. From SeventhDaySlumbeVEVO
______________________________________________
Anyone have a QoD?
Prayer Requests 6-21-14
Anyone have a request or praise they’d like to share?
Psalm 147
¹Praise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely.
2 The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.
3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
6 The Lord lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.
7 Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God:
8 Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.
9 He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
10 He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.
11 The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.
12 Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.
13 For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.
14 He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.
15 He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth very swiftly.
16 He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.
17 He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?
18 He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.
19 He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
20 He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord.
Rants! and Raves! 6-21-14
It’s Saturday, so you know what that means….
Rants! 😦
and
Raves! 🙂
News/Politics 6-21-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread Weekend.
Our Daily Thread 6-20-14
Good Morning!
It’s Friday!!!
Today’s header photo is from Janice.
______________________________________________
On this day in 0451 Roman and Barbarian warriors brought Attila’s army to a halt at the Catalaunian Plains in eastern France.
In 1756, in India, 150 British soldiers were imprisoned in a cell that became known as the “Black Hole of Calcutta.”
In 1898 the U.S. Navy seized the island of Guam enroute to the Phillipines to fight the Spanish.
In 1941 the U.S. Army Air Force was established, replacing the Army Air Corps.
And in 1997 the tobacco industry agreed to a massive settlement in exchange for major relief from mounting lawsuits and legal bills.
______________________________________________
Quote of the Day
“Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.”
Charles W. Chestnutt
______________________________________________
Today is Chet Atkins’ birthday.
And it’s Jerome Fontamillas’ too. From BlackTree TV
And Remembering Mister Guitar – Chet Atkins – From Roger Niccum who has a lot more of Chet.
______________________________________________
Anyone have a QoD?
Prayer Requests 6-20-14
Anyone have a request or praise to share today?
And it’s Friday, so don’t forget Mumsee, Mike, and the Nestlings. 🙂
Psalm 146
¹Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul.
2 While I live will I praise the Lord: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
5 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God:
6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever:
7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners:
8 The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:
9 The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
10 The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord.
News/Politics 6-20-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Good question.
From PowerLine “What Happened to the 1.1 Million Pages of Data on Nonprofits that IRS Gave the FBI? “
“We wrote here and here about the IRS’s transfer of 1.1 million pages of documents about 501(c)(4) organizations to the FBI in October 2010. We now know that the documents included confidential taxpayer information, which means that it was a criminal offense for Lois Lerner to transmit them to the FBI. Presumably this is one reason (not necessarily the only one) why Lerner sought refuge in the privilege against self-incrimination.
Within a few days of transmitting the documents, Lerner met with Department of Justice officials to encourage them to prosecute 501(c)(4) groups and individuals associated with them. In view of these events, an obvious question is: what did the FBI do with the materials it got from the IRS?
On June 11, FBI Director James Comey testified before a House oversight committee and was asked that question. His answer was: nothing. Comey didn’t have first-hand knowledge, but based on discussions with others at the Bureau, a single FBI employee looked at the index to the documents and then did nothing, waiting for instructions from DOJ that never came. On this account, the documents sat in FBI headquarters for more than 3 1/2 years without anyone looking at them. Comey said that within the past week, the Bureau had sent them to DOJ.”
This is what happens when you ask the fox to investigate crimes at the chicken house.
_______________________________________________
2. It’s about time states take the matter up on their own. After all, the White House will do nothing to stop it since it’s their plan that’s causing it.
From Time “Texas can’t afford to wait for Washington to act on this crisis and we will not sit idly by while the safety and security of our citizens are threatened”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders called Wednesday evening for a “surge” in law enforcement along the border, announcing plans to inject $1.3 million more into the effort every week in response to a recent influx of illegal crossings.”
““Until the federal government fulfills its duty, it falls on the State of Texas to address those obligations,” the state leaders said in the joint letter to the director of the Texas DPS.”
______________________________________________
3. So they knew it was a disaster, but Obama’s legacy was more important than a working website.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “Under pressure from the White House, healthcare.gov was launched despite a wave of previously unknown warnings from consultants that the Obamacare website was insecure, untested and prone to crashing after just 500 people got on, according to a damaging new Senate report.
“The White House continually meddled in technical decisions and put pressure on [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] officials to launch the website on time, regardless of operability and security concerns. As a result, officials ignored countless red flags to launch a website with thousands of defects. In the end, the launch failed miserably, crashing on takeoff,” said the report from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.”
“”Both metaphorically and factually, the website was designed to be the public face of President Obama’s signature achievement,” said the report. As a result, it added, “No one wanted to be the messenger that told the White House that its signature piece of legislation was going to crash at takeoff. The administration prioritized political success over protecting taxpayers,” charges the report, provided to Secrets in advance of its Thursday morning release.”
Nobody wanted to tell the Emperor he had no clothes I guess.
______________________________________________
4. Has the Middle East’s own 30 Year War begun?
From TheSpectator “Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a counter-coup. But Lebanon is starting once again to fragment. Beneath all these facts — beneath all the explosions, exhortations and blood — certain themes are emerging.
Some years ago, before the Arab ‘Spring’ ever sprung, I remember asking one top security official about the region. What, I wondered, was their single biggest fear? The answer was striking and precise: ‘That the region will clarify.’ That is a fear which now appears to be coming true.
The Middle East is not simply falling apart. It is taking a different shape, along very clear lines — far older ones than those the western powers rudely imposed on the region nearly a century ago. Across the whole continent those borders are in the process of cracking and breaking. But while that happens the region’s two most ambitious centres of power — the house of Saud and the Ayatollahs in Iran — find themselves fighting each other not just for influence but even, perhaps, for survival.”
______________________________________________
5. More on the Obama/Muslim Brotherhood connections.
From GulfNews “Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.
The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements.
To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.”
Naïve? No. Guided by MB insiders in the Obama admin, and Hillary’s MB connected right-hand-woman is more like it.
______________________________________________
Our Daily Thread 6-19-14
Good Morning!
On this day in 1586 English colonists sailed away from Roanoke Island, NC, after failing to establish England’s first permanent settlement in America.
In 1862 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln outlined his Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in U.S. territories.
In 1911, in Pennsylvania, the first motion-picture censorship board was established.
In 1934 the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration was established.
And in 1958, in Washington, DC, nine entertainers refused to answer a congressional committee’s questions on communism.
______________________________________________
Quote of the Day
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.
When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift—that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies—that’s something.
When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter—that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body—it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed—that’s the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”
—Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939
______________________________________________
I thought I’d play a favorite of mine this morning, from a whole bunch of people.
And of course, Lou Gehrig’s farewell. From Historic Films Stock Footage Archive
______________________________________________
Wandering Views 