What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread
1. Oh boy. This is way worse than they thought/admitted.
From ABCNews “The massive hack into federal systems announced last week was far deeper and potentially more problematic than publicly acknowledged, with hackers believed to be from China moving through government databases undetected for more than a year, sources briefed on the matter told ABC News.
“If [only] they knew the full extent of it,” one U.S. official said about those affected by the intrusion into the Office of Personnel Management’s information systems.
It all started with an initial intrusion into OPM’s systems more than a year ago, and after gaining that initial access the hackers were able to work their way through four different “segments” of OPM’s systems, according to sources.
Much of that data has been stored on OPM systems housed by the Department of the Interior in a Denver-area data center, sources said. And one of the four “segments” compromised held forms filled out by federal employees seeking security clearances.
As ABC News previously reported, the 127-page forms — known as SF-86’s and used for background investigations — ask applicants for personal information not only about themselves but also relatives, friends, and potentially even college roommates.”
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2. OK Mr. President, let’s start with your neighborhood, then we’ll do Biden’s and Clinton’s too.
They did something similar in this area. They closed down a housing project in a nearby city, gave the former residents Section 8 and disbursed them into the surrounding neighborhoods and cities. Did it bring them up? No, it had the opposite effect. It brought the other areas down.
From TheHill “The Obama administration is moving forward with regulations designed to help diversify America’s wealthier neighborhoods, drawing fire from critics who decry the proposal as executive overreach in search of an “unrealistic utopia.”
A final Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule due out this month is aimed at ending decades of deep-rooted segregation around the country.
The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks, libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a gentrification of those communities.
“HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a HUD spokeswoman said. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”
It’s a tough sell for some conservatives. Among them is Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who argued that the administration “shouldn’t be holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble.”
“American citizens and communities should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government,” said Gosar, who is leading an effort in the House to block the regulations.
Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, are praising the plan, arguing that it is needed to break through decades-old barriers that keep poor and minority families trapped in hardscrabble neighborhoods.”
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3. How nice.
From TheObserver “In a scene all too typical in present day Washington, the culmination of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, along with the push for passage of related legislation such as Trade Promotion Authority (or Fast Track) have set off a lobbying frenzy.
While liberal organizations and members of Congress deride the TPP as the biggest boondoggle since NAFTA and President Obama defends it as “the most progressive trade treaty ever,” the influence peddlers who populate K Street see opportunity.
Policy makers aren’t simply facing a lobbying barrage from the typical slate of domestic interest groups. Foreign governments are running sophisticated operations to influence Congress and gather intelligence in Washington as the negotiations proceed.
This is now “par for the course,” according to Lydia Dennett, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight [POGO], a nonprofit watchdog. “If a certain country wants trade legislation that will be beneficial to them they can hire an American lobbyist to get them the access the need.”
Leading the way among TPP nations seeking to sway American policy makers is Japan, which signed up former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle’s firm as well as well-connected public relations firm DCI.”
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4. Careful what you wish for…..
From HotAir “Why are arrests down so sharply? Some cops may fear that criminals have turned more aggressive and confrontational after a year of high-profile allegations of police brutality, from the protests in Ferguson to the assassination of two officers in New York to the riots over Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Jack Dunphy, a cop himself, noted in a piece for PJM last month that crime rates are up in multiple major cities nationwide. Can’t be a coincidence. For other officers, it’s not fear of perps that drives them but of the DA: Watch towards the end of the clip below and you’ll hear Brooke Baldwin say some cops told her they’re more afraid of being charged by Marilyn Mosby if an arrest goes bad than they are of being killed in the line of duty. Even Baltimore’s police commissioner acknowledges that concern:
Batts has several explanations for what’s happening. One is a flood of prescription drugs on the street, being used for recreational purposes, that were looted from pharmacies during the April rioting. “There’s enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” Batts said Wednesday. “That amount of drugs has thrown off the balance on the streets of Baltimore.” (This is, City Paper notes, a bit exaggerated.) Batts also said that officers have been patrolling in pairs rather than the normal solo beats, which effectively halves the number of patrols.
The FOP offers a bleaker, though related, rationale for the decrease in arrests: Officers are afraid, its leader says. On the one hand, they’re beset by hostile citizens who carefully monitor every arrest, crowding around officers who are just trying to do their jobs and capturing the detentions on camera, lest they turn into another Freddie Gray situation. On the other hand, police are also afraid a prosecutor will haul them in front of a jury. After Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged six of their comrades with a range of offenses in Freddie Gray’s death, they say that they don’t know when they might be charged with a crime, just for doing their jobs.”
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Wandering Views 
#2
to HUD; Memo
MYOB, Butt Out!
Our local school district wants to ban the ice cream truck from parking opposite the high school so kids won’t find it so easy to buy chips, sodas, energy drinks and other evil foods during lunch. Those same students can drive cars, are taught how to have “Safe Sex”, and some will join the Service this year.
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There’s now a lucrative blackmarket for forbidden chips and other junk foods on some of our local school campuses.
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Mohler:
http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/albert-mohler-on-how-to-survive-a-moral-revolution
“… It’s going to be the great challenge for us: how to be a truly Christian counter-culture.”
“If we really do love God and love neighbor then we hope for, pray for, and we must strive for a social order that will lead to human flourishing and to human happiness. We don’t believe that’s going to happen by joining in validating this revolution. …
“We also don’t operate on the false hope that somehow we’re just an election away from national revival or from somehow just one clincher argument from the culture agreeing with us. So it’s a long, persistent faithfulness. There are public policy issues that we’ve got to speak to and we need to speak to them; but we’ve got to speak to them without the triumphalism that has so often, frankly, marked Christians in the public square—and without the hurt feelings and the sense of cultural loss that builds a lot of resentment among Christians. We don’t have any right to be resentful. We weren’t promised the culture. …”
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News dump time….
Yes….. yes it is……. and that’s a good thing.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-deals-humiliating-blow-to-obama-in-trade-fight/ar-BBl3UyZ?ocid=U142DHP
“Defying President Obama, House Democrats on Friday rallied to vote down legislation granting aid to workers displaced by trade, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the fast-track legislation that had been scheduled to hit the floor.
An overwhelming majority of Democrats voted to sink the package in the 126-302 vote despite an impassioned plea from the president, which he delivered in person during a rare morning visit to Capitol Hill. A majority of Republicans also opposed the bill.
The vote came minutes after a dramatic floor speech by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who rebuffed lobbying by Obama to vote against the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program.
Pelosi noted that Democrats have traditionally backed TAA, but sided with liberals in her conference who argued a vote against the program was the only way to stop fast-track.
“If TAA slows down the fast track, I’m prepared to vote against TAA,” Pelosi said.
Other members of Pelosi’s leadership team, including House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Reps. James Cyburn (S.C.) and Steve Israel (N.Y.), voted yes.
On the GOP side, Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) cast a vote in favor of TAA. House Speakers cast floor votes on relatively rare occasions.”
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Now just imagine if it was with Christians and churches….
The reaction from the liberals who thought this was a good idea would be much different.
http://eagnews.org/public-school-teachers-administrators-hold-staff-training-join-prayer-service-at-islamic-mosque/
“Dozens of teachers and administrators in Pennsylvania’s Lebanon School District recently attended a taxpayer-funded in-service workshop at a local mosque to learn about Islam and Arabic culture.
About 50 staffers from the district attended an in-service workshop Monday led by former district Arabic translator Mohamed Omar, who “took time off from his new job as a case worker for the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia to share his knowledge of Islam with the staff, which included Superintendent Marianne Bartley and several other administrators,” the Lebanon Daily News reports.
The workshop started off at the high school where Omar discussed the differences and similarities between the education systems in the U.S. and Arab countries. Afterward, they headed to the nearby Lebanon Valley Mosque to delve into the Islamic religion and join a prayer service with the congregation, according to the news site.”
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Hmmmm…….
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/11/dhs-agent-says-she-was-stripped-of-gun-nearly-lost-daughter-after-blowing-whistle-on-immigration-visa-program-video/
“A Department of Homeland Security agent testified Thursday that she nearly lost custody of her 1-year-old adopted daughter and was told that she could not own a personal firearm after she voiced concerns about a little known federal program that grants green cards to foreign investors.
Taylor Johnson, a senior special agent with a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), testified at a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing alongside several other whistleblowers who claim they’ve faced retaliation for reporting wrongdoing in their agencies.
Johnson, an 11-year veteran of ICE, said she began investigating a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) program called EB-5. The program grants green cards to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in U.S. companies.
Johnson testified that during her investigation she uncovered and disclosed gross mismanagement and public corruption that posed “national security risks” and threatened public safety.”
““Some of the violations investigated surrounding the project included bank and wire fraud, and I discovered ties to organized crime and high-ranking politicians and they received promotions that appeared to facilitate the program,” Johnson testified.”
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This one….
Welllllll……..
I can’t help but snicker a bit. 🙂
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/06/09/man-explains-spilled-drink-westboro-protester/28728343/
“Man says why he ‘spilled’ drink on Westboro protester”
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This one has a LANGUAGE WARNING!!!
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically-correct-college-campuses
“Like Chris Rock and Larry the Cable Guy, Jerry Seinfeld avoids doing shows on college campuses. And while talking with ESPN’s Colin Cowherd on Thursday, the comedian revealed why: College kids today are too politically correct.
“I hear that all the time,” Seinfeld said on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’”
Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the @#$% they’re talking about.”
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I don’t know what the Trades bill was about. I suspect no one else does either.
But I think voting against anything Obama proposes is the best move.
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I suspect the vote on the trade bill — and all the various alignments — had a lot more to do with political posturing that anything else. 😦
We may have reached the point where we can no longer govern.
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We need to elect someone with the courage to wipe out everything Obama has done.
Presidents never prosecute nor try to undo the things a previous president has done.
One of the problems G.W. Bush had is that he didn’t fire the entrenched Clintonites that had established themselves into the government apparatus.
I like the things I hear the Farina woman is saying.
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We have some section 8 houses in my neighborhood. Most of the people who live there are all right. .
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I once had a Section 8 renter. She was a good renter. I will never rent to Section 8 again. It was wrong of me to accept money from the government for her rent that was taken in taxes from anyone. That was stealing. I shouldn’t have accepted stolen money.
No one should accept money from Robin Hood. It is stolen money!
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Robin Hood must have been a liberal! Yuck.
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