What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread
1. So who is withholding documents from Congress? Was it Hillary or the State Dept.? Or both?
From TheNYTimes “Emails that a longtime confidant to Hillary Rodham Clinton recently handed over to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, raise new questions about whether the State Department and Mrs. Clinton have complied with a series of requests from the panel.
The emails, provided by Sidney Blumenthal, a close adviser to Mrs. Clinton, include information about weapons that were circulating in Libya and about the security situation in Benghazi in the year and a half before the attacks. The committee has asked the State Department and Mrs. Clinton several times in the past year for emails from her and other department officials about “weapons located or found in” Libya and about the decision to open and maintain a diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
The emails from Mr. Blumenthal have widened a rift between the State Department and the committee. State Department officials said that they had complied only with requests and subpoenas related directly to the attacks because the committee’s demands were too broad. The department has “provided the committee with a subset of documents that matched its request and will continue to work with them going forward,” said a spokesman, Alec Gerlach.
But the panel has called that an excuse to protect Mrs. Clinton and to slow the investigation of the attacks, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2012, and resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
It is not clear whether the State Department possesses the emails between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal and did not hand them over. It is also possible that Mrs. Clinton never provided them to the department and deleted them off the server that housed the personal account she used exclusively when she was secretary of state.”
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2. The Pope has become the left’s new BFF. At least for now.
From TheGuardian “Pope Francis will this week call for changes in lifestyles and energy consumption to avert the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem” before the end of this century, according to a leaked draft of a papal encyclical. In a document released by an Italian magazine on Monday, the pontiff will warn that failure to act would have “grave consequences for all of us”.
Francis also called for a new global political authority tasked with “tackling … the reduction of pollution and the development of poor countries and regions”. His appeal echoed that of his predecessor, pope Benedict XVI, who in a 2009 encyclical proposed a kind of super-UN to deal with the world’s economic problems and injustices.
According to the lengthy draft, which was obtained and published by L’Espresso magazine, the Argentinean pope will align himself with the environmental movement and its objectives. While accepting that there may be some natural causes of global warming, the pope will also state that climate change is mostly a man-made problem.
“Humanity is called to take note of the need for changes in lifestyle and changes in methods of production and consumption to combat this warming, or at least the human causes that produce and accentuate it,” he wrote in the draft. “Numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of the global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases … given off above all because of human activity.”
The pope will also single out those obstructing solutions. In an apparent reference to climate-change deniers, the draft states: “The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.””
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3. This is the face of evil.
From TheDailyMail “Merciless ISIS fighters retreating from towns taken by their Kurdish enemies are planting mines in the bedrooms and bathrooms of homes to blow up returning families, it was claimed today.
The bombs, which have so far killed 12 People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters, are being discovered in the Khabour region of Syria.
YPG and Syriac Military Council forces are working to liberate the villages, as well as find and defuse the explosive devices. They were planted by the terrorists after they seized the area in February and kidnapped 250 civilians.
The bombs are being hidden under beds, behind bedroom doors and even in bath tubs, as well as in crop fields in the north-eastern region of the country, which is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians.
It is the terror group’s chilling new tactic aimed at wiping out minorities in Khabour.
‘Property of Islamic State’ and ‘Your land is ours now, go to hell’ are scrawled on the walls inside the homes of Assyrians who fled earlier this year.”
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4. The poor woman is just a black person trapped in a white person’s body. Welcome to the world of transracials. I know it sounds silly, but she already has enablers helping her thru this difficult process. 🙄
From NewsBusters “Transgenderism is so yesterday. Now, it’s time to “discuss” transracial issues! That, of course, according to a guest on the June 15 edition of MSNBC’s NewsNation. Tamron Hall invited Earl Hutchinson – a radio host and prominent author on racial issues – to the program to chat about the still unfolding story surrounding Rachel Dolezal, the now former head of the Spokane NAACP who lied about being black.
Hall started the conversation by asking Hutchinson if Dolezal has “identified herself as transracial,” and he responded by suggesting that she’s never had the chance to fully explain herself other than stating that she considers herself black. He added: “You know, if you consider yourself from the moon, or a Martian, I mean, if that’s what you wanna be, that’s what you want to be.”
The radio personality mentioned that – aside from the fact that Dolezal clearly lied about her race – it is important that people look at her record:
The critical question is, what did she do as president of that chapter? I took a look at it. I took a look at the record. I took a look at the minutes of some of the meetings that they had, and I got to tell you, Tamron, I was absolutely bowled over on all the key issues: education, health care, criminal justice reform, police misconduct and civil rights. I got to tell you, she was spot on and the chapter was spot on.
Hall concluded her interview by wondering if we have reached a point where discussion over transracial issues may become necessary:
[A]re we now looking at a space where I am Caitlyn, so that’s how she wants to identify herself – are we now at a transracial point? Because when blacks passed for white it was in many cases because their life was in danger. Are we at a transracial point now where someone like a Rachel is now on the forefront of something we’ve probably never discussed before?”
Ummmmm…. No.
And there’s more enablers making up justification for her actions……….
From TheHuffingtonPost “Rachel Dolezal is a fascinating case study in White racial identity development.* She is stuck in the immersion/emersion stage, in which White people, having learned extensively about the realities of racism, and the ugly history of White supremacy in the U.S., “immerse” themselves in trying to figure out how to be White in our society, and “emerge” with a new relationship to Whiteness. Only in the case of Dolezal, her way of dealing with the pain of the reality of racism, was to deny her own Whiteness and to become Black.
She is an extreme example of a common phenomenon. The “immersion” stage is typified by White people taking more responsibility for racism and privilege and often experiencing high levels of anger and embarrassment for racism and privilege, which they sometimes direct towards other Whites. They sometimes try to immerse themselves in communities of color, as Dolezal did. She’s not alone.
I definitely experienced this. There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors… and my descendants. I remember deciding that I couldn’t have biological children because I didn’t want to propagate my privilege biologically.
If I was going to pass on my privilege, I wanted to pass it on to someone who doesn’t have racial privilege; so I planned to adopt. I disliked my Whiteness, but I disliked the Whiteness of other White people more. I felt like the way to really end racism was to feel guilty for it, and to make other White people feel guilty for it too. And then, like Dolezal, I wanted to take on Africanness. Living in South Africa during my junior year abroad, I lived with a Black family, wore my hair in head wraps, shaved my head. I didn’t want to be White, but if I had to be, I wanted to be White in a way that was different from other White people I knew. I wanted to be a special, different White person. The one and only. How very White of me…”
The stupid is strong in this one…. and so is the white guilt.
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Wandering Views 
Not only is stupid strong, but so is evil.
That applies to the Pope as well as the others.
It never occurred to the Nazis to booby trap people’s homes.
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The pope on global warming (smh — ‘shaking my head’):
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/06/how-many-windmills-has-the-pope.php
“Pope Francis has become a deeply problematic figure, all the more so after his encyclical on global warming was leaked to an Italian publication. … First, the Pope has no idea what he is talking about. His letter is full of factual errors. … The Pope’s letter is full of concern for the poor, of course. But the poor would suffer most from any prohibition against efficient energy (i.e., fossil fuels). … “
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Re: Pope Francis being the left’s new BFF: Unsurprisingly, YF has mentioned a couple times how much she loves this pope. She doesn’t realize that some of the things he’s been purported to have said were unbiblical. (I say “purported” because he did not actually say all of the quotes or paraphrases we see attributed to him.)
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The pope is the toast of all the left-leaning unbelievers I know on FB. 🙂 The staunchest atheists are sharing glowing posts about him, kind of funny, really.
Although when he was first named pope a couple years ago, one of our editorial writers tweeted how disappointed he was that while the pope was an advocate for the poor, he also opposed same sex marriage.
“So,” I tweeted in reply, “You’re saying that the pope is … Catholic?”
Couldn’t help myself. He never replied.
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Cheryl and I had a conversation about this last night. The left just wants their ears tickled, it doesn’t really matter who does the tickling. Last week I was reading a story on MSN about Catholics fighting against having to provide birth control. The comments after the piece were horrible, with at least one calling him the head of the largest pedophile ring in the world. But yesterday, since on this they agree with him, the same poster decided he suddenly was a great guy who cared about the planet and the poor. No consistency at all.
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Uh-oh…..
It looks like the term “transracial” is already taken, and they’re not happy about it……
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rachel-dolezal-draws-ire-of-transracial-adoptees/ar-AAbHgAl?ocid=U142DHP
““I’ve never said, like, ‘I’m transracial,’” ex-NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal told Melissa Harris-Perry on Tuesday. Indeed, Dolezal said she thought discussion of her identification was a distraction from conversations about racial justice. She summed it up: “… That’s not what I’m about.”
But in interviews and Twitter hashtags, Dolezal has become the face of “transracial” — what, for many, is a new adjective on the battlefield of identity politics. And linking Dolezal with the word has offended many, among them those for whom growing up looking different is a familiar struggle: transracial adoptees.
“You’re turning something that is a historical experience into something that’s almost being made a joke,” Kimberly McKee told The Washington Post.
McKee, 31, is the assistant director of the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Parent Network and a professor who studies transracial adoption — when a child of one race is adopted by the family of another. She was adopted from South Korea when she was five months old; she grew up in the suburbs of Rochester, N.Y.; and she is one of about two dozen adoptees, adoptive parents and academics who signed “An Open Letter: Why Co-opting ‘Transracial’ in the Case of Rachel Dolezal is Problematic.”
“As members of the adoption community — particularly those of us who identify as transracial adoptees — we are deeply alarmed by the gross mischaracterization of this term,” the letter reads. “We find the misuse of ‘transracial,’ describing the phenomenon of a white woman assuming perceived markers of ‘blackness’ in order to pass as ‘black,’ to be erroneous, ahistorical, and dangerous.””
This is why identity politics suck.
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Too early for polls to mean a whole lot, but still interesting to watch in terms of preliminary micro movements and momentum …
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/swing-state-polls-suggest-rubio-could-be-trouble-for-clinton-119096.html
“Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be giving Hillary Clinton the best competition among Republican presidential contenders in his homestate of Florida and is in a too-close-to-call match-up against Clinton in Pennsylvania, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll of swing states released Wednesday. … “
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my Cat says she is a cat trapped in a dog’s body. Is she trans-speciesal
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There’s a photo of an anxious-looking beagle going around on FB tonight — “Bruce Jenner’s cat” the caption says.
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