News/Politics

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News/Politics 10-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. More US victims from F and F. What else are they hiding?

From JudicialWatch  ” Judicial Watch today announced that, based on information uncovered through a Judicial Watch public records lawsuit against the City of Phoenix, the U.S. Congress has confirmed that an AK 47 rifle used in a July 29, 2013, gang-style assault on an apartment building that left two people wounded was part of the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program.

An October 16 letter sent from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) to Deputy Attorney General James Cole discloses that “we have learned of another crime gun connected to Fast and Furious.  The [Justice] Department did not provide any notice to the Congress or the public about this gun.”  Grassley (Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Issa (Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) detail:

Based on the serial number [1977DX1654] from the police report obtained by Judicial Watch and documents obtained during our Fast and Furious investigation, we can confirm that the assault rifle recovered in the vehicle on July 30, 2013, was purchased by Sean Christopher Stewart. Stewart pled guilty to firearms trafficking charges resulting from his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious … Stewart purchased this particular firearm on December 8, 2009, one of 40 that he purchased that day while under ATF surveillance” (emphasis in original document).

The Phoenix Police reports, which the letter from Congress references, were obtained by Judicial Watch thanks to a lawsuit filed against the City of Phoenix, AZ, seeking the Police Department’s records about the gang assault (Judicial Watch v. City of Phoenix (No. CV2014- 012018)). The lawsuit was filed on October 2 after the City of Phoenix ignored an August 5, 2014, Arizona Public Records Law request for information about the crime and the guns.  Judicial Watch believed the reports detailed that a weapon or weapons used in the assault are connected to the federal government’s Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.  Today’s letter from Grassley and Issa is official confirmation of Judicial Watch’s understanding from other sources.”

“According to the Phoenix Police Department report, ATF traced the firearm on July 31, 2013, the day after Phoenix police officers recovered it. Yet, over a full year has passed, and the Department has failed to notify the Committees … This lack of transparency about the consequences of Fast and Furious undermines public confidence in law enforcement and gives the impression that the Department is seeking to suppress information and limit its exposure to public scrutiny.”

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2. Catch and release.

From Breitbart  “Deportations from the interior of the United States declined 34 percent this year from last, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, derived largely from an internal Department of Homeland Security document. 

The CIS report released Wednesday and authored by the group’s director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, details the decline in immigration enforcement and reveals that there remain nearly 167,000 convicted criminal immigrants with final orders of removal still in the United States and “currently at large.”

“Prosecutorial discretion as practiced by the Obama administration has transformed immigration enforcement into a massive catch-and-release program that makes a joke of the law, fails to deter illegal settlement, and allows even illegal aliens who commit crimes to remain here,” Vaughan said Wednesday.

“These policies inflict real harm on Americans and legal immigrants,” she continued, “in the form of lost jobs, depressed wages, additional social services, and even lost lives. In addition, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups around the world, our lax policies represent an unnecessary national security risk.”

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3. The CDC director says a travel ban would hurt African economies. Yet that’s exactly what many African nations are doing.

From TheAP  “Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries – and two of them appear to have snuffed out the disease.

The developments constitute a modest success in an otherwise bleak situation.

Officials credit tighter border controls, good patient-tracking and other medical practices, and just plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak was first identified nearly seven months ago.

Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization on Friday will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.”

Sealing the borders won’t happen under Obama, and if it does, it won’t be done until it’s too late.

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4. The Centers for Anything But Disease Control.

From TheNYPost  “At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. Those evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC funding increases in January larger than what President Obama requested.

What are we getting for this ever-increasing amount of money? Answer: A power-hungry busybody brigade of politicized blame-mongers.

Money, money, it’s always the money. Yet, while Ebola and enterovirus D68 wreak havoc on our health system, the CDC has been busying itself with an ever-widening array of non-disease-control campaigns, like these recent crusades:

Mandatory motorcycle-helmet laws

Video games and TV violence

“Social norming” in the schools”

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5. Neo-Victorianism on Campus.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Sexual liberation is having a nervous breakdown on college campuses. Conservatives should be cheering on its collapse; instead they sometimes sound as if they want to administer the victim smelling salts. 

It is impossible to overstate the growing weirdness of the college sex scene. Campus feminists are reimporting selective portions of a traditional sexual code that they have long scorned, in the name of ending what they preposterously call an epidemic of campus rape. They are once again making males the guardians of female safety and are portraying females as fainting, helpless victims of the untrammeled male libido. They are demanding that college administrators write highly technical rules for sex and aggressively enforce them, 50 years after the proponents of sexual liberation insisted that college adults stop policing student sexual behavior. While the campus feminists are not yet calling for an assistant dean to be present at their drunken couplings, they have created the next best thing: the opportunity to replay every grope and caress before a tribunal of voyeuristic administrators.

The ultimate result of the feminists’ crusade may be the same as if they were explicitly calling for a return to sexual modesty: a sharp decrease in casual, drunken sex. There is no downside to this development. “

Or if you prefer an alternate title, The Vindication of Christian Sexual Ethics.

From NationalReview  “It won’t work. Sure, there will be a chill that settles across some campuses (depending on enforcement), and there will be cases where the burden-shifting “works” (at least in the way that feminists want it to work) by ruining a man’s life in highly ambiguous circumstances. But the end result won’t be a net increase in healthy relationships but instead an increase in fear, confusion, and recriminations as neo-Victorianism butts up against the crazed ”sex week” culture that still infects campuses from the top to the bottom of the academic food chain. It’s decadence versus contractual morality that utterly defies human nature, and neither model is viable.

This is exactly the time when Christians should step forward with a different ideal, the holistic, healthy, and proven model of sobriety always, chastity before marriage, and fidelity afterwards — all because marriage is sacred, our bodies are a temple to God, and we love our spouses more than we love our own lives. 

Yet, sadly, many Christians have treated Christian sexual morality as something to be embarrassed about — to be shoved at the end of the conversation or minimized by reference to “other” good works. As if the formation of lifelong, loving relationships is somehow secondary to good deeds in soup kitchens or medical mission trips.”

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News/Politics 10-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. facepalm-double

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2. And if that video didn’t bring their incompetent response to all this into focus, this should.

From CNSNews  “Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a telephone press briefing Wednesday that you cannot get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but that infected or exposed persons should not ride public transportation because they could transmit the disease to someone else.”

“Frieden’s statement came in response to CNSNews.com’s question regarding a video message from President Barack Obama last week addressing Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, in which the president told residents they “cannot get [Ebola] through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.””

“My first question is, did the CDC vet this video message before it was released and posted on U.S. embassy websites, and is it true that a person runs absolutely no risk of contracting Ebola on public transportation, such as a bus?”

“Yes, CDC vetted the message, and, yes, we believe it’s accurate,” Frieden responded. “I think there are two different parts of that equation,” he continued. “The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no.”

“Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you,” he said.”

Take a moment to absorb the stupidity of these statements……

How is it that you can’t catch it on a bus, but you can infect others on the bus if you have it. What?

And these are the experts handling this? We are so …….

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3. More bad news.

From TheJournalOfEmergencyMedicalServices  ” International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.

 Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community.

“Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?” said Ekambaram who worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. “We’ve all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground.””

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4. Nope. No WMD’s here.

From TheNYTimes  “In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”

“The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.”

“Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.””

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5. Harvard educated lawyers are speaking out about the school’s new sexual misconduct policies.

From TheBostonGlobe  “Twenty-eight current and retired Harvard Law School professors are asking the university to abandon its new sexual misconduct policy and craft different guidelines for investigating allegations, asserting that the new rules violate the due process rights of the accused.

“This is an issue of political correctness run amok,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard Law professor who was among the faculty members signing an article, sent to the Globe’s Opinion page, that is critical of the new procedures.”

“In a statement Tuesday night, Harvard said the new policy was enacted after a two-year review of its practices and its guidelines “create an expert, neutral, fair, and objective mechanism for investigating sexual misconduct cases involving students.”

The misconduct policy, which Harvard announced in July and which took effect this fall, includes a provision to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard when determining whether sexual assault or harassment occurred.”

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by

News/Politics 10-15-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. We’ll start off today with some busted memes. First up, the “Ebola is the Republicans fault” meme.

From Gov. Bobby Jindal, writing at Politico  “In a paid speech last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to link spending restraints enacted by Congress—and signed into law by President Obama—to the fight against Ebola. Secretary Clinton claimed that the spending reductions mandated under sequestration “are really beginning to hurt,” citing the fight against Ebola: “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is another example on the response to Ebola—they’re working heroically, but they don’t have the resources they used to have.”

Her argument, like those made by others, misses the point. In recent years, the CDC has received significant amounts of funding. Unfortunately, however, many of those funds have been diverted away from programs that can fight infectious diseases, and toward programs far afield from the CDC’s original purpose.

Consider the Prevention and Public Health Fund, a new series of annual mandatory appropriations created by Obamacare. Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Yet only 6 percent—$180 million—of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Especially given the agency’s postwar roots as the Communicable Disease Center, one would think that “detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats” warrants a larger funding commitment.

Instead, the Obama administration has focused the CDC on other priorities. While protecting Americans from infectious diseases received only $180 million from the Prevention Fund, the community transformation grant program received nearly three times as much money—$517.3 million over the same five-year period.”

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More from EricErickson  “According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, in January the CDC won in the budget deal.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will see an 8.2 percent budget increase for fiscal 2014, thanks to a $1.1 trillion spending bill announced by Congress Jan. 13.

But not just that. There was also this nugget of news:

This influx of cash will raise the CDC budget to $6.9 billion, which is $567 million more than it received in 2013. This is more than the agency anticipated, because the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for it was just $6.6 billion — a decrease of $270 million from fiscal 2012.

Yes, you read that right. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to give the CDC more money that President Obama requested. And what did the CDC intend to do with all that money. Cure Ebola?

Well, umm . . . .

The CDC listed some of its top spending priorities in its fiscal 2014 budget request. It wants to boost spending for vaccines for children by $287 million and increase funds by $53 million for its “World Trade Center Health Program.” It requested a $40 million increase for AMD, $22 million more for Health Statistics, $20 million more for its National Violent Death Reporting System, almost $17 million more for Food Safety and an additional $15 million for polio eradication.”

Like I said, busted. And maybe they’d have appropriate funding if they weren’t wasting it on studies to find out why lesbians are overweight and other such nonsense. Just sayin’…..

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Next up, a double meme buster. The “Republican’s are the party of the rich” and the “Democrats are for the average guy” meme. It’s not just Democrat donors like Soros and Rich Richman that are busting these memes.

From MSN  “It has long been a given that politics is a rich man’s game, and there is nothing in Roll Call’s latest compilation of the 50 richest members of Congress to contradict that notion.

The publication’s annual report reveals that about one in ten of the 535 members of the House and Senate rank among the nation’s top one percent financially based on their net worth.

Some of those lawmakers may be troubled from time to time to be associated with so reviled an institution as Congress, which is saddled with an approval rating averaging a lowly 14 percent. But they can take solace in their personal financial balance sheets, with some showing their net worth in hundreds of millions of dollars.”

8 out of the top 8 are Democrats. This one’s all busted up.

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And the last one, also a double, the “Gun free zones stop crazy people with guns” meme and the “Mass shootings are on the rise” meme.

From Breitbart  “On October 9, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a revised report showing that 92% of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 took place in gun-free zones.

The CPRC report was released in response to an Everytown for Gun Safety study claiming only 14% of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones. Everytown actually claimed 86% of such incidents occurred in places where guns were allowed.

CPRC showed that the 86% claim rests on Everytown’s “inclusion of attacks in private homes” and “numerous errors in identifying whether citizens can defend themselves.” For example, Everytown “[ignores] rules that prevent general citizens from carrying guns [for self-defense]” in certain cities, and they fail to recognize that “allowing police to carry guns is not the same thing as letting civilians defend themselves.””

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More here from LegalInsurrection  “An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.”

But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of time is examined (1977 through the first half of 2014), deaths from Mass Public Shootings show only a slight, statistically insignificant, increase – an annual increase of less than one percent.

The FBI’s misleadingly includes cases that aren’t mass shootings – cases where no one or only one person was killed in a public place. While the FBI assures people that it “captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria,” their report missed 20 shootings where at least two people were killed in a public place. Most of these missing cases took place early on, biasing their results towards showing an increase.”“

Do these people ever tell the truth? Everything is half-truths and exaggerations from them.

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2. Another feel good idea bites the dust. Or at least it should, but they’ll probably just throw more money at it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “As school children continue to protest Michelle Obama’s push for healthier lunches by dumping their full trays into garbage bins, the nation’s school boards are joining in to demand that the Obama administration let them off the hook of serving the costly and tasteless meals.

Armed with a national poll for National School Lunch Week, the National School Boards Association on Monday demanded that Washington address the “onerous requirements for federal school meal programs.””

“The survey of school leaders revealed:

— 83.7 percent of school districts saw an increase in plate waste.

— 81.8 percent had an increase in cost.

— 76.5 percent saw a decrease in participation by students.

— 75 percent of school leaders want an increase in federal funding for school districts to comply with the new standards.”

It’s not working.

From CNSNews  “In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese.”

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3. Not good.

From TheHill  “Global health officials said Tuesday that the death rate in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 70 percent, up from 50 percent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement at a news conference in Geneva, where officials said there could be up to 10,000 new cases of the virus every week within two months.

A total of 4,447 people have died from Ebola this year, the WHO said, while 8,914 have been sickened. Experts believe the real number of Ebola victims is much bigger than the official figures due to difficulties in reporting the cases.

WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward underscored the need for a more robust international response to Ebola with a timetable.

If the effort to fight Ebola is not intensified within 60 days, he said, deaths will mount and the virus will become even harder to control.”

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4. Here’s more on the story 6 Arrows posted a link to last night, from the group fighting the overreach by city officials.

From AllianceDefendingFreedom  “City officials are upset over a voter lawsuit filed after the city council rejected valid petitions to repeal a law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other’s restrooms. ADF attorneys say the city is illegitimately demanding that the pastors, who are not party to the lawsuit, turn over their constitutionally protected sermons and other communications simply so the city can see if the pastors have ever opposed or criticized the city.

“City council members are supposed to be public servants, not ‘Big Brother’ overlords who will tolerate no dissent or challenge,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “In this case, they have embarked upon a witch-hunt, and we are asking the court to put a stop to it.”

“The city’s subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions. Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment.”

In June, the Houston City Council passed its “bathroom bill,” which sparked a citizen initiative to have the council either repeal the bill or place it on the ballot for voters to decide. The public submitted more than three times the legally required number of valid signatures, which the city secretary, who is entrusted by law to examine and certify petitions, certified as sufficient. The mayor and city attorney defied the law and rejected the certification.”

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5. Is the federal appeals court system stacking the deck for gay marriage rulings? Wouldn’t surprise me.

From BuzzFeed  ” The lawyer representing the group that supports Nevada’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages made an explosive claim on Monday: He argued that a federal appeals court appears to have picked specific judges “in order to influence the outcome” of marriage cases.”

“One of the reasons he asked for the rehearing, he claimed, is the “high likelihood that the number of Judges [Stephen] Reinhardt and [Marsha] Berzon’s assignments to the Relevant Cases, including this and the Hawaii and Idaho marriage cases (which we treat as one for these purposes), did not result from a neutral judge-assignment process.”

Stewart wrote that the claim was the result of “careful statistical analysis” by Dr. James H. Matis.

Stewart went further, writing, “The appearance of unfairness is not a close question here. Even without the aid of professional statisticians, a reasonable person will immediately sense that something is amiss when one judge out of more than thirty is assigned over a four and one-half year period to five of this Circuit’s eleven cases involving the federal constitutional rights of gay men and lesbians, another to four of those cases, and both of them to the momentous ‘gay marriage’ cases.”

In an affidavit filed and signed by Stewart with the filing, he noted the legal team’s decision to obtain the analysis from Matis and includes Stewart’s personal conclusion that the panel of judges that heard the Nevada marriage case was one of the most favorable possible panels for the same-sex couple plaintiffs and “among the least favorable” for “the man-woman marriage side.” He then added that “such preferences and conclusions are known and understood by all at the Ninth Circuit involved with the judge-assignment process.”

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6. Ah yes, the extortion racket. 🙄

That’s a lovely country you have there…..

Be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it…..

From Yahoo/Reuters  “The United States should provide billions of dollars to help Central American nations curb the flow of illegal migrants, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said, and his government warns the problem will get worse if Washington fails to help.

Fleeing violence, trying to reach relatives already in the United States or seeking jobs, record numbers of child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been stopped at the southern U.S. border this year, causing widespread alarm.

Last month, the three countries pitched Washington an ambitious development plan to confront the issue.

They want to pump about $10 billion into the region to create jobs and lift living standards, with the bulk of funding coming from the United States, Perez told Reuters.”

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News/Politics 10-14-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Useless is what you call insurance like this.

From TheAP  ” They have health insurance, but still no peace of mind. Overall, 1 in 4 privately insured adults say they doubt they could pay for a major unexpected illness or injury.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research may help explain why President Barack Obama faces such strong headwinds in trying to persuade the public that his health care law is holding down costs.”

“Edward Frank of Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, said he bought a plan with a $6,000 deductible last year through HealthCare.gov. That’s in the high range, since deductibles for popular silver plans on the insurance exchanges average about $3,100 — still a lot.

“Unless you get desperately ill and in the hospital for weeks, it’s going to cost you more to have this plan and pay the premiums than to pay the bill just outright,” said Frank, who ended up paying $4,000 of his own money for treatment of shoulder pain.

“The deductibles are so high, you don’t get much of anything out of it,” said Frank, who is in 50s and looking for a new job.”

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2. ACORN is up to its old tricks again.

From WatchDog.org  “A lawsuit filed by an organizer for Battleground Texas accuses a labor group established by ACORN founder Wade Rathke of instructing an Obamacare navigator to spend time recruiting union members.

The complaint echoes decades-old criticisms of Rathke and ACORN: They use federal money meant for services to the poor in pursuit of their own labor organizing activities.

Cedric Anthony, who went to work for the Democratic Party’s Texas recruitment operation, filed a wage-and-hour lawsuit in June against two groups he says jointly employed him as a “federal navigator assisting people with the Affordable Care Act” – Southern United Neighborhoods and Local 100 United Labor Unions.”

“Anthony says he was hired by SUN, which holds the navigator contract, and later directed to enroll union members for ULU. Although he worked for both groups, he said his instructions came from the same person. His complaint depicts blurred lines between the two groups, which “shared the same offices in Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Little Rock.”

The lone attorney for both defendants denies SUN and ULU acted jointly; he says the labor group was Anthony’s sole employer. He also denies the two “shared the same offices,” although he admits they each “have offices located in the same building in each of the five cities.””

Isn’t it nice that the President has no problem using taxpayer monies to fund union activities?

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3. Nice to see Democrats looking out for minorities and seniors. Oh wait…..

From HotAir  “In June, as you may recall, the EPA announced their new “Clean Power Plan” which was, for all intents and purposes, another shot across the bow in the war on coal. In their mission statement, while paying lip service to the fact that the needs and resources of each of the states are different, they also cite “the important role of states as full partners with the federal government in cutting pollution.” This is matched with the built in assumption of the need to “address the risks of climate change.” (Apparently nobody bothered to ask the states exactly how much of an “equal partnership” they were interested in.)

Now that the new rules are moving forward in the process and people have begun to take notice of what this will mean in the real world, one wonders precisely whose side the Obama administration is on. You’d think that the Democrats – long the champions of the poor and oppressed – would have their best interests at heart… particularly with an election coming up. But as Jim Martin noted at Town Hall recently, one of the most heavily affected groups will be senior citizens.

Energy, like food and housing, is an indispensable necessity of life. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, electricity prices have jumped more than 6 percent in the Mid-Atlantic States last year alone. Yet, instead of alleviating the heavy financial burden of energy prices for seniors, President Obama is exacerbating the problem. He is proposing to reduce our nation’s carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030, and the impact would be devastating for our nation’s seniors.”

“But it’s not just seniors. Some of the hardest hit by rising energy costs are America’s minorities. The Pacific Research Institute reports that annual electricity spending for an African-American household in Ohio will rise from 4.5 percent of their income to 5.8 percent of their income due to the EPA’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — an increase of $408 annually in energy costs.”

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4. This would be funny if they weren’t serious. Since they are, it’s an unfunny, pathetic joke at best.

From TheLATimes  “Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel addressed the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas on Monday, unveiling a comprehensive plan for how the U.S. military will address the effects of climate change.

Rising global temperatures, increasing sea levels and intensifying weather events will challenge global stability, he said, and could lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease and disputes over refugees and resources.

The Pentagon’s “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap” describes how global warming will bring new demands on the military. Among the report’s conclusions: Coastal military installations that are vulnerable to flooding will need to be altered; humanitarian assistance missions will be more frequent in the face of more intense natural disasters; weapons and other critical military equipment will need to work under more severe weather conditions.

“This road map shows how we are identifying — with tangible and specific metrics, and using the best available science — the effects of climate change on the department’s missions and responsibilities,” Hagel said. “Drawing on these assessments, we will integrate climate change considerations into our planning, operations, and training.””

So basically a total bastardization of the military’s legitimate defense role.

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5. Nice. So now taxpayers are helping fund China’s disgusting forced abortion policy. They’d do it here too, if they could.

From CNSNews  “Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday that despite his and other congressmens’ efforts to hold Communist China accountable for its one-child, forced abortion policy, President Barack Obama and his administration are not only ignoring the policy but are advancing the “brutal program.”

“I respectfully submit that not only is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one-child policy, but it is even contributing financial support–contrary to U.S. law–to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),” Smith said in a keynote address at the event.

“Under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush, Mr. Obama, unlike them, has thus far provided $227 million in tax payer funds–grant money–to the UNFPA, an organization that supports, plans, implements, defends–and maybe for international audiences this is most important–whitewashes the Chinese government’s brutal program.”

“Smith, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairs its subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization, was referring to his and other Republicans’ 1984 legislation that became law as a part of a foreign aid bill that prohibits funding organizations  like UNFPA that support China’s one-child and forced abortion policy.”

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News/Politics 10-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. “The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic.”

From MSN  “Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number 1.5 to two.

Ebola cases in West Africa have been doubling about every three weeks, and no data suggests a major change in that trendline.

“The speed at which things are moving on the ground, it’s hard for people to get their minds around. People don’t understand the concept of exponential growth,” said Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Exponential growth in the context of three weeks means, ‘If I know that X needs to be done, and I work my butt off and get it done in three weeks, it’s now half as good as it needs to be.’ ”

Frieden warned Thursday that without immediate, concerted, bold action, the Ebola virus could become a global calamity on the scale of HIV. He spoke at a gathering of global health officials and government leaders at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. The president of Guinea was at the table and the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone joined by video link. Amid much bureaucratic talk and table-thumping was an emerging theme: The virus is still outpacing the efforts to contain it.

“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the people [who become infected] are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, told the group.”

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2. Common sense or overreaction?

From NBCNews  “A majority of Americans support banning all flights to the United States from countries experiencing an Ebola outbreak, an exclusive NBC News online survey reveals.

The survey, which was conducted by SurveyMonkey and then weighted for age, race, sex, education and region to match U.S. Census data, found that 58 percent of Americans want a ban on incoming flights from West African countries hardest hit by the virus, such as Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Twenty percent of respondents opposed a travel ban, and the rest said they didn’t know. The survey was conducted a day before the first person diagnosed with Ebola inside the U.S. died Wednesday.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday announced new screening procedures at five American airports that see the most travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone: New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare and Atlanta. Staff will question and take the temperature of everyone coming from those countries and screen for signs of the illness. Approximately 150 passengers come to the U.S. from those countries each day, officials said.”

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3. Of course.

From TownHall  “HealthCare.gov, the online portal where millions of Americans must by health insurance, will not display premiums for 2015 until after the 2014 elections, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. 

Obama administration officials told the AP that Americans will not be able to find out if their health insurance premiums are going up “until the second week of November,” which conveniently falls after Americans will go to the polls November 4th.

“Insurers say one big challenge for next year will involve millions of returning customers,” the AP reports. “It’s not really a technology issue, but a time crunch that also coincides with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.”

“Existing customers who do nothing will be automatically re-enrolled in their current plan as of Jan. 1,” the AP continues. “But they will receive this year’s subsidy amount, which could be lower than what they’d be entitled to for 2015. And that could mean sticker shock over their new monthly premiums.””

Cowards.

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4. They can’t hide from all the consequences of this disaster. 

From FoxNews  “More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of people just before the midterm elections.

“It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so.

In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to cancel such policies, which generally fall out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act because they don’t offer the level of coverage the law requires.”

Vote accordingly.

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5. Fraud is all they have left.

From TheFreeBeacon  “A network of union-funded groups from Little Rock to Washington, D.C., working to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas have been implicated in a lawsuit alleging that operatives in the state forged notary signatures in order to get the question on November’s ballot.

The lawsuit, which has reached the Arkansas Supreme Court, is challenging the validity of a ballot question to raise the state’s minimum wage. Details in the complaint provide a window into connections between the seemingly disparate organizations.

Those organizations are ostensibly run by Arkansans, but public records suggest that they are part of a coordinated political effort with ties to a network of Washington-based Democratic groups supportive of Hillary Clinton.”

“Beyond deadline issues, Stephens alleges numerous defects that he says should invalidate tens of thousands of petition signatures. They include allegations that canvassers forged a notary’s signature on thousands of petition pages.”

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6. They’re getting desperate. Public opinion is turning, and they know it.

From TheCollegeFix  “The University of California – San Francisco will launch an online abortion course this Monday, an Internet class being hailed as the first of its kind. The course will delve into “clinical aspects of medication abortion, aspiration abortion, post-abortion contraception, and pain management for abortion,” as well as topics such as the history of abortion, “abortion stigma,” complications and counseling, its outline states.

“I think that if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful,” Dr. Jody Steinauer, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California – San Francisco, told The Daily Beast, which first reported on the class, noting an estimated 3,000 people have signed up so far.”

““Each week’s lectures will incorporate the stories of women who seek abortion in order to better portray abortion significance and rationale,” its outline states. “Other topics will include a brief history of abortion, the clinical aspects of medication and procedural abortions in and after the first trimester, an overview of patient-centered abortion-care, the basics of abortion counseling, the professional obligations of health care practitioners to ensure that women have access to safe abortion care, and the maze of restrictions that make safe abortion care inaccessible to many women.”

“In response to news of the course, Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told WORLD magazine that “obstetricians and gynecologists refuse to do abortions because they choose to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, not because their education didn’t cover abortions.”

And National Right To Life’s Randall O’Bannon, its director of education and research, stated the reason most medical schools and med students shun learning how to perform abortions is because they “recognize that abortion is the killing of human beings.””

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News/Politics 10-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Fuzzy Math.

Or if you prefer an alternate headline, Census Helping Cook the Unemployment Books.

From TheNTPost  “A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.

And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers. The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.

When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.”

“The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.”

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2. An update on the story from the other day about the electronic records problems in the Texas Ebola case. Another flawed product from another Obama donor and bundler, just like with ObamaCare’s website.

From NationalReview  “Here’s what I can tell you for sure: Texas Health contracts with Epic Systems for its electronic-medical-records system — and the Dallas hospital isn’t the only client that has complained about its costly information-sharing flaws and interoperability failures.

Epic was founded by billionaire Judy Faulkner, a top Obama donor whose company is the dominant EMR player in the U.S. health-care market. As I reported last year, Epic employees donated nearly $1 million to political parties and candidates between 1995 and 2012 — 82 percent of it to Democrats. The company’s top ten PAC recipients are all Democratic or left-wing outfits, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (nearly $230,000) to the DNC Services Corporation (nearly $175,000) and the America’s Families First Action Fund super PAC ($150,000).

Faulkner, an influential Obama campaign-finance bundler, served as an adviser to David Blumenthal. He’s the White House health-information-technology guru in charge of dispensing the federal electronic-medical-records subsidies that Faulkner pushed President Obama to adopt. Faulkner also served on the same committee Blumenthal chaired.”

“Epic and other large firms lobbied aggressively for nearly $30 billion in federal subsidies for their companies under the 2009 Obama stimulus package. The law penalizes medical providers that fail to comply with the one-size-fits-all mandate. Obama claimed that the new rules would cut costs and reduce errors. But health-care analysts at the RAND Corporation admitted last year that their cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year were vastly inflated.

Epic has been the subject of rising industry and provider complaints about its antiquated closed-end system — so much so that when Texas Health released its first statement about the software glitch in the Ebola case, Jack Shaffer, a health-care IT guru and top official at KRM Associates, immediately snarked on Twitter: “Guess Epic can’t share data even with itself!”

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3. And since we’re on the subject of Obama’s billionaire buddies…

Only someone completely tone-deaf, or a serial liar, can pull this off with a straight face while in the home of a billionaire named Rich Richman. I kid you not. 😆

From TheDailyMail  “President Barack Obama chided the Republican Party for catering to the ‘interests of billionaires’ in an email to supporters on Tuesday, then attended a series of high-dollar fundraisers, including one at real estate mogul Rich Richman’s house.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser at Richman’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut, cost as much as $32,400 a person, according to the White House. 

The other two events, held in New York and sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, cost between $1,000 and $32,400 to attend.”

“As Obama was yucking it up with wealthy Democratic donors, he sent out a fundraising email slamming the GOP for being in the pocket of billionaires, the Washington Times reports.

‘If the Republicans win, we know who they’ll be fighting for,’ Obama allegedly wrote. ‘Once again, the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class.'”

They must think their supporters are total morons.

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4. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The EPA is poised to “do an IRS” — similar to what the tax agency had to do with dismissed top official Lois G. Lerner — and officially notify the National Archives that it may have lost key electronic records, according to a think tank that’s suing to get text messages under an open-records request.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal court on Tuesday that the alert will be coming soon, in a case that’s shaping up as a significant battle over whether government agencies are required to keep cellphone text messages as “official” records.

An EPA spokeswoman said agency officials have acknowledged to the court and to the National Archives that the agency doesn’t have the text messages, but they contend the messages never had to be stored in the first place, since they were personal in nature and aren’t required to be preserved under open-records laws, nor turned over under the Freedom of Information Act.

“EPA is not aware of any evidence that federal records have been unlawfully destroyed,” said Liz Purchia, the EPA spokeswoman.”

Nothin’ to see here folks. Again.

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5. Thoughts?

From HotAir  “Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution, even courts can’t mess with it. (I think!) As The Atlantic notes, though, Cruz’s proposed amendment isn’t substantive. It’s procedural.

“It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage, but that is what the Supreme Court is implying today. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

“Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the Nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts.

“Marriage is a question for the States. That is why I have introduced legislation, S. 2024, to protect the authority of state legislatures to define marriage. And that is why, when Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.”

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6. How tolerant… 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky has a chilling message for Christian business owners who refuse service to LGBT organizations: leave your religion at home.”

“On Tuesday, a Lexington Human Rights Commission hearing examiner issued a recommended ruling that the owner of a T-shirt company violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination.”

The hearing examiner recommended the following punishment:

First, Hands On Originals cannot discriminate against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other words, the T-shirt company must service LGBT customers – no questions asked. The examiner also ordered Adamson to attend “diversity training” conducted by – wait for it – the Lexington Human Rights Commission.

“Take just a moment and let that sink in – a Christian business owner is being ordered to attend diversity training – because of his religious beliefs. That’s a pretty frightening concept and a mighty dangerous precedent.”

And I must say, I’m impressed with the updated terminology used. After all, “diversity training” sounds so much nicer than “re-education camp.”

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7. Reason number 6,453,627 not to use the public school system. PC stupidity run amok.

From NationalReview  “A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead.

“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training document given to middle-school teachers at the Lincoln Public Schools.

“Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.

The document also warns against asking students to “line up as boys or girls,” and suggests asking them to line up by whether they prefer “skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening.”

“Always ask yourself . . . ‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’” the document says.”

A better question for parents is to always ask yourself, “Do I want a wussified kid, that’s totally confused about gender and the differences between boys and girls, because everyone is treated as unisex now?” And if the answer is no, you don’t, then maybe you should find a better schooling option.

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by

News/Politics 10-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. I’m sure this was part of the Bishop’s reasoning from the story yesterday. There already is a religious war happening, but only one side is fighting it.

From InternationalBusinessTimes  “A prominent Nigerian reverend has revealed Islamist terror group Boko Haram destroyed over 180 churches in the West African country following its capture of towns and villages in the north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa.

Reverend Gideon Obasogie, the director of Catholic Social Communication of Maiduguri Diocese in Borno State, said the group’s seizure of territory in both states has seen 185 churches torched and over 190,000 people displaced by their insurgency.

In his statement, Obasogie said Boko Haram’s “ransacking and torching” of churches had forced priests to leave their homes for two months while displaced civilians were still unable to return to their towns and villages.

He added the destruction of churches was “sad, heart-aching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria.””

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2. Meanwhile in Syria ISIS continues it’s attacks against minorities and those of other faiths as well. The bombing campaign doesn’t seem to be slowing their advance.

From ChristianScienceMonitor  “Islamic State militants have reportedly advanced to southern and eastern districts of Kobane, a strategically important Kurdish town along the Syria-Turkey border.

The fall of Kobane would further undermine the security of the Kurdish-majority region in northern Syria. It also raises questions over the effectiveness of the US-led bombing campaign in Syria against the self-declared Islamic State. 

IS fighters fought their way into the eastern side of the city on Monday as they pushed back its Syrian Kurd defenders, the BBC reports. The militants then raised their black flag on buildings and hills. 

“These neighborhoods are Kobane’s shantytowns and there are still civilians there who couldn’t flee,” Ismet Sheikh Hasan, a senior defense official in the Syrian Kurdish region, told the Wall Street Journal.”

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3. Everyone’s worried about Ebola, but we already have another epidemic running wild in the US.

From Atlanta/CBSLocal  “While the national media focus on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the patient in Dallas, the CDC is reminding Americans that sexually transmitted diseases are an ongoing but hidden epidemic.

In the United States, nearly 20 million cases of new STD infections are reported each year, reports Live Science. Since infections can persist for a long time, and because some victims are not even aware they have a disease and can easily spread it to others.

Based on data from 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the eight most common sexually transmitted diseases are: chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B virus (HBV), genital herpes, HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV), syphilis and trichomoniasis.

About 50.5 million current infections are in men while 59.5 million are in women, for a total of 110 million Americans with STDs at any given time.”

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4. Not if, the only question is when.

From MSN  “Missouri authorities are drawing up contingency plans and seeking intelligence from U.S. police departments on out-of-state agitators, fearing that fresh riots could erupt if a grand jury does not indict a white officer for killing a black teen.

The plans are being thrashed out in meetings being held two to three times a week, according to people who have attended them. The FBI said it was also involved in the discussions.

Details of the meetings and intelligence sharing by Missouri police agencies and their counterparts around the country have not been reported before.

The grand jury is expected to decide next month whether to bring criminal charges against police officer Darren Wilson, who shot dead Michael Brown, 18, on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri.”

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5. Once again, never listen to what they say. They lie. Just watch what they do. Or better yet, don’t elect them to begin with.

From CapitolCityProject  “Yesterday, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action released a video showing campaign staffers of  U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes admitting she’s deceiving voters on her energy plan. They promised if she were elected, she’d destroy the coal industry in Kentucky despite publicly “supporting” it.

Now, a newly released second video shows a real estate mogul and top donor to Democrats saying, “She’s going to @#$% em as soon as she gets elected.”

“Investigators secretly record video at Grimes fundraising event attended by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, real estate tycoon Niko Elmaleh and New York Knicks owner James Dolan at a swanky NY restaurant,” writes Project Veritas.

“She will do what she has to do to get elected then “@#$%” the coal industry says major donor.””

I hope loose drunken Dem donor lips sink ships.

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by

News/Politics 10-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread, with a few from me to start things off.

1. Carrying water.

From TruthRevolt  “Anyone watching Sunday’s broadcast of Face the Nation on CBS did not hear critical comments about President Obama from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those were edited out and sequestered to CBS’s website, leaving only the positive comments aired.

What Americans heard as they sat in front of their televisions Sunday morning was Netanyahu’s positive comments about his relationship with Obama over images of the two leaders smiling in one another’s presence. In describing his relationship with the president, Netanyahu said:

Actually, it’s quite good. We had a conversation, I don’t want to say like an old married couple, but the president said that he’s had more meetings with me than with any other foreign leader. I think you get to a point of mutual respect, you cut to the chase very quickly. You talk about the real things, openly, as is befitting of real allies. I think we have a relationship of mutual respect, and mutual appreciation.”

“But on CBSNews.com, the clip that did not air showed sharp criticisms from both leaders. “

Only positive comments about our glorious leader will be aired. 🙄

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2. Here’s another story about what I commented on yesterday. While they concentrate on imaginary enemies on the right, the fox rampages thru the hen house. And we fund it all. Plus more scamming of the H-1B visa program.

From Cincinnati.com  “The charter school also employs seven foreign teachers, mostly from Turkey, brought to the U.S. on H-1B visas for jobs it says Ohio teachers are unqualified to fill.

Concept Schools, founded by followers of a Turkish Islamic cleric secluded in the Poconos, already is under federal and state scrutiny for possible irregularities in teacher licensing, testing and technology contracts.

An Enquirer investigation has found that Chicago-based Concept Schools, which runs Horizon and 17 other charter schools in Ohio, annually imports dozens of foreign teachers in numbers that far surpass any other school system in the state.

At least 474 foreign teachers, again mostly from Turkey, have arrived at Concept’s Ohio schools between 2005 and 2013. The schools are collecting about $45 million in state funds annually to educate 6,600 children in kindergarten through high school.

Critics say H-1B visas were designed to help companies temporarily employ highly skilled foreign workers in biotechnology, chemistry, engineering and other specialized fields – not K-12 teachers.”

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3. Thoughts?

My first was what took so long?

From CNSNews  “Christians must do everything within their powers to protect their lives from being snuffed off by Satanist-driven Islamic organizations,” Bishop Joseph Bagobiri, the Roman Catholic head of Nigeria’s Kafanchan Diocese, said Sunday, according to Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper.

Bishop Bagobiri also noted, according to the Vanguard, that Christians have a “grave duty” to use “moderate and proportionate force” to defend their families against Islamic groups such as Boko Haram, which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians since 2009.

Boko Haram became internationally known after it staged a mass kidnapping of more than 250 Nigerian schoolgirls in April. Only one has reportedly escaped in nearly five months.

Not fighting back is a “gross act of irresponsibility,” the bishop said at a Sunday reception, pointing out that “Christian communities that observe absolute pacifism have all ceased to exist.””

“Bishop Bagobiri invoked church teaching on “legitimate defense” in his remarks, noting that the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes it as an act of love towards oneself; and carried out out in defense of God’s gift to life, [of] which we are merely custodians. The theological authorities of the Church are emphatic: Love towards oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality.”

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