George Soros

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News/Politics 6-16-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. You know when Soros is involved, grassroots is really astroturf. 

How are these people not in prison? A real DoJ would be all over this. 

From TheGatewayPundit  “Professional race activists Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie (ShordeeDooWhop), pictured here in Baltimore, helped whip up the Ferguson mobs. This year Fortune Magazine named these two professional activists two of the world’s greatest leaders.

Many conservatives rightly smelled a rat in the supposed organic race-riot movement that sprang up so quickly in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 after the shooting death of robber Michael Brown. After burning the Ferguson and Dellwood, Missouri business districts to the ground the radical left has relentlessly sought to recreate the same discord and disinformation in various locations around the U.S. Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter protest leaders have been flown to New York, South Carolina, Milwaukee, Selma, and more recently to McKinney, Texas and Hillary’s campaign relaunch in New York.

Thankfully, every day patriots and online conservative investigators still fight to shine truth, anywhere “the movement” tries to sow its twisted seeds to foment anger, feed bitterness, and breed division. Much has been printed about the paid protesters and Soros connections.

** Nearly half of the roughly 500 businesses operating in Ferguson and adjacent communities, such as Dellwood and Jennings, suffered property damage or lost revenue as a result of the coordinated Ferguson protests and riots.

In May black Ferguson activists staged a protest at the office of MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) to complain that the group’s white leaders collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations off of the Black Lives Matter movement without paying the Black participants their fair share. It was during these protests that Ferguson activists admitted that fellow protesters were making MORE THAN $5,000 a month to disrupt cities, damage property and attack police!

In response to these protests MORE released a list of names and amounts paid out to protesters and protest groups who agitated and harassed police night-after-night in Ferguson last fall and winter.

The list of over 80 groups and individuals was posted on Twitter by an irate protester.”

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2. These people would still be alive if we enforced our borders and deported these criminal illegals. 

From TheDailySignal  “More than 100 convicted criminals who remained in the U.S. despite receiving deportation orders between 2010 and 2014 now face murder charges, according to the agency charged with carrying out such deportations of illegal immigrants.

U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement reports that 121 convicted criminals who were never removed from the country face murder charges today.

In response, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., of the Judiciary Committee submitted a letter on June 12 requesting a “multi-departmental response” from Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

In their letter, Grassley and Sessions cite Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics that show 1,000 of the 36,007 criminally-convicted illegal immigrants released from custody in fiscal year 2013 have been reconvicted of additional crimes.”

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3. Here’s an update. Remember this one? 

From TheAP  “A blogger who pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to break into a nursing home and shoot unauthorized video of the ailing wife of a U.S. senator was sentenced Monday to serve more than two years in prison.

Clayton Kelly, 29, of Pearl, Mississippi, shot the video of Sen. Thad Cochran’s then-wife in 2014 during a tough Republican primary. After making the video of a bedridden Rose Cochran, who had dementia, Kelly felt remorse but ultimately wanted to make a name for himself as a journalist, according to testimony during the sentencing hearing.

Mississippi Circuit Judge William Chapman gave Kelly the full five-year maximum sentence but allocated 2.5 years to prison and the rest to probation. District Attorney Michael Guest said there’s no way to know now whether Kelly will become eligible for early release.

Images of Rose Cochran appeared online briefly during the primary that Cochran ultimately won over a tea party-backed state senator, Chris McDaniel. Kelly was one of four people who conspired to produce the video suggesting Thad Cochran was having an affair, investigators say.”

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4. So the mayor allows the protesters space to destroy and loot these businesses, and then leaves them out of the loop when it comes time to rebuild? It’s almost like they planned it this way.

From Reuters/MSN  “Dozens of Baltimore liquor stores damaged in rioting over the death of Freddie Gray are likely to be excluded from city recovery help, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on Monday.

Long-standing concerns about zoning and community complaints about liquor stores in poor neighborhoods mean they could be barred from loans and other financial aid, she said.

Many of the stores do not meet zoning laws and Baltimore needs alternatives, such as grocery stores to improve impoverished neighborhoods, Rawlings-Blake said.

“I do not believe it is appropriate for the city to provide money for these non-conforming liquor stores to rebuild as liquor stores in these locations,” she told a news conference in the Park Heights neighborhood, which city officials say has the highest concentration of liquor stores in Maryland.

Nearly 400 businesses across Baltimore, about 40 of them liquor stores, were damaged or destroyed in rioting after the April 27 funeral of Gray, a 25-year-old black man. He died of spinal cord injuries allegedly suffered while in police custody.”

They use words like non-conforming yet the city zoning allowed them. And they still took their tax money too. 

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5. Do Christians need to stop playing the self-flagellation game?

From TheFederalist  “Leftists love the self-flagellation game, a fun little exercise where you gather in a circle with people of your tribe, say you’re going to punish yourself for causing some problem in the world, and then whip the tar out of the guy standing next to you. Technically, of course, this is not self-flagellation. But that’s the fun part. As long as you act like you’re tearing up your own flesh, you can give as many lashes as you want to the guy that you think is really guilty of the transgression.

Leftists are masters of this game. They’re quite skilled at wincing and saying, “I, a poor, miserable sinner, deserve pain for refusing to check my cisgender privilege,” while unleashing all nine tails o’ the cat on the real culprits, those awful conservatives who cause a transgender suicide every time they assume that a person with an Adam’s apple, a five o’clock shadow, and a Y chromosome is a male.

But when losses in the culture war frustrate conservatives, they can occasionally be persuaded to try their hand at a round of the game liberals invented. In March of 2014, Ross Douthat grabbed the whip and repented of the sins other Christians have committed against the LGBT community, essentially arguing “we made our bed of having to bake gay wedding cakes by treating our gay neighbors with intolerance instead of charity, now it’s time to lie in it.” Recently, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry joined the self-flagellation circle, arguing that Christians only have themselves to blame for the recent Irish referendum in support of gay marriage.

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by

News/Politics 4-20-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

I’ll start things off.

1. Clinton’s cash. 

From TheNYTimes  “The book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.”

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2. A new VA scandal. 

From FoxNews  “Nearly a year after a scandal rocked the Department of Veterans Affairs, revealing that the agency’s centers nationwide were manipulating records to hide dangerously long patient wait times, the bad news just keeps on coming — calling into question the agency’s promise to clean house.

Ignored claims, manipulated records, cost overruns and even one facility infested with insects and rodents are among the latest issues uncovered by a blisteringVA Inspector General’s report. The auditor’s probe found that more than 31,000 inquiries placed by veterans to the Philadelphia Regional VA office call center went ignored for more than 312 days, even though they were supposed to be answered in five. Perhaps even worse, claim dates were manipulated to hide delays, $2.2 million in improper payments were made because of duplicate records, 22,000 pieces of returned mail went ignored and some 16,600 documents involving patient records and dating back to 2011 were never scanned into the system.

“This report is as bleak as it gets, full of systemic malfeasance and deliberate data manipulation,” charged Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, in a statement after the story broke April 15. “The Philadelphia VA Regional Office is in crisis, brought on by years of mismanagement and encouraged by VA’s longstanding refusal to hold employees accountable.””

“In response to the Philadelphia IG report, the VA said the findings “reflect conditions a year ago.” Once issues were brought to their attention by whistleblowers, reforms were already in high gear during the IG’s inspection, first and foremost with a new director Diana Rubens, who was brought in to tackle the reforms in July 2014. 

“This is not a new thing, this is a last-year thing,” Allison Hickey, the VA’s official in charge of benefits, told The Associated Press. But the IG’s report rejects that notion, saying it was getting complaints as recently as last month.”

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3. Soros’ secret liberal donor retreat. Remember this the next time you hear some liberal whine about all of that money Republicans use.

From TheFreeBeacon  “The contrasts are stark at this week’s meeting of the nation’s foremost liberal donor club. Flashy sports cars ferry climate crusaders to a luxury hotel, a private security company shields prying eyes from speeches on political accountability, and billionaire Democratic donors denounce money in politics.

The Alliance is a hub of liberal and Democratic fundraising. It steers tens of millions of dollars each year to leading political and policy groups strategically vetted and endorsed by its staff of progressive operatives.

“If there was an attack on this building, the Democratic donor base would be gone,” joked investor Joe Sanberg. “There are probably a lot of conservatives who would love to drop a bomb on this building.”

Security was tight at San Francisco’s Four Seasons hotel, as the group hired its own security to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing the hotel’s conference area.

It set up disposal bins for “confidential” conference materials, where attendees could dispose of sensitive paperwork for “secure shredding.” The group brought along its own paper shredders.”

“Attendees dined on goat cheese and garlic polenta, sourdough French toast, Kobe beef, and chorizo-stuffed dates. They sipped fine Napa Valley wine. The minimum food and beverage charge for the event was $130,000 according to hotel documents.”

Paper shredders? They must be hoping Hillary stops by. 😆

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by

News/Politics 9-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Stop, Drop, and Roll Barry!

Someone please grab the President and roll him around. His pants are on fire again.

From CNSNews  “President Obama promised that under his health care plan, “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,” but that’s just another broken promise, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which indicates that public funding of abortion is happening on a large scale.

“This confirms what we have long suspected,” Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) said in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

Pitts and other Republicans asked the GAO to find out which taxpayer-subsidized plans in the Obamacare exchanges fund abortion and if consumers know about that coverage.

The report concluded that in 2014, more than a thousand federally subsidized Obamacare policies paid for abortion on demand, sometimes unbeknownst to policyholders. And in five states, every plan offered on the exchanges included abortion on demand, giving consumers no alternative, as required by law.”

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2. Who didn’t see this coming…..

Also from CNSNews  “The cost of the Obamacare subsidy that the U.S. Treasury will pay on behalf of people who earn under 400 percent of the federal poverty level and who buy a government-approved health-care plan on a government-run health-insurance exchange will increase by approximately 8-fold in its first ten years of operation, according to the latest budget estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Medicaid spending will double in the first ten years of full implementation of Obamacare, according to the CBO estimates.”

“In fiscal 2013, the year before the health insurance exchanges opened, the federal government spent $265 billion on Medicaid, according to CBO. This year, fiscal 2014, the first year that the exchanges will be in operation, the federal government will spend $305 billion on Medicaid. By 2023, the tenth year that the Obamacare exchanges will be in operation, Medicaid will cost the federal government $539 billion—more than double the $265 billion it cost in 2013.

By 2024, the last year in the CBO estimates, Medicaid spending will climb to $570 billion.”

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3. Epic Fail

From TheDailySignal  “Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise.

Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion. (These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment Insurance.)

Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.”

Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

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4. The press leaving out relevant info? Not shocking.

From NewsBusters  “Legal battles against state governor’s with higher political aspirations keep cropping up. But looking deeper into attacks on Republican governors from Texas, Wisconsin and Louisiana reveals George Soros’ checkbook was behind it all – but the news media aren’t about to point that out.

The group that first filed an indictment charge against Texas Gov. Rick Perry was funded by Soros, the liberal billionaire, but the trail of his money didn’t end there. Both the recall election for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and an even less successful recall attempt for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal were rooted in Soros-funded groups. Between them, these three potential Republican presidential candidates were targeted by groups receiving more than $6.3 million from Soros.

The media should be reporting on this connection, but so far they have completely ignored it. None of the broadcast news coverage of Walker’s recall election or Perry’s indictment on ABC, CBS or NBC have mentioned Soros. Attempts to recall Jindal weren’t mentioned by the networks, although left-wing outlets like The Huffington Post tried to promote them.”

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5. A respiratory illness hitting children has now been detected in 12 states and officials expect that number to grow. Where do you suppose the source of this latest “rare” outbreak came from?

From MSNNews  “A serious respiratory illness sickening U.S. children has spread to 12 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, as it predicted that more states will report cases in coming weeks.

The growing list of states with confirmed cases now includes Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, the CDC said.

Known as enterovirus D68, the somewhat rare virus can cause symptoms ranging from mild fevers to difficulty breathing and wheezing severe enough to require hospitalization.

Since mid-August, the CDC has received reports of 130 people with confirmed cases of the virus. There is no vaccine, and infants, children and teenagers have the greatest risk of infection. So far, there have been no reported deaths from the illness, which could be fatal in serious cases.”

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by

News/Politics 3-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open thread, with a few from me to start off.

1. Why Russia no longer fears the US.

From Politico  “The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?

 Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.

Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.

Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.”

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2. 8 steps Obama must take to punish Russia.

From Politico  “Russia’s illegal military incursion in the Crimea region in Ukraine is a grave violation of a nation’s sovereignty and cannot go unpunished.

 First, President Obama should speak unequivocally and call this what it is: a military invasion. The Obama administration must publicly acknowledge that its “reset” with Russia is dead. The president must now accept that the only way to deal with tyrants like Vladimir Putin is with a clear understanding that they can’t be trusted and that only decisive action will deter their provocative moves.

Second, President Obama should dispatch Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Kiev to show U.S. support for Ukraine’s transitional government, and urge our allies in the European Union and NATO to send representatives there as well. The United States should convene an emergency meeting of NATO to develop a strong united response from the trans-Atlantic alliance. And we should send high-level delegations to our allies in Central and Eastern Europe to reinforce the fact that we are standing by them. As part of this work with our allies, we should develop a series of economic and security assurance measures to help the transitional government in Kiev remain stable and carry out a democratic transition.”

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3. The WaPo editorial board is pointing out the fact that President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.

From TheWashingtonPost  “FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That’s a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country’s standing is no longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing armies.

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.”

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4. Next, some video reminders, and healthy dose of “I told you so.”

Apparently Putin didn’t get the memo.

From HotAir  “Now seems like a reasonable moment to recall these zingers, which Democrats and the media thought were terribly clever in 2012. Mitt Romney’s clear-eyed assessment of Vladimir Putin’s Russia is looking more spot-on accurate than ever, yet it was greeted at the time with widespread ridicule.”

“Who’s laughing now?”

There’s also more video of the DNC propaganda network explaining how wrong Romney was. Except he wasn’t, they were.

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5. Finally……. About time someone points out the obvious. This is just another of the President’s foreign policy fantasies.

From TheJerusalemPost  “Prime MinisterBinyamin Netanyahu met with US President Barack Obama in theOval Office on Monday, pushing back against pressure from the White House to swiftly cut a deal with the Palestinians as the president warned time was running out for peace.

“Israel has been doing its part, and I regret to say that the Palestinians haven’t,” Netanyahu said to Obama, in front of the press. “The people of Israel know that it’s the case.”

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6. Birds of a feather and all.

From TheDailyCaller  “Progressive billionaire George Soros and the Obama administration help fund the Chicago nonprofit that set up Obamacare enrollment programs for prison inmates.

Chicago-based Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC) helped establish Obamacare enrollment programs for prisoners at Chicago’s Cook County Jail. Cook County is one of at least six states and counties enrolling prisoners to help shift inmate medical costs to federal taxpayers.

“A lot of states will come to this, because state corrections budgets are huge and county jail budgets are huge,” said TASC spokesperson Maureen McDonnell.”

All this does is shift the burden from the local/state level to the federal level. But don’t hold your breathe looking for a tax rebate on the local level. They need the extra cash to fund their pension/legacy costs.

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7. Is yelling the new spanking?

From Today  “You love them like crazy, but they can also drive you crazy, so no matter how well-behaved your children are, there comes a time when you need to get tough.

For lots of parents, that means yelling – something many feel awful about afterwards.”

“She’s also an opponent of spanking. In fact, some experts speculate that many families – apparently taking to heart research that indicates spanking can make kids more aggressive, angry and lead to problems later in life — are instead turning to yelling as a way to control their children.

 “Yelling is the new spanking. It’s sort of the go-to strategy for parents… I think (this) definitely is a generation of yellers,” said Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and a TODAY Moms contributor. Many families tell her it’s the number one issue they want to change.“

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