North Korea

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News/Politics 4-12-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

There’s a lot to choose from, that’s for sure.

We have some scary stuff, from TheCSMonitor

“That was the bombshell out of a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

It came when Rep. Doug Lamborn (R) of Colorado began quoting from what he said was an unclassified version of the DIA report, which has not yet been made public.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation’s top military officer, appeared caught off-guard. The Pentagon has in recent days sought to strike a balance between words of warning to the North and attempts to calm the situation. General Dempsey’s reaction suggested that he was not pleased to have the DIA assessment made public, as it could further stoke anxieties over what is already a enormously tense international standoff.”

Greaaaaaat….. 🙄

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We have Dems pretending to be European Socialists by behaving badly….. from Heritage

“One would naturally think it impossible that anyone would hesitate – even for an instant – to honor the woman who tackled communism head on as prime minister of Great Britain. Lady Margaret Thatcher was a principled politician who helped to foster the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States that we all benefit from today.

A Senate resolution to honor Lady Thatcher was supposed to pass last night.  However, per well placed sources on the Hill, Democrats have a hold on the resolution.”

I’m not shocked at all. And they’re not pretending either I suspect.

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The President’s Priorities, from TheWallStJournal

“President Obama is pitching his new budget proposal as a fiscal peace offering to Republicans, but the details suggest everyone should expect more conflict. The fiscal 2014 plan he released Wednesday is a very slightly modified version of his previous budgets that reduces the deficit by raising taxes and trading defense cuts for more domestic spending.

The real news is that his budget ratifies much of the spending increase of the first term and tries to lock it in. He wants the feds to spend $3.78 trillion next year ($11,944 per American), which would still be 22.2% of national output nearly four years into an economic recovery. Before the financial panic in 2008, the government was spending about $1 trillion less, or closer to $2.7 trillion a year and an average of 20% of GDP—and President Bush was no slouch as a spender himself.”

“On the other hand, debt held by the public as a share of the economy will continue to climb—to what the White House predicts will be a peak of 78.2% of GDP in 2014. As recently as 2008, U.S. debt was 40.5% of the economy. Mr. Obama has nearly doubled it. (See the nearby chart.) With a modicum of spending restraint and faster growth, the debt burden will start to decline. The danger is that there’s no room to avoid Southern European debt levels if we have another recession or an interest-rate spike.”

Good thing we don’t have a spending problem huh? 🙄

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So how exactly did that bi-partisan gun deal come about? Why in typical DC fashion of course. From TheWashingtonTimes

“Sen. Mark Kirk says the real driving force  behind the gun deal that was hatched by bipartisan work was booze and boat  retreats.

The Illinois Republican said to reporters that visits to the Black Tie, a  yacht owned by Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin,  played a large role in the Democratic-Republican come-together over background  checks and other legislation related to gun control, Roll Call reported.”

“You guys really ought to go out to National  Harbor and see the Black Tie, which has been much of the reason for much of  the bipartisan cooperation around here,” he said, as quoted in Roll Call.”

You can look, but don’t touch it. They don’t like the commoners touchin’ their stuff.

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Next we have a serious case of judicial, and I suspect liberal, stupidity. From FoxNewsBoston

“The illegal immigrant who was drunk driving when he hit and dragged a Milford man to his death has been ruled incompetent to stand trial.

Judge  Janet Kinton-Walker says Nicolas Guaman’s “unique cultural background” and language barrier means that he doesn’t understand the court process. The court  also said that he lacks the ability to consult with his attorney properly.”

“FOX 25’s Melissa Mahan asked Maloney whether she believes Guaman does not understand the court process in the United States because of his language  barrier.

“No, I don’t believe it,” said Maloney. “In the past, he’s had other run-ins with the law. He’s been in court multiple times on other charges prior to all this in August 2011 and a Spanish interpreter or no interpreter was used for those hearings and he’s always managed just fine.”

Sure. And does he keep breaking the law because he doesn’t understand it too? Oh well. Let’s face it, the DoJ and INS would probably just release him anyway, what with Sequester cuts and all. 🙄

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These last 3 are all education/indoctrination related. We have some doozies today.

First, from the hallowed halls of higher learning we have the Clown Prince of Professors, from FoxNewsRadio

“For two years the University of Southern California student had listened to the classroom ranting of liberal professors. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Darry Sragow, his political science professor, launched into an anti-Republican tirade on the first day of class.”

“The 20-year-old political science major bought a hidden camera disguised as a shirt button. And that’s how he was able to secretly videotape every single lecture delivered by Professor Sragow.”

““On the first day of class he talked about how Republicans prevent blacks from voting,” Talgo said. “He also said that he used to work for Democratic candidates and it was his job to kill Republicans.”

““They’re really stupid and racist,” Sragow said at one point. “The Republican party is increasingly the last refuge of old, angry white people who don’t like what’s going on in this country.””

And yes, there’s video at the link. But with a  CONTENT WARNING!!!  for some cussing.

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Next we have the further indoctrination of public school kids, disguised as education of course. Gotta get ’em young. From NationalReview

“One doesn’t need to be a global-warming skeptic to be appalled by a new set of national K–12 science standards. Those standards, developed by educrats and science administrators, and likely to be adopted initially by up to two dozen states, put the study of global warming and other ways that humans are destroying life as we know it at the very core of science education. This is a political choice, not a scientific one. But the standards are equally troubling in their embrace of the nostrums of progressive pedagogy.

Students educated under the Next Generation Science Standards will begin their lifelong attention to climate change as soon as they enter school. Kindergartners will be expected to “use tools and materials to design and build a structure that will reduce the warming effect of sunlight on an area” (perhaps this is what used to be known as “building a fort”) and “develop understanding of patterns and variations in local weather and the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather.” Things get even scarier by the third grade, when students should be asking such questions as: “How can the impact of weather-related hazards be reduced?” The standards don’t mention protesting the Keystone pipeline as a possible “real-world” answer to the question of how to reduce “weather-related hazards,” but rest assured that the graduates of America’s left-wing education schools will not hesitate to include such hands-on learning experiences in their global-warming-politics — oops, make that “science” — classes. By high school, students are squarely in the world of environmental policy-making, expected to “evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.””

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And the last of the bunch is also from a public school, again, get the kids. From EAGNews

“Eighth-graders in Wisconsin’s Union Grove school district were assigned to fill out a “Liberalism vs. Conservatism” crossword puzzle, and they learned some new and very questionable “facts.”

Students learned conservatism is “the political belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms … ”

Conversely, they learned liberalism is “the political belief of equality and personal freedom for everyone, often changing the current system to increase government protection of civil liberties.”

“On the back side of the crossword puzzle was a political survey students were required to fill out to identify their beliefs, something Varebrook believes is equally troubling.”

That’s how they figure out who the free-thinking trouble makers are. Can’t have ’em influencing the collective with their conservative values. You know how radical 8th graders are. Best to identify ’em early.

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News/Politics 4-5-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

Lots to talk about today.

First off the North Korea mess. Did we just blink? I think we blinked.

From HotAir

“Report: U.S. backing off shows of force against North Korea for fear of what Kim might do”

“This isn’t merely a failure of nerve, it’s a failure of intelligence and a failure to keep operational secrets. The White House had a “playbook,” agreed to by O, Hagel, and John Kerry, on how to rattle its saber at North Korea during the next crisis without rattling it so much that NK would get spooked and do something rash. E.g., first comes some B-52 flights over South Korea, then the B-2s make a cameo, then the F-22s, and so forth. Problem one: Kim’s gone further in his bellicosity than U.S. analysts expected and now they’re unsure if they know where his personal red line is. Problem two: The deployment of two destroyers last weekend to the Pacific wasn’t part of the “playbook” and wasn’t supposed to be publicized. That was a bona fide strategic move, not a show of muscle-flexing designed for North Korean and international consumption. But then the news leaked and the Navy confirmed it, which turned the deployment into an inadvertent, potentially war-sparking audible.

One screw-up on top of another, so now it’s time to cool things off before someone gets nuked.”

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This one I’m a little confused about. But the atheists and the ACLU aren’t happy about it, so that’s good at least. 🙂

From ChristianityToday

“The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) may have thought it had the upper hand when it filed suit against a North Carolina county for opening its board meetings with explicitly Christian prayers. After all, the federal Establishment Clause of the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with citizens’ religious exercise.

But a new bill introduced in the North Carolina state legislature would protect the county’s right to prayer in an unconventional way: by nullifying any federal regulations or court rulings regarding religion.

Eleven House lawmakers already have signed on to the bill, which “would [allow North Carolina to] refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina—or indeed on any Constitutional topic,” according to WRAL, a local news source.

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Wait, am I reading this right? In this one the ACLU is on the right side?

From TheDailyCaller

“In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist for the ACLU  announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both  privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of  most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris  Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU  doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If  you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.”

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I don’t know why the ACLU is making a big deal of this. Obama and Reid have both assured us this national registry thing won’t happen. Yeah, except once again they’re being dishonest.

From Heritage.org

“As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) must know, Americans who own firearms have a special sensitivity to a “Big Brother” federal government that wants to keep centralized records on who owns what guns and where in America. Loose language in his gun control bill (S. 649) could start America down that slippery slope.

Since the Second Amendment guarantees to the people the right to keep and bear arms, many Americans look askance at efforts to create centralized records that might some day, in some distant future neither wanted nor expected, facilitate a despotic government’s efforts to disarm the populace or ensure that its supporters but not its opponents possess arms. Some Americans look at history and view that concern as far-fetched; others look at history and see careful attention to that concern as essential to maintaining freedom.

Congress has attended carefully to the concern about a federal gun registry in the past.”

“Unfortunately, the Reid legislation deviates from this strong guarantee that protects against misuse of the NICS process to start a national firearms registry.”

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Meanwhile, more obvious flaws with their approach emerge. They say they want a national conversation on guns, yet they ignore obvious pieces of the conversation. Not shockingly, the part of the conversation that points to Hollywood as part of the problem. Must protect the cash cow.

From TheWallStJournal

“There was something missing from President Obama’s Wednesday speech in Denver about gun violence. He focused almost exclusively on passing gun-control laws, and not at all on one of the nation’s biggest promoters of violence: the entertainment industry.

The president’s campaign against gun violence has produced a stale debate marked by lots of speeches with little achieved. A more creative chief executive would have used this moment to widen the discussion by drawing attention to the increasingly graphic violence so pervasive in television shows, movies and videogames. Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world’s elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress.”

Yeah, don’t hold your breath.

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In ObamaCare news……  

From HotAir

“This sounds remarkably like what we’ve been writing, and it’s nice to see a few Obamacare supporters recognize this reality. Holding Obamacare to its promises is rather important, no matter which side you’re on. On my side, it’s to ameliorate the damage and prevent such debacles in the future. For Klein, it’s to make sure this debacle doesn’t make activist government biting off way more than it can chew competently look, well, incompetent.

“Let me try to understand this: The key incentive for small businesses to support Obamacare was that they would be able to shop for the best deals in health care super-stores—called exchanges. The Administration has had 3 years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so.

This is a really bad sign. There will be those who argue that it’s not the Administration’s fault. It’s the fault of the 33 states that have refused to set up their own exchanges. Nonsense. Where was the contingency planning? There certainly are models, after all—the federal government’s own health benefits plan (FEHBP) operates markets that exist in all 50 states. So does Medicare Advantage. But now, the Obama Administration has announced that it won’t have the exchanges ready in time, that small businesses will be offered one choice for the time being—for a year, at least. No doubt, small business owners will be skeptical of the Obama Administration’s belief in the efficacy of the market system to produce lower prices through competition. That was supposed to be the point of this plan.”

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And despite their best efforts, people ain’t buyin’ what they’re selling. 

From InvestorsBusinessDaily

“The White House recently released details about how it plans to market ObamaCare  to the uninsured. What it reveals is that most of them don’t want what the  administration is trying to force them to buy.”

“Let’s leave aside for a minute the oddity of this effort. Its backers have  endlessly touted ObamaCare as a miracle of modern government that will at long  last bring insurance within reach of 48 million people who desperately want it.  Besides, the law mandates that everyone buy ObamaCare coverage.

So why the need for a big marketing push at all?”

“What they’ve learned since is that more than half of the 48 million who the  government says are uninsured aren’t interested in health insurance, which is  why they don’t bother to buy it in the first place.”

Whaaaaaat……!!!!  I’m 😯 

Yeah, not really. 🙄

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Here’s a look at the future of medical care.

From FoxDC

“Walgreen Co. has expanded the reach of its drugstore  clinics   beyond treating ankle sprains and sinus infections to handling chronic   diseases such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure.

The company, based in Deerfield, Ill., said Thursday  that most of its   370 in-store Take Care Clinics now will diagnosis, treat and  monitor   patients with some chronic conditions that are typically handled by    doctors.

Drugstore clinics, which are run by nurse  practitioners or physician   assistants, have grown popular in recent years as a  convenient way for   patients to get immunizations, physicals and treatment for  relatively   minor illnesses when their regular doctor is unavailable. But the    clinics have been broadening their scope of care: Walgreen’s decision   follows  a move by CVS Caremark Corp. a few years ago to handle chronic   conditions at  most of its 640 MinuteClinics.”

Oh Goody! 🙄

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And we’ll finish up with some immigration news. And yes, more misleading and false claims from the Obama admin.

From TheLATimes

“Vader, a system originally used to track the Taliban, finds that more immigrants elude capture at the U.S.-Mexico border than previously estimated.”

“The number of “gotaways,” as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.”

“According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.”

They say they catch 64%. The actual numbers are less than 50%.

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Unlike the Obama admin, the public wants the border secured before reforms begin.

From Rasmussen

“President Obama argues that more border security is not a necessary first step before legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already here. But most voters are willing to support immigration reform only if it includes both border security and a way for some illegal immigrants to remain in the country.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Likely U.S. Voters favor an immigration plan that gives illegal immigrants legal status to stay in the United States provided the border is really secured to prevent future illegal immigration. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 25% are opposed to this plan. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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Oh yeah, and the Yankees finally won! 🙂

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News/Politics 4-4-13

What’s interesting out there today?

Here’s a few and then you folks can have at it.

That North Korea things is getting a bit outta hand.  From Google

“North Korea dramatically escalated its warlike rhetoric on Thursday, warning that it had authorised plans for nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.

“The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out “today or tomorrow”.

Pyongyang’s latest pronouncement came as Washington scrambled to reinforce its Pacific missile defences, preparing to send ground-based interceptors to Guam and dispatching two Aegis class destroyers to the region.”

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More on North Korea, from TheHill

“Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday that the United States had the right to  take preemptive military action against North Korea if there was “solid  evidence” that Kim Jon Un planned to attack the U.S. or South Korea.

“If we have good reason to believe there’s going to be an attack, I believe  we have the right to take preemptive action,” King said on CNN’s “Erin Burnett  Outfront.”

“I don’t think we have to wait until Americans are killed or wounded or injured  in any way,” he continued. “I’m not saying we should be rushing into war, don’t  get me wrong, but if we have solid evidence that North Korea’s going to take  action, then I think we have a moral obligation and an absolute right to defend  ourselves.””

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White House tours cut. Money to improve Armenia’s pension system not cut. Priorities people.

From NationalReview

“Today the “Spared by the Sequester” spotlight falls once again on the Agency for International Development. On March 29, USAID awarded $3,881,188 to Chemonics International, Inc. to help implement reforms to Armenia’s pension system.”

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Now this one is being blamed on Sequester cuts, but that doesn’t really make sense. How exactly does a 2% reduction in INCREASED spending cause this, yet 70 billion of 700 billion in ObamaCare cuts hasn’t impacted it? Really? I’m not buyin’ it. And I’d also note that this is small clinics affected, not hospitals.

From TheWashingtonPost

“Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.”

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First the Unions get exemptions, and now they’ll be paid to help the commoners navigate a system they’re not forced to participate in, at least to start. Nice racket they got goin’ there.  And of course the ACORN type community activist folks get a cut too. It’s the Chicago way after all. 🙄

From TheWashingtonExaminer

“Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as “navigators” to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 could earn $20 an hour or more, according to new regulations issued Wednesday.

The 63-page rule covering navigators, drawn up by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also said the government will provide free translators for those not fluent in English — no matter what their native language is.”

“That could be an expensive proposition. The proposed rules, now open for public comment, suggest an estimated pay of $20-$48 an hour.”

As well as benefits too I’m sure.

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And this one doesn’t surprise me. There are many military jobs where this will be the case. That’s not sexist, it’s the physical realities and differences in the sexes. Unless the standards are lowered.

From TheFreeBeacon

“The only two women to participate in the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course (IOC) failed ongoing tests to determine which infantry positions should be available to women, according to the Marine Corps Times:

The women failed the introductory Combat Endurance Test, a punishing test of physical strength and endurance, officials at Marine Corps headquarters said Tuesday. The latest class began March 28 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., with 110 lieutenants participating. Ninety-six men passed the initial endurance test. Twelve men and two women — the only female Marines taking part — failed.

The two women both volunteered to participate in the IOC. Two other women had previously volunteered in September but also failed.”

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