Saturday, May 31, 2014

Are Homosexuals Born that Way?

Stand to Reason ^ | 05/31/2014 | ALAN SHLEMON
Lady Gaga’s mega-hit song “Born this Way” sold millions of copies affirming what many people believe: homosexuality is hardwired. In fact, people think that’s as axiomatic as saying the earth revolves around the sun. No rational person rejects the idea. The only hold-outs, it is said, are either ignorant of science, homophobic, or bigots (read: Christians). But before I explain why this view is beset with problems, let me make a tactical suggestion. Many Christians get defensive when someone says homosexuality is inborn. I understand the temptation to argue against this claim. But it’s a mistake to try to show it’s false, at least initially. That’s because the claim is not an argument. It’s just an opinion and, therefore, not necessarily true. In order for their claim to become a bona fide argument, it must be supported with evidence or reasons. So, instead of defending your convictions, make them defend their claim. Simply ask, “What evidence do you have that homosexuals are born that way?” Then wait and listen. This is totally appropriate and not just a rhetorical trick. It’s how the burden of proof works. Whoever makes the claim bears the burden to show it’s true. Since they’ve made the claim, it’s their job to back it up, not your job to prove them wrong. If they don’t have evidence for their claim, then it’s fair to graciously explain that their view is unreasonable – that they don’t hold their view for good reason. If they do offer evidence for their view, only then is it appropriate to respond with a counter-argument. With that tactic in mind, let’s look at three problems with the born-that-way theory. The first is the most egregious. A simple scientific fact-check demonstrates that no study has proven that homosexuality is biologically determined. Decades of research to discover a “gay gene” have been unsuccessful. It’s now uncommon for scientists to think that homosexuality is solely genetic. Perhaps the most powerful line of evidence is found in twin studies. Since identical twins have identical genetics, it would follow that if one twin was homosexual, the other would also have to be homosexual 100% of the time. But both twins are homosexual in less than 15% of the cases.[1] Not only is the genetic effect extremely low, but it also accounts for shared environmental factors. In other words, even saying that the genetic contribution to homosexuality is 15% is not accurate because identical twins are usually raised together and share a similar environment. In order to isolate the contribution of genetics, one would have to study identical twins raised apart. That way you eliminate the effect of their environment. It was also speculated that homosexuality had a biological basis. But research that correlates brain anatomy/physiology with homosexual behavior doesn’t prove causation. In other words, even if the brains of homosexuals have structural differences from those of heterosexuals, that might suggest their behavior changes their brain, not necessarily the other way around. This is possible due to neuroplasticity – the lifelong ability of the brain to change in response to the environment, behavior, brain injury, or even acquiring knowledge. For example, blind people’s brains have a different neurologic structure because reading braille using fingers is a different behavior than using eyes to read. What’s surprising is that pro-gay researchers and organizations acknowledge the dearth of evidence for a biological cause to homosexuality. The American Psychological Association (APA), for example, once held the position in 1998 that, there is “evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality.” However, a decade of scientific research debunked this idea and caused the APA to revise their view in 2009. Their new position reads: “Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors”[2] [emphasis mine]. A pro-gay group like the APA wouldn’t revise their statement unless there was overwhelming evidence that necessitated a position change. A second problem with the born-that-way theory is that even if true, it wouldn’t prove that homosexual behavior is moral. Consider that scientific research has discovered genes they believe contribute to alcoholism, unfaithfulness, violence, and even many diseases. Are we to believe that because there is a genetic contribution to these behaviors (or even if they were genetically determined) that they should be regarded as morally appropriate? Of course not. So, proving homosexual behavior is appropriate by appealing to a genetic determinant is equally spurious. This mistake in thinking is known as the naturalistic fallacy. You can’t get an “ought” from an “is.” Even if homosexuality is natural, it doesn’t prove it ought to be. And scientists who are attempting to prove homosexuality is inborn agree. Harvard geneticist Dean Hamer, himself a homosexual, says, “Biology is amoral; it offers no help in distinguishing between right and wrong. Only people guided by their values and beliefs can decide what is moral and what is not.”[3] Simon LeVay, a Harvard trained neuroscientist and also openly gay, concurs: “First, science itself cannot render judgments about human worth or about what constitutes normality or disease. These are value judgments that individuals must make for themselves, while taking scientific findings into account.”[4] A third problem stems from the mere existence of the “ex-gay” community. If homosexuality is, as many pro-gay advocates state, as inescapable as eye color, then how do they explain former homosexuals? Eye color is genetic, something that one is born with and can’t change. But sexual orientation is fluid, as evidenced by the changed lives of thousands of men and women. There are women who have had long-term, lesbian relationships with other women and then changed and became attracted to men. There are also men who have had same-sex attractions since puberty, spent a decade in gay relationships, and then developed attractions to the opposite sex. Many of these people have gone through some form of counseling or therapy, but many have not. The fact that even one person has changed is evidence that homosexuality is not hard-wired. But that there are thousands of individuals who share this experience is significant counter-evidence against the born-that-way theory. I know many of these people. They can’t all be lying about their life. Instead, what they offer is hope. Since many people are dissatisfied with their same-sex attractions, these changed lives represent an opposing voice to the cultural chorus that claims homosexuals are born that way.

Graduation Day for the Tea Party

blog.chron.com ^ | 5/30/14 | Mustafa Tameez
Tuesday marked the Tea Party’s graduation from an insurgent, grassroots movement touting a populist and anti-establishment message to actually becoming the establishment itself. With the dust settled from the Republican primary run-offs it is now plain to see: the Tea Party isn’t just a growing faction of the Texas Republican Party, it IS the Texas Republican Party establishment. Senator Ted Cruz and State Senator Dan Patrick, both Houston natives, are most certainly enjoying their graduation party; their leadership roles mean that they will now be the ones calling the shots. The Texas Republican establishment received an absolute shellacking on Tuesday night. The losses among the establishment include many of the most powerful and influential elected offices in Texas: Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Agriculture Commissioner. Where the GOP establishment touted the qualifications and experience of its candidates, the rank-and-file voters favored the Tea Party candidates for their ideological purity, conservative bona fides and willingness to ‘shake things up.’ The former Republican establishment has lost its grip on these offices and we need to understand just how important this is. The Texas Lieutenant Governor is the most powerful elected position in the state. The Lieutenant Governor controls the legislative agenda, makes committee appointments, and has the leading role in the state budgeting process. The Attorney General is the highest law enforcement office in the state, and is intimately involved in the enforcement and practical impact of Texas law. The Agriculture Commissioner deals not only with agricultural issues, but also food inspection and disease and pest control, in addition to its historical importance in the rural areas of our state.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.chron.com ...

Scientists Admit Polar Bear Numbers Were Made Up To ‘Satisfy Public Demand’

dailycaller.com ^ | 5/30/2014 | Michael Bastasch
This may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers. Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

Is U.S. Chamber Of Commerce President Thomas Donohue An Idiot? Or A Scoundrel?

Townhall.com ^ | May 31, 2014 | Humberto Fontova
U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue was barely finished calling for the further impoverishment of American workers (i.e. “immigration reform”) when he shows up as a guest of Cuba’s Stalinist regime and gives a speech at the University of Havana calling for a further fleecing of American taxpayers (i.e. ending the so-called Cuba embargo.) “For years, the US Chamber of Commerce has demanded that our government eliminate the commercial embargo on Cuba. It’s time for a new approach,” proclaimed Donohue this week to an ovation from communist apparatchiks, some who in 1960 stormed into almost 6000 U.S. owned businesses (worth almost $ 2 billion at the time) and stole them all at Soviet gunpoint. A few American business-owners resisted. One of these was Howard Anderson who owned a filling stations and Jeep dealership (not a casino or brothel, which were relatively rare in pre-Castro Cuba, by the way.) I’ll quote from Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Circuit Court, April 13, 2003). "In one final session of torture, Castro's agents drained Howard Anderson's body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad." The Inter-American Law Review classifies Castro’s mass burglary of U.S. property as “the largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.” Rubbing his hands and snickering in triumphant glee, Castro boasted at maximum volume to the entire world that he was freeing Cuba from "Yankee economic slavery!" (Che Guevara's term, actually) and that "he would never repay a penny!" This is the only promise Fidel Castro has ever kept in his life. Hence the imposition of the Cuba embargo, not that you’d know any of this from the mainstream media, much less from Thomas Donohue. The burglarized (and often brutalized) American owners filed those property claims against Castro’s regime with the U.S. government. They’re worth $7 billion today--and must be settled before the so called embargo is lifted. This settlement provision for lifting the embargo was codified into U.S. law in 1996 by the Helms-Burton act, which means only Congress can lift the embargo, obviously after a vote. But the votes are not there. Shouldn’t the President of an outfit like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce be aware of this? Or is Donohue calling for more of Obama’s “executive overreach?” “The reforms under Raul Castro’s government demonstrate that Cuban leaders understand that direct economic investment can be a powerful tool for economic development,” proclaimed Donahue to another ovation from his communist audience. Oh, Cuba’s Stalinist kleptocracy understands this alright. But this “economic development” via foreign investment exclusively benefits the tiny Stalinist nomenklatura that has run Cuba since 1959—and enthusiastically hosted Thomas Donahue this week. All foreign trade with “Cuba” is still conducted exclusively with the Stalinist regime—no exceptions. In fact private property rights still do not exist in Cuba, much less an independent judiciary and the rule of law. According to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. has transacted almost $4 billion in trade with Cuba over the past decade. Up until four years ago, the U.S. served as Stalinist Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. We’ve fallen a few notches recently but we’re still in the top half. For over a decade the so-called U.S. embargo, so disparaged by Thomas Donahue, has mostly stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. And that’s the catch with Donahue’s gracious hosts. They’re desperate to abolish that provision. Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation, with a foreign debt estimated at $50 billion, a credit rating nudging Somalia’s and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard & Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by its Stalinist apparatchiks as utterly bogus. Just this year the Russians wrote off almost $30 billion Castro still owed them. Regarding the disconnect seen above between historic truth and Castroite propaganda, what we have here, amigos, is not a “failure to communicate.” Instead it’s perfect communication-- between Castro’s propaganda ministry and the U.S. media (and “business leaders”) to whom they issue press bureaus and visas, after careful vetting. These latter amply live up to their side of the bargain, “reporting” exactly what Castro wants them to report. A Spanish businessman named Fernandez Gonzalez has an interesting story that might serve as an education for Thomas Donahue, or for those who might fall for his siren song, as composed by the kleptocratic Castro brothers: “A few years ago, I created in the Hemingway Marina, a tourist zone near Havana, a bar/restaurant…then during a farce that would not hold water in any Western judicial system -- my business was taken from me and I became "an enemy of the people." Today, I remain deprived, without recourse, of the property that I steadfastly and honorably worked to create for many years. I don't want other foreign investors, who travel to Cuba under some siren song to suffer the same fate as I did. Thus I recommend, I beg, that you don't contribute with your money and knowledge to shore-up Cuba's dictatorship…Because there is not the slightest judicial guarantee. There is no Rule of Law that protects investors, nor anyone else. In Cuba, what prevails are not rights, but the will and whim of those who govern. The same thing that happened to business owners at the beginning of the revolution can happen, and does happen, to today's investors and businessmen.” One fine morning in February 2009 the Castro brothers woke up and decided to freeze $1 billion that 600 foreign companies kept in Cuban bank accounts. Another fine morning in April 2012 the Cuban regime arrested the top officers of Britain-based Coral Capital that had invested $75 million in the Castro brothers’ fiefdom and was planning four and luxurious golf resorts. These hapless (greedy, unprincipled and stupid, actually) businessmen find themselves with no more recourse to law than the millions of Cubans and Americans who had their businesses and savings stolen en masse in August of 1960 by Castro’s gunmen. After all, Che Guevara who served as Cuba’s “Finance Minister” during the initial mass burglaries of Cuban and U.S. owned properties explained the regime’s legal guidelines very succinctly in January 1959, when he served as chief hangman. “Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We execute (and jail and torture and steal) based on Revolutionary conviction.”

Jindal: Obama Told Governors He Doesn’t Trust the States

Townhall.com ^ | May 31, 2014 | Leah Barkoukis
Fox News’ Sean Hannity sat down with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Thursday at the Republican Leadership Conference to talk about the accomplishments conservative governors have made across the U.S. “All of you inherited deficits you turned into surpluses, high unemployment now low unemployment,” Hannity said of Jindal and Govs. Rick Scott (FL), Rick Perry (TX), John Kasich (OH), Scott Walker (WI), and Nikki Haley (SC). “What can the Republicans in Washington learn?” Washington can actually learn a lot from states if they want to—it’s just common sense, Jindal replied. Lawmakers inside the beltway always talk about the things they can’t do, like cutting spending, repealing Obamacare, enforcing term limits, cutting taxes. “All that’s ridiculous. At the state level, we’ve done those things,” he said. The conversation then switched to trust. Jindal said that conservative governors actually understand and trust the American people. The Obama administration, however, doesn’t seem to trust the public to choose their own insurance, or their child’s school, for example. “When we met with him as governors, I asked him, why don’t you give the states more influence on accrediting higher education, to bring more competition in the marketplace?” Jindal said. “Here’s the insulting thing: In a room full of Democratic and Republican governors, basically, in so many words he said, ‘We can’t trust states. We can’t trust governors to protect their own people.’” Given the Obama administration’s efforts going after states for their voter ID and immigration laws, for example, Jindal’s claims aren’t that hard to believe. Jindal: President Obama Most Liberal & Incompetent In Lifetime

Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Dodge

PJ Media ^ | May 31, 2014 | Andrew C. McCarthy
Is Hillary Clinton a charlatan or just the crappiest lawyer in Washington? As the Obama Left likes to say, that’s a false choice. There’s no reason she can’t be both.  The question arises thanks to yet another excellent report on the Obama administration’s Benghazi fraud by the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes. The Benghazi fraud is a prominent subject of my new book, Faithless Execution , which traces the debacle from the president’s unauthorized, unprovoked, and ultimately disastrous instigation of a war against the Qaddafi regime; through his (and Secretary Clinton’s) recklessly irresponsible failure to provide security for the American officials they mysteriously stationed in Benghazi (a jihadist hotbed that is one of the world’s most dangerous places for Americans); through the president’s shocking failure to attempt to rescue Americans under siege on the night of September 11, 2012; and finally through Mr. Obama’s carefully orchestrated deception, in which the administration tried to hoodwink the country into blaming the murders of our ambassador and three other Americans on a video rather than on his calamitous policy of empowering Islamic supremacists. Steve’s latest report homes in on Mrs. Clinton’s infamous “What difference, at this point, does it make” caterwaul, emitted during tense questioning by Senator Ron Johnson (R., WI) during a hearing on Benghazi. Apparently, the former secretary of state struggles to rationalize this appalling testimony in her forthcoming memoir, Hard Choices. As notorious for taking no responsibility as for committing blunders over which accountability becomes an issue, Mrs. Clinton complains that her “What difference” yowl has been distorted. It was not, she insists, an exhibition of callous indifference; it was, in Steve’s description, “an attempt to redirect the questioning from its focus on the hours before the attacks to preventing similar attacks in the future.” Or, as Mrs. Clinton reportedly writes:
My point was simple: If someone breaks into your home and takes your family hostage, how much time are you going to spend focused on how the intruder spent his day as opposed to how best to rescue your loved ones and then prevent it from happening again?
As Steve quite rightly observes, this is nonsense. By the time of Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, the Benghazi Massacre—and, indeed, even the Obama administration’s fraudulent “The Video Did It” cover-up of the cause of the Benghazi Massacre—was several months old. We were long, long past the intruder-in-the-home phase. We were in the accountability phase—the phase of: let’s now establish what actually happened and why, so we can then figure out how to prevent a recurrence. Any competent lawyer knows that during the investigative and trial stages that follow a public debacle—to say nothing of an act of war in which American officials were derelict in responding to a murderous terrorist attack—the obligation of the witnesses is not to redirect the questions. It is to answer the questions. Any competent trial judge would have sustained an objection to the secretary of state’s evasive answer, striking it from the record as non-responsive. Mrs. Clinton is a crappy lawyer if she does not get that, since a first-year law student would. And she is a charlatan because the transparent two-step objective of her performance was, first, to dodge questions about her conduct and, then, to wail that the questions must cease because she has already answered them. Would that the Senate had better cross-examiners. One suspects that former prosecutor Trey Gowdy, who will chair the House select committee on the Benghazi Massacre, would have known to ask the right follow-up question that eluded Senator Johnson. To wit, “Secretary Clinton, how many times did you practice that little speech in front of the mirror before you came here today?” Then, after the smoke pours out of her ears, you keep asking the accountability questions until you get real answers—or, as in Mrs. Clinton’s case, until it becomes painfully obvious that the witness has no satisfactory answers. Did Secretary Clinton really believe her job was to steer the Senate’s questions rather than answer them? Did she seriously believe her appearance as a witness was the occasion for moving on to the matter of preventing a recurrence of—rather than establishing accountability for—the derelictions of duty that resulted in the killings of four Americans? If so, that is the easy part. Clearly, we should make certain that she is never again in a position of responsibility for the formulation of American foreign policy and for the protection of Americans serving our country in perilous places.

Pilot Lands a Plane [in a simulator] with His Thoughts

FoxNews/SciTech ^ | May 30, 2014 11:15 AM ET | // by Allison Barrie
Wearing a cap with lots of cables attached, pilots in the simulator were able to land a plane simply by looking at the screen and moving the control stick with their thoughts, correcting the plane’s position repeatedly until it landed. To achieve the breakthrough, the researchers connected electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes to a cap to measure the pilot’s brain waves. An algorithm created by Berlin Institute of Technology scientists enabled a program to decipher the brain waves and convert them into commands fed into the plane’s control system. Once it’s perfected, brain-controlled flight could reduce pilot workload and increase safety. Freeing up pilots’ hands would give them freedom of movement to manage other manual tasks in the cockpit.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...

The worst week of the Obama presidency!

The Washington Post's Post Partisan ^ | May 30, 2014 | Ed Rogers,
This was probably the worst week of the Obama presidency so far. President Obama’s foreign policy reboot failed, the economy is in the tank, the VA scandal is a growing cancer on the presidency, criticisms of the administration’s forthcoming gratuitous plan to raise everyone’s power bill via regulations that will essentially shut down coal-fired power plants have already emerged, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned this morning and just a short while ago solid but beleaguered White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he is throwing in the towel. How could things get any worse for Obama and the Democrats? In terms of impact on the 2014 elections, Obama certainly seems to be doing his part for the Republicans. And as the old axiom goes, never interfere when the opposition is in the process of destroying themselves. Unfortunately we are still several months away from the elections, and Republicans will still need a core message. With all the debacles, calamities, failures, mistakes and plain old bad policies associated with this administration and the Democrats generally, it’s easy to get lured off-topic and it’s hard to maintain good message discipline. Republicans should not take the bait. They should not be too distracted by faux-scandals like the accidental naming of the CIA station chief in Kabul. Republicans should not get caught up in the disaster du jour, nor should they pursue the VA fiasco as a scandal in the traditional sense. The systemic mismanagement within the VA is a political catastrophe – similar to what Hurricane Katrina was like for President Bush. No one at the Obama White House wanted to deprive veterans of proper care; they just don’t know how to govern. We should not overreach....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

FLOOD OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MINORS TO COST TAXPAYERS $2 BILLION NEXT YEAR!

BREITBART ^ | 30 May 2014 | CAROLINE MAY
Illegal immigrants under the age of 18, including unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors, will likely cost taxpayers $2 billion next year, according to Reuters. With the Obama administration already grappling with a veritable onslaught of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border into the United State, the flow is only expected to grow. Reuters reports that administration officials are estimating that the number of these illegal immigrant minors are likely to double in 2015 to nearly 130,000, causing an increase in the cost to taxpayers from $868 million to $2 billion. In March HHS estimated that 60,000 unaccompanied minors would be caught trying to cross the border this year. In FY 2011 a vastly few 6,560 unaccompanied minors were caught attempting to cross the border. Many have pointed to the poverty and violence in Mexico and Central America as an impetus for these minors to see a better live northward to the United States. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Gil Kerlikowske admitted at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing in April, however, that Obama administration policies have also been a factor in the increase of illegal youths crossing the border unaccompanied.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

Phony Scandal? Courts Open Window on the IRS’s Political Litmus Tests

Jonathan S. Tobin

Interest in the Internal Revenue Service’s outrageous practice of subjecting politically conservative groups to discriminatory treatment has died down a bit since the revelations about this scandal first hit the news a year ago. But a court decision that was handed down earlier this week about a similar instance of potential government misconduct may shed more light on the way the Tea Party and other right-wing organizations were given the business by Lois Lerner and the rest of what appears to be a highly politicized bureaucracy at the heart of our tax collection system.On Tuesday, Federal Judge Ketanje Brown Jackson issued the first substantive ruling in any suit that challenged the IRS’s pose of political neutrality under the Obama administration. The case concerns Z Street, a Philadelphia area-based pro-Israel organization that filed for tax-exempt status in December 2009 because of its role in educating the public about Israel and the Middle East conflict. The group’s founder Lori Lowenthal Marcus wrote in the Jewish Press this week about what followed:
On July 19, 2010, when counsel for Z STREET spoke with the IRS agent to whom the organization’s application had been assigned, that agent said that a determination on Z STREET’s application may be further delayed because the IRS gave “special scrutiny” to organizations connected to Israel and especially to those whose views “contradict those of the administration’s.”
Z Street subsequently sued the government and rightly argued that its constitutional rights had been violated because of the “viewpoint discrimination” that the IRS agent had openly displayed. Now after years of delays, Judge Jackson has ruled that by asserting that Z Street had no right to sue, the government had tried to “transform a lawsuit that clearly challenges the constitutionality of the process … into a dispute over tax liability.” She similarly dismissed the government’s claims of sovereign immunity.What has this got to do with the Tea Party and its complaints? Plenty.As the Wall Street Journal editorial page noted yesterday:
This ruling will force the IRS to open its books on the procedures it used and decisions it made reviewing Z Street’s tax-exempt application, procedures it has tried to keep shrouded. As the case proceeds, Z Street’s attorneys can seek depositions from many who have been part of the larger attempt to sit on similar applications by other conservative groups.
In other words, this case may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of the IRS’s politically prejudicial policies. If an IRS agent can reject or stall a pro-Israel group’s application on the grounds that “these cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies,” then no group, no matter what its political orientation or cause is safe from being subjected to a political litmus test designed by any administration of either political party.Z Street’s Marcus deserves praise for having the guts to persist in her challenge to the government for years even though the media had little interest in publicizing what appeared to be an outrageous example of how the IRS had become politicized under the Obama presidency. Last year Marcus learned she wasn’t alone when the news about the Tea Party broke. Now, as her legal process unfolds, Americans may get a better idea about how broken the system has become.Using the IRS to punish political foes is blatantly illegal. If, as we suspect, the Z Street case reveals the sort of internal email traffic that will reveal how widespread this practice has become in the last five years, perhaps even a liberal mainstream press that still thinks the problems at the IRS are a “phony scandal” will start to pay attention.

President Not Getting Enough Credit for Foreign Policy

Semi-News/Semi-Satire ^ | 30 May 2014 | John Semmens
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki lamented the perception that President Obama’s foreign policy has been plagued by incoherence and inconsistency, saying that “President Obama doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world.”  “Lesser minds are having difficulty comprehending the sophisticated nuances of the President’s world view,” Psaki contended. “They see the resurgence of al-Qaeda as evidence of failure in the war on terror. What they fail to understand is that if the United States is not perceived as threatening, that it is no longer their enemy, they will have no reason to attack us. And unlike during the Bush Administration, there have been no terrorist attacks on America since President Obama introduced his ‘smile turneth away wrath’ approach.” Some members of the media found Psaki’s perspective “laughable,” however, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean came to her defense. “There is no question that there are vast differences between the mental capabilities of different people,” Dean said. “President Obama is at the pinnacle of the human pyramid. It stands to reason that persons further down would have a hard time trying to figure out his thinking.” As an example of President Obama’s superhuman mental accomplishments Dean cited “the transformation he has wrought in Libya. For 40 years Gaddafi ruled that land with an iron fist, but with the skilled intervention carried out under President Obama’s orders a democratic and peaceful regime has supplanted his tyranny.” According to Dean, the fact that few would be inclined to agree with his assessment “only bolsters the case for President Obama’s genius. Historically, geniuses have always stood out from the pack. Many have been pilloried and persecuted as President Obama is being pilloried and persecuted for his vision of a better world.” In related news, Secretary of State John Kerry labeled Edward Snowden a coward for refusing to return to the United States where he faces the threat of prosecution for divulging that the US Government spies on its own citizens. “I think that a person who has objections to what his Government is doing has an obligation to air these grievances face-to-face like I did as a young naval officer in order to expose the war atrocities being committed by US troops in Vietnam,” Kerry said. The Secretary’s comparison may be inapt, though. While Kerry may have committed crimes, the Government never sought to try him—a circumstance that Kerry attributed to “both Nixon’s cowardice and the irrefutable truth of what I had to say.”

How Google Got States To Legalize Driverless Cars

Associated Press ^ | 5/30/14 | Justin Pritchard
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- About four years ago, the Google team trying to develop cars driven by computers - not people - concluded that sooner than later, the technology would be ready for the masses. There was one big problem: No state had even considered whether driverless cars should be legal. And yet this week, Google said it wants to give Californians access to a small fleet of prototypes it will make without a steering wheel or pedals. The plan is possible because, by this time next year, driverless cars will be legal in the tech giant's home state.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...

Hillary Clinton: I'm the Real Victim of Benghazi

Breitbart's Big Government ^ | May 30, 2014 | Ben Shapiro
(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Hillary Clinton may not be much at administering the State Department, but she’s certainly a pro when it comes to expressing outrage at her own persecution. For the woman who is supposedly the world’s most powerful feminist, her sense of victimhood remains surprisingly strong. That’s never been more true than in her new book, Hard Choices, which points out that she – not the four men who died in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of September 11, 2012 – is the victim. The Clinton camp reportedly leaked the 34-page Benghazi chapter of Hillary’s latest tome to favored outlet Politico. The portions quoted by Politico demonstrate an offputting self-pity and a false righteous indignation utterly at odds with Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State. According to Politico, Clinton writes, “Those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who served our country.” Of course, the sacrifice of those who served our country wouldn’t have been necessary if Clinton had done her basic duty in protecting diplomatic facilities overseas. And when it comes to politicizing Benghazi, it was the Obama administration that repeatedly lied for weeks to the American people about the source of the attacks to continue portraying President Obama as tough on terror during election season. Hillary goes on to attack anyone who asks questions about her behavior during Benghazi, writing, “I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It’s just plain wrong, and it’s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

Friday, May 30, 2014

Pelosi VA "Death List"

Interior Dept. Launches Program to Incorporate Gay-History Sites Into Parks System

PJ Media ^ | May 30, 2013 | Bridget Johnson
The Interior Department announced today that the National Park Service is launching a study to “identify places and events associated with the story of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans” for inclusion in the national parks system. The National Historic Landmark Program began actively looking for sites associated with LGBT history in 2010 for the potential of being listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Today’s directive, part of a broader administration initiative to “ensure that the National Park Service reflects and tells a more complete story of the people and events responsible for building this nation,” will expand those efforts.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...

New York Times apparently thinks Asians are now 'white'!

American Thinker ^ | 05/30/2014 | Thomas Lifson
Its’ quite a telling moment from the Gray Lady, spotted by Eugene Volokh of The Washington Post: The New York Times Bits blog reports:Google on Wednesday released statistics on the makeup of its work force, providing numbers that offer a stark glance at how Silicon Valley remains a white man’s world.But wait — just a few paragraphs down, the post notes that non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent of the Google work force, slightly below the national average. (That average, according to 2006-10 numbers, is 67 percent.) Google is thus less white than the typical American company.The New York Times is joining Apartheid-era South Africa in conferring “honorary white” status on Asians.



(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

Bill Ayers and "Social Justice"

Examiner.com ^ | May 14, 2014 | Bruce Deitrick Price
From John Dewey circa 1914 to Bill Ayers a century later, we hear the same progressive spiel. There must be drastic change, and perhaps much destruction and death, in order to create a more just society. A dubious trade if you stop and think about it. (Lenin gave the same deal to the hapless Russians.) Dewey was a professor of education; Ayers, once a famous terrorist, is now also a professor of education. So what will be the impact of their philosophy on the classrooms of America? The short answer is that children will get a lot more indoctrination, and a lot less knowledge. That’s for starters. Neither professor of education is primarily interested in academic education, that’s the weird endgame. Both professors see themselves as social engineers; they think their job is to create a new socialist human in order to build a new socialist society. If education (or anything else) must be kicked to the curb, that’s not important for Dewey and Ayers. The first key to understanding both men is to understand that the word “education" is code for socialism. Similarly, the word “democracy” is code for socialism. Nowadays, Bill Ayers mainly uses the phrase “social justice,” which is also code for socialism. It is the be-all and end-all. As a practical matter, all of this code means that social engineers like Bill Ayers make all the decisions, so people like you can be herded and manipulated for your own good.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...

SHINSEKI IS OUT AT THE VA: Here Are 12 People Who Could Replace Him

Task & Purpose ^ | 5/30/14 | Brian Adam Jones
President Barack Obama today accepted the resignation of embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. It was an unfortunate end to a remarkable career of public service that lasted roughly half a century. Shinseki’s departure comes amid widespread charges of corruption and ineptitude at VA hospitals across the country. And it leaves a glaring question — who is next to lead the VA? There’s no doubt the VA needs help, so who could take the reigns from Shinseki and provide the organization with the leadership it needs to serve the nation’s veterans? We compiled a shortlist: 1. Jim Webb The Marine and former Navy Cross recipient from the Vietnam War has been a prominent figure in veterans affairs for 40 years. He served as secretary of the navy under President Reagan and most recently as a U.S. senator from Virginia, where he was the architect of the G.I. Bill for post-9/11 veterans. His son is also a veteran of the war in Iraq. He’s been successful in basically everything he’s ever done, and all of that has been geared toward helping veterans. He’s just the kind of no-nonsense leader the VA needs, if he isn’t set on running for president… 2. Stan McChrystal A retired Army four-star general who last commanded coalition forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal knows first hand the costs of the last 13 years of war. Though he fell out with the Obama administration after a scathing Rolling Stone article, he later partnered with the president to help run Joining Forces, the president’s initiative for military families. McChrystal has been a transformative leader and revolutionized the way Joint Special Operations Command worked with other government agencies. If he could do something similar at the VA, he could be the perfect man for the job. 3. Tammy Duckworth A wounded veteran of the Iraq War who now represents Illinois’ 8th congressional district as a democrat, Duckworth represents the very veterans that need the VA the most. She also has direct experience working for the VA, both as the director for the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, and later in Washington as assistant secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. 4. Mike Mullen Mullen last served as the president’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in doing so, was the president’s chief uniformed military adviser. After retiring from 43 years in uniform, Mullen has turned his attention to the private sector, serving on the board of General Motors and other corporations. He has the name recognition and authority and experience to lead the VA. 5. Max Cleland Cleland currently serves as secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, and in doing so, is a prominent public official in the veterans community. He is a former democratic senator from Georgia, the only democrat to ever serve a full term in the senate. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Cleland is also a wounded warrior, having lost both legs from a grenade blast in Vietnam. 6. James Mattis No list of prominent veteran leaders is complete without retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, who last served as the head of U.S. Central Command. Since his retirement, he has been an outspoken proponent of veterans issues, including recently railing against the perception of veterans as victims. In addition to being a legendary leader, Mattis would be an absolute icon at the head of the VA. 7. Paul Rieckhoff As the executive director and founder of Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America, Rieckhoff is a prominent voice in support of modern veterans. He’d be an intriguing figure to launch the VA from obscurity and give it a face for the 21st century. 8. Patrick Murphy An Iraq War veteran and attorney, Murphy was the first veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan to serve in Congress, representing Pennsylvania’s 8th congressional district from 2006 through 2011. President Obama appointed him to the U.S. military academy’s board of advisors in 2011. He currently hosts an occasional program on MSNBC called “Taking the Hill.” He’s a pioneer for modern veterans and has the legislative and leadership experience the VA needs. 9. Holly Petraeus The wife to retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus, Holly Petraeus has been a part of the military community her entire life. Her father, Gen. William Knowlton, was the superintendent of West Point while David Petraeus was enrolled there. In 2011, she joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to lead the Office of Servicemember Affairs. 10. Tommy Sowers The former special forces soldier just left a leadership position at the VA where he served as assistant secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. He holds a doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics. He was the Democratic nominee for Congress in 2010 for Missouri’s 8th congressional district. He deployed twice to Iraq. A young, modern veteran, he also has the knowledge of VA infrastructure and the energy to transform the institution. 11. Bob Kerrey Kerrey is a former Navy Seal, a Medal of Honor recipient, a longtime senator from the state of Nebraska, and most recently the president of the New School in New York City. He has the leadership, the experience, the resume, and the know how to lead the VA under the very difficult circumstances it currently faces. 12. Tulsi Gabbard Gabbard, a Democrat representing Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district, is a rising star in the military community and the Democratic party. She is a member of the Hawaii National Guard and deployed twice to the Middle East, including a 12-month tour with a medical unit in Iraq, where she worked with many of the injuries the VA deals with on a daily basis.

Obama defeated by his own bureaucracy!

CNN ^ | May 30, 2014 | By Gloria Borger, CNN Chief Political Analyst
When Barack Obama was a newbie president, there was no shortage of ambition or lack of confidence in the government he was about to lead. Government should be seen as a force for good, not evil. Sure, he told us, it needed to be "smarter and better," but that could—and would—happen under his watch. Instead, the President is living his own version of "Alice Through the Looking Glass": staring down a rabbit hole of government bureaucracy and inefficiency. The government he has studiously tried to grow, manage and change has become his own personal nemesis.  All of which makes you wonder: Does the President himself trust government anymore? Government is unwieldy and difficult and hard to tame, sure. But if your presidency is based, in large part, on telling Americans that government can work for them--which it can--you need to make it work. It's not that the President is a hopeless manager. He does very well when he leads a hierarchical organization with a single goal, like a presidential bid. He's top dog, he's not negotiating with anybody, and he's not trying to get people to do things they don't want to do. In a campaign, for instance, they all want to elect the same person: him. But when you have to negotiate—or lead—people not related to you, or not indebted to you or who don't agree with you, it's a different story. Managing or negotiating with people with mixed motives (Congress, anyone?) is not an Obama strong point.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...

Income Redistribution Is About Votes, Not About Helping The Poor!

Forbes ^ | 05/30/2014 | Jeffrey Dorfman
Everyone knows the famous Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. So why does the federal government spend so much money on giving away fish and so little on teaching people how to fish? Because Democrats want people to depend on government so that they will vote to re-elect them. Think of all the redistributive programs we have to help people. The minimum wage, food stamps, housing subsidies, free cell phones, and Medicaid are just a few of the over eighty federal means-tested programs designed to help the poor. Social Security and Medicare redistribute income to the elderly. Federal disability insurance helps people who are too disabled to work. In total, the federal government redistributes about $2.5 trillion per year, which buys a lot of votes. In contrast, policies that aim to create self-sufficiency are significantly fewer. Job training programs are the obvious example, as they are the epitome of teaching a person to fish. Yet the federal government spends only around $10 billion on job training programs which is less than one-half of one percent of the amount spent on redistributive programs. Other programs that qualify as self-sufficiency increasing are health savings accounts and private retirement programs (such as IRA and 401(k) accounts). These are large-scale programs but no federal spending is dedicated toward them unless one believes in counting the tax breaks they enjoy. If you count that cost, it is around $500 billion, or one-fifth of the amount that is redistributed.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...

Michelle Obama Leads Us Down The Road Of Food Tyranny!


http://leomcneil.net/2014/05/30/michelle-obama-leads-us-down-the-road-of-food-tyranny/ ^ | May 30, 2014 | Leo McNeil
Michelle Obama’s intrusion into school lunches has come under fire from students, Republicans and even her husband’s executive branch. Mrs. Obama essentially wants government to dictate what people eat. Via her school lunch program, the government is insisting that schools feed kids food they won’t or don’t eat. The cost for schools is higher, student participation is lower. As is typical with government, the program is one size fits all. Calorie counts are based on elementary, middle and high school and don’t count for age differences. In other words, the program is a mess. Republicans want to cut into it, even the administration has weakened the law.
(Excerpt) Read more at leomcneil.net ...

New federal database will track Americans' credit ratings, other financial information!

Washington Examiner ^ | 5/30/2014 | Richard Pollock
As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives -- including their Social Security numbers -- in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies. The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy. Sign Up for the Watchdog newsletter! FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning document for 2013-17 describes the bureau as monitoring 95 percent of all mortgage transactions. FHFA officials claim the database is essential to conducting a monthly mortgage survey required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and to help it prepare an annual report for Congress. Critics, however, question the need for such a “vast database” for simple reporting purposes. In a May 15 letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt and CFPB Director Richard Cordray, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, charged, "this expansion represents an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of ordinary Americans." Crapo is the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Hensarling is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Critics also warn the new database will be vulnerable to cyber attacks that could put private information about millions of consumers at risk. They also question the agency’s authority to collect such information. Earlier this year, Cordray tried to assuage concerned lawmakers during a Jan. 28 hearing of Hensarling's panel, saying repeatedly the database will only contain “aggregate” information with no personal identifiers. But under the April register notice, the database expansion means it will include a host of data points, including a mortgage owner’s name, address, Social Security number, all credit card and other loan information and account balances. The database will also encompass a mortgage holder’s entire credit history, including delinquent payments, late payments, minimum payments, high account balances and credit scores, according to the notice. The two agencies will also assemble “household demographic data,” including racial and ethnic data, gender, marital status, religion, education, employment history, military status, household composition, the number of wage earners and a family’s total wealth and assets. Only 12 public comments were submitted during the 30-day comment period following the notice's April 16 publication. The mortgage database is unprecedented and would collect personal mortgage information on every single-family residential first lien loan issued since 1998. Federal officials will continue updating the database into the indefinite future. The database held information on at least 10.1 million mortgage owners, according to a July 31, 2013, FHFA and CFPB presentation at an international conference on collateral risk. FHFA has two contracts with CoreLogic, which boasts that it has “access to industry’s largest most comprehensive active and historical mortgage databases of over 227 million loans.” Cordray confirmed in his January testimony that CoreLogic had been retained for the national mortgage database. The credit giant Experian is also involved in the mortgage database project, according to an FHFA official who requested anonymity. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, who sits on the Hensarling panel and who has followed the mortgage database's development, said he was “deeply concerned” about the expansion. “When you look at the kinds of data that are going to be collected on individuals, just about anything about you is going to be in this database,” he told the Examiner in an interview. Critics of the database span the financial spectrum, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. In a May 16 letter to FHFA, NAFCU's regulatory affairs counsel, Angela Meyster, said the database "harbors significant privacy concerns" and "NAFCU believes greater transparency should be provided by the FHFA and CFPB on what this information is being used for." Meyster told the Examiner that "it goes back to the breadth of information that they’re asking for without really speaking to what they will be used for." Meyster said she was unconvinced. "It seems they’re just adding information and they’re not really stating where it’s going or what it’s going to be used for. There’s no straightaway answer. They say they are trying to assemble as much information that they can." Neugebauer agreed. "Why are we collecting this amount of data on this many individuals?" he asked in the interview. The Chamber of Commerce said that while Congress did ask for regular reports, it never granted FHFA the authority to create the National Mortgage Database. “Congress did not explicitly require (or even explicitly authorize) the FHFA to build anything resembling the NMD,” the Chamber told Watt in its May 16 letter. Cordray in his testimony told the House, "We’re making every effort to be very careful" but he could not promise there would never be a data breach. Neugebauer said the hacker threat is real. "If someone were to breach that system, they could very easily steal somebody’s identity." Meyster said she doubts the government can protect the data. “We’re essentially concerned that these government systems don’t have the necessary precautions to make sure that individual consumers are identified through the database,” she said. Computerized theft of government and commercial data is a major concern for federal officials. Indictments were made public last week for five Chinese military members who allegedly hacked into the computer systems of six American corporations. A December report from the Government Accountability Office on breaches containing personally identifiable information from federal databases shows unlawful data breaches have doubled, from 15,140 reported incidents in 2009 to 22,156 in 2012. A May 1 White House report on cybersecurity of federal databases also recently warned, "if unchecked, big data could be a tool that substantially expands government power over citizens.”

Big Labor's VA Choke Hold!

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 29, 2014 | Kimberley A. Strassel
Big Labor's VA Choke Hold How Democrats put their union allies before the well-being of veterans.  We know with certainty that there is at least one person the Department of Veterans Affairs is serving well. That would be the president of local lodge 1798 of the National Federation of Federal Employees.  The Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that mediates federal labor disputes, earlier this month ruled in favor of this union president, in a dispute over whether she need bother to show up at her workplace—the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. According to FLRA documents, this particular VA employee is 100% "official time"—D.C. parlance for federal employees who work every hour of every work day for their union, at the taxpayer's expense. In April 2012, this, ahem, VA "employee" broke her ankle and declared that she now wanted to do her nonwork for the VA entirely from the comfort of her home. Veterans Affairs attempted a compromise: Perhaps she could, pretty please, come in two days a week? She refused, and complained to the FLRA that the VA was interfering with her right to act as a union official. The VA failed to respond to the complaint in the required time (perhaps too busy caring for actual veterans) and so the union boss summarily won her case. The VA battle is only just starting, but any real reform inevitably ends with a fight over organized labor. Think of it as the federal version of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and other states where elected officials have attempted to rein in the public-sector unions that have hijacked government agencies for their own purpose. Fixing the VA requires first breaking labor's grip, and the unions are already girding for that fight.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...

Dem to Hispanic Republican: 'We Need to Send Her Back to Wherever She Really Came From'!

Weekly Standard ^ | 8:14 AM, May 30, 2014 | Daniel Harper
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alan Webber of New Mexico says of his likely political opponent, Republican governor Susana Martinez, that "We need to send her back to wherever she really came from."

Watch video here "So I’m asking you for your help, we need to make Susana Martinez a one-term governor. We need to send her back to wherever she really came from," says Webber in a video obtained by The Weekly Standard. "I suspect it’s Texas. And that would be good for Texas and that would be good for New Mexico."

Martinez, who is up for reelection this year, is a Hispanic Republican. Indeed, she's the first woman Hispanic governor in America.

Webber, who squares off in a primary on June 3 to face Martinez in the November election, is a controversial Democrat. "Webber has a history of radical views, including ties to the Weather Underground and urging empathy for a child sex offender," the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.
Webber has raised the most money of Democratic candidates vying to challenge Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, and is competing against four other Democrats, including Lawrence Rael, who exaggerated his resume on his campaign website. The primary will be held on June 3. Mark Rudd, a leader and founder of the domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground, which has advocated for the violent overthrow of the United States and committed multiple bombings of public buildings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, endorsed Webber in April. Rudd’s wife Marla Painter hosted a campaign event for the Democrat that month.


This new video is from a candidate forum in Las Vegas, New Mexico, which took place on May 17.

(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...

‘White Privilege’ Exposed

FrontPage Magazine ^ | May 30, 2014 | Jack Kerwick
The idea of “white privilege” has made the news recently. The truth, though, is that it has been a fetish of leftist academics for quite some time. “White privilege,” as one sage puts it, “is a form of racism” that’s “predicated on preserving the privileges”—by which he means the “social and economic benefits”—of whites. Because “white privilege” is maintained via “hegemonic structures, practices, and ideologies,” individual whites “do not necessarily intend to hurt people of color,” even though “they inevitably do.”So, white privilege is all about “preserving the privileges of white people” by way of those white privilege-producing things that “reproduce whites’ privileged status.”That the definition of “white privilege” is rigged from the outset to paint all whites as victimizers and all non-whites (particularly blacks) as victims can be seen by its viciously circular reasoning. But it is also, necessarily, highly abstract. Once we make concrete its implications, however, its ridiculousness is exposed.Statistically, blacks, say, have far higher rates of criminality than do whites. This, it is held, is a legacy of “racism” or “white privilege.” Of course, raw numbers in and of themselves go zero distance in establishing anything. Inter-racial statistical disparities no more signify injustice than does the fact that there are statistical disparities between the rates at which men and women are struck by lightning indicate injustice.Back in 2000, Reginald and Jonathan Carr, two black brothers, beat, tortured, sexually humiliated, and robbed five white victims: Jason Befort, Brad Heyka, Aaron Sander, Heather Muller, and a woman known only as H.G. The Carrs repeatedly raped the women before shooting all five of their prey in the backs of their heads and driving over their bodies in a stolen pick-up truck. H.G. was the lone survivor.If the theory of “white privilege” is true, then the Carrs are the real victims and those whose lives they destroyed are the victimizers, for in the absence of “white privilege,” the Carrs would have been decent, law-abiding citizens.In 2007, in Nashville, Tennessee, a young white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, were out on a date. They were carjacked, abducted, raped, and murdered by five blacks. Newsom was sodomized and shot. His body was wrapped and set on fire. Christian was raped anally, orally, and vaginally. She was forced to ingest bleach to remove traces of her assailants’ DNA and stuffed alive in garbage bags. Over the span of hours, she gradually suffocated to death.If the theory of “white privilege” is true, these black criminals are the real victims and those whites whose lives they destroyed were actually the victimizers, for in the absence of “white privilege,” these black rapist murderers would have been decent, law-abiding citizens.Last summer, Delby “Shorty” Benton, an 89-year-old white World War II veteran, was jumped and beaten to death by two black teenagers in Seattle.If the theory of “white privilege” is true, then Benton’s murderers are the real victims and this WWII hero was the victimizer, for in the absence of “white privilege,” these thugs would’ve been decent, law-abiding citizens. On Christmas Eve 2010, in Houston, a 12-year-old white boy, Jonathan Foster, was kidnapped, bound, and killed by way of a blowtorch courtesy of a 44-year-old black woman, Mona Nelson. His remains were discarded in a ditch along the side of a road.If the theory of “white privilege” is true, then Nelson was the real victim and young Foster was the victimizer, for in the absence of “white privilege,” Nelson would’ve been a decent, law-abiding citizen. Last year, a 99-year-old white woman, Fannie Gumbinger, was greeted by a 20-year-old black male intruder in her Poughkeepsie, New York home. Gumbinger was subsequently murdered. Police say she died of “multiple injuries.”If the theory of “white privilege” is true, then the black man who beat Gumbinger to death was the real victim and Gumbinger was the victimizer, for in the absence of “white privilege,” this robber and murderer would’ve been a decent, law-abiding citizen. In my hometown of Trenton, New Jersey, back in 1992, black career criminal Ambrose Harris carjacked Kristin Huggins, a young white female. Harris carjacked Huggins, and while she pleaded with him not to deprive her of her virginity, he sodomized her. While begging for her life, Harris put a bullet in the back of Huggins’ head and left her body in a shallow grave.If the theory of “white privilege” is true, then Harris is the real victim and Huggins is the victimizer, for in the absence of “white privilege,” Harris would’ve been a decent, law-abiding citizen.The 18th century philosopher David Hume remarked that many an absurd theory has taken refuge behind high levels of abstraction.To this list we can add the theory of “white privilege,” surely one of the most absurd positions of them all.

Confession of a Conservative rascist-bigot!

I've decided to come clean today before the audience.

I have at various times been accused of being a rascist and/or bigot by family members, coworkers, etc. In my conservative narcissism, I decided to lay my failings before as a catharsis for this terminal condition. Let me list the things and personalities I detest.

I hate baggy pants that show your underwear, I hate fathering children out of wedlock, I hate welfare queens. I hate most of the NBA and a good part of the NFL. I hate home invasion robberies, I hate garish tattoos. I hate EBT foodstamps. I hate race pimps like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, NAACP, etc. I hate ghetto lingo. I hate flash mobs. I hate anybody hanging around after 11 pm.

Having confessed my rascism, I have an interesting abberation. I love people like Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Allen West, Daneen Borelli, Condi Rice, J.C. Watts, Ben Carson. George Washington Carver, The Tuskegee Airmen, Buffalo soldiers, etc. I don't even think about the melanin in their skin when I think of their patriotism.

This weird duality torments me continually. If anyone can offer therapy for this condition, it would be appreciated.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Your ObamaCare subsidies are probably wrong, but don’t worry. We’ll bill you later!

Hotair ^ | 05/17/2014 | Jazz Shaw
Remember back in the bad old days when the ObamaCare website didn’t work and everyone had a good laugh over it? Ah… good times. But then they got it fixed, millions of people signed up and we all marched happily forward into the future. Or did we?Rick Moran wrote a piece for American Thinker this week highlighting a recent report showing that, well… math is still hard.
The Washington Post has learned that more than a million Americans who signed up for Obamacare insurance policies are being paid too much or too little in taxpayer funded subsidies.Bad enough, right? It gets worse.The process by which the government informs these taxpayers that they are receiving an incorrect subsidy has broken down, or is not even in place yet. In their unholy rush to sign people up and “prove” Obamacare “works,” the administration has created a monstrously confusing situation that won’t be resolved any time soon.
The original report has all the details, and the part of this story that is both frightening and aggravating is that this is apparently yet another problem which they knew about all along, but never bothered to mention. And it has a very direct impact on hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Americans. In the best case scenario, the subscriber may be receiving too little in subsidies. This makes life a bit harder in the short term, but if they manage to come up with the cash to keep their policy, then after the discrepancy is noted and resolved, they’ll get the money back. But for the rest of the users who have been incorrectly assigned, they may think they’re getting a really good deal on their insurance. Then, when tax time comes around next year, they’ll be slammed with a bill for the “overpayment” they’ve been receiving without even knowing it.
The government has identified these discrepancies but is stuck at the moment. Under federal rules, consumers are notified if there is a problem with their application and asked to upload or mail in pay stubs or other proof of their income. Only a fraction have done so, according to the documents. And, even when they have, the federal computer system at the heart of the insurance marketplace cannot match this proof with the application because that capability has yet to be built, according to the three individuals.So piles of unprocessed “proof” documents are sitting in a federal contractor’s Kentucky office, and the government continues to pay insurance subsidies that may be too generous or too meager. Administration officials do not yet know what proportion are overpayments or underpayments. Under current rules, people receiving unwarranted subsidies will be required to return the excess next year.
And remember, some of the key portions of the back end of the site are not simply malfunctioning due to unforeseen technical problems. That could be almost forgivable if you lean toward being an ObamaCare apologist. But that’s not the case here. These are critical functions of the application which were never even built and the government knew it. I’ll leave the parting shot on this story to Rick, who sums it up nicely.
They’re not only liars, they’re sneaky liars. Just when were they going to get around to telling us about this problem?It’s incredible that the back end of the website still isn’t working because much of it hasn’t been built yet. It’s unconscionable that they would spend a billion dollars to push these policies and subsidies on Americans knowing full well that there was no way to verify income and get the correct amount of subsidy. And it’s ridiculous that sometime in the future, hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to be shocked that they owe the IRS hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars.
That about sums it up.

Judge Savages Shinseki: VA Deaths Are Criminally Negligent HOMICIDE!

The Right Scoop ^ | 5/17/14 | Caleb Howe
"War heroes don't leave men to die." On Saturday night, Judge Jeanine held nothing back in tearing the Obama administration and Shinseki to shreds over the unspeakable failure on the part of our government to care for American veterans seeking, and waiting for, VA medical care.  [VIDEO AT LINK ABOVE]
"You call veterans facing certain death, refused medical care by VA personnel who then create false records so that they can pocket a bonus an 'adverse incident'? It's not an adverse incident, General. It's a homicide. A criminally negligent homicide."
 
Jeanine calls the administration's cover-up an "organized criminal enterprise". She also destroys Democrats for not caring and providing excuses for the administration's failures. The judge does not spare the First Lady or the Vice President either ...
(Excerpt) Read more at therightscoop.com ...

NY Times Says Even Hillary's Fans Are 'Flailing' In Attempt to Tout Her Achievements at State Dept!

NewsBusters ^ | 5-17-14 | By Tim Graham
Via The Right Scoop, we noticed that young New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore – a veteran of the liberal opinion journal The Washington Monthly – thinks Hillary Clinton has a resume problem on her way to the White House, and it’s not Benghazi, exactly. On MSNBC’s Jansing & Co. Friday, he said “I actually think that the real thing they have to overcome, the question everyone’s asking is ‘What was her biggest accomplishment as Secretary of State?’And you know, I just see flailing on this question, from her own supporters, I don’t see any good answer, or at least a solid, strong answer. It’s sort of surprising to me.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...

Just 4 years ago...

Obama by the Numbers:
NONE OF THIS IS SUSTAINABLE


 
Just four years ago nobody even used the word 'trillion'!
______________________________________

YIKES!

You Guys

A real Lame Duck!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Nancy Pelosi is, once again, uttering nonsense!

Townhall.com ^ | May 17, 2014 | Michael Schaus

I know this isn’t really much of a shock: but Nancy Pelosi is, once again, uttering nonsense. This time, her aimless string of platitudes was focused (and I use the word “focused” rather loosely) on immigration reform. Like many of her progressive allies (in both parties) she rambled about the need for America to create a “path to citizenship”. Nancy, we already have a path to citizenship… And generally, the first step to becoming a US citizen isn’t breaking our Federal immigration laws. According to CNS News: “As a country, we cannot, let me say, we cannot prohibit a path to citizenship,” Pelosi said Tuesday at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation annual economic summit in Washington, D.C. Right… Because expecting hopeful immigrants to follow the laws, regulations, and procedures for lawful immigration, is clearly a prohibition on welcoming new US citizens into the country. (I’m sure you recognize the need for a sarcasm font as much as I do.) It seems to completely confound the Liberal loon from San Francisco that some Americans want citizenship to be given only to people who haven’t already displayed a blatant disregard for our legal system. (Giving citizenship to illegal immigrants is kinda like retail stores giving out discounts to shoplifters… It just doesn’t seem like you’re rewarding the correct behavior.) But, of course, Nancy continued: “I don’t think we as a country want to be a country that says, ‘You can do our work, but you can’t have the rights of a citizen in our country,’” said Pelosi. “It’s more about who we are as a nation.” Ok, I must be having a stroke… I think I agree with her words. Something tells me, however, that our solutions are probably a bit different. While Nancy seems to believe that America should toss aside its respect for the rule of law (by allowing illegal immigrants to magically obtain citizenship after displaying a clear contempt for our immigration system), I tend to believe that – well – we just shouldn’t hire illegals. I mean, heck: Rahm Emanuel has announced that Chicago will start hiring illegals en mass. Liberal utopias, like San Francisco, have promised to give de facto immunity to illegals and their unlawful employers. Aside from the fact that Americans are feeling a little left out of the workforce nowadays, this plan doesn’t really seem to do the poor illegal immigrants any favors. As Nancy Pelosi (unwittingly) pointed out: Illegals are living in a perpetual shadow economy, with no representation, hope, or economic mobility. What’s ironic, however, is that the liberal/ progressive promise to hand out de facto amnesty (through selective implementation of immigration laws) only exacerbates the current crises in American immigration politics. Maybe we should start enforcing citizenship requirements on employers, instead of allowing this shadow economy to flourish? Perhaps we should actually implement the laws we have on the books? After all, these laws were not written to exclude, or discriminate against, immigrants. Quite the opposite, actually. They were created to protect the hopeful immigrants who trudge through our bureaucratic process of legal immigration. In essence: Our immigration laws protect immigrants who respect the rule of law. Nancy Pelosi’s ramblings, along with the “amnesty-politics” among progressives of both parties, have done far more damage to immigrants in America than a little governing has ever done. Maybe we should look at simply enforcing our laws, rather than implementing some loony California liberalism.

The VA Scandal: It’s Here to Stay

Coach is Right ^ | May 17, 2014 | Jim Emerson, staff writer
The Veterans Administration (VA) “waiting list” scandal and allegations of a cover-up have tarnished the reputation of an agency that was created to help America’s veterans. The Phoenix VA hospital is at the eye of the storm, engaging in a behavior pattern of falsifying medical records in order to conceal lengthy delays in the keeping of patient appointments. To date four other VA facilities are also under investigation. Around the country numerous whistle-blowers are speaking up exposing an institutional behavior of hospital mangers putting bonuses before health care. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has ordered a nationwide review of clinics at VA Medical Centers across the country in order to assess veterans’ access to care. Of course, Shinseki ordered the review only because the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee had grown tired of being stonewalled by VA leadership and issued a subpoena in an attempt to force the VA into providing information relating to the "wait list" scandal. Clearly, VA senior leadership was playing a “wait list” game with Congress just as their clinics had been with patients. Being an election year this scandal is here to stay since both sides of the aisle are calling for action. After all, the American people sympathize with victims of bureaucratic abuse, especially when those victims have served in the military. VA acting Inspector General Richard J. Griffin testified before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee this week, promising to complete an “exhaustive review” of VA practices by August.
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...

VA Fast-Tracks Sex Change for Manning While Vets Die on Waiting Lists (Sickening)

breitbart ^ | 5/16/14 | t rose
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has formally approved the request of Pvt. Bradley Manning, convicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, to be temporarily transferred out of military custody in order to undergo expensive hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman. Manning, whose taxpayer-funded request to change his name from Bradley to Chelsea was approved last month by a Kansas court, has been able to obtain repeated diagnoses from military doctors that he suffers from “gender dysphobia”; a condition of someone ‘discontented’ with the sex they were ‘assigned with’ at birth. It was first listed as a medical condition in 2007 by the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Two Pentagon officials quoted by WUSA-TV, the CBS News affiliate in Washington, D.C., claim the transfer orders were submitted because neither the Defense nor Veterans Department authorize such medical services, while the US Bureau of Prisons does. Pentagon Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby denies the claim, saying no decision has been made to transfer Manning to a civilian facility. As the medical needs of Manning, convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for stealing 750,000 classified defense department documents in order to disseminate them to Wikileaks, were being assiduously attended to by America’s defense establishment, untold hundreds of American servicemen and women suffering from genuine life-threatening and acute medical conditions have allegedly been left to die on at least seven waiting lists managed by the US Veterans Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

More Obamacare Workers Reveal They Were Paid To do Nothing!

NewsMax ^ | 16 May 2014 | Sandy Fitzgerald
More workers hired to process Obamacare applications are revealing how they've been filling their days sleeping, playing board games, reading, or fighting with each other on many days when there was little or no work. "I walk out every day feeling as if I have contributed nothing," a worker from the London, Ky., Serco facility told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday. A former worker at a processing center in Wentzville, Mo., processing facility, Lavonne Takatz, said she and other workers played games or slept because there was nothing for them to do. She and other workers said company and government supervisors knew they were being paid to do little or no work at all. “We played Pictionary. We played 20 Questions. We played Trivial Pursuit,” said Takatz, who worked at Serco's Wentzville center from October through April. In some cases, the boredom led to gossiping and fights, former employees said. Monica Colvin, who worked in Wentzville's facility until January, said co-workers pushed her and unplugged her computer, and eventually she she had to visit a doctor for anxiety and depression.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...

Steven Seagal: When Benghazi is Exposed, Obama Will Be Impeached [VIDEO]

http://www.capitalisminstitute.org ^ | May 16, 2014 | Captitalism Institute
“Never in my life did I ever believe that our country would be taken over by people like the people who are running it at this day.”  “When we have leadership that thinks that the Constitution of the United States of America is a joke, when we have a President who has almost a thousand Executive Orders now, when we have a Department of Justice that thinks that any kind of a judicial system that they make up as they go along can get by with whatever they decide that they won’t do.” “What’s happened with Fast and Furious? What’s happened with the truth about any of some of the greatest scandals in American history that have happened right before our eyes?” “If the truth about Benghazi were to come out now, I don’t think that this man would make it through his term, I think he would be impeached.” “America is a great country where we have designed a system based on the Constitution where we have freedom of speech, we’re allowed to disagree and say what we want to say, and should not be persecuted for it. But on the same token, those who have something to say that is too controversial really have to be very, very careful, and I think right now we are at a sort of tipping point where, whether you are a Democrat or Republican, we have to realize that we have to put the parties aside and all come together as Americans and realize that we have to take this country back.”

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