Thursday, November 28, 2013

The UN Global Warming Hoax Is Slowly Dying


RenewAmerica.com:
In 2007 Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner was interviewed on the subject of sea levels. He is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years.

"You have Vanuatu, and also in the Pacific, north of New Zealand and Fiji – there is the island Tegua. They said they had to evacuate it, because the sea level was rising. But again, you look at the tide-gauge record: There is absolutely no signal that the sea level is rising. If anything, you could say that maybe the tide is lowering a little bit, but absolutely no rising."


The most recent edition of Bloomberg Businessweek features a cover that says "This entire country is about to be wiped out by climate change. It won't last." It is devoted to Kribati, a Pacific island chain, and it is a total lie.

The media has been a co-conspirator to the global warming hoax and I take this latest example as one that reveals its utter desperation to maintain the greatest hoax of the modern era. The facts mean nothing to them. Real science means nothing to them. But reality is intruding on theirs and the United Nations environmental program just wrapped up Conference of Parties-19 in Warsaw, where more nations are now in open revolt.

Writing from the conference was Craig Rucker, the Executive Director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a think tank that has helped organize the Poles to protest this travesty. "Poland has been bullied for decades and they are not about to cede their energy independence to Russia, the UN or anyone. Nor should they."

On November 21, Rucker reported that "COP-19 was shocked when China led a block of 132 nations in a walkout over 'loss and damage.' Loss and damage is a completely bogus concept that developed nations should be legally liable when natural disasters strike developing nations. There is of course no meaningful scientific or historical link that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was abnormal and with no global warming link."

We owe a debt of gratitude as well to The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free market think tank, that has sponsored eight international conferences on global warming since 2008 and recently released a report,"Global Warming Reconsidered II." Like CFACT it has been on the forefront of those seeking to educate the public regarding the phony science claims put forth.
RELATED: Poll: Nearly half of meteorologists don’t believe in man-made global warming

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Liberal Media’s Corrosive Excuse for Not Covering Controversies: Republicans Cared


Mediaite.com:
A once unspoken rule within mainstream reporting outlets has recently been exposed and, lacking any other recourse, acknowledged by an honest handful. 2013 has been a year characterized by one scandalous revelation after the other – each had been brewing for months, even years, before they were uncovered. Too often, journalists are consoling themselves and exculpating their dereliction with the fantasy that some allegations deserved to be dismissed outright only because Republicans displayed a conspicuous level of interest in them.


The latest example of this phenomenon is positively amazing and more than a little bit depressing. 

Appearing on The Steve Malzberg Show, TIME Magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin conceded without a hint of reluctance that conservatives’ warnings about “death panels” within the Affordable Care Act was without merit. 

Halperin began by chastising the press, as an institution, for doing “nothing like an adequate job in flyspecking and scrutinizing the whole law.” 

“Part of the issue,” he said, “is that Governor [Mitt] Romney did not make healthcare the issue in the campaign because he had his own political problems.”

Halperin added that a thorough scrutiny of the ACA in the press would have been beneficial to liberals and President Barack Obama because it would have muted the sense of shock many are experiencing today. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose. 

Moving on to the issue of end-of-life cost controls contained within the ACA, Halperin conceded that those provisions are and always were part of the law. “It’s built into the plan,” Halperin insisted. “It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled.”

“There should have been more scrutiny by all the press, including the conservative press, of the specifics,” Halperin added. “There’s going to be a lot of journalism done, across the board coming up, on this issue, just as there has been now on the issue of whether people with individual plans could keep them. There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny. It should start now.”

This is a noble admission that cuts against interest and Halperin should be lauded for it. But there are no laurels in store for any member of the journalistic establishment. What Halperin is exhibiting is a pervasive and insidious instinct within the East Coast political media complex to abandon their roles as neutral arbiters of competing claims whenever Republicans become too enthusiastic about any given issue. 

Journalism professor Richard Benedetto displayed this dubious instinct in May, 2013, in the wake of a stream of embarrassing revelations about the White House’s incompetence leading up to the deadly attack on an American consulate in Benghazi. By displaying his concern about the attack in 2012, Benedetto claimed, Romney had quashed any investigative reporting. 

“The former Massachusetts governor made the colossal blunder of jumping out ahead of the president in responding to the attacks,” Benedetto wrote. “By doing that, he made himself a key player in the first news stories about the tragedy.”

He says that Obama escaped culpability in the press for pre-Benghazi blunders because Romney had made himself the focus of the story. “Several reporter questions that followed focused on whether the speed, tone and tenor of Romney’s tough criticisms were appropriate when the crisis was still unfolding and all the facts were not known,” Benedetto observed. 
RELATED:  Rothman to Hugh Hewitt: Halperin ‘In Good Company’ Not Blowing Whistle on Obamacare in 2012

Lesbian Waitress Faked Story About Being Refused a Tip

People really don't understand the undeniable, Godless and morally bankrupt foundation that comes with choosing homosexuality as the centerpiece of your life. This woman lied and people are supposed to be surprised? Funny that. Now let's see if she gives back that $2,000 in "donations" she got from naive idiots who believed her story:
With an ever-changing 24/7-news cycle, it’s refreshing to see some members of the liberal media taking the time to correct the record. While we at NewsBusters don’t usually give the liberals at NBC News much credit, for once they did a respectable job and did not completely fall for what now appears to be a complete scam by a New Jersey waitress.

You may recall last week that the media were all abuzz about a New Jersey waitress who claimed a religious family refused to tip her, writing on the receipt that they disapproved of her lifestyle. Well now New York City's NBC News 4 is reporting that a man has come forward with his copy of the receipt and a credit card statement to prove that he did, in fact, tip the waitress. What's more, this man denies he wrote the statement on her copy of the check, which says he disapproved of her lifestyle.

To his credit, MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts relayed the story on his November 26 program. Roberts, who is openly gay, has long made his hour of daytime programming a platform for gay rights-related stories. He deserves credit for spotlighting the newest development in this story rather than leave his audience to go by the one-sided reporting they might have heard earlier in the week on MSNBC's Weekends with Alex Witt.

It was on Sunday that guest host Mara Schiavocampo briefly relayed the story of Dayna Morales and how in the aftermath of the media spotlight, she was receiving thousands of dollars in "tips" -- donations from complete strangers. Ms. Morales, a former U.S. Marine, pledged to give most of those monies to the Wounded Warrior Project.
RELATED: Family Says They Did Tip Gay Server, Didn't Leave Note

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Obamacare’s Contraceptive Mandate

Mediaite.com:
On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would take up a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage mandates on the grounds that it could violate the First Amendment to the Constitution’s guaranteed religious freedoms. Lower courts have issued split decisions on the issue, forcing the nation’s highest court to finally resolve the mandate’s constitutionality.

The case has been brought by Hobby Lobby, a crafts chain with approximately 13,000 employees. The chain’s owners, the Green family, claim that forcing them to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees violates their religious beliefs. 

“The Green family has no moral objection to the use of 16 of 20 preventive contraceptives required in the mandate but it says it cannot provide or pay for four of the drugs including Plan B and Ella, the so-called morning-after pill and the week-after pill,” ABC News reports. “The Greens belief is that human life begins when sperm fertilize an egg and that it is immoral for them to facilitate any act that causes the death of a human embryo.”

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate requiring individuals to purchase health insurance could survive so long as the penalty applied to those who do not comply with the mandate was construed as a tax.
RELATED:  Uh oh: Another ObamaCare “success” story turns sour for White House

White, Liberal Writer Tommy Christopher Defends Racist ‘Knockout Game’


With no reports on gangs of white kids attacking innocent minorities as well as the mainstream media playing down reports of deaths occurring around the country due to the racist "Knockout Game", it's left up to white, liberal journalists (and resident Obamabot) like "Tommy Christopher" to whip out the race card and defend bad behavior by blacks at any cost. It's what they do to keep blacks poor and dependent as well as to keep the black vote in their pockets:
The so-called ‘Knockout Game’ has been gathering steam as a news narrative, with conservatives demanding that the media finally focus on crimes committed by black people. On Monday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, expert guest Harry Houck, a former NYPD detective, went there, explaining to the New Day anchor team that while “not every black kid is doing this,” the only suggestion he could offer to avoid such attacks was “crossing the street, getting away from them” if you see “a group of black youths.”

Reporting around the “Knockout Game” has been of the sketchy Shark Week variety, with a handful of cases being amplified by media attention, even when some of those cases might not even be related to the trend. For example, as The New York Times pointed out this weekend, one of the attacks that’s most played by national news outlets doesn’t appear to fit the narrative:
Much news coverage of reported knockout attacks includes 2012 footage from a surveillance camera in Pittsburgh of James Addlespurger, a high school teacher who was 50, being swiftly struck to the ground by a young man walking down an alleyway with some friends. Yet the Pittsburgh police said the attacker insisted the assault was not part of any organized “game.”
“This was just a random act of violence,” Police Commander Eric Holmes said in a televised interview last year. “He stated that he was just having a bad day that day.” The assailant saw Mr. Addlespurger, the commander said, “and decided this was a course of action he was going to take.”
That clip was part of New Day‘s package, as was CNN correspondent Pamela Brown‘s framing that incidents of the  Knockout Game “have been reported in six states and Washington, DC.”
In her report, Brown conducted man-on-the-street interviews in which she showed videos of attacks to stunned subjects.
Anchor Kate Bolduan asked former NYPD detective Harry Houck  for his take on the phenomenon. “Is this a growing trend?” she asked. “Is this an urban myth, or maybe better stated as growing trend or group of isolated incidents?”
Houck replied that the trend is real, adding that “Urban myths don’t exist. These attacks exist in everyone’s minds, especially in those victims.”
That’s when the familiar language of race-baiting began. Asked if the media was contributing to the problem by hyping the attacks, Houck replied that “I think we have to let the public know what’s going on to protect ourselves. That’s our job. That’s the police department’s job to protect the public. No matter how politically incorrect it might be. It’s to know what is going on and how to protect themselves.”
This is where the hustler hides the red card, because when co-host Chris Cuomo asks Houck to explain his remark about “political correctness” (insulating himself and his show from criticism), Houck lays his suggestion off on other people. “I ask people who I run into every day, ‘What are you doing?’ They say if they see a group of black youths, they cross the street.”

Co-host Michaela Pereira pushed back, telling Houck that “black kids don’t need to be feel, made to feel they’re a threat simply because they are hanging out with friends.”

Houck generously allowed that “Not every black kid is doing this. it’s very few, but if you are the victim, if you are a potential victim and you are afraid walking down the street, you see a group of black youths, everybody I am talking to says they are crossing the street, getting away from them,” and added that “the good black kids will be saying ‘Why are you crossing the street when I walk by?’”

While Pereira pointed out that the “majority” of black kids aren’t doing this, and Cuomo added that “Black kids are getting clocked, too,” their guest expert never gets around to offering any alternative to crossing the street to protect yourselves. He even reiterated it later in the segment, in what could double as a spot-on media criticism. “This is creating terror on the streets, I know,” Houck said. “People are, as soon as they see black youths, like I say, everybody I have talked to, I know you don’t like that, Michaela, but you can understand why they think that way.”

Houck also referenced the classic “the good blacks” frame, which reinforced his earlier suggestion that black teenagers who don’t viciously knock people out are someho the exception.

As far as anyone can tell, of course, these crimes are exceedingly rare, and you are orders of magnitude more likely to be killed or injured crossing the street than walking past a group of black youths. This sort of fear-mongering is nothing, new, though; it’s not as if white people really needed another excuse to be scared of black kids. What is somewhat new is the attempt to normalize it. Pereira’s objections notwithstanding, little is done to challenge the logic of Houck’s commentary.

CNN, and the rest of the media, would do well to resist focusing on the racial aspect of these crimes, and instead serve the public with information they can use, such as the serious medical consequences that loss of consciousness can entail.
RELATED: Horrifying New "Knockout Game" Trend Responsible for 7 Deaths

Liberal Hollywood Covers Up Plague of Animal Abuse


Breitbart.com:

According to an in-depth and potentially game-changing expose' in The Hollywood Reporter, the credit  you see at the end of movies and television shows that reassures with "No Animals Were Harmed," is nothing close to reliable. Corruption, cover-ups, and outright dishonesty plague an American Humane Association (AHA) that has apparently allowed itself to be co-opted by a Hollywood that is much more concerned with getting it on film than protecting innocent animals.

THR's reporting is filled with report after report of individual animal abuse and horrifying negligence. Dead horses (HBO's Luck, Spielberg's War Horse), punched dogs (Disney's Eight Below), squashed chipmunks (Paramount's Failure to Launch), exploded fish (Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean), etc. Most damning, though, are the statistics surrounding enforcement. Because there doesn’t seem to be any.
  
In California, AHA monitors are licensed law enforcement officials. If they witness any kind of animal abuse or negligence, this means they have the power to make arrests or issue citations. According to THR, not a single citation has been issued in over thirty years. Not one over 35,000 productions.

The conflicts of interest between Hollywood and the regulators charged with looking out for the welfare of animals involved in film and television production is literally impossible to believe:

Charges of improper coziness between the AHA and the entertainment business have been raised before. The arrangement by which the Film & TV Unit’s budget has been mostly financed — through what is currently a $2.4 million grant administered by two trade groups, the recently merged SAG-AFTRA actors’ union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers via its shared Industry Advancement and Cooperative Fund — long has been criticized for the inherent conflict of interest present in Hollywood bankrolling its regulator. (The IACF is endowed as part of the producers’ obligation to the actors’ union.)
This unique compact, in which a nonprofit has taken on the role of a regulator of industry in lieu of more traditional, government oversight — and therefore is not subject to public disclosure laws, allowing its work to mostly remain shrouded in secrecy — means the AHA is accountable only to Hollywood itself. 

According to THR's sources (current and former AHA employees; leaked documents and emails), this coziness has resulted in more than just looking the other way; cover ups are standing operating procedure and one AHA official alleges she was fired for attempting to protect animals from mistreatment on the set of the HBO series Luck

Naturally, the AHA disputes almost all of this, but what they do not dispute is that the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer is awarded to films where animals were in fact harmed. What the disclaimer really means, according to the AHA, is that no animals were "intentionally hammed" or injured while cameras were rolling. 
RELATED:  Hollywood’s long history of animal cruelty

Barack Obama Still Denies Being A Liberal Terrorist


HotAir.com:
This is longstanding Obama shtick but feels more anachronistic by the day. Being seen as post-partisan and “pragmatic” was key to his 2008 Hopenchange message, reassuring centrists and libertarians that their fears of electing a liberal were overblown. Then he got elected, rammed through a giant stimulus, passed a landmark redistributionist health-care boondoggle, ran trillion-dollar deficits, demanded tax hikes on the rich, blocked Keystone as a favor to environmentalists, inevitably “evolved” on gay marriage, and of course remained a stalwart defender of the right to abortion. He didn’t even bother, really, with the “pragmatist” crap last year, concluding that he was better off turning out his base and trying to hold centrists by demonizing Romney than pushing more post-partisanship BS that no one would believe. Good call, as it turned out. He got reelected — and then began his second term with a big gun-control campaign followed by a call for action from Congress on legalizing illegals. Right down the middle, our Barry.

I don’t know why he’s come back to this now, five years in. Maybe, as the walls close in from the ObamaCare debacle, Democrats feel some atavistic impulse to return to what worked in the past. The “extremist Republicans” narrative was a sterling success for them in 2012. Think it’ll help with someone who’s now paying an extra $200 a month in health-insurance premiums?
Despite those problems, the White House expressed optimism on Sunday that Democrats could regain control of the House of Representatives, which has blocked many of Obama’s top policy priorities – on ideological grounds, Democrats would say.
The president called that chamber a barrier to progress in his remarks and said there would be broad consensus on issues such as immigration reform if politics were stripped away.
“I’m not a particularly ideological person,” he said, saying pragmatism was necessary to advance the values that were important to him.
Says Jonah Goldberg drily of Obama’s self-styled pragmatism, “Saying he only cares about ‘what works’ at this point in his presidency is more of a problem given that his signature achievement, you know, doesn’t.”
Simple question: Don’t liberals consider Reagan an ideological conservative even though he deviated from conservative orthodoxy in certain ways? Obama’s been surprisingly hawkish on drone strikes and NSA surveillance despite his liberal pedigree; Reagan, depicted as a crazed warmonger by some of his lefty critics, stuck to diplomacy with the Soviet Union and withdrew from Lebanon not long after the barracks bombing. He also signed the most permissive amnesty for illegal aliens in modern American history and gave up on abolishing the Department of Education despite running on it in 1980. The entitlement state weathered eight years of his presidency (and 12 years of Bushes) to deliver the fiscal crisis that threatens the country now. In fact, one of the left’s favorite ways to needle tea partiers is to claim that their hero, the Gipper, governed too moderately to be nominated by the GOP today. Does that mean Reagan wasn’t really an ideological conservative?

Of course not. No one, Obama included, disputes that he was. He split from doctrinaire conservatism when political realities of the moment forced him to, but his vision was one of smaller government, lower taxes, and robust defense spending to counter communism. It’s also political reality that tends to force O’s deviations to the center. If he had refused to use Bush’s counterterrorism tools and the country had suffered a major terrorist attack, the political fallout for Democrats would have been brutal. He could have crafted his own entitlement reform deal with Democrats in 2009 when they controlled Congress, but he made no serious gestures towards it until the GOP reclaimed the House and Boehner gave him a reason to discuss it. Even his signature boondoggle, which the left now likes to remind people is a public/private hybrid, is a hybrid of necessity: Not only would it have been a bridge too far politically for a few centrist Democrats in Congress to pass single-payer, it would have been enormously disruptive to health coverage in America, needless to say. Obama himself has said in the past that he’d prefer single-payer if we were starting from scratch — pretty ideological! — but that economic reality is what it is, leaving a hybrid system the only option. ObamaCare’s not his preference, it’s just the best he can do. That’s not “ideological”?
RELATED:  The Five: If Obama’s Not a ‘Real Socialist,’ Does That Make Him a ‘Fake’ One?

Friday, November 22, 2013

‘Hookers for Obama’: Prostitutes Sing Obamacare’s Praises



Of course they love our Godless President:
The sex workers in parts of Nevada where prostitution is legal are reportedly thrilled about the Affordable Care Act. According to a report in USA Today, which aired on a local NBC affiliate, legal “hookers” who have a difficult time finding health coverage will have options starting in January to which they would otherwise never have had access.

“The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, has been touted as a boon to America’s self-employed,” said USA Today reporter George Warren. “That would include the independent contractors here at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, otherwise known as prostitutes.”

The report features a number of sex workers at the Nevada brothel describing the frustrations they have had getting health coverage. “Usually you’re denied right away,” one prostitute said, “because I’m a working girl.”

“They absolutely equate us to illegal working girls that have very high rates of STDs and AIDS,” another said. “I have the best car insurance in the world, but that’s the only thing that’s covered.”

“It’s truly a miracle,” another said of the ACA.

“I think it’s ‘Hookers for Obama,’” Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof said. “Because they appreciate what he’s done.”

The end of the report, however, notes that Hof called the ACA “a double-edged sword.” He said that while his employees will have easier access to health coverage, he will have to spend $250,000 more per year to cover his non-sex worker employees’ insurance.
RELATED: Please, Mr. President, for the good of the country, let's delay ObamaCare

Thursday, November 21, 2013

President George W. Bush on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

 

RELATED: George W. Bush Talks Obamacare, Painting, and Putin Insulting His Dog on Leno

Conservative Writer Matt Lewis Takes on Race-Obsessed MSNBC Contributor Michael Eric Dyson

Right Professor Dyson. And everyone can recall those lovely days when Democrats not only worked with white, Republican President George W. Bush, but heaped him with nothing but praise and repeated accolades:
Daily Caller and The Week columnist Matt Lewis appeared on MSNBC with Martin Bashir on Wednesday to discuss the Affordable Care Act’s roll-out and the lack of Republican alternative proposals to replace that law. Within minutes, the debate exploded as Lewis was accused of appealing to “white privilege” by Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson.


Bashir began by playing a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) being grilled over a lack of an alternative GOP plan to replace the ACA. Lewis defended Cruz, saying that he was effectively representing his base and playing a smart political game by not taking the media’s focus off of the presently failing ACA roll-out. 

Lewis conceded, though, that Republicans need to coalesce around a single ACA alternative in the coming days. “It’s not enough to say ‘Obamacare’s bad,’” he insisted. “You have to have a solution.”

Bashir insisted that it is not just health care reform, but that the GOP routinely has no alternative to Democratic proposals on a host of issues.

Dyson insisted that this reflexive opposition from Republicans to President Barack Obama’s initiatives was, as Oprah Winfrey recently suggested, due to his skin color.

“It took ten minutes – ten minutes to get to the race issue,” Lewis interjected. The pair exploded over Lewis’ suggestion that race was an inappropriate topic of debate on this issue. 

“Don’t deploy the very principles of white privilege to silence a black man on the panel because you don’t want to talk about race,” Dyson shot back. 

Chaos ensued. “You can’t talk about policy,” Lewis declared. “The only thing you have to talk about is race.”

Lewis blew up at Bashir when he was asked to let Dyson finish his tonight. “Please allow him to speak,” Bashir insisted. 

“The vast majority of Republicans are mindless and incapable of articulating a solid, serious, intellectual conception, or a political fix or remedy to the problem we have here,” Dyson insisted.

“This is a joke,” Lewis concluded. 
RELATED: MSNBC Hosts Claim GOP Blocking Obama’s Nominees Due to Bigotry, Contradict Selves Within Minutes

Barack Obama Gives White Radical Feminist Gloria Steinem Medal of Freedom


Taking care of the Godless, white, liberal squadron--it's what Barack Obama does best. Who cares that feminism is a racist theology that degrades women and blames all their problems on men, Gloria Steinem gets a Medal of Freedom because Barry white, liberals massa's told him to:
Presenting feminist radical Gloria Steinem with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday, President Obama said that Steinem “changed how women thought about themselves.” He also labeled her a “game-changer,” a “disrupter,” and a “champion noticer.” Obama stated, “She’s alert to all the ways, large and small, that women had been and, in some cases, continue to be treated unfairly just because they’re women… because of her work, across America and around the world, more women are afforded the respect and opportunities that they deserve.”

Obama did not mention Steinem’s disdain for heterosexual relationships (Steinem infamously remarked that “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”), marriage and childbearing (“you become a semi-non-person when you get married”), her love for abortion (on her own abortion: “I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life”), her advocacy for confusing gender boundaries for children (“We’ve begun to raise daughters like sons…but few have the courage to raise our sons more like daughters”), and sexual promiscuity (“A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after”).
RELATED:  FEMALE HYPOCRISY, A FEMINIST CONDITION

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar Breaks Down The Fallacy Behind "Homophobia"

RELATED: Homophobia is a Fallacy

Barack Obama Wants To Stop Minority Kids From Attending Private Schools


Another issue that you won't see in the mainstream press or even the black, liberal, Obamabot press, because it's really about keeping blacks poor, dependent, indoctrinated and voting for Democrats::
Coretta Pittman goes well beyond the 40 hours of service required of parents whose children attend the Good Shepherd School in New Orleans. Last year she did 100.

She borrows her mother’s car to take her son Elias, a second grader, to Good Shepherd each morning rather than sending him to a public school across the street. She chooses to work part-time so she can volunteer.

Without a voucher, Pittman would not be able to send Elias to the private Catholic school.

“I love the school,” she said. “I wouldn’t switch him for anything.”

Pittman fears that without the program Elias’s future could be snuffed out, like her nephew. She gets emotional when talking about his death. “Me and my mother raised my nephew from the time he came home from the hospital,” Pittman said. “A year ago, he was killed. He was really smart. I think he could’ve done and been anything that he wanted to.”

“I just wonder if he would’ve had somewhere like Good Shepherd to go, what could have become of him,” she said. “And I’m just hoping that, I don’t want to ever have to wonder what could have become of my son.”

When we find Elias he is sprinting across the playground. Baton in hand, he nearly barrels his cheering classmates over as he finishes his leg of a relay race. We summon him over. Wearing a huge smile, he tells us what he wants to be when he grows up.

“I like math and numbers,” he says. “I want to be a mathematician and a doctor. I’d love to be a police. My auntie’s husband is a police.”

Elias’s favorite part about school: “I get to talk to my friends.”

“I don’t want to imagine what would happen if the program ended,” his mother says. “It gives my son choices and it gives me hope.”
***
The children at St. Leo the Great Catholic Central in New Orleans know more Spanish than I do. Kids from Ms. Margaret Mary’s third grade class stand to recite “Padre Nuestro”—the Lord’s Prayer—when we walk in. Smiling faces greet us with a resounding “good morning” in each classroom.

A portrait of Barack Obama hangs on the wall. The kids don’t know anything about the motions filed by the president’s Justice Department, which could block kids like them from attending schools like St. Leo—better schools than those in the public system they’ve left behind. They know that they love their teachers, and they are learning.

“What frustrates me—I keep hounding on it, but it’s true,” said Ronald Briggs, chairman of the board at Good Shepherd. “The state of Louisiana saves money on the deal. They actually save $16 million a year.”

“The taxpayer wins, the kids win, and the guardians win. So what’s the problem?”
***
As president, one of the first laws Obama signed killed a voucher program in Washington, D.C. Though Congress worked to reinstate the program, Obama has repeatedly tried to defund it in his budget proposals.
Now the Justice Department is going after Louisiana, first seeking a permanent injunction against the state scholarship program, which would put the fate of future voucher recipients in the hands of federal judges.

Roughly 6,750 low-income students received a voucher this school year to escape failing schools.

“It’s political. It’s unfortunate. It’s wrong,” said Ann Duplessis, the president of the Louisiana Federation for Children (LFC).

A lifelong Democrat, Duplessis opposed school choice for years until she began to question who the unions were really fighting for.

“It was more of actually looking at those kids,” she said. “I have three girls and three grandchildren. I couldn’t bear the thought of them being in an environment that I didn’t know if they were going to come home that evening.”

“You want to fight for your kids,” she said. “You look in their faces—they’re children.”
RELATED:  DOJ Changes Strategy in Fight Against Louisiana School Voucher Program

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Long Irrelevant Pop Singer Cher Calls Sarah Palin A "Dumb Cunt" On Twitter


When you're a so-called "legend" who hasn't made a hit song in almost two decades, you'll do just about anything for attention:
Most women will tell you that other than the N-word, the C-word is the most vile in the English language never to be used.

Cher apparently doesn't hold such a belief, for she disturbingly took to Twitter Friday to call former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a "Dumb C Word":

Three minutes later she put an exclamation point on it:

Looking at her timeline, I can find nothing that provoked or precipitated this attack.

I guess Cher just woke up Friday thinking she needed to grotesquely attack - without any reason apparently - a former vice presidential candidate in front of her almost 2 million followers. 
Alas, this wasn't the first time the singer has publicly defamed Palin.

In 2010, she told Vanity Fair, “I got so obsessed with [C-SPAN] that it was kind of interfering with my life. Sarah Palin came on, and I thought, Oh, f---, this is the end. Because a dumb woman is a dumb woman.”

Now, three years later, she's added the C-word.

I wish someone would explain to me what Palin has done to turn so many women into hateful, foul-mouthed morons.
RELATED: Here Are All the Times the Media Has Apologized to Sarah Palin

Urban City "Knockout Game" Hits Another Victim in D.C.


Tag. Manhunt. Chinese handball. Skelly. These were the kind of harmless and fun games I played as a kid running around in the streets of Brooklyn. But for many of today's teens, growing up in a morally bankrupt America while unable to afford $400 Xbox consoles, a "game" like Knockout isn't just something to do to pass the time, but a sad reflection of today's "do what you want as long as it makes you happy" society. No doubt you won't be hearing from Al Sharpton anytime soon on this one.

RELATED: NYC Police Stop-And-Frisk Numbers Down Sharply

George Zimmerman Arrested After Threatening His Girlfriend with a Shotgun.

Making it harder and harder for far-Right conservatives who don't believe racism still exists to defend this guy:
George Zimmerman is being held without bail on charges that he threatened his girlfriend with a shotgun.

Zimmerman, 30, was taken into custody Monday afternoon following a disturbance call at a home in Apopka, Fla., about 15 miles from Orlando, according to Chief Deputy Dennis Lemma of the Seminole County Sheriff's office.

In July, Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

In a 911 call released later Monday, Samantha Scheibe told police that Zimmerman had smashed a glass table, broken her sunglasses and pointed a shotgun in her face.

"You put your gun in my freaking face," Scheibe is heard telling Zimmerman on the call. "Get out of my house. Do not push me out of my house. Please get out of my house."

Seconds later, she can be heard telling the dispatcher, "He pushed me out of my house and locked me out. ... He knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game."

After police arrived on the scene, Zimmerman placed his own 911 call. 

"I have a girlfriend, who for lack of a better word, has gone crazy on me," Zimmerman said.

He said that he never pulled a gun on his girlfriend, and that it was Scheibe who smashed a table at the home.

He also told the dispatcher that Scheibe was pregnant with their child and that she had decided she would raise the child on her own. When Zimmerman started to leave, "she got mad," he said.

When the dispatcher asked why Zimmerman had called 911 instead of talking to the police officers who were outside the home, he said, "I just want everyone to know the truth."

Lemma told reporters that the girlfriend told police she is not pregnant.

MSNBC Scumbag Martin Bashir Apologizes to Sarah Palin for Response to Her Slavery Remarks


They must really hate women over there at MSNBC. That is, conservative women who speak out and think for themselves:
Bashir opened Monday’s show with a complete and abject apology. “Last Friday, on this broadcast,” bashir said, “I made some comments which were deeply offensive and directed at Governor Sarah Palin. I wanted to take this opportunity to say sorry to Mrs. Palin, and to also offer an unreserved apology to her friends and family, her supporters, our viewers, and anyone who may have heard what I said. My words were wholly unacceptable. They were neither accurate, nor fair. They were unworthy of anyone who would claim to have an interest in politics, and they have brought shame upon my friends and colleagues at this network, none of whom were responsible for the things that I said.”

“In the battle of ideas, America leads the world in whole-hearted discussions and disagreements,” he continued, “and these arguments can be heard on a daily basis. But what I did on Friday had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that great tradition, and I am deeply sorry. Upon reflection, I so wish that I had been more thoughtful, more considerate, more compassionate. but I was not. And what I said is now a matter of public record.”

“But if I could add something to the public record,” Bashir added, “it would be this: That I deeply regret what I said, and that I have learned a sober lesson in these last few days. That the politics of vitriol and destruction is a miserable place to be, and a miserable person to become. And I promise that I will take the opportunity to learn from this experience. My hope is that it will renew in me a spirit of humility and humanity, that looks for the good and that builds upon the great things that this country has to offer to all of us, regardless of our political persuasion. This will be my guiding light and compass in the days ahead. But once again, I am truly sorry for what I said on Friday.”
RELATED: MSNBC Sends Wrong Signals With Bashir Apology…

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Politiks As Usual: In The News 11/17/13

Teens' 'Knockout Game' A Growing Danger With Deadly Results

Atheism: Poor Odds, Bad Science and the 'Law of Non Contradictions'

Perfect. Seattle Elects A Socialist To City Council

Failed Left-Wing Policies Sinking Obama's Presidency

The Cult of Outrage

Andrew Sullivan Slams MSNBC: 'Bunch of Hypocrites and Phonies on That Propaganda Network'

Physician Criticizes FDA Crusade Against Trans Fats 

Transgender Bathroom Laws An Assault On Freedom, Expert Says

Pa. Pastor Facing Church Trial Over Gay Marriage

Marketplace Changes Have Made ENDA Superfluous

Don Lemon Takes On Black Writer For ‘Why I Hate Being a Black Man’ Column

Toronto Mayor Refuses to Step Down: 'I'm Not an Addict'

DC Insurance Commissioner Fired After Being Critical of Obamacare “Fix”


When it comes to Godless liberals tolerance is not a two-way street:
A top deputy in the DC mayor’s office reportedly told the city’s insurance commissioner he wants to “go in a different direction” -- i.e., fire him -- one day after the latter released a statement raising concerns about President Obama’s decision to amend his signature health care law. This is another way of saying, “if you disagree with the president publicly, there will be consequences.” Or so it seems:
A day after he questioned President Obama’s decision to unwind a major tenet of the health-care law and said the nation’s capital might not go along, D.C. insurance commissioner William P. White was fired. 

White was called into a meeting Friday afternoon with one of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s (D) top deputies and told that the mayor “wants to go in a different direction,” White told The Washington Post on Saturday.
White said the mayoral deputy never said that he was being asked to leave because of his Thursday statement on health care. But he said the timing was hard to ignore. Roughly 24 hours later, White said, he was “basically being told, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”
White was one of the first insurance commissioners in the nation last week to push back against Obama’s attempt to smooth over part of the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act: millions of unexpected cancellations of insurance plans.
White evidently raised the warning bells because the president’s unilateral delay will discourage young people from enrolling in the exchanges, thus hastening the law’s death spiral. Curiously, the commissioner’s public statement was removed from his department’s website almost immediately:
White’s statement was removed from the department’s Web site sometime before Friday morning. Asked about the removal Friday, spokesman Michael Flagg said the department’s statement had changed. 

“Our statement now is that we’re taking a close look at the implications of the president’s announcement on the District’s exchange and we will soon recommend a course of action after taking into consideration the positions of all the stakeholders,” Flagg wrote in an e-mail.
An anonymous city official suggests White was fired not because of the content of his statement, but because he violated protocol:
A senior city official said White’s initial statement was sent to the mayoral communications director, Pedro Ribeiro, only minutes before it was issued publicly. It was not sent to Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins, White’s immediate supervisor, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about a personnel matter. 

A formal statement critical of the president should have been closely vetted and approved by the mayor’s office, and White refused to acknowledge the misstep, the official said. White said Hoskins fired him Friday.
White disagrees:
White said he thought he would have been derelict in his duties to not quickly make a statement on the president’s announcement. 

“Everyone was looking for responses from the regulators. One of my chief concerns is always consistency and clarity in the marketplace — you can’t have something that big sitting out there without responding to it,” he said.
Either way, White no longer has a job. And politics seems to be the reason why. 
RELATED:  NBC’s Gregory Confronts Pelosi With ‘We Have to Pass the Bill to Find Out What’s In It’ Clip

Saturday, November 16, 2013

House Republicans Introduce Resolution to Impeach Attorney General Eric Holder


About freaking time:
A group of congressional Republicans introduced a resolution Thursday to call for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder, alleging Holder had committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” during his tenure as head of the Justice Department.

The resolution was introduced by Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, who claims Holder has committed “the offenses of lying to Congress, refusing to comply with a subpoena, and failing to fulfill his oath of office.”

Olson cites Holder’s unwillingness to cooperate during the investigation into the botched Operation “Fast and Furious, his refusal to prosecute those involved IRS targeting of conservative groups, his failure to enforce laws including the Defense of Marriage Act, and his “false testimony” about the DOJ’s monitoring of Fox News journalist James Rosen as articles that are grounds for impeachment.

“For nearly five years, Attorney General Holder has systematically deceived Congress and destroyed the credibility of the Justice Department in the eyes of the American people,” Olson said in a statement.

Olson was joined by 19 other Republican representatives in the resolution.

One House Democrat spoke out against the resolution before it was introduced Thursday, calling it “the most fundamental abuse of the impeachment power.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a former federal prosecutor who led the Senate in the impeachment of a federal judge in 2010, said the articles of impeachment in the resolution are simply a list of “debunked conspiracy theories.”
RELATED:  AG Holder asks for appeal in Fast and Furious case holding him in contempt