"The Obama administration wants to consign the Benghazi terrorist attack to the history books, but this week three State Department officials will tell Congress that the Obama administration’s version of history is false — and that the falsehoods it told the American people were willful and deliberate."We shall see...
The above is the opening paragraph to a Marc Thiessen op-ed which ran in yesterday's Washington Post. Today's Newsbite #1 will share the rest of the piece.
Tomorrow is the hearing. We shall see what's testified to under oath.
The election is over, folks; Obama won. The media did their job last year... what's reported this year has little chance of creating more than a bit of minor embarrassment for the Obama Administration and their media allies. After all, it's not like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic congressional caucuses would go along with impeaching Barrack Hussein Obama under any circumstances.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one gives a damn...
(*SHRUG*)
18 comments:
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-a-benghazi-bombshell/2013/05/06/d7a4e3fe-b651-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html
The Obama administration wants to consign the Benghazi terrorist attack to the history books, but this week three State Department officials will tell Congress that the Obama administration’s version of history is false — and that the falsehoods it told the American people were willful and deliberate.
One of the whistle-blowers, Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau, was in direct, real-time communication with people on the ground during the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Libya, before he was locked out of the room. Yet despite his firsthand knowledge of how the attack unfolded, he was not interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, even though he asked to be.
* ONE... MORE... TIME:
[D]espite his firsthand knowledge of how the attack unfolded, [Thompson] was not interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, even though he asked to be.
According to sources I spoke with, Thompson will testify that the circumstances under which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died have been “purposefully misrepresented” by the administration and that “all their public statements from the initial account to the talking points [that Ambassador Susan Rice used on the Sunday shows] were false, and they knew it.”
Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the attack, will apparently back up that charge.
* WE WILL SEE... WE WILL SEE...
* ALL THAT I'M LOOKING FOR IS THE TRUTH.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
This weekend, Rep. Darryl Issa (R-Calif.), who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed some of what Hicks told congressional investigators: “My jaw hit the floor as I watched [Rice speak] .... I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day. . . . I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate.”
What was even more jaw-dropping was that no one from the State Department contacted Hicks before Rice’s interviews on the Sunday shows. Hicks says he was “personally known” to Rice’s staff and “I could have been called. . . . I could have said, ‘No, that’s not the right thing.’ That phone call was never made.”
(The next day, Hicks told investigators, he called Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and asked her, “ ‘Why did Ambassador Rice say that?’ And Beth Jones said, ‘I don’t know.’”)
Hicks told congressional investigators that Stevens’ final report before he died was to say, “Greg, we are under attack.” Incredibly, though, Hicks has not even been allowed to see the classified Accountability Review Board report.
(Perhaps the Obama administration is afraid to let him review its “findings” for fear he will uncover more falsehoods.)
Last week, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell dismissed the whistle-blowers, declaring there has already been a thorough investigation into the attack “and that should be enough.” Well, apparently the man who was second in command at our embassy in Libya disagrees.
In addition to getting to the bottom of what the administration knew about Benghazi, and when they knew it, Congress needs get to the bottom of the cover-up, which is apparently ongoing. Victoria Toensing, a lawyer for one of the whistle-blowers, told Fox News the whistle-blowers have been threatened with career-ending reprisals if they furnish new information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress.
(Who threatened them? What were they told would happen to them? And who else was pressured not to testify?)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
White House spokesman Jay Carney last week tried to dismiss Benghazi as something that “happened a long time ago.” With all respect, the attack took place just eight months ago. To the families who woke up this morning without sons and husbands and fathers by their side, it does not feel like “a long time ago.” Moreover, eight months later, we still have not gotten the full story of what happened. If all the facts are out, and the administration truly has nothing to hide, why has it reportedly tried to silence these career State Department officials?
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that eight months have passed since Benghazi and still nothing has been done about it. Our country suffered a coordinated terrorist attack on an American diplomatic facility. A U.S. ambassador was killed at the hands of our terrorist enemies. Yet no one has been brought to justice — nor has justice been delivered to anyone.
Maybe before the Obama administration closes the book on Benghazi, it ought to tell the truth about what happened — and then actually do something to avenge these dead Americans. Because when a president seems more intent to sweep a terrorist attack under the rug than he is to respond to it, it sends a message of weakness to our enemies and invites new attacks.
* FRANKLY... I DOUBT WE'RE COMPETENT ENOUGH TO FIND THE RIGHT CULPRITS.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/special-ops-halted-from-responding-to-benghazi-attacks-us-diplomat-says/2013/05/06/c3f311d4-b677-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_print.html
As the weakly protected U.S. diplomatic compound in eastern Libya came under attack the night of Sept. 11, 2012, the deputy head of the embassy in Tripoli 600 miles away sought in vain to get the Pentagon to scramble fighter jets over Benghazi in a show of force that he said might have averted a second attack on a nearby CIA complex.
* SOUGHT... IN... VAIN...
* "GREAT" REPORTING! (EIGHT MONTHS AFTER THE FACT!)
Hours later, according to excerpts of the account by the U.S. diplomat, Gregory Hicks, American officials in the Libyan capital sought permission to deploy four U.S. Special Operations troops to Benghazi aboard a Libyan military aircraft early the next morning. The troops were told to stand down.
* THE... TROOPS... WERE... TOLD... TO... STAND... DOWN.
Defense Department officials have said they had no units that could have responded in time to counter the attack in Benghazi...
* LIES.
* FOLKS... WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS AD NAUSEUM. HAD IT BEEN AIR FORCE ONE (PRESIDENT OBAMA ON BOARD) THAT HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN OVER BENGHAZI OR AIR FORCE TWO (VP JOE BIDEN ON BOARD) OR AIR FORCE THREE (THEN-SEC-STATE HILLARY CLINTON ON BOARD) OR A PLANE CARRYING MICHELLE OBAMA AND/OR THE OBAMA DAUGHTERS... OR HAD A PLAN CARRYING BILL CLINTON... OR AL GORE... (FOLKS... INSERT YOUR OWN FAVORITES!) GONE DOWN OVER BENGHAZI DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE WE WOULDN'T HAVE HAD THE ENTIRE AREA FLOODED WITH FORCES WITHIN HOURS...?
* FOLKS... EVEN IF WE BUY THE DOD's LIES... LOOK AT A MAP... WE COULD HAVE REQUESTED REGIONAL ALLIES SEND QUICK REACTION FORCES TO RESCUE OUR PEOPLE!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
...but Republicans on Capitol Hill have questioned whether the Obama administration could have saved lives with a nimbler, more assertive response. They say that the reluctance to send the Special Operations troops may have, at the very least, deprived wounded Americans in Benghazi of first aid.
Congressional investigators released a partial transcript of Hicks’s testimony Monday ahead of a hearing Wednesday at which he is scheduled to appear. His remarks are the first public account from a U.S. official who was in Libya at the time of the attacks about the options that were weighed as militants mobbed the American diplomatic outpost and CIA station in Benghazi, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other government employees.
The new details are certain to reignite a debate over whether the Obama administration has been sufficiently forthcoming in its public accounting of the events and missteps that resulted in the first death of a U.S. ambassador in the line of duty in a generation.
* THERE'S NO "DEBATE." OBAMA LIED! HILLARY LIED! RICE LIED!
If Republicans in Congress succeed in portraying the administration’s response as feckless, the episode could dog any future political aspirations of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state when the attacks happened.
* PERHAPS. THING IS... A LARGE SEGMENT - PERHAPS MAJORITY - OF THE AMERICAN VOTING PUBLIC DON'T KNOW... AND DON'T CARE. (*SHRUG*)
After the attacks ended without planes being scrambled or special forces dispatched, the lieutenant colonel in Tripoli who commanded the Special Operations team told Hicks he was sorry that his men had been held back. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than someone in the military,” the officer told Hicks, according to the diplomat’s account. Hicks called that “a nice compliment.”
* FOLKS... AMERICAS TOP MILITARY BRASS CLOSED RANKS WITH OBAMA. (*SHRUG*) THEY PROVIDED HIM COVER. ONCE THERE ARE ENOUGH STARS AFFIXED UPON MILITARY SHOULDER BOARDS DON'T TAKE IT FOR GRANTED THAT YOU'RE STILL LOOKING AT SOMEONE "ABOVE THE FRAY." OUR TOP MILITARY BRASS ARE POLITICIANS.
* GENERAL PATRAEUS...? GENERAL ALLEN...??? RICH AND COMFORTABLE RETIREMENTS AWAIT THEM. STICKS AND CARROTS, FOLKS... STICKS AND CARROTS.
Hicks may have been the last American official to speak with Stevens. After an embassy security official ran into his residence to tell him about the initial attack, Hicks managed to get Stevens on the phone. “Greg, we’re under attack,” Stevens blurted out, according to Hicks. “My response is ‘Okay,’ and I’m about to say something else and the line clicks.”
The administration has said the independent review of the Benghazi assault was exhaustive...
* UH-HUH. (AND THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO SAY... WHAT, EXACTLY...???)
Republicans, however, say Hicks’s account suggests the administration has not been entirely truthful.
* FOLKS... FUCK THIS "REPUBLICANS SAY" NONSENSE! HOW'BOUT "COMMON SENSE SAYS...?!?!"
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
“The White House and the Pentagon have allowed us to believe that there were no military options on the table,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said in a phone interview. “The model of the military is to leave no person behind, and it’s stunning and unacceptable to think we had military willing and ready to go and the Pentagon told them to stand down. That’s just not the American way.”
Chaffetz said the troops who were not allowed to travel to Benghazi would have arrived after the attack on the CIA base but may have provided first aid to wounded personnel. He noted that the order to keep them from traveling was given before the second attack.
Part of the Benghazi debate has focused on whether prompt action might have saved lives. In the initial attack, militants overran the compound where Stevens was staying and he and another State Department officer, Sean Smith, were killed. Others made their way to a nearby annex used by the CIA, where two Americans, former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in an attack several hours later.
* SEVERAL... HOURS... LATER.
Hicks, a veteran Foreign Service officer who is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday, told congressional staffers that he and others in Libya thought that flying U.S. military jets over Benghazi during the early hours of the attack could have had a deterrent effect. “If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the [CIA] annex in the morning, because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks said. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”
Hicks said that late on the night of Sept. 11 he called the embassy’s defense attache, Lt. Col. Keith Phillips, and asked about the viability of sending jets. “Is there anything coming?” Hicks said he asked Phillips. Phillips told Hicks that the nearest planes were at Aviano Air Base in Italy and that it would take two to three hours to get them off the ground...
* IF THAT'S TRUE... THEN THE ENTIRE TOP BRASS OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE SHOULD BE COURT-MARTIALED AND IMPRISONED FOR GROSS DEROLICTION OF DUTY!
There also were no aircraft nearby that could have refueled airborne planes. “The answer was, it’s too far away, there are no tankers, there is nothing, there is nothing that could respond,” he said.
* ITALY... GREECE... TURKEY... ISRAEL... SAUDI ARABIA... EITHER NATO ALLIES OR OTHER FRIENDS AND ALLIES... AGAIN, CHECK THE MAP!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578468582435347210.html
General Motors Co. said it received permission from Chinese authorities to build an $1.3 billion factory [in China] to manufacture its Cadillac brand, boosting the U.S. auto maker's ambition of becoming a larger player in China's booming luxury car market.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
"We've decided that the luxury market is going to grow and we want a bigger share," said Dayna Hart, a spokeswoman for GM in China.
* MAKES YA "PROUD," HUH...
The facility will have a capacity of up to 150,000 vehicles. Construction is scheduled to begin in June. The facility will be built in Jinqiao, Shanghai where GM's joint venture Shanghai GM and GM China headquarters are located.
* IN OTHER WORDS... "FUCK DETROIT. FUCK AMERICA. FUCK AMERICANS!"
* AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S REACTION...???
* AND THE UNIONS... WHAT OF THEM...? IS NOT THE SILENCE DEAFENING...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants-will-cost-america/2013/05/06/e5d19afc-b661-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html
The economist Milton Friedman warned that the United States cannot have open borders and an extensive welfare state.
He was right...
[H]is reasoning extends to amnesty for the more than 11 million unlawful immigrants in this country.
In addition to being unfair to those who follow the law and encouraging more unlawful immigration in the future, amnesty has a substantial price tag.
An exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found that after amnesty, current unlawful immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay more than $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes. That leaves a net fiscal deficit of $6.3 trillion.
[I]mmigrants should come to our nation lawfully and should not impose additional fiscal costs on our overburdened taxpayers.
* PERIOD!
We estimate that when those who broke our laws to come here start having access to the same benefits as citizens do — as is called for by the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill — the average unlawful immigrant household will receive nearly $3 in benefits for every dollar in taxes paid.
The net annual cost is $28,000 per unlawful immigrant household. Given the U.S. debt of $17 trillion, the fiscal effects detailed in our study should be at the forefront of legislators’ minds as they consider immigration reform.
Already, illegal immigrants impose costs on police, hospitals, schools and other services. Putting them on a path to citizenship means that within a few years, they will qualify for the full panoply of government programs: more than 80 means-tested welfare programs, as well as Social Security, Medicare and ObamaCare.
The lifetime fiscal cost (benefits received minus taxes paid) for the average unlawful immigrant after amnesty would be around $590,000. Who is going to pay that tab?
Our government is now in the business of redistribution. As Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, has pointed out, federal transfer payments, or taking from one American to give to another, grew from 3% of spending in 1935 to about two-thirds of all spending in 2010.
* AGAIN... PEOPLE... THIS IS NO LONGER AMERICA. WE ARE NO LONGER AMERICANS. THIS ONCE GREAT NATION WAS ON THE PATH TO "FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION" LONG BEFORE BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA. THAT SAID... BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS DOING EVERYTHING WITHIN HIS POWER TO "NUDGE" US EVER FURTHER LEFT... EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO PUSH US FURTHER AWAY FROM INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM AND TOWARDS A CORPORATIST WELFARE STATE LED BY AN OLIGARCHY OF THE ELITE.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Our findings are based on empirical research and reflect common sense. Adding millions of unlawful immigrants to U.S. programs will have a massive negative fiscal effect. Unlawful immigrants have relatively low earning potential because, on average, they have 10th-grade educations and low skills. Heads of households like that, whether from the Midwest or Central America, will receive, on average, about four times as much in government services and benefits as they pay in taxes. Adding millions more to bloated welfare and overburdened entitlement programs will deepen the fiscal hole our country is in.
Our cost estimates are in some ways very conservative: The $6.3 trillion figure does not factor in the waves of unlawful immigrants who could pour into this country hoping for another future amnesty. As scholars at the Heritage Foundation and elsewhere have explained, the comprehensive immigration bill being considered in the Senate differs little from previous empty promises to secure our borders and enforce immigration laws on the books. When amnesty was granted under a similar plan in 1986, there were about 3 million unlawful immigrants; now we have more than 11 million.
Instead of forcing through a complicated, lengthy bill, Congress ought to advance piece-by-piece immigration solutions that enjoy broad support and build trust with the American people. We should move to streamline our legal immigration system, encourage patriotic assimilation to unite new immigrants with America’s vibrant civil society, fulfill promises to secure our borders and strengthen workplace enforcement.
We are proudly a nation of immigrants. People the world over are attracted to the United States because we are a nation of laws. Granting amnesty to those who broke the law and putting them on a path to citizenship would be unfair, would encourage more bad behavior and would impose significant costs on American families...but our dysfunctional bureaucracy makes it easier to break the law than to follow it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347564/no-more-free-breakfasts
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced last week that it will discontinue the free-school-breakfast plan it initiated last year.
* DON'T GET OVERLY ENTHUSED THOUGH FOLKS... THE WORD "DISCONTINUE" DOESN'T ACTUALLY MEAN DISCONTINUE. (BUT WE'LL GET TO THAT...)
The reasons for the announced cancelation were that the program had drawn rodents and insects into classrooms and that classroom learning time was being wasted by students who were eating for long periods in class.
(*SNORT*)
But the rodents, insects, and disruption of class learning time are nothing compared with the destructiveness of the free breakfast itself.
First, the program was created to solve a problem that does not exist. It is inconceivable that there are five, let alone 200,000 or the projected 450,000, homes in Los Angeles that cannot afford breakfast for their child. A nutritious breakfast can be had for less than a dollar. For examples, go to the website “webMD” which lists five “Breakfast Ideas for a Buck.”
Second, it both enables and encourages irresponsible, uninterested, and incompetent parenting.
Given how inexpensive breakfast can be (not to mention the myriad public and private programs that provide food for poor households), any home that cannot provide its child with breakfast demands a visit from child protective services. Any parent who cannot give a child breakfast is not too poor; he or she is too incapable of being, or too irresponsible to be, a competent parent.
(*JUMPING TO MY FEET TO APPLAUD*)
Third, even where decent parents are involved, free breakfasts at school weaken the parent-child bond. Hundreds of thousands of parents who are able, and happy, to provide their child with breakfast have accepted the offer — because anything free is too enticing for an increasing number of Americans.
(*NOD*) (*PURSED LIPS*)
But what they have done is made the proverbial deal with the devil. They have traded in one of the most fundamental definitions of parenthood — providing one’s children with food — for a dollar and for a little less work as a parent. As a result, these parents become less of a parent to their child.
[F]ourth... the free breakfast profoundly weakens young people’s character.
(*NOD*)
When you grow up learning to depend on the state, you will almost inevitably — even understandably — assume that the state will take care of you. And you will grow up also assuming — as do Europeans, who give far less to charity than Americans for this very reason — that the state will take care of your fellow citizens, including your own children.
* BUT THAT'S THE GOAL OF THE LEFT... TO REMAKE AMERICANS AS EUROPEANS!
But it gets worse. “Canceling” the program does not mean ending it.
* YEP... (*SIGH*)
Remember, the program is not being canceled because of its destructive effects on students and family life. The reasons it is being canceled are that rodents and insects infest classrooms and that classroom learning time is wasted while the children stretch out breakfast-eating time. Therefore, the program is being shifted to the schools’ cafeterias.
The public-employee unions, which govern the state of California and the city of Los Angeles, have demanded that the program be shifted from the classroom to the school cafeterias so as to employ more cafeteria workers.
(*SIGH*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323826804578467243103343934.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
The nine Republican Governors who decided earlier this year to pump some helium into the ObamaCare balloon and expand Medicaid forgot about that saving grace of American politics: the separation of powers. On Friday Florida became the latest state to reject the expansion, as Governor Rick Scott failed to convince the GOP-controlled legislature to approve his Medicaid flip.
* AMEN!
Jack Dalrymple in North Dakota is the only Republican so far who has sold a GOP legislature on expansion.
(*HISS*) RINO!
John Kasich in Ohio, Jan Brewer in Arizona and Rick Synder in Michigan are also having trouble moving Medicaid legislation... As the state legislative calendar winds down, perhaps as many as 24 states won't expand.
* WE CAN ONLY HOPE AND PRAY!
Instead of making a broken system larger, a saner approach would be to fix Medicaid first.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-07/march-consumer-credit-increase-driven-entirely-and-then-some-student-and-car-loans
The March consumer credit headline was a disappointment, increasing by just $7.97 billion on expectations of a $15.6 billion increase.
* BUT, WAIT... THERE'S MORE!
[T]he February total [was] revised lower to $18.14 billion.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
So far so bad. It gets worse when one peeks beneath the surface and finds that discretionary consumer credit in the form of credit card and other revolving loans posted its first decline of 2013 - dropping by $1.7 billion, the biggest decline since December's 2.1 billion.
So what rose? Why debt for purchases of Government Motors and student loans of course, which increased by $9.676 billion in March[!]
In other words: the student [loan] bubble keeps getting bigger... more and more GM cars are being bought on sub-prime credit... while the vast majority of Americans can't even afford to charge toilet paper purchases as the discretionary deleveraging continues.
In the last year, of the $157 billion in total debt issued, 97.5% is in the form of non-revolving credit.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
Consumer credit created? A whopping 2.5% of the total or $4 billion.
Finally, who is the primary source of all this free credit? Why Uncle Sam of course (and all U.S. taxpayers by implication, when the student and second sub-prime car bubble pops of course).
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.creators.com/conservative/walter-williams.html
One definition given for insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results; it might also be a definition of stupidity.
Let's look at some cities where large percentages of black Americans live under poor conditions.
Experiencing a violent crime rate of 2,137 per 100,000 of the population, Detroit is the nation's most dangerous city.
Rounding out Forbes magazine's 2012 list of the 10 most dangerous cities are St Louis; Oakland, Calif.; Memphis, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; Atlanta; Baltimore; Stockton, Calif.; Cleveland; and Buffalo, N.Y.
The most common characteristic of these predominantly black cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations. Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia — haven't elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. What's more is that in most of these cities, blacks have been mayors, chiefs of police, school superintendents and principals and have dominated city councils.
You might ask, "What's the point, Williams?"
Let's be clear about it. I'm not stating that there's a causal relationship between crime, poverty and squalor on the one hand and, on the other, Democratic and black political control over a city.
* AND I... WILLIAM R. BARKER... REFUSE TO NOT CONSIDER THAT THERE IS EXACTLY THAT - A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP.
Nor am I saying that blacks ought to vote Republican.
* I AM! (BUT BACK TO THE PIECE...)
What I am saying is that if one is strategizing on how to improve the lives of the poorest black people, he wants to leave off his to-do list election of Democrats and black politicians.
* BY AND LARGE. BY THE NUMBERS. STATISTICALLY SPEAKING. (THERE ARE OF COURSE EXCEPTIONS...)
Also to be left off the to-do list is a civil rights agenda. Racial discrimination has little to do with major problems confronting black people.
(*NOD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Today 72% of black babies are born out of wedlock.
Being born and finding out that your mother is 17 years old, that your grandmother is 35 and that you don't know who or where your father is not a good start on life. In fact, it's a near guarantee for school dropout, poverty and crime... but such a start in life has nothing to do with racial discrimination.
Law-abiding poor black people suffer the nation's highest rates of criminal victimization from assaults and homicide. More than 50% of homicide victims are black. Would anyone claim that this victimization is caused by racist groups preying on the black community?
In addition to victimization, the level of lawlessness in many black communities has the full effect of a law banning economic growth. That's because the thugs are equal-opportunity thugs who will rip off a black-owned business just as they'd rip off a white-owned business.
Black education is a disaster, but who runs the violent, disruptive big-city schools, where education is all but impossible? For the most part, it's not white people.
Go to a city such as Detroit and you'll find that blacks have been superintendents, principals and most of the teachers for years. Most black high-school students, in Detroit and other cities, can't read, write and compute as well as sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade white students, but is it because of racism?
What the ["progressive"] elite teach is not only futile but counterproductive. For example, speaking standard English in an English-speaking country is critical for self-improvement. But that's not the lesson from the nation's multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of native languages and dialects. Sloppy-minded academics and assorted hustlers have taught that poor English, gangsta rap, men wearing pigtails and thug behavior should not be criticized but become a part of the celebration of diversity.
(*SAD NOD*)
Black people could benefit from an honest examination of the bill of goods they've been sold. Such an examination would not come from black politicians, civil rights leaders or the black and white liberal elite. Those people have benefited politically and financially from keeping black Americans in a constant state of grievance based on alleged racial discrimination.
The long-term solution for the problems that many black Americans face begins with an absolute rejection of the self-serving agenda of hustlers and poverty pimps.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_boston_mindset_cringe_like_sheep.html
Colonel Jeff Cooper's "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth" describes exactly what is wrong with the United States today.
Cooper wrote of the society in which he grew up during the 1930s: "Boys were taught to shoot and use their hands, and girls were taught to expect that in their men." In that society, it would have been both futile and ridiculous for two punks to assume control over 159 people.
Cooper's position was that there was no excuse - none - for 159 passengers to allow a pair of hijackers to take over an airliner.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
It is easy to imagine what Cooper would say about more than a million people in Boston and its suburbs allowing one punk to lock them in their homes, and out of their workplaces, at a cost of up to one billion dollars.
(*CLENCHED JAW*)
The message to terrorists could not be clearer: Any deranged individual willing to sacrifice his life or his freedom can bring a major U.S. city to its knees.
Cooper explained exactly why; the press, academe, and the law enforcement establishment preach: "Do not fight back! On the street, in your home, on the airplane, on the high seas, anywhere, anytime. Do not fight back! You may be hurt."
This contemptible, despicable, and pusillanimous culture has not, fortunately, infested the Old South, most of the Mountain States (except Colorado), or rural and suburban Pennsylvania and Ohio.
It is no coincidence that these are places where it is legal to carry a sidearm openly without a permit, and/or it is fairly straightforward to get a concealed carry permit.
The "cringe like sheep" mindset is, on the other hand, most pervasive in the major metropolitan areas that are also the clearly identifiable origin of almost all attacks on the Second Amendment. These are the same entities trying to tell the rest of us to surrender our means of defense entirely so we can become good little sheep just like them. The Boston lockdown should have taught them exactly where that gets them; onto their knees, or into the fetal position.
What is the Solution?
One punk, or even ten punks, cannot lock down the more heavily armed parts of our country. This does not mean that citizens strap on their hog legs, form a posse, and try to bring him (or them) in by themselves. Problems with amateur law enforcement include the chance of shooting the wrong person by mistake, along with the fact that a street is not a firing range with a backstop behind the intended target.
What this does mean, however, is that rational and prudent citizens might carry weapons while performing daily chores, or while driving to and from places of business. They don't look for the punk(s), because that is a job for law enforcement professionals who know what they are doing. The punk(s), on the other hand, had better not come looking for them. The punk does not hijack a car, break into an occupied residence, or terrorize somebody on the street without considerable risk to his personal safety. The punk therefore does not shut down so much as a small town, let alone a major metropolis, in a well-armed society.
The fact that one [punk] shut down Boston is incontrovertible proof of the degeneracy of the values and culture of the enemies of the Second Amendment.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will050413.php3#.UYmAC0rQDXQ
* BY GEORGE WILL
Suppose a federal executive department flagrantly abused its regulatory powers for the unmistakable purpose of suppressing truthful speech that annoys the government. If you assume the Supreme Court would rectify this assault on the First Amendment’s core protection, you would be mistaken.
The government has done this, and the court has declined to do its duty to enforce constitutional limits.
Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest are low-cost passenger air carriers that have thrived since the deregulation of the airline industry, which began in 1978.
[Recently these airline petitioned] the Supreme Court to hear their case that the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government's tax burdens.
The government’s total price rule forbids the airlines from calling attention to the tax component of the price of a ticket by listing the price the airline charges and then the tax component with equal prominence. The rule mandates that any listing of the tax portion of a ticket’s price “not be displayed prominently and be presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.” The government is trying to prevent people from clearly seeing the burdens of government.
* ONE MORE TIME...
The government is trying to prevent people from clearly seeing the burdens of government.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.
(*NOD*)
These three low-cost carriers compete for the most price-conscious travelers, and they want to tell those travelers which portion of a ticket’s cost the airlines control. The government, far from regulating to prevent customer confusion, is trying to prevent customers from understanding the taxes and fees that comprise approximately 20% of the average airline ticket.
* YEP...
Timothy Sandefur, of the public-interest, limited-government Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that decades ago the Supreme Court, without justification in the Constitution’s text, structure or history, created a binary First Amendment. So today the amendment gives different degrees of protection to two kinds of speech — strong protection to political speech, minimal protection to commercial speech. The Court has never clearly defined the latter, but has suggested that commercial speech proposes a commercial transaction between the speaker and the audience. [But] the Court has [also] held that freedom of commercial speech cannot be abridged if the speech is neither false nor deceptive and if it is not related to an illegal activity.
Note two things: 1) The airlines’ speech the government is regulating with the total price rule would be protected even if it were just commercial speech; 2) it actually is political speech - it calls its audience’s attention to, and invites disapproval of, government policy.
(*TWO THUMBS UP*)
In permitting the government’s regulation of this speech, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held, 2 to 1, that the total price rule “does not prohibit airlines from saying anything; it just requires them to disclose the total, final price and to make it the most prominent figure in their advertisements.” But this ignores the government’s obvious purpose of preventing the airlines from drawing attention to the government’s exactions.
In their brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. Circuit’s decision, the airlines noted that the government is forbidding them to do what virtually every American industry does — advertise the pre-tax price of their products. Shirts and shoes and salamis are sold with the pre-tax sum on the price tag.
D.C. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, dissenting from the court’s permission of this unauthorized and indefensible regulation, asked: How can the government’s supposed interest in consumers having “accurate” information be served by requiring “significantly smaller” typefaces for taxes and fees that make up a larger share of the prices of the low-cost airlines than of the older airlines?
Randolph said [quite rightly that] the government’s purpose is “to control and to muffle speakers who are critical of the government.”
Government is violating one of the natural rights that the Founders said government is “instituted” (the Declaration’s word) to protect. This episode confirms conservatism’s premise that today’s government is guilty of shabby behavior until proven innocent.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/10962532-us-disability-beneficiaries-exceed-population-greece
The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,962,532 million in April, which exceeds the 10,815,197 people who live in the nation of Greece.
* MAKES YA PROUD...
As the overall number of American workers collecting disability has increased, the ratio of full-time workers to disability-collecting workers has decreased.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
In December 1968, 1,295,428 American workers collected disability and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 65,630,000 worked full-time. Thus, there were about 51 full-time workers for each worker collecting disability.
* DECEMBER 1968 - 51 FULL-TIME WORKERS SUPPORTING EACH DISABILITY BENEFICIARY.
In April 2013, with a record 8,865,586 American workers collecting disability and 116,053,000 working full-time, there were only 13 Americans working full-time for each worker on disability.
* NOW... 13 AMERICANS WORKING FULL-TIME FOR EACH WORKER ON DISABILITY.
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