Glenn Beck’s Emotional Monologue on the Horrific Story He Says Is Being Swept Under the Rug Because It Doesn’t Further an ‘Agenda’
Glenn Beck confronted society’s
morality on his television program Thursday evening, shocked and
disgusted at the events of recent weeks.
He primarily focused on the horrific report of a 13-year-old girl who was allegedly gang raped by up to ten men in Austin, TX,
before being sexually assaulted by another man after being dropped off
with “nowhere to go.” Doctors said their findings were consistent with
the allegations.
“Where is the outrage? Where’s Al
Sharpton?” Beck said, pausing briefly with emotion. “Where’s Barack
Obama? Shouldn’t the president give a speech saying something like,
‘This girl could have been my daughter, after all my daughter is just
turning 14?’ …How about speeches on the dangers of letting illegals
live in the shadows? How about the speeches of let’s just be good to each other? Where are the marches?”
President Barack Obama spoke several
times about 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot by George Zimmerman
in what a jury recently ruled was self defense. The president said
Martin could’ve been his son, or even could’ve been him 35 years ago.
The issue aroused sustained national fury over the death of the
17-year-old.
But Beck said the 13-year-old girl should expect no such support.
“See, nobody really actually
cares about people anymore,” Beck said. “It’s really only about
politics. It’s not about Trayvon Martin. They had to make him look like
a little 13-year-old-boy…Why? Because it would help them get elected,
or re-elected, or get them to cause trouble or get more trouble. But see
this little 13-year-old-girl, you don’t have to doctor a picture of
her…she is 13.”
He continued: “We are witnessing a
society that is completely detached, and we are detached because we have
an agenda. Why didn’t we tell the story of the 13-year-old-girl?
Because of an agenda. The second rapist was black, the others were
illegal immigrants, so we don’t tell that story. That’s not a good
story, that doesn’t help us with our agenda…”
“Does anything even matter anymore?
Does the truth matter? Is there such a thing as right and wrong? I don’t
even recognize us anymore,” Beck said with disgust.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/25/glenn-becks-emotional-monologue-about-the-horrific-story-being-swept-under-the-rug-because-it-doesnt-further-an-agenda/
The Lincoln Memorial… vandalized?!
…Who does that?The Lincoln Memorial was shut down Friday morning after unknown vandals splashed the statue of the nation’s 16th president, and the marble floor around it, with green paint, U.S. Park Police said.
Police are reviewing surveillance footage from the popular tourist attraction on the west end of the Mall, but so far have released no information about who may have been responsible.
Authorities believe the vandalism happened around 1:30 a.m. The National Park Service will work to clean up the paint, police said, and the memorial will be closed to the public until cleanup is complete.
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/07/26/the-lincoln-memorial-vandalized/
Mother of Benghazi victim asks how her son's death could be considered 'phony'?
The latest White House storytelling has it that all the scandals plauging the Obama administration are "phony." The president said so. So did his press secretary Jay Carney.But Patricia Smith, mother of slain Benghazi victim Sean Smith, begs to differ.
Daily Caller:
The mother of a Benghazi victim is furious about the new White House strategy of calling the terrorist attack and many other scandals plaguing the Obama administration "fake" or "phony."
Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, who was slain in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack, lashed out on "Your World" on the Fox News Channel about that terminology.
President Obama has never revealed what, if anything, he was doing while workers at the Benghazi embassy were urgently requesting support, nor has the administration explained why no forces were sent to protect the embassy. The administration also denied the attack was a terrorist incident, claiming it was a spontaneous protest against an obscure YouTube trailer for a film that may or may not exist.
"I don't believe him anymore," Smith said. "He's wrong. My son is dead. How could that be phony?"
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/mother_of_benghazi_victim_asks_how_her_sons_death_could_be_considered_phony.html#ixzz2aA6x1P8b
Obama Economy Emphasis Is all Talk
We have a president who loves to give campaign speeches to adoring crowds, but who doesn't seem to have much interest in governing.That was apparent Wednesday, when Barack Obama delivered the first of several promised "pivot to the economy" speeches at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., where he spoke eight years ago as a newly elected U.S. senator.
The hour-long speech started off with some characteristic self-referencing -- he didn't have gray hair then, he noted, or a motorcade -- and ended with a quotation from Galesburg native Carl Sandburg.
But in between there was not much in the way of serious public policy. Nothing much that seems likely to speed up the nation's sluggish economic growth or to increase the lowest-in-three-decades labor force participation.
Obama called for increasing the minimum wage. That always tests well in polls. But in real life it tends not to create but to destroy jobs, especially for young people with few skills and little work experience.
He also called for job retraining, a Community College to Career Initiative. Unfortunately, studies have shown for years that government job training programs aren't very effective.
In the meantime, the administration and congressional Democrats have been launching attacks on for-profit higher education firms, many of which do a better job of equipping young people for the job market.
Obama mentioned in passing his administration's efforts to connect 99 percent of students to high-speed Internet. But it's not a lack of connectivity that is holding the economy back.
The president said more about his proposal for universal pre-school education. But the administration's own studies have shown that the four-decades-old Head Start program produces little in the way of lasting educational gains.
This looks more like an expensive attempt to create more jobs for teacher union members -- and more union-dues money to help elect Democratic politicians -- than a serious attempt to stimulate the economy.
Amazingly, Obama called for more money to create jobs in wind and solar energy. No mention was made of the hundreds of millions in loan guarantees lavished on the now bankrupt Solyndra and A123 Systems.
To that list he added natural gas. But the boom in natural gas has occurred more despite, not because of administration policies.
More serious perhaps was his call for more investment in infrastructure, and for once Obama did not tout his ludicrously expensive plans for high-speed passenger rail -- a technology half a century old and liable to be rendered obsolete by self-driving cars.
But neither his administration nor Congress has been able to come up with financing to supplement the gasoline tax, which no longer provides sufficient revenue for road-building.
Obama noted that Atlantic ports are not prepared to handle the supertankers that will be coming through the widened Panama Canal in 2015. What has his administration been doing about that?
Infrastructure was not the only policy on which the president provided slogans rather than specifics. He called for expansion of tax-free savings programs as part of tax reform. But has the administration made any serious effort to engage with the tax-writing committee chairmen on the subject?
Similarly, he decried high earners' "generous tax incentives to save" -- whatever those may be. But any hope of increasing revenues from high earners depends on a Democratic takeover of the House next year.
Obama called for giving every homeowner a chance to refinance their mortgages, something that many have done, although administration programs to do so have helped far fewer than predicted.
And, ominously, he added, "I'm also acting on my own to cut red tape for responsible families who want to get a mortgage, but the bank says no." But didn't granting mortgages to non-creditworthy borrowers trigger the collapse of the housing market?
Inevitably, Obama talked about the Affordable Care Act and predicted gamely that people will be able to "comparison shop in an online marketplace, just like you would for TVs or plane tickets," even as fellow Democrats are predicting a train wreck.
But Obamacare is, as recent polling suggests, an increasingly hard sell. Voters seem to have gotten the idea that it's causing businesses not to hire or to cut back workers' hours.
The problem Obama faces on this latest pivot to the economy is that most voters believe his policies have retarded rather than stimulated economic growth and job creation. This speech is not likely to change their minds.
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2013/07/26/obama-economy-emphasis-is-all-talk-n1649038/page/full
Obama’s Crony Appointments
A failed celebr-ambassador returns to Washington.
By Michelle MalkinWelcome to another installment of No Obama Bundler Left Behind. This chapter stars an elite Hollywood fundraiser who scored a plum diplomatic appointment, slacked off on the job and left her public office in disgrace, and then rebounded from failure as a new Obamacare promoter. Nice crony “work” if you can get it.
This failed celebr-ambassador is Nicole Avant. Her father, Clarence Avant, is a prominent Democratic activist and music executive. Her husband, Ted Sarandos, is the chief content officer at Netflix. Her godfather is music legend Quincy Jones. On Monday, Avant turned up at an Obama administration confab with pop stars (Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo), comedy stars (Amy Poehler, Kal Penn, Aisha Tyler) and other assorted Beautiful People (public relations teams for Oprah Winfrey and Alicia Keys). The liberal glam squad members all have agreed to spread Obamacare propaganda to the masses.
Avant, billed as an “Obama administration veteran” by The Hollywood Reporter, represented “industry” at the Ministry of Health Care Misinformation meeting this week. The Wrap, another Hollywood gossip outlet, describes Avant as having been “tasked with helping boost Obama’s relationship with Hollywood.”
But what exactly has this “veteran” accomplished? What are her qualifications? How has she used taxpayer dollars, and what exactly is her “industry”?
By all appearances, the industry of Nicole Avant is Nicole Avant. The Beverly Hills socialite and “power player” has appeared in highbrow magazines like “Uptown” with glossy photo spreads of her 1-percenter mansion — designed, we must all be made aware, by Max Azria. Avant’s personal website describes her as a “businesswoman,” but her biography mentions no actual business. Instead, Avant exults from a privileged 90210 childhood attending “elite soirees, charitable events and political fundraisers.”
Avant’s official biography includes the following anecdote: “One time, when I was in grade school, I told my teacher that Gov. Jerry Brown of California had been over. She responded in disbelief, asking, ‘What was the governor doing at your house?’ Avant replied, ‘Just talking with my dad.’”
And that brings us to Avant’s “qualifications.” As a member of Obama’s 2008 Los Angeles fundraising team, Avant used her family connections to help drum up some $21 million in campaign cash. She and her husband drummed up at least $500,000 for the Obama campaign during the last election cycle. First lady Michelle Obama recently gushed that Avant was a “dear friend” and “pretty phenomenal woman.”
Money can buy love. And ambassadorships. In the fall of 2009, Avant was appointed ambassador to the Bahamas. The State Department inspector general, alas, didn’t have the same warm, tingly feelings for Avant that the Obamas do. The IG’s scathing report blasted her jet-setting tenure, which the watchdog described as “an extended period of dysfunctional leadership and mismanagement.” Avant, true to the Obama way, blamed problems “inherited” from the previous administration.
But Avant, and Avant alone, was responsible for her chronic absenteeism. She was gone from the office 276 days between September 2009 and November 2011. The IG concluded bluntly: “Her extensive travel out of country and preference to work from the ambassador’s residence for a significant portion of the workday contributed to a perception of indifference. … The frequent absences of the ambassador contributed to poor mission management.”
And it was Avant’s neglect of basic office maintenance and core mission work, not George W. Bush’s, that led the IG to conclude that the post had produced “little political reporting or analysis on international crime, drug smuggling and illegal migration or on prevention of terrorism” under her reign. Avant chose instead to tout her “success” in hosting former basketball star and fellow Obama booster Magic Johnson on the islands to promote “business development.”
It’s more political patronage as usual in the era of Hope and Change. Remember when Obama the candidate once inveighed: “We need a president who will look out for the interests of hardworking families, not just their big campaign donors and corporate allies.” Or when he pontificated: “It is no coincidence that the best bundlers are often granted the greatest access, and access is power in Washington.” As I’ve chronicled throughout Obama’s tenure in my columns and in “Culture of Corruption,” Avant is the rule, not the exception among his class of incompetent, feather-lining bundler appointees.
No doubt the complainer in chief will dismiss any criticism of his celebr-ambassadorships-for-sale embarrassments as more “phony scandals.” But the phoniest phony of them all doth protest too much.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354488/obamas-crony-appointments-michelle-malkin
DHS Nominee May Have Approved Visas for Applicants Who Posed Security Threat
New information has been released regarding an investigation into Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas’ role in helping a company secure international investor visas for foreign investors.
Mayorkas, who is currently the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being federally investigated for assisting with applications for the agency’s EB-5 visa program, which allows foreign nationals to get a visa if they invest $500,000 to $1 million in a project or business that provides U.S. jobs.
The company in question is Gulf Coast Funds Management, a company run by Anthony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, that also happens to be the sister company of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) released documents yesterday obtained from whistleblowers that show that Mayorkas was alerted by an internal USCIS e-mail that all 21 of GreenTech’s pending EB-5 visa applications were on hold for “fraud/national security.”
Sen. Grassley raised major concerns that Mayorkas was expediting approval of visas for applicants that he knew could be the cause of a serious security threat.
“I’ve received information and documents from whistleblowers over the last few days, which demonstrate that the director was directly involved in expediting EB-5 applications before the proper security checks,” said Grassley. “The FBI has expressed serious national security concerns with foreign investors involved in some of the EB-5 projects that had moved forward. We need to be sure that the EB-5 program is not only creating economic stimulus and jobs, but that the nation’s security isn’t at risk.”
The new information comes at a bad time for Mayorkas, who is having his nomination hearing to be deputy secretary of DHS Thursday.
http://freebeacon.com/dhs-nominee-may-have-approved-visas-for-applicants-who-posed-security-threat/
Detroit bankruptcy not stopping Michigan from spending $284 mil on sports arena
How big a hockey fan is Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder? So big he is putting $284 million into a new Detroit Red Wings arena despite the city’s July 18 bankruptcy filing.Indeed, Snyder — who calls himself “one tough nerd” — argues that this is exactly what the city needs, according to the Associated Press. The new 18,000-seat venue will bring jobs and economic development, Snyder said in an announcement Thursday.
“This is part of investing in Detroit’s future. That’s the message we need to get across. … As we stabilize the city government’s finances, as we address those issues and improve services, Detroit moves from a place where people might have had a negative impression to being a place that will be recognized across the world as a place of great value and a place to invest,” Snyder said.
The project is public/private partnership under the auspices of the Michigan Strategic Fund Board, a state agency. About 60 percent of the arena’s $450 million arena’s cost will come from tax revenues.
Another $200 million – most of it private funds — is planned for rebuilding adjacent neighborhoods around the project. The state will own it, while Redwing owner Mike Ilitch will have an exclusive lease and naming rights.
As the Washington Examiner’s Shikha Dalmia has noted, though, there is a long history of state and local elected officials backing such economic development projects — none of which have arrested Detroit’s decline:
Every mayor for the last two decades has tried to jump-start Detroit by reviving its crumbling downtown. In the 1990s, Dennis Archer erected stadiums and casinos. His successor, Kwame Kilpatrick (now serving time on federal extortion and racketeering charges) hosted mega-events.
The current mayor, Dave Bing, has been too bogged down in Detroit’s fiscal quagmire to propose anything grand. But a group of rich investors led by Dan Gilbert, owner of Quicken Loans, is spearheading a massive effort to bring businesses, hotels and residents into the city.
Gilbert has pumped close to $1 billion to relocate his headquarters in Detroit and scoop up real estate for stores, hotels and apartment buildings. Whole Foods recently followed suit as did Moosejaw, a retailer for outdoor apparel.
But these ventures have been seduced by massive subsidies. Whole Foods’ local partner received $5.8 million in state and local grants as well as sizable tax credits. Still, the business editor of Forbes declared two years ago that, thanks to Gilbert, green shoots were beginning to sprout in Detroit.
Since then, however, things have only gotten worse as more residents have fled and city services have deteriorated. Why? Because these shoots were Astroturf, not a spontaneous response to actual need. Worse, they were a wealth transfer from the average taxpayers to the rich who patronize these high-end stores.http://washingtonexaminer.com/detroit-bankruptcy-not-stopping-michigan-from-spending-284-mil-on-sports-arena/article/2533512
Why doesn’t GM bailout Detroit?
According to GM CEO Dan Akerson, “generous” American taxpayers who bailed out GM wouldn’t care if they lost a couple billion dollars.”We are in the midst of transforming an iconic American company so 20 and 30 years from now (taxpayers) will look at this company and they’ll say, ‘Absolutely it was the right thing to do,’ ” Akerson said. ”And it shouldn’t be measured on did it sell for $43 or $53 (a share) or did they lose a couple billion dollars?”But really it’s only the U.S. Treasury that’s losing money right now, not GM. According to the AP, the stock would need to triple in value for Treasury to break even:
General Motors stock would have to sell for $95.51 per share for the U.S. government to break even on bailing out the company, according to a government watchdog’s report released Wednesday…. Since emerging from bankruptcy, the restructured company has piled up $17.2 billion in profits…. The government is still $18.1 billion in the hole on the $49.5 billion bailout, including interest and dividends, according to the report.One of Dan Akerson’s favorite topics in public comments is GM’s “fortress balance sheet.”
June 13, 2013:
They see a company with a fortress balance sheet that allows it to weather economic storms while keeping capital investment strong.December 19, 2012:
Some of the lessons were financial, including how important it is to have a fortress balance sheet and a low break-even point. We have them today and we will protect them fiercely because they make it possible for us to reinvest about $8 billion in the business every year regardless of the economic cycle.June 7, 2011:
Creating a fortress balance sheet, giving us freedom to operate . . . $36.5B of available liquidity with only $5B of debt on March 31.Google can help you find plenty more references, but clearly GM is sitting on piles of cash while taxpayers suffer.
Now that Detroit is $20 billion in the red, Government Motors is nowhere to be found. But Akerson also once said GM and the UAW have a “sacred obligation” to repay the favor that the American taxpayers did for them in the bankruptcy and bailout:
“We have a sacred obligation, all of us, to deliver on the promise and the helping hand that the American public extended to this company in its hour of need,” said GM CEO Dan Akerson, in a ceremony at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramk plant.GM and Akerson could take the $16 billion tax gift that Obama gave them, and help save Detroit.
Congress limited tax-loss carry forwards because it concluded they were being abused to unfairly erase tax liability. If the Administration thinks that’s bad tax policy, it ought to propose changing the rule for all companies, not merely for those it owns. Instead, it has handed a $16 billion tax gift to GM that isn’t available to Ford or other auto makers that didn’t take bailout cash. It’s one more example of the way the political class has stacked the deck in favor of Government Motors.Especially since the City of Detroit’s latest revenue report cites the tax gift GM received as a major factor in its own inability to collect revenues:
The management from the Income Tax Division predicted that the corporate income tax revenue will not be significantly increased in 2012-2013 due to net profit loss carry forward from previous years for some big companies like General Motors.But no, Dan Akerson runs around the country bragging about GM’s “fortress balance sheet,” while … wait for it …. also bragging about how much money they’re investing in jobs in China:
GM recently announced at the Shanghai Auto Show that it would spend roughly $11 billion on facilities in China by 2016 – creating almost 6,000 new jobs. To further twist the knife, according to AutoNews.com, the number of GM workers employed in North America has fallen by 76,000 since 2005…. Americans “could very well” soon find Chinese-made GM cars on showroom floors, and that “[there] is no reason why we can’t be exporting to the [United] States.”In other words, GM isn’t “paying its fair share” and has done just about everything Obama said it would if Romney had won the election. The City of Detroit has been left holding the bag. So why isn’t Obama upset about any of it? (Hint: he already appeased the UAW, and doesn’t have to face another election.) And anyway, why should GM help Detroit?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/26/why-doesnt-gm-bailout-detroit/
Stein’s Law
By Charles KrauthammerIf there’s an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Detroit, for example, can no longer go on borrowing, spending, raising taxes and dangerously cutting such essential services as street lighting and police protection. So it stops. It goes bust.
Cause of death? Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there’s been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post-World War II auto boom.
Corruption of the criminal sort was legendary. The former mayor currently serving time engaged in a breathtaking range of fraud, extortion and racketeering. And he didn’t act alone. The legal corruption was the cozy symbiosis of Democratic politicians and powerful unions, especially the public-sector unions that gave money to elect the politicians who negotiated their contracts — with wildly unsustainablehealth and pension benefits.
When our great industrial competitors were digging out from the rubble of World War II, Detroit’s automakers ruled the world. Their imagined sense of inherent superiority bred complacency. Management grew increasingly bureaucratic and inflexible. Unions felt entitled to the extraordinary wages, benefits and work rules they’d bargained for in the fat years. In time, they all found themselves being overtaken by more efficient, more adaptable, more hungry foreign producers.
The market ultimately forced the car companies into reform, restructuring, the occasional bankruptcy and eventual recovery. The city of Detroit, however, lacking market constraints, just kept overspending — $100 million annually since 2008. The city now has about $19 billion in obligations it has no chance of meeting. So much city revenue has had to be diverted to creditors and pensioners that there is practically nothing left to run the city.Forty percent of the streetlights don’t work, two-thirds of the parks are shut down and emergency police response time averages nearly an hour — if it ever comes at all.
Bankruptcy, which will radically cut payments to bondholders and retirees, is the only chance to start over. Yet, if a Detroit bankruptcy succeeds, other cities will be tempted to follow suit. Dozens of other large urban areas have similarly massive pension and debt obligations, with commensurately denuded services and exorbitant taxes — leading to a vicious cycle of depopulation that makes everything worse. Detroit has lost more than 60 percent of its population since 1950.
The moral hazard increases if the federal government steps in to help. The Obama administration is therefore firmly opposed to any “bailout,” recognizing both the political toxicity of the word and the fiscal consequences of a Detroit precedent that invites other cities to line up with a tin cup. Washington cannot afford a nationwide federal bailout of insolvent cities.
However, under pressure from the public-sector unions, whose retirees will necessarily be victimized, the administration will likely offer “assistance” — which implies whatever kind of non-cash payments, indirect funds from other ongoing federal programs and enterprise-zone tax subsidies that it can get away with.
But Detroit is an object lesson not just for other cities. Not even the almighty federal government is immune to Stein’s Law. Reactionary liberalism simply cannot countenance serious reform of the iconic social welfare programs of the 20th century. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pledged to their inviolability. President Obama will occasionally admit that, for example, Medicare cannot go on as is, but then reverts to crude demagoguery when Republicans propose a structural reform, such as premium support for Medicare or something as obvious as raising the retirement age to match increasing longevity.
On the contrary. Obama added one enormous new entitlement (Obamacare) and, in hislast State of the Union address, proposed yet another (universal preschool).
None of this is inevitable. In Wisconsin, Republicans showed that they recognize the perils of unconstrained government growth and will take on the unchecked power of government unions. Democratic Detroit, on the other hand, has for 50 years conducted a contrary experiment in myopia and the most imprudent passivity.
It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein’s Law and yell, “Stop.” You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/26/steins-law/
Can Obamacare Get the Young Blood It Needs to Live?
What would it take to get you to enroll in Obamacare? A folksy song? A celebrity endorsement? An ad in a porta-potty?
Taxpayer money may be used for all of those things and more as October 1—the date when the health insurance exchanges are supposed to open—approaches.
But all the campaigns and millions of dollars in advertising may not be enough, especially for the demographic Obamacare so desperately needs: young people.
Why Obamacare NEEDS Young People
The Obama Administration estimates that of the projected 7 million exchange enrollees next year, 2.7 million need to be young adults to make the premiums work. If young people don't show up for Obamacare, premiums for everyone else in the exchanges will skyrocket—which, of course, dramatically increases the cost for taxpayers.
As Heritage has pointed out, Obamacare's additional health benefits are not free: You will pay for them through higher premiums or lower wages. As employers' share of health care costs rises, workers' wages decrease. The added costs will be passed on one way or another.
Young adults are hit with increased costs from health benefits they must purchase but may not use. And they have the added disadvantage of paying artificially higher premiums because Obamacare's rules make them do so. This Obamacare rule, called community rating, charges younger, healthier people to help offset the higher costs of insuring older and sicker people. In addition, the "guaranteed issue" rule lets you wait until you're sick to buy coverage and doesn't allow insurers to charge you more for procrastinating—giving healthier people an incentive to jump in only when they need care.
Why Obamacare's Logic Falls Apart
So Obamacare needs young people to enroll to help everyone's premium costs. But will they?
This week, CNN asked its intern, a college senior, what she's likely to do when she's forced by the law to buy health coverage.
"Will you buy health insurance under Obamacare, and are your friends interested in doing that?" the anchor asked. The intern responded, "Well I must say, as influential as [singer] Alicia Keys is, I must say, my bank account is not on fire, so I would probably pass on paying for health insurance because the fine would be cheaper for me."
That's right—the fine for not buying health coverage will likely be lower for many than the price of the coverage. She's just doing the math. It is likely that many rational individuals will have this response when they look at their bank accounts and then at Obamacare's expensive coverage.
This is just another of the many reasons Obamacare fails the common-sense test. Congress shouldn't throw any of our tax dollars after this debacle.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/26/morning-bell-can-obamacare-get-the-young-blood-it-needs-to-live/?roi=echo3-16376889036-13873642-16feda0765a8fb7d8346ba8465a779f5&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Common Core Teaches Community Organizing for the Collective
Do we still teach in public schools our common culture, common identity, common true history, or values such as hard work, charity, morals, virtue, and the rule of law? With the exception of home schooling and a few private schools, the answer is no. We do teach secular education, “green” environmentalism, the new religion of Mother Earth, and now Common Core Education.
Although touted as a means to improve education standards, the Brookings Institution said, “The empirical evidence suggests that the Common Core will have little effect on American students’ achievement. The nation will have to look elsewhere for ways to improve its schools.”
The Department of Education paid two Washington, D.C., organizations, the National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices and The Council of Chief State School Officers, to come up with the Common Core national standards. (Pioneer Institute)
According to Lance Izumi, author of Obama’s Education Takeover, the President “strong-armed the states into adopting these Common Core standards through a number of devices, principally through the Race to the Top competition through federal grants.”
The Race to the Top $4 billion “historic” grant scheme was awarded to states “leading coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform.” The grant was authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The Department of Education at the federal and state levels
had developed many experimental programs that promised to be breakthroughs in
education but were discarded later as giant wastes of time and taxpayer dollars
while the achievement levels had continuously declined.
Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, described Core Standards as an important tool for international competitiveness, access to high quality education, and a way to prepare “all students for college, work and citizenship. These standards are an important foundation for our collective work.” I emphasized “collective” because that is what Common Core is about, indoctrination into the “collective” mindset.
In spite of the fact that we have different brains, IQs, learning styles, and God-given talents, Common Core standards insist that “all children can and should learn to high achievement standards based on a “universal design for learning.” This would be achieved by having different sets of standards based on race, ethnic background, socio-economic background, and disability, a type of “separate and unequal” education. All students will receive the same diploma but for “unequal” work in mathematics and reading and for “unequal” achievement.
Furthermore, a video surfaced that shows that wrong answers in math are acceptable under Common Core standards as long as students can explain how they got the wrong answer and feel good about it.
The states who adopted the Common Core Standards were excused from the detested No Child Left Behind Act which set the standards too high for low achievers and low motivators who are not really interested in education. It is criminal and sad to see semi-literate individuals receive diplomas when they cannot actually read or write, cursive or otherwise, very well and are glorified by the MSM for speaking Ebonics.
“Beginning this fall, Alabama public schools will be under a new state-created academic accountability system that sets different goals for students in math and reading, based on their race, economic status, ability to speak English and disabilities.” (Tuscaloosa News)
The English Arts Curriculum textbooks used in Utah, called “Voices, Literature and Writing,” emphasize the Democracy Plan, preparing students for community organizing. The German poet Goethe, a classical liberal, warned us that democracy is incompatible with liberty. He said, “Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time are psychopaths.” Even Hans Hermann Hoppe of the Ludwig von Mises Institute said, “Political centralization would lead to the destruction of the culture.”
The Utahans Against Common Core has mounted an opposition. A short video shows the first grade textbook, Voices, Literature, and Writing, that teaches nothing about literature or writing. Instead, “In the Voices of Democracy theme, students use their voices to advocate solutions to social problems that they care deeply about. They are engaged in learning the following theme-related social knowledge and skills: social role models, social advocacy, and respect for each other. They learn to develop a Democracy Plan in which they develop ways to help people in need.” My six-year olds thought about recess and play, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Is this what first graders do now, they think about ways to organize people in their communities to fix social problems? This is community organizing; this is communism, not literature and writing.
In the same series of books, educators are directed to teach first graders about emotional words of anger and fear in order to accomplish their social justice goals. The workbook gives the following example, “My mom_____ (tells) (nags) me to clean my room.” Students are supposed to choose “nags” because it is an emotional word of anger. If a student chooses “tells,” the answer is incorrect. Students are taught about feelings instead of logical thinking and parents are marginalized as some annoying individuals who nag their children. Would the collectivist village take over the rearing of our children?
Homework activities include practicing being upset and angry because “feelings cause people to act.” Is there any wonder that we have the Occupy Wall Street mobs, angry mobs, flash mobs, and people talking over each other? Liberals are taught to be ruled by feelings and not by logic.
Are these curriculum materials limited to first grade? No, all grades have the same theme, the Democracy Plan. By third grade teachers must “measure attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions,” making specific notes on the Student Observation Form whether “growth and change in individual student’s behavior and attitudes is observed. One rubric asks, “Does the student use the plural “we” and “our” to advocate ways to solve social problems?” In other words, I and my, individualism, are frowned upon. Behavior and attitudes are measured in each grade and teacher check marks are made for each student under the rubrics, Beginning, Learning, Proficiency, or Mastery.
I remember receiving pass or fail grades under communism for good or bad behavior at the end of each semester. Parents were called in, humiliated and criticized in front of everybody if their child had a bad grade in behavior. Both parents and child had to undergo an attitude adjustment in line with the communist propaganda.
According to Michelle Malkin, the 2009 stimulus package contained a State Fiscal Stabilization Fund offered to states for a “longitudinal data system (LDS) to collect data on public school students” such as health, family income, religion, and homework.
The Blaze described a 44-page Department of Education report which indicated the possibility of implementing through Common Core monitoring techniques such as “functional MRIs” (scanning and mapping a child’s brain function), “using cameras to judge facial expressions, electronic seats that determine posture, pressure-sensitive computer mouse, and a biometric wrist wrap.”
Is this what we are trying to do with Common Core standards? Force every student into a government-dictated and enforced mold, dumbing down the curriculum so much that everyone appears equally intelligent, equally capable, equally trained, equally able? The focus will no longer be education, the classics, language, government, mathematics, science, history, chemistry and individual achievement in those fields but social justice, activism, and community organizing for the socialist collective?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56789
The Ephialtes Establishment in the Republican Party
I can see how the GOP loses in November of 2014. The establishment and base have moved so far apart the base is about ready to go third party or sit at home. If the GOP does not make a stand against Obamacare, they will not see the energy they need to effectively compete in 2014.Let me explain what is happening and what will happen.
Karl Rove’s Crossroads group commissioned a poll by North Star Opinion Research. The poll found most Americans do not want the GOP to block “health care reform.” That’s right, Crossroads repeatedly called Obamacare “the healthcare reform law” and was shocked to find people oppose stopping reform. Go figure.
But that poll has been circulated to Republican leaders and they have soiled themselves over it. That is why Mitch McConnell will not support Mike Lee’s strategy to draw a line in the sand against funding Obamacare. That is why John Cornyn withdrew his name from Mike Lee’s letter. That is why Richard Burr of North Carolina calls defunding Obamacare “stupid.”
These men are about power, not principle. They’ve chosen to let polls lead them instead of leading people.
Already, Byron York is out with a piece saying the GOP will not defund Obamacare. Next we will most likely see Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal write one of her semi-regular hit pieces on Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the conservatives who want to stand their ground.
Then we will see Jenn Rubin begin another hyperbole laden attack on Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz.
The actual editorial page of the Wall Street Journal will chime in to yet again attack the Hobbits for daring to stand on principles. The Democrats will then dangle the shiny object of the Keystone Pipeline before the GOP. Like dogs scrambling for scraps at the table, the GOP will take it and their editorial friends will hail this as a grand bargain worth taking. Pay no attention to Obamacare being implemented.
We have seen this before. The GOP leadership will cave and dazzle the base with shiny objects. They will then send out fundraising letters in courier type telling you to stand with them and send them money if you want Obamacare defunded.
Leonidas and three hundred Spartans held the pass at Thermopylae against overwhelming Persian odds until Ephialtes betrayed them and led the Persians on a path around. If the Republican Establishment were in Greece, they’d stand with Ephialtes. So desperate are they to regain power, the Republican Establishment will be led by those who promised President Romney and spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting the status quo.
http://www.redstate.com/2013/07/26/the-ephialtes-establishment-in-the-republican-party/
College Republicans Deemed Security Threat at Obama Speech
On Wednesday President Obama gave another speech on the economy at the University of Central Missouri. But apparently 10 college republicans wearing Tea Party t-shirts or other patriotic, Republican themed clothing were turned away from attending the event. The students who all held tickets to the event and had waited in line for 2 hours, were deemed a threat by security personnel at the front doors. Security made sure to explain it wasn’t about their politics, but about the President’s security. Really?!The students had protested some of the President’s policies on campus earlier in the day, but had put away their signs in order to attend the event. Security turned them away at the front doors of the recreation facility and told them to stay hundreds of yards away from the area.
“It just didn’t make any sense,” Courtney Scott, the State Treasurer of the College Republicans told The Fix. “A lot of us traveled several hours to watch the speech. We were very disappointed not to be able to attend.”
According to The Fix:
The students’ protest earlier in the day was a peaceful one, consisting of holding political speech signs and talking to passersby throughout the morning, Scott said. They were asked to protest at the “public speech area” on campus, not anywhere near the rec center. They were not allowed within eyesight or earshot of people who were waiting in line.
The Mizzou Republicans were among about sixty protesters, half of whom were college students, who had voiced concern Wednesday over Obama’s economic policies in the wake of the country’s ongoing recession.
Some of the signs called for capitalism, others illustrated discontent with Missouri’s 16 percent unemployment rate among college student youth, and the increasing share of national debt students are saddled with year by year.Hmmm. These kids really sound dangerous. Some 2,500 other people managed to get through security just fine, but the ones wearing Republican gear were turned away? Yeah, this seems a bit sketchy. Why is the President afraid of some college students disagreeing with his policy decisions? Maybe their impending graduation and the lack of jobs for them is making him worry about their approval?
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/heatherginsberg/2013/07/26/college-republicans-werent-allowed-at-obama-speech-n1649921
Report: Feds Demand Major Internet Companies Turn Over User Passwords
The federal government has demanded that major internet companies turn over users’ stored passwords, two sources told the respected tech website CNet.
So what exactly does this “escalation” — as CNet calls it — mean?
“If the government is able to determine
a person’s password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the
credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential
correspondence or even impersonate the user,” the report says.
“Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in
situations where passwords are reused.”
But it doesn’t end there. The
government is not only requesting the passwords, but its also asking for
algorithms and even security questions:
Some of the government orders demand not only a user’s password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.
According to the report’s sources, the
government has requested password information on numerous occasions.
Still, both sources said the companies fight them.
“We push back,” one said.
“There’s a lot of ‘over my dead body,’” said another.
Most of the big internet companies —
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo — declined to comment or give any specific
information regarding the allegations, but Yahoo did say, “”If we
receive a request from law enforcement for a user’s password, we deny
such requests on the grounds that they would allow overly broad access
to our users’ private information. If we are required to provide
information, we do so only in the strictest interpretation of what is
required by law.”
Still, CNet does offer some hope for
those who may be concerned about this new era of government
surveillance: it’s not guaranteed that if the government gets a stored
or encrypted password that they can crack it.
“Even if the National Security Agency
or the FBI successfully obtains an encrypted password, salt, and details
about the algorithm used, unearthing a user’s original password is
hardly guaranteed,” the report says. “The odds of success depend in
large part on two factors: the type of algorithm and the complexity of
the password.”
There is some advice, though, buried
deep in the report. Although the author doesn’t expressly say it, he
does note that longer passwords that contain odd characters are much
harder to crack — even with an algorithm:
One popular algorithm, used by Twitter and LinkedIn, is called bcrypt. A 2009 paper (PDF) by computer scientist Colin Percival estimated that it would cost a mere $4 to crack, in an average of one year, an 8-character bcrypt password composed only of letters. To do it in an average of one day, the hardware cost would jump to approximately $1,500.
But if a password of the same length included numbers, asterisks, punctuation marks, and other special characters, the cost-per-year leaps to $130,000. Increasing the length to any 10 characters, Percival estimated in 2009, brings the estimated cracking cost to a staggering $1.2 billion.
It almost makes you want to go back and read TheBlaze’s report on five ways to thwart the government from spying on you.
Read CNet’s full report for more.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/26/report-feds-demand-major-internet-companies-turn-over-user-passwords/
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