A Stranger to His Own Presidency: All Those Times Obama ‘Heard About It On the News’ in 59 Seconds

Washington Free Beacon came up with this great video showing all the times President Obama and his Press Secretary heard about any and all scandals involving the Obama administration ‘on the news.’
Let’s just say that Obama’s constant posturing as an outsider in his own presidency, instead of just taking responsibility and acting like a leader, is getting a bit predictable. Maybe he should try LinkedIn and get to know some of the people who are running his administration?

Drip: VA Scandal Whistleblowers Emerge in Two Additional Locations

By Guy Benson

As of yesterday's writing, the total was nine. Now it's up to eleven and counting, with new "isolated cases" in Florida and West Virginia expanding the scope of the scandal. CNN:

An audit team sent to the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida, discovered a list of patients needing follow-up appointments that was kept on paper instead of in the VA's electronic computer system. As a result, the VA's Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation and three members of the Gainesville VA's supervisory staff have been placed on paid leave, pending the outcome of an investigation, VA Sunshine Healthcare Network (VISN 8) spokeswoman Mary Kay Hollingsworth said Monday. The latest allegation comes as the Department of Veterans Affairs defends itself against claims of potentially deadly delays at other facilities nationwide.

Fox News:

A West Virginia doctor is coming forward with new allegations against the Department of Veterans Affairs, claiming that she too was told to put patients seeking treatment off for months on end -- and that at least two of them committed suicide. The claims add to the mounting controversy surrounding the VA, and allegations in several states that workers were concealing information about the long wait times veterans encountered. Dr. Margaret Moxness, who says she was employed at the Huntington VA Medical Center in Charleston, W.Va., from 2008 to 2010, told "Fox & Friends" on Monday that she was told to delay treatment even after she told supervisors they needed immediate care. She said at least two patients committed suicide while waiting for treatment between appointments..Moxness, a psychiatrist, says the VA administrators lost touch with patients and claims they were compassionless. “They don’t really experience what the doctors and nurses are experiencing, which is the suffering and the pain and the death,” she said...Moxness, who is currently writing a book on suicide, said her patients would be forced to wait “months” for a second visit. She said that “means they’re partially treated, which means they’re worse off than no treatment at all.” Moxness said when she complained to her supervisors that it was harmful to partially treat patients, they stopped talking to her. “I was functionally silenced,” she said.

That account is just about as heartbreaking and infuriating as the original Phoenix report. We've since learned from the whistleblower in Albuquerque that officials have been busy destroying evidence, which suggests that the extent of this fraud may never be fully known. A corroborating official at the same location said VA higher-ups in New Mexico responded to the sordid allegations in Arizona (which touched off a cascade of accusations from coast to coast) by shrugging that the Phoenix system was "better than us at playing the numbers game." That comment indicates that the practice of cooking the books to obscure accurate statistics was at least somewhat widespread. Anecdotal evidence that these abuses were systemic is still accumulating. The Obama transition team was warned about this issue in 2008, after the president-elect had called attention to problems at the VA during the campaign. Nearly identical formal admonitions surfaced again in 2010. Additional troubling symptoms and diagnoses in 2012 and 2013 fell on deaf ears, resulting in at least dozens of deaths. Meanwhile, the VA claims backlog wait time has tripled since 2008, despite a doubling of the budget over roughly the same time period. Media reaction to the administration's handling of these revelations has been overwhelmingly negative. National Journal's Ron Fournier seethes:

News quiz: President Obama and his communications team hope that Americans are: 1) Dumb; 2) Distracted; 3) Numb to government inefficiency; 4) All of above. Answer: 4, all of the above. That answer along with utter incompetence are the best explanations for why the White House thought it could get away with claiming that the departure of Veterans Affairs official Robert Petzel was a step toward accountability for its scandalous treatment of war veterans...For all of its 21st-century savvy in the field of campaign technology, the Obama White House has repeatedly proven that its communications philosophy is stuck in the 20th century. Before the Internet gave voters instantaneous access to information, including every public utterance of the president and his team, White House strategists could hope to wear out the truth: If you said a lie enough, people might believe it. It's harder to BS the public these days. White House press secretary Jay Carney still tries...In Obama's defense, he inherited a dysfunctional VA, and the agency has been overwhelmed by veterans returning from two wars he is winding down. But he pledged to reform the VA after blasting the Bush administration in 2007. Instead of getting better, the health care bureaucracy has worsened and become corrupted. Long delays are covered up and veterans are dying while awaiting care. It's a policy travesty magnified by an insulting public relations strategy.

Florida high school charging $200 for best seats at graduation

The latest must-see event had some parents doling out $200 for the best seats in the house.
But the top-shelf tickets weren’t for the latest boy band concert or even a sporting event. Rather, that was the price for front-row seats at a high school graduation.
According to the Bradenton Herald, Manatee High School charged parents $200 for prime seating at the May 31 graduation ceremony at the school's Hawkins Stadium. The tickets sold out in four hours.
The cash-strapped Florida high school also announced it will charge seniors a $20 fee to attend this year's graduation in hopes of offsetting the cost of the ceremony.
Don Sauer, the school's principal, told the paper that graduation fees are common at other high schools in the area, and if a student is unable to come up with the $20, the fee will be waived.
The school said this year's graduation will cost about $12,000. The school district usually gives the school about $3,000 to pay for the event, but this year the district will not be offering the money, the paper reported.
"I am not here to make money off my kids," Sauer said.

CNN President Jeff Zucker: ‘We’re Not Going To Be Shamed’ Into Covering Benghazi

By Brendan Bordalon
CNN President Jeff Zucker declared his network would “not going to be shamed” into covering Benghazi and other stories without “real news value

” at an awards dinner Monday.
Capital New York reports that Zucker explained CNN’s post-plane plans during an interview at the Deadline Club’s annual dinner on Monday night.
“I don’t think there’s any question about our commitment to breaking news, as evidenced by all the questions about the plane,” Zucker told The New York Times’ Bill Carter
“So we’re still there whenever that happens,” he continued, “but we’re going to supplement that with some different kind of storytelling.”
What kind of stories? “Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about,” he explained — though he lamented the fact that “when we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.”
But there are some stories Zucker is loathe to touch, like the House select committee on Benghazi scandal.
“We’re not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something,” he explained, taking a not-so-subtle shot at the Republican Party. “If it’s of real news value, we’ll cover it.”
For all his talk of “real news,” Zucker felt compelled to explain why his network

obsessively covered the missing airliner for two months despite possessing almost no new information.

Dem Congressman: ‘We’ve Proved That Communism Works’

By Brendan Bordelon
Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.”
Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security.
“Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” he said. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the Americas, which is Juarez. Right?”
“And two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico,” Garcia continued. “And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.”
“But that isn’t what we should be doing on the border,” he continued. “The kind of money we’ve poured into it, and we’re having diminishing returns.”

Great moments in tolerance: Howard Dean says Republicans aren’t Americans

By Ed Morrissey

....Howard Dean, who is still alive, told attendees at a fundraiser for a Democratic congressional hopeful that Republicans “are not American” and would “be more comfortable in the Ukraine or Russia.” He also screamed that GOP supporters should “stay away from our country.”

Dean, a former Vermont governor, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and a 2004 presidential candidate, made the statements last week in a fit of zeal as he was speaking in support of Colorado 6th Congressional District candidate Andrew Romanoff.

“This is a Republican party that has decided they like power so much that they think it’s okay to win by taking away the right to vote,” Dean told the gathered assembly of 750 people at Dora’s Mexican Restaurant in Aurora, Colo.

“They are not American,” he bellowed. “They could be more comfortable in the Ukraine or Russia but stay away from our country. This is based on the right to vote.”

Amusingly, Dean then lectured Republicans on tolerance and love:

“We have had enough of the extreme right wing,” Dean continued. “We have had enough of the politics of anger, we have had enough of the politics of hate, we have had enough of the politics of division,” Dean told the estimated 750 in attendance at Dora’s Mexican Restaurant.

Yes, let’s demonstrate tolerance and love by demanding the deportation of all Republicans to Russia. What a wonderful demonstration of open debate!

Leftists Cancel School Honors Night - Too 'Exclusive'

By Selwyn Duke
....Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Writes East Greenwich Patch:

Citing concerns about the "exclusive nature" of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition.

Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation.

The notice was sent to parents over the weekend in an e-mail signed by School Principal Alexis Meyer and Assistant Principal Dan Seger.

Certainly, we must battle feelings-bruising exclusivity.

Hollywood biggies caught on tape agreeing to hide Middle East funding for anti-fracking film

By Thomas Lifson

...Journalist James O'Keefe, known for his controversial undercover sting operations aimed usually at liberals -- is set to unveil at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday the first of a group of videos that he says will reveal hypocrisy among Hollywood environmentalists.

In the video, obtained exclusively by The Hollywood Reporter and embedded below, actors Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemingway are duped by a man named "Muhammad," who is looking to make an anti-fracking movie while hiding that its funding is coming from Middle Eastern oil interests.

Muhammad, accompanied by a man pretending to be an ad executive, seemingly has the two actors agreeing to participate in the scheme, even after he acknowledges that his goal is to keep America from becoming energy independent. The meeting, which appears to have been secretly recorded, took place a few months ago at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Project Veritas explains the premise:

In the investigation, an undercover journalist from Project Veritas posed as a member of a Middle Eastern oil dynasty and offered $9 million in funding to American filmmakers to fund an anti-fracking movie.  In video from a meeting with Ed Begley, Jr., Mariel Hemingway, and Josh Tickell, a Project Veritas investigator disguised as "Muhammed" offered $9 million for an anti-fracking film. "Muhammad" clearly states: "If Washington, D.C. continues fracking, America will be energy efficient, and then they won't need my oil anymore."  In the same conversation, Begley and Hemingway accept the funding and agree to hide the source of funds for the anti-fracking movie. Hemingway agreeing that those who will know the source of the funding are "only at this table."  Ed Begley, Jr. is an outspoken environmental activist and current Governor on the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (the organization that brings us the OSCARS every year.)  Mariel Hemingway is a Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated actress.  Josh Tickell is a Sundance Film Festival Winner and the director of environmental message movies "Fuel", "The Big Fix", and "PUMP".  Team Begley even submitted a video of Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo offering his unwavering support for the fictitious anti-fracking film project.  The meeting came about after a series of discussions with Josh and Rebecca Tickell. A Project Veritas journalist posed as an ad executive seeking to broker a deal for his client ("Muhammed") to fund an American-made anti-fracking film.  In a phone call to Tickell, the ad executive states: "My client's interest is to end American energy independence; your interest is to end fracking. And you guys understand that?"  Tickell's response: "Correct. Yes, super clear."  Tickell makes it clear on the tape that revealing the source of funding for an activist film can undermine its credibility. Tickell notes that the movie "Promised Land" undermined its own message because it was labeled as being funded by Image Nation Abu Dhabi. His advice: "So rather than putting that [the source of funding] up front, don't mention that."  In a follow-up call with Josh and Rebecca Tickell, Rebecca Tickell assures our investigator: "We would never tell about where the funding is coming from. That would be really awkward for us."  Josh Tickell: "We're confident that we can keep this zip locked, you know tight, air-tight forever. If we don't protect who is kind of funding this thing, if we have to disclose that or that becomes a necessary part of it, the whole enterprise will not work." 