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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Hicks’s Full Account of Night of Benghazi Attacks

Let's not let it slip into oblivion,

"The Official Government Party"

In the comments at NRO column by Michael Walsh Let’s You and Him Fight I found a good suggestion for framing the political divide that's really the one that is on my mind (don't know about the rest of the country).

A long time ago I suggested we start calling NBCABCCBSNYTETC state-run media. Rush starting using it shortly afterwards. So I have a suggestion for Mr. Walsh and other like-minded, true, conservatives: stop calling them Democrats and Republicans, and just refer to each of them as the Official Government Party...the OGP. i.e. "Government Party Senator John McCain said...." Put a (G) next to their name.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

76% of White Americans Feel Economically Insecure Under Obama

You're only economically insecure if you're not on welfare. 

Obama Approval in Egypt Fell Drastically Since Cairo Speech

Anyone who got their worldview from the editorial pages of the New York Times would assume that Obama’s Cairo speech was a transformative event that repaired America’s image in the Middle East.

The reality however is drastically different.

Obama’s approval level in Egypt in 2009 was at 42 percent. Not bad for the region or for the Muslim world. These days after the prolonged mess that his democracy initiative put Egypt through it’s at 26 percent.
Anyone who's watching Middle East is not surprised.  It's all that "Smart Diplomacy."

Hispanic win: ‘California can be Republican again’

Republicans take "safe" Democrat seat in the California Senate.  Can we get a majority of the Hispanic vote?

I'm not sure, but until the mid-20th Century the Black vote was solidly Republican.

Bob Beckel: The Worst Person in the World

I'm glad I read this column by Mark Tapson because it allows me to reference my racist car. You may recall that my car is racist because it locks its doors when I put it in gear as a black person walks by. For those who may not be familiar with my reference, Bob Beckel is kind enough to document it:

The anger in the black community was less about an awful verdict and Florida’s barbaric ‘stand your ground’ law than it was about the indiscriminate stopping and searching of blacks by police without cause, and subtle things like locking car doors when a black man crosses a street, or following black shoppers. There are many more examples.
Is poor old Bob Beckel the "Worst Person in the World?"   No, he's just a Liberal boob.

I'm a ‘Counterjihadist’

Bruce Bawer reminds us that the bien pensant types have always had contempt for their own country. Patriotism is gauche and opposition to Jihad, like opposition to Communism is, in their view, the province of the knuckle dragging peasants.

So with the new term "counterjihadist" they attempt to demonize people who believe that the 9/11 hijackers were followers of Islam rather than some kooky lunatic fringe.

But then these are strange times. On the evening of September 11, 2001, you might’ve expected responsible-minded, in-the-know public servants, journalists, and academic Islam experts throughout the Western world to start giving their respective publics a crash course (as it were) in Islamic jihad, so as to ensure that absolutely everybody understood exactly why those men wanted to take down those buildings. Instead, the President of the United States, the Karen Armstrongs and John Espositos, and virtually the entire Western media were quick to begin issuing fervent assurances that the terrorists were a fanatical minority who’d hijacked not only airplanes but Islam itself. Similar assurances followed hard upon every major terrorist act in the succeeding years. Those of us who knew better – who recognized that the terrorists were doing exactly what the Koran ordered them to do, and who believed that it was vitally important for everyone in the West to understand this – began to see our names yanked to a term that identified us not as people who were seeking to educate and inform but as antagonists of something to which every one of us, after all, should be opposed.

For those who blame George Bush, I totally agree. Keep in mind that the Bush family is part of the "respectable" country club and upper-class Republican establishment with a world view that closely matches the mainstream Democrats of the twentieth century. Remember the "thousand points of light" or a "kindler, gentler" Republican? That was a way of distancing themselves from the conservative Ronald Reagan who as definitely not the scion of privilege and who Bush Senior ran against in the Republican primary.

The stance of the chattering classes vis a vis Jihad and Islam closely parallels that of their attitude toward Communism.

Back in the day, anti-Communists had a similar problem. I’m old enough to recall the obloquy heaped upon them by bien pensant types – professors and high-toned journalists who considered active, vocal opposition to Communism the most lowbrow of pastimes. Yes, whereas today’s counter-counterjihadists act as if jihad is a figment of counterjihadists’ fevered imaginations, the anti-anti-Communists (a label they wore with pride) at least acknowledged – albeit in a bland, bored way – that Communism existed. Sometimes they even admitted that it wasn’t all that terrific. But by focusing their animus on anti-Communism, and remaining all but silent about the evils of Communism itself – indeed, by insisting that the very application of words like “evil” to Communism (à la Ronald Reagan) was infantile and hyberbolic – they drove home the idea that overt anti-Communism was worse – by which they meant less intelligent, less sophisticated, less worldly – than Communism itself. Indeed, even as self-identified Communists in America and throughout the West held positions of trust in the academy, government, the arts, and elsewhere, anti-Communists came to be viewed as fanatical, paranoid conspiracy theorists who, in the phrase of the day, saw “a Communist under every bed.”

Read the whole thing.

Monday, July 29, 2013

The Sad Fate of Democrat Women

Andrew Klavan doesn't sugar-coat it describing the Democrats.

It’s always a little galling (not to mention hilarious) for those of us on the right to reflect that the Democratic Party — the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and family-destroying social programs — the party of Detroit, New Orleans, Newark, and Baltimore — the party that facilitates a black abortion rate that would bring a smile to the face of Planned Parenthood’s genocidally racist founder — has somehow managed to sell itself to African Americans as the friend of black people!

But it’s beginning to be equally galling (and equally comic) to reflect that the Democrats have also contrived to present themselves as the party of women.

Here are Democrats and their women
This is the party whose most powerful senator left his probable mistress to drown after a car accident; the party whose most popular living president is a serial philanderer and accused rapist; the party whose most prominent woman rose to that prominence by virtue of her stand-by-your-man loyalty to a louse; and now the party of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, two men who have humiliated their wives with truly creepy behavior and yet seek to continue their political careers regardless.

We all make mistakes and it’s not that the GOP hasn’t got its share of sexual shenanigans, but the Republican establishment doesn’t routinely make excuses for its recidivist miscreants or make icons of their victimized spouses. The Dems…? They seem to think their political agenda somehow excuses their personal behavior. I joked on the Ricochet podcast last week that the party’s new slogan should be, ”Women — We Treat You Like Dirt, But At Least You Can Kill Your Unborn Children!”

Well, maybe there is a connection to how much women are willing to degrade themslves and Dmocrat men.
That is, ladies, maybe it’s not a coincidence that the same men who want to ensure your unborn child can be turned into medical waste — or who feel your vote (not to mention your sexual favors) can be bought in exchange for “free” birth control — are the very men who treat you like a collection of damp holes into which they can stick themselves without regard for your feelings, their principles, or basic human decency.
Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.




Hollywood Courage.

Angelina Jolie speaks out against rape in war

Glenn Beck talks about 13-year-old girl who was gang raped by up to ten men in Austin, TX

Blaming Bush for domestic spying

I have been tempted to agree with the left’s argument that it’s all “Bush’s fault” because he started the data collection that we have today.  But that’s like blaming the murders in Chicago on the guy who invented gunpowder.  Data collection is a tool and thanks to technology we’re better at it than ever.  But the person using it and the way it’s used that determines if the use is evil or good. 
The NSA program and the way it's implemented, spying on reporters, IRS abuses, Fast & furious, Benghazi are all Obama programs and he is responsible. 

Polanski victim's memoir

The book, "The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski," features a photograph of a young Samantha (then known as Samantha Gailey, her maiden name) taken by Polanski himself on Feb. 20, 1977.

The photo was snapped just weeks before the director's infamous sexual encounter with Geimer, who was just 13 at the time. Polanski was accused of raping the teen during a modeling shoot at actor Jack Nicholson's home, after drugging her with alcohol and a Quaalude, and was originally indicted on six felony counts.

Polanski skipped the country and has been living the good life, lionized by the glitterati of Hollywood ever since.   And why not? He did what they are doing every day.

Why the Democrats should enjoy a get-out-of-scandal card because they don’t even pretend to have any standards of personal behavior is never made clear.


It seems that the press takes the position that if you don't publicly uphold moral standards you can be a moral cesspool without attracting too much scrutiny.  If hypocrisy is the most heinous crime, no politician would be walking free. 

Bud Norman at Central Standard Times refers to Democrat Mayor Bob Filner of San Diego and Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York as examples of political figures who are getting exposure for lewd sex acts, but are somehow not part of the War on Women or a Democrat Party Culture of Corruption.

We mention these men’s party affiliation not because Republicans would never engage in such crude behavior, but rather because it is always so prominently mentioned in media reports when they do. Weiner’s unfortunate name and the high office he seeks have combined to force more media coverage that his deeds would ordinarily merit, but Spitzer’s whore-mongering past has gone largely unremarked, and there’s a suspicion that Filner’s misdeeds have been getting attention because San Diego is one of the last bastions of California Republicanism, but in none of these cases have the media been quite so gleefully outraged as they surely would be if it they were all in on a Grand Old Party. There’s certainly been no attempt to tie the scandals together into proof of some party-wide pathology, which would surely be the case if they were Republicans.

Several journalists of our acquaintance freely admit the double standard but contend that it is proper, explaining that Republicans deserve the extra scrutiny and scorn because their party presents itself as the defenders of old-fashioned “family values.” Why the Democrats should enjoy a get-out-of-scandal card because they don’t even pretend to have any standards of personal behavior is never made clear, but in any case the argument has long outlived any truth it might have. Republicans rarely push the “family values” slogan these days, being more concerned with keeping the country from insolvency and other economic concerns, while the Democrats consistently accuse their opponents of misogyny and tout themselves as the defenders of womanhood.

He also makes a point well that drives me up the wall. The Left and many Libertarians regularly accuse those of o=us on the right of wanting to push our morality on them. The reverse is actually the truth.

Such hypocrisy is more galling than that of the misbehaving Republicans. the most Bible-thumping politician who gets caught with his pants down isn’t trying to make religion compulsory, but the silly sensitivity-training workshops that the average private sector worker endures and the civil liability laws that inspired them have been imposed by the Democratic party with the force of government. These laws and the new rules of sexless behavior have done some good, and the officious way they are often enforced has done some harm, but certainly the political that is responsible should be held to the same rules.

A message from Governor Scott Walker


CULTURAL DEGENERATION

Glenn Reynolds comments on the desire for the curator of the 9/11 Memorial Museum — because it was “rah-rah” American, according to a new book says.
It’s a problem when the people who are supposed to be the curators of your culture fundamentally don’t like it.
Too "rah-rah" American?

It IS a problem, and it's increasingly robbing Americans of their country when academia, the arts, museums and other collectors of cultural artifacts essentially agree with Jeremiah Wright that on 9/11 "America's chickens came home to roost."

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Dishonesty reduces applied intelligence: re-wires the brain


From Intelligence, Personality and Genius
Habitual dishonesty (most notable political correctness) is a form of learning; and learning strengthens some brain pathways and brain connections; while allowing other pathways and connections to wither and (perhaps eventually) perish.

Therefore, even on those rare occasions when a typical modern intellectual tries to be honest and to think straight - they cannot do it, because their reasoning processes have been sabotaged by their own repeated habits of dishonesty - their attempts at honest thoughts will be inhibited, and instead channelled down the usual lying pathways...

Could this be the explanation for Team Obama. I don't mean just Obama but all his adherents?

Gun-crazed Philadelphia?

Are you nuts?

There are a lot of killings in Philadelphia, but not because the city is gun-crazed.  It's for the same reason that there are a lot of killings in Chicago, where guns are pretty much illegal.  

It's an article about liquor stores and why more are not being robbed. 

Inside the dingy, glass front door of Stop 'n Shop Discount Liquors on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard, a wall is plastered with alcohol ads featuring women in thong bikinis and hot pants.

Business is good, said manager Tom Prom, 32. But being open seven days a week until 10 p.m. in a scruffy section of Pennsauken, Camden County, requires precautions. Someone on staff is always armed and security cameras and monitors record just about every square foot inside and outside the store, he said.

If Pennsylvania privatizes its liquor stores later this year - as Gov. Corbett and some Republican lawmakers want - similar precautions will have to be taken in Philadelphia, Prom predicted.

"If they go that way, it will be more benefit for the consumer, but more trouble too," he said. "The crime rate is going to go higher, because the liquor stores will stay open late and people can get their hands on liquor [later] instead of the cold beer that is going on in Philly now."

Missing from the debate over the effort to privatize Pennsylvania's liquor stores is whether the change would create more gun violence and crime in and around those stores in Philadelphia.

Statistics provided to the Daily News by the Philadelphia Police Department and the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board show that of the 884 robberies of businesses recorded last year, only five were in the city's 51 state liquor stores. The numbers were similar in the previous year: 901 robberies, only eight in state stores.

In gun-crazed Philadelphia, where at least 300 homicides have been recorded in each of the last 10 years, none was inside a state-run liquor store.

Camden County authorities did not provide statistics for crime at private liquor stores, but one expert says there's a reason it's so low in Philly's state stores.

"I think there's an aura around those stores. They're well-lit, they have security cameras and state-of-the-art point-of-sale systems," said Steve Schmidt, of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association in Alexandria, Va. "They have a lot of things in place that make committing crimes more difficult."

So what does this tell us about "gun crazy" Philadelphia?  Exactly nothing.  The beginning of the story is even set in New Jersey, not Pennsylvania.  Everyone is armed there and there is lots of surveillance; Pennsauken is - after all - next to Camden which is sort of a Detroit East.

My car's a racist


By now everyone has heard that racists lock their car doors when black people are around. Well, I have a confession. My car's a racist. You see, every time I put my car in gear and there's a black person around it automatically locks its doors.

I have also noticed that it locks the doors when people of pallor are around. The car must thing that they are one of those new kind of minorities that the New York Time has found for us.  Like White-Hispanics or maybe the Black-White people, sort of like Barack Obama except paler.  Since being made aware of it I'm offended by my blatantly racist car.
 
I sort of liked my car before I found out that it was really a KKK-mobile and that by driving it I was dissing the Black community. 
 
So I went to a number of dealers and you know what?  Pretty much all cars are as racist at mine.  Some wait until you get to 10 miles per hour before they lock up with a loud "thunk" designed to show their racism, but every darn one of them just hates Black people.   I wonder if the Department of Justice has looked into this?  I wonder how they managed to stop Eric Holder's car from being racist, or the one they call The Beast?
 
 

The Government, Episode 1


President Obama calls the United States and Europe ‘developing countries’ in latest embarrassing gaffe


It's entirely possible that Obama's policies will make the United States a "developing country" just as Detroit looks exactly like a city in the third world.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Touré inspires Ace to give cultural tour of #Peruvia, home of George Zimmerman

This is hilarious.  First you have to see where George Zimmerman as a Peruvian-American comes from. A race obsessed black man named Toure says that Zimmerman is not Hispanic but "Peruvian-American." Hilarity breaks out







Read the rest.

Benghazi Hero Who Fought Alongside Seals Had To Wait On Roof With Shredded Leg For 20 Hours For Help




Today on Fox, it was revealed that after being struck by the same mortar round that killed Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, Ubben was forced to wait twenty hours before a plane was sent to pick him up. He had suffered grievous wounds to his leg and is still in fact, recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed, more than ten months later.

Jim Hoft put it bluntly – “while Ubben was waiting for help with a shredded leg Barack Obama was campaigning in Las Vegas.”

Why in the world was help not sent, sooner? And who gave the order to stand down?

New approach lighting system unveiled at KSFO following recent Asiana Airlines B-777 accident.


Fox News parent co. funneling money to Dems?

Contributions favored Obama 5-to-1 over Romney

If, despite this, FOX News is still viewed as tilting Right, just imagine what the contributions of the alphabet networks and the rest of the MSM looks like.

Taken Friday in Tahrir Square:


Friday, July 26, 2013

Jonah Goldberg on the Cynicism of the Obama Presidency

In the fifth year of the Obama regime, the President and the press never accept responsibility for what's happening in Washington. Read the Limbaugh Theorem.

That’s not the narrative you usually hear, because for most of Obama’s presidency, the Washington press corps was enthralled with him. It wasn’t until the dawn of his second term that most reporters stopped asking questions like “Can you create a boulder too heavy for you to lift?”

It’s also odd that Obama has pivoted back to the economy when, depending on whose estimates you use, he’s made similar “pivots” on average once every two to four months since he’s been elected. As one wag told The Weekly Standard, “You do that on the basketball court, you get called for traveling.” But the more apt image is of a basketball player with one shoe nailed to the floor, constantly pivoting in a circle.

But it’s not just odd, it’s deeply cynical. For starters, it was the reelected president — not “Washington” — who took his eyes off the economy to exploit a tragedy for new gun controls that would not have prevented the tragedy itself. His unilateral crackdown on carbon emissions isn’t exactly a full-throated effort to create jobs either. When Congress took its eye off the ball by taking up immigration reform, the White House cheered.

A White Person’s Reaction to Obama’s Trayvon Martin Speech


Interesting take that I have not seen before. It is a reminder of why people avoid stopping to help, of getting involved, because the media and the Liberal establishment can destroy your life.

He could have been me. I could have been out on neighborhood watch in my community performing my duties on a rainy night. It could have been me following a young African-American male around in my neighborhood because I did not recognize him, and because my neighborhood had been burglarized by young African Americans. It could have been me lying beneath a young black man who was striking my head against the concrete, my nose broken in a fight gone bad. It could have been me that tragic, deadly night.

It could have been me facing criminal charges for doing nothing illegal that night, presumed guilty of a crime I didn’t commit, and presumed guilty of being a racist, even though I had not an ounce of racism in me, and even though the way I lived my life was proof of that assertion.
Read the whole thing.

The Lies Americans Were Sold In 2012 Exploding In 2013


Just a few of the lies the press never called Obama on.

Saving Detroit:
"Obama Saved Detroit,” The Daily Beast‘s Peter Beinart asserted in August, 2010. “General Motors posted strong second-quarter profit — the latest sign that Obama saved Detroit.”
Winning in Iraq:
Before the deadly attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the president speaking on the stump would regularly declare Al Qaeda to be “on the run.” The killing of Osama bin Laden and the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq represented opportunities for boasting – opportunities which the president and his supporters regularly took – but those, too, are proving themselves to be merely rhetorical victories. ... Iraq’s relative stability is a thing of the past. The strategically vital Middle Eastern state is rapidly descending into the chaos that hundreds of American servicemen sacrificed everything to stave off.

The "Reset" button with Russia:
This [Snowdon's asylum] is just one of a series of recent provocations against the West, and the United States in particular, executed by Russian authorities. In the last several months, Russia has done its best to complicate America’s efforts to impose a cease fire or even intervene in the conflict in Syria in which more than 100,000 people have died. Russia’s efforts to foster an adversarial relationship with the West, ranging from halting American adoptions of Russian children to invading neighboring Georgia over trumped-up charges of ethnic discrimination against Russian minorities, the Romney campaign had the temerity to call America’s Cold War enemy out for being America’s “geopolitical foe.”

The chorus of scowling mockery that followed this statement of empirical fact from Obama and his supporters was, in retrospect, obscene. “He acts like he thinks the Cold War’s still on,” Biden sneered in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation in April of last year. “I don’t know where he’s been.”

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama snapped at Romney during an October, 2012, presidential debate.

There are of course others.  As a commenter pointed out:
Noah, how about a column focusing on the 2008 unfulfilled Obama promises - closing of Gitmo, hiring lobbyists, time to review bills, overall transparency, accepting public funding, raising taxes on families making over $250k, same sex marriage, cut deficit in half by end of first term, I don't really know Tony Rezco, I don't remember any specific sermons by Rev Wright, not friendly with Bill Ayers . .

And let's not forget promising to run the most transparent, ethical administration in history.   Having a slavish press on your side means never having to keep a promise.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Huma Unmentionables

By Andrew McCarthy.

Just a few of Huma's issues. It may help you understand why Obama nixed the sale of F-16s to Egypt yesterday.
Sorry to interrupt the Best Enabler of a Sociopath Award ceremony but, to recap, Ms. Abedin worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic-supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef ran the Rabita Trust, a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under American law. Ms. Abedin and Naseef overlapped at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA) for at least seven years. Throughout that time (1996–2003), Ms. Abdein worked for Hillary Clinton in various capacities.

Ms. Abedin’s late father, Dr. Zyed Abedin, was recruited by Naseef to run the JMMA in Saudi Arabia. The journal was operated under the management of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a virulently anti-Semitic and sharia-supremacist organization. When Dr. Abedin died, editorial control of the journal passed to his wife, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin — Huma’s mother.

Saleha Abedin is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to supporters of violent jihad. Among other things, she directs an organization – the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child. The IICWC, through its parent entity (the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief), is a component of the Union for Good (also known as the Union of Good), another formally designated terrorist organization. The Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel. (As detailed here, the Obama White House recently hosted Qaradawi’s principal deputy, Sheikh Abdulla bin Bayyah, who also endorsed the fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq.)

Read the whole thing.  The Weiner/Abedin Team may be one of the most toxic on America today.



Why would NBC replace Jay Leno when he's so dominant?

HERE’S A fascinating story,” the longtime host of NBC’s Tonight Show With Jay Leno told his audience last week, mentioning a recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling “that a dentist could legally fire his female assistant because he found her too sexy, too attractive, and a threat to his marriage. She didn’t do anything. She’s just good-looking.” The payoff: “Hey, I’ll bet that’s what happened to me here at NBC!”

[snip]

The irony—and it’s a rich one—is that Leno has never been more dominant: the Nielsen ratings for the second week in July have him beating CBS’s David Letterman by a 43 percent margin in the all-important “viewers 18 to 49” category (on which advertising rates are set) and swamping ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel by a crushing 75 percent. The “total viewers” number is a similar story, with Leno delivering 3.3 million compared with Letterman’s 2.6 million and Kimmel’s 2 million. Not counting a two-year rough patch after Letterman was enthroned at CBS in 1993, that makes 17 seasons in which Leno has won his time period since he started hosting the iconic show on May 25, 1992.

Sex, money and lies: ‘Culture of corruption’ boomerangs on Democrats

Taking the culture of corruption to new heights.  MoveOn will get a new reason for being.

Liberal media love new Jesus book 'Zealot', fail to mention author is Muslim

Of course not.  The Liberal media hate Christians as much as Muslims.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Naked City

Mark Steyn on Anthony Weiner.
These “sexts” and “selfies” are from less than a year ago. I link to them not because of their literary or artistic quality but because the euphemistic gentility of the American media serves to protect Weiner. If you watch Wolf Blitzer talking about it with Gloria Borger and Dana Bash on CNN, you would never know that the likely next Mayor of New York is a man who photographs his penis and emails it to strangers.

If you don't object to graphic porn, go to Mark's article to learn what Weiner actually texted and sent.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Glenn Beck puts condoms on his fingers


Carlos Danger


Weiner's 'explicit' new sex messages, bathroom pic...

Sent graphic smut months after resigning from Congress in shame...

Went by 'Carlos Danger' in sex chats...

Demanded woman delete messages; Promised her job, condo in Chicago...

BUZZFEED: WE FOUND HER...
Huma: 'I Believe in Him'...

Scenes from a marriage...

Obama teams with McCain to cut deals...


A Cincinnati IRS Lawyer Speaks: We Are Democrats, But Nonpartisan Democrats.

Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) comments: WHO JUST ACTED PARTISANLY

But here's the letter to Robert Anderson that is worth reading.
Professor Anderson,

As an attorney who works for the IRS, I read with interest your post in the Tax Prof blog concerning political contributions by federal government attorneys. You express the view that the fact that the vast majority of contributions by federal government attorneys are to Democrats reflects a "lack (of) political diversity necessary to represent the American people" and a "dysfunctional culture in federal agencies," that "should make everyone uneasy." Quite frankly, I believe your post reflects a political bias on your part, and your confusing cause and effect.

Let us consider the fact that the Republican Party in recent years has adopted as a mantra that government is bad, and government regulation is bad. Thus, attorneys who hold those views will probably not seek employment in government. Government service will attract people who believe government service is worthwhile, and view government regulation positively. Is it any wonder that government attorneys are far more likely to contribute to Democrats than Republicans?

Moreover, the Republican Party has promoted the idea that government employees are bad. Especially over the past 5 years, the Republican Party has waged a nonstop campaign against government employees at all levels of government, arguing that we are lazy, overpaid, etc., etc., etc. There has not been a pay raise for federal employees for 3 years, and if the Republicans have their way, there won't be for at least another 3. In my agency, we are facing hiring freezes and major cuts in the resources we need to do our job. (And we are the agency that brings in government revenue!) The Republican House is pushing for a 25% cut in the IRS budget, to punish us for various trumped up offenses. Why are you surprised that government attorneys have a hostile view of the Republican Party and its agenda?

On a personal level, I can say that I have worked with many of the same attorneys for the past [redacted] years. During that time, the political views of a number of my colleagues have shifted from the Republicans to the Democrats. It is because they are sick of the attacks by the Republican Party, and an utter lack of respect for the hard work that we do.

I would note that partisan politics never figures into the work we do. We are simply committed to enforcing the tax laws as best we can. And many of us, regardless of political persuasion, would agree that Don Korb, a Bush appointee, was one of the best Chief Counsels we have ever had.

So if there is a lack of political diversity among federal government attorneys, it can be attributed almost entirely to the Republican Party agenda. That agenda makes me, and other federal government attorneys, very uneasy.

Sincerely,

Here is my response:

Professor Anderson,

I am afraid that I disagree that the letter by the IRS lawyer's letter “a thoughtful and impassioned response on the other side.” It may be impassioned but it creates Republican strawmen simply to knock them down.

To state as Government Lawyer states that “ …the Republican Party in recent years has adopted as a mantra that government is bad, and government regulation is bad” is simply false. The Republican party has taken the position that government has grown too big and too intrusive. It’s analogous to a doctor recommending that someone who is overweight should go on a diet; that’s not calling the overweight person bad, it’s diagnosing a problem and recommending a solution. It’s entirely possible that Government Lawyer believes that more government and more regulation is good … endlessly, but then I might be making the false accusation that he is making about Republicans.

He goes on to say that: “Moreover, the Republican Party has promoted the idea that government employees are bad.” Again that is a false and partisan generalization. Republicans probably have a problem with the number of government employees as a result of the increasing size of government. And they have found that some of these employees have engaged in unwise, wasteful and even criminal activities, but that is entirely different from branding all government employees as bad. I would venture to say that all Republicans know a number of government employees who are fine upstanding citizens.

Finally, he concludes that the Democrats in government are not letting their political orientation affect what they do. In that respect he’s simply the lawyer version of the average member of the media who tells us that they are Democrats because they are compassionate and Republicans are not. And that despite their partisan position they are fair and dispassionate.

BS.

Wearing Tampons on your ears


Monday, July 22, 2013

A National Conversation About Complete Crap



President Barack Obama has already increased our national debt somewhere between five and six trillion dollars and shows no sign of stopping. Maybe that’s why women clutch their purses when he gets in an elevator.

Or, who knows, maybe it’s because he’s black.

I mean, United States Attorney General and corrupt political hack Eric Holder has called for a “national conversation” on race, and hey, that’s exactly how I like to spend my weekends, but shouldn’t we ask some questions first so we’re all sure we’re talking about the same things?


For instance, President Obama said, “If I’d had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Now I assume when he said that he meant “he’d look like Trayvon except for the private school uniform my son would be wearing,” but leaving that aside — why is it important that Trayvon looked like the son Obama never had, but not important that he looked like the people who were committing acts of vandalism in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood? Why is it okay for the president to make assumptions and generalizations based on skin color, but not the rest of us?


In certain DC schools districts lagging children are no longer invited to remedial summer classes because they “are too far behind.”


What can you say about the education of children who are so bad that they don't even qualify for remedial classes?  Richard Fernadez: 

The Washington Post says that “fewer than half of D.C. children are proficient in reading, according to standardized tests, and more than a third of all city residents are functionally illiterate, according to a 2007 report.” This despite the availability of “public education” which by rights should have made illiteracy a thing of the past.

But public education’s achievements — or lack thereof — can be gauged by the Post’s further reporting that in certain DC schools districts lagging children are no longer invited to remedial summer classes because they “are too far behind.” They can’t even be included in remediation for fear they will prove an anchor round the necks of any students who might actually have a chance to escape the government-funded shipwreck. Money is apparently not the problem. The DC school district is already spending nearly more per capita than Harvard.


American taxpayers already spend some $600 billion per year on public elementary and secondary schools, with average per-pupil expenditures nationwide currently at an all-time high of about $11,000—a nearly fourfold increase (in constant present-day dollars) since 1961. But even this figure is dwarfed by the $29,400 per-pupil cost of a public elementary and high-school education in Washington, DC. That astounding sum is nearly as much as the yearly cost of an undergraduate education at Harvard.

Mark Steyn argues that the greatest devastation inflicted by political corruption on America has not been the destruction of buildings. It has been the annihilation of minds.


In my book After America, I observe that the physical decay of Detroit — the vacant and derelict lots for block after block after block — is as nothing compared to the decay of the city’s human capital. Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate, which is about the same rate as the Central African Republic, which at least has the excuse that it was ruled throughout the Seventies by a cannibal emperor. Why would any genuine innovator open a business in a Detroit “innovation hub”? Whom would you employ? The illiterates include a recent president of the school board, Otis Mathis, which doesn’t bode well for the potential work force a decade hence.

when you hear the "black leaders" on TV talking about how they are working to solve the problems of the underclass, you can't believe them. Even a half-hearted attempt would do something about the creation of an illiterate population.  

Bobby Rush tried to deflect blame by telling Newt Gingrich that
"I have been working relentlessly since I've been in Congress, even when you were the speaker of the House and didn't want to hear any of these matters. I have been working on trying to deal with this violence. I'm astounded and ashamed about this violence. But this is also systemic to an overall problem. Chicago will take care of this violence. That's one of the reasons why on a Friday, the 26th, we're having this National Summit on Urban Violence. This was before the verdict we had planned this. The congressional black caucus is coming into Chicago so that we can work on solutions to this problem."
Just like  O.J. Simpson has been working tirelessly to find out who murdered his wife.  What was bizarre was Rush's segue into quoting scripture.  Watch the whole thing beginning with the smarmy Candy Crowley.

Fernandez concludes by quoting Romany Malco on Trayvon Martin: 

To be brutally honest, the only reason people are even aware of Trayvon Martin is because it became a topic within mainstream news and pop culture. Meaning: News directors saw it as a profitable, sensational story. …

Our “government” continues to wreak havoc on our civil liberties and there is little to no protest from the black community because of media diversion tactics that keep such pertinent issues out of mainstream media. But if Jay-Z or Rihanna were to make mention of it, we’d suddenly be jolted out of our sugar comas and protesting on freeways.

My point being, people are up in arms about Trayvon based on regurgitated pundits and manipulated facts aired to elicit emotion while fueling America’s anger and division. That’s how you boost ratings. No different from Piers Morgan’s desperate rant over gun control when he knew his ratings were in the dumps….

I believe we lost that trial for Trayvon long before he was killed. Trayvon was doomed the moment ignorance became synonymous with young black America . We lost that case by using media outlets (music, movies, social media, etc.) as vehicles to perpetuate the same negative images and social issues that destroyed the black community in the first place. When we went on record glorifying violent crime and when we voted for a president we never thought to hold accountable. When we signed on to do reality shows that fed into the media’s stereotypes of black men, we ingrained an image of Trayvon Martin so overwhelming that who he actually may have been didn’t matter anymore.

No he didn’t matter any more. Because Trayvon Martin the fact was never of any interest to anybody. The facts never mattered; reality is unconstitutional. All the system cared about was Trayvon Martin the fiction; the meal ticket, the product, the Narrative. Nobody gave a damn about the actual man. In this respect he was exactly what all those illiterate multitudes in the crashing cities are: just meal tickets for a system that uses them as window-dressing to justify scams and job programs meant to benefit only political hacks.
This can't be said any better, and should be said many times and in many places.

The Decline of the Civil-Rights Establishment


Shelby Steele (who is black enough to comment) talks about the Civil-Rights establishment and its foot-stomping tantrum because it was not able to intimidate the jury into convicting George Zimmerman.

The verdict that declared George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin was a traumatic event for America's civil-rights establishment, and for many black elites across the media, government and academia. When you have grown used to American institutions being so intimidated by the prospect of black wrath that they invent mushy ideas like "diversity" and "inclusiveness" simply to escape that wrath, then the crisp reading of the law that the Zimmerman jury displayed comes as a shock.

On television in recent weeks you could see black leaders from every background congealing into a chorus of umbrage and complaint. But they weren't so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them, "You won't call the tune here. We will work within the law."
[snip]
Why did the civil-rights leadership use its greatly depleted moral authority to support Trayvon Martin? This young man was, after all, no Rosa Parks—a figure of indisputable human dignity set upon by the rank evil of white supremacy. Trayvon threw the first punch and then continued pummeling the much smaller Zimmerman. Yes, Trayvon was a kid, but he was also something of a menace. The larger tragedy is that his death will come to very little. There was no important principle or coherent protest implied in that first nose-breaking punch. It was just dumb bravado, a tough-guy punch.

The civil-rights leadership rallied to Trayvon's cause (and not to the cause of those hundreds of black kids slain in America's inner cities this very year) to keep alive a certain cultural "truth" that is the sole source of the leadership's dwindling power. Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership's very reason for being.

The purpose of today's civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a "poetic truth." Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one's cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: "America is a racist nation"; "the immigration debate is driven by racism"; "Zimmerman racially stereotyped Trayvon." And we say, "Yes, of course," lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.

Read the whole thing.

Ramirez on Race and the Media


Ramirez on the Rolling Stone cover

R

Guess which one the press focuses on.


Ramirez on Sharpton


Reaganomics vs.Obamanomics



Sunday, July 21, 2013

Adam Carolla Trashes HuffPost for Calling Him Racist (AUDIO)

Comedian Adam Carolla savaged the Huffington Post for calling him a racist, shooting back that the organization is full of cowards and accusing it of perpetuating the problem of “black-on-black” and “brown-on-brown” crime. Carolla said the website and those who cover for politicians like California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom “all have blood on your hands.”

Go to the link for the audio.

Mona Yvette Nelson and the 12-year old child burned to death with a BLOW TORCH!

Need to keep the focus on Martin-Zimmerman so this won't see the light of day in the MSM.

First, let's kill all the TV producers


From R.S. McCain

Why is it so difficult for people to understand this? About 30 people get shot to death every day in America — more than 200 a week, nearly 1,000 a month — and most of those shootings are just local news. If you exclude mass-murder sprees, shooting deaths very seldom become national news, and very rarely does this kind of one-on-one shooting become the sort of story that gets nationwide coverage for more than a day or two. So . . . why?


You care about this case because TV producers decided you should care about the case, and I seem to be the only person who wonders why America has decided to outsource to TV producers the decision about which homicides are truly important. Are TV producers really wiser, more virtuous, more intelligent than everybody else in America?

This is infuriating. The other day a pervert just released by a judge. Pervert goes to the mall, follows a 10-year-old girl and her mother to their car, violently rapes the girl and stabs the mother to death. TV producers don't care.

Two men rape 16-year-old prostitute and throw her off a three story building. TV producers ignore the story.  Here's one of the perps.

If Obama had a son, would he throw a teenage prostitute off a roof?

Some victims of crime are more equal than others. Some crimes are ignored by the national media and some crimes are not. These decisions are made by TV producers, and by political activists whose agendas have very little to do with justice (or with peace).


Ho-hum, say the media. Just another 16-year-old Internet call girl thrown off the top of a three-story building in Brooklyn.


Ho-hum, say the media. Just another pervert raping a 10-year-girl and stabbing her mother to death at a mall near Syracuse.


Let’s just ignore those stories, say Piers Morgan and Martin Bashir and Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos, because stories like that aren’t really important in the way that a 17-year-old getting shot by a half-Peruvian in Florida is important.


Terrorists kill a U.S. ambassador? Trayvon Martin!


IRS targets the president’s opposition? Trayvon Martin!


Detroit goes bankrupt? Trayvon Martin!

No matter what story you might consider to be genuinely newsworthy, TV producers decide Trayvon Martin is more important.

We don’t have a race problem in America.

We have a liberal problem in America.

The blame-shifting, guilt-tripping, grievance-mongering Victimhood Sweepstakes mentality, which paralyzes individual initiative and invites us to rationalize our problems as resulting from indomitable historic trends over which we have no control — that’s the problem.

Stacy McCain: Take his Gun Aways and George Zimmerman might have been Matthew Shepard



And if we had known then what we seem to know now, that Trayvon took off running because his idiot friend Rachel Jeantel warned him that the “creepy-ass cracker” might be a homosexual pedophile — hey, that’s what she told Piers Morgan, and nobody is calling Rachel Jeantel a liar, are they? — how different might our perceptions of this case have been in the spring of 2012?

Think about it: George Zimmerman, victim of an anti-gay hate crime, beaten bloody by an angry young homophobe — well, if he hadn’t had a pistol, George might have been Matthew Shepard!

Silly as that analogy may seem, is it really a more far-fetched hypothetical than half-white Obama walking back from the store in his hoodie with his Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea getting shot to death by a half-Peruvian neighborhood watch captain in a crime-plagued townhouse community? Maybe that kind of stuff happened 35 years ago and it just didn’t make the headlines in 1978 or something.


 

Is Your City the Next Detroit?

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing is one depressing read. Poverty, crime, blight – you name the malady and there’s plenty of data to back it up. And unfortunately, Detroit’s not alone. You may be wondering which city hits the wall next.

I’m not making predictions, but I’ve looked at one indicator that may offer some clues: population loss.

As any good Ponzi Schemer will tell you, your future looks much better when there are more people moving in than moving out. Once the population change turns negative, a vicious circle can take hold, and that’s exactly what we saw in Detroit.

And Brains Still Be Dead and Not Concealing.


Vanderleun comments:
And Brains Still Be Dead and Not Concealing.
A mind is a terrible thing to be wasted. Poor sad, bitter, and self-unmade woman. Twenty years of schooling, they put you on the day shift, and you still can't write or think clearly. You. Are. Doomed. But just keep voting for everyone and everything that has doomed you all you life.

Unforgivable: Only God Forgives Is One of the Worst Movies Ever Made

I don't go to movies so I never read movie reviews, but this one is worth the price of admission.

Gruesomely grotesque and pathologically pretentious, a diabolical horror called Only God Forgives may not be the worst movie ever made, but it is unquestionably in the top five. It reunites the usually reliable Ryan Gosling with the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose work I admired (prematurely, it seems) two years ago in the moody, shocking and perversely fascinating Drive. There is nothing remotely compelling about this one. I should have suspected as much. Premiering in May at the Cannes Film Festival, Only God Forgives was viciously barbecued by the critics after the film was booed so loudly that Ryan Gosling didn’t even show up for the red carpet. Now I know why.

Ultra-violent, demented, plotless, creepy, meat-headed and boring, this is nothing more than a depraved travesty of abstract expression that wastes the film it’s printed on. Get to the point, you say. What is it about? Absolutely nothing, really. Ryan Gosling, looking dangerously anaesthetized, is an American thug who runs a brutal boxing club that doubles as a drug den in the slums of Bangkok. When his sub-mental brother rapes and slaughters a teenage whore, her father slices his head off. Enter a catatonic cop, who proceeds to Cuisinart everyone in sight, and Gosling’s mother Crystal, the despicable, drunken, pill-popping bottle-blonde nymphomaniac head of a family drug empire who travels 10,000 miles to lick her pomegranate-red lips over the corpse of the rapist son, with whom she has obviously been having an incestuous affair for years. This hag is played by none other than Kristin Scott Thomas, who may think she’s slumming, but instead trashes a big chunk of her otherwise respectable career. After she unfavorably compares the size of Gosling’s penis with her dead prodigal son’s johnson, Gosling tells her, “He raped and killed a 16-year-old girl!” The mother retorts, “I’m sure he had his reasons.” The audience howls derisively. That’s about as talky as this disaster ever gets. The script contains such a bare minimum of words that it resembles a cadaver ripped clean of flesh by carrion birds. The action is pretty much left up to the benign Thai cop, who throws boiling oil in a man’s face and bashes his head in with the hot skillet. Then he drives sharp metal spikes through another screaming man’s eardrums and scoops out his eyeballs. Between massacres, the cop sings love songs in a karaoke cabaret. I don’t want to tell you what he does with a samurai sword, or how he slashes open Kristin Scott Thomas’s body with a butcher knife before a drooling Gosling inserts his hands and does unspeakable things with her entrails.

Tell us what you really think Rex.

Detroit's Problem is its people.


The problem with Detroit is that they ran out of other people's money. When I say "they" I'm talking about the people who are left. The ones who voted for the past 60 years of corrupt mayors and city council members. The ones who voted for Barack Obama in overwhelming numbers figuring that they could be bailed out from "Obama's Stash."

Why is Detroit the first major Democrat ruled city to go bankrupt? Because the people who ran the city into the ground, who turned it into a semblance of Hiroshima 1945, were not just greedy and corrupt but stupid. They were not content with plucking the golden goose, they enjoyed wielding the axe that killed it, believing with the confidence of the criminal class that another would come along.

However the courts eventually decide, decades of misgovernance, the criminal corruption of the Democratic Party in Detroit, and the depraved indifference of politicians at every level as crooks and hacks conspired together to loot and wreck a great American city have brought us to a place where Detroit’s problems seem almost beyond solution. The saddest part of this story is that there is still much, much more pain to come for a lot of people. Both the residents of current day Detroit and the cops, teachers, firefighters and others who trusted in the promises of Detroit politicians and union officials face a world of hurt.

Detroit is going to need some outside help to get back on its feet, but that help should be tied to deep reform in the way city government works. Many liberals will want to offer the help without requiring reform; many conservatives will want to impose the reform without offering the help. Republicans need to do more than gloat over the ruins, and Democrats need to do more than wring their hands. Detroit can become a great example of a post-blue city emerging from the ashes, but that won’t happen unless some smart people in both parties take the crisis as the call for creative thinking.

Sorry, Mr. Mead, I may be wrong but there are no real technical fixes. Cutting back on pensions, getting rid of the current bunch of crooks, selling off the assets, will not provide a long-term solution to Detroit's fundamental problem. The basis for the trouble Detroit finds itself in is cultural. The bulk of the Detroit's residents aren't that much into working for a living, raising a nuclear family, living for tomorrow. The ones who were, have moved out long ago.
 
The solution to Detroit is to give it back to nature and allow it's residents to find someplace else. Or perhaps live in the thousands of tumbledown shacks and raise a few chickens, a goat and plant some vegetables. Think of a "Green" and rural community.  A few generations ago tens of thousands of sharecroppers flocked to Detroit to get away from Jim Crow and find a well-paying job in the auto factories.  Many may find their roots again, right there in Detroit.  Except it's a lot colder in the winter.

Dragnet: "Don't try to build a new country. Make this one work."

Via Vanderleun



MOBLEY: "You just don't understand."

FRIDAY: Maybe we do, son. Don't think you have a corner on all the virtue vision in the country or that everyone else is fat and selfish and yours is the first generation to come along that's felt dissatisfied--they all have, you know, about different things; and most of them didn't have the opportunity and freedoms that you have.

"Let's talk poverty. In most parts of the world, that's not a problem, it's a way of life. And rights? They're liable to give you a blank stare because they may not know what you're talking about.

"The fact is, more people are living better right here than anyone else ever before in history. So don't expect us to roll over and play dead when you say you're dissatisfied. It's not perfect, but it's a great deal better than when we grew up: a hundred men standing in the street hoping for one job; selling apples on the street corner-- that's one of the things we were dissatisfied about; and you don't see that much anymore..."

GANNON: "You're taller, stronger, healthier, and you live longer than the last generation ...

Read the whole thing.

Delaware Tax Chief Says That Snooping into Christine O'Donnell's Tax Records was "Routine."

The director of Delaware’s tax-collection office said Friday that his agency accessed the federal tax records in 2010 of an unnamed taxpayer, believed to be former GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell.

Patrick Carter, director of the state’s division of revenue, would not identify Ms. O'Donnell as the taxpayer but said he approved the inquiry “for routine purposes.”


And wouldn't you know it, a "computer glitch" suddenly appears that shows there's a tax lien on a house she doesn't own. Funny how convenient those computer glitches are for her opponents ... in both parties.
 
And the Federal Government says there's no crime, just an accident, nothing to see, move on.

ObamaCare Datebase worse than NSA

Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice. As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous.

And what will they be able to see?
The massive, centralized database will include comprehensive personal information such as income and financial data, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security numbers, and private health information. It will compile dossiers based on information obtained from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and for some reason the Peace Corps. The Data Hub will provide web-based, one-stop shopping for prying into people’s personal affairs.
You won't have to worry about another Snowden getting access to your personal records. The local ACORN (or it's successor) chapter will be re-named "Navigators" and will be paid to look at them.
The hub will be used on a daily basis by so-called Navigators, which according to the GAO are “community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups, to which exchanges award grants to provide fair and impartial public education” and “refer consumers as appropriate for further assistance.” Thousands of such people will have unfettered access to the Data Hub, but there are only sketchy guidelines on how they will be hired, trained and monitored. Given the slap-dash, incoherent way Obamacare is being implemented the prospect for quality control is low. And the Obama administration’s track record of sweetheart deals, no-bid, sole-source contracting and other means of rewarding people with insider access means the Data Hub will be firmly in the hands of trusted White House loyalists. So if you think the IRS targeting Tea Party groups was bad, just wait for the Obamacare Navigators to be unleashed. “Trust us,” the administration says, no one will abuse the Data Hub. Sure, because that has worked out so well in the past.

Fudging the numbers.

Trayvon Martin was not arrested for stealing jewelry because the school police department wanted to be able to claim that they had reduced the crime rate.  It's fairly certain that if he had, he would still be alive.

And then there's another academic scandal. 

Administrators at the university sacrifice academic integrity to make the school’s results look better.
In this historically Black college

Many of the entering students were not prepared for college and required remediation before they were able to take regular college courses. Thus, many of these students were unable to make it through to graduation and that put pressure on the university and faculty to increase success rates. The university’s four-year graduation rate for the university was a mere 14 percent. Since funding from the state is based on graduation rates and a school’s accreditation can be jeopardized by low rates, campus officials were extremely concerned.

Because of WSSU’s low graduation rate, school officials had to decide whether to change its admission standards and move to attract a higher quality of student, or to lower course standards to make it appear that students were more successful. During faculty and staff meetings, this was discussed and the chancellor stated that he did not want to change the “look” of WSSU. Raising admission standards would mean fewer students on campus and therefore less state money flowing in.

The path the administration took was to make it seem as though students were doing better. Of course, there was no official statement to that effect, but I realized that was the case after faculty members began to share their concerns and frustration with me.

Read the whole thing.

Car plunges from Chesapeake Bay bridge, woman lives


It's a very pretty ride. We just drove over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. You can see the ships anchored in the bay before they are brought into port. But there are accidents and when there are, there's not much between you and the water.

A woman swam to safety in the Chesapeake Bay Friday night after her car plunged 40 feet off the Bay Bridge following a collision.

The Trayvon Trademark


It's all about the Benjamins.

Down the Rabbit Hole


Saturday, July 20, 2013

WaPo reluctantly reports Terry McAuliffe’s bald-faced debate lie.

Via Redstate.

In the most obvious misstatement of the debate, [Democrat Terry] McAuliffe attacked [Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken] Cuccinelli over the findings of a Richmond prosecutor who had been tasked with investigating Cuccinelli’s financial disclosures.

“If you read the whole report, which I have, it says in here that the attorney general should have been prosecuted,” McAuliffe said, over Cuccinelli’s failure to disclose his stock holdings in Star Scientific and gifts from Williams. McAuliffe also said that because of Cuccinelli’s ties to Williams and Star, which filed a civil tax case against the state, “a judge took the case away from him because of a conflict of interest.”

Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring said in a report last week that he found no evidence that Cuccinelli had violated the law. And it was Cuccinelli’s office that requested recusal from the civil tax case.

“So much is inaccurate,” Cuccinelli said when asked in the debate to respond, “I’ll let the fact checkers take care of it. That one’s gonna get sliced up.”

After the debate, McAuliffe sought to clarify his comment. “On the report — the attorney general could have been prosecuted if we had stronger disclosure laws in Virginia,” McAuliffe said, although Herring’s report did not make that assertion.

You can be sure the Virginian Pilot will repeat McAuliffe's lies verbatim.

“My child is gifted. He’s also 29, unemployed, and living in my basement”


From The Matt Walsh Blog
I don’t respond to most of the negative emails I get from people who listen to my show or read my blog. This one struck a chord, though. Here’s a message I received from a guy named Nick, in reference to a discussion we had on the broad subject of parenting. I think we can all benefit from reading this and confronting the sad reality that this country is full of Nicks:

“Matt, I heard your horrible conversation today about parenting. A few comments in response:

1) Based on your remarks, I have to say I feel bad for your kids. You sound like the sort of person who never should have been a parent. You said you plain to teach your kids “how to think.” I guess this is common in right wing religious fundamentalist households. Personally, I let my child form his own conclusions about things. To impose your views on a child is tantamount to child abuse. Do them a favor, let them think FREELY.

2) You greatly exaggerate the importance of “chores.” Also, the idea that a kid should be forced to “get a job” is abhorrent. My son was very gifted so we gave him all the tools to succeed academically. This meant we didn’t turn him into slave labor and we certainly didn’t tell him he needed to go work behind a cash register. He concentrated on his school work, and we did our job as parents and financially supported him.

3) It’s easy to mock a “30 year old who lives with is parents.” My son is almost 29 and he’s been home with us since he graduated.
....

Read the rest of the letter. The response is entertaining.