News of the Week for September 29^th, 2013

• Obama Scandals
• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

 

Obama Scandals

 

IRS Offers True The Vote Tax Exempt Status, Files to Dismiss Lawsuit
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has offered election integrity group True The Vote its tax-exempt status in what appears to be a bid to keep the group from proceeding with discovery on its lawsuit against the agency, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

Lois Lerner is Retiring
Lerner is the former head of the Exempt Organizations unit which held up 501(c)(4) applications by Tea Party and similar groups for as long as two years.

Lois Lerner’s lawyers negotiating with Oversight Committee on immunity
IRS scandal figure Lois Lerner is negotiating through her lawyers with Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about possibly gaining immunity to testify again in the committee’s investigative hearings.

IRS Watchdog: $67 Million Missing from Obamacare Slush Fund
The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a TIGTA report released today.

Gun Rights

 

McAuliffe: Virginia Should Have Colorado’s Gun-Control Laws — and More
Apparently deterred neither by the recent and successful liberalization of state gun laws in Virginia nor by the clear message that Colorado voters sent to lawmakers earlier in the month, Virginian gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has added a gun-control plank to his campaign website.

7th Graders Who Played with Toy Gun — In Their Own Yards — Expelled from School
During a hearing Tuesday morning, Aidan Clark and Khalid Caraballo were expelled in a unanimous vote. Clark was offered the option of attending an alternative school, but his father, Tim, told WAVY News’ Andy Fox he will be homeschooled.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

Russia to File Piracy Charges Against Greenpeace
Russia intends to file piracy charges against Greenpeace after campaigners tried to climb onto an offshore drilling platform in the Arctic.

EPA Admits New Power-Plant Regs Won’t Affect Climate Change
The EPA recently announced new regulations limiting the carbon produced by power companies as part of a greater effort to curb climate change. However, on the 346th page of the 463-page report, under a section entitled “Impacts of the Proposed Action,” the EPA admits that it doesn’t think the new rules will reduce emissions of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, in any major way.

Climate Countdown: T-Minus 2
One of the leading talking points of the climateers, repeated more often than the rosary in the Vatican, is the factoid that “97 percent of scientists agree” that human-caused climate change is real. As I’ve noted before, the only surprise is that the number isn’t 99.5 percent, as the question of whether greenhouse gases have a warming effect—all other factors being equal—is uncontroversial.

Climate Countdown: T-Minus 1
Thought experiment: Imagine you are a reporter for the mainstream media—yeah, I know, that involves not only slumming it but a considerable sacrifice of intellect, but bear with me—and you were covering the release of a massive report on intelligence gathering activities from the NSA. The NSA had produced, say, a comprehensive 2,000-page report on terror networks and their data gathering and analysis operations of them along with future threat assessment, but instead of issuing the full report, they issued a 30-page “Summary for Policy Makers” written by the political appointees at the Justice Department, promising that the full 2,000-page report would be released a few days later.

California wind farm seeks permit to kill eagles
A Solano County, Calif., wind farm would be the first renewable energy project in the nation allowed to kill eagles under a federal plan, a U.S. agency said.

David Suzuki’s Down Under Blunder
Last week in Australia, David Suzuki did something he hasn’t done before: He allowed himself to be interviewed in a situation he did not control.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

The Explosion in Healthcare Premiums in One Convenient Chart
Those nerds at the Society of Actuaries have crunched the numbers and gave us a tidy little forecast of insurance premium rate hikes under Obamacare. Oh, by the way, taxpayer subsidies don’t eliminate costs. A “free” elementary economics lesson out there for anyone confused about TANSTAAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).

Not only can’t you keep your doctor, you may not even have a doctor
Obamacare-exchange insurance is essentially Medicaid lite – insurance but few doctors who will see you.

The ObamaCare Wars Are Just Starting
The health law has set in motion long-run forces that could erode the political foundation of Medicare.

Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women
For months now, we’ve been waiting to hear how much Obamacare will drive up the cost of health insurance for people who purchase coverage on their own. Last night, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finally began to provide some data on how Americans will fare on Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchanges. HHS’ press release is full of happy talk about how premiums will be “lower than originally expected.” But the reality is starkly different.

We are all lab mice now: White House didn’t think this Obamacare promo through

Bam! Rep. Issa hits back at WH’s pathetic @AdorableCareAct propaganda

Mobile death squads to kill sick and elderly in their own homes leads to surge in suicide rates in the Netherlands
Around 3 per cent of all deaths in the Netherlands are now by euthanasia
The country last year introduced mobile euthanasia units
In 2002 it became the first country since Nazi Germany to legalise it

Labor Unions: Obamacare Will ‘Shatter’ Our Health Benefits, Cause ‘Nightmare Scenarios’
Labor unions are among the key institutions responsible for the passage of Obamacare. They spent tons of money electing Democrats to Congress in 2006 and 2008, and fought hard to push the health law through the legislature in 2009 and 2010. But now, unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.

7 Adorable Animals Sad About Obamacare
Obama’s using cute animals to sell the “Adorable Care Act” to a skeptical public. But we found 7 pics that didn’t make the cut.

Daniel Henninger: Let ObamaCare Collapse
Congress can’t kill the entitlement state. Only the American people can.

ObamaCare and the “let it burn” theory of socialist collapse
Writing at the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger has some advice for ObamaCare opponents: just let it burn until it collapses, taking the entire rotted edifice of socialism with it.

 

War & Terror

 

‘Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers’: Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details
Kenyan soldiers claim to find scenes of torture by mall terrorists
They say children found dead in food fridges with knives still in bodies
Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed

Revealed: How hero father died in Kenyan mall massacre after offering himself as a hostage to save lives of group of children
London-born Mitul Shah was killed in the Kenyan mall massacre
The 38-year-old died after he offered to become a hostage to save children
Tributes have poured in honouring ‘a selfless man and a born leader’

Letter from Kenya: Surviving Westgate
For years, Khadija Adam had gone to Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on Saturdays. She had her hair styled at the Ashley Salon, attended to her mobile-phone at Safaricom, shopped at the Nakumatt supermarket. Sometimes she stopped into the Millionaires Casino. Adam, a former model and a warm, boisterous talker, knew many shop owners by their first names, and always bumped into friends. Often, she would get caught up for hours in conversation—she speaks Swahili, Somali, English, and some Arabic—at ArtCaffe. Like many in Kenya, Adam is part Kenyan and part Somali, and a Muslim. “You know how Somalis are,” she told me, “we always have to get the story on everything.”

Nigeria attack: Students shot dead as they slept
Suspected Islamist gunmen have attacked a college in north-eastern Nigeria, killing up to 50 students.

National

 

Amodei gets minerals bills passed, will Reid drop the ball? Sep19 by Thomas Mitchell
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei’s H.R. 761, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act, 246-178. Now, let’s see what Nevada’s Harry Reid does with it in the Senate. He’s thrown a few monkey wrenches before.

Flip-Flops Banned At 2 San Juan Capistrano Parks
At least two parks in San Juan Capistrano have prohibited people from wearing flip-flops.

Hillary to Huma: Dump Weiner or you’re out
Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has been given an ultimatum: dump serial-sexting hubby Anthony Weiner, or get out of Clintontown.

Hamilton College cancels racially-segregated diversity program
Hamilton cancels the program but still denies it has a problem: “My intent was to be inclusive but my phrasing suggested otherwise.”

The Radicalism of Bill de Blasio
De Blasio is a longtime admirer and supporter of Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinistas. He helped raise funds for the Sandinistas in the 1980s, subscribed to the party’s newspaper, Barricadda (Barricade), and unlike many others, remained supportive even after the Sandinistas lost power. To this day de Blasio speaks admiringly of the Sandinistas (while offering some token criticism of their handling of dissent), and remains interested in the Latin American left. De Blasio honeymooned in Cuba, in violation of the U.S. travel ban.

Broadcaster Fired for Opposing Same-Sex Marriage Blasts Fox Sports for Religious Discrimination
In exclusive comment to Breitbart News, former ESPN and CBS broadcaster and former Southern Methodist University and NFL star tailback Craig James criticized former employer Fox Sports Southwest for its firing of him two weeks ago over his public stance on same-sex marriage.

Common Core Turns First Graders Into Advocates of Social Justice
We’ve recently seen how Common Core exposes children to pornographic literature and promotes ghetto culture, and how speaking out against it at the wrong place and time can get you thrown in jail. Here’s how Common Core trains 6-year-olds to become social activists like the Community Organizer in Chief

Quotations From Academia’s Front Lines in the War to Destroy America
A ham-fisted socialist maneuver Obama employed against traditional America that should have caused much greater alarm is the nationalization of the student loan industry. In the short term, this was an act of looting to help finance ObamaCare. But in the long term it is a step toward universal coercively financed college education, just as ObamaCare is a step toward socialized medicine. John Hawkins has collected some quotations from college professors that help explain why Obama et al. would want every American to go to college.

Judge expresses ideological solidarity with would-be mass murderer
Liberals hold that “hate crimes” are worse than crimes involving the same conduct but not the same attitude. But the application of this doctrine may depend on which group the perpetrator hates.

Clemson poll shows S.C. GOP with mixed feelings on Sen. Lindsey Graham
A new Clemson University poll shows U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is having trouble with his Republican base here at home.

Barilla, world’s biggest pasta company, will ‘never’ include gay families in ads
Guido Barilla, the 55-year-old chairman of the company, sparked outrage when he said that gay families would not be appearing in advertisements while he is in charge.

Cokie Roberts on MSNBC: ‘Some … tea party anger is racist’
Recent days have seen some thoroughly reported work on Clintonland — a profile in New York Magazine featuring the first big post-State Department interview for the former secretary and a deep story in the New Republic about Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton whose work could complicate the political future of Hillary Rodham Clinton. And in the midst of the big takeouts, there’s a lot of cable chatter.

Wendy Davis tells Democrats she’s in
Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis and her advisers have begun informing influential Democrats that she intends to run for governor in 2014, according to multiple sources familiar with Davis’s conversations.

Hamilton College student: Why I stood up against segregated diversity program
Hamilton’s Director of Diversity & Inclusion initially rejected my objection as “in the minority”

‘Nation’s most influential foreign-policy think tank’ employs pro-terrorist Castro follower
The influential Council on Foreign Relations employs a director who thanks convicted terrorist bombers in a book, calls for restrictive gun laws, and has a long history of warm relations with the most extreme elements of the Castro regime.

Retiring Abroad is Heating Up
If you could retire for 40 dollars a day, would you? A BBC piece today suggest that British citizens are increasingly answering in the affirmative

Hamilton College desegregated Diversity Town Hall exposes racial tensions
Student reports: Not much accomplished, but people had a chance to get things off their chests

Report: Hollywood Is Less Gay-Friendly Off-Screen
A new study suggests the proliferation of gay and transgender characters in films and television shows has not prevented gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender actors from experiencing discrimination in Hollywood.

Khmer Rouge: Harvard’s Favorite Communists
In 1986, the New York Times wrote of Harvard that it “has left a deep impress on American culture and society ever since it was founded in 1636,” and “as the university prepares to celebrate its 350th birthday with a tremendous convocation next September (the present Charles, Prince of Wales, will be among the guests), American education, scholarship, government, law, medicine, business and literature still find themselves somewhat under Harvard’s spell. Harvard has set standards in scholarship over the years, and underlying its scholarship there remains a seriousness about truth-seeking, along with a moral ambition, that other schools have strained to emulate. These deeper traits are probably traceable to Harvard’s Puritan origins.” Only a decade earlier, Harvard’s student paper, the Crimson, demonstrated the school’s Puritan moral ambition by enthusiastically endorsing the Khmer Rouge.

Tea Party California Caucus’ Tech-Based Gameplan for CA GOP Convention
No matter how much the elite media and establishment politicos want to kill-off Tea Party, it seems that we citizen activists refuse to roll over and die.

 

Economy
& Taxes

 

House GOP Whip: If Reid Strips Obamacare Language, House to Send Back Something ‘Very Different’
The House Majority Whip said last night that while Senate Democrats will likely send the lower chamber a “clean” continuing resolution stripped of Obamacare defunding, the House will respond to the Senate with something “very different.”

 

International

 

Angela Merkel wins historic third term in German elections
Angela Merkel vowed that she would deliver more “successful years for Germany” as exit polls indicated a commanding lead for her party over the main opposition.

Pakistan quake flattens hundreds of homes as toll rises to 327
At least 373 injured; New island up to 100 feet high and 200 feet wide rises in Arabian Sea

China Pushing Russia Out of Kazakhstan
Last week, one of the world’s biggest, most expensive, and technically fraught oil fields produced its first barrel of oil. Kashagan, as the field is called, is located in Kazakhstan, in the North Caspian Sea, and was developed by a consortium of energy giants that shared the massive risk of pouring in $50 billion and a decade of legwork. Obviously the field is a boon to Kazakhstan, but China is also coming out on top, as the NYT reports

Eddie Izzard declares he will stand for London mayor in 2020
Comedian Eddie Izzard has confirmed that he will throw his hat in the ring for the London mayoral race in 2020.

Dutch King: Say Goodbye to Welfare State
King Willem-Alexander delivered a message to the Dutch people from the government Tuesday in a nationally televised address: the welfare state of the 20th century is gone.

Greece On The Verge? Military Special Forces Have 15 Demands… Or Else
Greek government authorities are on alert after a union of Greek army reservists of Special Forces issued a statement urging the Greek administration to step down and make way for a national unity government. As Keep Talking Greece notes, the statement on the union’ website included 15 demands – including the resignation of the Greek President – and urged people to gather at the infamous Syntagma Square on Saturday. The statement was interpreted by some as a call to a “coup d’etat” – denied by the union – but prompted Greece’s Supreme Court to meet to discuss it.

British Columbia pro-family group exposes gay agenda behind Surrey ‘Safe Schools’ program
The British Columbia Parents and Teachers for Life (BCPTL) organization has compiled a report on what parents can expect their children to be exposed to under the Surrey School District’s newly implemented “Safe and Caring Schools: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” regulation.

Paris cosmetics store forced to close early due to labor laws despite employees lining up to work

Despite its almost 11 percent unemployment rate and only freshly barely-there economic growth rate, Socialist President Francois Hollande insists that “growth is starting to take off again” and that “we are almost there” on efforts to tackle the problem of unemployment. …Er, if he says so, but besides perhaps taking it down a notch on the historically high tax burden, hem hem, French business leaders and economists consistently recommend one very important thing on which France needs to crack down if they’re ever going to really spur the economy forward: The country’s convoluted, rigid, anti-growth, and generally bass-ackwards labor laws.

 

Opinion

 

Yes, Rosalind, boys do have deep emotional lives. Not all of those emotions are feminine, and that doesn’t make boys “problems” that need to be solved.
I haven’t read this book by Rosalind Wiseman, the author of Queen Bees and Wannabees (later turned into the movie Mean Girls), but I have it on order, because I think Rosalind might get boys a little better than the average person.

Marxism by Any Other Name
When I took Critical Theory in college (it was a requirement,) the professor said that Cultural Studies was what took over in the universities among Marxists after the fall of the Soviet Union. I watched a dyed in the wool commie professor tell a well-known Queer Theory professor that she was plagiarizing Marx. The phrase “Cultural Marxism” is a perfectly accurate description, and within academia people make no bones about being indebted to the Frankfurt School. Hell, I’ve read my fair share of Marcuse and Adorno, because they’re still being assigned in schools.

A Quick Primer on Base and Superstructure Marxism
A lot of people are already familiar with the base and superstructure concept in Marxism, but for those who aren’t I thought I’d write up a quick and dirty primer on it, mainly because it will help people better understand Cultural Marxism and its current influence on society. I’m not going to rewrite Das Kapital here, so this will necessarily be incomplete, but hopefully it’s less tedious than the Wikipedia entry. For those who are familiar with this concept and for those who find this kind of thing boring, I’m going to throw in pictures of hot cosplay chicks like Nariko here.

A Voice for Male Students
My name is Jonathan Taylor. I am the founder of the website A Voice for Male Students and a former instructor of freshman composition and argumentation at Texas A&M University-Commerce. I’d like to thank Mr. Jacobson for inviting me to submit a guest post about my website, why I launched it, and what it aims to address.

Question: “How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America’s Worst Performing Economies?”
Answer: “Government policies did their damage”

The Clinton Foundation: Helping the Rich & Powerful Feel Good About Themselves
Huge Morning Jolt today – “Yuuuuuge,” as Donald Trump would say. The slow-motion train-wreck of Obamacare, Cory Booker’s pathological condition, the Senate’s majority leader and two minority leaders, and then…

Wendy Davis was a media hero and Ted Cruz is a ‘grandstander’
It’s sort of hard to believe, but the Washington media is filled with people who maintain that the major mainstream news media in the U.S. does not have a liberal bias. I don’t spend too much time on the broader “media bias” case, because it’s too hard to litigate. Point out disparate treatment, and a bias-denier can just say “the cases are equivalent.”

Why Isn’t Socialism Dead?
The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, celebrated May Day by ordering soldiers to occupy his country’s natural gas fields. The purpose of this exercise was not military, but economic: Morales has demanded that all foreign companies currently operating these fields must sign a contract with Bolivia that would allow them to retain only 18% of the production, while the remainder would go to Bolivia’s state-owned oil company. The 18% concession to the foreign companies was not an act of generosity on the part of Morales, but simply of expediency: Bolivia needs these companies to tap its natural gas resources, because it is unable, at least at present, to operate the natural gas fields on its own.

Nothing is ours, except time
Towards the end of his 69 years, Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote numerous insightful letters to his friend, Lucilius Junior, in which he offered often invaluable advice relating to a wide range of issues. In 65 AD, the year of Seneca’s death, 124 of these missives were published under the title Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (Moral Epistles to Lucilius).

Our Truest Lies
If the truth doesn’t serve social justice — well, tell a noble lie.

Government by demand
The laws of supply and demand are beautiful things – expressions of logic as elementary as the basic laws of physics, which govern everything except the more unruly subatomic particles, which thumb their noses at laws, dress like slobs, and listen to the kind of music that drives their parent atoms crazy.

Schools Are Not Parents
Children in Virginia Beach are suspended from school for playing with an airsoft gun at home.

The Nummifcation of Political Culture
Everyone likes sweets, of course. But he was getting at the idea of reversion to the juvenile. That adults, rather than simply attaining the taste for actual coffee, and you know, drinking coffee, were instead reverting to their Childhood Palates of insisting that all things be “nummy.”

The Cancerous Lie of Unbounded Positive Rights
You Don’t Have An Unending Right To Have A Good Or Service Provided By Somebody Else

Complementarity vs. Androgyny
The beginning of economics is the division of labor. If we were all hunter-gatherers, there would little for us to exchange in the marketplace. Hunter-gatherer societies are universally poor. Agriculture and the domestication of livestock were the first steps beyond subsistence and those steps were attended by the development of sex roles. It is only with the affluence and convenience provided by advanced industrial market economies that any idea of “sexual equality” becomes feasible.

Malthus at the Movies
Why does Hollywood continue to make movies based on discredited environmental theories?

Six Lies Most People Believe About U.S. Schools
Adults feel comfortable while kids suffer the consequences.

War on Boys in Schools: Math and Science Edition
American schools have become hostile learning environments for boys and young men.
Yet, some progressive pundits would rather manipulate statistics and bash conservatives than achieve true gender equality.

Dehumanizing Sex
A basic error at the core of the gay-rights crusade in recent years is what I call the Desire Is Destiny Fallacy, wherein all sexual desires are self-legitimizing — a human right — and any opposition to or criticism of anyone’s desire is an infringement of their personal autonomy.

Daniel Hannan MEP speaks on Magna Carta: The Secular Miracle of the English-speaking Peoples
Daniel Hannan MEP speaks at a TFA event in praise of Magna Carta and explains why these British freedoms are still so important.