News of the Week for May 18^th, 2014

• Election 2014
• Obama Scandals
• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

 

Election 2014

 

Clay Aiken’s Democratic rival dies suddenly
Singer Clay Aiken’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination for Congress died unexpectedly Monday.

Clay Aiken’s Opponent in Congressional Race, Keith Crisco, Dies
Clay Aiken’s opponent in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s Second Congressional District seat, Keith Crisco, died today, according to the company he owned, Asheboro Elastics Corporation.

How Big a Wave?
The big question for 2014: Will we see a GOP ripple … or a tsunami?

Eric Cantor’s tea party opponent in Va. primary may be picking up momentum
There was a time when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sympathized with the tea party’s frustration with Washington.

 

Obama Scandals

 

Discrepancies between Benghazi emails released to Congress, watchdog group

Shinseki ‘mad as hell’ about VA allegations, but won’t resign
Under withering criticism, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki told a Senate committee on Thursday that he was “mad as hell” about allegations of deadly waiting times and coverup at VA hospitals but he doesn’t plan to resign.

VA Undersecretary Resignation
An undersecretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs resigned Friday, a day after he testified at a Senate hearing on the wait times at VA hospitals. The resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, the department’s undersecretary for health, was announced in a statement from VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Seventh VA office finds secret wait list — with over 200 veterans on it
Yesterday, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki declared himself “mad as hell” over the allegations of wait-list fraud in Phoenix, where 40 veterans passed away before accessing medical assistance while the office falsified records. Shinseki also pronounced himself saddened by the consequences of the VA’s failures, and pledged to get to the bottom of them — and allegations at five other offices that arose from other whistleblowers

Gun Rights

 

Racist ThinkProgress Asserts Colion Noir Must Have Been Manufactured By The NRA
If you listen to the assertions made by ThinkProgress’s Jessica Goldstein, Colion Noir was manufactured by the NRA virtually overnight in an effort to con minorities into supporting gun rights.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

If You Still Need Proof the EPA Is a Rogue Agency, Last Week Provided Plenty
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing last week at which it was revealed that one senior civil servant at the Environmental Protection Agency spent much of his office time watching pornography over the Internet. The career employee admitted to the EPA’s Inspector General’s Office (OIG) that he spent two to six hours a day watching porn videos. This included four straight hours at a site called Sadism Is Beautiful, according to news reports.

Michael Mann Is A Liar and a Cheat. Here’s Why.
Michael Mann is one of the most partisan advocates for the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory. He is controversial for several reasons: he invented the “hockey stick” graph, which was intended to show that recent warming trends were unprecedented, and has since been exposed as a hoax that misrepresents historic temperatures. He has fought bitterly to prevent his own emails from being discovered in litigation, even though he is a public employee whose research is lavishly funded by taxpayers. He has participated in some of the dishonest “tricks”–their word–by which climate alarmists have kept billions of dollars in government money flowing their way.

John Holdren: The Scientist Who Cried Wolf
Who is John Holdren? If you’re Jonathan Chait, the answer seems to be: I don’t really know.

Environmentalist Billionaire Made His Fortune From Asian Coal Mines
It’s a safe bet that environmentalist billionaire and big-time Democratic donor Tom Steyer has a bigger carbon footprint than you do

The Climate Mafia Strikes
I’ve been referring to the climate campaigners here as the “Climatistas” to chide their cult-like resemblance to the romantic Sandinista sympathizers of the 1980s, but it should not be forgotten that the real Sandinistas were a pack of nasty thugs. Likewise, the climate establishment behaves more like the Mafia today, telling any scientist or academic who might consider any departure from orthodoxy: “Nice little scientific career you have here; shame if anything were to happen to it.”

Scientists in cover-up of ‘damaging’ climate view – full article
Uh oh, another “climategate” like moment is upon us as the law of unintended consequences kicks in.

Global Warming Defector Alleges Journal Rejected Publication of His Article In Order To Suppress “Unhelpful” Findings
Lennert Bengtsson, a meteorologist, recently announced that he had defected from the global warmist camp to the skeptical side of things.

Climate Change Debate: A Famous Scientist Becomes a Skeptic
Meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson has long been considered a cool head in the often heated conflict over global warming. In an interview, he defends his decision to join an organization that is skeptical of climate change.

Rep. Keith Ellison says ‘communities of color’ hardest hit by climate change

Cornell hypes on methane as a ‘climate boogeyman’
Through the years, we keep hearing that methane, much like Trenberth’s missing heat, is going to jump out and get us.

University of Queensland threatens lawsuit over use of Cook’s ’97% consensus’ data for a scientific rebuttal
Wow, just wow. Not only have they just invoked the Streisand effect, they threw some gasoline on it to boot. It’s all part of the Climate McCarthyism on display this week

World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years
Leaked United Nations report reveals the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years
Politicians have raised concerns about the final draft
Fears that the findings will encourage deniers of man-made climate change

Scientific Authoritarians
The case for skepticism about climate scientists.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

NHS to give sex change drugs to nine-year-olds: Clinic accused of ‘playing God’ with treatment that stops puberty
Treatment with controversial drugs is for youngsters trapped in wrong body
Monthly drug injections into the stomach stop puberty and may do harm

 

War & Terror

 

The Phantom Menace
How an unproven, widely mocked technology scared the Soviets into ending the Cold War.

Chinese general tours U.S. carrier as maritime tensions fester
A top Chinese general toured an American aircraft carrier on Tuesday at the start of a U.S. visit expected to expose tensions over territorial disputes between Beijing and U.S. allies in the South and East China Seas.

National

 

WHITE PRIVILEGE CONFERENCE – 2,400 educators learn how to HATE capitalism and Christianity (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)
Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a 5 part series.
When mainstream journalists cover the White Privilege movement, many do so in a frighteningly naïve manner.

White Privilege Industrial Complex exposed
These people teach the teachers who teach your children.

Has UCLA Found A Way to Use Race in Admissions?
Many universities in the United States grant advantages to members of racial minorities in admissions–though not all will admit it. In California, the use of race in admissions to public universities has been illegal since the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), however, according to evidence I will present, appears to have found a way to work around it.

Dolphins player fined, sent for educational training after tweet about Michael Sam
I wonder if any other front office in the league would have cracked down this swiftly. Miami sweated through an endless PR forest fire last year over bullying and “locker-room culture” with the Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin mess. They probably decided early vis-a-vis Sam that they weren’t going to tolerate the smallest spark.

Dolphins Fine, Send Player to ‘Educational Training’ for Negative Michael Sam Tweets
On Sunday, the Miami Dolphins fined safety Don Jones and sent him to “educational training” for tweeting negative comments about Michael Sam, who became the first openly gay player to be drafted, immediately after the Rams took Sam with a seventh-round pick.

He Was Reportedly Told by City Officials That He May Hear From Their Attorney Over This Sarcastic Video About ‘Serious’ Issue
A frustrated Indianapolis realtor launched a sarcastic “Adopt a Pothole” initiative in an attempt to bring attention to the city’s “serious” pothole problem. City officials were not amused — in fact, they reportedly told him he may receive a call from one of their attorneys.

Feds released hundreds of immigrant murderers, drunk drivers, sex-crimes convicts
Immigration officials knowingly released dozens of murderers and thousands of drunken drivers back into the U.S. in 2013, according to Obama administration statistics that could undercut the president’s argument that he is trying to focus on the most serious criminals in his immigration enforcement.

U. South Carolina Upstate Trims Costs, Closes Gender Studies Center
U. South Carolina Upstate leaders say their strategic plan cuts $450,000 in administrative costs but will impact the Honors Program, Continuing Studies, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Upstate’s Greenville Campus and others.

Department of Health And Human Services Threatens Blogger Over Satirical Posts
The blog Addiction Myth is devoted to a very out-of-the-mainstream proposition about medicine: that the entire concept of drug and alcohol addiction is a scam perpetrated by law enforcement, rehab groups, and the entertainment industry. By contrast, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is devoted to mainstream medical and scientific propositions1 It is perhaps inevitable that these two worldviews would conflict one day.

Shouted Down at Portland State
Portland State University students hold an annual forum with the theme “Law and Disorder” at which they critique police conduct. Speakers tend to be people from the left who have a history of speaking out against police brutality.

White Privilege Conference: Racism was invented in the American colonies
In today’s segment the speakers at the White Privilege Conference 2014 claim racism was invented in the American colonies.

White Privilege Conference speakers judge by skin color and claim rape is not intrinsically bad
In part 2 of our report, we take you inside the workshops of the WPC to witness how organizers translate the radical Keynote addresses into practical White Privilege training, the goal of which is to teach educators how to indoctrinate children in the ethos of White Privilege ideology.

White Privilege Conference speakers train teachers to inject theory into ELEMENTARY classrooms
“White Privilege” theorists aren’t content with just indoctrinating high school students. Their agenda is to start earlier than that. Four- and five-year-olds are much more impressionable than a skeptical teenager.

Anarchist Conference Devolves Into Chaos
Anarcho-Syndicalists protest/get protested at their own conference. A panelist by the name of Kristian Williams was scheduled to speak at the annual Law & Disorder conference, but was thwarted by a protest. No one could actually articulate what their issue is with Mr. Williams. Campus police were eventually called in as the panelists fled.

SunTrust Reverses Decision On Conservative Benham Brothers
After an uproar from conservative customers, SunTrust Banks announced Friday afternoon that the decision to end its relationship with real estate entrepreneurs David and Jason Benham had been reversed.

Sriracha CEO Compares California to Communist Vietnam, Texas Officials to Court Company
Sriracha hot sauce manufacturer Huy Fong Foods has spent the past few months in an intense legal battle with the city of Irwindale California over their plant’s caustic smell. The lawsuit has already caused a partial shutdown of Sriracha’s Irwindale factory, after a restraining order to shut down the plant entirely was denied by a California Judge.

Richard Dreyfuss: The US constitution is the single greatest step in improving civilization EVER
I’ve never heard Richard Dreyfuss sound so conservative. He truly believes that the US constitution is indeed the single greatest step in improving civilization for humanity since we were first put on this earth. He’s even quoting George Washington when it comes to the Constitution.

Harvard plans ‘mandatory power and privilege training’ for poli-sci students
The administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has agreed to work with a student group to implement a “mandatory power and privilege training” as part of its orientation, according to several reports by the group.

UCLA prof says stats prove school’s admissions illegally favor blacks
Public universities in California are barred from using race as a factor in admitting students, but a UCLA professor who once served on its admissions oversight team says he has proof they do it anyway.

Rights complaint filed on behalf of Ducks players
Former Eugene City Councilor Kevin Hornbuckle has filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of three University of Oregon students who were kicked off the basketball team in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations.

Fargo parent calls school’s ‘Y.M.C.A.’ talent show act ‘racist’
A Fargo first-grade class won’t be participating in the school’s talent show after a concerned parent called a planned act “racist.”

Massachusetts’s Teachers’ Union Elects Anti-Common Core President
The Common Core standards and their implementation are suffering attacks all around America and from all sides — in red states and blue, and from the left and right. The Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union at 110,000 members, elected a new president on Saturday, and she’s opposed to Common Core (and high-stakes testing and the use of those tests to evaluate teacher quality).

Was Brendan Eich removed to get closed source DRM into Firefox?
It’s quite a theory, and I’m not sure what to make of it, but via Instapundit I ran into the allegation that the real reason Brendan Eich was removed as the head of Mozilla wasn’t the homosexual “marriage” issue at all, but rather that he stood in the way of Hollywood-friendly restrictions called Digital Rights Managment (“DRM”) being added to the open source browser Firefox.

Eric Cantor kills a stealth amnesty bill
Despite the fact that very few people care about immigration, the Vichy wing of the GOP has insisted on pressing ahead on the irrational impulse TO DO SOMETHING.

Harvard University Freshmen To Be Forced To Undergo ‘Check Your Privilege’ Training
Starting this fall, incoming students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government may be mandated to check their privilege at freshmen orientation, a student group has announced.

Massive resistance at UCLA
The regime of affirmative action — of preferences administered on the basis of race — is illegal in California. It nevertheless continues to operate, though it necessarily does so under conditions of secrecy and deceit

High school senior told he’s ‘not welcome’ at school after raising Gadsden flag
Greg Stoneburner, a senior who just graduated from Central High School in Grand Junction, Colo., said he was told in no uncertain terms that he was no longer welcome at the school after raising a Gadsden flag on the school’s flagpole. Moreover, he told Examiner.com in an exclusive interview Friday, the principal withheld his flag and his diploma until after his graduation walk.

Economy & Taxes

 

Chart of the day: California vs. Texas in one chart
The chart displays 1-unit housing starts for the entire state of California and the Houston metro area annually from 2011-2013 and year-to-date through March for 2014. During the period from January 2011 to March 2014, there have been slightly more single-family housing starts in Houston (95,037) than in California for the entire state (94,993). In this single chart, we can understand the dynamism of the booming, expanding Texas economy and housing market compared to the stagnation of the California economy and the housing market there for new construction.

Greece denies plan for retroactive tax on foreign bondholders
Greece’s government on Thursday denied it had instituted a retroactive tax on foreign holders of Greek bonds, saying capital gains booked from early 2012 to the end of last year were subject to the tax regime covering that period.

 

International

 

China Takes the Lead in Africa
Sometimes big geopolitical news gets tucked away in a mere clause. We can see this phenomenon in, for example, a recent AFP story on the Nigerian terror-kidnaping: “World powers, including the United States and China, have joined in the search for the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram Islamists.”

The Boko Haram Girls May Already Have Been Mutilated
The entire world is focused on the captured Nigerian girls, many scenarios have been envisioned–and yet there is at least one issue no one has raised: That it is entirely possible that these poor girls have also been genitally mutilated. If so, that means that their rapes will be doubly torturous and traumatizing.

Dutch populist targets EU ‘Brussels monster’
Anti-Islam, anti-immigration Geert Wilders, who is notably pro-Israel, wants his country out of European Union

The Last Communist City
A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see

‘Alien’ creator H.R. Giger is dead
The renowned Swiss artist H.R. Giger has died at the age of 74, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall. Giger, who passed away in a Zurich hospital, was most famous for the alien monster he created for the movie of the same name.

Exit polls show Narendra Modi-led NDA on course for victory in Lok Sabha elections
The Bharatiya Janata Partyled National Democratic Alliance is expected to win India’s general elections comfortably, with exit polls commissioned by various TV channels giving it a majority or putting it well within shouting distance of forming the next government. The results of the surveys back up opinion polls that predicted the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will take over at the head of an NDA government after votes are counted on May 16, ending the decade-long rule of ..

Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert handed six-year jail sentence
Olmert, 68, found guilty of taking bribes in a real estate deal that took place during his time as mayor of Jerusalem

Samizdata quote of the day
I’m always curious why the killing of millions of kulaks by Communists is shrugged off as the price to be paid for the glorious socialist ideal, whereas Pinochet’s killing of thousands of avowed Marxist revolutionaries is the most eeeevil thing that ever happened.

Postcards From Venezuela
“The guardsmen beat them with their fists and the butts of their rifles, taking away their personal belongings before setting fire to the car.”

Protests Target Chinese Factories in Vietnam
Vietnamese authorities have called for calm after thousands of workers in South Vietnam attacked factories believing them to be Chinese-owned.

Trouble at the Top
Chinese officialdom is in turmoil.
In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have died of unnatural causes, with most being suicides. The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China’s elite is likely tied to the anticorruption campaign being led by Chinese president and party general secretary Xi Jinping.

Thai Army Chief Warns of Military Action If Clashes Escalate
Thailand’s army chief said the military may need to use force to counter any escalation of violence linked to the nation’s six-month political stalemate.

Villagers Kill 200 Boko Haram Insurgents With Dane Guns, Arrows; Catch 10 Alive
Villagers fought off and killed over 200 members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect who launched an early morning attack on their village.

Steelworkers Join Police Patrols in East Ukraine
Steelworkers employed by Ukraine’s biggest tycoon have joined police on patrol in some disputed eastern Ukrainian cities, and the company said Thursday that its officials had struck a deal with police and pro-Russian separatists in one of the cities for the insurgents to leave occupied government buildings.

Modi takes India with eye-popping margin of victory
Narendra Modi’s BJP was the first party to win outright in 30 years. It was a stunning triumph for Modi, who ran a presidential-style election campaign promising development and economic growth.

I would pass the Tebbit test, says Sajid Javid
Sajid Javid, the new Culture Secretary and the first Asian man in the Cabinet, tells Tim Ross that only the Conservatives can change EU law to cut immigration

 

Opinion

 

I Checked My Privilege, And It’s Doing Just Fine
Liberals have a new word for what normal people call “success.” They call it “privilege,” as if a happy, prosperous life is the result of some magic process related to where your great-great-great-grandfather came from.

On Liberal Campuses, A Point of Personal Privilege
The chickens are finally coming home to roost on the liberal campus. After two generations of academics concocting elaborate justifications for shouting down unfavored ideas, the students have begun reading the script back to them flawlessly.

Gay NFL draftee becomes sacred cow
I wrote here about the selection by the St. Louis Rams of Michael Sam, an openly gay football player. The selection brought widespread praise including, predictably enough, from President Obama.

The Role Of Family Choice In Early Childhood Education
Call me picky, but last time I checked the word “social” in the title Social Studies indicated the interaction between people. These lessons might merit a pass if they were filled with deep introspection, but even my kindergartener understood they were fluff and nonsense.

Liberal WaPo editor explains how tolerance is only for people who agree with him
A career journalist and one-time Washington Post editorial board member, Jonathan Capehart explains on MSNBC how tolerance, despite its definition, is actually all about judgmenty judgment and forceful reeducation

Liberals’ Dark Ages
Welcome to the Dark Ages, Part II. We have slipped into an age of un-enlightenment where you fall in line behind the mob or face the consequences.

Twisting Libertarianism
Michael Lind either misunderstands it or is intellectually dishonest.

Dictatorship of virtue
In his weekly Wall Street Journal column Daniel Henninger chronicles the commencement speakers who have become collateral damage to the tyranny of the lunatic left on campus. As the distance between the left and the lunatic left grows ever closer, attention must be paid. Henninger performs a real service in going in compiling the body count, with respect to which all but the great Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis was news to me.

Trigger Warning: Dude Looks Like a Lady
This could be someone trolling the UCSB Microagressions page. Hell, for all anyone knows the page is a gigantic trolling operation. No matter. This post is special in that it meets at the crossroads of unearned self-esteem, hookup culture and political correctness.

Gender and education: Have American boys been left behind?
Many are content to dismiss the underachievement of boys in school as, “just the way things are.” But the consequences of educational underachievement have never been more serious. The Factual Feminist explains why if we don’t help boys close the education gap now, they may never catch up.

Bill Whittle explains how the administration gaslights Americans
I believe I’ve spoken here before about “gaslighting,” because it’s a stock technique for malignant narcissists and other sociopaths, two personality disorders I think characterize the Left generally and Obama specifically.

If you like your neighborhood you can keep your neighborhood
The new push toward forcible desegregation

Deep question: Is a Hump Day camel … racist?
Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota have cancelled an event to celebrate the end of the year after complaints that bringing a camel on campus could offend those of Middle Eastern cultures.

Vile at Vassar
A college finally cracks down on anti-Israel extremists

‘Superior Male Mathematical Ability’
In fact, differences between males and females in terms of mathematical aptitude have been the subject of feminist protest for decades. In his 1999 book The New Know-Nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature, sociologist Morton Hunt recounted an earlier uproar over the same basic topic

Check Your Privilege is an Idiotic Phrase
In a new video, “Token Libertarian Girl” Julie Borowski addresses the issue.

The slow decline of America since LBJ launched the Great Society
Standing on his presidential limousine, Lyndon Johnson, campaigning in Providence, R.I., in September 1964, bellowed through a bullhorn: “We’re in favor of a lot of things and we’re against mighty few.” This was a synopsis of what he had said four months earlier.

American schools are becoming segregated as a result of “culturism,” not racism
A friend asked me what I thought of an Atlantic article pointing to the fact that, sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, America’s schools are once again becoming segregated, as whites (and Asians and East Indians) do whatever they can to flee predominantly black schools. Black schools are academically much, much weaker than white schools and, as the whites flee, the infrastructure of the schools declines.

One Picture to Capture the Leftist Worldview
The headline: This is my baby right now.

#BringBackOurFathers
By avoiding hard questions in nearly every story connected to America’s most dysfunctional children, the liberal media help to perpetuate the fairy-tale about Democrats being the champions of society’s victims. However, who could be more of a victim than a child whose father’s love, discipline, and positive example have been replaced by the pretense of government benevolence?

Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio had less responsibility than Mayor Sarah Palin of Wasilla
Talk about the need to get some credibility before the Veep nod in 2016

The Left’s Anti-Christian Bigotry Strategy 2.0
Your political views have nothing to do with your religious liberty

Warning, this post may “Trigger” you to think
“Trigger Warnings” are the latest method of enforcing conformity on campus