Most of us infidels in the West have been lied to. Trusting the education system, foolishly, we believed all the bunk bundled into our textbooks concerning the period in history (1096 AD -1272 AD) when the Crusades took place…they left out an itty bitty piece of info…This will be great for all your “enlightened” friends…
The real reason WHY the Crusades took place…and here’s the shocker: It was a response to Islam’s aggression!
That’s right…it all began with Muhammed’s implicit threat more than 450 years before the Crusaders entered Jerusalem. He said: “embrace Islam and you will be safe.” (Muhammed’s extortion letter to the Khaibar Jews)
Some facts for your ill-informed friends/family/colleagues:
The Crusades were a delayed response for CENTURIES of Muslim aggression, that grew ever fiercer in the 11th Century. The Muslims focused on Christians and Jews…forcing conversions, plundering and mortally wounding apostates.
The Crusades were a DEFENSIVE action, first called for by Pope Urban II in 1095 at the Council of Clermont.
The Crusades were a response against Jihad, which is obligatory against non-Muslims entering “Muslim lands’”. (Muslim lands are any lands invaded and conquered by Islam.)
The motives of the Crusaders were pure. They were jihad-provoked and not imperialistic actions against a “peaceful”, native Muslim population. The Crusades were NOT for profit, but rather to recover the Holy Land brutally invaded and conquered by Muslims…who conquered for profit and as a notch on their superiority belt.
The lands conquered by the Crusaders were NOT colonized under the Byzantine Empire. The Empire withdrew its support so the Crusaders renounced their agreement.
The Islamic world ripped through the Christian world on a bloody Jihad crusade to propagate Islam. Muslim imperialistic conquest wars were launched for more than 1,500 years against hundreds of nations and over millions of square miles (larger than the British Empire at its peak). The Jihad crusade went from southern France to the Philippines, from Austria to Nigeria, and from central Asia to New Guinea.
The dictionary defines imperialism as “the policy and practice of seeking to dominate the economic and political affairs of weaker countries.” This historical Islamic Jihad WAS imperialistic…and its goals remain the same.
Islam’s greed and lust for bloody domination of non-Muslims and their property CAUSED the Crusades…it doesn’t get simpler than that!
Glenn Beck on Monday revealed the true extent of his health issues, saying he can no longer keep what has happened a secret from his friends, his staff or audience, whom he considers to be his family.
If you have sensed a change in Beck — maybe you even thought he was losing interest in his program — Beck said it is because he was told he may only have several functional years left, and his health conditions were causing such excruciating pain that it was difficult to do live programming.
“Tonight’s show is not for the casual fan or, really, anyone in the press,”Beck said. “This is a one-on-one between friends. No one in the media ever does a show like this, because it is crazy. … But I believe that by not talking with you openly, it destroys everything of real meaning and value — namely, our trust.”
“I have never lied to you, but I have omitted a few really important facts because — they scared me,”Beck admitted, beginning to swallow back tears. “I didn’t have any answers, and the answers I was being given at the time meant … the end of our time together.”
Beck said that five years ago, around the time of his Restoring Honor event in Washington, D.C., God began to tell him that he was standing in the wrong place. At around the same time, his health issues began, starting with vocal cord paralysis, eyesight problems and what doctors at first believed was a painful form of neuropathy.
“While I was at Fox, the pain would get so bad that my camera crew, our executive producer Tiffany and I, had worked out hand signals so they would know when to take the camera off of me,” Beck revealed. “We didn’t know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands and feet, or arms and legs would feel like someone had just crushed them, set them on fire or pushed broken glass into them.”
Beck said that while he was in intense pain, something unusual was happening that he actually thought was an advantage in his business: he only ever needed two to four hours of sleep a night.
“Doctors tell me that up until recently, I hadn’t had a real REM sleep in maybe as long as a decade,”Beck said. “I didn’t have a dream that I remember, except one in a decade. And quite honestly, this isn’t a symptom you look to fix if you have a ton to do. But the first sign of trouble I noticed was what I call a ‘time collapse.’ If we had met before, I couldn’t tell you if it was a month ago, a year ago or when we were in high school. I then began to lose names to faces and over time, entire conversations would go away.”
Beck said doctors told him it was normal for someone processing as much information as he was, and the phenomenon has been discussed by figures like Winston Churchill.
“While essential facts remained, life became fuzzy,”Beck continued. “This was happening at the same time the pain was becoming a very real issue. They told me there was no connection between the two. Then came macular dystrophy and vocal paralysis — all disconnected, or so they thought.”
Beck said a string of doctors, medications and diets only left him with more questions, and none really improved his condition. His health issues were among the reasons he decided to move to Dallas — a warmer climate than New York City.
“Then … my body began going into a seizure-like state,”Beck said, adding that the episodes most frequently occurred on planes or after a large performance or speech.
“Most afternoons my hands would start to shake, or my hands and feet began to curl and eventually — if I didn’t stop and rest, I began to curl into a fetal position,”Beck said. “This has baffled some of the best doctors in the world. It has frightened me and my family, and I didn’t know what was happening.”
Beck said that shortly before the convulsions began, he checked into a hospital in New York City for extensive testing, and asked some of the best doctors in the world to look at him.
In one of the most frightening moments of his life, he was tested for traumatic brain injury and found that he was functioning in the bottom tenth percentile.
“I was told at the time that I had anywhere between five and ten years before I would no longer be able to function,”Beck said, pausing to collect himself. “I was told to go home, take at least a year off, and enjoy the days with my children.”
“My pivot point came one night shortly after returning home,”Beck continued. “We were all in the kitchen as a family and I had an attack. … I saw the faces of my children, and the idea that I would someday not remember them, nor would I remember my soon-to-be-born grandchild, hit me like a bag of bricks. And we looked at each other and I asked, ‘What am I doing? Maybe we should all move up to the mountains and spend all the time I have left together.’”
Beck said his doctors told him that if he didn’t stop working, his condition would get worse. But he was “haunted” by the fact that doctors told him to stop, and God did not.
Beck said his “ability to function grew to be so bad” that they were forced to do more taped pieces for television, and on radio, Beck’s co-hosts Pat Gray and Stu Burguiere — two of a handful of people who knew about Beck’s condition — would sometimes have to cover for Beck in the middle of a sentence.
“People, even my senior staff began to ask: ‘Does Glenn even care about what we are building?’ They didn’t know,”Beck said. “The answer was, ‘Yes, deeply.’ But it was growing harder for me every day to focus. I didn’t know at the time, but my left brain was losing a great deal of functionality.”
Beck said that for personal and professional reasons, he did not want to share what was happening to him until now. But he said it grew “almost impossible to hide” his condition as time went on.
But Beck said his wife, Tania, had it the hardest. Beck began to cry as he recalled how, on the many days he could not feel his hands or they were in extraordinary pain, she would tie his shoes or button his shirts.
Tania did it all “with kindness, love and joy,” Beck said, wiping away tears. “It has taught us about our marriage, and it has made our marriage very, very strong.”
Glenn Beck sits with his wife, Tania Beck, as he shares the true extent of his health problems on his television program November 10, 2014. (Photo: TheBlaze TV)
“Meanwhile, while this was going on, I had a company to run. Over the last two years, I began to search for my replacements,”Beck said. “Pat and Stu for my radio show, Buck Sexton or Dana for TV. Almost everyone in my company has been looked at for what piece of me they could fill. But the hardest part to fill was someone that could think completely out of the box creatively, and knew how to tell a story.”
Beck found that person in Ben McPherson, a masterful painter and filmmaker who heads the American Dream Labs.
“Just as we were finishing Man in the Moon … I told him everything about what was going on, and asked him if he would do me a favor,” Beck said. “I asked him if he would learn all of these stories and complete each tale, if the time would ever come that I could no longer remember them.”
Beck said his condition continued to get worse, and he began to believe that maybe he did need to walk away from everything to spend more time with his family.
“I asked God: ‘Am I done? Can I put my sword down now?’ The answer was always ‘No,’” Beck recalled.
That was when Beck found the Carrick Brain Centers, a place that he has seen “work miracles” on people.
The Carrick Brain Centers in Texas specialize in unconventional healing methods. (Image credit: Carrick Brain Centers)
“After a few short visits, they found that I had several things going on, from an autoimmune disorder to adrenal fatigue. They also found the connection to everything that was going on, and for the first time gave us hope that we could reboot my system — not just stop it, but reverse things,”Beck said. “Me never having to sleep was finally understandable. The last sign of adrenal failure is a hyperextension of your adrenal glands. In other words, I didn’t need sleep. I could have been lifting cars during my time at Fox!”
“But now that I had blown out my system, all I could do is sleep,”Beck continued. “My immune system was looking at these natural hormones as an infection and so my body was trying to kill its most basic functions. I also appeared at the time to be in the early stages of Addison’s disease.”
Beck said his doctors told him he should not have been standing, and only his faith in God had kept him moving. If he had remained in New York City, they said he probably wouldn’t be alive today.
“Over the last ten months, I did all kinds of tests and therapies, which included everything from electric stimulation to weird gyroscope tests like the astronauts use where they’re flipping you around,”Beck remarked. “After months of treatment and completely changing the way I eat, sleep, work and live, along with ongoing hormone treatment and intensive physical therapy, I have reversed the process. Some of the physical scars will be with me for the rest of my life … but my brain is back online in a big way.”
Beck said the story is so remarkable that, if he and his wife hadn’t lived it, they wouldn’t believe it.
During his last day of therapy this summer, Beck took the traumatic brain injury test once more and the results showed him to be in the 90th percentile. He has since received a clean bill of health.
“Rush Limbaugh says he does the show with half his brain tied behind his back,”Beck joked. “With me, it’s actually been true. But now, it’s back online.”
“Why am I telling you all of this? Because you and I are family, and for us to survive, we need to trust each other,”Beck said. “When I first spoke of my alcoholic pivot point on the air in the 90s, I was actually trying to end my career. But It had the opposite effect. I got to know my audience for the first time, and I realized we are all hiding something, whether it is physical, mental or spiritual pain. We need to know that we are all in this together.”
Beck said his health condition gave him yet another pivot point, and everything he does now has “new meaning,” and will change to focus on “love and truth and reconciliation.”
“For those who question why I have been saying, ‘We need to love one another,’ they didn’t know that when you are faced with a real shortened timeline of your life, you begin to measure everything and its worth,”Beck said.
“Maybe you didn’t even notice, but I have been gone,”Beck concluded. “But I’m happy to say, I’m back. But with all of this time left, what do I spend it on? I have pivoted. I know what life is about and it isn’t about money, fame or division. It isn’t about politics or a 5 p.m. TV show that continues to highlight problems. This summer we went into production on a pilot that will completely change what I do on TV. But that really is only one piece. In the macro, it’s about me changing me and you changing you.”
Beck said no one is telling stories to help America hold onto its children, and “we need to tell the stories of love and courage where the good guys win.”
“I downloaded the best stories I have ever written, stories I feel I was born to tell,”Beck said. “Now they all fit together, and Ben and I are ready to roll up our sleeves and go to work, as we continue to build TheBlaze and this network. We will become the change that we seek. With your help, we will start a revolution of hope. I choose hope.”
The United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs has announced that on Dec. 24th 2014 the UN Arms Trade Treaty will begin it’s enforcement. To refresh your memory on what the UN Arms Trade Treaty actually does:
“The treaty includes export/import controls that would require officials in an importing country to collect information on the ‘end user’ of a firearm, keep the information for 20 years, and provide the information to the country from which the gun was exported. In other words, if you bought a Beretta shotgun, you would be an ‘end user’ and the U.S. government would have to keep a record of you and notify the Italian government about your purchase. That is gun registration. If the U.S. refuses to implement this data collection on law-abiding American gun owners, other nations might be required to ban the export of firearms to the U.S.”
So what will that mean for the United States once this treaty goes into force? Well, thanks to the Obama Administration and John Kerry for signing the most worldwide form of gun control and sovereignty invalidating piece of garbage in history, even if the Senate doesn’t ratify it, the effects will still be extensive.
First and foremost, since the US has a thing about liberty (we love it) and by nature disdains the forfeiture of its own sovereignty as well as creating gun registries, we will not ratify and because we won’t bend a knee, the importation of firearms from other countries will all but evaporate.
Small arms from countries that have ratified the treaty include Germany, Italy, Romania and the United Kingdom and as such will be compelled by international treaty to stop importation of their wares to the United States. Other countries that have signed up and are awaiting ratification include Austria, Belgium, and the Czech Republic; so get ready to say goodbye to your Glocks, Brownings and Czech made AK’s.
Mind you, we’re not just talking about the complete firearms either:
Parties must also regulate export of parts and components that may assemble these conventional arms.
After Christmas, while the conventional model may be to expect a drop in prices, parts for these firearms will undoubtedly go through the roof.
You can thank the Obama administration for this.
This was the “under the radar” methods that Obama was speaking of when he spoke of taking away American’s 2nd Amendment rights. A strong US President who loved his country and the liberty it entails could have easily, as THE World Leader, squashed this entire treaty long before it became a reality.
How do I know this? Because the Small Arms Treaty didn’t start under Obama’s reign, it started WAY back in 1997 by the President of Costa Rica. It languished for ten years until it finally came up for the first time at the United Nations as Resolution 61/89.
153 foreign nations voted for the resolution, 24 abstained and ONE nation stood as the lone vote rejecting the resolution. Which country was this High Noon’s Will Kane? You got it…AMERICA. The Bush administration didn’t side step the issue and abstain, the Bush administration took a stand and said NO.
That ENDED the UN’s plan for global gun control right there and then. With a lone dissenting voice the United States stopped one of the most dangerous measures the United Nations has ever tried to pass.
And don’t undervalue the impact of the United States in stopping it because after the vote, Algeria indicated that the effort must receive broad-based support from states and be based on the principles of the UN Charter.
Broad based support? The resolution had 153 signatures and one dissenter. It’s support was broad based. What Algeria really meant was that: “this resolution cannot go forward without the United States.”
Which was true, until we elected the gun controller in chief with his rabid obsession of disarming his own people.
This is not conjecture, this is a quantifiable action/reaction delineation.
The DAY, September 25th 2013, after Obama had Kerry sign the treaty, 16 other nations signed with three more nations ratifying it immediately. Nearly, 20 nations followed Obama’s lead that day. Three more would sign the following day.
Before the Obama administration signed the treaty only 4 nations in the world ratified it. Once the world saw that the US was willing to go along with it the dam gave way and countries were falling over themselves to follow suit.
So even when the Senate refuses to ratify the Treaty, because of Obama’s willingness to lead the world instead of his country, the firearms industry will be hurt by this treaty. Thereby hurting the American gun owning citizen.
Now, you may be saying, we’ll just build them here in the USA. And we can…or can we?
I direct your attention once again to the following aspect of the treaty:
Parties must also regulate export of parts and components that may assemble these conventional arms.
What actually constitutes a component? A barrel? Sure. A stock? Ok. The steel and wood to make them? Ahhhhhhh.
What about bullets? Well, one could say that lead is also a component and can now banned from importation. Considering that the Obama Administration shut down the last lead smelting plant in America at the end of last year, that could be a very tricky situation for the US.
The US has been shipping manufacturing and textile jobs overseas for so long that we are lacking the capabilities of just picking up and making it ourselves.
Even if we start again, at the very least, prices for firearms and bullets will sky rocket. The UN Arms Trade Treaty will, in effect, create an embargo designed to make the firearm in America go extinct or cow the government to ratify the treaty.
Not a very nice Christmas present for the 2nd Amendment. But on the bright side, after this most recent election the country all but assured that the UN treaty will not be ratified here and that is something.
Let this also be a reminder that in 2 years, when we pick a new President, we vote for one who will not only put the welfare of his own people before the whims of foreign states but also will have the backbone and courage to stand alone if needed.
Because frankly, even if Obama wasn’t so gung-ho of an anti-gunner, he is still a coward and would have kow-towed to the world in order to go along to get along and be liked. Our sovereignty is in jeopardy because our leader has no spine.
(AP) U.S. President Barack Obama, left, gestures towards Chinese President Xi Jinping,…
BEIJING (AP) — On the surface, President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were all niceties — a pat on the back here, a pleasantry there. But away from the cameras, the two leaders circled each other warily at a global summit in China, coming face to face while relations between their countries continue to deteriorate.
The White House said Obama and Putin spoke three times Tuesday on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific economic meeting, tackling some of the tough issues that have strained their relationship, including Russia’s provocations in Ukraine and support for Syria’s embattled government. They also discussed the fast-approaching deadline in nuclear talks with Iran, in which the U.S. and Russia find themselves on the same negotiating team.
Unlike at some of their past meetings, Obama and Putin kept their deep-seated policy disagreements behind the scenes. But their public encounters suggested their relationship remains tense.
Picturesque Yanqi Lake, just outside of Beijing, became the venue for an awkward pas de deux between two of the most powerful leaders in the world. Entering an ornate, wood-paneled room for the start of the summit, Obama and Putin looked a bit like sidekicks to Chinese President Xi Jinping. The summit’s host led the way, with the American on one side and the Russian on the other.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”Putin said in Obama’s direction. “Yes, it is”,concurred a reticent Obama, avoiding eye contact with Putin and addressing his response to no one in particular.
(AP) U.S. President Barack Obama, left, walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, center,…
As the three presidents came to a stop at the head of the table, Putin reached out to give Obama a slap on the back. But Obama had turned in a different direction, and it didn’t appear that the Putin’s hand landed on its intended target.
A few hours later, the two again found themselves in close quarters under an overcast sky as leaders planted trees in honor of their counties. Putin strode confidently up to his tree, ahead of Obama, who clasped his hands behind his back before picking up a shovel and greeting a Spanish TV crew with a wave.
Neither the White House nor the Kremlin offered much in the way of detail about the policy conversations Obama and Putin had on the sidelines of the summit. Putin’s spokesman said only that the two had spoken a few times, touching on “bilateral relations, the situation around Ukraine, Syria and Iran.”
The U.S. is furious over Russia’s presumed role in fueling pro-Russian rebels in neighboring Ukraine. White House officials have accused Russia of sending heavy weapons to the separatists and shelling Ukrainian troops, and have denounced Russia’s buildup of forces along the border.
A truce reached in September between the rebels and Ukraine’s government is teetering, destabilized by what the White House calls a “blatant escalation” by Russia and rebel-organized elections in eastern Ukraine that the U.S. condemned as a “sham.” Vice President Joe Biden, in a phone call last week with Ukraine’s president, vowed further U.S. sanctions against Moscow “if Russia continued to willfully violate the terms” of the cease-fire.
Russia’s economy has taken a major hit following U.S. and EU sanctions — the ruble has plunged by a third this year and hit an all-time low last week — but Putin has dismissed the notion that he’s hurting at the hands of the West. Addressing the Asia-Pacific economic summit here Monday, Putin said his government had the resources to stabilize its currency without taking any emergency measures.
“We want Russia to play a different role,”Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday. “We want Russia to be a stabilizing force on issues that we care about. But they’re not going to be able to do that … if they’re violating the sovereignty of a country next door.”
(AP) U.S. President Barack Obama, left, Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian…
Rhodes said Obama wouldn’t not be seeking out a meeting with Putin while in Beijing — nor in Brisbane, Australia, where the leaders will once again run into each other during a Group of 20 economic summit this weekend. “Putin knows where we stand,”Rhodes said, adding that Obama may discuss Russia’s actions with other G-20 leaders.
For Obama and Putin, awkward encounters at international gatherings have become almost expected. But the optics have gained even greater attention as the Ukraine crisis has taken center stage.
In June, on the sidelines of D-Day anniversary commemorations in Normandy, France, Obama and Putin avoided each other during a group photo, with Obama even using Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as a buffer. The two later spoke briefly during a private leaders’ lunch.
And during a formal meeting last year during a summit in Northern Ireland, Putin slumped in his chair and sat stone-faced as Obama tried to joke about the Russian leader’s athletic ability. Obama later said Putin frequently looks like “the bored kid in the back of the classroom.”
—
AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Beijing and AP writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
America has officially honored its veterans on Nov. 11 since 1954, when an act of Congress changed the name from Armistice Day, recognizing the 1918 ceasefire between Germany and Allied nations. Veterans Day became a federal holiday to honor those who have served in the U.S. military.
The video below features excerpts from President Ronald Reagan’s Veterans Day remarks on Nov. 11, 1985. Speaking to a crowd at Arlington National Cemetery, Reagan emphasized that peace must be maintained through the strength of the courageous.
“Peace is only maintained and won by those who have clear eyes and brave minds,” said Reagan. “In memory of those who gave the last full measure of devotion, may our efforts to achieve lasting peace gain strength.”
A jump for the record books, Robbie “Maddo” Maddison also known as the modern-day Evel Kneviel attempts yet another death defying aerial feat-as he takes over the Utah Olympic Park in Park City, Utah, a setting that is more improbable, and impressive, than ever. “Maddo” teamed with Skullcandy and Red Bull Media House’s On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter to show the world what it truly means to DROP IN.
President Obama speaks to the media before a meeting with his cabinet members in the White House…
Dozens of liberal-leaning groups are lining up to demand President Obama take executive action on a wide range of regulations and reforms that have no chance of passing a Republican-led Congress next year.
For some groups, the lists are long and specific: A call by the Center for Progressive Reform to implement stricter smog rules, tougher food safety regulations and expanded federal oversight of streams and wetlands.
Dozens of Hispanic organizations, meanwhile, joined together a day after the election to demand in writing that Obama take executive action to legalize millions of immigrants now living in the United States.
Other groups are suddenly asking for new executive action to further raise the minimum wage and implement other workplace requirements aimed at raising the standard of living for low-wage workers.
A coalition of liberal lawmakers and advocacy groups on Monday plans to announce a “To-Do List” for Obama, which includes raising a $10.10 federal minimum wage that would be implemented in January.
“The president has two years left,”Paco Fabian, a spokesman for Good Jobs Nation, an advocacy group for low-wage federal contract workers, told the Washington Examiner. “He’s got a legacy to worry about. That could be a definite incentive for him to do this.”
More than 50 liberal groups that have sent similar post-election wish lists, hoping Obama will agree to their demands out of a desire to cement his legacy.
“We thought this is a time when people will be talking about the president’s legacy and whether he is still relevant,” Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform, told the Examiner. “So, we decided now would be a good time to say, ‘Mr. President, if you want to be relevant, do this.’ ”
Obama has already promised to use executive authority to deal with immigration reform and other issues, but he has not outlined his plans or when he will take action.
Steinzor’s group last week issued a report that names “13 essential regulatory actions” that the president could take before leaving office.
Steinzor said her organization’s wish list includes regulations that are within the president’s authority to implement but have garnered significant opposition from Republicans.
The list includes broader federal authority to regulate bodies of water, and a new rule to lower smog emissions. Most of the items on the list draw strong opposition from the newly minted congressional Republican majority, which believes the new regulations would kill jobs, close power plants and raise the price of energy and goods.
“It’s after the election,”Steinzor told the Examiner. “And it’s obvious that, while both parties are talking about bipartisan cooperation, the number of issues that they will really be able to cooperate on is very small.”
Last week, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a group of 39 Latino civil rights and advocacy organizations, wrote to Obama to urge him “to act swiftly and broadly in exercising your clear authority to provide administrative relief to the undocumented immigrant population.”
The group argued in its letter that since Republicans in Congress blocked comprehensive immigration reform, Obama should unilaterally legalize the millions who would have benefited from passage of the failed legislation.
The groups have the backing of some prominent congressional Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who told the president in a meeting Friday that she believes he has the authority to take executive action on immigration.
Republicans leaders who attended the same meeting, however, warned him against such a move.
Liberal groups, who have accused Obama of “risk aversion” during his six years in office, say they fear he will shrink from taking executive action that would anger the GOP.
“If there is one guiding principle we would urge for the president, it’s don’t shy away from doing the right thing just because it would pick a fight with Republicans,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told the Examiner. “Americans need to see a debate with Republicans in order to see what Democrats stand for.”
In a newly surfaced video, one of Obamacare’s architects admits a “lack of transparency” helped the Obama administration and congressional Democrats pass the Affordable Care Act. The conservative group American Commitment posted Jonathan Gruber’s remarks, reportedly from an Oct. 17, 2013, event, on YouTube.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,”says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
FERGUSON, Mo. (CBS St. Louis/AP) – Ferguson is “getting prepared for war” if a grand jury doesn’t indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson told CBS News he has been meeting with students, gang members and ministers about what might happen following the grand jury decision that is expected to come down this month.
“There’s a lot of fear. A lot of people are afraid of what could happen,”Johnson explained. “In the end, this is gonna be the community we have to live in.”
Ronardo Ward, 33, is one of those hoping to maintain peace in Ferguson if Wilson isn’t indicted.
“We are getting prepared for war,”Ward told CBS News. “And that’s just crazy.”
Michael Johnson, 42, believes many young people will rail against the “system.”
“There’s gonna be a lot of angry young people that’s pretty much not gonna listen to the system anymore,”Michael Johnson said. “Why should they?”
Protests have been going on for months following Brown’s death in August.
“The destruction here symbolizes this community, and how fragile and crumbled things are here,”Johnson told CBS News.
Despite the potential violence, Johnson doesn’t believe Ferguson is ready to explode if Wilson is not indicted.
“I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as people want to make it out to be, but I think there’s some tough times ahead,”Johnson stated.
Activistsasked last Wednesday for advance notice before prosecutors announce whether Wilson will face charges in the shooting death of Brown, saying they can help prevent widespread violence if they have 48 hours to prepare for protests.
Members of the Don’t Shoot Coalition said at a news conference that they want to “de-escalate violence without de-escalating action” once a grand jury decides whether to indict Wilson, who is white, for the Aug. 9 shooting of Brown, who was black.
The coalition represents more than 50 organizations including union workers, clergy, anti-war activists and black empowerment groups. Its members are leaders of the protests that erupted across the region after Brown’s death and have continued in the three months since.
“Everyone around the United States and much of the world is looking at St. Louis,” said Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace. “There’s much anticipation as to what happens next.”
Demonstrators on Wednesday criticized the use of tear gas, riot equipment and armored vehicles by county and local police in the early days of the protests. The heavy initial response led Gov. Jay Nixon to summon the National Guard and temporarily put the Missouri Highway Patrol in charge of Ferguson crowd control.
Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Attorney Bob McCulloch, who is overseeing the grand jury investigation, met with McPhearson and attorney Denise Lieberman earlier Wednesday and said the coalition’s request for 48 hours’ notice of a grand jury decision is “being considered.”
The grand jury was expected to hear evidence in Brown’s case until mid-November, but McCulloch said Tuesday night that its work could continue for several more weeks. Brown, 18, was unarmed when Wilson encountered him walking in the street with a friend. A scuffle ensued and Brown was shot multiple times. Witness accounts of what happened varied, with some saying they saw Brown raise his hands as if in surrender.
“After the verdict, no matter what it is, people are going to pour into the street — either in celebration or in rage,” said Montague Simmons, chairman of the Organization for Black Struggle. “It’s in the best interest of the public, the police and elected officials who control the actions of the police to work together to protect the rights of people to engage in civil disobedience and expression of their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.”
Organizers have created 19 “rules of engagement” they want police to follow, including calls to treat protesters as “citizens and not enemy combatants.”
County police Chief Jon Belmar earlier this week reiterated that police do not intend to impede peaceful dissent but said he wouldn’t take anything off the table when asked about the use of tear gas and other tactics.
“I have a responsibility…to make sure that everybody walks out of this on the other end,” he said.
Darlena Cunha makes breakfast for her then-5-year-old twin daughters Dulce, right, and Natalina. (Carla Hotvedt)
I’m a diehard, bleeding-heart liberal. And it’s ruining my parenting.
My intentions are good. I want my two daughters, 6, to think critically, to fight for fairness and justice whenever they can. I want them to value equality above all else. But sometimes, I also need them to do what I say. This contradiction is hard to explain.
Take a recent incident, involving some candy. I’d given each girl the same number of gumballs. But one of my daughters lost some. She then implored me for extra. “Now I have less and that’s not fair,”she moaned.
“But they’re my candy! It’s not my fault we lost some of hers!” the other one replied.
My solution — to put all the gumballs together in one bowl and split them equally — was unacceptable to both. All afternoon, they threw tantrums, slammed doors, or tried to slyly outwit me, crumbling when I didn’t fall for it.
“How about we keep our own gumballs and I get an extra other kind of candy that she doesn’t get?” said one.
“Why am I being punished for her missing candy?” asked the other.
Three hours later, the result was the same as it would’ve been had I taken a sterner approach from the get-go: We did what I said. But what should have taken five minutes took three hours, and everyone was in a bad mood.
I remember being a little kid. While my mother was amazing, I never felt like I had a say. What she said went, end of story. I spent my childhood bemoaning how unfair it all was (like, I know, every little kid ever). I had to overcome many obstacles to learn that my voice was important.
But I’ve gone too far in the other direction.
Three is probably a bit too young for the pay-gap speech, but there I was, explaining why I turned down a low-paying position at a local business. It’s a big world out there, and I want my girls to know what they’re worth. But since they’re so little, their whole world is our home, and their needs. The poor and disadvantaged? In their world, it’s them, when they don’t get their way.
I’ve given them power they don’t know what to do with. So minor decisions that should be left to the parent (like, say, wearing tights without holes in them) become ruthless, time-consuming battles that add unnecessary dissonance to their lives.
I thought my parenting approach would lead to strong, confident girls who are able to assess situations and logically thwart unequal systems. And it probably will, someday. But right now? They’re 6. The lessons I’ve taught them have led to two very dissatisfied girls who don’t know if their mother is their friend, their adversary or their keeper.
One poignant instance illustrates this perfectly. My daughter wanted me to buy her candy but had not behaved well enough to warrant an extra treat.
“Mom,”my daughter said, “people without money need help, and people with money need to help them.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said.
“Well, I don’t have money, and you do, so you need to help me and buy this.”
A perfectly well-reasoned, thought-out argument.
When the answer was still no, she tantrumed and screamed, and I had to drag her out of the store. She did what I’d taught her; she still didn’t get what she wanted. I didn’t get what I wanted. Everyone was unhappy.
I’m not about to swing around and go authoritarian. I am who I am.
Instead, I’m changing my communication style. What I had thought was explanation they deserved is actually confusing baggage they cannot parse. I’m refocusing, trying to teach the girls about priorities, about why it’s more important to go to school than color in the mornings.
It’s not without a fight, but it’s a reprogramming well worth it. If I could do it again, I’d wait to start on the grand-scale ideology until the girls were 10 or so, when they could more easily grasp the concepts as outside of themselves, and differentiate their present lives from their future lives.
But for now, I’ve taught the wrong message — that life should be fair and there is no other acceptable option. I did it before the girls had the capacity to understand the meaning of fair. Fair became “what I want right now because I want it.”
I should have stuck to the well-worn, well-tested “life isn’t fair, and I call the shots” route when my girls were babies and toddlers.
Because what isn’t fair is asking children to think and behave like adults before they have the mental ability to do so.
Liberalism ruined my parenting, but I’m slowly getting it back.
The Washington Free Beacon has long been a place where conservatives can go to find like-minded reporting and journalism that doesn’t look down on us for being conservative. The WFB recently reproduced an advertisement that is now making the rounds on the Internet and is literally catching fire.
Here is what some are saying about this bit of creative genius.
Anyway, here’s the ad – see if you don’t get a bit teary eyed yourself.
Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in the Atlanta area with his wife, Leah. They have three children and enjoy the hectic pace of life in a young family. Onan and Leah are members of the Journey Church in Hiram, GA. Catch him at http://www.eaglerising.com
This is the world, according to Paul Krugman, as he shares with us his genius in his latest New York Times column, “Triumph of the Wrong“.
Anyone who knows of Krugman can guess from the title and its proximity to the elections that he is referring to the Republican drubbing of the Democrats last Tuesday. Oh – and that he’s not fond of the result.
He begins his learned piece with this gem: “… of another Republican Party sweep, politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday.”
I actually agree with this statement, save for replacing the “Republicans” with “Obama and his policies”.
He continues by saying: “So now is a good time to remember just how wrong the new rulers of Congress have been about, well, everything.”
He cites the “financial crisis of 2008, brought on by runaway financial institutions” as being caused by the “sacred pursuit of profit”.Krugman claims that the Republicans “invented an imaginary history in which the government was somehow responsible.”
Well Paul, I hate to wrench open your myopic view of history, but it was entirely the fault of government, beginning with Carter administration. You may read all about it here.
Krugman is a big government spending Keynesian(a), and thus he pooh-poohs conservatives “predictions that deficit spending would lead to soaring interest rates, that easy money would lead to runaway inflation and debase the dollar.”
Look how long it took for the housing/banking sector to completely melt down – but meltdown it did. If we continue down the easy Fed money and artificially low interest rate path, everything you claim hasn’t happened, will happen. It has to, providing nothing changes.
Krugman then segues from the financial to the lefts capstone of stupidity – Climate Change. He says that, “these days the [Republican] party is dominated by climate denialists, and to some extent by conspiracy theorists who insist that the whole issue is a hoax concocted by a cabal of left-wing scientists.”
Personally, I know not a single “climate denialist”. Of course the climate changes, as it has for millennia. We on the right are just not as arrogant as you to think man can affect it. And that’s exactly what it is – arrogance.
He closes with a question that has haunted and will continue to haunt the modern day left. “But if Republicans have been so completely wrong about everything, why did voters give them such a big victory?”
His answer: The Republicans sabotaged our great president and the Democrats- blocking the path to prosperity for political gain.
Wow!
The facts are, and facts can be scary things to the left, but the facts are that there has never been a single time in history, in any country, including ours, where government spending has led to prosperity, and there never will.
But we will never convince Krugman of this. His warped ideology trumps all.
Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle.[2] Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy – predominantly private sector, but with a role for government intervention during recessions.
RUSH: This is classic. And again, not a criticism. It’s an illustration here of communication. Peggy Noonan’s piece in the Wall Street Journal is very revealing, and this one sentence — you know, Peggy, she’s such a nice woman. She really hates all the fighting, and she doesn’t like all the disagreeing, and she really wishes that people would get along. She’s writing here about Obama.
“It is confounding — not surprising but stunning, unhelpful and ill-judged — that the president is instead going for antagonism, combat and fruitless friction.”What she is reacting to here is Obama not understanding that he got skunked in this election. She doesn’t understand why Obama is going to continue to antagonize, why he wants to stay combative, and why he wants to cause this fruitless friction. She’s wondering why can’t Obama understand that he lost, take the meaning that he lost and start working with the Republicans to make a wonderful, beautiful Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood country.
Now, I think Peggy would be one of those who probably disagreed profoundly when I said “I hope he fails,” and to this day she may not even know why I said it. Barack Obama was raised by a toxic blend of Marxists like Frank Marshall Davis, communists like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and anti-Americans, and among his friends were anti-Israeli militants, anti-Semites, racists and other assorted bigots. These are the people he was influenced by. This is how he was raised. He was raised with a chip on his shoulder about this country.
He’s an angry man. He’s not cool. He’s not calm. He’s not collected. He’s a narcissist. He’s a community organizer, and what do they do?They agitate. By definition, that’s all they do. He’s not gonna slink away. He’s not gonna admit defeat. Did you hear what he said in the press conference? “I’m gonna listen to the two-thirds that didn’t vote.” Hey, Mr. President, the two-thirds that didn’t vote are the ones that walked out on you in all of your campaign appearances the last two weeks before the election. (imitating Obama) “I don’t care. I’m gonna focus on the two-thirds that didn’t vote. Those people are so disenfranchised, so upset, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
So you can sit around and hope that Obama would realize he lost and work to come up with a nice country. That’s not who he is. The point of my frustration is how, six years in, can people not know who Obama is now? But if you’re one who doesn’t know who he is, you’re not gonna understand when somebody says, “The mandate of this election is to stop Obama.”
“That’s needlessly harsh. That’s unnecessarily frictious. Why, we need to compromise, to work together and make the system work.” He’s not interested in that. He is the problem here. We’ve tried working with the guy. The Republicans have bent over backwards trying to show they can cooperate and be bipartisan. It’s one of the reasons they’ve gotten themselves into such trouble over the years.
So just to be clear, the mandate of the election, the American people, the exit poll data now proves it: stop Obama, stop Obamaism, stop the implementation of policies, for example, that are doing great harm to the free enterprise economy. Stop Obamacare and repeal it. Stop this unnecessary wild spending. Stop illegal immigration. It’s all there. Just enforce the law. Stop Obama. That does not mean do nothing. It can’t mean do nothing, nor did I ever say it means do nothing, nor did I ever say ignore Obama. I’m simply translating for people inside the Beltway what the election results meant. I’m translating for the left so that they know what it meant. They can’t afford for this to take hold again.
Stop Obama and then pepper him with bill after bill after bill that we know he’s gonna veto, but portray hip as the obstructionist, portray him as the guy saying “no.” Portray him as the guy governing against the will of the people because every bill you send up there is accompanied by a poll showing it’s majority support for the American people. Now, I don’t know how you get to “ignore Obama” from that. I don’t know how you get to “that means do nothing,” none of which I said.
But in spite of all this, we still have progress because now we have people on record saying, “Yep, that’s right, we’ve got to stop Obama,” instead of we’ve gotta compromise with him. Remember, that was the context in which I first offered my take on what the election meant. We had Republicans out saying we gotta compromise. The consultants, the media, we gotta work together, we gotta get along, we gotta fix the system.
No, no, no, no. The Republicans were not sent there to compromise. They were not sent there to govern with Obama. They were not sent there to fix anything. They were sent there to stop the things that are transforming and, in some cases, destroying the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, by the way, let me say I realize in my recent illustration of a sentence Peggy Noonan used in her latest column… I said Obama’s raised by “a toxic blend,” I called it, of Marxists, communists, and various anti-Americans to one degree or another. It’s undeniable. Reverend Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Muala Kahir, whatever the guy the LA Times has the tape they won’t release of some.
It’s one of Obama’s buddies bashing Israel at some fundraiser in LA. Bill Ayers? We know how Obama was raised. We know that he wants to transform the country. None of this is a mystery. But the fact that people don’t accept it, that’s what fascinates me. The fact that after six years there are people that don’t want to admit it or don’t see it, it just fascinates me.
But I don’t want anybody to tell me that I’m insulting Obama, because I’m not. These are not insults. These are descriptors. I’m describing him to you. And. And I don’t think it’s confounding. Obama doesn’t confound me and he doesn’t stun me, and the fact that he wants friction and chaos is documented. Why would that change now? These next two years are gonna be potentially worse than anybody is contemplating.
You don’t personally insult a narcissist like the country just did in this election and get away with it. I mean, there’s gonna be, “Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? You think you’ve shown me? Well, let me show you. You don’t like amnesty? Try 20 million!” I mean, who knows what can happen here? But I’m not making this up stuff up and I’m not being incendiary. I’m being descriptive. It’s who the guy is.
It’s why the country voted the way they did on Tuesday!
The sooner people figure it out… I can’t fathom not understanding it six years in, but clearly people still don’t get it or don’t want to admit it. But it’s time to get with the program and understand exactly what we’re dealing with here, and it’s unique. It’s not the standard, “He’s just the latest Democrat president. The Republicans are in opposition.” This is far more involved than just that.
We’ve got the Democrat Party has become radicalized. They’re not just the usual bunch of corrupt thieves and thugs that they’ve always been. There is a radical, radical, liberal element in the Democrat Party which doesn’t need to win elections in order to implement what they believe throughout the strata of this country. That’s the purpose of community organizations like ACORN.
They don’t need to win elections in order to corrupt the institutions they don’t like. Obama, he doesn’t need to win. Okay, so he lost the election. Big whoop! That isn’t gonna stop him from doing what he wants; it’s not gonna stop his fellow community organizers or his fellow liberals. I mean, they’ll take election victories, yeah, hubba hubba, but they do not get stymied when they lose them.
The traditional old hat — the typical union, corrupt-thug, Harry Reid/Pelosi wing of the Democrats– yeah. Now, they get upset when they lose, and there’s hell to pay when they lose. ‘Cause they do everything they do legislatively. Now, they work with the new liberal wing, the community organizer wing like Obama. They work with ’em. Occupy Wall Street.
But Occupy Wall Street and the militant environmentalist wacko movement and the pro-choice wackos, they are gonna continue to be organizing and causing friction and doing whatever the hell they can do to upset things, whether they win or lose. This is what I don’t think is understood, widely understood by a lot of otherwise really smart Republicans.
The additional U.S. troops also will perform non-combat roles, primarily to advise and train Iraqi and Kurdish troops and to help build “capacity and capability.”
According to a White House statement, the U.S. military will establish several sites to train nine Iraqi army brigades and three brigades of Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighting force. The news should be especially welcome to the Peshmerga, according to what Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, told WND Friday. The congressman just returned from Iraq where he was escorted by the Peshmerga to within a few miles of the front lines with ISIS, the Muslim terrorist army the U.S. has been targeting with airstrikes. Stockman said from what he saw, the Peshmerga were eager to fight but appeared severely untrained and under-equipped.
The congressman told WND, “They don’t even have enough equipment and ammunition to practice shooting.”
In contrast, he was told ISIS had now captured 6,000 pieces of military equipment from Iraq, pieces that originally came from the U.S. military. Kurdish fighters would be willing to fight ISIS forces in both Iraq and Syria, but Stockman was told neighboring Turkey had, so far, only allowed some 50 Peshmerga fighters to enter Syria.
The White House announced the U.S. military will establish two operations centers, one outside the Kurdish capital of Erbil and another outside the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The centers will be supported by what the administration called “an appropriate array of force protection capabilities.”
The Iraqi army has appeared in desperate need of training ever since its ranks were overrun in June by ISIS forces, which captured large swaths of the country and marched within miles of Baghdad.
The White House plans to ask Congress to provide $5.6 billion for efforts in Syria and Iraq, including $1.6 billion for the new “Iraq Train and Equip” fund.
The Ferguson protest movement held a meeting tonight at St. Mark Family Church on Glen Owen Drive.
The protesters took time out from their meeting to beat a college student.
Then they chased him down the street screaming. Finally the man was rescued at the local Walgreens.
From the Justice for Mike Brown Facebook page:
Radical Hamas supporter Bassem Masri defended the attack.
UPDATE: Live-streamer Chris Schaefer posted a video from his hospital bed in the emergency room. Schaefer said he got hit “pretty badly” in his head, hands, and sides. He’s asking for donations to pay for his CAT Scan.
FERGUSON, Mo. — Walk down West Florissant Avenue, and the scars of the summer are still there. The door and display window of a beauty supply store remain covered with plywood; a glued-up poster, “Beauty Town Is Back,” is the one hopeful sign of the life inside. A cellphone store, too, still has the plywood up from when riots and confrontations with the police shook this neighborhood. And the Family of Faith Baptist Church uses its billboard to proclaim, “Join us as we pray for peace.”
But few are expecting peace as this St. Louis suburb prepares for a grand jury decision, expected in the next few weeks, on whether to indict the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in August, inciting months of protests and putting Ferguson at the center of a national debate over the police and race.
Here, where heavily fortified police officers faced the demonstrators and the nights sometimes turned violent, even those shopkeepers who put in new windows are boarding up again.
“I hate this,” said Dan McMullen, the president of Solo Insurance Services, as he sat behind his desk on Thursday. During the course of a 20-minute conversation, his phone did not ring; no customers walked through the door. “Business is terrible,” he lamented. “The customers don’t want to come here anymore. We all know the grand jury is going to come back in the next couple of weeks, and everyone knows there won’t be an indictment. This time around will be a lot more violent.”
What Happened in Ferguson?
Why did the police shoot an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb, and what has unfolded since then? Here’s what you need to know about the situation in Missouri.
Mr. McMullen, a former police officer who is white, opened his desk drawer to show the loaded revolver that he keeps there.
“I don’t anticipate having to use it,” he said, but added that he was prepared to do so if necessary to defend his business.
All around this small suburb, people are bracing for the grand jury’s decision, with the wide expectation that the officer, Darren Wilson, will not face serious charges for shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown six times.
Government officials have said that forensics tests showed Mr. Brown’s blood on Officer Wilson’s gun, giving credence to the officer’s account that at one point he was pinned in his vehicle and engaged in a struggle over his gun with Mr. Brown. He told investigators that he had feared for his life, and police officers are typically given wide latitude to defend themselves if they feel their safety is threatened.
Nor are civil rights charges expected. Federal officials have said that while their investigation is continuing, the evidence so far does not support such a case against Officer Wilson.
But people protesting police tactics, who have continued to hold marches here since the shooting on Aug. 9, say they envision larger, angrier demonstrations should Officer Wilson not be charged. Fearing renewed unrest, the police in the region have bought new riot gear, called meetings with nearby departments and held special training seminars.
School leaders are reviewing emergency contingency plans and urging officials to announce the grand jury finding outside of school hours — perhaps on a Sunday, so that children returning home are not caught in a melee.
The headquarters of the Ferguson Police Department. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times
On Friday, President Obama spoke by phone with Gov. Jay Nixon to get an update on the situation. Earlier in the day, he was briefed by the Justice Department on efforts to assist state and local governments as needed.
Behind the scenes, government officials at various levels have been struggling with how to orchestrate and blunt the effects of the grand jury announcement. Investigators in Missouri want the Justice Department to announce the results of its civil rights investigation at the same time, according to several people briefed on the case, who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential conversations. Yet Justice Department officials, who have promised that their investigation will be independent, do not want to coordinate announcements.
Other government officials have been privately discussing whether they can pressure the Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, to step down, or somehow substitute the St. Louis County police for the local force. The county prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, has said that if the grand jury does not indict Officer Wilson, he will take the unusual step of releasing the evidence for public scrutiny if a judge approves.
Mr. Brown’s parents are preparing to call on the people of Ferguson not to react violently to the grand jury’s decision, even though they have little faith in the prosecutor, according to their lawyer, Benjamin L. Crump. “We want people to pray that the system will work, but the family doesn’t have much confidence at all,” Mr. Crump said. Nor, he added, are they confident that the local police will deal properly even with peacefulprotesters.
Regardless of what the grand jury decides, Mr. Crump said the Browns would dedicate themselves to pressuring the federal government and states to pass “Michael Brown laws”that would require officers to wear video cameras.
“The real change they want is for people to use their frustration and turn it into legislation,”he said. “If you get the Mike Brown law passed, nobody will have to deal with something like this and the insult to injury afterwards.”
Some protest groups have said that they are urging demonstrators to be peaceful. The Don’t Shoot Coalition, which formed in the aftermath of the shooting, is pressing local officials for coordination in advance of the grand jury’s return so that members can adequately prepare for the announcement. The coalition, which represents about 50 groups, said this week that it was promoting “a peaceful response” from demonstrators.
The group also asked the police to do their part. Michael T. McPhearson, a co-chairman, said in a statement that the police should provide protesters “adequate space.” The police should also shun the use of tear gas and armored vehicles, the group said, and allow protesters to retreat to predetermined “sanctuary safe spaces.”
Elected officials have tried to soothe nerves in recent days, even as some police departments have bought more pepper-spray balls, flexible handcuffs and batons, and, in the case of at least one department, decided to delay repairing police vehicles until any unrest is over. Anxious business owners filled part of a banquet hall here the other night, brimming with worries.
At the meeting, billed as a “disaster preparedness seminar,”they peppered city officials with questions: If Officer Wilson faces no charges, will Ferguson be able to manage the ensuing protests? Should they be stocking up on fire extinguishers, in case someone tries to burn down their stores? Should they arm themselves? Yon Kim, a clerk at a beauty supply store, later described the growing tension. “I know it’s not going to be smooth,”she said. “The customers are already scared. And if something happens, we don’t know if insurance is going to cover it.”
“There’s going to be protests,”Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff, an assistant Ferguson police chief, told the business owners, while urging them to be careful how they respond. “Once you pull that trigger,”he warned, “you cannot pull that bullet back.”
Among the other bits of less-than-reassuring guidance for business owners: Empty your trash often, fire officials said, so it is not set aflame during protests. And Mayor James Knowles III suggested that people steer clear of the area in the evening if protests break out. “By 8, 9 o’clock, nothing good is going to happen out on the streets,” Mr. Knowles said. “When the gremlins come out, you’re just going to get caught in the crossfire.”
Stuffed animals, flowers and other items form a memorial to Mr. Brown. Credit Scott Olson/Getty Images
And the protests go on. Nearly every night, demonstrators gather in front of Police Headquarters on South Florissant Road, chanting and confronting police officers with expletive-laden cries and promises to shut the streets down.
On Wednesday evening, an unusually large crowd of more than 100 protesters was there, many with garish Guy Fawkes masks of white faces. The police, wearing riot gear and armed with plastic handcuffs, warned the protesters that if they continued to block the road, they would be arrested. The group defied the police, marching down the middle of the street and leaving a traffic jam behind them. Some pounded on cars whose drivers were trying to maneuver through. One driver, a white-haired older woman, turned onto South Florissant, saw the protesters and did a hasty U-turn to avoid being trapped by the crowd.
At times, officers appeared to struggle to remain calm in the face of insults. “You’re three-fifths of a person,”one woman taunted a black police officer, who turned his back and walked in the opposite direction.
The leaders of at least three police departments — the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the St. Louis County Police Department and the St. Louis Police Department — have held regular meetings as part of an effort at unified preparation. “We’re focused on the preservation of life and property,” Jon Belmar, the chief of the county police, said in an interview. His department spent $37,741 in October on helmets, shields, batons and shin guards.
A central goal, some law enforcement officials said, is to ensure that peaceful demonstrators are able to voice their views while also preventing violence.
The St. Louis Police Department has spent $325,000 on new equipment, including riot gear; sent 350 officers to training sessions on how to manage civil disobedience; and met with police chiefs from other communities around the nation that have dealt with unrest. Still under consideration are canceled days off for officers and 12-hour shifts. “We’ll be prepared to respond,”said D. Samuel Dotson III, the chief in St. Louis.
Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, the Missouri State Highway Patrol official who became the public face of law enforcement here after early clashes, said he had spoken to school groups and church panels about long-term changes needed in Ferguson. Still, the grand jury’s looming decision comes up regularly.
“I tell them that we’re going to make it through whatever happens,”Captain Johnson said in an interview. “I also tell them that it is my belief that whatever happens is not going to be as bad as we believe it’s going to be. I also tell them that I believe we’ll be better for it. But I tell them that I look at each day for each day.”
Iraqi News reported Nov. 3 on an ISIS document that supposedly listed the prices at which to sell Yazidi and Christian women and children abducted by the terrorist group. Citing economic reasons, ISIS listed the worth of a young woman at $85, of girl at $128, of a child – as young as a year old – at $171. Only a few media outlets covered the story. The feminist media didn’t , maybe because free contraceptives weren’t at issue.
Translating the ISIS document, the news site revealed, “The market to sell women and spoils of war has been experiencing a significant decrease, which has adversely affected ISIS revenue and financing of the Mujahideen.”
In response, the group determined specific prices for women and children, while “vowing to execute whoever violates those controls.” This is the worth of a human life, according to ISIS:
A woman, 40 to 50-years-old: 50,000 dinars. ($42.90)
A woman, 30 to 40-years-old: 75,000 dinars. ($64.35)
A woman, 20 to 30-years-old: 100,000 dinars. ($85.80)
A girl, 10 to 20-years-old: 150,000 dinars. ($128.70)
A child, 1 to 9-years-old: 200,000 dinars. ($171.60)
The news came after a recent video emerged of ISIS fighters allegedly bartering over Yazidi women during a “slave market day.” In it, the men chant, “Where is my Yazidi girl?”
One man declared, “If she is 15-years-old … I have to check her … Check her teeth” and continued, “If she doesn’t have teeth, why would I want her? Another decided, “I buy her for a pistol,” “I buy her for a Glock.”
In reaction, Tearfund’s Katie Harrison told Christianity Today about the “the hasty marriage ceremonies between buyer and the woman they’ve bought in order to justify his raping her.”
“And these are not just grown women,” Harrison said. “The youngest girl we heard of being taken for rape was three years old.”
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday stunningly affirmed the rights of voters in four states – Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee – to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, throwing a boulder into the millpond of complacent assumptions by homosexual-rights advocates that same-sex marriage is a given across the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently has refused to take on any same-sex marriage cases, allowing the movement to expand into about 30 states.
But Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, which has fought on behalf of traditional marriage, said that now may change.
“With a divide in the appeals court rulings, the Supreme Court will likely take up the issue,”he said.
Previous rulings from the high court on the issue have found that the institution is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman. In 1942, it said marriage is “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.” In 1888 it ruled, “An institution in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”
Staver said marriage “is not merely a creation of any one civilization or its statutes, but is an institution older than the Constitution and, indeed, older than any laws of any nation.”
“Marriage is a natural bond that society or religion can only ‘solemnize,’” he said.
The 6th Circuit agreed in a 2-1 decision, concluding no federal judges should be making such a decision.
“Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea. Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority, one that would allow just three of us – just two of us in truth – to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four states of the Sixth Circuit.”
The pro-homosexual Marriage Equality organization called the ruling “out of step with the decisions of 40 other courts.”
The organization said states as diverse as “Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Utah” recently have “embrace[d] marriage equality.”
“It is clear that the freedom to marry is a fundamental constitutional right that belongs to all Americans, not just some Americans,”said spokesman John Lewis.
But the organization did not note that a vast majority of the states that have “embraced” same-sex marriage have done so largely by judicial decree, after voters in many of those states specifically chose to define in their laws or even constitution marriage as one man and one woman.
Before federal judges stepped in, the wave of state affirmations of traditional marriage was virtually unstoppable, with victories in 31 of 31 elections.
Critics have argued that if the traditional definition is dropped, there would be no legitimate reason to continue bans on incest or polygamy.
That opinion was included in a legal decision in California, where judges created same-sex marriage.
State Supreme Court justice Marvin Baxter, writing a dissent, said: “The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deeprooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy. … Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous.
“Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.”
His warning?
“Who can say that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority’s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?”
The 6th Circuit said: “A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world, shared by most, if not all, of our ancestors, and shared still today by a significant number of the states…. One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse. Imagine a society without marriage. It does not take long to envision problems that might result from an absence of rules about how to handle the natural effects of male-female intercourse: children.”
And the judges wrote: “Once one accepts a need to establish such ground rules, and most especially a need to create stable family units for the planned and unplanned creation of children, one can well appreciate why the citizenry would think that a reasonable first concern of any society is the need to regulate male-female relationships and the unique procreative possibilities of them…. People may not need the government’s encouragement to have sex. And they may not need the government’s encouragement to propagate the species. But they may well need the government’s encouragement to create and maintain stable relationships within which children may flourish. It is not society’s laws or for that matter any one religion’s laws, but nature’s laws (that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative. And governments typically are not second-guessed under the Constitution for prioritizing how they tackle such issues.”
There is a logic behind traditional marriage, they said.
“What we are left with is this: By creating a status (marriage) and by subsidizing it (e.g., with tax-filing privileges and deductions), the states created an incentive for two people who procreate together to stay together for purposes of rearing offspring. That does not convict the states of irrationality, only of awareness of the biological reality that couples of the same sex do not have children in the same way as couples of opposite sexes and that couples of the same sex do not run the risk of unintended offspring. That explanation, still relevant today, suffices to allow the states to retain authority.”
Byron Babione, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said: “The people of every state should remain free to affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman in their laws. As the 6th Circuit rightly concluded, the Constitution does not demand that one irreversible view of marriage be judicially imposed on everyone. The 6th Circuit’s decision is consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s acknowledgement in Windsor that marriage law is the business of the states.”
The ruling from the 6th Circuit reversed district court rulings that had struck down gay marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
It conflicts with rulings from the 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th circuits.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, described by USA Today as one of the Republican Party’s most esteemed legal thinkers and writers, issued the 42-page decision. Deborah Cook concurred.
Sutton noted a one-sentence Supreme Court ruling from 1972 also “upheld the right of the people of a state to define marriage as they see it.”
Sutton concluded: “Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said: “We applaud the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for upholding the freedom of the people to define marriage as the union of a man and woman. The Sixth Circuit rightly recognizes that the Constitution does not demand that this modern redefinition of marriage be forced on the States. The American people simply will not accept a nationwide redefinition of marriage imposed on them by a judicial oligarchy.
“As the debate continues, recent polls and the election demonstrate that support for marriage redefinition is stalling as Americans begin to experience and consider the consequences for religious freedom, free speech, and parental rights.”
“Where marriage is redefined, parents are increasingly finding a wedge being driven between them and their children as school curricula is changed to contradict the morals parents are teaching their children. And as more and more people lose their livelihoods because they refuse to not just tolerate but celebrate same-sex marriage, many Americans are beginning to see that this is about far more than the marriage alter, but is about fundamentally altering society.”
The government in Kiev has once again accused Russia of sending tanks into eastern Ukraine. Claim made after vote was held in Donetsk People’s Republic on Sunday
Although unconfirmed, the Ukrainian military says 32 tanks and 30 trucks crossed over into the Luhansk region where rebels opposed to the government in Kiev are making a stand.
Citizen journalists, however, claim to have video showing the deployment:
“The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told the BBC.
In August, the Ukrainian government claimed Russia had invaded the country. NATO used the unverified invasion as a pretext when it announced troop deployments in Eastern Europe.
NATO released satellite imagery of what it said were tank and truck columns crossing over into Ukraine. Critics argued it was not clear if the images were of military vehicles inside Russia or Ukraine.
Donetsk Separatist Vote
On Sunday a vote was held in the Donetsk People’s Republic and separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko was sworn into office.
Russia said it “respects” the vote after previously stating it supported it.
“We support the continuation of the Minsk process and advocate holding another meeting of the Contact Group,” said Russian foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.
The Minsk process is a reference to a ceasefire agreement reached in the capital of Belorussia on September 5.
Earlier this year separatist leaders declared victory after a large number of residents in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions voted in a Crimea-style referendum calling for the establishment of People’s Republics.
On May 24, the two separatist republics signed an agreement creating a confederation called the Federal State of Novorossiya, or New Russia.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned Thursday that any attempt by President Barack Obama to ease U.S. immigration rules on his own would poison his relationship with Congress, which is already suffering from a severe lack of trust in the White House.
Boehner said the midterm elections show that voters don’t want Obama to act unilaterally, as he’s promised to do, and warned that such a move would be like playing with matches.
House Speaker John Boehner warned President Barack Obama Thursday that going it alone on immigration would be like playing with matches. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
“When you play with matches, you take the risk of burning yourself,”Boehner warned. “And he’s gonna burn himself if he continues to go down this path. The American people made it clear on election day: they want to get things done, and they don’t want the president acting on a unilateral basis.”
On Wednesday, Obama seemed to ignore the huge GOP win on election day, and said he would move forward with some kind of executive action on immigration by the end of the year. The White House is thought to be considering changes that would let it expand the number of green cards available to immigrants and their families.
Obama also said he has already been patient long enough waiting for Congress to act.
“I think it’s fair to say that I’ve shown a lot of patience and have tried to work on a bipartisan basis as much as possible, and I’m going to keep on doing so,” he said.
Boehner said Obama’s comments showed that he hasn’t yet decided to work with Congress on the critical issue of immigration.
“Yesterday, we heard him say that he may double-down on his go-it-alone approach,” Boehner said. “I’ve told the president before that he needs to put politics aside and rebuild trust.”
“Finding common ground can be hard work. But it’ll be even harder if the president isn’t willing to work with us,”he added.
Outside of immigration, Boehner said it is likely that the House will again pass a bill next year to repeal Obamacare, and see if the new GOP-led Senate can pass it. But he also said Republicans would try to pass smaller bills to repeal objectionable parts of the law.
Those parts include killing the medical device tax, ending the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and eliminating the individual mandate to buy health insurance. Boehner said there are bipartisan majorities in both chambers for passing those bills.
“We need to put them on the president’s desk that let him choose,” he said.
He also rejected the idea that Republicans would be poisoning their relationship with Obama by passing Obamacare bills, and said repeal measures are needed because the law is clearly hurting the economy.
Boehner and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have outlined several issues they want to address next year. Boehner told reporters that Republicans want to fix the tax code, address the national debt, reform the legal system, make the government more accountable, and give parents more choices on education.
There are times when opportunities come your way, which just humble you and such has happened for me.
I have the honor of being named the CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a free-market/free-enterprise policy think tank headquartered in Dallas, Texas. This position will afford me the opportunity to have an impact on the development of policy positions, which will advance economic growth, individual opportunity and restore the promise of America for current and future generations.
My vision for NCPA is for it to become exactly what its name suggests – the “National Center for Policy Analysis.” I see NCPA being the hub of policy analysis with collaborative efforts alongside other entities as its “spokes. Growth is aimed towards our economic practices and policies. Opportunity seeks to promote those policies and the concept of “equality of opportunity” versus that of “equality of outcomes” – and that starts with a good quality education. Lastly, promise refers to securing the American Dream stating that regardless of where you are born or from where you come, you are endowed with the right of “pursuit of happiness” and NCPA will advocate for the policies enabling everyone to pursue – as opposed to policies that give a “government guarantee” of happiness.
My goal is for NCPA to be the preeminent Constitutional Conservative policy analysis entity, not advocacy group. We want to align ourselves with the fundamental principles of governance of America as a Constitutional Republic and promote the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual sovereignty, free market economy, and strong national defense.
As we examine the policies in synchronization with the governing philosophy and principles, we become focused not on party but rather effective and efficient governing policy – and we must be able to simply articulate that in the public sphere.
NCPA’s current focus is on tax, retirement, healthcare, energy, education, and raw material policy. As we further develop NCPA as a policy center and nexus, the objective is to expand to the three legs of security – economic, energy, and national. We seek not only to advocate to elected federal lawmakers, but to be “America’s Think Tank” by becoming a repository of information where Americans can turn to find principled analysis. That means we want our message to reach the kitchen tables of everyday Americans – the middle income family.
And we want to hear back from you, my fellow Americans, to garner your input and also your ideas. Most of all, I look forward to expanding our base of volunteers at NCPA and our next generation group of interns who will set the stage for our future statesmen and women.
Why these three categories of security? They will keep our think tank on target and purpose-driven.
Economic security assesses the tax, regulatory, government spending, and monetary reforms that affect the advancement of a free market economic system. In this leg we also must continue to address the issue of healthcare reform and spending considering it is one-sixth of our economy. It is critical that we never lose sight of free market ideals and solutions – not government-driven.
Our economy has drifted to one drive more by government spending driven than the free market – and critical to that are our small businesses. We must examine our budgetary process — how can we move away from the baseline process towards a zero-based budget — and what the true solutions are for the mandatory spending side of our budget. We must slow down the debt clock.
Energy security is vital, as we should be producing, consuming, and exporting our energy resources here in America. Part of the 21st century battlefield is energy resources – just look at how Vladimir Putin leverages it against Europe. NCPA can be a leader in analyzing the full spectrum development of our energy resources – an energy Manhattan Project. And this leg promotes our economic growth, offering better opportunities for Americans — as we see emanating from the Bakken fields in North Dakota.
Lastly, nothing matters if we fail in the number one responsibility of the Federal Government: “To provide for the common defense.”NCPA can be a voice that objectively identify what a 21st century U.S. military force should look like to meet the challenges of this battlefield with non-state, non-uniformed unlawful combatant belligerents and the adversarial nation-state actors. Our think tank has to be versed in national security policy and how the current threat environment shapes our force structure — not the defense industry or budgetary constraints. Defense policy has to return to the premise of “peace through strength,”but it must be based on a fiscal responsibility, not political gimmickry. We must return to sound principled policy based on our Constitutional Republic philosophy of governance, fundamental principles, and proven policies for success, prosperity, and security.
It’s not about attaining political office for me – it’s about a better-engaged and informed electorate regarding the policies that advance America. It is about the oath of office I took many years ago — “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” And NCPA has so blessed me to be a voice that can have an impact on the future of my country. Folks, it just does not get any better than that!
And as Davy Crockett said — y’all know I am a Tennessee Volunteer — “You all can go to hell, I am going to Texas.”Well, ten years later, I get to go back to Texas, the place of my last Army duty station!
Rest assured, I will continue to make my voice heard on this pages, and to each and every one of you, I shall remain Steadfast and Loyal.
Two years after California Democrats swept to commanding two-thirds majorities in both houses of the state Legislature, they were unable to again claim the same margin in the Senate and the Assembly remained in doubt with key races too close to call.
Republicans captured two closely contested Senate seats central to the supermajority hopes of Democrats. Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen defeated former Democratic Assemblyman Democrat Jose Solorio, while Republican Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, repelled a challenge from Democrat Luis Chavez to retain a spot in the Senate he first won in a tight special election last year.
…More seats were in play on the Assembly side. Two vulnerable first-term Democrats, Sharon Quirk-Silva of Fullerton and Steve Fox of Palmdale, lost seats that became focal points for a Republican party intent on fracturing Democratic control.
Republican Carl DeMaio and Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) were nearly tied Wednesday morning in an election race that has captured national attention with allegations of sexual misconduct, an office break-in, oodles of outside financial contributions and a flood of mudslinging advertising.
According to results from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office, with 100 percent of the votes counted, DeMaio and Peters were both at 50 percent. DeMaio had 72,431 votes to 71,679 for Peters, a margin of 752 votes.
…Wednesday morning, the Registar of Voters Office confirmed that there were just over 180,000 ballots that needed to be counted. Those consisted of 143,000 mail-in ballots and 36,429 provisional ballots.
We are anticipating a formal announcement of the results Thursday. The upside: If Peters asks for a recount, he would have to pay for it.
Dawn Wildman, a leading coordinator with California Tea Party Groups, says, “We actually flipped a couple of seats in statewide races so that was good. It shows our groups are effective at the local level, which is fabulous result. We now have given the GOP the opportunity to get it right…or continue make excuses. However, today we celebrate.”
It is heartening to see the wave of sanity reach the shores of California. Time will tell if the tsunami washed up jellyfish, or something with more spine to it.
Day After: Obama, GOP Face New Political Dynamic A day after Republicans stormed to power in the U.S. Senate, a weakened President Barack Obama and emboldened GOP congressional leaders began adjusting to a new political dynamic Wednesday with eyes on the 2016 presidential contest. (Nov. 5) AP
The big question now confronts a newly-emergent Republican majority in the Senate and an overwhelming Republican majority in the House: what next? Some party leaders have called for working with the opposition; some have proposed comprehensive legislation. Others say it’s time to push forward with a hard-core conservative agenda, full speed ahead. The answer truly lies in combatting the narrative that the media will no doubt embrace: Republicans as the Party of No. We saw this narrative emerge in the aftermath of the Republican victories of 2010; Obama then ran against the supposedly obstructionist Congress. The media, seeking to prop up a Hillary Clinton run, will now demonize the Republican Party as a roadblock to progress. Which is why the GOP must reverse the narrative. It is President Obama who is the roadblock. He is, in fact, the President of No. How can the GOP achieve this reversal? By moving beyond omnibus packages, pork-laden monstrosities cobbled together via a consensus-building process. Instead, Republicans should pursue short, single-issue bills, no more than 10 pages in length, with clear and concise language. The bills should all be simple, comprehensible, and inescapable in the conclusions constituents should draw from a Congressional vote on them. Here are the top options for Republicans: Stop Amnesty Now.
President Obama wants to pursue executive amnesty. We all know it. He knows it; his cabinet knows it; the media know it. The Republicans should pass a one-page bill defunding any agency of government that refuses to implement federal immigration law or that facilitates such refusal. The executive branch does not have the cash to implement amnesty – unless Congress gives it to President Obama.
Border Security.
Republicans should immediately pass a bill securing the southern border, with funds available to complete the fence. Those funds should, if possible, be given to border state governors for implementation should those governors apply for grants. Furthermore, Republicans should fully fund all immigration agents so that the great lie that government cannot keep track of those illegally in the country can be put to bed once and for all: if the IRS can keep track of hundreds of millions of Americans, surely the feds can keep track of 10 million illegal immigrants.
Piecemeal Funding Of The Government.
Republicans are already talking about passing a full budget. They shouldn’t. The budget process is a joke, created purely for the purpose of lard-slathered legislation. Instead, Republicans should individually fund each portion of the government, and force Obama to veto every one of those bills. Let him go on record as opposing funding for the Defense Department, the Centers for Disease Control, and the like, all in order to preserve his precious Obamacare. It will be difficult for him to argue that a government shutdown is the Republicans’ fault when he has hundreds of individual bills funding everything Americans want on his desk awaiting signature.
Repeal Obamacare.
Yes, full repeal. Obama will reject it. That does not matter. The point is that the American people do not like Obamacare, and are not interested in preserving it. A full quarter of Americans said in exit polls yesterday that health care was their top voting priority. That number is likely to rise as Obamacare is implemented. Republicans pledged repeal. Now is the time for them to fulfill that pledge.
Restore Defense Department Cuts.
The cuts to Defense funding under President Obama’s sequestration have been disastrous for Americans’ security. We no longer have the capacity to fight two wars simultaneously – a basic requirement of national security – and we are looking at the greatest cuts to military readiness in almost a century. Republicans should move quickly to replace Defense spending in the face of a growing threat from Islamic terrorism, Russian imperialism, and Chinese militarism.
Withdraw Funding From Certain Parts of The United Nations.
The United Nations is an amoral joke, and councils like the Human Rights Council are far worse than that. Spending millions of taxpayer dollars to prop up failing dictatorships and thugocracies isn’t just wrong, it’s an insult to the men and women who work every day to stop such dictatorships – and those who die trying to fight them.
Pass Strong Sanctions on Iran; Withdraw Funding for the Palestinian Authority; Move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
President Obama’s outreach to Iran has been one of the greatest catastrophes for American foreign policy in decades. Iran will go nuclear, unless the United States takes severe action against Iran. That means harsh sanctions, beginning now. That would also send Iran the signal that no matter how much President Obama hates “chickens***” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the people of the United States stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel. The same message would be sent by moving the embassy to Jerusalem – right now, the Obama administration refuses to even state that Jerusalem is a part of Israel – or with a move by the Congress to cut off foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is working with Hamas in a genocidally anti-Jewish campaign of terror against the Jewish state.
Dismantle Common Core.
Common Core is set to plague states across the country with its mishmash of standards and requirements. Federal power over education should be delegated back to the states, where it belongs. Republicans on the state level should then vote to set up grant programs that create actual teacher training standards, as in countries like Finland.
Green-light Keystone XL.
New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already said that this remains a top priority. President Obama should be forced to give Keystone XL an up-or-down decision as soon as possible. As Alison Lundergan Grimes found out, Americans like access to energy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are plenty more such legislative proposals worthy of consideration. The bottom line: if Republicans blow this opportunity to draw a contrast with the Democratic Party, they will have failed dramatically. President Obama must become the President of No in order for Americans to see Republicans as a party worth saying yes to in 2016.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
Julie West, founder of Parents for Truth in Education, finds some scary stuff on the Williamson County, TN Schools website. She goes to the 7th grade Social Studies page and points out a few shocking things, beginning with the fact that we have been told “Common Core is only Language Arts (English) and Math.” First red flag. Here are other red flags that prove Common Core has an Islamic agenda prepared for the minds of our next American generation.
Why is CCSS, Common Core State Standards on the Social Studies page? Haslam/Looney said CCSS is only Math and Language Arts.
Why is a “religion” being taught in school? Christianity is banned, including the word Christmas, and prayer, etc. So why Islam? And, why only Islam?
According to the WCS website, more time is being spent on teaching Islam than on teaching the Roman Empire and its effect on American Law and Government, architecture, etc.
Under the heading ‘Islamic World Standards. Africa,’ the CC Curriculum teaches this; ‘Pillars of Islam.’ ‘Discover Islam.’ “Explore. Discover. Be Convinced.” Then, there’s “My Journey to Islam,” someone’s conversion story.
Is there a conversion to Christianity story in the CCSS curriculum? No. A Conversion to Judaism story? No.
Common Core Curriculum links to a Muslim gear page that includes T shirts bearing the Aqida, the Muslim creed.
Under ‘Other Religions,’ there’s a link entitled, “Islam and Other Religions,” not “Christianity and Other Religions.”
Under the Heading, “Prophets and Messengers,” Jesus and Mohammed are listed.
Under same heading it says; “Was Jesus sent to be crucified?”
Public schools are teaching this.
Common Core Curriculum says, “It is very clear from the above verse Matthew 26:39 that Jesus had no intention of dying.”
Julie West responds, “That is a pretty overt attack on the foundational belief of most of the students in Williamson County schools, again on a public school website.”
Next paragraph is entitled, “The Post Crucifixion Prophesied Events Never Happened.”Wow.
Julie West points out, “It doesn’t say, “Muslims believe they didn’t happen.” It doesn’t say, “Many people question this account,” or “it’s a belief of Christians.” It categorically states, on a public school website, apparently enforcing a Common Core Standard (all tests to get into college will be held to this standard), that the post crucifixion prophesied events never took place. Again, this is the faith of the majority of residents of this county, and the district web site is instructing students that that information is not true.”
Julie West continues, “So once again I ask Commissioner Huffman, Governor Haslam, Director of Schools Mike Looney, and really anyone else, why is this okay, that this is what our children are being exposed to, not just for one day or two, but according to the scope and sequence, for the vast majority of at least the first nine weeks? I’ve got a feeling it goes on. So thank you, and by the way, I really am waiting for an answer.”
So are we Julie. Thank you for your research. I am very angry at how our elected and appointed leaders are lying to us. They work for us, and they need to be accountable.
This is obvious indoctrination, brainwashing, propaganda. Civilization Jihad according to experts, link here and here, is Islamic Jihad infiltrating a society without violence by taking over the education system, the courts, the churches, the government, etc.
Related Stories:
Common Core is not “state-led” as Gov. Haslam and Superintendent Looney have lied. It is world wide. A Common Core Conference in Dubai just took place Oct. 2014. Link here. It is globalism, as is Agenda 21. Both tied to the United Nations.
Common Core curriculum in Pearson Textbooks was written by two Muslims, Mansuri and Douglass. Link here.
Islam Dominating Public School Curriculum. Story here.
I have no doubt you are already aware the Republicans gained control of the U.S. Senate last night, securing at least 52 of 100 Senate seats. I wanted to give you a full rundown of the election results and their impact on us.
Senate Republicans picked up seats in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia, giving them at least a 52 seat majority. Three races (Alaska, Louisiana, and Virginia) have yet to be decided, with Louisiana going to a runoff on December 6th and pundits already saying that incumbent Democrat Landreiu will likely lose.
Republican Dan Sullivan is currently leading in Alaska, with 60% of the vote counted and Democrat Mark Warner is leading in Virginia in a surprisingly tight race against Ed Gillespie. Republicans in tight races were able to stave off significant challenges in Georgia, Kansas, and Kentucky. Barring any unforeseen circumstance, Senator Mitch McConnell will become the new Senate Majority Leader in 2015.
Republicans in the House have picked up at least 12 seats, with the GOP currently holding 243 seats to the Democrats’ 174. Fourteen races have yet to be determined, and Republicans are leading in six of them. This will likely cement John Boehner’s power for the foreseeable future. Just in case you were wondering, the largest margin the Republicans have held in the House was 270 seats during the 1928 session.
Republicans did well on the state level as well, netting at least three governor’s races with victories in Illinois and Arkansas, and surprising upsets in Maryland and Massachusetts, giving Republicans at least 31 seats. The Democrats picked up the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania. Republicans held off challengers in key races including Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, and Texas. Three races are still too close to call with Democrats leading in Colorado and Connecticut and an independent leading in Alaska. Vermont’s legislature will determine the winner of the governor’s race, as neither candidate was able to get to 50% needed for victory, with incumbent Democrat Peter Shumlin likely to win the seat.
At the state legislature level it will take some time to get a clear picture of which party will control each chamber. Of the 99 legislative chambers nationally, 87 held elections yesterday, with Republicans controlling 57 and Democrats controlling 41. As of this morning Republicans were able to flip control of 7 chambers to their control, including the Minnesota House, Nevada House, New Hampshire House, West Virginia House, New Mexico House, New York Senate, and Nevada Senate. The West Virginia Senate went from Democrat control to an even split. Five chambers are still too close to call, with Democrats controlling four and Republicans controlling one before the election.
At this point Republicans have trifectas (controlling the Governor’s office and both legislative chambers) in 23 states, losing the trifecta in Pennsylvania, with three still to be decided. Democrats lost trifectas in Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and West Virginia.
What does this all mean for Convention of States? It means we need to strike while the iron is hot and redouble our efforts to secure Article V applications in 34 states in 2015. While the elections put new people into office, the results tell us the American people are dissatisfied with their government, and they want meaningful change. Fox News exit polling shows that:
1. Congressional still hovers around 13%, with Obama at 41%.
2. 49% of respondents feel their children’s generation will be worse off than their generation.
3. 78% of voters are concerned about the direction of the economy, with 70% saying the state of the current economy is not good.
4. 78% said they do not trust the government, with 79% saying that they cannot trust Washington to do what is right.
5. Realizing they handed Republicans power in Congress, 60% still said they are dissatisfied with Republican leadership.
So, while there is a shift in Washington, people are still not happy with the federal government. Only a Convention of States will allow the people to take back the power the Founders intended them to have all along.
Scott Russell is the Executive Director for the Convention of States Project.
Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. AP
A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday.
Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote.
In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running a positive campaign. “History has been made tonight in West Virginia, and while I am proud of all that we have accomplished together, it is the future of this state that is now my singular focus,” she said.
Saira Blair walks through the rows of books at the university library at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W. Va.Ty Wright for the Wall Street Journal
Ms. Blair campaigned on a pledge to work to reduce certain taxes on businesses, and she also holds antiabortion and pro-gun positions. She defeated Democrat Layne Diehl, a 44-year-old Martinsburg attorney, whose top priorities included improving secondary education and solving the state’s drug epidemic.
Ms. Diehl congratulated Ms. Blair on running a good campaign and said she knew she was also up against broad dissatisfaction with Democrats in the state, partly from the widely held view that the Obama administration’s energy policies are hurting the coal industry.
“I’m very proud of the race that was run on both sides,”Ms. Diehl said. “Quite frankly a 17- or 18-year-old young woman that has put herself out there and won a political campaign has certainly brought some positive press to the state. I look forward to seeing what her leadership brings to the state of West Virginia.”
Ms. Blair gained national attention in May when she defeated the 66-year-old Republican incumbent in a primary when she was 17.
She will be the youngest state lawmaker in the nation, according to records kept by the National Conference of State Legislatures. There are more than 7,300 state legislators in the U.S., and fewer than 5% are under the age of 30, according to Morgan Cullen, a policy analyst at NCSL.
Ms. Blair said she would defer her spring semester to attend the part-time legislature’s 60-day session and make up classes in the summer and fall. She promoted her youth as an asset during the campaign, saying the voice of younger voters should be heard in the state capitol. An economics major, she hopes to become a financial planner, and she supports term limits.
She also contributed nearly $4,000 to her own campaign.
“Candidates should have some skin in the game,”Ms. Blair said in a recent interview. “I wanted voters to know I was serious.”
FILE- In this April 28, 2014 file photo, Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, speaks during a news conference in New York. Lynch could be one of a handful of contenders being considered to replace Eric Holder when he steps down as U.S. Attorney General. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) (The Associated Press)
FILE- In this April 28, 2014 file photo, Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, stands next to a poster displaying the alleged crimes committed by U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm during a news conference in New York. Lynch’s name has shown up with increasing frequency as a possible choice to replace outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) (The Associated Press)
FILE- In this June 17, 2013 file photo, Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Lynch could be on a list of contenders to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General. If selected, Lynch would make history as the first black woman to lead the Justice Department. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) (The Associated Press)
NEW YORK – She’s an under-the-radar contender to become the first black woman to head the Justice Department.
Loretta Lynch rarely holds news conferences, does interviews or gives speeches in her current job as U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. But the lack of a paper trail on Lynch hasn’t kept her from emerging in recent weeks as one of only a handful of people still under consideration by the White House to replace the outgoing Eric Holder as attorney general.
The buzz over the 55-year-old Harvard Law School graduate was apparent as she sat next to Holder for his appearance at a ceremony last week in Brooklyn highlighting efforts to divert low-level offenders into drug rehab and job diversion programs, one of the attorney general’s pet causes. In her introduction of Holder before an audience that included U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of Manhattan — considered another attorney general contender — a judge made clear who she favors for the job.
“We all hope that the 83rd attorney general is in this room — someone who may be wearing a little orange thing,”said U.S. District Judge Carol Amon, referring to a colorful jacket Lynch had on.
A spokesman for Lynch later said she wouldn’t discuss her prospects, but her supporters were vocal.
“She has everything that we would want in an attorney general,”said Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson. “She has intelligence, dignity and the ability to be fair, but also tough. I have the utmost respect for her.”
Lynch, who grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, began her career as a federal prosecutor in 1990. While a chief assistant U.S. attorney, she was on the trial team in one of the most sensational police brutality cases in city history, the broomstick torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a precinct bathroom.
She originally served as U.S. attorney in Brooklyn from 1999 to 2001 before entering private practice. She returned to the position in 2010 and was appointed to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, a position that required her to spend more time in Washington and drew her closer to Holder.
During her second tenure at one of the country’s busiest federal districts, Lynch’s office has won convictions in a thwarted, al-Qaida sanctioned plot to attack New York City subways, and charged the head of a Mexican drug cartel with 12 murders. More recently, her office brought tax evasion charges against Republican Congressman Michael Grimm that’s scheduled to go to trial next year.
Still, Lynch often has been overshadowed by the media-savvy Bharara, whose office has prosecuted numerous headline-grabbing cases against terrorists, corrupt politicians and Wall Street swindlers. But behind the scenes, she has won respect for dedicating much of her career to law enforcement without seeking publicity.
“I don’t think that’s why she’s in government and that’s a real admirable quality,”said Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Lynch and now teaches law at New York University.
Thompson, who teamed with Lynch on the Louima case when he was an assistant U.S. attorney, recalled her cool under fire. “There was so much pressure to get it right. She was unflappable,”he said.
Seeing Lynch become the first black woman to serve in the position “would be inspiring to millions of people, especially children, to know what they could become,” he said.
(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), declaring himself “humbled” by Tuesday night’s many Republican wins, says it’s not time to celebrate, it’s time to pass jobs, energy, tax and regulatory reform bills:
“It’s time for government to start getting results and implementing solutions to the challenges facing our country, starting with our still-struggling economy,” Boehner said in a statement.
“Americans can expect the new Congress to debate and vote soon on the many common-sense jobs and energy bills that passed the Republican-led House in recent years with bipartisan support but were never even brought to a vote by the outgoing Senate majority, as well as solutions offered by Senate Republicans that were denied consideration.
“I’ve also put forth a five-point roadmap for harnessing the emerging energy boom in America, resetting our economy and restoring the American Dream for our children and grandchildren. It calls for fixing our tax code, solving our spending problem, reforming our legal system, reforming our regulatory system, and improving our education system.”
Boehner said Republicans have set those priorities by listening to their constituents, and he urged Obama to “work with us,” rather than launch a “counterattack on the new majority.”
“This is a time for solutions to get our economy moving again, and we’re eager to get to work,” Boehner said.
Under Boehner’s leadership, the House has passed dozens of bills — more than fifty — to repeal Obamacare; and as recently as August 8, Boehner was complaining about the Democrats’ health care law driving up insurance costs for families and small businesses:
“In just two years, Ohioans have now seen their insurance premiums spike by 53 percent on average – it’s simply unconscionable,” Boehner said in an Aug. 8 statement.
“Every story that piles on further strengthens my resolve to continue fighting to repeal this law and start over with patient-centered reforms that will actually lower health care costs and protect jobs.”
Voters may have rejected “Obama stagnation and malaise” in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but that doesn’t mean they are any happier with Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz warned late Tuesday night.
“The fact that the people rose up and voted the Democrats out of power doesn’t necessarily mean they trust the Republicans,” Cruz told Fox News Channel. “They’ve given us another chance. But we’ve got to earn that trust.”
The Texas Republican has drawn the ire of both Democrats and establishment members of his own party with his tea party philosophy and his leading of the partial government shutdown in October 2013. At the time, Democrats thought they were poised not only to hold the Senate, but perhaps to take control of the House after the GOP suffered a drop in public opinion after the shutdown. But a year later, it was the Democrats who were vanquished, losing more seats in the House and losing control of the Senate to Republicans.
Cruz, who is expected to make a run for president in 2016, sounded more conciliatory at least toward his own party Tuesday, saying the GOP must now lead with a united, bold, positive agenda, focusing on tax reform, regulatory reform and U.S. energy independence.Asked whether he would support Sen. Mitch McConnell as majority leader, Cruz said that would be a decision for the conference next week but he was not aware of anyone running against McConnell.
IJ Review – South Carolina Senator Tim Scott wasn’t the only candidate who made history Tuesday. Following his footsteps is Utah’s Mia Love, who became the first black Republican woman elected to Congress in United States history.
After hearing the good news, Daily Herald Photographer Ian Maule snapped this pic of Love and her father.
Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, was elected to the United States Senate Tuesday evening
Senator Scott, who defeated opponent Joyce Dickerson in a landslide, is now the first black man from the South to enter the United States Senate following a public election
He is also only the third black politician to serve on the United States Senate from the South, and the first in over 130 years
Senator Scott was actually the incumbent in his race, having been appointed to the U.S. Senate in late 2012 by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley
Breakthrough: A victorious Tim Scott makes his speech to supporters after beating challengers Jill Bossi and Joyce Dickerson to
Senator Tim Scott made history on Tuesday night when he became the first black senator from the South to be elected to the United States Senate by a popular election.
Sen. Scott, a Republican from South Carolina and the incumbent in his race, defeated Democrat Joyce Dickerson in a landslide, with the race being called just four minutes after the polls closed.
He became a senator in 2013 after being appointed to fill the seat of Jim DeMint in late 2012, who stepped down to join a Republican think tank, by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
History: Young supporters celebrate Sen. Scott’s landmark victory
Only nine African-Americans have been elected or appointed to serve in the United States Senate. Of those nine, only three, including Senator Scott, have been from the South.
Just as shocking is the fact that the other two senators to serve from the South were Sen. Hiram Rhodes Revels, who was elected by the Mississippi State Senate in 1870 and served just over one year, and Sen. Blanche Kelso Bruce, who was also from Mississippi and served a full term beginning in 1875 after being elected by the state senate.
That means that it took over 130 years for the next black senator to enter the United States Senate. Until Tuesday however, none of these men had ever won the office as the result of a public election.
Proud mama: Sen. Scott, who is unmarried, celebrated his victory with his mother, Frances Scott (above)
President: Six of the black politicians elected to the United States Senate have come from the North, including Barack Obama (above), who was junior senator from Illinois until he gained the presidency
Major moment: A drawing of Sen. Revels being sworn in back in 1870
The six black senators from the North, three from Illinois, two from Massachusetts, and one from New Jersey, all assumed office as the result of a public election, beginning with Massachusetts Sen. Edward William Brooke, III who was elected in 1967.
The other five are Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, Sen. Roland W. Burris, Sen. Mo Cowan, Sen. Cory Booker and, most notably, President Barack Obama.
Sen. Scott, who is unmarried and owns an insurance agency, is now one of two black senators serving in the U.S. Senate alongside Sen. Booker.
He previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013.
Immigration was a losing issue in the 2014 election, with Republicans who announced their opposition to President Obama’s legalization plans earning victories across the country and voters in Oregon easily defeating a referendum that would have granted driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Republicans said the results should serve as a warning to President Obama, who has said he plans to take unilateral action to grant legal status to illegal immigrants some time this year.
Hispanic leaders had been counting on Oregon voters to embrace driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, arguing it would be a signal that states were stepping in to act on immigration reform where the federal government wouldn’t.
But when put to voters, the referendum was losing by more than a two-to-one margin as of early Wednesday morning.
In congressional races, Republicans who promised a crackdown on immigration were unseating Democrats who voted for legalization in North Carolina, Arkansas and Colorado, with a December Senate run-off in Louisiana offering yet another test.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who has led opposition to Mr. Obama’s immigration plans, said the results show voters gave a clear mandate to the president.
“Republicans campaigned for the House and Senate against the Obama-Senate immigration bill and on the pledge to block President Obama’s unlawful executive amnesty,” Mr. Sessins said. “The immediate emergency facing our new majority will be fighting the president’s disastrous planned actions, and we will have not only a constitutional mandate but also a popular mandate to do so.”
Democrats and immigrant-rights advocates, though, said Mr. Obama must not be cowed by the election results.
“The fact is that the president has the moral responsibility and the full authority under existing law to expand relief and end the policies he himself has described as inhumane. Good policy should not be subject to bad politics,”said Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Mr. Obama had planned to take his unilateral action at the end of the summer but put that on hold, with the White House saying it didn’t want to act before the election – which would have given voters a chance to register their disapproval.
In the wake of the election, some liberal analysts said Mr. Obama may have actually squandered a chance to help Democratic candidates win support among Hispanic voters in North Carolina and Colorado by refusing to act, and they said he cannot break his promise yet again.
For their part, Republicans – who will have control of both chambers of Congress – will have to decide how to tackle the issue next year.
Some leaders suggested late Tuesday that they will try to pass legislation solving all parts of the issue, but rank-and-file GOP members warned against that, saying more work must be done first on border security.
As Democratic losses mounted in Senate races across the country on election night, some liberal commentators clung to the idea that dissatisfied voters were sending a generally anti-incumbent message, and not specifically repudiating Democratic officeholders. But the facts of the election just don’t support that story.
Voters replaced Democratic senators with Republicans in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and likely in Alaska, and appear on track to do so in a runoff next month in Louisiana. At the same time, voters kept Republicans in GOP seats in heavily contested races in Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. That is at least 10, and as many as a dozen, tough races, without a single Republican seat changing hands. Tuesday’s voting was a wave alright — a very anti-Democratic wave.
In addition to demolishing the claim of bipartisan anti-incumbent sentiment, voters also exposed as myths five other ideas dear to the hearts of Democrats in the last few months:
1) The election wouldn’t be a referendum on President Obama. “Barack Obama was on the ballot in 2012 and in 2008,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in late October. “The candidates that are on the ballot are Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress.” Of course, that was true, but Republicans from New Hampshire to Alaska worked tirelessly to put the president figuratively on the ballot. And they succeeded.
Every day on the stump, Republican candidates pressed the point that their Democratic opponents voted for the Obama agenda nearly all the time. “Kay Hagan has voted for President Obama’s failed partisan agenda 95 percent of the time,” said Thom Tillis, who defeated the incumbent Democrat in North Carolina. Mark Pryor “votes with Barack Obama 93 percent of the time,” said Tom Cotton, who defeated the incumbent Democrat in Arkansas. “Mark Udall has voted with [Obama] 99 percent of the time,” said Cory Gardner, who defeated the incumbent Democrat in Colorado.
On Election Day, nearly 60 percent of voters told exit pollsters they were dissatisfied or angry with the Obama administration. In retrospect, there was no more effective campaign strategy for Republicans running in 2014 than to tie an opponent to the president.
2) Obamacare wouldn’t matter. Many Democrats and their liberal supporters in the press believed that the president’s healthcare plan, a year into implementation, would not be a major factor in the midterms. But Republican candidates ignored the liberal pundits and pounded away on Obamacare anyway — and it contributed to their success.
“In our polling, [Obamacare] continues to be just as hot as it’s been all year long,” said a source in the campaign of Tom Cotton, who won a Senate seat handily in Arkansas, in an interview about ten days before the election. “If you look at a word cloud of voters’ biggest hesitation in voting for Mark Pryor, the two biggest words are ‘Obama’ and ‘Obamacare.’ Everything after that is almost an afterthought.” Other winning GOP candidates pushed hard on Obamacare, too. Tillis in North Carolina, Gardner in Colorado, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and several others made opposition to Obamacare a central part of their campaigns.
3) An improving economy would limit Democrats’ losses. In the few places he felt confident and welcome enough to campaign, Obama devoted much of his appeal to citing the economic progress his administration has made: jobs created, growth, healthcare costs, corporate regulation.
The election results were pretty definitive proof that voters are not feeling the progress Obama feels has been made. Most importantly, it is an unhappy fact that a significant part of the decline in the unemployment rate under Obama has been the result of discouraged workers giving up the search for employment altogether. Indeed, in exit polls, nearly 70 percent of voters expressed negative feelings about the economy, many years into the Obama recovery.
4) Women would save Democrats. There were times when the midterm Senate campaigns seemed entirely devoted to seeking the approval of women voters. The Udall campaign in Colorado was almost a parody of such an appeal to women, focusing so extensively on contraception and abortion that the Denver Post called it an “obnoxious one-issue campaign.”
Beyond Udall, most Democrats hoped a gender gap would boost them to victory. As it turned out, there was a gender gap in Tuesday’s voting, but it favored Republicans. Exit polls showed that Democrats won women by seven points, while Republicans won men by 13 points. The numbers are definitive proof that, contrary to much conventional wisdom, Democrats have a bigger gender gap problem than the GOP. The elections showed precisely the opposite of what Democrats hoped they would.
5) The ground game would power Democrats to victory. When all else failed — and all else seemed to fail in the campaign’s final days — Democrats believed that a superior ability to get voters to the polls would be their margin of victory, or at the very least would limit Democratic losses. After all, the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 had run rings around Republicans in voter contact and get-out-the-vote technology.
It didn’t turn out that way. Republicans had upped their game; the party invested millions in an improved turnout machine, and it appears to have passed its first test. At the same time, Democrats failed to conjure that 2008 and 2012 turnout magic in 2014. “The Obama coalition that propelled the president to two victories remained cohesive, drawing on minorities, younger voters as well as women,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “But Democratic efforts to boost turnout among younger and minority voters fell short.”
Perhaps most importantly, Democrats learned that a solid turnout effort could not overcome the drag of Obama, Obamacare, the economy, and a generalized unhappiness with the state of the country under the Obama administration.
In the end, Tuesday’s vote represented a repudiation of virtually every notion Democrats embraced in recent weeks as they tried to disregard the growing evidence that they were headed for a historic defeat. Now, the vote is in, and the voters’ message can no longer be discounted.
The apartment complex we live in will be undergoing some Edison repairs tomorrow. It might happen that I will not be able to write, or repost anything tomorrow. We’ll have to see.
For multiple reasons, I am compelled to write this before you read the following post. It is filled with cursing, hate, and some of the most ridiculous statements you are going to read. For a political party that believes itself to be so tolerant, and hearing their constant rant that conservatives are so hateful, the expressions made below scream just the opposite.
As the old proverb (not from the Bible) goes; “Never argue with delusional people because you are NOT the donkey whisperer.”
What is best in life? Well, experiencing Tuesday night’s meltdown at Democratic Underground is certainly nowhere near the top of the list, but it was halfway entertaining — for a Tuesday night.
Below are the greatest hits from a night filled with intense rage, frustration, more rage, sadness and confusion among users at the interactive leftist website.
sammy750: “The GOP is the biggest scandal of the century. Huge voter suppression and fixing the voting machines so they didn’t register right. The GOP is the biggest fraud, AG Holder will be busy undoing all the GOP fraud wins”
akbacchus_BC: “This is what I do not understand, how could the Rethugs get elected again? What is wrong with some Americans? Did Democrats not vote? Now the President cannot get anything done unless it is by Executive Order. I really wish the President could tell the rethugs to piss off and sign as much policies by Executive Order and piss them off more and they cannot impeach him, bunch a idiots. This President tried to work with the assholes but man, they did not want to work with him.”
KingCharlemagne: “I am deeply disappointed in my fellow Americans tonight. The suffering that will ensue was and is mostly entirely preventable. So I am disappointed that we shall have to endure this suffering for at least 2 years now because Americans could not see through the lies sold to them by this pack of charlatans, demagogues and scalawags. Yes, the Democrats largely ran away from President Obama after allowing the Republicans to frame the race as “Obama, Obama, Obama” and that bespeaks a party in trouble. But in the final analysis, voters chose to vote against their self-interest and against the interest of their compatriots for what? To ‘send a message’ to Dems? The reality is that things will not get better in the next two years. They will get worse and possibly much, much worse. And so I am disappointed that my fellow Americans chose a path that will cause suffering for their countrymen when I have to believe most of them did not seek to cause such suffering.”
BlueDemKev: “MSNBC has called Colorado for Gardner. WTF, Colorado? Are you that pissed off because Pres. Obama asked Congress for some token gun regulations after 20+ elementary school students were slaughtered just a week before Christmas?”
<img class=” wp-image-4371067alignleft” alt=”guy screaming on the phone Creative Commons” src=”http://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/guy-screaming-on-the-phone-Creative-Commons.jpg” width=”184″ height=”122″ />Ampersand Unicode: ”I’m actually scared — as in can’t-sleep-tonight-Halloween-came-five-days-late scared — of the GOP fascists taking over the Kennedy state. I voted for Coakley but am not optimistic because of all the endorsements Baker has gotten and the past history of electing GOP governors (Romney, Weld). I’m also looking to leave because MA just voted to keep the filthy casinos. Also, there is a gun store that just popped up out of nowhere down the street from my house on a main street. I no longer feel safe in my neighborhood or my state. Should I find a way to move to Vermont where Bernie and the sane people live? Or if I can’t afford to leave, should I just do myself in? I honestly am terrified that we’re living in the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Reich.”
DebJ: “Tonight doesn’t make me wish I had quit smoking. An early death would be merciful compared to a long slow one with insufficient nutrition and no health care, which is what is coming up. I’m torn, can’t decide in which order to cry and vomit and get sick.”
2naSalit: “If anyone thinks we, as a nation, have any chance of saving ourselves from our wanton disregard for the biosphere which supports our existence, this election has proven we don’t really give a rat’s ass about our own sorry asses (or that of anyone else). Unless there is some major infrastructure destroying catastrophe that some of us survive before the biosphere is toast, our species is in for some big trouble. I suspect we are in for a lot more trouble than any of us have bargained for. With our distractions keeping us from looking around and seeing how destructive our way of life has become and that we could have each personally done something to change it… and we have no one but ourselves to blame. So brace yourselves for the gloom and doom of losing your habitat, like most other species have been facing for quite a while now, because we’re next on the menu.”
whereisjustice: “If you’ve been to Asia and witnessed the slums and factory farms filled with impoverished workers, the US has just taken another step in that direction tonight. Sure, we’re not there yet. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get there. Like global warming, the change isn’t noticeable when all you look at is your backyard thermometer. It’s coming. Sooner or later it is going to catch up with you and your children.”
(The images attached to these quotations are manifestly and obviously not the same people who wrote the words. The Daily Caller shouldn’t have to tell you that.)
Here’s a black female journalist’s opinion of the Obamas. These are her words. Even if you love Obama you might take a few minutes to read this because it is unvarnished in its implications for them and our country. This journalist is not afraid like so many are to be branded a racist simply because she is black. How beautiful and liberating the truth can be when our minds are opened for all who care to see and be free.
“In the beginning of a change, the PATRIOT is a scarce man, and brave and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it cost nothing to be a PATRIOT.”
–Mark Twain 1904
The below summary of Barack and Michelle Obama’s 5 year reign in the White House is by far the best you’ll ever read as it squarely hits the nail on the head. And it took a black reporter writing it to make it as effective as it is. A white man’s account would be instantly criticized by the liberal media as pure racism. But, how can anyone scream “Racist” when an exacting description of the Obamas is penned by a well known journalist of color?
BEST SUMMATION OF BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA EVER!
(Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles.)
The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn’t like the Obama’s. Specifically I was asked: “I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama’s? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture.”
The truth is I do not like the Obama’s, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I’ve made no secret of my contempt for the Obama’s. As I responded to the person who asked me the aforementioned question, I don’t like them because they are committed to the fundamental change of my/our country into what can only be regarded as a Communist state.
I don’t hate them per definition, but I condemn them because they are the worst kind of racialists, they are elitist Leninists with contempt for traditional America. They display disrespect for the sanctity of the office he holds, and for those who are willing to admit same, Michelle Obama’s raw contempt for white America is transpicuous.
I don’t like them because they comport themselves as emperor and empress.
I expect, no I demand respect, for the Office of President, and a love of our country and her citizens, from the leader entrusted with the governance of same. President and Mrs. Reagan displayed an unparalleled love for the country and her people. The Reagan’s made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish.
His arrogance by appointing 32 leftist czars and constantly bypassing congress is impeachable. Eric Holder is probably the MOST incompetent and arrogant DOJ head to ever hold the job. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?
Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama’s have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry, and they display an animus for civility.
I do not like them, because they both display bigotry overtly, as in the case of Harvard Professor Louis Gates, when he accused the Cambridge Police of acting stupidly, and her code speak pursuant to now being able to be proud of America. I view that statement and that mindset as an insult to those who died to provide a country where a Kenyan, his illegal alien relatives, and his alleged progeny, could come and not only live freely, but rise to the highest, most powerful, position in the world. Michelle Obama is free to hate and disparage whites because Americans of every description paid with their blood to ensure her right to do that.
I have a saying, that “the only reason a person hides things, is because they have something to hide.” No president in history has spent over a million dollars to keep his records and his past sealed.
And what the two of them have shared has been proven to be lies. He lied about when and how they met, he lied about his mother’s death and problems with insurance, Michelle lied to a crowd pursuant to nearly $500,000 bank stocks they inherited from his family. He has lied about his father’s military service, about the civil rights movement, ad nausea. He lied to the world about the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address.
He berated and publicly insulted a sitting Congressman. He has surrounded himself with the most rabidly, radical, socialist academicians today. He opposed rulings that protected women and children that even Planned Parenthood did not seek to support. He is openly hostile to business and aggressively hostile to Israel.
His wife treats being the First Lady as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I condemn them because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, he and his family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement – as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare.
I don’t like them, and I neither apologize nor retreat from my public condemnation of them and of his policies. We should condemn them for the disrespect they show our people, for his willful and unconstitutional actions pursuant to obeying the Constitutional parameters he is bound by, and his willful disregard for Congressional authority.
Dislike for them has nothing to do with the color of their skin; it has everything to do with their behavior, attitudes, and policies. And I have open scorn for their constantly playing the race card.
I could go on, but let me conclude with this. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate them, as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people, as these two are permitted out of fear for their color.
As I wrote in a syndicated column titled, “Nero In The White House” – Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader.
He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequaled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood.
Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation, and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement – while America’s people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.
Claims of vote-buying in Illinois apparently aren’t limited to Chicago, according to accusations by Republicans a few hundred miles away.
In Pike County, GOP leaders charge the Democratic Party held an Oct. 25 event that advertised “free drinks, food and door prizes” to entice Democrats to vote early.
A copy of an mailer promoting the “Democrat Voting Rally” was initially brought to the attention of Pike County Republican Chairman Robert Browning.
He told WND: “I knew there was something fishy right away when they were promising free food and prizes to come out and early vote.”
The event was held next door to an early voting location, GOP officials said.
“My first call would have been to the state’s attorney,”Browning said, “but he was involved in the event.”
Democrat State’s Attorney Matt Goetten, who is up for re-election Tuesday, was featured in the flyer as a participant in the rally.
Browning told WND: “Everyone knows that election law forbids compensating people for voting. I would think the state’s attorney would know that better than anyone. If county Republicans did something like that, we would be facing felony charges. But Republicans in Illinois are held to a different standard than Democrats.”
Browning contacted state Republican Party officials who are requesting an immediate investigation from the office of the attorney general.
State law in Illinois states: “Sec. 29-1. Vote buying. Any person who knowingly gives, lends or promises to give or lend any money or other valuable consideration to any other person to influence such other person to vote or to register to vote or to influence such other person to vote for or against any candidate or public question to be voted upon at any election shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony.”
At CapitolFax.com, election law attorney Burt Odelson said it looks like the event was illegal.
In an explanation to the website inquiry, Pike County Democratic Party Chairman Rick Toumbs didn’t directly address the issue.
“Please find the Pike County Democrats response to your inquiry. On October 25th the Pike County Democrats held a Democrat rally. We were pleased with the turnout and we’re happy with the event. We had people at the event who had already voted, people who who (sic) planned to vote later, and people who were voting on election day. Everyone was welcome at the event. Thank you for your interest in the pike (sic) County Democrats.
Pike County Board Chairman Andy Borrowman told WND he’s been in contact with the state’s attorney featured at the event.
Goetten, he said, “seemed very concerned that this might lead to an investigation.”
“Goetten warned us that we should watch what we say … that it may be libelous, and he would end up owning everything Browning has.”
Browning, the GOP chairman, said: “It is funny that the state’s attorney would try to educate us about libel laws when he apparently doesn’t know, or chooses not to follow, basic election law.”
Browning said it’s “the kind of corruption we have come to expect from the Democrat Party.”
“It goes to show that Democrat officials on the local level are just as corrupt as ones on the state and national level. Barack Obama’s policies and his corruption are on the ballot this year … all the way down to your local races.”
The brochure for the event said: “Bring a friend, have a cup of coffee, and vote. The event will include free drinks, food and doors (sic) prizes.”
Obamacare has been challenged in court since it was launched, with charges that it is unconstitutional, violates religious rights, invades privacy and unlawfully orders consumers to purchase a product.
Now, a new lawsuit by four Christian institutions argues the Obama administration is using the law to attack religious groups that oppose the White House’s promotion of abortion.
The plaintiffs allege “the purpose” of Obamacare’s mandate that employers pay for abortion-causing contraception and abortion “is to discriminate against religious organizations.”
The complaint cites then-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius comparing Obamacare opponents to “people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s” and asserting that upholding the law requires the same action as was shown ‘in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.’”
Attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom are representing the Association of Christian Schools International, Samaritan Ministries International, Taylor University and Indiana Wesleyan University in the case against Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and others.
The Supreme Court already has ruled the abortion mandate cannot force business owners to violate their faith.
So the White House has offered an “accommodation” in which the abortion-causing drugs and abortion services can be provided to the employees without any paperwork that connects the transactions to the employer.
The Christian organizations contend, however, the Obama rules still impose a burden, or duty, on them.
“They believe that God has condemned the intentional destruction of innocent human life. They hold, as a matter of religious conviction, that it would be sinful and immoral for them intentionally to participate in, pay for, facilitate, enable, or otherwise support access to abortion, which destroys human life,” the complaint explains.
“They hold that one of the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments (‘thou shalt not murder’) precludes them from facilitating, assisting in, serving as the conduct for, or enabling the use of drugs and devices that can and do destroy very young human beings in the womb. The health benefits they provide to their employees reflect these convictions.”
The case alleges the Obama administration is violating the Administrative Procedure Act, the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Free Speech Clause, the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Further, evidence suggests religious believers who object to abortion-causing drugs are deliberately being targeted, the case claims.
“The Final Mandate forces the plaintiffs to facilitate government-dictated education and counseling concerning abortion that directly conflicts with their religious beliefs and teaching,” the lawsuit states. “Facilitating this government-dictated speech directly undermines the express speech and messages concerning the sanctity of life that the plaintiffs seek to convey.”
Further, the government’s demand “advances no compelling governmental interest” and such drugs already are commonly available through “numerous alternative mechanisms.”
The government easily could provide the “benefits,”the lawsuit said, or “the government could simply exempt all conscientiously objecting organizations, just as it has already exempted the small subset of nonprofit religious employers that are referred to in Section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii) of the Internal Revenue Code.”
After all, the government already provides a multitude of other “exemptions,”it said.
The government, through its actions, already admits that the mandate is not part of any “compelling interest.”
So why is the demand being pursued?
“The Final Mandate was promulgated by government officials, and supported by non-governmental organizations, who strongly oppose religious teachings and beliefs regarding marriage, family, and life,” the case states.
“Defendant [former HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius, for example, has long been a staunch support of abortion rights and a vocal critic of religious teachings and beliefs regarding abortion and contraception,” the complaint continues. “On Oct. 4, 2011, six days after the comment period for the original Interim Final Rule ended, Defendant Sebelius gave a speech at a fundraiser for NARAL Pro-Choice America. She told the assembled crowd that ‘we are in a war.’
“She further criticized individuals and entities whose beliefs differed from those held by her and the others at the fundraiser, stating: ‘Wouldn’t you think that people who want to reduce the number of abortions would champion the cause of widely available, widely affordable contraceptive services? Not so much,’” the complaint states.
“On July 16, 2013, Secretary Sebelius further compared opponents of the Affordable Care Act generally to ‘people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s,’ stating that upholding the Act requires the same action as was shown ‘in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.’”
That attitude leads to the conclusion that the administration is intending to discriminate against religious organizations, the complaint says.
“It cannot be plausibly maintained that the fate of the entire enterprise rests in any measurable way on forcing these four plaintiffs to facilitate access to four drugs and devices – which represent one-fifth of the one of the 143 required items,” the case says.
“In any event, the government has already conceded that it has no interest in imposing the mandate upon religious employers like the plaintiffs,” it says.
So Washington’s “accommodation,” which “does not sufficiently diminish their ethical objection to complicity with sin,” still “conscripts the plaintiffs into the government’s scheme, hijacking their health plans and using them as conduits for the delivery of life-destroying drugs and devices to members of their religious communities.”
The government still demands that the Christian groups identify to the government their insurance policy administrators, play a “central role in facilitating free access to abortifacient services” and make them victim to “a shell game that attempts to disguise the religious organization’s role as the central cog in the government’s scheme for expanding access to contraceptive and abortifacient services.”
The case was filed in federal court in Colorado.
“The government should not force religious organizations to be involved in providing abortion pills to their employees,”said ADF Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor. “The best way to respect everyone’s freedom would have been to extend the existing religious exemption to religious non-profits in addition to churches. The administration has failed in its duty to uphold the freedoms guaranteed to every American under the Constitution and federal law. These religious organizations had hoped to avoid this action, but the cause of religious conscience and liberty compelled them to take this step.”
Added ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot: “All Americans should oppose unjust laws that force people – under threat of punishment – to give up their fundamental freedoms in order to provide insurance. That’s no different for these Christian organizations, which simply want to abide by the very faith they espouse. The government is forbidden from punishing people of faith for making decisions consistent with that faith.”
It was a federal judge in Florida who ruled that the government’s latest revisions to the mandate still “don’t do enough to protect people of faith.”
The ruling came from Judge James Moody Jr. in a suit by Ave Maria University, which charged the Obamacare requirement violates the faith on which it operates.
The judge said: “Defendants do not dispute that Ave Maria is a nonprofit Catholic university purposed with ‘educat[ing] students in the principles and truths of the Catholic faith.’ … One such element of the Catholic faith that Ave Maria holds and professes concerns the sanctity of life. Ave Maria ‘believes that each human being bears the image and likeness of God, and therefore any abortion – including through post-conception contraception – ends a human life and is a grave sin. Ave Maria also believes that sterilization and the use of contraception are morally wrong.’”
He said the “rule” that was intended to provide an “accommodation” to faith members was not a satisfactory solution.
“After dozens of court rulings, the government still doesn’t seem to get that it can’t force faith institutions to violate their beliefs,”said a spokesman for that legal team, assembled by the Becket Fund. “Fortunately, the courts continue to see through the government’s attempts to disguise the mandate’s religious coercion.”
IB Times noted an article in the most recent issue of the ISIS English-language magazine Dabiq said Yazidi women and children captured during the military offensive in Sinjar were divided among fighters “according to Shariah,” or Islamic law. According to the English subtitles in the video, one of the ISIS members says, “Today is the slave market day.” Another says: “We should have our share. Where is my Yazidi girl?”
There are giggles after one asks another, apparently referring to a slave girl, “Can you handle her?” And again there are giggles when one says: “Your Yazidi is dead.” Another said: “Everyone is free to do what he wants with his share.”
The value and prices are discussed.
“I pay 3 banknotes … I buy her for a pistol,”an ISIS member says. “The price differs if she has blue eyes.”
Another asks: “If she doesn’t have teeth, why would I want her?”
CNN recently conducted an interview with a Yazidi girl who was abducted but then escaped. CNN correspondent Ivan Watson said the victim, interviewed under an assumed name, told how she was among the hundreds of young women and girls taken by ISIS. The victim came from Kojo, which is near Sinjar in Iraq, the report said. The woman explained how ISIS took everyone in the village to the local school. The men and boys were separated then taken outside the village and shot.
“Hundreds of girls”then “got visits from the men of ISIS,”she told the reporter.
This girl said she was chosen by a 70-year-old man who took her to his house, put a gun to her head and said he would kill her for being an infidel. She later was rescued.
Asked by the interviewer what she would tell the man who “chose” her, she said: “I don’t want to tell him anything. I just want to kill him,”according to a translation of the interview.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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The United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs has announced that on Dec. 24th 2014 the UN Arms Trade Treaty will begin it’s enforcement. To refresh your memory on what the UN Arms Trade Treaty actually does:
Common Constitutionalist / November 8, 2014
8, brought on by runaway financial institutions” as being caused by the “sacred pursuit of profit”. 
Claims of vote-buying in Illinois apparently aren’t limited to Chicago, according to accusations by Republicans a few hundred miles away.
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