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Friday, July 31, 2015

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Spills The Beans

The more accurate title for this blog post might be "Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Tries To Hide The Beans." Heh.

On July 30, 2015, on MSNBC, the DNC Chairwoman could not or would not answer the question "What's the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist?" Please watch the short video below (Wasserman-Schultz's stammering and deflection begin around time marker 0:57):


Rough excerpt from the transcript below the fold:

Thursday, July 30, 2015

How Do You Interpret This Photo?

The Waving Man, Fairfax County's local icon of days gone by:

Photo taken circa 1976, in Fairfax County, Virginia, by T. Wayne Gauthier

Andy also directed traffic at the local Little League games:

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Cell Phones In The Operating Room?

(For politics, please scroll down)

Illustration by Michael Hirshon
Sometimes one opens the newspaper and is gobsmacked by a story that is not political, a story that makes one say: "What is this madness? And whatever happened to common sense?"

The story below the fold is one such story, and it illustrates that there really may be an addiction to modern technology.

From Kaiser Health News (dated July 14, 2015):

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Jobs That Americans Won't Do?


The reality now may be more about illegal aliens getting jobs that Americans would do if given the chance.

Recent data from Pew Research Center, not a bastion of conservatism, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the United States Department of Labor, is grim.

From Illegal Immigrants Outnumber Unemployed Americans:
The number of illegal immigrants in the United States totaled 11.3 million in 2014, outnumbering the 9.6 million Americans who were unemployed in the same year, according to data from Pew Research Center and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“An estimated 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2014,” says a Pew report. “The new unauthorized immigrant total includes people who cross the border illegally as well as those who arrive with legal visas and remain in the U.S. after their visas expire.”

Of those 11.3 illegal immigrants, 8.1 million are participating in the labor force. “Unauthorized immigrants make up 5.1% of the U.S. labor force,” Pew says. “In the U.S. labor force, there were 8.1 million unauthorized immigrants either working or looking for work in 2012.”

In 2014, there were 1.7 million more illegal immigrants living in the United States than there were unemployed Americans. According to the BLS, the average number of unemployed Americans in 2014 was 9.6 million. The BLS defines an unemployed individual as someone who did not have a job but actively sought one in the past four weeks.

The executive action on immigration President Obama put in place in November of 2014 is set to help more illegal aliens become active in the labor force....
Read the rest HERE.

Meanwhile (dated July 22, 2015), Obama Admin Plans More Executive Action on Immigration: Proposed rule expands number of illegal immigrants allowed to stay in country.


Is it any wonder that Donald Trump poll numbers are so high?

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

On Hiatus

I need to reduce my stress levels right now. Therefore:


I still to plan to co-host The Gathering Storm Radio Show every Friday at 3:00 P.M, EDT. I will also be making blog rounds on an intermittent basis.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Obama's Inexcusable Response To The Chattanooga Jihad Attack

Eli Arnold is pictured planting a flag outside the Chattanooga National Guard recruitment center targeted by Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez.

From No explanation by Obama on flags not lowered to half-staff for Chattanooga shootings (dated July 20, 2015):
The White House provided no explanation Monday amid questions over why the president had not ordered flags across the nation to half-staff in the wake of a Chattanooga, Tenn., shooting that killed five servicemembers.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama offered condolences last week and may speak to veterans at VFW conference Tuesday about the shooting, but he had no further comment.

Obama has issued presidential proclamations that lowered flags at federal facilities and military bases after many mass shootings, including attacks at the Washington Navy Yard, Fort Hood in Texas, and Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut. The lack of a proclamation following the deaths of four Marines and sailor in a possible terrorist attack Thursday by a 24-year-old Muslim man rankled some and spark online outrage.

“I don’t have more information about the status of the flag over the White House,” Earnest said, responding to a question at a daily briefing Monday with the press....
Read the rest HERE.

Let us remember that Obama ordered the lowering of United States flags when Nelson Mandela died in 2013. But not for five of our servicemen slaughtered right here on our home soil?

Obama, the Commander in Chief, hasn't so much as picked up the phone and spoken to the families of our fallen in Chattanooga!

GRRRRRR!


Related reading: Fallujah-in-Chattanooga by Tammy Swofford.

Concluding portion:
Lance Corporal Skip Wells was a highly trained, professional United States Marine. He was “armed” with a cell phone. He used his “weapon” to text the last known words attributed to him:

ACTIVE SHOOTER

This is the real tragedy. It is the tragedy of an unarmed U.S. Marine.
Read the entire essay HERE.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Sociology Today: New Concepts Of Equal Rights

According to University Researchers: We Have to Accept People Who ‘Identify as Real Vampires’, we must cease discriminating against vampires. Well, not quite vampires, but rather people who claim to be vampires. Excerpt from the link:
Sociology researchers are now insisting that we as a society start accepting people who choose to “identify as real vampires” — so that they can be open about the fact that they’re vampires without having to worry about facing discrimination from people who might think that that’s weird.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Sunday Break From Politics

(For politics, please scroll down)

Our hostas bloomed heavily this year. I've never seen them this lush! All that snow and ice during the winter — and a rainy spring — brought us this beauty:



Four more photos below the fold.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Open Thread

(For other material, please scroll down)

So, what's on your mind?

To discuss Thursday's jihad attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, please go to THIS THREAD, the post just below this open thread.

Here is your chance to opine according to the parameters below:

Friday, July 17, 2015

Motivation And Investigation (With Addendum)


The following appear to be the last words of Chattanooga jihadist Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s brief-lived blog, published on July 13, 2015:
"To give us a complete understanding of the message of Islam, and the strength the live by this knowledge, and to know what role we need to play to establish Islam in the world."
A blog post in his name also stated:
This life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to Allah may pass you by
Read all of Abdulazeez's blog posts HERE.

About the investigation: William Killian, the DoJ Official Leading #Chattanooga Jihad Shooting, Previously Vowed to Criminalize Criticism of Islam.

Also see DOJ: Social Media Posts Trashing Muslims May Violate Civil Rights.

The impromptu memorial at the Military Recruiting Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee:


Photo credit: Kevin Liles for the New York Times

ADDENDUM: The faces of the fallen Marines in Chattanooga. Please take a moment to look and to read.

Click directly on the photos below to enlarge them:



Monday, July 13, 2015

The High Costs Of Sanctuary Cities

Click directly on the image to enlarge it:


Additional information and my personal story below the fold.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Musical Interlude: Song from π!

I find this fascinating and astounding:


According to the YouTube blurb:
Pi Song I wrote to help me memorize pi - I figured it would be easier to remember a melody than a string of numbers.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Open Thread

(For other material, please scroll down)

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine according to the parameters below:

Monday, July 6, 2015

Quotation Of The Day: The Global Economy

Comment by Bocopro, who typed in the following to this post at Western Hero and particularly appropriate now that Greece has defaulted on a 1.6 billion euros debt payment to the IMF and has rejected the European Union's bailout offer:

Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Puerto Rico . . . these are the rumblings of what before long will be a great global Vesuviusing, with nationally fatal pyroclastic flows, intercontinental ashfall, planetary climate disruption, mass migrations, riots, starvation, hysteria, disease, and unending strife.

China, Russia, Europe, South America, and the US will flounder and drown in the morass of debt in the gazillions while their GDPs barely make it to the brazilians. Hurricanes of speeches and tons of promises won’t prevent a single balloon payment or cancel an ounce of debt.

Debts are like bastard children, begot in pleasure of the flesh, then brought forth in great pain and handicap. To promise fabulous socialist entitlements based on flawed arithmetic is to enslave the next generation who will inherit the budget shortfalls. And interest on debts grows without nourishment or watering.

The US central government seems to believe that a day will come when all debts are forgiven and everyone will live in some kind of utopia where self-replicating, self-repairing machines provide us with all our needs sans cost, where exactly-the-right-size Levis suddenly appear on shrubberies and meatball sandwiches flow from giant cornucopias in converted supermarkets.

At seven-point-five decades, I may already be safely under ground when the debt tsunami hits, but my grandkritters and their lot will be forced to pay for the mismanagement of thousands of politicians who tried to run cities on splenda, states on saccharine, and nations on nutrasweet.

Our entitlement systems, whether the leftistas choose to believe it or not, are not sustainable unless we discover the trick to turning hot air into gold. As Hamlet tells us: “I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.”


Meanwhile in China: BROKERAGES ANNOUNCE PLAN TO PROP UP SHARES.

Also see this (Click directly on the graphic to enlarge it):


Please discuss in the comments section. Got a crystal ball to check so as to see what's coming next?

Friday, July 3, 2015

Independence Day Weekend 2015



Hillsdale College's choir singing "America the Beautiful":



O Ship Of State by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882):

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’Tis of the wave and not the rock;
’Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
!--BLOCKING--