Biden’s latest push for Supreme Court “reform” is merely an extension of this liberal frustration at an independent judiciary that follows the Constitution and applies the laws as written.
Tammy Duckworth has a sad record of not standing up for our veterans.
[Duckworth is a double amputee due to combat injuries in Iraq]
The firestorm erupted this month when Jane O’Toole, who moved to Wolfeboro about four months ago, overheard [Police Commissioner Robert] Copeland loudly describing Obama using the slur while sitting in a town restaurant.
Upon discovering that he was an elected official, O’Toole formally complained to the town manager and other members of the police commission.
“I believe I did use the ‘N’ word in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse,” Copeland said in a subsequent e-mail to his fellow police commissioners, which he forwarded to O’Toole. “For this, I do not apologize — he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.”
Copeland has remained defiant, sitting with crossed arms Thursday as more than 100 residents showed up for a public meeting to discuss the incident. Many angrily called for his resignation.
But the commissioner has said he will not resign and has declined interview requests from the news media, not returning calls for comment and lashing out at a local television reporter who attempted to interview him Thursday, calling him a “skunk.”
One must distinguish between Hitler before 1939 and Hitler after 1939. The thing is that Hitler collected [German] lands. If he had become famous only for uniting without a drop of blood Germany with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, in fact completing what Bismarck failed to do, and if he had stopped there, then he would have remained a politician of the highest class.
The grievance in [the Charlotte demonstrators] mind is the animus, the anger," he said. "They hate white people, because white people are successful and they're not."
Without being prompted, Pittenger quickly pivoted to a discussion about welfare and race. "I mean, yes, it is. It is a welfare state. We have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, we have put people in bondage so that they can't be all they're capable of being.
"America is the opportunity of freedom and liberty. We didn't become that way because we have great government, who provided everything for everyone. No. That's the destiny of America, the freedom to come to this country, why they're still coming to our shores is because they can take their work ethic and their hard effort and put up their capital and the risk and build out their lives."
Trevor Treller, 44, who carries a small Smith & Wesson pistol on his hip, moved to north Idaho last year from Long Beach, Calif., and recently paid a little less than $400,000 for a defensible three-bedroom house on five wooded acres.
Treller, a sommelier at a local resort, said Obama was a key factor in his decision. He said the president has inflamed racial tensions in America, presided over a dangerous expansion of the national debt, been “hostile” to Second Amendment rights and failed to curtail the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
Treller said any one of those factors could lead to crippling chaos, so he and his wife have laid in food, weapons and ammunition and are installing an iron gate across their long gravel driveway.
“I think there’s a very good chance that these things won’t happen in my lifetime, but I also think there’s a chance that they will,” Treller said. “It’s extreme collective hubris to think that we’re exempt from everything that happened to every single society before us throughout history.”
So, Trump is the conspiracy theorist for listening to Alex Jones," InfoWars contributor Paul Joseph Watson said in one of the site's many takedowns. "Yet, [Hillary Clinton] just asserted that a former KGB officer under the Communist government of the Soviet Union is now the leader of conservatives in America."
Asked to comment on the convention speech of Khizr Khan, a Pakistani immigrant whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004, Trump described Khan as “very emotional” and said he “probably looked like a nice guy to me” — then accused him of being controlled by the Clinton campaign.
“Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s scriptwriters write it?” he asked in an interview with ABC.
Trump also questioned why Khan’s wife, Ghazala, did not speak on stage, despite the fact that she sat for an interview with MSNBC the following day.
“His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say,” he said. “You tell me, but plenty of people have written that. She was extremely quiet and it looked like she had nothing to say.”
The Khans appeared in Philadelphia on Thursday, the same night that Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, formally accepted her party’s nomination. Khizr Khan’s moving remarks quickly reverberated beyond the arena, and their effects have since spilled out onto the campaign trail. In an interview the following day with MSNBC, Ghazala Khan said she did not speak because she is still devastated by her son’s death and grows emotional when she sees his picture.
Although only the latest instance in which Trump has attacked a convention speaker, the Republican nominee’s remarks drew strong rebukes Saturday — but only silence from several senior GOP leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the vice-presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
He reportedly tied up the eight staff members who were on duty at that time and then went on a rampage, stabbing 45 patients as they lay in their beds. The dead include 10 men and nine women ranging in age between 19 and 70. Among the 26 injured, 20 are said to have serious injuries, including deep stab wounds to the neck, and were being treated at local hospitals.
After the attack, Uematsu drove himself to the local police station, where he turned himself in. “I did it,” he told police. "It's better that disabled people disappear," he continued. He had three knives with him, at least one covered in blood, and tie cables in his car. He was immediately arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unlawful entry to a building.
A message posted on a Twitter account after the attack — apparently belonging to the suspect — showed a photo of a smiling man with dyed blond hair, who was wearing a suit. "Wishing for world peace. beautiful Japan!!!!!!," the tweet read. Local reports said the man who carried out the attack had dyed blond hair.
The attack has left this rural area in shock, but was apparently not entirely without warning.
In February, Uematsu took a letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives in which he threatened to carry out the attack.
"I will carry out a massacre without harming the staff," Uematsu wrote in the letter, according to Kyodo News, which published a photo of the letter. "I will kill 470 disabled people. My goal is to euthanize, with their guardians' consent, seriously disabled people if they can't live at home or be active in society," he wrote, referring to the center by name. "I will carry it out at night time, when there are fewer staff on duty," he wrote.
NHK, the public broadcaster, added that Uematsu had also told his colleagues in February that seriously disabled people had no use for life and should be euthanized, leading them to call the police.
Soper’s research also led him to some of the Internet’s favorite conspiracy theories, including a purported U.N. plot to impose “One World Government.” And Soper, like most in the patriot movement, became a believer.
He suspects that the United Nations, through a program called Agenda 21, wants to reduce the global population from 7 billion to fewer than 1 billion. He said the federal government may be promoting abortions overseas as part of that plot, and also may be deliberately mandating childhood vaccines designed to cause autism because autistic adults are less likely to have children.
Soper said he could not rule out the possibility that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. He suspects that the government and the “medical community” have had a cancer cure for years but won’t release it because cancer treatment is too profitable for pharmaceutical companies.
I write this from the hospital,” John Stossel of Fox wrote. “Seems I have lung cancer.”
This was quite the revelation — one all the more powerful for its delivery in terse, Hemingway-esque prose. But Stossel, who said he “will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone” and that he will “be fine,” wasn’t here for a meditation on mortality a la Oliver Sacks. Instead, from the highly regarded New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the 69-year-old consumer affairs reporter quickly transitioned into a discussion of why his “hospital’s customer service stinks.”
“My doctors tell me my growth was caught early and I’ll be fine,” he wrote. “Soon I will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone. I believe them. After all, I’m at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. U.S. News & World Report ranked it No. 1 in New York. I get excellent medical care here.
“But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital’s customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, ‘I’m running late.’ Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can’t communicate using modern technology.
“I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay.”
“Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies,” Stossel added. “Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies.”
“How can the [U.S.] Marshal say, without a thorough post mortem, that [Antonin Scalia] was not injected with an illegal substance that would simulate a heart attack—”?“Did the US Marshal check for petechial hemorrhage in his eyes or under his lips that would have suggested suffocation? Did the US Marshal smell his breath for any unusual odor that might suggest poisoning? My gut tells me there is something fishy going on in Texas.”
Alongside the honor brigade’s official channel, a community of self-styled blasphemy police — from anonymous blogs such as LoonWatch.com and Ikhras.com to a large and disparate cast of social-media activists — arose and began trying to control the debate on Islam. This wider corps throws the label of “Islamophobe” on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. Their targets are as large as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as small as me.
The official and unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. They bank on an important truth: Islam, as practiced from Malaysia to Morocco, is a shame-based, patriarchal culture that values honor and face-saving from the family to the public square. Which is why the bullying often works to silence critics of Islamic extremism.
Nonetheless, and even though I’m an atheist, I do enjoy Christmas. I love to see the twinkling lights adorning our houses and streets, the delightfully inventive displays in store windows, the Santas greeting enthusiastic children. I wholeheartedly join in when yuletide songs are being sung. I’m happy to attend parties that evoke the holiday spirit. Some people lament the secularization and commercialization of Christmas; I applaud it. I’m glad that most of us don’t spend it huddled in penance, praying for redemption and renouncing the pleasures of this Earth. Instead, at Christmas, people embrace those pleasures and rejoice in life — very much in line with the ethics of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy .
Imagine trying to celebrate Christmas by taking altruism seriously. Instead of buying gifts for your children, you would be obliged to spend that money on needy children in, say, Bangladesh. Instead of buying yourself a new suit for the holiday, you would have to go around in sackcloth because of your duty toward those who have less than you. Is that what the Christmas spirit is supposed to mean? Does an obligation to sacrifice for the sake of others sound like a prescription for goodwill among people — or for resentment and conflict?
A “season of trading” would make better sense than a “season of giving.” The central principles could be summarized as: Give when it’s in your interest to do so. Give because someone deserves it, not simply because he or she needs it. Don’t sacrifice yourself for others, and don’t ask others to sacrifice for you.
The White House on Thursday sharply condemned a lengthy and racist North Korean screed against President Obama, calling the rhetoric from Pyongyang “particularly ugly and disrespectful.”
The rebuke came in response to a recently published diatribe by North Korea calling Obama a “clown,” a “dirty fellow” and somebody who “does not even have the basic appearances of a human being.”
Another part of the tirade declared, “It would be perfect for Obama to live with a group of monkeys in the world’s largest African natural zoo and lick the breadcrumbs thrown by spectators..."
He is a crossbreed with unclear blood,” the North says.
And later: Obama “still has the figure of a monkey while the human race has evolved through millions of years.”
The diatribe, published May 2, almost escaped foreign attention. But Joshua Stanton, who blogs regularly about the North’s viciousness and rights violations, uncovered the Korean-only piece, as well as a separate, milder article that was translated into English and in which Obama was called a “wicked black monkey.”
The Korean-only piece (headlined “Divine retribution for the juvenile delinquent Obama!”) featured four lengthy passages, each attributed to a regular citizen. In the North, quotations of citizens are state-sanctioned and often spoon-fed by the government’s propaganda department, analysts say.
For 23 years I wanted to be in the Soviet Union,” said a 35-year-old miner who gave his name only as Sergey. Asked why, he said: “I don’t want to live with gays.” Later, Sergey, who came to the demonstration with his wife and son, stood among the crowd with a rock in his hand.
Irepeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.
“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.
Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths. Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.
So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken?
They deal with the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, argues Dyson, ignoring the effect of biology, i.e., vegetation and topsoil. Further, their predictions rest on models they fall in love with: “You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years and you start to think of your model as being real.” Not surprisingly, these models have been “consistently and spectacularly wrong” in their predictions, write atmospheric scientists Richard McNider and John Christy — and always, amazingly, in the same direction.
I'm kind of trying to follow what [Pope Francis'] agenda is. You know, I'm surprised he came out with a couple of things in the media. But, then again, I'm not one to trust the media's interpretation of somebody's message. But having read through media outlets — he's had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me. Unless I really dig deep into what his messaging is and do my own homework, I'm not going to just trust what I hear in the media.