While Nation Braces For Winter Storm, Senate Sneaks In Bill To Allow For Military Martial Law

While Nation Braces For Winter Storm, Senate Sneaks In Bill To Allow For Military Martial Law:

"While parts of the nation braced for Winter Storm Jonas, Senate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Connell was busy preparing the way for a proposal on the floor that had many concerned.

The Authorization for the Use of Military Force, written by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is packaged as a proposal to fight the Islamic State group — but it would also allow the president to deploy military forces anywhere he chooses and for as long as he wants."

Václav Klaus: “It is War on Our Whole Continent”

Václav Klaus: “It is War on Our Whole Continent” | Gates of Vienna:

[T]his time it is a war of the European political, intellectual, and the media elites, against the majority of the citizenry, and the future of Europe, and the preservation of European culture, of European civilization.

— Václav Klaus

This is the first in a series of posts that represent the first tiny wavelets of what may turn into a massive tsunami of change sweeping over Europe.

Over the past few months we’ve posted a number of excellent videos and articles showcasing statements made by current political leaders in the former East Bloc countries of Central Europe: Czech President Miloš Zeman, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.

To that list must now be added Václav Klaus, the former President of the Czech Republic.

The former president’s words in the following video and article go farther than anything said by the other three — perhaps because Mr. Klaus is no longer a sitting head of state, and does not have to worry about having a military coup engineered against him in reaction to his statements.

These quotes, as far as I know, represent the first time that a serving or former head of state in a European country has told his audience that mass immigration into Europe is being arranged by the political elites to dilute and weaken the nation-states of Europe, and to make their populations more docile and manageable..."
Read on!

Wasted money. Wasted time. Wasted lives!-----The Problems Free College Won't Solve

The Problems Free College Won't Solve | Economics21
Higher education is shaping up to be the next front in public policy battles.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his proposal to make two years of community college free. 
Not to be outdone, Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders has called for abolishing tuition entirely at public colleges and universities.
Tempting as the prospect of free tuition sounds, these proposals will do little to resolve the crisis in higher education.
The federal government heavily subsidizes higher education through a complex system of grants and loans.
While the programs are great for colleges — they have enabled an astronomical increase in tuition — they contain few measures holding the institutions accountable to their students.
As a result, only 59 percent of students graduate from four-year colleges and universities within six years.
Those lucky enough to graduate face another hurdle: 44 percent of recent college graduates occupy jobs which do not require a college degree.
Taken together, these numbers suggest that only one-third of college enrollees emerge from the system with both a degree and a relevant job.
Making college free would do nothing to address these problems.
In fact, it would worsen them.
At community colleges, which President Obama would make free, only 40 percent of students graduate, even when taking into account those that transfer to other institutions.
Bernie Sanders' proposals look even worse.
At four-year colleges with open enrollment, which are most likely to accept the additional students drawn into the system by free tuition, the graduation rate is just 34 percent. 
More students attending these colleges would push overall graduation rates down.
Without measures to ensure that colleges help their students graduate and find good jobs, free tuition would only shuffle more young people into a system that fails two-thirds of them..."

Atlanta Paper Epitomizes Gun Grabbers' Tactics In 2 Sentences Back-to-Back

Atlanta Paper Epitomizes Gun Grabbers' Tactics In 2 Sentences Back-to-Back - Breitbart:
On January 16, the Atlanta Progressive News (APN) used one sentence to explain a Democrat-proposed ban that will require owners to hand over “assault weapons” by the end of October 2016 and in the very next sentence mocked pro-gun citizens who “are already yelling that Democrats are trying to take their guns away.”
In other words–

• Sentence 1: New Democrat-proposed bill means your “assault weapons” will be taken away. 

• Sentence 2: Pro-gun people are already trying to malign the law by claiming Democrats want to “take their guns.”

Here are APN’s exact words:
"This bill will require people who possess assault weapons to render the weapon inoperable or turn it into the Georgia Bureau of Investigation by the end of October 2016. 
Pro-gun folks are already yelling that Democrats are trying to take their guns away."
On Janaury 13 Breitbart News reported that the text of the proposed “assault weapons” ban–put forth by Mary Margaret Oliver (D-83rd) and other Democrats–actually “[designates] certain weaponry and ammunition as contraband and [requires] seizure of such by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”
So the “assault weapons” ban is actually an “assault weapons” confiscation bill."

Korean Missile-Defense Upgrade

Korean Missile-Defense Upgrade - WSJ:
"China’s leaders are again standing by North Korea after its nuclear test by blocking serious United Nations sanctions and refusing to cut off the flow of fuel, food and arms to Pyongyang. 
But this time Beijing may pay a strategic price for shielding its unsavory friends, as South Korea moves closer to deploying the U.S.-built Thaad defense system to protect itself from ballistic-missile attacks.
After publicly avoiding the topic for more than a year, President Park Geun-hye raised it last week in a national address. “Taking the North’s nuclear and missile threats into consideration,” she said, “I will review the issue of deploying Thaad here based on security and national interests. That is the bottom line.”
It’s also good news for anyone within missile range of Kim Jong Un, which now includes the South Koreans, Japanese, and perhaps also Americans in Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. West Coast.
...As for Beijing, it sees any advance in U.S. and allied military capabilities as an obstacle to its ambition to dominate Asia, and has sought to draw Seoul—which does more trade with China than with the U.S. and Japan combined—into its own camp.
South Korea would “sacrifice its fast-growing relations with China” by integrating into U.S.-led regional missile defenses, the official Xinhua news agency warned last year. China’s defense minister and other senior officials reinforced the message on visits to Seoul, but their hosts publicly told them to back off.
Ms. Park’s move toward deploying Thaad should be met with dispatch by the Obama Administration. 
Integrated allied missile defenses in Asia are a bulwark against North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and China’s growing threat to America’s core alliances in Asia."

BREAKING: Clinton Camp Reeling After Intern Scandal Explodes... And Bill Isn't Even Involved

BREAKING: Clinton Camp Reeling After Intern Scandal Explodes... And Bill Isn't Even Involved:

“Clinton’s campaign has organized teams of mothers in the country illegally to operate phone banks on her behalf,” the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The irony here is rich. One of the most notorious criminals of our time is now using other criminals — albeit less notorious ones — to prop up her notoriously sketchy campaign. Sounds nice."

"Social promotion" kills young minds-----What if teenagers can’t even read?

What if teenagers can’t even read? | Intellectual Takeout:
The teacher’s words are a year old now, but still deeply troubling. In her December 4, 2014 letter to the editor, Kim Dallas, an English teacher at Rosemount High School in Minnesota had the following to say:

“I teach high school English, and I am begging you to please read to your children. Read everything. ….

Why? Because your children can’t read.

We are in the midst of one of the greatest literacy crises ever encountered, and we are fighting an uphill battle. Every day I experience firsthand what it means to be illiterate in a high school classroom. At best it means sleeping away a unit; at worst it means depression or aggression. Average students with average abilities can fervently text away, but they cannot read.

Recently, I gave a unit test where students could use all their notes and their short story on the test (not my standard practice). The results: abysmal. I didn’t think the test was too difficult until I started doing some investigating and made a shocking discovery. They couldn’t even read the test. …

I teach nearly 200 high school juniors each day. If we give them all the same book to read, they often do not read it. Ask them why, and they say: ‘It’s boring.’ Translation? ‘It’s too hard.’”

Rosemount is not an “urban” or “poor” high school. It is in a suburb of the Twin Cities with a median household income of $85,000 and over 80% of the population is white.

To be fair, that story is anecdotal; maybe there’s just a problem in that school district. Alas, that’s probably not the case. Rosemount High School is more likely of an example of the breakdown of our education system that’s happening across the country. Consider the fact that as of 2013, only 38% of high school seniors were considered proficient in reading by the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP): 

Yes, we have a problem and Kim Dallas is probably quite right, “we are in the midst of one of the greatest literacy crises ever encountered…”

Film and race: How racially skewed are the Oscars?

Film and race: How racially skewed are the Oscars? | The Economist:
How racially skewed are the Oscars?
FOR the 20 actors nominated for an Oscar all to be white could at best be seen as a surprise.
For that to be true two years running is, to many, a scandal.
While there will be no empty seats at the 88th Academy Awards ceremony on February 28th—live television does not permit such things—there may be a lot of m

issing faces.
Confronted with what is seen as a “whitewash”, many prominent black Americans are saying they will boycott the ceremony.
In fact, as our analysis of film casts and awards shows, the number of black actors winning Oscars in this century has been pretty much in line with the size of America's overall black population. 
But this does not mean Hollywood has no problems of prejudice.
As the data show, it clearly does.
...Of course the data are not random.
Yet, despite the 2015-2016 whiteout, an analysis of Oscar selections since 2000 suggests that the imbalances are industry-wide, not primarily to do with Academy voters.
And they affect all ethnic minorities.
Oscar nominations have not dramatically under-represented black actors. 
Instead, they have greatly over-represented white ones. 
Blacks are 12.6% of the American population, and 10% of Oscar nominations since 2000 have gone to black actors. 
But just 3% of nominations have gone to their Hispanic peers (16% of the population), 1% to those with Asian backgrounds, and 2% to those of other heritage (see chart).
Black actors get speaking roles in rough proportion to their percentage of America’s population, according to a study of 600 top films from 2007-2013 at the Annenberg Center for Communication and Journalism. (See “film roles” in the chart above.)
Again, Latinos and Asians do much worse..."

Lunch video-----Kevin Nealon Confronted By Racist Colorado Ski Trails - CONAN on TBS

Noon-toon

‘Schindler’s List’ Producer Has Scathing Message for ‘Spoiled Brats’ Crying ‘Racism’ and Boycotting the Oscars | TheBlaze.com

‘Schindler’s List’ Producer Has Scathing Message for ‘Spoiled Brats’ Crying ‘Racism’ and Boycotting the Oscars | TheBlaze.com:

"Gerald Molen won an Academy Award for producing Best Picture-winner “Schindler’s List” back in the day — and he also was disinvited in 2012 from speaking at a high school graduation because of his conservative views.
Such a circumstance would reduce many who share Molen’s views to silence — or at least cause them to tread lightly when it comes to sociopolitical matters.

Not so with this industry vet."

Looking for the truth-----The real tragedy in Flint

Must read of the MONTH!
Click the link to see this excellent analysis.
Lots here. Grab a cup of coffee and prepare to get angry!!
The real tragedy in Flint | In Other Words by Greg Branch
We’ve all read and heard a lot about the water situation in Flint.
We’re hearing most of it from Democrats, who are citing this as an example of the evils of Republican leadership and all sorts of other hyperbole.
Rachel Maddow, among others, has (nauseatingly endlessly) blamed it on Michigan’s emergency financial manager law.
So much noise.
So much misinformation.
So little time.
If you’d like to know what really happened here, read on, but be warned: it’s long. 
If you’re the TL;DR type (Too Lazy; Don’t Reach), skip to the last subhead. 
The conclusions won’t make sense to you, but then maybe you don’t want it to.

• The Tragedy’s Roots

For more than 50 years, Flint bought its water – treated and ready to serve – from Detroit.
In recent years, Detroit has – like most cities with wholesale water customers, like Saginaw – has raised its rates to reflect the rising costs of maintaining aging systems.
Detroit, according to Flint (and most of its other wholesale customers) was really jacking prices up.
Keep in mind that all of Saginaw’s wholesale customers say the same thing at every rate increase, and some – Frankenmuth most recently – have, over the years, threatened to build their own systems or find another source.
In order to be able to control its own water destiny, Flint’s city council and its mayor voted to join the Karegnondi water authority. 
It’s something they’d been talking about – and tried once before – since the 1960s.
They finally got enough municipalities behind them to make the deal work.
They announced the deal in 2013, with a target of getting water from Lake Huron through the new system sometime in 2016.
Council voted 7-1 on the decision, which was later signed off on by the city’s EFM.
Read the expanded of each one of these!

• The Kiss-Off...
• The First Screw-Up...
• The Cover-Up...
• The Recap...
• The Even Larger Tragedy...
• Update 1/19/2016

This has been updated to reflect new information.
And let me be very clear: I am not paid to be an investigative reporter, and this is not a news outlet. This is strictly my opinion, and it is based on news accounts. 
Some facts are not known, in large part because of the lack of transparency in the office of a governor who promised to be transparent.
And as I learn new facts that contradict information I had in here, I will so note them.
None of this changes my overall point.
There is a big difference between blame and accountability — and which you use will have a lot to say about the results you get in the end.
Blame and outrage will help Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and it will help Michael Moore sell his next film.
But the people of Flint can’t drink blame, and they can’t bathe their kids in outrage.
We know exactly what the problem is.
Let’s get the best people to work on fixing it.
After that, we can start the floggings. 
And there are people here who should be flogged."
Read it all!!!

Detroit is Not Really Tracking the 'Comp Time' of Its Employees

Detroit is Not Really Tracking the 'Comp Time' of Its Employees [Michigan Capitol Confidential]: "Employees who claim as many overtime hours as city of Detroit police officers can also rack up lots of associated “comp time.”
That’s what they call the extra time off the city gives to employees who put in extra hours, as an alternative to extra overtime pay.
Employees are allowed to bank those hours for use at a later time, and can even cash out their comp time when they retire.
Even though accumulated comp time is a liability the city may have to pay some day, Detroit does not keep a running tally of how much of it officers are owed. 
When asked for this information, officials sent an email saying they can only report the comp time accrued during the current year.
They said that compiling the full amount would take 10,000 hours and cost more than $100,000.
“This will not be a fast process,” said an attorney in the city’s law department in an email.
ForTheRecord says: Michigan Capitol Confidential will pass on paying Detroit $100,000.
But best management practices (and common sense) suggest its accountants should have a handle on the magnitude of this liability, given that it appears to be a potential future claim on the city’s finances.
Plus, it’s not as if overtime fraud has been a stranger to the city, so sorting this one out shouldn't be an afterthought."

Fermi paradox resolved: near-universal early extinction?

Fermi paradox resolved: near-universal early extinction? | KurzweilAI
The famous Fermi paradox raises the question: why haven’t we detected signs of alien life, despite high estimates of probability, such as observations of planets in the “habitable zone” around a Sun-like star by the Kepler telescope andcalculations of hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy that might support life.

Now astrobiologists from Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Earth Sciences say they have the best answer: 

Because life on other planets would likely be brief and would become extinct very quickly from runaway heating or cooling.

“The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens,” said Aditya Chopra, PhD., lead author on a paper published in Astrobiology. 
In fact, “early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive. 
Most early planetary environments are unstable. 
To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable.”

The Gaian Bottleneck

For example, about four billion years ago Earth, Venus and Mars may have all been habitable. 
However, a billion years or so after formation, Venus turned into a hothouse and Mars froze into an icebox, the authors explain. 
Early microbial life on Venus and Mars, if there was any, failed to stabilize the rapidly changing environment, while life on Earth probably played a leading role in stabilizing the planet’s climate.

The authors name this near-universal early extinction the “Gaian Bottleneck,” which also leads to the prediction that the vast majority of fossils in the universe (found in future meteorites, for example) will be from extinct microbial life, not from multicellular species such as dinosaurs or humanoids that take billions of years to evolve. 

So far, that’s the case..."

Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Seem to Know How the Supreme Court Works — Look at How His Supporters React | TheBlaze.com

Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Seem to Know How the Supreme Court Works — Look at How His Supporters React | TheBlaze.com:

"Although democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is receiving some criticism on social media for a Thursday tweet about what his requirements for a Supreme Court nominee would be, his avid supporters seemed to pay no heed to Sanders’ apparent disregard for how the Supreme Court operates."

Socialism. Again!!-----Failed Talks Raise Specter of Biggest Default in Puerto Rico Crisis

Failed Talks Raise Specter of Biggest Default in Puerto Rico Crisis - The New York Times
SAN JUAN, P.R. — Negotiations to restructure roughly $9 billion of the debt of Puerto Rico’s power company collapsed late Friday, raising the prospect of the biggest default yet in Puerto Rico’s deepening debt crisis.
The creditors blamed the utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, for scuttling the talks, saying Prepa officials had decided to let a critical expiration date pass without taking action. But Prepa said it was the creditors’ fault for trying to impose a requirement that Prepa had already rejected.
Prepa is one of the largest single issuers of Puerto Rico’s $72 billion in debt, most of it in the form of municipal bonds, which are widely held through mutual funds and other investment firms. It is a monopoly, owned by the residents of the island, and until 2014, it was self-regulated.
“They had no incentives whatsoever to be efficient,” the president of Puerto Rico’s Senate, Eduardo Bhatia, said of Prepa in a recent interview. This is incredible. Our power plants look like the cars in Cuba...”

History for January 24

History for January 24 - On-This-Day.com:
Frederick the Great (Prussia) 1712, Oral Roberts 1918, Ray Stevens 1939 


Neil Diamond 1941, John Belushi 1949, Mary Lou Retton 1968 


1848 - James W. Marshall discovered a gold nugget at Sutter's Mill in northern California. The discovery led to the gold rush of '49. 


1908 - In England, the first Boy Scout troop was organized by Robert Baden-Powell. 


1922 - Christian K. Nelson patented the Eskimo Pie. 


1935 - Krueger Brewing Company placed the first canned beer on sale in Richmond, VA. 


1965 - Winston Churchill died at the age of 90. 


1986 - The Voyager 2 space probe flew past Uranus. The probe came within 50,679 miles of the seventh planet of the solar system. 


1989 - Ted Bundy, the confessed serial killer, was put to death in Florida's electric chair for the 1978 kidnap-murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. 


2002 - The U.S. Congress began a hearing on the collapse of Enron Corp. 

BREAKING: Clinton Camp Reeling After Intern Scandal Explodes... And Bill Isn't Even Involved

BREAKING: Clinton Camp Reeling After Intern Scandal Explodes... And Bill Isn't Even Involved: "Never one to distance herself from criminals, 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has reportedly been using illegal immigrants to drum up support for her campaign.

“Clinton’s campaign has organized teams of mothers in the country illegally to operate phone banks on her behalf,” the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The irony here is rich. One of the most notorious criminals of our time is now using other criminals —"

Wife Objects to Husband Marrying 7-Year-Old "2nd Wife," So He Teaches Her HORRIFYING Islamic Lesson

Wife Objects to Husband Marrying 7-Year-Old "2nd Wife," So He Teaches Her HORRIFYING Islamic Lesson:

"Reza Gul’s plight emphasizes the violence against women in Afghanistan, who after decades of legal efforts enacted to protect them and billions of dollars in legal aid, remain unprotected from such abuse. To make matters worse, their attackers are rarely punished.

A police official said the authorities had heard the Taliban had already arrested Khan.

“We don’t know what they plan to do with him, but we will follow the case and bring him to justice,” Yaqubi said."

GOP to Confirm ‘Property Rights are White and Racist’ Judge

Conservative Review: Horowitz: GOP to Confirm ‘Property Rights are White and Racist’ Judge
After confirming a liberal judge to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week as their first act of 2016, Senate Republicans are prepared to confirm yet another liberal judge next week. 
And once again, they are sneaking it in as the first vote on Tuesday so that opponents can’t mobilize. 
Welcome to Orwell’s “1984” where the opposition party is not really the opposition party.

On Tuesday afternoon, Republicans will vote to confirm Wilhelmina Marie Wright, a sitting member of the Minnesota state Supreme Court, to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. 
Just who is Ms. Wright?

Writing a short entry for the UCLA Law Review in 1990 (page 18-19 of PDF), Ms. Wright brazenly asserted that, “[T]he practice of American racism is based on two principles: the sanctity of property and the belief in the hierarchy of races.” 
She concludes as follows:

The failure of today’s racial discourse is its reliance on the notion that property is neutral, that the deed to a suburban home is ‘property’ while the opportunity to move out of a slum is not. 

The fungibility of property can be no better exemplified than it is by slavery. The fact that our Constitution once recognized one person’s very life and liberty as another’s property should teach us the danger of letting property determine liberty rather than looking to liberty to define property.

If you want to know why every Democrat-appointed and many GOP-appointed judges believe the Constitution is unconstitutional, here’s the source. 
They oppose the fundamental negative rights expressed in our founding documents, replace them with man-made positive rights for favored classes, and point to flaws with the settlement of our continent with regard to slavery as justification for upending the Constitution outside the legitimate amendment process.

Ms. Wright, much like all of Obama’s judicial tyrants, believes our foundational values are rooted in racism.

Highest State And Local Tax Burdens Are In Blue States, Lowest Are In Red States

TaxProf Blog:

Highest State And Local Tax Burdens Are In Blue States, Lowest Are In Red States

"During the 2012 fiscal year, state-local tax burdens as a share of state incomes decreased on average across the U.S.
Average income increased at a faster rate than tax collections, driving down state-local tax burdens on average.
New Yorkers faced the highest burden, with 12.7 percent of income in the state going to state and local taxes. Connecticut (12.6 percent) and New Jersey (12.2 percent) followed closely behind. On the other end of the spectrum, Alaska (6.5 percent), South Dakota (7.1 percent) and Wyoming (7.1 percent) had the lowest burdens."

Group Of "Arab Men" Rape Young White Girl... The Police Response Left Her Parents In Total Shock

Group Of "Arab Men" Rape Young White Girl... The Police Response Left Her Parents In Total Shock:

"The continuing problem of Muslim refugees raping women in European countries is becoming sickeningly routine. Almost daily, stories emerge about more victims of these horrible crimes. If that weren’t enough, responses of local law enforcement officials leave many wondering what in the world they could be thinking.

Case in point: a 13-year-old German-Russian girl was kidnapped on Jan. 11 on her way to school by three Muslim refugees and subjected her to repeated rape for 30 hours, according to a story published by Pamela Gellar."

Muslim school in London fails Ofsted inspection after books promoting stoning are found in library

Muslim school in London fails Ofsted inspection after books promoting stoning are found in library: "A school in east London has failed its Ofsted inspection following the discovery of books promoting stoning in its library.
The school acknowledged staff had ‘not been sufficiently vigilant’
Investigators from the education watchdog found three ‘extreme’ texts at the private Muslim Jamiatul Ummah School in Tower Hamlets, and published their report on 4 January.
The texts promoted both the inequality of women and illegal punishments such as stoning, the report said, and undermined the rule of British law.
‘The concern is that during a very brief tour of the library inspectors found three books that undermine the active promotion of the rule of British law and respect for other people,’ the Ofsted report read.
‘The books promote inequality of women and punishments, including stoning to death, which are illegal in Britain and which do not reflect the school’s ethos of tolerance and integration.
‘Staff have not been sufficiently vigilant about the availability of inappropriate texts in the library or sufficiently aware of the potential for unwittingly promoting extreme views.’
Staff at the all-boys school, which charges £3,400 a year, said they had removed the offending texts and were carrying out an audit on the rest of its materials.
This is the third inspection Jamiatul Ummah has failed since October 2014.
The latest surprise investigation took place on 25 November, but the report was not published until 4 January.
‘The school said in a statement: ‘Our position in respect to extremism is very clear, we condemn all forms of extremism unequivocally and this is recognised by Ofsted...’"

Senator Blames Baltimore Violence on “Gun Show Loophole”

Senator Blames Baltimore Violence on “Gun Show Loophole”
While speaking at the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D- Maryland) proclaimed her support for Obama’s gun control measures and his use of executive actions.
The Senator also talked about rising violence in Baltimore, and put a lot of the blame on the so-called “gun show loophole”, a term that has been used by many anti-gun politicians who neither understand what exact “loophole” they are talking about nor its exact meaning.
Her exact comments:
‘For too long, Congress has failed to act on measures to keep us safe, including common sense reforms to close the gun show loophole, improve background checks for gun purchasers and strengthen mental health services,’ Mikulski said.
‘As appropriators, we put money in the federal checkbook… Sadly, deadly gun violence has become all too familiar in Maryland and across our nation. No one should be afraid to attend a religious service, go to school, visit a shopping mall or see a movie in a theater.’
What was left out of her comments was the number of crimes that took place as a direct result of the so-called “loophole”.  
Probably because these numbers just don’t exist and criminals have access to actual “loopholes” like stealing guns and getting them on the black market.
Senator, you will never stop the rising crime problem in your state if you continue to put the blame on law abiding citizens instead of the actual criminals.
If you really believe in this “loophole” please tell us what it is.
We are dying to hear more about your ignorance on the issue and get a good laugh out of it.

Lunch video-----Dumbing Down University

Noon-toon

ISIS Thugs Encounter 8 Muslim Women... They Lift Their Burqas And All Hell Breaks Loose

ISIS Thugs Encounter 8 Muslim Women... They Lift Their Burqas And All Hell Breaks Loose:

"Sometimes, the iextremist desire for women to be covered from head-to-toe doesn’t work out for radical Islamic terrorists. This is doubly true when the people covered up aren’t women.

According to the U.K. Express, eight soldiers with British special forces dressed in full burqas and pretended to be the wives of senior Islamic State group officials to enter a group stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, and help kill a senior leader of the group via a drone strike."

Just 14% of Baltimore students proficient, despite high administrator salaries

Just 14% of Baltimore students proficient, despite high administrator salaries | EAGnews.org
BALTIMORE – A published list of top salaries for the Baltimore City school district in 2013-14 is a little confusing at first.
One column of the spreadsheet lists “regular earnings,” which is obviously what each employee was paid in regular salary or hourly wage.
But there are two more columns – titled “additional earnings” and “total earnings,” that trip the alarms.
The “additional earnings” column had some pretty big numbers, and made many of the dollar figures under “total earnings” much larger.
What “additional earnings” are they talking about?
How could it involve so much money?
A March 2015 article from the Baltimore Sun clears up the mystery, and not in a pretty way.
It seems that the very expensive “extra earnings” paid out by the Baltimore City district represented “bonuses, overtime pay and accrued leave,” according to the newspaper.
In other words, a whole lot of unnecessary perks ended up pushing a lot of employee salaries much higher than they would have been, and costing the taxpayers a handsome sum.
In 2013-14, a total of 659 Baltimore City school employees made at least $100,000 in regular and additional earnings combined – and that’s not counting the untold cost of insurance and other benefits.
Those 659 employees were paid a combined $68 million in regular earnings, plus another $5.8 million in additional earnings, totaling $75 million.
All but eighteen on the list of 659 in the “six-figure club” received “additional earnings” – including 125 who were paid at least $10,000 for unused leave, various types of bonuses and overtime pay.
Four employees made at least $100,000 in extras. 
One of them – interim district CEO Tisha Edwards – was paid $121,830 in straight salary and a whopping $217,156 in additional earnings, totaling $338,986.
Most of the extra money was compensation for leave time she did not use in her 10 years with the district, the Sun reported.
While most of that time was spent in lesser positions at lower pay, district policies allowed Edwards to cash out her unused leave time at the rate she was making as CEO.
Another good example was school district police officer Leonard Winfield, who made $52,228 straight salary and $125,851 in additional earnings, bringing his salary to $193,607.
The picture gets worse when the entire payroll is examined.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the school district paid more than $600 million in salary to approximately 13,000 employees that year, including $46 million in “additional earnings.”
While all of this was happening, the district was running up a $72 million budget deficit that threatened to force layoffs in the district for the first time in more than 10 years, according to the Sun..."

This is liberalism, folks-----In advance of big storm, New Jersey lifts licensing laws for shoveling snow

In advance of big storm, New Jersey lifts licensing laws for shoveling snow - Watchdog.org
Just days ahead of an expected blizzard on the East Coast, New Jersey has officially repealed a nonsensical rule banning the shoveling of snow without a license.

Shutterstock image

SNOW JOB: Police in Bound Brook, N.J., told two boys, Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf, they were not allowed to shovel their neighbors’ driveways without a permit. A new state law puts the boys on the right side of the law, and common sense.

Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday signed a bill making it legal for New Jersey residents to offer snow shoveling services without first registering with their town. Last year, two entrepreneurial teens going door-to-door and offering to shovel snow for a small fee were stopped by local police in Bound Brook.

The cops told the two boys, Matt Molinari and Eric Schnepf, they were not allowed to solicit businesses without a permit..."

Must read of the day!-----Cosmic Cycles, not Carbon Dioxide, Control Climate

Cosmic Cycles, not Carbon Dioxide, Control Climate | Somewhat Reasonable
Those who think the political war on carbon will cool the globe or keep climate stable need to study climate history.
Temperatures on Earth dance to a cyclic rhythm every hour, every day, every month, every season, every year, and to every beat of the sun-spot and glacial cycles.
...Then there is the 22 year sun-spot cycle, which correlates with cycles of floods and droughts. 
Sunspot cycles are indicators of solar activity which causes periods of global warming and cooling.
Earth’s climate is also disrupted periodically by the effects of changing winds, ocean hot spots and submarine volcanism that produce the El Nino Southern Oscillation.
The least recognised but most dangerous climate cycle is the glacial cycle. 
We live in the Holocene Epoch, the latest brief warm phase of the Pleistocene Ice Age.
The climate history of the Holocene, and its predecessor the Eemian, are well documented in ice core logs and other records in the rocks.
Each cycle consists of a glacial age of about 80,000 years followed by a warmer age of about 20,000 years, with peak warming occurring over about 12,000 years.
Our modern warm era commenced 12,000 years ago, so it is probably nearing its end.
...On an even longer time scale, oscillation of the solar system through the plane of the Galaxy seems to trigger magnetic reversals and violent spasms of volcanism, crustal movements glaciation and species extinction. Earth is never still for long.
What about the role of carbon dioxide in climate? 
Al Gore did a great job to dramatise the recurring glacial cycles in his widely acclaimed work of science fiction.
But he missed two inconvenient truths.

• First, ice cores show that in the glacial spring-time the temperature rose BEFORE the CO2 levels rose. Therefore the rising CO2 cannot be a CAUSE of the warming – it is a RESULT of CO2 being expelled from the warming oceans.
• Second, at the top of every summer-time in the glacial cycle, the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were unable to prevent the cooling into the next cycle of ice.

We are already in the autumn of the current glacial cycle and nothing man can do will change that. Global temperatures today are lower than they were in Roman and Medieval times. 
...The transition from Greenhouse Earth to Icehouse Earth always occurs suddenly.
Once our verdant greenhouse is gone, life of Earth will ne
ver be the same again.
The warm days, seasons, years and epochs have never been a deadly threat to life on Earth.
Frost, snow, hail and ice are the killers.
If our descendants do not have the energy, resources and wisdom to keep their people warm and fed through the coming glacial epoch, humans may follow our Neanderthal cousins who perished in the last glacial winter, just 20,000 years ago.
It is a wonder of the modern era that people who cannot accurately forecast next weekend’s weather claim they can regulate the temperature of the whole globe by bashing industry and taxing carbon.
There is NO evidence in climate history that carbon dioxide has a detectable effect on global temperatures. 
However if our continued use of cheap reliable hydro-carbon energy does slightly delay the onset of the next glacial winter, we and all life on Earth should count ourselves extremely lucky.

Government shouldn’t create business entities to compete with the private sector

Government shouldn’t create business entities to compete with the private sector - NetRight Daily
"Should a city buy concrete trucks and start its own construction company if it doesn’t like the demographic makeup of the employees of the construction companies that could do work on city construction projects?
Most people with any experience around government operations would scoff at the notion, yet last year, Akron, Ohio considered doing exactly that.
This is just one of many examples the Business Coalition for Fair Competition recently put together of the government either directly or through the creation of new entities engaging in commercial activities that are designed to compete with the private sector.
In these instances of government competition with private enterprise, taxpayer funds help provide subsidies to the commercial activities that in many instances would not be available to real businesses.
These subsidies may range from taxpayer funded staff support to preferences in obtaining business from the government.
This is not the way to ensure cost effective governance.
These are also activities that the government has no business engaging in at all. Governmental control of the means of production, is, after all, the literal definition of socialism.
Unfortunately, like a lot of governmental activities, the inertia is in the direction of continuing to enlarge the size and scope of what the government does in the area of commercial activities..."

Report: Some of Hillary Clinton’s Emails on Her Private Server Are So Top Secret That Even Senior Lawmakers Can’t Read Them | TheBlaze.com

Report: Some of Hillary Clinton’s Emails on Her Private Server Are So Top Secret That Even Senior Lawmakers Can’t Read Them | TheBlaze.com:

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had emails on her private server that contained information so top-secret that the very lawmakers who oversee the State Department can’t read them without meeting “additional security requirements,” according to a report by Fox News’ Catherine Herridge.

According to the report, Clinton’s emails contained intelligence classified “at a level beyond top secret,” therefore, some of the lawmakers in both parties on the committees examining Clinton’s emails do not have the necessary security clearances to actually read them."

Don't Blame Lack of Money for Deplorable Conditions in Detroit Schools

Don't Blame Lack of Money for Deplorable Conditions in Detroit Schools [Michigan Capitol Confidential]:
Some teachers have said that DPS students deserve a level playing field, implying the state does not give as much money to Detroit as other school districts.
This plays on a widespread perception that schools in poor communities get less money.
This was a valid complaint before a 1994 school finance overhaul largely equalized funding across districts (Proposal A), but it cannot be sustained today.
In particular, the underfunding claim is not true in Detroit, whether it concerns funding for operations or for new buildings and major repairs (infrastructure).
As for the latter, in November 2009, Detroit voters approved $500.5 million in new debt (and related tax hikes on property owners) intended to improve the physical condition of the city’s schools. 

The magnitude of this spending is revealed by the fact that infrastructure millages approved in 35 other districts that year came to $583 million.
On the operations side, Detroit Public Schools received more money per pupil in the 2013-14 school year than any of the state’s 10 largest school districts. 

Detroit got $12,931 in local, state and federal funding for operations, compared to the statewide average of $9,121 (see attached chart).

To cite just one comparison, that year Detroit received about $4,400 more per pupil than the Chippewa Valley School District ($8,549), which is just 30 miles away from Detroit.