1215 - King John of England put his seal on the Magna Carta.
1667 - Jean-Baptiste Denys administered the first fully-documented human blood transfusion. He successfully transfused the blood of a sheep to a 15-year old boy. 1752 - Benjamin Franklin experimented by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. The result was a little spark that showed the relationship between lightning and electricity.
1844 - Charles Goodyear was granted a patent for the process that strengthens rubber. 1864 - An order to establish a military burial ground was signed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The location later became known as Arlington National Cemetery.
1964 - The last French troops left Algeria.
1992 - U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle instructed a student to spell "potato" with an "e" on the end during a spelling bee. He had relied on a faulty flash card that had been written by the student's teacher.
"Sunday is Flag Day, created when President Harry Truman signed an act of Congress on August 3, 1949, declaring June 14 to be the day each year to celebrate the stars and stripes.
If you ask just about anyone, “Who created the very first American flag?” you’ll no doubt hear the name Betsy Ross. But was she really our original flag’s creator?"
"After she blew the whistle on the EB-5 program, the retaliation was swift and severe. Johnson was escorted from her desk and denied access to her case files. The government then informed adoption social workers that Johnson had lost her job due to criminal activity.
“When an adoption social worker tried to contact and verify employment, she was told that I had been terminated for a criminal offense,” Johnson said, on the verge of tears. “I almost lost my 1-year-old child.”
Sen. James Inhofe to Climate Change Skeptics: 'We Are Winning'
Sen. James Inhofe told a group of climate change skeptics that they are winning the fight against those who believe in man-made global warming at the event hosted by the Heartland Institute. ...The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee put the blame for the climate change movement on the United Nations, The Hill reported.
"The United Nations is the reason that this all came along.
We all know that," he said.
"They want independence. They don't want to be accountable to anybody, to the United States or any other country."
The Oklahoma senator cited former French President Jacques Chirac who said that global warming "is the first component of authentic global governance..."
Authors of FBI Study Backtrack: Mass Shootings Are Not Increasing - Breitbart
Last week, the two authors of a study the FBI released on September 24, 2014, admitted they “got it wrong” when they “reported mass shootings were on the rise” in America.
Outlets like The New York Times and the Associated Press had seized on the study...as proof that more gun control was needed...
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has now reported that the study was wrong.
For example, the study claimed a “16%” increase in mass shootings from 2000 to 2013. The report’s synopsis showed that “during the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually.
In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”
Blair and Martaindale even used the faulty findings to predict that mass shootings were going to continue increasing in frequency by stating that “the findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents.”...
Moreover, they essentially admitted to creating data in the absence of extant data which supported their thesis.
Blair and Martaindale said, “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own.”
WSJ points out the irony of it all inasmuch as the truth is completely opposite what the study presented.
The occurrences of mass shootings have remained essentially flat for 40 years, and violent crime fell significantly during the period Blair and Martindale studied.
"The CIA released a trove previously classified documents related to the 9/11 terror attacks on Friday afternoon, including a report with a section on Saudi Arabia.
But there wasn’t much insight to be gleaned from the Saudi section, titled “Issues Relating to Saudi Arabia,” as nearly all of the information was redacted.
Subsections on “implications” and “accountability” were entirely redacted:"
Video of Santa Ana Police Pot-Shop Raid Shows Officers Eating ‘Edibles,’ Attorney Says | KTLA: "During a police raid on an unpermitted pot shop in Santa Ana late last month, hidden cameras caught officers eating marijuana-laced “edibles,” playing darts and displaying other questionable behavior, according to an attorney who plans to sue the city in connection with the raid.
The incident occurred at Sky High Holistic, a medical marijuana dispensary operating without a business permit, officials with the Santa Ana Police Department confirmed.
...The officers proceed to remove surveillance cameras mounted on the ceiling, the video shows.
Then, they appear to be smelling the merchandise and discussing the flavor of the edibles, to laughter. Multiple officers appear to break off pieces of the food and consume them.
Several other officers play darts...
Yesterday There Was Transracialism And Transethnicity. Today? "Otherkin." Oh Yes. It's A Thing. - Chicks on the Right: I don't know if I want to live on this planet anymore. Now, before you watch this, please be warned that there is pop-up text on the video that is snarky but also really crass. I can't find a version of the video without the text commentary, but I promise that you'll end up so bewildered by the interview with this wolf-girl that you won't be all that distracted by the text.
BEHOLD: The girl who believes she's a wolf in a human body.
Daisy was just joking around in the office yesterday that the next thing that we'd be forced to accept (or else face accusations of bigotry) was people who think that they're really animals.
I imagined we'd call them transanimals or something, but come to find out - they're out there, and they're known as "otherkin...."
State Dept suspends overseas passport, visa issuance | Fox News:
"The State Department said Friday it has been forced to suspend the issuance of U.S. passports and visas at its overseas diplomatic missions due to a glitch that has hit one of its computer databases. In a statement posted to its travel.state.gov website, the department said a hardware failure in its Consular Consolidated Database glitch has left overseas embassies and consulates unable to print visas, regular passports and other travel documents.
This means that people who submitted online applications for passports and visas on or after June 9 will likely experience delays in processing, it said.
...More details about the failure were not immediately available.
The consular database was taken down last July by another technical glitch that had the same effect but the department said the current issue is unrelated.
The department said it was working "urgently to identify the problem and correct it." "We expect the systems to be fully operational again soon," it said, but offered no timeline."
"Anger has ensued following reports that the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia celebrated American Independence Day on June 4 rather than July 4 in an intentional effort not to offend Muslims in the region. As it turns out, July 4 falls right in the middle of Ramadan, an Islamic holiday that involves fasting in remembrance of what Muslims believe was a divine revelation of the Koran to Muhammad.
Ramadan, which goes from June 17 through July 17 of this year, involves both fasting and prayer."
Rocky Mountain High Producing Some Undesirable Side Effects
...Amendment 64 was approved of by 55 percent of Colorado voters in 2012. Promoted as a revenue-generating “regulate marijuana like alcohol” measure, its passage and ensuing repercussions caught many by surprise. Regulating marijuana like alcohol, it appears, is a breathtaking oversimplification of what is required to turn an illegal intoxicant into a viable commodity.
The citizen-led ballot initiative behind Amendment 64 went beyond simple decriminalization and created a new civil right by encoding the possession and use of pot into the Colorado State Constitution...
...In March of this year plants at several growing facilities in the Denver area had to be quarantined because of the misuse of “pesticides.” The pesticides, it turns out, were improvised concoctions of chemicals, including some unidentifiable mixtures.
Cannabis growers have been left to improvise since no commercial pesticides are labeled for legal use on cannabis plants.
...Law enforcement issues, such as marijuana-intoxicated driving and the illegal movement of vast amounts of cannabis product into other states, are the tip of the iceberg.
Social and law enforcement issues resulting from the Colorado interstate pot pipeline prompted Nebraska and Oklahoma to file lawsuits against the state, citing the fact that marijuana commerce violates federal law and increases the burdens of law enforcement in other states.
Other symptoms of Colorado’s pot culture include increased use among teens, resulting in educational problems in middle schools and high schools, a spike in “edibles”-related emergency room visits, consumption by children and pets resulting in illness and death and regulatory confusion surrounding public consumption and enforcement.
...In 2014 and 2015, nearly $6 million in pot revenues have been distributed to local governments. But the cost of increased law enforcement, drugged driving incidents, fatal crashes, loss of productivity and a huge spike in gang-related crime bring into question the cost-benefit of those dollars. Teen drug-related school expulsions are also on the rise.
And the notion that prisons filled with minor drug offenders would be relieved of overcrowding—a selling point of legalizing marijuana—has been blown to smithereens. Denver’s homeless population has exploded since Amendment 64 went into effect.
And there are indications that finite tourist dollars are going more to pot and less to Colorado’s iconic natural wonders...
She Says She Was Repeatedly Abused By Her Parents and Ex-Husband. They then moved to South Africa, where her mother and stepfather beat her and her siblings, “punish[ing] us by skin complexion.” The reporter continues:
According to Doležal, the object her mother and stepfather used to punish them was called a baboon whip, used to ward baboons away in South Africa. These whips would leave scars behind, “they were pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery.”
Her parents say she’s a liar; they never even lived in South Africa.
Naturally, she also claims to be a rape victim. Why not?
Dolezal tried to pass off her adopted brother, who actually is black, as her son:
She Says She Her Black Brother Is Her Black Son. As BuzzFeed reports, according to her dad, Larry, her “oldest son Izaiah,” who she cites in the press, is actually her adoptive brother. “He used to be my brother,” she told the Couer D’Alene Press. “But I have full custody of him now.” She told that same outlet that they could “DNA test me if they want to.”
Dolezal has repeatedly complained of hate crimes presumably directed at her because of her African-American heritage, which undoubtedly were fabricated like the rest of her story:
She Has Repeatedly Claimed To Be The Victim of Anti-Black Hate Crimes. She says Idaho white supremacist groups burglarized all of her homes when she lived in the state, and explained that they felt “threatened by female power.” She says they threatened to kidnap her son, Franklin, and “hung nooses in her home.” No arrests were ever made.
This week, Spokane police released information about Dolezal’s most recent complaint: that she received hate mail. But according to the Spokesman-Review, it’s highly possible she sent it herself:
Police records say the initial package Dolezal reported receiving did not bear a date stamp or bar code, which Dolezal told police when she reported it. Investigators interviewed postal workers, who said it was either very unlikely or impossible that the package could have been processed through the post office, implying that the only alternative was that it had been put there by someone with a key… Asked about the possibility that she had put the package there herself, she said, “That’s such bullshit. What mother would terrorize her own children?”
Her efforts were met with opposition by North Idaho white supremacy groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo Nazis and the Aryan Nations, and at least eight documented hate crimes targeted Doležal and her children during her residency in North Idaho...."
And speaking of Lincoln Chafee, let me note that there are two kinds of countries in the world: Those that use the metric system, and those that have walked on the Moon."
"My grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. often quoted his mentor Dr. Benjamin E. Mays…
Dr. Mays would say: "No one can ride your back unless it is bent." Granddaddy always taught us to "stand up straight and walk tall because God is on our side."
When I hear Mrs. Senator Hillary Clinton or Mrs. Michelle Obama, or Al Sharpton, or other leading speakers stir up memories of racial unrest and oppression, even when they are pointing out the obvious current racial overtones and undertones that Blacks in America are still facing, I don't hear hope. They don't offer solutions, only more anger, pain and despair.
As a survivor of the 20th Century Race Wars, my back remains unbent, and I move forward for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all who were created equal in God's eyes."
Have you ever wanted to climb into the cockpit, buckle up, and see what it looks like and hear what it sounds like to fly one of these A-10s?
It is a beautiful machine.
These planes a were brought into the fleet some 30 years ago.
Though they have been scheduled to be taken off line several times, they keep coming back like proverbial zombies.
Presently, the 163rd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana (also known as the Blacksnakes’s) are deployed to the battle against ISIS in Syria and Iraq at this time.
For now, the A-10 Warthog is a keeper.
History for June 14 - On-This-Day.com Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811, Burl Ives 1909, Gene Barry 1921 Donald Trump 1946 - Real estate developer, television personality, Boy George (George O'Dowd) 1961 - Singer (Culture Club), Steffi Graf 1969 - Tennis player 1777 - The Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the "Stars and Stripes" as the national flag of the United States. The Flag Resolution stated "Resolved: that the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." On May 20, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson officially proclaimed June 14 "Flag Day" as a commemoration of the "Stars and Stripes." 1834 - Cyrus Hall McCormick received a patent for his reaping machine. 1834 - Isaac Fischer Jr. patented sandpaper. 1917 - General John Pershing arrived in Paris during World War I. 1940 - The Nazis opened their concentration camp at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland. 1940 - German troops entered Paris. As Paris became occupied loud speakers announced the implementation of a curfew being imposed for 8 p.m. 1951 - "Univac I" was unveiled. It was a computer designed for the U.S. Census Bureau and billed as the world's first commercial computer. 1952 - The Nautilus was dedicated. It was the first nuclear powered submarine. 1954 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an order adding the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. 1982 - Argentine forces surrendered to British troops on the Falkland Islands.
"This isn’t the first time Davis has attracted a lot of attention for a billboard message. In 2013, he put a sign at the same intersection to encourage people to pull up their sagging pants.
“Show your mind. Not your behind,” the sign read."
Obama Seeks to Reshape Neighborhoods With Housing “Diversity” The Obama administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is under fire after announcing a proposed executive decree to make American neighborhoods more “diverse.” Under the new HUD policy, dubbed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” the federal government will gather and track data on “segregation” and “discrimination” across America before deploying a wide range of social-engineering schemes to ensure more “diversity” in U.S. neighborhoods. Some analysts say there is an even broader agenda at work.
While details about the latest anti-constitutional plot remain scarce, news reports and official documents suggest the administration will use a combination of federal bribes and coercion to achieve its aims.
The goal, in essence, is to force state and local governments into submission using a “carrot and stick” approach.
Among the many federal targets in enforcing centrally planned diversity: local zoning regulations, public transportation, land-use policies, government housing agencies, and more.
Check out these somber new shots of the Soviets' stunted space shuttle program:
"Don't fault us for thinking these cemetery-like photos taken inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia would make an epic setting for a spectacular superhero showdown.
Check out these eerie images by Russian photographer and adventurer Ralph Mirebs, who gained access to the cavernous superstructure where the rotting husks of two Soviet Burans lie in eternal slumber.
The $16 billion Buran-Energia space shuttle program ran between 1974 and 1993 in response to the U.S. shuttle program, with only a single automated orbital flight under its belt before funding was yanked due to the Soviet Union's political and financial implosion.
This colossal hanger was first built to assemble the Soviet's N1 moon rocket, then converted to an orbiter maintenance facility and final destination for the two shuttles.
...Pay your respects to these decaying icons of a more ambitious period in Soviet space exploration in the gallery below, and a special thanks to Ralph Mirebs for braving the spooky interior of this abandoned Soviet tomb and capturing the Burans' sad state for posterity."
By the way, it’s still cool to use “pales,” right? I may need to update my scorecard:
I’m a big user of “guys,” and when it was first brought to my attention that the phrase was frowned upon among leading feminist thinkers and people concerned with equality — especially in male-dominated workplaces — my reaction was “Oh, come on. It’s inaccurate, but it’s not actually hurting anyone.”
But I’ve changed my mind. As I read up on the issue, I realized that my kneejerk response (“but it doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me, personally, and changing would require effort on my part and that’s hard and tiring”) is nothing more than a very typical lazy excuse for avoiding the tiny tweaks to our lives that can, as a whole, make society more equal...
Pennsylvania family forced to pay $500 for a chance to keep girl's tree house - Watchdog.org PITTSBURGH — Elise Truchan has learned some lessons in her first run-in with bureaucracy. “I’ve learned that people lie,” is unfortunately one of them, her father recounted to Watchdog.org.
After Elise spent three months planning and then building an elaborate tree house for a school project, her family came home to find a note on their front door from the local building inspector telling them it had to come down
Now, in order to keep the treehouse from being torn down, the family has to pay $500 just for a chance at an official permission slip from Leet Township.
...After the township first ordered the family to pull down the treehouse –turning the Truchans’ situation into fodder for local and then national news – the family tried to reach an understanding with their local officials.
Friday A/V Club: Shedding Their White Identities - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Yesterday we learned that Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, was born of Czech/German stock before she started presenting herself to the world as black. Such "reverse racial passing," as it's called, has been around for a long time, and not just along the line supposedly separating black from white. The Dolezal story reminds me of another American who became a famous face of an ethnic group he hadn't been born into.
You may recall this public service announcement of the 1970s:
That man with the tear was known as Iron Eyes Cody. Here's what Snopes has to say about him: "Iron Eyes Cody was born Espera DeCorti on 3 April 1904 in the small town of Kaplan, Louisiana. He was the son of Francesca Salpietra and Antonio DeCorti, she an immigrant from Sicily who had arrived in the USA in 1902, and he another immigrant who had arrived in America not long before her. ...In 1924, following their father's death, the boys moved to Hollywood, changed "Corti" to "Cody," and began working in the motion picture industry. It was about this time Iron Eyes began presenting himself to the world as an Indian. ...Iron Eyes went on to achieve a full career as an actor, appearing in well over a hundred movies and dozens of television shows across the span of several decades. Although Iron Eyes was not born an Indian, he lived his adult years as one. He pledged his life to Native American causes, married an Indian woman (Bertha Parker), adopted two Indian boys (Robert and Arthur), and seldom left home without his beaded moccasins, buckskin jacket and braided wig.
For more, read Ron Russell's great 1999 story about DeCorti for the Los Angeles New Times...
New Article Blasts Feds’ ‘Pseudoscientific Methods’ For Establishing Dietary Guidelines - Reason.com: "A new article by University of Alabama-Birmingham researcher Edward Archer and colleagues Gregory Pavela and Carl Lavie, published this week in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, argues that the conclusions drawn by the federal government's controversial Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) rest on fatally flawed assumptions about unusable data.
Consequently, the authors conclude that the DGAC's work—and the research used to support that work—is so off base as to be scientifically useless."
They offer a private bathroom or the girls bathroom. The sick, sad girl sues to use the boys bathroom. The ACLU funds this madness. ACLU Suit: Allow Girl To Use Boys Bathroom | The Daily Caller The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal sex discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a Virginia high school student who has been prohibited from using the boys bathrooms and locker rooms on school premises.
The student plaintiff, 16-year-old Gavin Grimm, attends Gloucester High School in quiet, coastal Virginia, reports the Daily Press of Newport News.
The reason school officials have prevented Grimm from using facilities reserved for boys on campus is because Grimm was born a girl and by all accounts remains a girl.
...In December, the Gloucester County School Board voted 6-1 to establish an official policy assigning students with male reproductive organs to boys bathrooms and students with female reproductive organs to girls bathrooms. Students who feel they didn’t fit either of these straightforward categories can now use single-stall bathrooms at the school under the new rules.
...“The school board’s policy is deeply stigmatizing and needlessly cruel,” Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and HIV Project, told the Daily Press.
Block argued that one way the new policy discriminates is that it only allows students claiming transgender status to use the single-stall bathrooms. Thus, such a rule makes those students stand out.
“Any student — transgender or not — should be free to use single-stall restrooms if they want extra privacy..."
While governments and the Pentagon are increasingly talking up the need to protect the sensitive power grid and brace for the impact of a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) incident, which could come naturally from a solar flare or via an attack by a foreign entity, the Air Force is ready to embrace EMP as the status quo of future warfare.
The Air Force Research Laboratory has been working with Boeing for several years on the perfection, miniaturization and deployment of its Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), which has already been in the arsenal, but which will become increasingly central to the armed forces.
The U.S. Air Force’s confirmation that they and Boeing are developing the Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon, that essentially uses microwave energy to render useless all electronics in its “blast” area without causing structural damage, trended all over the Internet last month
[…] “This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare,” said Keith Coleman, Boeing Phantom Works’ CHAMP Program Manager in a Boeing video on the CHAMP test in 2012. “In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive.”
Here’s a video simulation of CHAMP in action, including proud statements from its creators on its powerful effect during tests to use directed energy to neutralize a modern urban environment:
In their test, the electromagnetic attack took out all the computers and other electronic equipment in the office without creating any structural damage, which would have rendered most populations and many enemies helpless in a real world conflict scenario...
There is little doubt that such an attack could be crippling, as many experts in the U.S. have warned. As the Inquisitr reports:
United States EMP Commission statement about the domino effect an EMP attack would have on the United States.
“The primary avenues for catastrophic damage to the nation are through our electric power infrastructure and thence into our telecommunications, energy, and other infrastructures. These, in turn, can seriously impact other important aspects of our nation’s life, including the financial system; means of getting food, water, and medical care to the citizenry; trade; and production of goods and services. The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent on the recovery of others.”
But are its devastating effects against civil populations – even in declared wars – fair game?
And how long until such an attack threatens the population here at home?
"The daughter of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin continued, hammering Cyrus for her comments.
“She wants everyone else to let her be ‘free to be Miley,’ but seems unwilling to offer the same respect to her parents and those who wish to live out their Christian faith,” she wrote.
“Oh, Miley,” Palin concluded. “Thanks for giving us the best example of what “tolerance” looks like in Hollywood: it looks a lot like contempt.”
"After nearly 25 years in the “news business,” CNN host Don Lemon said it’s obvious that liberals and progressives are the “least tolerant” of differing opinions. Further, political correctness in America has hit “dangerous” levels as many people don’t want to hear any opinion but their own.
In radio commentary for Black America Web, the “CNN Tonight” host implored listeners to be introspective about whether or not they might be “too politically correct.”
