Conservatrolling Topic

[Deleted]

So, what, God hates Fuji apples? >_>

[kode54]

If only more people believed in modern science and not in words written 2000 years ago by people whose goal was manipulating the populace in their favor.

[Jordan Ω]

Jul 17, 2013 22:22:20 GMT -5 kode54 said:

If only more people believed in modern science and not in words written 2000 years ago by people whose goal was manipulating the populace in their favor.

What part of modern science do we not believe in?
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. (Not that I'm admitting that any part of the second half of your statement is at all accurate)

[Tails82]

the position supplants God's authority in entirety. If the pope said "everyone gets a free pass to heaven"... everyone would get a free pass to heaven.

wat

The pope is meant to lead the church and proclaim the truth, not rewrite it. If all laws were torn down what would the purpose of the church be? Why have the institution? We cannot just say murder, for example, is fine as the relativists do. It is clearly wrong as written in the natural law and the commandments.

blog.heritage.org/2013/07/17/a-big-victory-for-harry-reid/

After yesterday’s display in the Senate, it should be no mystery why conservatives in Congress are unable to rally the American people to their cause. At the mere mention of the “nuclear option” by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Republicans caved in epic fashion.

Setting the stage for yesterday’s showdown, Reid filed cloture to end debate on seven controversial nominees at the end of last week.

Yesterday’s agreement was straightforward—Reid was assured a vote on five of the seven Obama executive branch appointees, with two of the three National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) nominees pulled in exchange for two replacements of the President’s choosing, and the Republicans… they would get nothing in return.

It is important for conservatives to realize the far-reaching and grievous implications of yesterday’s events. It appears now that Reid need only threaten invoking a rules change via the nuclear option and he and the President, along with their liberal allies, will get everything they want. There is nothing to stop Reid from employing this tactic on any upcoming nominees to the Supreme Court, as well as the future Secretary of Homeland Security.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/reid-it-and-weep

Although the media is reporting that the chamber finally arrived at a deal, some conservatives might disagree. The word "deal" implies that Republicans actually got something in exchange for their deep concessions on the confirmation process. Instead, it seems that Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and President Obama were the big winners of the day -- especially since the GOP promised a quick vote on five of the White House's most outrageous nominees.

Republicans had a chance to negotiate something better: Reid's word that his party wouldn't change the Senate's rules between now and the next election. Their failure means that the next time the GOP tries to block a White House nominee, the Senate will be back to square one -- with Senator Reid's finger on the trigger of the "nuclear option" to change the rules. Even the Democrats' offer to withdraw two of the President's nominees, those named to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was in recess, wasn't really a victory for Republicans because federal appeals courts had already declared their appointments unconstitutional.

Unfortunately for voters, the damage of Monday's deal runs a lot deeper than the GOP's image. As a result of this "compromise," Americans may be stuck with one of the most radical Secretaries ever to darken the Labor Department's door. Thomas Perez, the current head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, also won the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote as part of Tuesday's agreement. One of the most controversial figures on the President's payroll, Perez's conduct has been so questionable that the White House's own Inspector General called him to the carpet in a 258-page report released earlier this year. He's been accused of workplace harassment, lying, and corruption in a job marked by an extreme social ideology and inexplicable cover-ups.

Among other things, Perez has been rebuked by judges for his serial harassment of pro-life protestors and criticized by others for his open hostility to religious liberty. House leaders were so troubled by Perez's nomination that they took the unusual step of opposing his confirmation in a lengthy letter. "Prior to becoming an Assistant Attorney General," members explain, "Mr. Perez worked for Casa de Maryland, which trains illegal aliens on ways to avoid capture..."

...

When the new health care system kicks in, the source of most patients' pain will be their wallets. Under the latest estimates, the price tag for ObamaCare is almost triple what the President promised -- and climbing. In just the last few months, the 10-year projections have blown past the $900 billion liberals said it would cost to $2.6 trillion by 2022. And most of the major spending provisions in the law don't even take effect until 2014.

The irony wasn't lost on Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who pointed out that Congress spent most of last year fighting over ways to cut the debt, and this plan is going to add $2,600,000,000,000 more. And while the price may be higher, the number of insured certainly isn't. Experts now say that seven million Americans will lose their coverage because employers can't afford it. Unfortunately, that hasn't changed -- even with the administration's decision to postpone the employer mandate. According to the Washington Examiner, 74% of small businesses still plan to cope with ObamaCare's rules by firing some workers and reducing others to part-time status to stay under the 30-hour limit that requires them to provide insurance.

Together, the numbers provide a pretty compelling backdrop to this week's House votes. In response to growing outcry, GOP leaders are pushing two measures: one that would delay the individual mandate requiring Americans to buy insurance (H.R. 2668) and another that would postpone the employer mandate beyond the President's 2015 start date (H.R. 2667). Unfortunately, none of this would stop the President's oppressive mandate on conscience. While this is a good start -- and one we support -- the GOP needs to stop this train wreck by cutting out all funding for ObamaCare in the upcoming budget.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578611690336614814.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

We're starting to understand why Lois Lerner took the Fifth about her role in the IRS targeting of conservative groups. The testimony of at least three more employees in the IRS Washington office is now making clear that Ms. Lerner and other Washington IRS officials had a direct hand in slow rolling the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups in an election season.

Mr. Hull told House investigators that normally his judgment about applications would have been enough to approve or deny their tax-exempt status. Instead of sending those applications through the normal channel, however, conservative applications were sent through Ms. Lerner's office for review, and also directed to the IRS chief counsel. That process was highly unusual and created a vetting system in which applications were interminably delayed.

This routing process is significant in part because the chief counsel is one of only two political appointees at the IRS. Sending applications through that office ensured that a Democratic appointee and his staff could act as a filter for conservative groups' applications. According to Ron Shoemaker, who supervised Mr. Hull, the counsel's office was especially interested in evidence of groups' "possible political activity or political intervention right before the election period" in 2010.

When the targeting scandal broke, Democrats insisted that the whole operation was nothing more than a goof by Cincinnati employees. Former IRS chief Steve Miller testified in May that it was all a case of bad customer service by employees trying to be "more efficient in their workload selections." White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to cabin the scandal as "line IRS employees in Cincinnati improperly scrutinizing 501(c)(4) organizations by using words like 'tea party' in quotes and 'patriot.'"

The new testimony makes the Cincinnati excuse look even more feeble than it sounded then. In a letter this week to acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, House investigators have requested more information about the role of the Chief Counsel's office. They're also seeking documents including IRS employee discussions of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that ignited Democratic fury over the growing influence of conservative groups.

blog.heritage.org/2013/07/17/australias-carbon-policy-just-do-something/

At this time last year, the Australian government began collecting the world’s most expensive carbon tax. A year later, it seems unanimous among Australia’s two biggest parties that the tax has got to go.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday recommended replacing the tax with cap and trade. The change would potentially cut carbon emissions prices from $24 to $6 (in Australian dollars). Challenger Tony Abbott is advocating to eliminate the tax altogether.

The carbon tax has been hurting citizens, who have less in their budgets because of higher energy prices, and businesses, which have been less able to compete internationally—or even remain standing.

But a cap-and-trade program wouldn’t do much to help out businesses and individuals on their energy bills. The Heritage Foundation calculated the effects of a cap-and-trade program considered by the U.S. Congress in 2009. The results showed that by 2035:

* Gasoline prices would rise 58 percent (or $1.38);
* Natural gas prices would rise 55 percent;
* Heating oil prices would rise 56 percent;
* Electricity prices would rise 90 percent;
* Including taxes, a family of four would pay an additional $4,609 per year;
* Aggregate gross domestic product losses would be $9.4 trillion;
* Job losses would be nearly 2.5 million; and
* The national debt would rise an additional $12,803 per person ($51,212 per family of four).

Which liberals would no doubt support because they like to punish poor people for existing.

Aside from burdening businesses and families, cap and trade isn’t a serious environmental policy either. In 2009, Lisa Jackson, then-Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, recognized that cap and trade would do next to nothing to reduce global temperatures.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/17/nobody_will_go_near_rachel_jeantel_s_revelation_that_trayvon_martin_inflicted_a_whoop_ass_on_george_zimmerman_because_he_thought_zimmerman_was_gay

Let me go back to Piers Morgan CNN two nights ago. I keep learning things that Rachel Jeantel said. I didn't hear the interview. I just read about it. The audio sound bites that we heard yesterday are all I've heard. I didn't watch it. Apparently she said something else that's kind of entertaining. This is from Breitbart News. "Prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, speaking to Piers Morgan on CNN last night, explained that George Zimmerman had misunderstood the beating he was receiving from Trayvon Martin, and so had the jury in his trial.

"Zimmerman was not facing a potentially life-threatening 'bashing,' but simply a 'whoop ass.'" Here's her quote, Rachel Jeantel's quote from Monday night on CNN: "They don't understand, they understand, 'Oh, he would just bash, or was kill.' When somebody bash somebody, like, blood people, trust me, in the area I live, that's not bashing. That's just called 'whoop ass.' You just got your ass whooped. That's what it is."

The point that she was making was that it was Zimmerman's fault for not understanding the cultural context in which he was being attacked. Now, those are not Rachel Jeantel's words. She did not say that Zimmerman "didn't understand the cultural context." What she said was that Zimmerman didn't understand that Trayvon Martin didn't want to kill him. He was just doing a little whoop ass, and Zimmerman overreacted.

Trayvon did a little whoop ass on Zimmerman because he thought he was gay. Now, the point here is that in another part of the interview it was Rachel Jeantel who admitted that it was Trayvon beating up on Zimmerman. Remember during the trial all of this, "My God, who was on top, and who was on bottom, and, on the 911 call, who was saying, 'Help me! Help me'?" Well, Rachel -- God bless Rachel -- after telling us that it was a homophobic challenge that Trayvon was facing, now tells Piers Morgan that Trayvon wasn't trying to kill anybody.

He just doing whoop ass. So when she said that, when she said that to Piers Morgan said, "Oh, my! Jeez! Oh, my. I'm destroying the whole thing." So he then said, "Well, now, wait a minute, Rachel. Could Trayvon have been doing whoop ass in self-defense?" But the damage was already done. She had already made Trayvon the aggressor. He was beating up on Zimmerman, doing whoop ass, and it was Zimmerman's fault for not understanding that Trayvon wasn't trying to kill him.

That was a huge thing in the trial. They brought voice experts in. They brought all kinds of experts in to analyze the 911 tape, trying to figure out who was shouting for help, who was on top, who was on bottom, who was the aggressor. Rachel Jeantel told them. It's just nobody really understood what she was saying -- and, of course, that's everybody else's fault. In fact it was Zimmerman's fault for not understanding that Trayvon didn't want to kill him. He was just doing a little whoop ass.

But why was Trayvon doing whoop ass? Because he thought Zimmerman was gay. He thought Zimmerman was a gay predator. Nobody's picked that up. When Rachel Jeantel then said, "It's just whoop ass. He wasn't trying to kill him. That's all that was going on," she admits that it was Trayvon doing the whoop-assing and beating up. So Piers Morgan had to jump in there and try to save the day real fast by asking, "Whoa, whoa! Wait a minute! Trayvon could be doing whoop ass in defense, right, right, right?"

But the damage had been done, and then the Breitbart story says that the camera caught a member of the Piers Morgan audience reacting in shock. He said her jaw dropped at Jeantel's admission that it was Trayvon doing the whoop ass, because a lot of people still think this jury verdict was a travesty, and they still think that it was Zimmerman that was beating up on poor Trayvon. Jeantel blew everything about this trial sky-high.

dailycaller.com/2013/07/16/blacks-benefit-from-florida-stand-your-ground-law-at-disproportionate-rate/

African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.

[Deleted]

Jul 18, 2013 6:21:36 GMT -5 Tails82 said:

wat

The pope is meant to lead the church and proclaim the truth, not rewrite it. If all laws were torn down what would the purpose of the church be? Why have the institution? We cannot just say murder, for example, is fine as the relativists do. It is clearly wrong as written in the natural law and the commandments.

So which is it, Tails, does the Pope have a direct line of succession from Peter, and thus have the authority to change the rules in heaven and earth, or is he just some ordinary guy that happens to run the church at the moment?
You can't argue both points and claim you're being "consistent".

[Tails82]

You were claiming the pope is bigger than God, which is not true. This does not mean the pope has no authority.

[Deleted]

Jul 18, 2013 7:30:03 GMT -5 @zetta said:

So which is it, Tails, does the Pope have a direct line of succession from Peter, and thus have the authority to change the rules in heaven and earth, or is he just some ordinary guy that happens to run the church at the moment?
You can't argue both points and claim you're being "consistent".

No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it goes.

[Tails82]

My reaction to Obama's recent disgusting speech, in which he basically complains he can't go anywhere without some white guy hassling him: it's expected from someone who went to hear similar disgusting speeches for over two decades at Wright's place. It's expected from someone who marched with those racist militia nuts known as the New Black Panthers. People think I strawman? Barack really thinks there are white boogeymen on every corner out to get him. He thinks he can't walk down a street without making white people panic. His supporters want riots, to attack innocent white people, because they couldn't lynch an innocent "white" (Hispanic) person in court. Over the last five years Obama has functioned as a third world tribal chieftain, with his fellow racist Eric Holder refusing to prosecute nightstick-wielding militia thugs because his "people" are a special protected group (plus intimidation is their way to get the votes). So like I said, not surprising that this little turd is showing his true colors.

blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/07/18/detroits-bankruptcy-40-of-street-lights-dont-work-66-of-ambulances-out-of-service/

Detroit’s bankruptcy petition paints a bleak picture for the Motor City: more than 100,000 creditors, more than $18 billion in accrued obligations and a homicide rate that is at its highest level in nearly 40 years.

The decision to declare bankruptcy “comes in the wake of 60 years of decline for the city, a period in which reality was often ignored,” Gov. Rick Snyder wrote in a memo authorizing the case, which was filed with the bankruptcy petition.

“I know many will see this as a low point in the city’s history,” Mr. Snyder continued. “If so, I think it will also be the foundation of the city’s future—a statement I cannot make in confidence absent giving the city a chance for a fresh start, without burdens of debt it cannot hope to fully pay.”

Mr. Snyder said the city cannot meet obligations to its citizens or its creditors. He noted that citizens wait an average of 58 minutes for the police to respond to their calls, compared to a national average of 11 minutes. Only 8.7% of cases are solved, compared to a statewide average of 30.5%.

About 40% of the city’s street lights were not functioning in the first quarter of the year, and only a third of its ambulances were in service. Its population has declined 63% from its peak and there are about 78,000 abandoned structures.

As a result, Mr. Snyder said, even if the city could raise taxes to pay its obligations, its citizens would not be able to afford it. In any event, Detroit tax rates are at their current legal limits.

“The citizens of Detroit need and deserve a clear road out of the cycle of ever-decreasing services,” wrote Mr. Snyder. “The city’s creditors, as well as its many dedicated public servants, deserve to know what promises the city can and will keep. The only way to do those things is to radically restructure the city and allow it to reinvent itself without the burden of impossible obligations.”

This will happen to the country if liberals get their way. We cannot just keep spending and spending under a corrupt administration.

www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/07/18/Flashback-Biden-Romney-Would-Have-Let-Detroit-Go-Bankrupt

Flashback--Biden: Romney Would Have Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

blog.heritage.org/2013/07/19/detroit-bankruptcy-is-no-time-for-federal-bailouts/

No bailouts, please.

But it gets even better...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323993804578615782463422760.html

Dismayingly old-fashioned is some of the analysis of Detroit's bankruptcy. It shows how little progress has been made in economics. Apparently we have learned nothing from the crisis of recent years.

The city's bankruptcy arises from a shortage of money, of course, but the shortage of money is blamed on high expenses, especially on public-sector pensions and benefits, and declining revenues from businesses and taxpayers fleeing a crumbling city for the suburbs.

These misguided postmortems would say the city was badly governed, its resources and opportunities squandered, and they point a finger at unions that wanted to be paid a lot of money for work that wasn't worth much money.

But this is all so last-century. Shortages of money, as we now understand, are Ben Bernanke's department.

GM had similar problems. It made large pension and health-care promises to its employees. But President Obama put $50 billion into GM and now the problem is fixed and the government's stake in GM came out to $40 billion.

But, you ask, doesn't that leave a $10 billion shortfall for someone to shoulder? That's old-style economics. Under the new economics, it's possible to have losses without anybody recognizing losses. This is the lesson taught by Japan's approach to its banking crisis in the 1990s and Europe's treatment of its current fiscal woes.

But deeper matters are also at work in Detroit's bankruptcy. "All along, the state's involvement—including Mr. Snyder's decision to send in an emergency manager—has carried racial implications," the New York Times points out, referring to Michigan's white governor Rick Snyder.

Exactly so. Under the old economics, shortages of money were believed to come from expenses exceeding revenues. The Times alludes to the new understanding of money shortages: They are racist in nature.

As economists have come to understand that money shortages are essentially illusory, if infinite and unlimited money is made available to some but not others, then only racism can be the reason.

Again, if we are to believe this denialism of Keynesian failure, we must ask why blacks are always assumed to be the criminals, always viewed as the people supposedly so stupid they cannot handle money or get a voter ID they probably already have.

blog.heritage.org/2013/07/18/101-million-americans-received-food-aid-last-year/

101 Million Americans Received Food Aid Last Year

Nearly one-third of Americans received government-funded food aid in 2012, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

As Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector has explained, there are roughly a dozen federal food assistance programs operating today. The USDA reports that 59 percent of households that participated in one of the four largest food assistance programs—food stamps, school breakfasts, school lunches, and WIC—end up receiving benefits from “two or more programs.” This indicates significant duplication, “providing participants total benefits in excess of 100 percent of daily nutritional needs.”

The size of today’s welfare system demonstrates the need for both opportunity-based economic policies and critical reforms to promote self-sufficiency through work. For decades, the federal government has been pouring taxpayer dollars into an increasing number of welfare programs in an attempt to tackle poverty.

Yet this system has proven ineffective at helping individuals and families reach self-sufficiency. As Heritage expert Robert Rector writes, “Except in very limited cases, such as those involving serious malnutrition, welfare programs do not yield fewer problems and better life outcomes for children.” Welfare can even have harmful consequences for families, eroding personal responsibility across multiple generations. Heritage experts David Azerrad and Rea Hederman explain that welfare

"takes away a crucial ingredient of happiness: the incentive to work, to save, to improve oneself...It fosters dependence in welfare recipients, which in turn often carries over to children. Studies have shown—not surprisingly but nonetheless quite tragically—that welfare is increasingly intergenerational."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578614220949743916.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.

That is a bombshell...And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency.

What was the chief counsel's office looking for? The letter to Mr. Werfel says Mr. Hull's supervisor, Ronald Shoemaker, provided insight: The counsel's office wanted, in the words of the congressional committees, "information about the applicants' political activities leading up to the 2010 election." Mr. Shoemaker told investigators he didn't find that kind of question unreasonable, but he found the counsel's office to be "not very forthcoming": "We discussed it to some extent and they indicated that they wanted more development of possible political activity or political intervention right before the election period."

It's almost as if—my words—the conservative organizations in question were, during two major election cycles, deliberately held in a holding pattern.

So: What the IRS originally claimed was a rogue operation now reaches up not only to the Washington office, but into the office of the IRS chief counsel himself.

Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. "I would send those to general inventory." Who got extra scrutiny? "They were all tea-party and patriot cases." She became "very frustrated" by the "micromanagement" from Washington. "It was like working in lost luggage." She applied to be transferred.

Recent congressional information leads to Washington—and now to very high up at the IRS. Meaning this is the point at which a scandal goes nowhere or, maybe, everywhere.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, finally woke the proceedings up with what he called "the evolution of the defense" since the scandal began. First, Ms. Lerner planted a question at a conference. Then she said the Cincinnati office did it—a narrative that was advanced by the president's spokesman, Jay Carney. Then came the suggestion the IRS was too badly managed to pull off a sophisticated conspiracy. Then the charge that liberal groups were targeted too—"we did it against both ends of the political spectrum." When the inspector general of the IRS said no, it was conservative groups that were targeted, he came under attack. Now the defense is that the White House wasn't involved, so case closed.

This is the moment things go forward or stall. Republicans need to find out how high the scandal went and why, exactly, it went there. To do that they'll have to up their game.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/victory-layne-guardsman-wins-scrap-over-marriage

How far is the military willing to go to silence men and women of faith? According to Air National Guardsman Layne Wilson, they'd rather deny his sick wife medical care than tolerate his opinion on same-sex "marriage." In a shocking twist to the story we highlighted last week,Wilson's superiors not only rescinded his six-year contract with the Guard for his opinion on marriage, but broke off the health coverage that his wife -- who is suffering from stage four breast cancer -- depended on.

As part of his punishment for voicing his beliefs, Layne's superiors made it clear that the only way his family could regain their health benefits was by agreeing to a one-year extension -- instead of the six-year contract they had already signed. Essentially, the military was telling Layne that it was prepared to risk his wife's life on the altar of political correctness.

"That's so illegal," said Layne's attorney, John Wells. "You can't take an executed contract [and do that]. The oath was administered. Everybody had signed on it. You can't take it and just tear it up. And that's exactly what they did." He continued, "Tobias's earlier actions in pulling the six-year contract led to a break in service and a loss of benefits... It would seem to me that canceling the medical benefits for a sick cancer victim to coerce an underling to sign an illegal contract constitutes cruelty and maltreatment under the Utah Code of Military Justice. This type of action is unconscionable..."

The Air National Guard put the health of a military family on the line -- all because a 27-year veteran spoke up in defense of the law. In a letter to West Point, Layne objected to the lesbian wedding ceremony held in the cadet chapel, which, at the time, was in direct defiance of the Defense of Marriage Act. "You are hereby reprimanded," Lt. Col. Kevin Tobias informedWilson. "As a noncommissioned officer, you are expected to maintain a standard of professional and personal behavior that is above reproach. You have failed!" Ironically, the person who actually failed was the officer who allowed the ceremony in the first place.

When the government is involved in health care decisions...

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/18/quick_hits_page

"San Diego Mayor Refuses to Resign After Sexual Harassment Claims." Who harassed him? (interruption) Oh. Oh, he harassed. Well, he's a Democrat? It's not gonna be any big deal. "San Diego Mayor Refuses to Resign After Sexual Harassment Claims." It's totally understandable. It's not a big deal anymore. Democrats do it. Watch. I guarantee you'll have Democrat analysts on television excusing it and saying it's Republican playing dirty politics again.

They'll say this man needs his privacy, needs to work through the issues and so forth. Just send Clinton out there to do a fundraiser for the Clinton Global Initiative and include this guy. He can always say he was harassed by a couple of them and that's where he learned how. What do you...? (interruption) Democrats are never held to the standard that Republicans are. For crying out loud, look! Clinton is the biggest star the Democrat Party has right now...He's still bigger than Obama with the nostalgia crowd, the fundraising crowd and all that.

This guy, this mayor out in out in San Diego, Bob Filner is his name, and according to the ABC affiliate, KGTV San Diego: "Mayor Bob Filner has agreed to be the keynote speaker at a benefit for sexual assault victims." When was that gonna be? Are they doing that now? This has to be something that was before this. He can't... They couldn't... I wouldn't put it past 'em, but I can't believe that. I'll check.

Okay. Here you go. It's from yesterday, San Diego. "10News has learned Mayor Bob Filner has agreed to be the keynote speaker at a benefit for sexual assault victims. A women veterans group tells 10News the mayor's camp has just confirmed the appearance. Filner was originally scheduled to attend as an award recipient." The headline is: "Mayor Bob Filner to Deliver Keynote Address at Benefit for Sexual Assault Victims." And this part you gotta love: "Filner was originally scheduled to attend as an award recipient." I understand Bill Clinton getting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the sexual harassment convention that this Filner guy is appearing at.

(interruption)

You expressed surprise he's not resigning. Hell, he's not resigning, he's getting an award. And he's a keynote speaker at an event, I guess, on how to do it. And that's why I say --

(interruption)

No, of course he's not gonna deny it. Snerdley, it is a different age. America is changing. This isn't the forties anymore. This isn't even the nineties anymore. You better get with it. He's not denying it. He's going to be keynoting a speech about it, probably will give instructions on how to do it, and Bill Clinton as the lifetime award recipient.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323300004578555453881252798.html

Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts

When the telltale rash appeared behind Aleshia Jenkins's ears, her grandmother knew exactly what caused it: a decision she'd made 15 years earlier.

Ms. Jenkins was an infant in 1998, when this region of southwest Wales was a hotbed of resistance to a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Many here refused the vaccine for their children after a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, suggested it might cause autism and a local newspaper heavily covered the fears. Resistance continued even after the autism link was disproved.

The bill has now come due.

A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011.

The outbreak matters to the rest of the world because measles can quickly cross oceans, setting back progress elsewhere in stopping it. By 2000, the U.S. had effectively eliminated new home-grown cases of measles, though small outbreaks persist as travelers bring the virus into the country. New York City health officials this spring traced a Brooklyn outbreak to someone they believe was infected in London.

Measles outbreaks are a "canary in the coal mine," says James Goodson, the lead measles expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People who refuse one vaccine may be spurning others, setting communities up for outbreaks of other dangerous diseases that are slower to propagate, he says, such as diphtheria and whooping cough.

Measles is a respiratory condition causing fever, cough and rash. Most people who catch it recover fully. But measles can lead to deafness and pneumonia, and, in about one in 1,000 cases, death. It is one of the most contagious diseases, spread by coughing and sneezing.

It is also among the most preventable, with an effective inoculation since the 1960s that is now commonly given with mumps and rubella vaccines in a combined "MMR" vaccine. The U.K., as did the U.S., categorized measles as "eliminated" over a decade ago, meaning it was no longer circulating from within its borders.

Most measles occurs in developing countries. But it is resurging in some of the very countries that have led global campaigns against it. France was close to eliminating it in 2007 before an outbreak infected more than 20,000 people between 2008 and 2011. Philosophical opposition to vaccines helped cause the outbreak, says the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

The 117 U.S. cases reported so far this year are up from 54 in all of 2012 and could put the U.S. on track to match the 220 logged in 2011, the highest since 1996. England reported 1,168 cases in 2013 through May, up 64% from the year-earlier period and the highest recorded level since 1994.

"It's very galling we had measles eliminated and now we've got it again" in the U.K., says Paul Cosford, medical director of Public Health England, the government public-health agency...Wales declared the outbreak over on July 3. But there may be other ripples from the late-1990s scare. U.K. health officials say the drop in MMR vaccination has contributed to a spike in mumps in the U.K. in recent years.

Thanks Bill Maher and other ignorant progressives. Thank you phony alarmist "scientists."

[Tails82]

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American Sovereignty and Its Enemies

A group of powerful legal scholars are trying to make an end run around the Constitution.

The George Zimmerman saga came to an end last weekend when a jury of six Florida women found the neighborhood-watch captain not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. But even before the 15-month legal process had begun last year, the United Nations' top human-rights official had rendered a guilty verdict—against Mr. Zimmerman and the entire U.S. judicial system.

"Justice must be done for the victim," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay at an April 2012 press conference. "It's not just this individual case. It calls into question the delivery of justice in all situations like this. . . . I will be awaiting an investigation and prosecution and trial and of course reparations for the victims concerned."

Proponents call this movement "legal transnationalism," and as Mr. Kyl writes in a recent Foreign Affairs magazine article (co-authored with Douglas Feith and John Fonte of the Hudson Institute), "the idea that a U.N. official can sit in judgment of the U.S." is one of its main innovations. Transnationalists want to rewrite the laws of war, do away with the death penalty, restrict gun rights and much more—all without having to win popular majorities or heed American constitutional limits. And these advocates are making major strides under an Obama administration that is itself a hotbed of transnational legal thinking.

"Transnationalists are a group of people who are convinced they are right about important issues," Mr. Kyl says as we sit down for a chat at the plush Washington office of the law firm Covington & Burling, where the 71-year-old Arizona Republican has served as an adviser since leaving the Senate in January. "But they are in too much of a hurry to mess with the difficulties of representative government to get their agenda adopted into law—or they know they can't win democratically. So they look for a way around representative government."

Mr. Kyl knows something about representative government. After a four-term stint in the House, he entered the Senate in 1995 and quickly emerged as a serious thinker on defense matters. In 1999, armed with his collegial, unassuming personality and substantive knowledge, he led Senate GOP opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty's ultimate goal, he charged at the time, was "total nuclear disarmament," an effort by U.S. adversaries and global arms-controllers to defang America's nuclear deterrent.

Now he has taken it as his mission to defeat the transnationalist efforts to steer American law. And he finds himself once again contemplating treaties that don't bode well for the U.S. A favorite transnationalist tactic is pushing the U.S. to ratify treaties like the three-decades-old U.N. Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or Cedaw, and the more recent Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Such treaties, Mr. Kyl says, "have a lot of loose language that in the hands of the wrong people can demand far more than was ever intended by the American people."

Take Cedaw. If the Senate ever ratifies this piece of "1970s feminism preserved in diplomatic amber," as one commentator described the treaty, the U.S. would become subject to oversight by a Geneva-based committee that requires signatory states to, among other things, "achieve a balance between men and women holding publicly elected positions"; "ensure that media respect women and promote respect for women"; and "modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of . . . stereotyped roles for men and women."

Wiping out undesirable patterns of thought may be an easy proposition for illiberal regimes, but not for a constitutional republic. Says Mr. Kyl: "Once you have ceded authority to an external body to make decisions, our theory of government—accountability in officials, consent of the governed—is very difficult to uphold. So you want to give up sovereignty sparingly and only when there is a clear benefit to doing so. I'm not saying the Senate should never ratify a treaty on behalf of the people, but I'm saying it should take the responsibility very seriously."

To be clear, transnationalism isn't a conspiratorial enterprise. In the legal academy, its advocates have openly stated their aims and means. "International law now seeks to influence political outcomes within sovereign States," Anne-Marie Slaughter, then dean of Princeton's public-affairs school, wrote in an influential 2007 essay. International law, she went on, must expand to include "domestic choices previously left to the determination of national political processes" and be able to "alter domestic politics."

The preferred entry point for importing foreign norms into American law is the U.S. court system. The Yale Law School scholar Howard Koh, a transnationalist advocate, has written that "domestic courts must play a key role in coordinating U.S. domestic constitutional rules with rules of foreign and international law." Over the past two decades, activist judges have increasingly cited "evolving" international standards to overturn state laws, and Mr. Koh has suggested that foreign norms can be "downloaded" into American law in this manner.

Another innovation has been the elevation of progressive norms, like Cedaw's prohibition of gender stereotyping in the media, to the status of customary international law. Previously a widespread state practice—for example, the ancient prohibition against harming ambassadors—would take centuries to earn the status of customary international law.

"But transnational law says a rule doesn't have to be in existence very long," Mr. Kyl says. "And it doesn't have to be demonstrated by countries through their actions. You simply have to have well-meaning people talking about it."

Cedaw, it should be noted, has been ratified by China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, among other regimes with abhorrent women's-rights records. Yet transnationalists are fond of pointing out all of the areas where America supposedly lags the global gold standard: from the death penalty to state prohibitions on gay marriage.

"I wonder if we're also the only country that has all of the rights embedded in the first 15 amendments to the U.S. Constitution," Mr. Kyl says. "Does that also make those rights passé? I think not. We're the only country in the world ever founded on an idea rather than an accident of geography or blood. So the fact that other nations haven't gotten to our level . . . doesn't mean we have to throw in with them."

The transnationalists think otherwise, and President Obama has given them an opening to shape U.S. policy. Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Koh held top posts at the State Department during Mr. Obama's first term, and their tenures coincided with an aggressive push to ratify or recognize as customary law Cedaw and a host of other progressive causes.

For proof that the transnationalist threat isn't merely theoretical, look no further than the European Union. Says Mr. Kyl: "What they have now is a situation where their sovereignty has largely been supplanted by others who are not accountable to voters in individual European countries."

It was in Europe where these ideas were first implemented, and it is to the EU that transnationalists look as a model. Today over half of the regulations that affect Europeans' lives are made by administrators in Brussels, not by national legislatures.

These regulations include the EU's ban, announced in May, on restaurants serving olive oil in traditional glass jugs or terracotta bowls (to protect the "image" of olive oil); the prohibition against insurers charging women drivers lower premiums (sexism); and Commission Regulation 2257/94, otherwise known as the "bendy banana" law, which until recently required farmers to discard irregularly shaped bananas (don't ask).

American transnationalists look with admiration on Europe. "Once those laws are passed, EU institutions . . . look over national shoulders to ensure that they actually do what they commit to do," Ms. Slaughter has written. "This European way of law is precisely the role that we postulate for international law generally around the world."

Mr. Kyl is less sanguine. "When your society is regulated to that extent by someone who has no accountability to voters, something is very, very wrong," he says. "The transnationalists should be the last ones lecturing anybody about what ought to be because what is is the U.S. Constitution, which recognizes sovereignty in the American people. That is embedded in everything about our country. It's not outmoded—it's who we are. And if you're not willing to accept that, then you haven't signed on to the most basic notion of what it is to believe about our country."

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The verdict that declared George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin was a traumatic event for America's civil-rights establishment, and for many black elites across the media, government and academia. When you have grown used to American institutions being so intimidated by the prospect of black wrath that they invent mushy ideas like "diversity" and "inclusiveness" simply to escape that wrath, then the crisp reading of the law that the Zimmerman jury displayed comes as a shock.

On television in recent weeks you could see black leaders from every background congealing into a chorus of umbrage and complaint. But they weren't so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them, "You won't call the tune here. We will work within the law."

Today's black leadership pretty much lives off the fumes of moral authority that linger from its glory days in the 1950s and '60s. The Zimmerman verdict lets us see this and feel a little embarrassed for them. Consider the pathos of a leadership that once transformed the nation now lusting for the conviction of the contrite and mortified George Zimmerman, as if a stint in prison for him would somehow assure more peace and security for black teenagers everywhere. This, despite the fact that nearly one black teenager a day is shot dead on the South Side of Chicago—to name only one city—by another black teenager.

This would not be the first time that a movement begun in profound moral clarity, and that achieved greatness, waned away into a parody of itself—not because it was wrong but because it was successful...The Revs. Jackson and Sharpton have been consigned to a hard fate: They can never be more than redundancies, echoes of the great men they emulate because America has changed. Hard to be a King or Mandela today when your monstrous enemy is no more than the cherubic George Zimmerman.

The civil-rights leadership rallied to Trayvon's cause (and not to the cause of those hundreds of black kids slain in America's inner cities this very year) to keep alive a certain cultural "truth" that is the sole source of the leadership's dwindling power. Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership's very reason for being.

The purpose of today's civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a "poetic truth." Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one's cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: "America is a racist nation"; "the immigration debate is driven by racism"; "Zimmerman racially stereotyped Trayvon." And we say, "Yes, of course," lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.

In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager—Skittles and ice tea in hand—can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth—the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument.

Almost everyone saw this verdict coming. It is impossible to see how this jury could have applied the actual law to this body of evidence and come up with a different conclusion. The civil-rights establishment's mistake was to get ahead of itself, to be seduced by its own poetic truth even when there was no evidence to support it. And even now its leaders call for a Justice Department investigation, and they long for civil lawsuits to be filed—hoping against hope that some leaf of actual racial victimization will be turned over for all to see. This is how a once-great social movement looks when it becomes infested with obsolescence.

One wants to scream at all those outraged at the Zimmerman verdict: Where is your outrage over the collapse of the black family? Today's civil-rights leaders swat at mosquitoes like Zimmerman when they have gorillas on their back. Seventy-three percent of all black children are born without fathers married to their mothers. And you want to bring the nation to a standstill over George Zimmerman?

There are vast career opportunities, money and political power to be gleaned from the specter of Mr. Zimmerman as a racial profiler/murderer; but there is only hard and selfless work to be done in tackling an illegitimacy rate that threatens to consign blacks to something like permanent inferiority. If there is anything good to be drawn from the Zimmerman/Martin tragedy, it is only the further revelation of the corruption and irrelevance of today's civil-rights leadership.

Or in other words, it ain't the 60s anymore.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578616142530199474.html

A Judge Convicts Apple of Competition

The company enters the e-book market, Amazon loses its near monopoly, and prices decline. Guilty!

Company 2 entered a market in which Company 1 had a 90% market share—then Company 2 was found guilty of antitrust violations. Only in America. To the infamous antitrust prosecutions of technology companies such as IBM and Microsoft, add the Justice Department's July 10 "win" against Apple relating to sales of e-books.

When Apple's iPad entered the e-book market, Amazon lost its near total dominance, e-book prices fell, and publishers were freed to set prices based on consumer demand. Unless the ruling is overturned on appeal, it will undermine competition, harm consumers and deter new products.

The ruling against Apple means that any company trying to provide a new service that requires negotiating with multiple parties to get access to content (like books, music or video) is at risk of antitrust prosecution.

Silicon Valley lawyers and executives parsing Judge Denise Cote's decision against Apple will find several grounds to appeal. For one, she acknowledged that the terms of the agreement Apple reached with e-book publishers were lawful...Judge Cote ruled that she could apply a "per se" test, which means she could find an antitrust violation without proving anticompetitive results.

She dispensed with the core legal issue in one paragraph of her 160-page opinion. Precedents say only "horizontal" agreements setting price among competitors are supposed to be per se illegal, while there is a higher burden of proof when a "vertical" party is involved, such as Apple as a distributor. Judge Cote opined that "Apple directly participated in a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy," and "as a result its conduct is per se unlawful." That's circular reasoning.

Precedents discourage findings of antitrust violation if parties have "independent business interests." In this case, Apple agreed to enter the e-book market only when enough publishers agreed to participate on terms that allowed it to make a profit. The publishers wanted a competitor to Amazon.

The Supreme Court has said that agreements must be clearly anticompetitive—they must have "no redeeming value"—to be per se unlawful. But there was redeeming value in Apple entering the market to challenge Amazon. It's unprecedented to find a per se violation in a case like this, involving a new entrant to the market with zero market share.

Apple presented evidence that average prices fell after it began selling e-books. Judge Cote wrote that the "Apple experts did not offer any scientifically sound analysis of the cause for this purported price decline or seek to control for the factors that may have led to it." The burden of proof is supposed to be on the government to prove that prices went up, not on Apple to explain exactly why prices fell.

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www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/dont-rush-to-judge

Paging the GOP! According to a new study, social conservatives are actually more important to the Republican base than economic conservatives. The findings couldn't come at a better time, particularly as more moderate Republicans try to push social issues into the background. As part of the collaborative "2013 Economic Values Survey" by two (decidedly not conservative) groups, the Public Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, researchers found that fiscal conservatism "has the weakest hold in American public opinion." Based on the response of conservatives, 38% of Americans are theological conservatives, 29% are social conservatives, and only 25% are economic conservatives.

Interestingly enough, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne affirms what I've been saying for a number of years, which is that social issues may be the greatest bridge to Democrats -- 19% of whom describe themselves as social conservatives. The panel of largely liberal experts agreed: "Conservatives can't win without social conservatives." If you look at the data, Dionne points out, "it turns out that social conservatives loom larger as part of that conservative constituency and more consistently than economic conservatives do."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578616333588719320.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The NYPD: Guilty of Saving 7,383 Lives

Since 2002, the New York Police Department has taken tens of thousands of weapons off the street through proactive policing strategies. The effect this has had on the murder rate is staggering. In the 11 years before Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office, there were 13,212 murders in New York City. During the 11 years of his administration, there have been 5,849...So far this year, murders are down 29% from the 50-year low achieved in 2012, and we've seen the fewest shootings in two decades.

To critics, none of this seems to much matter. Sidestepping the fact that these policies work, they continue to allege that massive numbers of minorities are stopped and questioned by police for no reason other than their race.

Never mind that in each of the city's 76 police precincts, the race of those stopped highly correlates to descriptions provided by victims or witnesses to crimes. Or that in a city of 8.5 million people, protected by 19,600 officers on patrol (out of a total uniformed staff of 35,000), the average number of stops we conduct is less than one per officer per week.

In 2003, when the NYPD recognized that 96% of the individuals who were shot and 90% of those murdered were black and Hispanic, we concentrated our officers in those minority neighborhoods that had experienced spikes in crime. This program is called Operation Impact.

From the beginning, we've combined this strategy with a proactive policy of engagement. We stop and question individuals about whom we have reasonable suspicion. This is a widely utilized and lawful police tactic, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1968 decision, Terry v. Ohio, and authorized by New York State Criminal Procedure Law and the New York state constitution. Every state in the country has a variant of this statute, as does federal law; it is fundamental to policing.

In a similar vein, our detractors contend that the NYPD engages in widespread, unwarranted spying on Muslim New Yorkers. Again, this is a sensational charge belied by the facts.

Since 1985, the police department has been subject to a set of rules known as the Handschu Guidelines, which were developed to protect people engaged in political protest...As a matter of department policy, undercover officers and confidential informants do not enter a mosque unless they are following up on a lead vetted under Handschu. Similarly, when we have attended a private event organized by a student group, we've done so on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing at the highest levels of the department, in keeping with Handschu protocol.

Anyone who implies that it is unlawful for the police department to search online, visit public places or map neighborhoods has either not read, misunderstood or intentionally obfuscated the meaning of the Handschu Guidelines.

The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack—and we uphold the law in doing so.

As a city, we have to face the reality that New York's minority communities experience a disproportionate share of violent crime. To ignore that fact, as our critics would have us do, would be a form of discrimination in itself.

www.nypost.com/p/news/national/it_on_y22owkLpsldSAjDVC9isjM

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans...Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/22/unchecked_liberalism_killed_detroit

Detroit. It is almost, except it isn't, unimaginable what has happened to Detroit. Almost unimaginable, except it isn't unimaginable. It was in fact entirely predictable what has happened to Detroit. And it has been predicted, and it's just the first of, sadly, what will be many to come. A lot of people alive today have no memory of the Detroit that was. Detroit, Michigan, was at one time one of the great cities in the world. It was among the richest and most successful cities in this country. It was the envy of the world, primarily because the assembly line to mass produce automobiles was invented there, and the automobile industry's home was Detroit. Motown, Berry Gordy.

It was the envy of the world, and now it's the biggest city in the United States to ever go bankrupt. And why? Two things, that are actually under the same umbrella: unions and unchecked liberalism have led to the bankruptcy of Detroit. Would you like to hear something that is, to me, interesting historically? Detroit, now bankrupt, was where companies first started offering health care benefits and other perks in order to compete for skilled labor during World War II when there were wage and price controls. And so with wage and price controls, the market will always outsmart government and limits, and so the birth of health care benefits was created in Detroit as a means of becoming attractive to people seeking good jobs, because there were wage and price controls in place in World War II...Is that not something? The city where health care benefits were created have been brought down, essentially, by health care benefits and pensions and unions. Whatever else Detroit is, it is the epitome of everything that's wrong with the Democrat Party. And yet Obama is going to launch another speaking tour today about his latest new economic plan, which is really just the same old thing he's been saying for five years and what Detroit has been practicing for the last 30 years.

Detroit has been run exclusively by the Democrats for over 30 years, folks. The last Republican mayor in Detroit was elected in 1957. Only one Republican has been elected to the city council in Detroit since 1970. Back in 1960 the city of Detroit actually had the highest per capita income in the country. My, how things change. In 1960, 53 years ago, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per capita income in the entire nation. Sixty years ago Detroit was the fourth largest city in the United States. And since then, in the last 60 years, Detroit has lost 63% of its population. The statistics, there are 25 facts about Detroit and its plunge to bankruptcy that will stun and amaze you.

"Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States. Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about. ... 1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. 2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities. That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident."

I keep saying this, and I’m going to say it again: "3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation. 4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit. Today, there are less than 27,000. In 63 years, we've gone from 296,000 manufacturing jobs to less than 27,000. "5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48% of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost. 6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit right now for $500 or less."

Dennis Rodman owns about 25 of them. Just kidding on that. "7) At this point, there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city. 8) About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict." Stop and think about these things now. "9) An astounding 47% of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate," but they know how to say, "Obama stash!" My God, folks, less than half of the residents of Detroit can read! "10) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.

"11) If you can believe it, 60% of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty." I believe all... Well, it's not a question of believing it. It's true. "12) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by 63%. 13) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city. Right now, Detroit is bringing in about $11 million a month in tax revenue from the casinos," while 50% of the children live in poverty and less than half the residents over the age of 16 are working.

"14) There are 70 'Superfund' hazardous waste sites in Detroit. 15) 40% of the street lights do not work. 16) Only about a third of the ambulances are running. 17) Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them. 18) Two-thirds of the parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down since 2008. 19) The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40% over the past decade. 20) When you call the police in Detroit, it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond."

I know in New York, that sounds like a lot. "21) Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day. 22) The violent crime rate in Detroit is five times higher than the national average. 23) The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City. 24) Today, police solve less than 10% of the crimes that are committed in Detroit." Folks, if this town were run by a Republican, or had been, do you think anything would have been done about this?

Do you think you would know about this if a Republican or if the Republican Party had anything to do with this? "25) Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to 'enter Detroit at your own risk.'" Now, as this website says, "It is easy to point fingers and mock Detroit, but the truth is that the rest of America is going down the exact same path that Detroit has gone down. Detroit just got there first.

"All over the nation, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, debt levels are exploding and poverty is spreading. We are consuming far more wealth than we are producing, and our share of global GDP has been declining dramatically. We have been living way above our means for so long that we think it is 'normal,' but an extremely painful 'adjustment' is coming and most Americans are not going to know how to handle it,"

Only 7% of Detroit public school eighth graders are proficient in reading.

Folks, this is just unacceptable, and there are reasons for this. This is what happens when there is capitulation to the Democrats. This is what happens when everybody goes along with 'em. It's what happens when their power is unchecked. This is what happens when all you have is Democrat liberalism running whatever it is -- a city, a union, a country, any other organization. You end up with abject misery, despair, and total annihilation. That's just what they do, folks.

It's not me saying it.

It's Detroit living it.

blog.heritage.org/2013/07/22/u-s-engages-cuba-cuba-engages-in-arms-trafficking/

U.S. Engages Cuba, Cuba Engages in Arms Trafficking

The interception of a North Korean ship believed to be carrying missiles, jets, and other weapons from Cuba through the Panama Canal should be a wakeup call for the Obama Administration as it resumes migration talks with Cuban officials for the first time since 2011.

The incident illustrates the wrongheadedness of the Obama Administration’s warming relations with the Castro regime. The Obama Administration seems to have forgotten that the source of lack of progress in Cuban–American relations is the regime in Havana, which is hopelessly wedded to the Communist political-economic model.

If we actually want to help the long-suffering people of Cuba, the answer should be obvious: shine a light on the repression and tyranny that make daily life in Cuba such a grinding ordeal.

Dissidents such as Rosa Maria Paya and Berta Soler already speak out against the regime, hoping to raise awareness and demanding answers about horrors of communist Cuba. Paya hopes to pressure Cuba for answers about her father’s murder, dissident Oswaldo Paya, while Ladies in White leader Berta Soler works to defend political prisoners.

If the plight of Cuban political prisoners were not enough, American Alan Gross has been held in a Cuban prison for more than three years. A subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Gross was arrested in December 2009 for making the Internet available to members of Cuba’s small Jewish community. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2011.

Rather than accommodate and appease the Cuban regime, the Obama Administration should uphold the right of the Cuban people to democracy, and the Administration should refrain from measures that would enrich the Castro regime and its loyalists without empowering the citizens of Cuba to take charge of their country. The U.S. should offer real changes in U.S. policy only in exchange for freedom of information, expression, and travel for all Cubans and others repressed by the regime.

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Lewd tweets aside—there's a line we never thought we'd write— Anthony Weiner ought to drop out of the New York City mayor's race simply because of what he's forced his wife to endure. Watching the elegant Huma Abedin stand next to her man Tuesday as he explained his latest sexually charged online exchanges was painful for a normal human being to watch. Mr. Weiner is not a normal human being.

For those who don't read the New York tabloids, Mr. Weiner resigned from Congress in June 2011 after he sent suggestive pictures of himself via Twitter to women he met online, and then lied about doing so. His wife stayed with him and says she forgives him. Now he is trying to resurrect his career by running for mayor in a crowded field of paint-by-numbers liberals, and he has become one of the front-runners. But on Tuesday news broke that Mr. Weiner had continued to send women inappropriate online messages more than a year after he had resigned from Congress.

"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have," Mr. Weiner said in a news conference that would go down as one for the embarrassing ages if it were possible to embarrass Anthony Weiner. At least this time he admitted that, "Some of these things happened before my resignation, some of them happened after." Oh, and he said he has no intention of leaving the race, as if there were any doubt.

Along with Eliot Spitzer, another narcissist attempting a New York political comeback after humiliating his wife, Mr. Weiner has certainly enlivened an otherwise dull political year. The two men claim to have been chastened and redeemed by their falls from power, though it's clear in both cases they only regret having been caught.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/open-mike-lee-sounds-off-on-obamacare

Liberals and conservatives may not see eye to eye on same-sex "marriage," but they certainly agree that wedding vendors shouldn't have to participate in them! In a new Rasmussen poll, even 77% of Democrats agreed that Christian photographers should have the right to turn down a homosexual "wedding" request. The two sides are overwhelmingly supportive of religious liberty on the question of wedding services -- with Republicans nearly unanimous (96%) in their backing.

Even more interesting, atheists -- who have never been proponents of religious freedom -- seem surprisingly sympathetic to the plight of Christian businessmen. Eight-eight percent of the non-faith contingent said companies like Elane Photography, whose case is currently before the New Mexico Supreme Court, should have the ability to say "no" to customers who want them to take pictures of a ceremony they oppose.

HotAir.com is as stunned as others by the sweeping consensus. "I haven't seen many polls on this particular question, but if [Rasmussen] is right that we're looking at a spread of upwards of 80 points, then national Democrats will stay far away from this topic. Critics of [same-sex 'marriage'] argue that the slippery slope has no stopping point, but 85/8 would seem to have plenty of stopping power."

...

Speaking of stopping power, a San Diego County clerk is using his to put the brakes on the premature redefining of marriage in California. Ernest Dronenburg seems to understand what many California officials don't: Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to impose same-sex "marriage" (which is the only ruling left standing after the Supreme Court's action) only applies to his own jurisdiction -- California's northern district. Dronenburg, like many clerks, is unclear why San Diego would have to issue same-sex "marriage" licenses if it falls outside the scope of Walker's ruling.

Unfortunately, that's just one of the messes left behind by the U.S. Supreme Court when five justices refused to grant standing to California's Prop 8 supporters. Since the Court vacated the Ninth Circuit Court decision, the only ruling left standing was that of Walker, an open homosexual activist. Even the local press is confused by the practical effects of the justices' decision. From Mercury News: "Supporters of Proposition 8 contend that Walker's injunction applied at most to two counties -- Los Angeles and Alameda -- because they were the only two counties named in the injunction and in the lawsuit challenging the ballot measure." State Attorney General Kamala Harris, meanwhile, insists that any official -- including Dronenburg -- who stands in the way of homosexuals "marrying" is guilty of "unconstitutional interference."

FRC's Ken Klukowski disagrees, and says that neither Harris nor Gov. Jerry Brown have the authority to force Dronenburg to issue "marriage" licenses to same-sex couples. "County clerks don't answer to the Governor," Ken explains -- which may be why several California counties are refusing to perform same-sex "marriages." "They are free to refuse." For now, Dronenberg will wait on the courts, where he's filed a suit asking the judges to stop same-sex "weddings."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/23/zev_chafets_diagnosis_of_detroit_s_demise

Detroit, as we mentioned yesterday, used to be a jewel. Detroit was a city with the highest per capita income in the country for a while. It was the city where health care benefits were born as an employee perk because competition for good employees was so great during World War II wage and price controls. They couldn't pay anybody anymore because of the controls so they had to come up with inventive ways around the controls to attract workers, and health care benefits were born. And interestingly everything comes home to roost, and it's fascinating to me that unions and pensions and health care benefits all contributed to the demise.

But...according to Chafets, that's not the main thing. In his opinion, for decades Detroit was the most racist city in the north, and it wasn't accidental. It was the policy of the police department to hire southern lawmen and give orders to kick butt. The city was completely segregated. Urban renewal crowded all the blacks into very small neighborhoods. The city was racially tense for years. Now, in 1967 the blacks in Detroit rioted. They burned down and looted whole neighborhoods. Whites fled so fast that they were moving into unfinished houses in the suburbs.

The depopulation of the city which resulted and which had started with the building of freeways in the fifties became a full-fledged exodus after the riots. So in 1973, the new black majority, the majority of people in the city proper were black, they elected the first black mayor in 1973, Coleman Young. Now, unlike black mayors in other cities, like Andrew Young in Atlanta, Coleman Young did not come out of the civil rights movement per se. He came from a radical wing of a radical black organization. To some he was charismatic. To some he was hilariously funny. Even to me he was funny. I even got into a knock-down, drag-out with the guy over something in the early days of this program. I don't remember over what, but I mean, this guy, he was hilarious. He was hilarious while appearing incompetent and boobish, but he wasn't. He was tough as nails and he did not believe in turning each other cheek...Coleman Young, when the whites started abandoning the city after the black riots, and it was easy to do with the building of the freeways in the fifties, when they were moving into unfinished houses just to get out of town, Coleman Young publicly would accuse white people of abandoning the city and then trying to control it from the outside.

So he declared war on the hostile suburbs. He nixed gun control on the grounds that it would be dangerous to disarm his people in the face of the KKK lurking beyond Eight Mile Road. To him, the white flight was just the equivalent of the KKK that had moved to the suburbs, and his people in the city, he was not gonna take their guns away from 'em, and he didn't. So the city of Detroit was heavily armed, and it was heavily radicalized. He also, in declaring war on the hostile suburbs, discouraged outside investment that didn't run through his office. He turned the police force into his militia and he set out to create a black city state south of Eight Mile Road.

Now, under Mayor Coleman Young, Detroit had an official nationalist doctrine that referred to the riots as the rebellion and the former white administrations that used to run the city as occupying powers. That's how he talked about them. He was leading the rebellion of the city inside, you know, south of Eight Mile, and the occupying powers were outside the city.

Now, to make the point even clearer he erected a statue in honor of Joe Louis. It was a giant black fist right at the freeway entrance to downtown Detroit. A giant black fist in honor of Joe Louis right at the freeway entrance to downtown Detroit. So it was clear that Coleman Young harbored hatred for the whites who had fled the city after the black riots. Well, that hate was reciprocated. The whites, who might have wanted to invest, or live in the city, decided not to. They decided to stay out. This caused downtown Detroit to become a ghost town, which, according to Chafets' book, was fine with the mayor.

He built a political machine that kept himself in power for 20 years by fanning the fires of racial grievance and separatism. Coleman Young told Zev Chafets that his role models were Boss Daley of Chicago, Boss Curley of Boston, Mayor Cavanaugh of Detroit, and other ethnic tribal leaders of the past. And he was very open about it. And all of these people that he admired had looted their cities on behalf of themselves and their political base and Coleman Young said now it was my turn, and that's what he did in Detroit.

The 20 years of Colemanism, the 20 years that he was mayor were one long experiment in municipal black nationalism and ideological separatism. And by the name of he left office, the city was a shambles. He was followed by Dennis Archer and then Kwame Kilpatrick. Archer became a prisoner of the system. Kwame Kilpatrick became a prisoner of the federal penal system. They got him, it was multiple acts of corruption, but I forgot the details of what it was. But it all happened.

You know, a lot of people, just in the strict political sense, admired Coleman Young for what he was able to pull off.

Now, there was nothing really admirable about what he did to the city, but that he was able to do it. A lot of people admired him and envied him. This happens throughout human history. Thugs, scalawags, Clinton was admired for how well he was able to get away with lying. The press marveled at how good he was at it. They loved him for it. Coleman Young used to call himself the MFIC. The MF-in charge. I wish I could remember, something happened in Detroit and we were on the air there, WJR was our affiliate, still is, and I was openly critical, and it didn't faze him. He didn't care. He had his little fiefdom there and he was running it, and it was the way he wanted it to be.

The whole point of this, folks, is that, yes, all of these factors were relevant in the destruction of the city: liberalism, unionism, unending pensions, payouts to people that no longer work. But the point is that Detroit became a separatist place, and it just didn't have a chance. It was a city that was governed and ruled by anger, racial anger. It was really a textbook example of the problems that result. Art Laffer is out saying so, a number of other people are saying it. This is just the first such city of what will be many to declare bankruptcy and go down this road.

Now, what they all do have in common is they've all been run by Democrats. Whatever Coleman Young was, whatever racial characteristics he harbored, or racist, whatever, he was still a Democrat. It was still liberalism. It was still government is the focus of everything...I think it's safe to say, ladies and gentlemen, that if Detroit mayor Coleman Young has had a son, he would look like Barack Obama.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323993804578615760275211052.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

President Obama has found a new example for the pending wonders of his health-care reform—New York. In his latest sales pitch last week, he declared that insurance rates in New York's ObamaCare exchange "will be at least 50% lower next year than they are today. Think about that: 50% lower."

Thinking is good, which is why you may have guessed that there's more to this story than a 50% discount. The real news is that New York ruined its individual insurance market two decades ago by imposing the same regulations that ObamaCare is about to impose on every other state. If the Empire State's premiums do now fall, it will be because the Affordable Care Act partially deregulates New York insurance.

The culprit behind New York's long-standing insurance woes is a regulation known as "community rating" that hides in higher premiums the income transfers from one group to another. Insurance works best when people pay rates that are tied to their expected health risks over time. But a few states limit how much premiums can vary from person to person.

ObamaCare takes this community rating national. The law says that no individual can pay more than three times what the least expensive person pays, regardless of risk. Today 42 states have rating bands that are five to one or more.

New York's ratio is one to one. This means that insurers must vastly overprice coverage for, say, a 28-year-old who exercises regularly and doesn't smoke but vastly underprice coverage for a 55-year-old with high-cost chronic illnesses. Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo adopted this rule in 1992.

Premiums shot up 30% to 40% on average in the first year, often much more, and continued to spike. Insurers shed books of business, while customers cancelled their policies. Enrollment fell 38% in three years. About a dozen major insurers at the time sold the dominant style of indemnity coverage, similar to traditional fee-for-service Medicare. By 1996, every one had fled the state.

Bad incentives caused the exodus. The majority of people under 65 with low risks can avoid community rating's economic distortions by not buying coverage, especially because another rule called "guaranteed issue" lets them wait until they are sick before they buy coverage.

And that is what they do. Mutual of Omaha, by far the largest New York indemnity carrier at the time, watched the average age of its membership increase by 11 and a half years before it became the last one to turn out the lights. The average age of people who dropped coverage was 37.5.

In 1996 Albany tried to fix Mr. Cuomo's mess by requiring any managed-care insurer doing business in New York to also sell on the individual market, but the market never recovered. In 1992, some 1.2 million New Yorkers bought individual plans, which fell to 128,000 by 2001, and a mere 31,000 today. Think about that: Out of 19.5 million residents, and with three out of every 15 nonelderly adults uninsured, 0.0016% of the population uses this market.

Liberals claim community rating is a fair trade for subsidizing the needy and to counter the lotteries of disease and accident. But this forces young, generally low-income people starting their careers to pay hundreds of dollars more every month for insurance, rather than simply subsidizing the needy directly.

Individual per person premiums now average about $500 a month, far more in New York City and slightly less upstate. In less regulated Connecticut the comparable figure is $306, and in still less regulated Pennsylvania it is $225. In the Empire State insurance is available to anyone, only the price is unaffordable for millions.

ObamaCare's central planners are hoping to avoid a national reprise of New York by requiring and subsidizing individuals to buy insurance. The White House is planning a national campaign to persuade the young adults and minorities most likely to lack insurance to sign up, just as they turned out at the ballot box in 2012. But being forced to buy an overpriced product is different from casting a vote. Even with subsidies, ObamaCare's plans will sometimes be cheap to consumers, sometimes not, but never free.

Low- to moderate-income people with little net worth are highly sensitive to month-to-month finances. Some 17% of all workers already decline insurance that is sponsored by their employers, preferring more take-home pay. The figure for young workers is 40%. More than one in four of the uninsured are also "unbanked," meaning they lack a checking account or credit card, according to Jackson Hewitt Tax Service.

The ObamaCare gamble is that these Americans will act against their financial self-interest and buy insurance that is more expensive than what they need. But the great liberal fear is that they won't, and that premiums will then have to increase and some exchanges might fail. New York is less a model than a warning.

[Deleted]

Jul 18, 2013 8:09:32 GMT -5 @zetta said:

Jul 18, 2013 7:30:03 GMT -5 @zetta said:

So which is it, Tails, does the Pope have a direct line of succession from Peter, and thus have the authority to change the rules in heaven and earth, or is he just some ordinary guy that happens to run the church at the moment?
You can't argue both points and claim you're being "consistent".

No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it goes.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324564704578625973354325756.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

I wonder how many campaign buses Obama's going to buy this time.

www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57595225/cbs-news-poll-finds-more-americans-than-ever-want-obamacare-repealed/

CBS News poll finds more Americans than ever want Obamacare repealed...The poll also found a majority of Americans - 54 percent - disapprove of the health care law, 36 percent of Americans approve of it and 10 percent said they don't know about it.

The health care law is a chronic issue for the White House, CBS News political director John Dickerson said on "CBS This Morning."

The poll also found just 13 percent of Americans say the health care law will personally "help me" while 38 percent said they believe the law will personally "hurt me."

Dickerson said, "The feeling, basically, is, again, speeches are not going to change public opinion; this has got to start taking hold. People will start signing up and, the White House hopes, good things will start to happen once it kicks in, and that might turn around public opinion, but that's a ways away."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/24/war_on_women_democrat_political_wives_tell_the_world_it_s_noble_to_be_a_doormat

It's embarrassing, is what it is. There's nothing admirable about this. There's nothing uplifting about it. There's nothing inspirational. It's not about good role models or family values or any of that. I mean, this is absolutely absurd. I'm talking about Huma. For crying out loud, I don't want to ever hear another word about a Republican War on Women, because Democrat women are doing more to set women and whatever causes they might have back to the Dark Ages.

Huma Abedin is doing everything she can to make sure that women are seen as steppingstones and doormats...There is no question in my mind that, if there is a War on Women out there, it is being conducted by the Democrat Party -- and it's being conducted by Democrat women. This little press event yesterday between Carlos Danger and his wife, Huma Abedin, whose loyalty everybody is now praising. Her loyalty is to Hillary Clinton and her role model is Hillary Clinton. Doormats. Doormats with the promise of a payoff later down the road. I mean, this Weiner guy, Carlos Danger, this is reprehensible. I mean, and to think that this guy is still viable and in fact might even win the mayoral race in New York City.

They have made it normal. They have made it common to be totally cuckolded in front of the world by a man. Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton, in fact have made it a resume enhancement for the Democrat Party. Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin have seen to it -- that's why this mayor out in San Diego, what's the big deal? Sexual harassment. This guy's a piker compared to Clinton. It's a resume enhancement for the Democrat Party, and these women standing by, making it cool, making it acceptable, making it noble, making it common. You want to talk about setting an example for young women everywhere? ...They try to make their behavior noble and the new norm. But what these women are doing... Folks, we're talking about a bunch of power-mad leftists, and these women are standing aside while these men show everybody who they really are.

These women are standing aside and allowing these kinds of guys to gain power over us. It is a double whammy. It's not enough that Huma and Hillary deal with these guys in the privacy of their marriage. Now Huma and Hillary and Silda and all the rest are actively working to inflict these guys on the rest of us so that they will have power over us, too, the way they have power over these women in their marriages.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/atheist-chaplains-seeing-%3Cem%3Eisnt%3Cem%3E-believing

Atheists aren't just looking for a platform in the military -- they're looking for a pulpit. In one of the more bizarre storylines from the Defense debate, a handful of House Democrats have been working to establish a chapter of non-believing chaplains in the ranks. So far, two representatives -- Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) -- have introduced measures to create "non-theist" chaplains, only to see them flame out in committee. Groups like the Secular Coalition, who helped hatch this crazy idea, argue that nonbelievers suffer the same fear and pain that affects every service member.

But isn't that why the military has psychologists? And, as Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who is a reserve Air Force chaplain, pointed out, nothing is stopping atheists from visiting the chaplains who are already available. In fact, Collins said he's counseled several non-believers over the years. "What I have found so many times [is that] people in our world today just need someone to listen," he said.

The fact that Congress is even debating the idea of creating non-faith faith leaders is a sign of how absurd this debate about religious liberty has become. By definition, a chaplain's duties are to offer prayer, spiritual counseling, and religious instruction. If that doesn't disqualify a non-believer, I'm not sure what would! Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), one of the many members flabbergasted that Congress is wasting its time on this, told Fox News, "When it comes to the idea of an atheist chaplain, which is an oxymoron -- it's self-contradictory -- what you're really doing is now saying that we're going to replace true chaplains with non-chaplain chaplains. It's just total nonsense, the idea of having a chaplain who is an atheist."

Atheist chaplains are like vegetarian carnivores. They don't exist! In reality, what secularists are angling for is a position of greater influence. If the military were to expand the chaplaincy to atheists, it would give anti-Christian extremists like Mikey Weinstein an even greater opportunity to sanitize the military -- this time, from inside the chaplain corps.

Fortunately, Congressman Fleming knows how the Left operates. As part of the floor debate on the Defense budget bill yesterday (watch his remarks here), Rep. Fleming attached language that would ensure that federal funds aren't used to appoint chaplains who don't have an endorsing agency. In other words, candidates for chaplaincy would have to be officially affiliated with a specific faith. His amendment, one of 100 the House considered in Tuesday's mark-up, coasted through the vote thanks to 26 Democrats -- who helped pad the 253-173 margin.

Interestingly enough, this debate happens to coincide with a new study about the drop in worldwide atheism. Researchers just released four decades of data on "Christianity in Its Global Context, 1970-2010" and found that the world is more religious now than it was last century. "If this trend continues," the report suggests, "agnostics and atheists will be a smaller portion of the world's population in 2020 than they were in 2010." If atheism is declining, why should its influence increase? Good question -- one that Congress should ponder before it panders to more extremists.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578625823191376016.html

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he promised that America would be more respected and liked in the world. Foreign leaders would bow to his wishes. Ancient conflicts would end. In a speech before hundreds of thousands in Berlin, he vowed to do nothing less than "remake the world."

Instead, President Obama's foreign policy has been a failure tactically and strategically, almost from beginning to end, mostly because he lacks strategic vision.

Start with Iraq, where Mr. Obama has largely surrendered America's hard-won gains. The Iraqis and our allies wanted a continued U.S. military presence to protect them. Mr. Obama said he did, too. But he killed that outcome by demanding parliamentary approval in Iraq of any Status of Force Agreement. This was a political impossibility for Iraqi leaders.

The result is a region growing ever more unstable and dangerous. Violence is rising in Iraq and Iran's influence is increasing, while America's influence is nearly nonexistent. Iranian planes fly over Iraq to resupply Bashar Assad and ferry Revolutionary Guards to the civil war in Syria. This would not happen if the U.S. had a military presence in Iraq.

That's not all. Even after endorsing a surge of troops in Afghanistan in 2009, Mr. Obama signaled in 2011 that he was eager to head for the exits by withdrawing U.S. troops in 2014. But quitting Afghanistan next year will not make the tide of war recede, to paraphrase the president. It could allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven again, add to regional instability, and cause allies to doubt our word while adversaries doubt our credibility and staying power.

Next door to Afghanistan is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mr. Obama squandered the best chance for regime change and a possible historical turning point in that dangerous and vital land by failing to support democratic reformers when the ayatollahs stole the June 2009 presidential election.

Syria's brutal civil war is destabilizing neighboring Jordan, a U. S. ally, and increasing Russia's influence in the region. Assad, the despot Mr. Obama first demanded be gone in August 2011, tightens his grip on power in the face of a feckless U.S. policy.

Mr. Obama's promised "reset" with Russia has never materialized. Polls show America's standing is worse on the Arab "street" than when he took office. America's relationship with nuclear-armed Pakistan has deteriorated. Mr. Obama failed to take advantage of his predecessor's negotiation of a nuclear deal with India to strengthen ties there. The U.S.-China relationship remains problematic.

In Africa, the president's lack of enthusiasm for his predecessor's very successful program to combat AIDS and malaria has confounded Mr. Obama's liberal supporters.

It's impossible to know how much worse things might get between now and the end of Mr. Obama's presidency. It's fair to say that it will take many years to clear away the foreign policy rubble accumulated during his years in the Oval Office.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/24/america_discovers_zev_chafets_book_on_the_role_of_race_in_detroit_s_demise

I skimmed it, a little book report for you yesterday, and the book focuses on the Mayor Coleman Young as the real culprit in what happened to Detroit, and the fact that, yeah, you can't deny that liberalism played a large role in Detroit's failure, unchecked Democrat power, unions as well, the decline of the auto industry, all those are factors, but Zev Chafets' point in his book is that it was Coleman Young, the mayoralty of Coleman Young single-handedly is responsible -- well, nothing is single-handedly, but largely responsible for what happened to Detroit.

Now, the title of Zev's book, "Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit" -- when I mentioned this, Zev's book was at about one million, ranked one million at Amazon. I mean, it's 1990, 23 years old. Today Zev's book is at number 300, after just talking about it yesterday. And they're thinking they might want to reissue it. Let me just review, for those of you who missed it, because it's a fascinating take, especially we have just learned that the Detroit city council has demanded, they have passed a proclamation or an ordinance, they've unanimously agreed that George Zimmerman must be investigated by the federal government.

The city council of a bankrupt city took the time to debate whether or not the city ought to demand a federal investigation of George Zimmerman.

Oh, and speaking of Zimmerman, the UK Daily Mail has an interesting story. "The family rescued by George Zimmerman after a rollover crash in Florida are terrified they will become targets for hate mobs." They are not afraid of the Tea Party. They are afraid of Democrat Party and Twitter hate mobs. This has not been reported in the US media that I have seen.

The family name is Gerstel. "Mark and Dana Michelle Gerstle said they do not want to talk publicly about Zimmerman for fear they will be accused of portraying him as a hero Zimmerman pulled the couple and their two children from their car after a terrifying crash on July 17. It was the first time Zimmerman was seen since being acquitted," in the trial Trayvon Martin's murder, or death. "Went into hiding after he, his family and attorneys received death threats and thousands protested the verdict. Gerstle family are frightened Zimmerman haters will target them too. 'They are very grateful to Zimmerman for what he did, but they do not want to get involved.'"

[Tails82]

No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it goes

The pope recognizes the importance of the position and would not lead people astray. And as I've said, all the authority comes from God so he isn't above Him. It is on God's authority that people are forgiven. So I don't know why we're arguing over something neither of us have argued for.