CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Controversial Clinton-Tied Moroccan Mining Firm Supported by Ex-Im Bank.
Archive for 2015
May 16, 2015
May 15, 2015
AT AMAZON, 15% off SOG Knives & Tools.
O’MALLEY RAILS AGAINST DEATH PENALTY: In the wake of the jury decision to impose the death penalty on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Martin O’Malley says he “respect[s] the verdict of the jury” but opposes the death penalty as a matter of policy.
Meanwhile, radical Islamists praise Tsarnaev as a martyr on Twitter.
FIGHT THE POWER: House defies Obama veto threat, approves $612B defense bill.
Related: 41 Dems buck Pelosi in defense vote.
WE’LL PROBABLY BE SEEING MORE OF THIS: Hackers are stealing money via Starbucks’ mobile app. “Security experts warn that any account that is linked through third party is vulnerable. Their advice: use strong passwords and avoid auto reload if you can.”
LUCKILY, THIS SORT OF THING NEVER JUMPS OVER TO INFECT HUMANS: Egg Farms Hit Hard as Bird Flu Affects Millions of Hens. But I like eggs.
WELL, THEN I’M GOING TO LIVE LONGER BECAUSE OF DEADLIFTS: Stronger Grip Strength Means Longer Life.
WELL, FEMINIST HYSTERIA OVER SEXUAL HARASSMENT HAS ITS PRICE: Why Some Male Members of Congress Won’t Be Alone with Female Staffers. Of course, the solution is to force the men to spend time with female staffers. Because fairness!
From the comments: “Why are these potential rapists afraid of being alone in a room with me?”
ERIK WEMPLE: Dear ABC News PR: Tell us you didn’t shaft the Washington Free Beacon.
Despite Stiles’ best efforts, ABC News didn’t cough up a response on the spot. Heather Riley, a spokeswoman for ABC News, e-mailed Stiles just after 9 p.m., promising him “something.” “What time are you posting? Want to make sure I get it to you in time,” she wrote.
Hear this, knee-jerk detractors of modern web journalism: Absent a comment from ABC News, Continetti & Co. decided to let the matter sit overnight. They just waited.
When the Washington Free Beaconers put their heads together Thursday morning, there was still no comment from ABC News. “I say, ‘Let’s begin to move this story,’” recalls Continetti. The piece wasn’t complicated: A network news anchor had contributed to a charity run by the first family of the Democratic party and hadn’t told viewers when that charity emerged in news coverage. What was complicated was its landing. “Literally as we were about to hit ‘post,’ we are alerted to the Dylan Byers piece that just went up,” says Continetti, who moved to publish their piece without the ABC News statements. Those arrived later.
I think that ABC went to Byers because they thought he’d give them softer treatment. And if I were Dylan Byers I’d be embarrassed, and angry, about that. Plus:
Silence is unacceptable here. ABC News has to do one of two things: Either apologize to the Washington Free Beacon for whatever precisely it did or explain how its actions meet the commonly acknowledged standards of the industry. Today Stephanopoulos issued his second apology for his evasions in the Clinton Foundation case, so that story may ebb in the coming weeks. Yet the Erik Wemple Blog is committed to keeping this unfinished business about the Washington Free Beacon in play until the network resolves it.
Good.
V.A. WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS DEP’T WASTES $6 BILLION ANNUALLY: The biggest cause, apparently, is abusive use of purchasing cards by VA employees.
[Whistleblower] Frye, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, first brought to light problems of abuse back in March. He decided to air the information publicly after his 35-page memorandum to VA Secretary Robert McDonald went completely unanswered.
Of course they did. Congress should clamp down on all purchasing cards.
OF COURSE SHE DOES: Hillary Wants the Power to Ban Books and Movies that Criticize Her.
THAT SEEMS FAIR: Jury sentences Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for marathon attack.
ACTUALLY, THIS SHOULD BE THE LAW FOR EVERYONE: Legislation Would Ease Gun Restrictions for Military Spouses. “Military spouses could be able to purchase a handgun in any state without first becoming a resident if recently proposed legislation is passed into law. Under current federal law, active duty service members can purchase handguns in any state without proving they are state residents. But that law does not extend to their spouses, who must first establish state residency before making a firearm purchase.” States shouldn’t be able to regulate what kinds of guns people own, or limit the rights of American citizens to purchase and own firearms that are legal under federal law.
HEALTHCARE.GOV CONTRACTOR QUITS: QSSI, the politically connected IT firm that runs the federal Obamacare exchange, Healthcare.gov, announced Thursday it is calling it quits. QSSI is the third IT firm to run the problem-plagued exchange in two years.
PROGRESSIVE POLITICS OF GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE: NASA scientists are now warning that the Antarctic Larsen B ice shelf is going to detach and disappear:
[R]esearchers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Irvine say that this remnant now faces its “approaching demise.” In a news release, NASA adds that “it is likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.” If these two research teams are right, then the coming years could see major ice calving events off of the Antarctic peninsula. “What might happen is that for a few years, we will have the detachment of big icebergs from this remaining ice shelf, and then at one point, one very very warm summer, when you have lots of melting of the surface, the whole thing will just give way, and will shatter into thousands of smaller icebergs,” says the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Ala Khazendar, lead author of the new study.
Of course, as I recently posted, scientists have also observed that the Antarctic ice has thickened so much recently that they cannot even reach their destinations. And NASA itself has become highly politicized, with high-ranking leaders toeing the Obama Administration’s line on global warming climate change, but many rank and file scientists publicly disagreeing. And with a little research, NASA’s Ala Khazendar, who is quoted in the Washington Post excerpt above, has several letters to the editor newspapers that evince strong political inclinations–most notably, an anti-Israel philosophy. In a May 2002 letter to the editors of The Telegraph, for example, Dr. Khazendar condemns “the hateful racism that emanates from the other side [Israeli] of the Middle East conflict.” In a October 2003 letter to the editors of The Guardian, Khazendar understandably criticizes Palestinian suicide bombings but simultaneously observes that “Zionism [has] dehumanised the Palestinians as a prelude to expelling them, or to justify placing them under a ruthless military occupation”. In September 2009, he wrote to the Los Angeles Times, Khazendar criticizes a prior oped penned by an Israeli academic, saying,
Of which Zionist ideology exactly is Carmi proud? The one that demanded a homeland for the Jewish people in response to the persecution and genocide they suffered in Europe before and during World War II, or the Zionism that created Israel by expelling most of Palestine’s native inhabitants on the orders of the same man after whom Carmi’s university is named?
In June 2002, he wrote a short letter to the British Medical Journal in which he said, “Israel is indeed open and democratic, as long as one is not a Palestinian who has the misfortune of being a native of the land that it so much covets” In May 2006, Dr. Khazendar was even more bold, writing to The Guardian, criticizing the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict and concluding, “if the BBC is really plucky, perhaps it will start describing those Palestinian acts of terrorism as retaliations to Israeli persecution.”
But hey, I’m sure Dr. Khazendar is politically neutral when it comes to matters like global warming climate change.
UPDATE: Oh, and let’s not forget that President Obama has turned NASA into a Muslim outreach organization.
THIS SHOULD BE PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT. ALSO, POLYGRAPHS ARE UNSCIENTIFIC WITCH-DOCTOR-STUFF THAT SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED ANYWAY: Polygraph.com owner pleads guilty to training customers to beat polygraph.
ISIS SEIZES RAMADI: ISIS fighters have now captured key sites in Ramadi, the capital city of Iraq’s largest province, Anbar. It is only about 70 miles west of Baghdad. Great. But hey, no worries– our President assures us that ISIS is just the JV. God forfend if we ever have to deal with the varsity.
NOT UNLESS THEY CAN FLY, AND SHOOT LASER BEAMS OUT OF THEIR BABY EYES: Do You Fear An Elite Population Of Enhanced Babies?
IT LOOKS LIKE A WEEBLE CAR: This video shows Google’s self-driving car prototype. Not much sex appeal. And as with previous prototypes, it has no steering wheel or pedals. I don’t understand why they aren’t designing it as a “hybrid,” in the sense that one could “take over” navigation of the car if one wanted to. But then again, I love to drive.