These people are paid more from Welfare than the murdered soldier made.
I tried, and I have not been able to verify this, but it may very well be true. If it is true, speaks volumes about the insanity of contemporary Western culture.
Human beings normally see in color. We are natural trichromats– we have three different color receptors that permit us to see a range of colors far broader than many other mammals. Even most other primates (with the exception of old-world monkeys) have only two kinds of color receptors. We are not the top of the color vision pile though. Jumping spiders are natural tetrachromats, with four kinds of receptors, and while there are no known mammalian tetrachromats, there are believed to be tetrachromats among birds, insects, reptiles, and amphibians.
That mammalian exclusion may be about to change. Since 1993 scientists in Oxford and Cambridge have been looking for a few women compared to whom, we may all be color-blind. These women would be the first known mammalian tetrachromats. In an odd twist of fate, the same genetic glitch that creates color-blind males may create females with better-than-usual color vision.
Newcastle University neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan, recently announced that she has identified a woman who is a “tetrachromat,” that is, a woman with the ability to see much greater color depth than the ordinary person. …
Jordan and her colleagues have for 20 years searched for people endowed with super color vision, or tetrachromatic vision. According to Discover Magazine, Jordan found a tetrachromat two year ago. Although the person is the first tetrachromat known to science, the researchers believe there are others.
Discover Magazine reports that Jordan and her team found many people with four types of cones but only one person passed the tests for tetrachromatic vision. The woman, identified as subject cDa29, is a doctor living in northern England. Jordan and her colleagues believe there may be other persons with tetrachromatic vision.
The Boy Scouts of America, one of the country’s largest and oldest youth organizations, decided on Thursday to break 103 years of tradition by allowing openly gay members into its ranks.
The controversial move was approved by more than 60 percent of the approximate 1,400 votes cast by the BSA’s national council. According to the new resolution, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.â€
“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting,†the BSA stated in a press release.
Lifting the organization’s ban on gay adult volunteer leaders and paid staff was not considered and remains in place.
Pascal Tessier, a gay Scout from Maryland, told Yahoo News that he was ecstatic with the outcome.
“Proud, happy and on top of the world,†he said.
Tessier, 16, had feared that a no vote would mean he would not earn his Eagle award next year.
“The delegates proved me wrong,†Tessier said.
Texas Governor Rick Perry told the Texas Tribune, “While I will always cherish my time as a Scout … I am greatly disappointed with this decision.â€
These kinds of large national organizations commonly have far too many cowards and conformists on their boards. Time for the portion of the Scouting Movement that does not agree to separate from the corrupt national organization.
Dan Greenfield relishes the ironies of the Obama Administration’s conflicts with the very same establishment Media which propelled it into power.
The quarrel between Obama and the Media is largely a lovers’ quarrel, but the love is only there on one side. The media made Obama what he is. But what he is, among many other things, is a control freak spawned by a political ideology that distrusts everyone and consolidates power at all cost.
The media loved Obama, but it discovered early on that he did not love it back. Instead of basking in the adoration of the Candy Crowleys and the Anderson Coopers and the massive corporate machines behind them, the love child of every liberal fantasy shut them out, rigidly controlled their access and ruthlessly punished unauthorized conversations with the press.
The media had made Obama into a tin god, but were constantly suspected of heresy. Instead of being rewarded for their loyalty, they were kept at arm’s length.
Obama Inc. knew that their biggest asset was the narrative. A close study of Obama’s qualifications or accomplishments would have given no conceivable reason for voting for him. The only thing he brought to the table was race and even in this he was less qualified than most of the black men who had run for president.
The narrative was the dearest treasure of Obama Inc. It was the one thing that its cronies protected. The economy could tank, wars could be lost and an asteroid could smack into the Pacific Ocean and none of it mattered nearly as much as the golden narrative. They didn’t trust anyone with it including the media.
The media these days doesn’t have much. Its numbers are bad in every medium from the tube to the inky pages of newsprint to the crackling AM radio waves. It isn’t very profitable. Often it’s a dead weight. But it wields a great deal of institutional power. The New York Times and CNN may both be dogs when it comes to the balance sheets, but owning either one gives you an impressive amount of heft in the national dialogue; though not as much as working for one of them does.
Power is all that the media has. Its power is projected in a fairly narrow circle. Fewer people are reading, watching and listening to it, so its circle becomes more incestuous. Everyone has learned to act like a member of the D.C. press corps, interpreting events through the lens of old West Wing episodes. The resulting noise reaches fewer people, but helps form the shaky consensus on which the institutional power of the media stands.
In its dying hour, the media used that power to ensure the double coronation of a corrupt Chicago politician with a facility for mimicking speech patterns. And that politician rewarded it by trying to bypass it and set up his own media.
Obama’s vision of the proper place of the media isn’t just at his feet, but under his control. Instead of dealing with the media, he has tried to cut it out of the loop by putting a larger emphasis on social media and developing narratives through think-tanks and media influencing groups. It was a power struggle that the media was initially baffled by. It had held out an ice cream cone to the little boy, only to have the little boy kick it in the shin, grab the ice cream cone and run away.
For years the media had groused about a lack of transparency, the unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers and the hostile relationship between Obama Inc’s minions and many reporters. The grousing was usually understated. It could be mentioned offhand, but not too loudly. When Bob Woodward made the mistake of speaking his mind, he was swiftly punished for it by the avatars of the post-media media, while the old media sat silently and watched the show.
But then Obama pushed its limits by invading the sanctum of the Associated Press. It was one thing when the administration was targeting whistleblowers, but quite another when the media’s power became part of the collateral damage.
The week of scandals was the media reminding Obama that his smooth ride had been provided by them and that the ride could get very bumpy if his media ponies decide to take the back road to Benghazigate or drop by the IRS headquarters. It’s a bluff, of course. The day may come when the media takes Obama out back and disposes of him so that the new messiah, perhaps in a pantsuit, can ascend the old Camelot throne, but that day isn’t here yet.
Scandal week was a game of chicken between Obama and the media to see who would blink first. Would Obama decide to respect the institutional power of the media or would be consider pushing forward until the media blinked. A brief history of Obama Inc. suggests that he will keep pushing on. Obama backs down from Muslim terrorists and Russian government thugs, but not from Americans.
Like most cowards, Obama only attacks those he knows won’t fight back. And the only people who won’t fight back are either helpless or bound by their politics not to resist the liberal messiah.
Obama knows that the media does not dare harm a hair on the head of the liberal agenda. And he made certain to appoint a Vice President whom no one in their right mind would want to see take over. Until 2016, it’s Hussein or the highway. The media has shown that it can hamstring him even when the coverage is only mild. It is quite capable of turning up the temperature to boiling, though not without a civil war with Media Matters, Think Progress and a chunk of the liberal new media.
The media is a prisoner of its own ideology. It can’t hit Obama too hard… yet. Not until they’re making the case that Hillary will do a better job of governing than this inexperienced tyro did. Having abandoned any professional integrity years ago, it would be too late for most of the media to reclaim it now. Even in the name of its own institutional power.
Embattled IRS official Lois Lerner will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself when she appears before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
In a letter to Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Lerner’s attorney William W. Taylor III cites the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the issue of whether the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
Lerner, who oversaw the IRS nonprofit department, will be the first person involved with the IRS scandal to publicly invoke the Fifth Amendment.
“Just when you think things can’t get any stranger around here, they take a twist,†Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told POLITICO, adding, “this is a very serious matter.â€
Taylor’s letter requests that Lerner be excused from testifying, but Issa has issued a subpoena to compel her appearance.
“Requiring her to appear at the hearing merely to assert her Fifth Amendment privilege would have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her,†Taylor wrote.
Mona Charen is not taken in by this administration’s efforts to evade responsibility for doing nothing to save American lives in Benghazi.
The president invites us to conclude that his “my diplomats†language is proof of his passionate concern for their welfare. But there’s more than a whiff of protesting too much in the president’s comments and those of his spokesman. Pfeiffer went so far as to label questions about what the president did on the night of September 11, 2012, as “offensive.†Bristling at a question from Chris Wallace about whether the president was in the Situation Room that night, Pfeiffer huffed, “The assertions from Republicans that the president didn’t take action is offensive.†When Wallace persisted with “I’m simply asking a question: Where was he? What did he do? How did he respond . . . ?†Pfeiffer could say only that “the president was in the White House that day, kept up to date by his national-security team, spoke to the Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier, secretary of state, and as events unfolded he was kept up to date.â€
Taking offense, or pretending to, is a favorite tactic of this White House, but let’s understand it for what it is — a combination of bullying and evading responsibility.
President Obama has showered us with virtually minute-by-minute descriptions of his activities on the night Osama bin Laden was killed. We’ve been vouchsafed photos of the national-security team watching events in real time. The president used the word “I,†“me,†or “my†twelve times in a 1,300-word speech. But to ask how the president conducted himself on the night of September 11 crosses a line?
According to testimony from Leon Panetta, following a previously scheduled 5 p.m. meeting at which Benghazi was mentioned, the president did not speak again to his secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the attacks on the consulate and then later the annex unfolded. The following morning, the president jetted off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas.
Pfeiffer asserts that it’s false and offensive to say that the president took no action, but the secretary of defense acknowledged as much. In October 2012, Leon Panetta explained that while “we quickly responded†with ships, FAST teams, and forces to the region as soon as the attack was reported and were “prepared to respond to any contingency,†they did not act because there was a principle at stake: “You don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.†(This explanation was later contradicted.)
Is that really a U.S.-military principle? It’s one thing to say that, in the absence of hostilities, initiating military action should be undertaken only after a full evaluation of all options. But when Americans are under attack, shouldn’t the cavalry come over the hill if they possibly can?
Certainly that’s how Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty saw things. Completely outnumbered and outgunned, they nonetheless ran to the consulate and annex to man whatever guns they could lay hands on and attempt to defend their fellow Americans. They gave their lives doing so. The Obama administration gave nothing — not even the truth.
Jonah Goldberg points out that nobody needs to find a specific order in Barack Obama’s handwriting. He has made it very clear, time again, that anyone daring to oppose his policies or himself is beyond the pale.
Obama’s culpability in all of this isn’t restricted merely to his sins of omission. Throughout his presidency, Obama has set a very clear tone.
He’s made it clear that people who disagree with him are fevered, illegitimate, weird, creepy, dangerous, stupid, confused, ignorant, or some other adjective you might assign to a revamped version of the Seven Dwarfs. He’s explained that he doesn’t mind “cleaning up after†Republicans but he doesn’t want to hear “a lot of talking†from them. The time for democratic debate is always behind us with an administration that began with the mission not to let a crisis go to waste, for as Obama said in his second inaugural address, “Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.â€
Moreover, President Obama often insists we live in a country where the “government is us,†where there’s no need to fear tyranny “around the corner†because we could never be tyrannical against ourselves.
