Congressional Republicans readying ‘bite-size’ bills to replace Obamacare – TheBlaze

Congressional Republicans readying ‘bite-size’ bills to replace Obamacare – TheBlaze:

"In a feat of either extraordinary bravery or ambitious overreach, House Speaker Paul Ryan is planning to eschew accepted congressional practices and, rather than replace Obamacare with one large, unwieldy replacement, will instead present a series of smaller bills attacking the problems of the Affordable Care Act one at a time."

Students In College Bible Class Get Trigger Warning, Permission To Skip Studying Crucifixion Of Jesus Christ

TaxProf Blog:
"National Review, If You Are Too Triggered by Lessons About the Crucifixion, You Cannot Be a Religious Scholar:
Students in a Bible course at the University of Glasgow are being given trigger warnings before being shown images of the crucifixion — and permission to skip those lessons altogether if they are worried they’ll feel too uncomfortable.
Predictably, much of the conversation surrounding this has been focused on the cultural implications of the policy, and how it contributes to creating a generation of weak little snowflakes. ...
But the problems with this policy go far beyond the abstract cultural implications.
It’s also objectively, indisputably wrong on a logical level — because receiving credits for a class signifies that you have learned enough about the subject matter to earn those credits, and no student in an introductory Bible course could meet that qualification without having learned about the crucifixion..."

Invasion of Europe 2017: Prediction! Invasion will grow as there are too many Africans and not enough jobs

Invasion of Europe 2017: Prediction! Invasion will grow as there are too many Africans and not enough jobs « Refugee Resettlement Watch: 
"Lack of Jobs in Africa Could Spark Massive Migration to Europe
The economies of the developing world cannot keep pace with an increase in population, meaning millions of people from Africa will likely migrate to Europe, a new report has found.
The report, from the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), states that the economies of developing nations in Arica, Asia, and South America cannot keep pace with the number of young people entering the workforce. 
The result, especially in Africa, will mean that many are ready to migrate and look for jobs elsewhere – and their main target will likely be Europe Die Welt reports.
Don’t get these economic migrants confused with legitimate refugees. 
They are not, but the open borders movement is going to call them all refugees/asylum seekers!
More here.

The only hope for Europe (and it may be too late) is for countries like France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to elect leaders who are nationalists!

See all of our ‘Invasion of Europe news’ by clicking here.  Curious to see when I wrote my first post about the invasion, and I think it was this one in 2011.

Obama’s legacy: A deeper party divide in America – TheBlaze

Obama’s legacy: A deeper party divide in America – TheBlaze:

"As President Barack Obama prepares to leave office next week, he’s busy crafting the narrative of his legacy, telling CBS “60 Minutes” in a soon-to-air interview that he believes he is the first modern president without a major scandal in his White House tenure.

While others would disagree with that assessment — there’s certainly room to discuss episodes such as the four American deaths in Benghazi and the payoff to Iran for the release of America hostages, for example — it’s hardly surprising that Obama would be seeking some positive defining administrative success now that it appears the GOP will immediately repeal and replace Obamacare."

In Illinois, Substitute Teaching For One Day Reaped Nearly $1 Million in Taxpayer-Funded Pension Money

In Illinois, Substitute Teaching For One Day Reaped Nearly $1 Million in Taxpayer-Funded Pension Money:
"In 2011, the Chicago Tribune exposed a pair of Illinois teacher union lobbyists, Stephen Preckwinkle and David Piccioli, who substitute taught for one day and stood to collect nearly $1 million in state teacher retirement pensions from a severely underfunded system.
The five Illinois pension systems have a $100

billion liability and the teachers fund may run out of money as early as 2029.
...A couple of weeks ago, we spotted Preckwinkle and Piccioli within a long list of 30 state retirees from the Illinois Federation of Teachers (private sector teachers union).
Sure enough, in 2014, Piccioli is receiving $30,564 and Preckwinkle $37,416 pensions (click here for their life expectancy pension payouts of nearly $1 million each).
The experience was a bit overwhelming, even for our seasoned team of forensic investigators..."
Read on.
This is despicable!

Human Rights Watch's Trump Derangement Syndrome

Human Rights Watch's Trump Derangement Syndrome:
"Human Rights Watch has taken Trump derangement syndrome to new heights with the release of its annual report that lists the United States of America as a human rights abuser on par with China, Egypt, and Syria.

Their reason? 
Donald Trump's rhetoric during the recent presidential campaign...

The Daily Caller:

As The New York Times notes, the designation of the U.S. as a major human rights abuser marks a first for HRW in the 27 years it has released its annual survey.

“The rise of populism poses a dangerous threat to human rights,” Roth said in a video introduction of the report.

“Trump gained power in the United States, various politicians are seeking power in Europe through making appeals to racism, xenophobia, nativism and misogyny,” he continued.

...Though Trump has yet to shape any policies in the U.S., the HRW survey mentions the Republican 19 times, including under a section with the heading “Trump’s Dangerous Rhetoric.”

The group is most disturbed with Trump’s comments regarding immigration and Muslims.

The 19 mentions of Trump is compared to 11 mentions of both Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, both of whom have cracked down heavily on reporters and dissidents.

Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria who has murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens, receives 15 mentions in the report..."

Lunch video-----The Best Response at the Oscars.... a few years ago....

Noon-toon

Waiver That Would Allow Mattis To Serve As Sec. Of Defense Earns Resounding Approval

Waiver That Would Allow Mattis To Serve As Sec. Of Defense Earns Resounding Approval:

"The nomination of Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of defense took two significant steps forward Thursday.

First, despite threats of revolt from House Democrats, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee easily approved a waiver that will allow Mattis to serve in the Cabinet. Because seven years had not passed since Mattis retired from active duty, he required a special waiver from Congress for his nomination to be approved, per a 1947 law. Mattis retired in 2013."

Dead People Doled Out $2.6 Billion Worth of Food Stamps

Dead People Doled Out $2.6 Billion Worth of Food Stamps:
"Dead retailers redeemed more than $2 billion worth of food stamps, according to a new audit.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general reviewed billions of transactions through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.
It found that thousands of stores authorized to accept food stamps were using the Social Security numbers of deceased persons.
An audit released Thursday found instances of potential fraud where the Food and Nutrition Service issued food stamps through stores that claimed to be owned by children or the dead.
“We found that 3,394 authorized SNAP retailers (retailers) used Social Security Numbers (SSN) that matched SSNs of deceased people,” the inspector general said.
“Additionally, 193 retailers listed owners who were not at least 18 years of age.
While FNS did have some controls to edit or verify SNAP retail owner information, these controls were not adequate to ensure owner information accuracy.”
Between October 2013 and June 2015, the inspector general identified 3,394 stores owned by 1,819 people who were using SSNs listed on the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File.
“These 3,394 retailers redeemed about $2.6 billion in SNAP benefits,” the inspector general said.
The 193 businesses that reported child owners redeemed $41 million in food stamps..."

A brief history of nanotechnology

the Foresight Institute » Blog » A brief history of nanotechnology

"...Enthusiasm for near-term commercial applications became conflated with a long-term technology vision and combined to bring forth ambitious new funding in the US and elsewhere. 

The differing visions of what nanotechnology is and can become, and the resulting conflicts over funding and over the public image of nanotechnology, are part of the story of Foresight’s first 30 years “Thirty Years of Nanotechnology and Foresight“. 

An engaging perspective on the history of nanotechnology written by W. Patrick McCray, a professor in the history department at the University of California–Santa Barbara, was published by Slate earlier this year as part of its Futurography series: “Gods of Small Things“.

The field may seem new—but it dates back more than 50 years

… Since the 21st century began, few emerging technologies have been so heavily promoted, funded, and debated as nanotechnology. Defined (currently) by the U.S. government as “the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale”—a nanometer is one-billionth a meter—nanotechnology as a field and research community has received billions of funding dollars, making it one of the nation’s largest technology investments since the space race.

Yet the idea that manipulation of the material world at the near-atomic scale was possible, even within grasp, possesses a historical arc stretching far back to the height of the Cold War. From the 1950s onward, investments in physics, chemistry, and the relatively new field of materials science provided a research foundation for the eventual emergence of nanotechnology. In fact, architects of a post–Cold War national nano-research program often traced its origins back to a discrete point in time and space. …

The story Prof. McCray recounts begins with Richard Feynman’s 1959 after-dinner talk, which predicted microscopic machines that would be able to build complex materials by precisely placing individual atoms in designed arrangements to achieve desired functions. 

Feynman’s ideas attracted little attention despite important progress in chemistry, surface physics, and other areas until the exploratory engineering work of Foresight’s co-founder Eric Drexler, then a student at MIT, popularized Feynman’s proposal under the banner of “nanotechnology”. 

However, this vision of the future of nanotechnology soon came into conflict with mainstream science’s funding priorities and focus on near-term applications..."

Read on!

German Court: Burning Down A Synagogue Isn’t Anti-Semitism, It’s Just Anti-Israel

German Court: Burning Down A Synagogue Isn’t Anti-Semitism, It’s Just Anti-Israel | Daily Wire:
"A German regional court has now declared that burning down synagogues isn’t anti-Semitic – it’s just anti-Israel.
As the Jerusalem Post reports, according to the court spokesperson, Johannes Pinnel, the three German Palestinian Arabs who threw Molotov cocktails at a Wuppertal synagogue in July 2014 weren’t doing anything anti-Jewish. 
Rather, they were attempting to create “attention” over the “Gaza conflict” between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
The three terrorists, Mohamed E., Ismael A., and Mohammad A., were given suspended sentences.
...In reality, of course, this justifies any attack on any Jew at any time.
It’s the same anti-Semitic rationale pursued by the Iranian government when they sponsor terrorist attacks against random synagogues abroad.
It’s an excuse for genocide: collective responsibility for the actions of a state to which you don’t even belong..."

Bobby Jindal: Trump’s pick for Education Secretary wants everyone to get a great education. Dems hate her for it | Fox News

Bobby Jindal: Trump’s pick for Education Secretary wants everyone to get a great education. Dems hate her for it | Fox News:

"The Democratic Party and the American Left opposes equal education opportunity. Write it down and memorize it.

They oppose equal opportunity in education. They demand that you keep your children in a failing government school and they tell you to wait for their reforms to finally kick-in sometime in the next 100 years. 

These people are illogical and really should not be teaching anyone anything anywhere.

Which brings me back to Betsy Devos. She has fought tirelessly for decades to give disadvantaged kids the opportunity to receive a great education. That is the sum total of why these Luddites on the Left are attacking her. "

FAKE NEWS: WaPo Did Not Tell Whole Story on DC National Guard Chief's Resignation (Video)

FAKE NEWS: WaPo Did Not Tell Whole Story on DC National Guard Chief's Resignation (Video)
"...WaPo ate it up.

The Washington Post reported:

The Army general who heads the D.C. National Guard and has an integral part in overseeing the inauguration said Friday that he will be removed from command effective at 12:01 p.m. Jan. 20, just as Donald Trump is sworn in as president.

Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz’s departure will come in the middle of the presidential ceremony — classified as a national special security event — and while thousands of his troops are deployed to help protect the nation’s capital during an inauguration he has spent months helping to plan.

“The timing is extremely unusual,” Schwartz said in an interview Friday morning, confirming a memo announcing his ouster that was obtained by The Washington Post. During the inauguration, Schwartz will command not only members of the D.C. Guard but also 5,000 unarmed troops dispatched from across the country to help. He also will oversee military air support protecting Washington during the inauguration.

“My troops will be on the street,” said Schwartz, who turned 65 in October. “I’ll see them off, but I won’t be able to welcome them back to the armory.” He said he would “never plan to leave a mission in the middle of a battle.”

Now This…
The Trump administration told FOX News of Friday the story is a crock.

Schwartz was offered to stay on his post until after the Inauguration but decided to quit during the ceremony and then he ran to the press to complain.

According to FOX News,

“The Trump Transition team reportedly offered to let him keep his job until the ceremonies were over. Maj. Gen Schwartz refused. It appears he would rather argue his would rather argue his case though in the press.”

WOW!

And there’s more…

The Washington Post completely rewrote their story since it was originally posted without any mention of an update.

Via Free Republic:..."

AM Fruitcake

History for January 15

History for January 15 - On-This-Day.com:
Jean Baptiste Moliere 1622 - Playwright, Frederick Arthur Stanley 1841 - Gave Canada the Stanley Cup, Pierre S. DuPont 1870 - Industrialist


Edward Teller 1908 Physicist, Father of the hydrogen bomb, Lloyd Bridges 1913 Actor: ("Airplane!," "Airplane 2"), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929 - Pastor, leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement


1559 - England's Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabeth Tudor) was crowned in Westminster Abbey.


1844 - The University of Notre Dame received its charter from the state of Indiana.


1870 - A cartoon by Thomas Nast titled "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" appeared in "Harper's Weekly." The cartoon used the donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party for the first time.


1892 - "Triangle" magazine in Springfield, MA, published the rules for a brand new game. The original rules involved attaching a peach baskets to a suspended board. It is now known as basketball.


1943 - The Pentagon was dedicated as the world's largest office building just outside Washington, DC, in Arlington, VA. The structure covers 34 acres of land and has 17 miles of corridors.


1967 - The first National Football League Super Bowl was played. The Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League. The final score was 35-10.


1974 - "Happy Days" premiered on ABC-TV.


1986 - President Reagan signed legislation making Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday to be celebrated on the third Monday of January.

Blog: Jerry Brown’s bullet train fiasco and Trump

Blog: Jerry Brown’s bullet train fiasco and Trump:

California governor Jerry Brown has staked out the turf as President-Elect Trump’s opponent, hiring Eric Holder to gin up a legal strategy and appointing Congressman Xavier Bacera as his A.G. to oppose anticipated Trump policies in sanctuary cities, the environment, and what some call California’s “values.”

But I have to wonder if Brown doesn’t have a vulnerable flank in this battle: the looming financial collapse of his most cherished project, the so-called “bullet train” between the Bay Area and Los Angeles.  Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published information from a “confidential” Federal Railroad Administration report that was leaked to it revealing absolute incompetence and out-of-control overspending on the first segment under construction.  The report by Ralph Vartabedian should be read in its entirety to grasp the level of chaos in the project:

California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that’s just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Keep in mind that that cost estimates have already been increased a number of times, and as a result, the trains will have to run on ordinary tracks, at ordinary train speeds, in both the L.A. and S.F. metropolises, lowering the average speed of the journey well below “bullet train” status and requiring five hours or more for the journey, making a day trip unrealistic for most business travelers.

A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.

Bad as this is, there will be many, many more cost overruns – this is just a down payment.  The really important part of the report is the description of the systemic incompetence of the Rail Authority, an organization that has never built anything, and one that has seen a revolving door for top-level personnel: “the rail authority’s senior deputy, its chief administrative officer and its top information technology executive recently left.”

The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property.

The FRA estimates that the first stretch will be delayed seven years.  But that has to be premised on nothing more adding delay.  And that seems inevitable:

The California system is being built by an independent authority that has never built anything and depends on a large network of consultants and contractors for advice. Engineering and construction experts have warned that early cost and schedule problems will be difficult to reverse and that early cost increases likely will drive up the final cost of the project.

Here is a secret that Donald Trump already knows: when you rely on consultants and contractors, they will use every excuse in the book to run up costs unless the client watches them like a hawk and forces them to work to budget and standards.  He rescued Central Park’s Wollman Rink, which had been bogged down in endless change orders, repair, rework, and redesign issues that kept costs ballooning, the same syndrome California’s half-fast train already is experiencing.

The Trump administration and GOP Congress have some leverage and a spotlight to shine on Brown’s Folly:

The Federal Railroad Administration is tracking the project because it has extended $3.5 billion in two grants to help build the Central Valley segment. The administration has an obligation to ensure that the state complies with the terms, including a requirement that the state has the funding to match the federal grants. 
Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, said Friday he would conduct an oversight hearing in the near future and fight any further federal funding.
“Despite past issues with funding this boondoggle, we were repeatedly assured in an August field hearing that construction costs were under control,” he said in a statement. “They continue to reaffirm my belief that this is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.”
The railroad administration’s analysis shows that the state authority could lose $220 million in one of the federal grants this year if it cannot submit paperwork by June 30, to meet the Sept. 30 deadline of the Obama administration’s stimulus act. 
To hit those milestones requires spending $3.2 million per day, a very high rate of construction spending. But Morales said the rail authority’s construction progress and spending rate ensure that all of the grant funds will be used. So far, the authority has spent $2.2 billion of the grant, leaving $300 million to spend.

California is facing a budget deficit and is heavily reliant on tax revenues from a tiny number of high-income taxpayers, mainly in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and:

… the Legislature already has balked at giving the rail authority the ability to borrow against future state revenues, saying it would have to make do with existing allocations. And that was before Gov. Jerry Brown warned Tuesday that California’s projected 2017-18 budget shows a $1.6-billion deficit.

He does not know it yet, but the California governor may be setting himself up to be a tool of persuasion for Trump in altering the culture of federal construction contracting.  By declaring war on the president-elect, Jerry Brown invites a response from a man not known for restraint in countering his opponents.  And the failures of the California project exemplify exactly the sort of waste Trump needs to control in his promised trillion-dollar infrastructure program.  I have written a couple of times about Trump’s use of Air Force One as an example to others of the cultural change he needs in defense procurement, where change order cost overruns are epidemic.  Lockheed just capitulated to Trump’s cost control demands on the F-35 program, revealing that a powerful wind of change has already taken hold in that realm of federal deal making.

Now Trump needs to set an example of how not to do construction spending in order to warn all parties to infrastructure spending that they too could become objects of scorn if they don’t change their ways.

Alinsky understood this:

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

So POTUS may well add his voice to the House hearings, probably via Twitter, ridiculing Jerry Brown and drawing attention to the Wollman rescue he performed – and shining a spotlight that may illuminate a few California voters on their governor's incompetence.

Jerry Brown is 78 years old, and it is showing.  I am not sure he is up to the battle that lies ahead.  His dream is crumbling before his eyes, and he has taken on a guy who is a “counterpuncher.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/01/jerry_browns_bullet_train_fiasco_and_trump.html#ixzz4VnaL3HIC
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Jeff Sessions & Voting Rights: Racism Charges Are Dishonest & Scurrilous | National Review

Jeff Sessions & Voting Rights: Racism Charges Are Dishonest & Scurrilous | National Review:

"Let me address another issue straight on. I was accused in 1986 of failing to protect the voting rights of African-Americans by presenting the Perry County case — the voter-fraud case — of condemning civil-rights advocates and organization and even harboring, amazingly, sympathies for the KKK. These are false charges. The voter-fraud case my office prosecuted was in response to pleas from African-American, incumbent, elected officials who claimed the absentee-ballot process involved a situation in which ballots cast for them were stolen, altered, and cast for their opponents. The prosecution was sought to protect the integrity of the ballot, not the black voting. It was a voting-rights case."

Oikophobia on the rise after Trump win

Oikophobia on the rise after Trump win: Glenn Reynolds:
"Irrational fear of fellow countrymen is spreading among America's ruling class.
(How crazy has the reaction to Trump’s impending presidency gotten?
So crazy that Democratic operatives are scared of plumbers, and I don’t mean the Watergate kind.
No, really. Ned Resnikoff, a “senior editor” at the liberal website ThinkProgress, wrote on Facebook that he’d called a plumber to fix a clogged drain.
The plumber showed up, did the job and left, but Resnikoff was left shaken, though with a functioning drain.
Wrote Resnikoff, “He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional.
But he was also a middle-aged white man with a Southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week’s news.”
This created fear: “While I had him in the apartment, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish, and how that knowledge might change the interaction we were having inside my own home.”
When it was all over, Resnikoff reported that he was “rattled” at the thought that a Trump supporter might have been in his home. “I couldn’t shake the sense of potential danger.”
Well.
When people have irrational, exaggerated fears we call them phobias. 
We heard a lot during this year’s immigration debate about “xenophobia,” an exaggerated or irrational fear of foreigners.
But this plumber wasn’t a foreigner.
He was an American with an American regional accent who thought the American election had turned out okay.
What do you call the irrational fear of an American, by an American?
Roger Scruton coined the term “oikophobia” (from the Greed oikos for “home”) to describe the fear of one’s fellow countrymen. 
And there seems to be rather a lot of it among the gentry liberals who make up America’s ruling class.
In fact, another piece on reacting to the election, by Tim Kreider in The Week, is titled "I love America. It's Americans I hate." Writes Kreider,
“The public is a swarm of hostile morons, I told her. You don't need to make them understand you; you just need to defeat them, or wait for them die. . . . A few of us are talking, after a couple drinks, about buying guns; if it comes to a fascist state or civil war, we figure, we don't want the red states to be the only ones armed.”
“A vote for Trump,” Kreider continues, “is kind of like a murder...”

Panicked migrants jumped into the water and tried to climb aboard an already packed rescue dinghy during a dramatic rescue by the Italian Coast Guard 30 miles off the Coast of Libya - northeast of Tripoli.
Eventually all the migrants were saved. 
A total of 800 migrants were saved in six operations off the coast of Libya involving the Italian Coast Guard and rescue ships run by two non-profit groups.
Comment: Melvyn Thomas 
They aren't being rescued, the Italians are providing a taxi service.
Sink the boats, 
Take the "refugees" back to Libya enough times and the flow will stop.