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George Zimmerman changed his name to Ben Ghazi so the media and Obama will never know who he is, will never mention his name again and will ignore anything ever happened.
After all what difference does it make.
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Now for some personal commentary regarding Detroit: "Detroit serves as a valuable lesson about what happens when greedy union leaders seek out sized and unsustainable pensions and pay benefits in order to curry favor with their members and incompetent and corrupt Democrat politicians ignore reality and curry favor by approving out sized public employee pensions as well.
Then, to make matters worse, we have blind corporate executives who lost sight of what their customers wanted believing they would buy anything the auto industry shoved down their throats.
Finally, we have national Democrat politicians who craved union campaign money so they passed legislation supporting union demands and auto executives caved thinking they could simply pass strike settlement costs along.
As unemployment grew and auto revenue declined, tax receipts shrank eroding the ability to sustain public services, crime increased and flight to the suburbs became common place.
Not much different than what is happening on a vastly larger scale to our nation.
Chronic unemployment, half the nation on food stamps, increased taxes and unrecorded inflation, a shrinking middle class, piles of Fed induced debt matched by Obama budget busting spending, arrogant legislation and rules and regulations that cripple our competitiveness and crush our freedoms.
And then there are those pesky scandals that keep appearing despite administration denials and efforts to ignore them based on the belief the public's attention span is their friend as are the news and media lackeys.
Detroit did not happen overnight. It takes years for the cumulative effect of stupidity to register but inevitably it will.
The same will happen to our nation if we continue along our current path. Pigeons always come home to roost and planes eventually soft land or crash.
Yes,Bernanke stopped the nation from going into a depression. Yes, he helped the market soar and home prices recover. The bill for his manipulation has not been presented. History suggests we should not place our faith in most politicians because they consistently betray us.
The icing on this half baked cake is our community organizer president who, for five years, has proven what a solid incompetent he is in virtually every aspect of the job - foreign and domestic.
When I think of Obama's vision for our nation I picture Samson in a barber's chair and guess who is the barber?"
---Common core is simply another way for progressives to sick their nose in the education tent! (See 1 below.)
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Several weeks ago, I reported on Israel's attack from the sea on Syria's storehouse of Russian armaments and I have not seen much about this in other journals etc.
About a year ago I suggested Israel had the capability of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and might do so in an unusual way with special elite forces on the ground launched from subs or other clandestine methods.
Never sell Israel short when it comes to their ability to attempt the difficult, using unique methods.
When you live in a high risk neighborhood traditional options are not always available.
If and when Israel attacks Iran I believe they will employ a multiple approach. (See 2 below.)
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Helen Thomas did not die - she both uglied away and rotted from within! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Everything You Wanted to Ask About Common Core, and More
By Ann Kane
North Carolina's Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest has written a set of over 200 questions challenging the state superintendent of public schools to explain in detail the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards -- before the State Board of Education's scheduled August 7-8 meeting.
Lt. Gov. Forest's bold approach to finding the underlying cause of the CCSS in his state no doubt will be answered with attacks, as speaking truth to power rarely results in transparency on the latter's part. By questioning authority, the Lt. Gov. is showing us how to resist the tyranny of the minority.
Dr. June Atkinson, NC Superintendent of Public Instruction, in a June 12 letter defending CCSS, has already begun a counterattack on why "a pause in the implementation of the Common Core" would be detrimental. She implies that the entire educational structure would fall apart and that such an action would lead "to not teach students how to read, write, speak, listen, and learn math such as adding, multiplying, dividing, subtracting, etc." To which Forest in #26 returns with "North Carolina did not use the CCSS standards until this past school year. Do you believe that we have not been teaching our students to read, write, speak, listen, and learn math for the past several decades?"
Then, this past Friday, the Department of Public Instruction returned another volley at the Lt. Gov. On his Facebook Forest writes, "DPI asked that I supply 10,000 pieces of paper so that they could answer my questions." He sent them the requested reams. DPI could be pulling all-nighters.
It doesn't appear that anyone checked out the ramifications of the CCSS before the state adopted them in 2010. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the standards on June 2, 2010, and North Carolina's SBE adopted them two days later. There was no legislative debate and no real public debate (there was a two-month window for public comments, but who knew?).
In his inquiry, Lt. Gov. Forest broaches the topic of international standards under the section entitled "Development of Standards" when he asks, "Who created the international standards to which the CCSS is benchmarked?" Maybe he knows the answer already, but he wants to see if the chief of schools knows it.
CCSS has been in the works officially at least since 2005, when the document Benchmarking for Success became the blueprint for comparing U.S. standards to international benchmarks. Achieve Inc., the same nonprofit that helped the National Governors Association create the CCSS, wrote this report because states' "policymakers lack a critical tool for moving forward -- international benchmarking."
In a chilling quote from a globalist who is head of "Indicators and Analysis Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's Directorate for Education," we read the ideology behind the rhetoric:
It is only through such benchmarking that countries can understand relative strengths and weaknesses of their education system and identify best practices and ways forward. The world is indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving of frailty and ignorant of custom or practice. Success will go to those individuals and countries which are swift to adapt, slow to complain, and open to change.
So tradition, custom, and practice must be thrown into the trash bin. The report is rife with language more appropriate to a socialist state than a republic. The opening statement in the report claims, "We are living in a world without borders." Really? Tell that to China and Finland, the two countries to whom education reformers constantly compare the U.S. Then the report goes on to offer five "Actions" which turn out to be exactly what we are experiencing today.
You can also read about the necessity of federal involvement and a blueprint of Race to the Top:
The federal government can play an enabling role as states engage in the critical but challenging work of international benchmarking. First, federal policymakers should offer funds to help underwrite the cost. As states reach important milestones on the way toward building internationally competitive education systems, the federal government should offer a range of tiered incentives to make the next stage of the journey easier, including increased flexibility in the use of federal funds and in meeting federal educational requirements and providing more resources to implement world-class educational best practices. Over the long term, the federal government will need to update laws to align national education policies with lessons learned from state benchmarking efforts and from federally funded research.
Here's proof that all those reformers pushing the CCSS, including both Democrats and Republicans -- thank you, Jeb Bush -- are lying when they say that the standards are state-based, state-led, and voluntary. According to Benchmarking for Success, the federal government plays an integral role in developing policies and laws that cause states to buckle under federal authority.
The federal government's intrusion into states' rights gives rise to the question of collection of student data in order to equalize learning outcomes. Detailed data on students would be necessary to an overreaching government to make all states uniform so that the U.S. as a whole can be compared to other countries. And so it is with CCSS. The Lt. Gov. brings up the question of data-mining and its implications on students' private information. He cites a speech given by the architect of the Common Core, David Coleman, at a Harvard forum, where "he specifically spells out how the College Board is partnering with the Obama campaign to data mine education databases[.]"
I had discovered this speech while researching Coleman for a blog post for American Thinker, and I transcribed most of Coleman's words because they were so revelatory. When I first found the video, there were only 7 views on YouTube. After clipping out three minutes, which show Coleman's deceptive practice of slipping CCSS under the radar into governors' laps and his remarks about Obama's data campaign, the video got wider viewership, and the lieutenant governor's office must have picked it up. I am happy I could play a part in getting essential information to someone who could use it.
Lt. Gov. Forest lays bare the trouble with the Common Core Standards in his lengthy questionnaire to the superintendent. We will have to wait and see if Dr. Atkinson sees the wisdom in reassessing the SBE's decision to adopt the standards, but from the initial snarky response of needing thousands of pieces of paper to print their answers on, it doesn't look promising. Lt. Gov. Forest should keep the pressure on and keep the citizens of North Carolina informed no matter the outcome.
Dan Forest's letter is a breath of fresh air. In fact, I would suggest that every state that has a problem with the Common Core use his set of questions as a benchmark and send it on to each of its chief state school officers.
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2)
Israel's alleged underwater attack on Syria should serve as a warning to Iran
By Tom Gross
The mullahs are said to be only weeks away from crossing Netanyahu's 'red line'
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An attack two weeks ago that destroyed an advanced Russian missile shipment delivered to Syria's Assad regime should also serve as a warning to Iran — and to those complacent Western diplomats who have (dangerously in my view) reconciled themselves to the idea of allowing Iran to go nuclear and then trying to contain it. For it seems that the July 5 attack on an arms depot near the Syrian naval base of Latakia, which has been attributed to Israel, came not from the air (as CNN and the New York Times reported last weekend) but from under the water.
Many Western officials who have apparently concluded that Israel could only destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air — and that Israel does not have the capability to carry out such long-range air strikes in a decisive way — should take note. In recent years, Israel has greatly advanced its sea-based capabilities, and the geographical range of operations that Israel can mount from the sea, I am reliably told, now spans the entire globe. Israeli submarines are no longer confining themselves to the Mediterranean.
Last Saturday, the United States appeared to confirm that Israel was behind the July 5 attack on 50 Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles in Latakia. Both the New York Times and CNN quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying the strike was carried out by Israel from the air. The state-of-the-art Yakhont missiles have a range of 300 kilometers and are considered to be among the best of their kind in the world — for example, they can evade radar by flying just above water surface. They were of significant concern to both the U.S. and Israel because their range and sophistication meant they could neutralize the ability of both nations' navies to patrol the region, and they could also complicate the ability of the U.S. or other states to enforce a future no-fly zone over Syria should they wish to implement one. Israel was also concerned that Syria would allow the missiles to fall into the hands of its arch enemy, the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah militia.
But on Sunday, a more intriguing scenario was raised when the (London) Sunday Times reported that the attack was not carried out from the air, but by precision-guided missiles fired from Israel's German-made Dolphin-class submarines. I am told by informed sources that this is a more likely scenario.
When asked in a CBS interview about reports of Israeli responsibility for the Latakia strike, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in line with Israel's long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying such actions, said, "Oh G0D, every time something happens in the Middle East, Israel is accused. I'm not in the habit of saying what we did or we didn't do. I'll tell you what my policy is: My policy is to prevent the transfer of dangerous weapons to Hezbollah and other terror groups. And we stand by that policy."
"The fact that the crisis in Syria is getting worse by the minute is the central consideration in my eyes," he added. "Syria is disintegrating, and the huge advanced weapons stockpiles are beginning to fall into the hands of different forces."
Even more alarming for Israel, however, is that Iran is said to be only weeks away from crossing Netanyahu's "red line" of possessing 250 kg of 20 percent enriched uranium — enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb.
Netanyahu told CBS that Iran was now just 60 kilograms short of crossing this line, and "they should understand that they're not going to be allowed to cross it." His assessment is in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency's report in May, which alleged that Iran possessed 182 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium.
Israel fears that the Iran situation is becoming critical at the exact same time when there has been a lowering of the sense of urgency among many Western officials. Many in the West have become distracted from the Iranian nuclear issue due to a focus on events in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, coupled with the election last month of the regime-approved Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president, whom Netanyahu called "a wolf in sheep's clothing." In Israel Rouhani is viewed as far more sly and dangerous than the outgoing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often embarrassed himself with outrageous statements about the Holocaust, homosexuals, and so on.
Israel believes that a nuclear Shia Islamic regime in Tehran will not only prove to be a threat to the entire region and beyond, but it will almost certainly result in nuclear proliferation among the Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia (who could simply buy a nuclear arsenal from fellow Sunni Pakistan) and Egypt, states which are liable to become far less stable in future. (Israel is believed to have had nuclear weapons for the last 50 years but it has never threatened to use them — or even acknowledged their existence — and it is only the specter of Iran gaining them that now so worries the Arab states.)
American and European diplomats I have spoken to recently seem to have concluded that America doesn't have the willingness to stop Iran from going nuclear, and Israel doesn't have the means.
They have not taken on board the full range of Israel's ability to attack Iranian nuclear installations. The Israeli air force has limited flight range while carrying heavy payloads, but submarines can place themselves much closer to Iranian nuclear installations. Iran has sonar capabilities, and has devoted considerable resources to confronting both surface and underwater naval threats, yet it remains vulnerable to both. It is much harder to track the movement of submarines than it is of aircraft.
Combine this with the sophisticated electronic measures Israel is known to have mastered, for example, the use of EMP (electromagnetic pulses) and malicious computer code introduced into critical infrastructure, and possible special forces operations launched remotely, and it appears Iran and the West have more than an Israeli air strike to consider.
An EMP of the kind Israel has developed, for example, can be emitted from installations the size of a suitcase smuggled into Iran by land and used to disable specific buildings or target specific offices — for example, the office of the Iranian defense minister, to make it impossible for him to communicate by phone or computer with the outside world for a period of time.
It is still not too late for the Iranian regime to stand down or for the West to ratchet up sanctions to make them do so. If Iran does back down it may be a result of a realization that Israeli capacity to attack and stop them is far greater than might at first be apparent.
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Longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas is being celebrated today as a trailblazer who showed the way for young female reporters and the avatar for tough-minded journalism. Thomas deserves great credit for making her way against the odds in a man’s world before becoming a fixture as the dean of the White House press corps and a leading member of the once-all male Gridiron Club. Doing so required grit, tenacity, and the kind of work ethic that enabled her to beat out many of her colleagues and win her a place among the elites of the Washington press corps. But even the most laudatory discussion of Thomas’s career must mention its end when she was forced to resign from her last post for an anti-Semitic outburst. In order to maintain the story line of Thomas as trailblazer, obituaries like the front-page article in today’s New York Times, and appreciations like the one in the Daily Beast by Eleanor Clift, must treat it as something that does not detract from her significance or an understandable expression of legitimate opinion that showed she didn’t care what others thought.
But an honest assessment of her legacy requires us to do more than make a token acknowledgement of the “get the hell out of Palestine” statement while lionizing her as a symbol of equal rights for women. Thomas’s prejudice was not a minor flaw. It was a symptom not only of her Jew-hatred but also of a style of journalism that was brutally partisan and confrontational. We want reporters to be tough and relentless in the pursuit of good stories and truth. Yet anyone who watched her use her perch in the front row in the White House press room as if it were a platform for political opposition to administrations whose policies she didn’t like must understand that, along with her symbolic importance, we must also give Thomas her share of the credit for the creation of an ugly spirit of partisanship that characterizes much of the press.
As for Thomas’s line about throwing the Jews out of Palestine, the attempts to soften its impact by her friends still fall flat. The reporter wasn’t talking about Jewish settlers in the West Bank. She was referring to all six million Israeli Jews who, she thought, ought to go back where they supposedly belonged, to Germany and Poland. We are supposed to give her a pass for that because she was either elderly at the time or because she was the child of Lebanese immigrants, who brought their prejudices against Jews with them. Though she subsequently attempted to weasel her way out of the dustup with a statement that expressed her wish for peace, it was clear that she thought such a peace ought to be based on Israel’s eradication. This wasn’t so much, as the Times wrote, an “offhand remark” as it reflected a deep-seated hatred for Israel and its Jewish population that had characterized much of her reporting and writing throughout her career. That her fans are willing to regard this as not germane to the main story about her achievements is to be expected. But let’s ask ourselves how her stature would be affected if her offhand remarks, even in her dotage, had been aimed at African-Americans, rather than Israelis? Rationalizing or minimizing her prejudices for the sake of preserving Thomas’s reputation is intellectually indefensible.
Many people grew to like Thomas specifically because of her unrelenting hostility to the George W. Bush administration and her open opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those stances are seen by some as either prescient or praiseworthy these days, but even if you shared her political position, it’s important to understand that her use of her front-row seat in the White House briefing room to promote those positions represented a disturbing breakdown in civility as well as the way the press views itself.
Thomas made no secret of the fact that she felt the mainstream press gave too much leeway to Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But her decision to fight her own war against the war on terror from inside the White House wasn’t quite the responsible position that many of her backers pretend it to be. Thomas’s point wasn’t so much based on skepticism about whether Saddam Hussein really did possess, as every Western intelligence agency thought he did, weapons of mass destruction as it was on the idea that Islamist terrorists and their allies had legitimate grievances against the United States and the West. In her view, American attempts to defend against these threats or Israeli efforts to protect their people against a bloody terrorist offensive were the real problems.
Moreover, as much as the press needs to always be on guard against a tendency to be played by the president (something that has been crystal clear during most of Barack Obama’s presidency, as much of the mainstream media served as his unpaid cheerleaders), Thomas illustrated the pitfalls of the opposite trend. At times, Thomas appeared to be acting as if she thought the role of the press was to be the mouthpiece for Bush’s detractors. In doing so, she undermined her own shaky credibility more than she cut the president down to size.
Journalists should recognize that Thomas helped paved the way for subsequent generations of women in the working press. But we should also understand that the negative lessons of her career are as instructive as the positive ones. Helen Thomas may have been a pathfinder for women, but her prejudices and poor judgment are textbook examples of how journalists should not behave.
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