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Pot, meet Kettle: Obama, on vacation, berates GOP who went home for the holidays and 'abandoned less fortunate'

Dave Urbanski
The Blaze
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 06:02 UTC
obama vacation
© AP/Carolyn Kaster
President Barack Obama holds his shave ice as he exits Island Snow to greet people waiting outside, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2013.
While President Barack Obama continued what the New York Times called a "real and rare vacation in Hawaii," he used his Weekly Address to accuse Republicans in Congress of going home for the holidays while less-fortunate Americans suffer. (Bold added):

Just a few days after Christmas, more than one million of our fellow Americans lost a vital economic lifeline - the temporary insurance that helps folks make ends meet while they look for a job. Republicans in Congress went home for the holidays and let that lifeline expire. And for many of their constituents who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that decision will leave them with no income at all.
We make this promise to one another because it makes a difference to a mother who needs help feeding her kids while she's looking for work; to a father who needs help paying the rent while learning the skills to get a new and better job. And denying families that security is just plain cruel. We're a better country than that. We don't abandon our fellow Americans when times get tough - we keep the faith with them until they start that new job.
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Take 2

Why has Republican belief in evolution declined so much? (Hint: Political posturing to get votes)

David A. Graham
The Atlantic
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 13:43 UTC
Image
© Steve Pope/AP
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visits Kanzi, a 25-year-old Bonobo, at Great Ape Trust of Iowa in 2005.
There's been a drop of more than 10 points - to just 43 percent - in the last four years.

In November, Mischa Fisher took to this space to criticize the notion that Republicans are the anti-science party. Plenty of Democrats hold views that contradict empirically established facts, and Republican skepticism is overblown, he wrote.

And yet ...

The Pew Research Center released new numbers Monday on how Americans view evolution. (The question was asked in a way to include those who believe God or a supreme being guided the process.) About six in 10 accept it, the poll found, but the partisan divide is wide:
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Wolf

Abuse claims kept secret; allowed priest to minister and teach sex ed

Madeleine Baran
Minnesota Public Radio News
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 18:59 UTC
Image
© Jeffrey Thompson/MPR News
Harry Walsh wasn't included on a recent list of priests 'credibly accused' of sexual abuse. Church leaders knew his history, yet allowed him to continue working in parishes until the fall of 2011. Today Walsh teaches sex education to troubled teenagers and vulnerable adults in Wright Co., Minn.
When beloved priest Harry Walsh retired two years ago, parishioners of St. Henry's Catholic Church in Monticello, Minn., decorated a VFW hall with paper shamrocks and musical notes to say goodbye.

They sang, gave speeches and cried. Walsh, then 77, had served as the parish's music minister for nearly a decade.

"You developed close personal relationships with everybody and that gave us all the ability to trust you with all of our personal lives," one person wrote on a tribute website for the Irish-born priest. "You have blessed this community immeasurably."

But Walsh had a secret. He'd been accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl and 12-year-old altar boy decades earlier, according to church documents obtained by MPR News, and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis contributed to a financial settlement for the girl. Nonetheless, archbishops Harry Flynn and John Nienstedt allowed him to continue working in parishes until the fall of 2011. And neither bishop called police or warned the public.

More recently Walsh wasn't included on a list of 30 "credibly accused" priests released Dec. 5 by the archdiocese. Nienstedt said the disclosure of those names was important to restoring trust and could help protect children from harm.

- The list: Archdiocese names priests credibly accused of sexual abuse
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Airplane Paper

Islamic charity officials gave millions to al-Qaeda, U.S. says

Joby Warrick and Tik Root
Washington Post
Mon, 23 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
When Qatar's royal family was looking for advice on charitable giving, it turned to a well-regarded professor named Abd al-Rahman al-Nu'aymi. The 59-year-old educator had a stellar résumé that included extensive fundraising experience and years of work with international human rights groups.

But one apparent accomplishment was omitted from the list: According to U.S. officials, Nu'aymi also was working secretly as a financier for al-Qaeda, funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist group's affiliates in Syria and Iraq even as he led campaigns in Europe for greater freedoms for Muslims.

Nu'aymi was one of two men identified by Treasury Department officials last week as major financial backers of al-Qaeda and its regional chapters across the Middle East. Although U.S. officials routinely announce steps to disrupt terrorist financing networks, the individuals named in the latest case are far from ordinary. Both men have served as advisers to government-backed foundations in Qatar and have held high-profile positions with international human rights groups. The second man, a Yemeni, is heavily involved in his country's U.S.-backed political transition
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Light Saber

U.S.: The Founding Fathers rejected democracy

Harold Pease
Tenth Amendment Center
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Americanpatriot-vance.blogspot
The Founding Fathers universally rejected democracy and hoped that posterity would never turn the United States into one. The word they used was Republic, which is not synonymous with Democracy. The word Democracy is not in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is to the Republic for which it stands.

Benjamin Franklin defined democracy as two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. So why did they reject Democracy? Because it is inherently flawed with the share the wealth philosophy, which only works as long as there is someone else's money to share. Those receiving are quite pleased with getting something for nothing. But those forced to give are denied the right to spend the benefits of their own labor in their own self-interest, which creates jobs no matter how the money is spent. They also lose a portion of their incentive to produce.

Fraser Tyler, author of The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic authored more than 200 years ago said it best. A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
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Propaganda

Disinformation about French comedian Dieudonné's 'quenelle' gesture goes international

Scott Sayare
The New York Times
Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Meltybuzz.fr
No one seems to know just what is meant by the "quenelle," the vaguely menacing hand gesture invented and popularized by a French comedian widely criticized as anti-Semitic, but it is clearly nothing very nice, and it appears to be spreading.


Comment: The Opening sentence in this article is completely disingenuous. It is clear that the gesture means "Up Yours" and is directed at the ruling elite all over the world.


Fans of the performer, Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, send him photos of themselves performing the gesture in front of historic monuments, next to unwitting public officials, at weddings, under water and in high school class photographs, but also, increasingly, beside synagogues, Holocaust memorials and street signs displaying the word "Jew." At least one young man appears to have posed for a quenelle outside the grade school in Toulouse where, in 2012, four Jews were killed by a self-proclaimed operative of Al Qaeda.

Jewish leaders, antiracism groups and public officials have pointed out that the quenelle, which is also the name of a fish dumpling that is a regional French delicacy, strongly resembles a downward-facing Nazi salute. Mr. M'Bala M'Bala, who goes by Dieudonné, insists it is nothing more than an "antisystem" joke for his initiates, most of them young men, some from the disaffected immigrant suburbs, some from the xenophobic far right.

Comment: It's interesting to see how uniform criticism of Dieudonné is outside of France.

See the following articles for the real story, one that is not being reported by ANY mainstream media:

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala and the Quenellization of France

The Move to Muzzle Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala

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Snakes in Suits

America Is Fascist

Anthony Gregory
LewRockwell.com
Fri, 06 Sep 2013 00:00 UTC
bush salute
Five years ago, antiwar liberals calling the Bush administration fascist were labeled as kooks, marginalized by their own party leadership, accused by conservatives of treasonous thoughts worthy of federal punishment, even deportation. A few years pass, the policies hardly change, and the political dynamic turns upside down: T

Tea Party conservatives accusing the Obama regime of fascist impulses are compared to terrorists, accused of being racists, told that their hyperbole is a real threat to the country's security.

The establishment derides both groups for their fringe outlook on America, convinced that the United States is anything but a fascist country. After all, isn't America the nation that defeated fascism in the 1940s? Sensible conservatives and liberals agree with that.

The unappreciated reality is that when the patriot right and radical left refer to the U.S. system as fascistic, they have part of the truth but not the whole analysis. This is due to the blinders both sides wear as it concerns state power. Moreover, the criticisms sometimes fail to take account of America's very unique strain of fascism. This political program is distinct in every nation, always taking a different form but with some general themes in common. U.S. fascism is a most insidious mixture of the key ingredients while maintaining the necessary nuance to snooker the masses, the media, and the respectable folks across the spectrum.
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Sherlock

Secret court approves three more months of NSA phone snooping

Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Fri, 03 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
James Clapper
© AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
In this Oct. 29,2013 file photo, Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Obama administration will continue the National Security Agency's surveillance programs and cyber command operations under the direction of a single military commander, the first move in advance of what published reports described Friday as limited changes proposed by a task force that deliberated for months in secrecy.
The secret court that oversees the nation's intelligence activities renewed its approval of the National Security Agency's telephone-records program on Friday, granting the government a new three-month window to collect data on all Americans' phone calls.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office announced the court's ruling in a statement, though officials didn't make the ruling itself public, saying it was going through declassification procedures.

The decision marks the 36th time the program has been approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

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Cult

Ressurected? Church attendance increase in Ireland and elsewhere attributed to 'Pope Francis effect'

Sean Dunne
Irish Central
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 10:57 UTC
Image

All forgiven now?
Francis' popularity reviving Catholic Church in both Ireland and the U.S.

The popularity of Pope Francis continues to grow within the Catholic Church in Ireland and in America.

A survey conducted by The Irish Catholic this week found that the overwhelming majority of dioceses reported huge increases in the numbers Mass-goers over Christmas as the faithful returned.

Similarly, CNN recently reported that the new Pope is hugely popular in the United States.

This increase in congregations in Ireland has been credited to the people-friendly new pope, who has connected and re-engaged Catholic communities worldwide.

The trend in Ireland this Christmas was a more united family front, with large numbers attending church services across the country.

Comment: Apparently, firing Benedict and hiring Francis was a smart move for the Vatican.

All those pedophile priest scandals?

Just a distant memory now...

Catholic church in new sex abuse row

Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests'

Irish Catholic Church 'Covered Up' Sickening Catalogue of Child Abuse by Paedophile Priests

Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry

Unholy Lies: Vatican says number of sex abuse cases in church is small

Catholic Church sex abuse scandals around the world

Arrogant, corrupt, secretive - the Catholic church failed to tackle evil

Another Irish Bishop admits swearing oath of secrecy to cover up sexual abuse

Letters place Pope at centre of child abuse scandal

Catholic Church crumbling: Pope hit by abuse claims in Italian school

Pope dismisses 'petty gossip' of sexual abuse allegations

French priest avoids sex charges over claims he abused choirboy as Vatican struggles to contain paedophile crisis

Vatican Confirms Report of Sexual Abuse and Rape of Nuns by Priests in 23 Countries

Vienna Boys' Choir caught up in sex abuse scandals

Irish bishop resigns over Dublin sex-abuse scandal

Pope's Brother: I Ignored Physical Abuse Reports

Pedophilia in the Catholic Church: Coverup Operation at the Vatican?

1963 letter indicates Vatican knew of endemic abuse in US going back to the 1950s

Propaganda Spin: Vatican says pope target of 'hate' campaign

Institutional Immorality: Latest Pedophelia Scandal Rocks the Vatican

Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle

First Europe, then the US - now abuse claims sweep Latin America

Catholic church hotline in meltdown over paedophile priests

Church in Ireland 'has lost all its credibility', says Archbishop of Canterbury

Errant priests' secret children to sue church

Sex abuse victims hold demo at Vatican

Vatican Christmas Shocker! Pope says child rape isn't that bad, was normal back in his day

Let Him Prey: High-Ranking Jesuits Helped Keep Pedophile Priest Hidden

Special Report - Who knew what in U.S. priest child porn case?

Archbishop Covers for Archdiocese and Shredded List Reporting 35 Active Pedophile Priests

Victorian Catholic Church Reveals 620 Abuse Cases

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Snakes in Suits

47 U.S. senators side with Israel lobby against Iran - bought, sold and controlled!


Press TV
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 03:23 UTC
menendez
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has published the list of 47 US senators who have agreed to co-sponsor a bill to impose additional sanctions against Iran.

The sanctions bill, introduced by Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez on Dec. 19, initially had the backing of 24 other senators equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

The White House was quick to condemn the measure at the time, saying President Barack Obama would veto the bill "if it were to pass" Congress.

Senator Cory Booker, newly elected Democrat from New Jersey, quickly added his name to the list and since then, 20 other senators - all Republicans - have added their names, according Lobelog.com.
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