Tuesday, April 1, 2014

The Joke's on Us

Heritage
AprilFoolsOcare
 
"You can’t make this stuff up. On the health law’s pseudo-deadline day, following a huge push for people to visit the website, HealthCare.gov went down. Politico summed it up:
HealthCare.gov was down for six hours early Monday morning. Then it was up. Then it activated its “virtual waiting room.” Then it blocked newcomers trying to create accounts. Then it was working again…
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says Obamacare is having problems getting off the ground because “people are not educated on how to use the Internet.” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says Obamacare is a “political winner,” while “Saturday Night Live” lampoons the administration’s attempts to connect with young Americans through any celebrity and social network available." ....

Monday, March 31, 2014

The eyes are the window to the soul

Delta Airlines brings a fallen soldier home with honor


Hat tip to Janie Sanford, Santa Maria, CA

Christians should get more involved in politics?

Consider Again   "At the moment, the reputation of Christians in public life is disastrous. Religious people are often seen as fanatical fundamentalists, leading massive hate campaigns complete with picket signs and boycotts.

"This projection is not representative of most Christians. Yes, there are those who use religion as a weapon, perceiving a divine backing of their actions though they intend only to attack and insult."
....
"A Christian that engages in firestorm attacks, offensive insults, or unfounded accusations reflects poorly on the whole faith community. We have a duty to glorify God by striving to maintain kindness and understanding in all of our actions.

“ 'We need Christians in politics who believe in conversation and reasoned discourse,” Judge Ken Starr, president of Baylor University, told me in an interview. “What we don’t need, regardless of faith journey, is people who simply yell at one another or shout the other side down. To my mind, that’s not a very Christ-like attitude.' ”

Via Danny Huizinga at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook

Local couple upset after receiving pre-marked voter registration card from Covered California

ABC10 News  "LA MESA, Calif. - A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state's Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party.
The couple – who did not want their identity revealed – received the letter and voter registration card from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements President Obama's Affordable Care Act."

Covered California Confusion ... " Behind the statistics are the actual experiences of individuals and families who have applied for healthcare insurance through Covered California.  Their stories offer insight into the realities of the application process and also help explain why more Californians are not applying for healthcare coverage." ... 

Sunday, March 30, 2014

The miserable experience of a D-Day rehearsal

WW2 Today; March 30, 1944
Commandos, Britain's shock troops, practising assault tactics at the Combined Operations School at Dundonald Camp. Here they are landing from a dummy landing craft into a shallow pit filled with water so as to simulate a true amphibious landing.
 
"Commandos, Britain’s shock troops, practising assault tactics at the Combined Operations School at Dundonald Camp. Here they are landing from a dummy landing craft into a shallow pit filled with water so as to simulate a true amphibious landing."

Archaeologist at Treblinka Nazi death camp finds evidence of gas chambers

Jerusalem Post   "Documentary TV series "One is Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine" features tile with Star of David said to be affixed to chamber."  

 
" LOS ANGELES – An archaeologist featured on a TV documentary series unearthed what may be some of the only physical evidence of the gas chambers at the death camp.

"In the series "One is Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine" Caroline Sturdy Colls, a forensic archaeologist from Staffordshire University in the UK, uncovers new scientific evidence on the existence and mechanism of the death camp.

"While Auschwitz has become shorthand for the Holocaust and a pilgrimage site for more than a million visitors each year, very few pay homage to the victims at the other death factory, Treblinka.

"The reason is simple.

"The complex, 65 miles northeast of Warsaw, consisted of Treblinka I, primarily a forced labor camp, and Treblinka II, the site of the killing machine, closed in 1943 after 24 months of operation.

"During that timespan, its 10 gas chambers asphyxiated 900,000 men, women, and children. The grisly work done, the Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to erase every trace of the camp’s existence."....

BBC: Treblinka: Revealing the hidden graves of the Holocaust 
Map of Treblinka shown by investigations of Caroline Sturdy Colls
"When the Nazis left Treblinka in 1943 they thought they had destroyed it. They had knocked down the buildings and levelled the earth. They had built a farmhouse and installed a Ukrainian "farmer". They had planted trees, and - contemporary reports suggest - lupins.
"But if they thought they had removed all evidence of their crime, they hadn't. For a forensic archaeologist, there is a vast amount to study.
"The destruction of buildings rarely results in the complete removal of all traces of them. And even on the surface there are still artefacts and other subtle clues that point to the real purpose of the site." ...
 
 

 

A whole lotta Democrat corruption going on

pelosi1Michelle Malkin    "Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: Like the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what’s in it.) I’d love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi’s blink count must be off the charts.

"I’m going to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogue’s gallery reference list. But let’s not be naive. It’s clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI’s GOP corruption shoe will drop right before the elections for maximum distraction and damage. For now, let’s take stock of the jackassery:
....
"Remember: Nancy Pelosi famously promised to “drain the moral swamp” and end the “culture of corruption.” She cast herself and her minions as America’s political clean-up crew. But once again, the culture of corruption boomerang has swung back around to smack Democrats in their smug mugs.

"The cynical Swamp Drainers just hope you forget it all by election time. Don’t."
Limousine Liberal

International Women's Day -- why America's politically correct feminists dishonor human rights

Phyllis Chesler
 
"As a young bride, I once lived in a harem in Afghanistan. It was a nearly fatal adventure but I survived, escaped, and learned about gender and religious apartheid long before the Taliban.  My firebrand American feminism was probably forged in purdah in the early 1960s. However, something called me Eastward and I have remained involved with the Islamic world.

"Today, decades later, I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. They do not understand why Western feminists do not stand with them as they oppose normalized honor based violence, extreme state violence (think Iran, Saudi Arabia), and utter lawlessness when it comes to the torture and murder of girls and women.
....
"But feminists have been taken in by the false campaign against “Islamophobia,” (which does not really exist), and have backed President Obama’s approach to the Muslim world: Appeasement, flattery, a refusal to back the bravest Muslim dissidents who are fighting against barbaric totalitarian regimes, and a wholesale acceptance of Muslim women’s subordinate status in the United States."

Logical Fallacies to be avoided in argument

From Sense of Events

Purdue: Logical vocabulary, logical fallacies, and other types of logos-based reasoning.
"Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others."

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Republicans and Blacks

Thomas Sowell
 
"Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time -- and, above all, some serious thought -- into how to go about doing it.

"Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them. Some have even suggested that the channels to use are organizations like the NAACP and black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson -- that is, people tied irrevocably to the Democrats.

"Voters who want what the Democrats offer can get it from the Democrats. Why should they vote for Republicans who act like make-believe Democrats?

"Yet there are issues where Republicans have a big advantage over Democrats -- if they will use that advantage. But an advantage that you don't use might as well not exist." ... 

Distinguished person of the week

Jennifer Rubin
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican March 27, 2014. Despite differences on moral issues, Obama will find in Pope Francis a welcome ally on issues of poverty and social justice during their meeting. Obama has sparred with the Catholic Church hierarchy in the United States over his support for abortion rights, gay marriage and the "contraception mandate" that requires employers to provide health insurance cover for artificial birth control. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (VATICAN - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION)
 
... "President Obama went to the Holy See hoping some papal popularity would rub off on him. But Pope Francis’s humility and pious devotion to his flock aren’t transferable, especially to a president so hostile to religious liberty back home. The White House made it seem like a meeting the DNC — lots of talk of inequality, spun the White House. The Vatican press office was having none of it and issued the following (making it seem more like oral argument at the Hobby Lobby case):" ...