This 3200 Year Old Tree Is So Huge It’s Never Been Captured In A Single Image. Until Now.

Funky Pickens  “ 'The President” is one of those trees. The giant sequoia stands 247 feet tall, measures 45,000 cubic feet in volume, and is an estimated 3,200 years old."

....
"Absolutely incredible. To see how it was done, check out this video:"
 

 

Hat tip to Bill Smith; Rainier, Oregon

You had to know this was coming: White House says Obama only learned of VA wait-list scandal on TV

UK Daily Mail  "White House Press Secretary Jay Carney wound up with egg on his face Monday as he told reporters that President Barack Obama first learned from a TV news report that his Veterans Administration was denying medical care to vets with secret off-the-books-waiting lists.

 

"But new evidence emerged this morning that his transition team was notified five years ago about how VA medical centers' official wait-list times bore little resemblance to reality and risked denying military heroes critical health care." More...

 

Lessons of the VA Scandal; Lengthy wait times, bureaucratic abuse, rationed care: par for the course in government-run health care. 

... "According to VA figures for 2012, as reported by the Washington Post, “a veteran who takes an appeal through all available administrative steps faces an average wait of 1,598 days.” That’s more than four years of waiting.

"Obamacare will dramatically expand access to the health-care system at the same time that many surveys show doctors are likely to retire or cut back their hours. It is almost inevitable that we’ll see more waiting-list scandals as the need to ration care grows.
This is the record of many single-payer health-care systems, and both Obama and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have said that establishing a single-payer system is their long-term goal." ...

Alan Caruba; Too Much Gay Everything

Warning Signs

 

"I like to think of myself as a tolerant person. I have, however, one prejudice that is based on biology and history.

"Michael Sam, the first openly gay professional football prospect, made history when he was filmed by an ESPN crew giving his lover, Vito Cammisano, a long, lugubrious kiss to celebrate being selected in the National Football League draft on May 10^th.  The sight of two men kissing passionately was not something I and a lot of other folks wanted to see.

"A spokesman for GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, called the kiss “a significant milestone”, describing it as “touching.” No it wasn’t. It was nauseating to any heterosexual having to witness it or explain it to their children. " ... More...

Operation Tiger: D-Day's Disastrous Rehearsal



NPR   ... "When the whole affair was over, close to a thousand American troops were dead.

" 'It's a staggering figure," Milton says. "All the more staggering when you realize that more people were killed in the rehearsal for the landing at Utah Beach than were killed in the actual landing at Utah Beach." Utah Beach was one of the beaches in Normandy that Allied troops charged on D-Day." ...

April, 1944; 'Slapton Sands: The Cover-up That Never Was'   ... "For anybody who took even a short time to investigate, there clearly had been no cover-up other than the brief veil of secrecy raised to avoid compromise of D-Day. Yet, in at least one case -- WJLA-TV in Washington -- the news staff pursued its accusations of cover-up even after being informed by the Army's Public Affairs Office well before the first program aired about the various publications including the official histories that had told of the tragedy.

"Yet why, a long 43 years after the event, the sudden spate of news stories and accusations?
That had its beginnings in 1968 when a former British policeman, Kenneth Small, moved to a village just off Slapton Sands and bought and operated a small guest house. Recovering from a nervous breakdown, Mr. Small took long walks along the beach and began to find relics of war: unexpended cartridges, buttons and fragments" ...

Exercise Tiger Remembrance Service at Sea

Exercise Tiger was underway off the South Devon Coast ENGLAND on Friday 28th April 1944,The practice was in preparation of D-Day and being conducted in complete ...

 Exercise Tiger Remembered

Sonar cameras capture first high-res images of two American ships sunk in Operation Tiger D-Day attack that claimed 749 lives lying in pieces at bottom of English Channel

Video; LST 531 & Exercise Tiger practice for D Day (part 2)    "The stern section of the LST, all done on the same dive. Also included are the remains of the DUKW scattered across the seabed."

 

 

 

AFA: 7 common careers Christians may no longer hold in America

FSU Linebacker: Y’all praise Michael Sam for being gay but y’all mocked Tim Tebow for being a Christian.

 

American Family Association     "Many Christians choose self-employed careers because they want to be able to run their business according to the dictates of their faith and conscience.

"That list is quickly shrinking as homosexuals pro-actively seek opportunities to wreck the personal business and career of any Christian who declines to support the gay lifestyle.

"Don't be fooled. This is a focused effort to ostracize and humiliate faith-based businesses and their owners. Here are a few recent examples:

• Photography - A Christian photographer in New Mexico was fined $6700 for politely declining to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony. The Supreme Court allowed this fine to stand.
• Baker - A Christian baker in Oregon is facing both civil and criminal penalties, including jail time, for politely declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding ceremony. Her business has closed.
• Florist - Baronelle Stutzman, a Christian florist in Washington, is being sued by the state attorney general for politely declining to prepare an arrangement for a gay wedding ceremony.
• Broadcasting - Craig James was fired by Fox Sports Southwest after only one day on the job for expressing his support for natural marriage while he was a candidate for the United States Senate.
• Counseling - Jennifer Keeton was dismissed from the counseling program at Augusta State University for her religious reservations about the homosexual lifestyle.
• Innkeeping - The Wildflower Inn in Vermont was fined $30,000 and forced to shut down its wedding reception business after politely declining to host a lesbian ceremony.
• Teaching - Ms. Gillian John-Charles was kicked out of a doctoral program in education at Roosevelt University for expressing in class her belief that homosexuals aren't born gay.

Hat tip to Terry Lowry.com

The Huffington Post took note of this article   "Wildmon's remarks echo those of his American Family Association co-hort Bryan Fischer, who recently claimed that Christians should "reclaim discrimination" against the LGBT community.
" 'There are times when discrimination is the right thing to do," Fischer, who compared the gay community to shoplifters, said at the time. "It is right to discriminate against people who engage in aberrant sexual behavior. We should discriminate against people like that."

In taking note of the AFA article, the HuffPo makes no attempt to address each of the examples given nor does it discuss each point made by the AFA.

This administration and the voters who elected them - TWICE -are an embarrassment to so many of us

Adolescent president shows his stuff   "Barack Obama shimmied across the Shake Shack counter following lunch with Joe Biden on Friday. Whitehouse.gov posted an official picture of the impromptu show on its website. Check out his adoring fans in the front row.

 

"After six years, we know Mr. and Mrs. Obama love sticking it to the United States of America. While Barack was sliding his backside all over the counter, Michelle was in Kansas delivering another race speech to 1,200 graduating high school seniors. According to the first African-American First Lady, the nation is as racist as ever. “Today, by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were back when Dr. King gave his final speech,” she said.

 

"Could we have a more immature and pandering first couple than these two?"

 

 

For Michelle Obama, world is black and white — but skin deep  "She talks about it often, incessantly, even, injecting race and racism into speeches and events in which they have no business. And she did so again on Friday, when she traveled to Topeka, Kansas, to deliver a speech to graduating high school seniors."  More...

“ 'It’s our first African-American president, something that many people involved in Brown didn’t think they would live to see,” Cheryl Brown Henderson said in an interview with The New York Times, calling the visit “a manifestation of what they worked for.' ”

True, but how sad that of so many African-Americans in this country with governing abilities, we had to elect a couple who will leave a path of destruction in their wake. 
Case in point:

President Obama and US Embassies ignore Armed Forces Day, but honored 'International Day Against Homophobia Or Transphobia' yesterday

Transphobia?*

"My friends said it was a day commemorating gay pride day, but none of the other embassies were flying the gay flag with their own country’s flags, just the American Embassy did"

The Soviet president vs. the Petulant Juvenile president   ... "Clearly, Vladimir Putin and his comrades want a resurgent Russia restored to power, prestige, and influence.  They want to be supreme in their sphere and to play a superpower role in the world.

" 'Against them we have a secretary of state, John Kerry, who fecklessly bleats about the Russians being on “the wrong side of history.”  And we have other high administration officials who scold the Russians, saying their seizure of Crimea is not in keeping with the enlightened standards of the twenty-first century. " ... 

I do recall pictures of the Soviet flag at pro-Obama rallies, don't you?

*I'm more concerned over Christophobia  

He KNEW! Obama told of Veterans Affairs health care debacle as far back as 2008

"And the President is madder than hell."   "The President is madder than hell about something, but from the tone that McDonogh is taking, it sounds like it’s because he’s being distracted from golfing his many other important duties."

Washington Times   "How exhausting. That means he's been mad as hell all this time". says Lucianne

President Barack Obama autographs a banner while visiting a wounded service member at Walter

 Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., June 28, 2012.

 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

"The Obama administration received clear notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care — problems that have turned into a growing scandal.

"Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting."  More...

Free speech on campus, the marketplace of ideas.

Bokbluster

 

... "In April Brandeis University cancelled altogether its offer of an honorary doctorate for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She writes and speaks about real religious liberty and the real war on women in Muslim countries. She’s also a critic of Islam itself. Condoleeza Rice was driven away from her Rutgers University speech by unhinged faculty members and their poorly informed students accusing her of war crimes. IMF boss Christine Legarde was also disinvited from her speaking engagement at Smith University.

"I’m not equating disinviting Legarde, Rice, or Ali to disinviting Satan. I’m equating academics to nuts.

"In a column about the lack of due process in college, Thomas Sowell discusses “free speech” zones on campus:" Read more...

When free speech is harassed on college campuses   "Three weeks ago, a California professor was ambling across her campus when she saw a teenager holding up a political sign she didn't like. What happened next reveals a larger problem: the steady assault on free speech at universities." ...

When Campus Intolerance Means Free Speech Gets Torn Up and Run Over, Literally

 

"Being offended is what happens when you have your deepest beliefs challenged. And if you make it through four years of college without having your deepest beliefs challenged, you should demand your money back.

"I have been saying that line in speeches on campus for more than a decade. Even though it often gets a laugh, the idea that students have an overarching “right not to be offended” seems more entrenched on campus than ever."....

Krauthammer: The sound and the fury — and the tweet

Charles Krauthammer  ... " If you do, as in the case of the Obama administration watching Russia’s slow-motion dismemberment of Ukraine, it’s simply embarrassing when the State Department spokeswoman tweets the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine.

... "That is nothing but preening, a visual recapitulation of her boss’s rhetorical fatuousness when he sternly warns that if the rape of this U.S. friend continues, we are prepared to consider standing together with the “international community” to decry such indecorous behavior — or some such.

"When a superpower, with multiple means at its disposal, reverts to rhetorical emptiness and hashtag activism, it has betrayed both its impotence and indifference. But if you’re an individual citizen without power, if you lack access to media, drones or special forces, then hashtagging your solidarity with the aggrieved is a fine gesture and perhaps even more.

#BringBackOurGirls and the Left’s Empty Moral Outrage

Bruce S. Thornton   "The outrage over the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by the Nigerian jihadist gang Boko Haram reeks of Western hypocrisy and moral idiocy. Boko Haram has for years been slaughtering Christians – up to 2500 this year alone – and burning churches in a classic Islamic jihad against infidels. These depredations apparently weren’t enough to get the group designated a terrorist organization by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. But this indifference to what under international law is a genocide has been indulged as well by our celebrities and the mainstream media, who rarely mention that the group is specifically targeting Christians, and before the girls were kidnapped displayed little interest in the suffering of those Christians. So why this sudden attention?" ...
...
..."Just forget that none of the tweeting and “outrage” will do anything to get those girls back and punish the perpetrators. But they will distract us for a bit from one of the worst records of foreign policy failure in American history."

 

The Narcissistic Creed; When preening replaces thinking, our ability to engage in responsible self-government is diminished.

 

... "As the socialist blogger Fredrik deBoer put it:

Online liberalism, as I’ve said many times, is not actually a series of political beliefs and alliances but instead a set of social cues that are adopted to demonstrate one’s class background — economic class, certainly, but more cultural class, the various linguistic and consumptive signals that assure those around you that you’re the right kind of person and which appear to be the only thing that America’s 20-something progressives really care about anymore. ...

Breathtaking Stupidity from the Liberal Press

Hope n' Change

 

"Just when you think that liberal "journalists" can't grow any more biased or offensive, along comes someone like The Daily Beast's Eleanor Clift ...

"Clift, while discussing Benghazi on a Sunday news talk program, angrily said "I would like to point out that Ambassador Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke-inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation!"

"... And you know the thousands of people who died in the World Trade Center? Presumably Clift believes that they weren't murdered by terrorists either - they all just happened to die of natural causes like fire, falling, and being inside collapsing buildings...

 

"Or maybe she'd like to argue that during the Holocaust, the death camp victims weren't murdered by anyone - they just happened to die because of cyanide gas inhalation." ...

...

“New Hitler ads on Metrobuses stir up controversy”

Pamela Geller   "The picture of Hitler shows him meeting with an anti-Jewish Islamic leader during World War II. Pamela Geller heads the group who bought the ads, and assures that their goal is not to be provocative. “My intent is leapfrog over a media that is not even-handed, that is advancing the propaganda against the Jewish state,” says Pamela. "

 

... "The ads will stay on 20 buses for four weeks. CAIR says it is considering the possibility of a response ad, and is offering free copies of the Quran in response."