Monday, December 8, 2014
SNL does remarkable imitation of Al Sharpton
Hot Air "It’s good to see that the ongoing protests and riots are at least helping somebody. Saturday Night Live apparently reached the point where even they couldn’t take any more of Al Sharpton’s endless appearances at rallies around the nation this weekend and set their own version of him up for an interview."
"This was interesting timing, since Sharpton has been coming under increasing scrutiny lately. His appearances in both Ferguson and Staten Island have had some conservative commenters wondering if he’s not actually adding to or inciting the violence we’re seeing. For at least some, this is reminiscent of another tragic story which took place in the early 90s during the Crown Heights riots. The fact that Sharpton played a role in that tragedy is not a matter of debate, and one which Sharpton admits without ever actually offering an apology, as described in this 2011 account."... More here
Profiling guidelines to be unveiled by the Obama administration
Politico "The Obama administration will Monday unveil its long-anticipated updates to its guidelines on racial profiling, tightening limits on the practice but still allowing federal law enforcement agencies to employ it at airports and along the border.
"The new rules replace guidelines created by the Bush administration in 2003, which banned racial profiling for federal law enforcement, but included broad exemptions for national security and border security. The Bush rules applied only to race, but the new policy also bans profiling on the basis of religion, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identification." ... Read more:
Replacing the ACA: What Women Want
By Grace-Marie Turner at The Galen Institute "Americans are angry about the manifest failure of Obamacare. Many have felt the impact directly, from the millions who lost their health plans after being promised they could keep them, to those facing sky-high deductibles and premiums, to those — including some in the midst of cancer treatments — who are losing access to their family doctors.
"But at the same time, Americans want insurance that is secure and covers treatments they need. They want the uninsured and those with preexisting conditions to have access to coverage, and they know costs are rising dramatically. They know a safety net is needed for those who lose coverage, particularly those undergoing treatments for serious diseases."...
"But at the same time, Americans want insurance that is secure and covers treatments they need. They want the uninsured and those with preexisting conditions to have access to coverage, and they know costs are rising dramatically. They know a safety net is needed for those who lose coverage, particularly those undergoing treatments for serious diseases."...
Alan Caruba: Protesting Law and Order
Warning Signs
Related:
... "The protests that occurred in the wake of grand jury decisions not to indict a police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or another group of police officers whose arrest of Eric Garner led to his death in Staten Island, New York are different only because they swiftly went from local to national. The initial Ferguson protests immediately descended into looting and arson. The Garner protests attracted large crowds that disrupted traffic and interfered with consumers in some shopping outlets. It seems to have gone unnoticed that large numbers of those in the latter protests were white." ...
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Most Americans See Race Relations Worsening Since Obama's Election
Bloomberg Politics "President Barack Obama had hoped his historic election would ease race relations, yet a majority of Americans, 53 percent, say the interactions between the white and black communities have deteriorated since he took office, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll. Those divisions are laid bare in the split reactions to the decisions by two grand juries not to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.
"Both times, protesters responded with outrage and politicians called for federal investigations. Yet Americans don’t think of the cases as a matched set of injustices, the poll found. A majority agreed with the Ferguson decision, while most objected to the conclusion in the Staten Island death, which was captured on video...
"Obama has also weighed in on the deaths of both Brown and Garner. And the Justice Department is reviewing the two incidents, as well. Yet Obama has not gone to Missouri or New York. ... “He should have gone to Ferguson and very bluntly said, ‘I don’t want any violence here. Let’s show people that we can accept verdicts we don’t like,’” he said. “The destruction just makes people more prejudice[d] than they already are.”
Sharyl Attkisson: Why I’m Suing the Justice Dept.: Its Unlawful Freedom of Info. Response
Sharyl Attkisson "On Nov. 19, I filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) lawsuit against the Department of Justice, which oversees the F.B.I.. For over a year, I had been pursuing public information that the F.B.I. holds—about me. Something any U.S. citizen has the right to do.
"The response I got was typical of the response federal agencies provide to FOI requests today.
"The F.B.I. first said it didn’t have any information that mentioned me.
I appealed, reiterating the information in my original request, which outlined a great deal of information that the F.B.I. is known to have regarding me (at the very least through my dealings with the F.B.I. as a reporter over more than 20 years)." ...
...
... "On his first day in office, President Obama said he was instructing federal agencies to err on the side of disclosure in answering Freedom of Information requests. The record under Clinton and Bush had been abysmal. Obama was promising unprecedented transparency. Only the most sensitive material, such as that which could directly harm national security, should be kept from the public that owns it."In reality, there is now a consensus among many journalists and open government groups that the Obama administration has been the least transparent in recent times, and the worst at properly responding to FOI requests." Via IOTWReport
NYPD cops warned militant group Black Guerrilla Family ‘preparing to shoot on-duty police officers’
NY Daily News "A tattooed gang of militants declared open season on the NYPD in the wake of the Eric Garner grand jury decision, according to a threat a police union verified Saturday.
"Ten Black Guerrilla Family members are “preparing to shoot on duty police officers,” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said.
"The gang, formed in the 1960s in the California prison system, recently surfaced on the East Coast and Maryland, where members are at the heart of a drug-trafficking and corruption probe within the Baltimore prison system.
"Members swear allegiance for life and sport “BGF” tattoos, as well as ink depicting a dragon surrounding a prison tower, according to gangs.org.
An Impassioned Defense of Law Enforcement Officers
Legal Insurrection "San Bernardino DA Takes Jon Stewart and the Daily Show to task."
"San Bernardino County district attorney Mike Ramos was recently watching television when he noticed Jon Stewart of the Daily Show reporting incorrect information about an incident in his county.
"Ramos took to YouTube and created a video in which he scolds Stewart and offers a powerful defense of law enforcement officers everywhere.
"Carman Tse of the LAist reported:
Video: San Bernardino D.A. Calls Out ‘The Daily Show’, Show Apologizes For ‘Sloppy’ Mistake"Watch the video. Ramos singles out the Daily Show but his message applies to the media at large.
Comedy Central’s news commentary show The Daily Show tweeted an apology to the San Bernardino district attorney after host Jon Stewart listed a Victorville man, who had previously died in an incident with a sheriff’s deputy, as another victim of police shootings in the United States.
On the Monday, December 1 episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart opened the show with a bit about the nationwide response to the events in Ferguson, Missouri. Stewart ran through a list of black men killed in police shootings across the country, listing Dante Parker, who was killed in a controversial incident with a San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputy in Victorville in August. Unlike the other victims Stewart listed, including 12-year old Tamir
BrownRice of Cleveland, Parker was not shot by police but actually died after being Tased.
"For his part, Jon Stewart said in a tweet Friday that he will apologize on Monday.
Last of Senate's Deep South Democrats defeated
AP " 'This victory happened because people in Louisiana voted for a government that serves us, that does not tell us what to do," Cassidy said in Baton Rouge, the state capital.
... "A few obvious questions: If white Southerners were really so enraged about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and if they switched to the Republican party to express their displeasure, then why did they wait 30 years before making that preference felt in House elections? Why did Dwight D. Eisenhower — a supporter of civil-rights legislation who insisted on the actual desegregation of the armed forces (as opposed to President Truman’s hypothetical desegregation) and federal agencies under his control — win a larger share of the Southern vote in 1956 than Barry Goldwater, the most important Republican critic of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did two cycles later?"
NY Times: Demise of the Southern Democrat Is Now Nearly Complete ..."It remains to be seen whether Republicans will continue to fare so well after Mr. Obama leaves the White House. Yet a Democratic rebound seems unlikely anytime soon. With Republicans now holding the advantage of incumbency, unless the region’s religiosity dims or the Democrats relent on their full-throated embrace of cultural liberalism, it may be theirs for a generation."
The Benghazi Report; An ongoing intelligence failure
Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn ... "But Boehner’s visit was not a social call. He was there to see three CIA officers who had fought in Benghazi, Libya. Their identities were unknown to all but a small group of U.S. government officials with high-level security clearances, and the details of their harrowing stories were unknown to virtually everyone who was not a colleague or relative.
"And the fact that the meeting was taking place at all was unknown to the man who, under different circumstances, might have been expected to host it. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was not invited.
Rogers was sick of Benghazi. Some of his Republican colleagues had spun themselves into a frenzy of conspiracy theorizing, publicly making wild claims that had no basis in fact or hinting at dark conspiracies that had the president of the United States willfully and eagerly arming its enemies. Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, long the Republican face of Benghazi investigations, accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of giving a “stand-down” order to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Representative Louie Gohmert claimed that Senator John McCain deserved some of the blame for Benghazi because McCain, like Barack Obama, had supported opposition forces in Libya. Normally responsible Republicans pretended that Hillary Clinton’s famous “what difference at this point does it make” line was not so much a tone-deaf question about how the attacks happened, which deserved the criticism it earned, but a declaration of indifference that the attacks happened, which was absurd. Rogers complained about these excesses regularly to his staff and colleagues.
"This frustration, however, wasn’t the reason Boehner and Nunes cut him out of the meeting with CIA officers. They shared his frustration, as it happened." Full article here.
Chuck Schumer Bails on ObamaCare
Bokbluster
"Chuck Schumer, the third ranking Senate Democrat, gave a speech trashing ObamaCare. He said it was a mistake to ram through health care reform when the main concern of voters was the economy. The uninsured were a small percentage of the electorate and most of them didn’t vote. ObamaCare meant middle class working people had to pay more for their insurance to subsidize the non-voting beneficiaries of ObamaCare. Schemer said that was politically stupid. As a result Democrats are now getting shellacked at the polls.
"The speech came as a shock to Progressives and the press but it’s something Schumer must have given a lot of thought to. As Dan Henninger said in the WSJ, “Let us count the times Sen. Chuck Schumer has blown himself up politically.
"That was a short count, wasn’t it?”
"The speech came as a shock to Progressives and the press but it’s something Schumer must have given a lot of thought to. As Dan Henninger said in the WSJ, “Let us count the times Sen. Chuck Schumer has blown himself up politically.
"That was a short count, wasn’t it?”
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