Michigan public school official calls first American flag symbol of “exclusion and hate”

The coming dark age: The first American flag, the flag that Betsy Ross designed for George Washington in the Revolutionary War, now “symbolizes exclusion and hate,” according to a Michigan public school superintendent.

A Michigan public school superintendent wrote in a published “letter to the community” that students at a high school football game injected “hate” and “hostility” because they waved a historical Betsy Ross flag that has 13 stars to represent the original 13 colonies.

The students waved the flag at a Sept. 9 football game at Houseman Field between Forest Hills Central and Ottawa Hills. The students also brought a Donald Trump for President banner to the event.

The superintendent received a complaint from a parent and then published the letter which is dated Sept. 12. “And to wave a historical version of our flag, that to some symbolizes exclusion and hate, injects hostility and confusion to an event where no one intended to do so,” Forest Hills Public Schools Superintendent Daniel Behm wrote. Behm continued with an apology: “To our gracious hosts — the students, families, staff, and community of Grand Rapids Ottawa Hills High School and Grand Rapids Public Schools — and to the student-athletes, coaches, officials, and supporters of both teams, we are truly sorry. These actions are not characteristic of our schools, our staff, our students, or our community, and they represent a lack of knowledge.”

This is where modern academia and the racist left that dominates it is taking us. Any reference to American past history, any reference at all, is going to be considered a racist act, and must be censored, banned, silenced, and rewritten. It doesn’t matter that this flag had nothing to do with hate or exclusion, but was simply the flag of the United States in its war of independence from British rule (a war, by the way, that led to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the eventual end of slavery). It is an integral part of American history, and for young people to learn anything about that history must be prevented, at all costs.

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College students using coloring books to ease stress

The coming dark age: In an effort to help the modern college student deal with the stress of life — and the possibility that someone might express an opinion different from their own — universities nationwide are increasingly offering them coloring books as a relaxant.

There was once a time that students went to college eager to face life and its challenges. Now, they need help coping, and apparently are willing to use techniques formerly reserved for 5-year-olds

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Putin to revive the KGB

The coming dark age: One day after Putin’s party won an easy election victory it has announced that they plan on reviving the secret security force known previously as the KGB.

“The KGB was one of the strongest special services in the world – everyone recognised this,” Sergei Goncharov, who served in Russia’s now disbanded Alpha counter-terror unit in the 1990s, told state media. Mr Goncharov also said the creation of the MGB would provide Russia with a “strong fist” overseen by a unified leadership.

Kremlin critics were horrified by the possible rebirth of an organisation synonymous in Russia with political oppression. “It’s time to get out [of the country],” wrote Elshad Babaev, a Twitter user. “Anyone who can should take the opportunity.”

Unlike the 20th century, however, the west can no longer be called “the free world”, as it was then. Instead, we are lumbering toward the same evils, and thus do not necessarily provide a safe haven for real political refugees that we were then. Instead, our bankrupt intellectual leadership has been rushing to bring in fifth columnists from the Middle East while leaving the real refugees there to suffer persecution by Islamic radicals.

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Senior Bush to vote for Clinton

Why am I not surprised? Former President George H.W. Bush, the first Bush president, announced today that he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton for president.

Bush, 92, had intended to stay silent on the White House race between Clinton and Donald Trump, a sign in and of itself of his distaste for the GOP nominee. But his preference for the wife of his own successor, President Bill Clinton, nonetheless became known to a wider audience thanks to Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy. On Monday, Townsend posted a picture on her Facebook page shaking hands next to the former president and this caption: “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!”

All the Bushes have been closet Democrats since day one. All this does is confirm this fact for every Republican conservative nationwide. It will also allows Trump to cut them out of the power game should he win the presidency. I should also note that the Bushes are closely tied in with the congressional Republican leadership that has failed to fulfill any of their election promises since 2010, and have instead stabbed the voters who gave them a majority in the back, repeatedly. All this now becomes obvious.

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India army suffers largest terrorist attack in decade

Guess who: On Sunday seventeen India soldiers were killed by terrorists thought to come from a Islamic terror group based in Pakistan.

The Director General of Military Operations, Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, said the terrorists were foreigners and there are clear signs of the role of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose chief Masood Azhar is based in Pakistan. The group had been involved in the attack on Pathankot air base in January during which 7 army-men were killed.

An analysis of the situation can be read here.

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The powerless GOP

Obama is imposing an unprecedented number of new regulations in his final months in office, and the Republican leadership says it is helpless to do anything about it.

Data compiled by the Heritage Foundation found that the Obama administration issued 184 major rules during its first six years. The conservative organization, citing regulators’ estimates, says those could come with a price tag of almost $80 billion a year. The American Action Forum, which dubs itself as a “center-right” think tank, concludes that since Jan. 1 of this year, the administration has picked up the pace, finalizing 60 new rules and proposing 60 more at a potential cost of $16.5 billion next year alone.

Republican lawmakers and independent experts expect more to come. But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas told Roll Call that his party cannot do much because “the framers of the Constitution didn’t give us a lot of tools that didn’t involve a presidential signature to overturn them.” [emphasis mine]

Excuse me, Senator Cornyn, but the framers of the Constitution gave Congress all the power. All you have to do is read the Constitution, a document only 16 pages long (excluding amendments), to find out. One would think a sitting Senator might do that once in awhile.

The problem is that Congress for decades has abdicated its responsibilities to the bureaucratic wing of the executive branch, and in the recent years the Republican leadership has further chickened out when voters demanded that they take some of those responsibilities back. The Republicans could very easily shut the whole shebang down, which might finally force some compromise from the Democrats. Until they do, however, expect no compromise from the left, which keeps getting exactly what it wants.

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Feds mistakenly grant citizenship to more than 800 potentially dangerous immigrants

Does this make you feel safer? The federal government has mistakenly granted citizenship to more than 800 immigrants who for many reasons are considered security risks.

The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren’t caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases. DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.

The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth’s auditors said they were all from “special interest countries” — those that present a national security concern for the United States — or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. The report did not identify those countries.

As I’ve noted many times, the federal government is not only bankrupt, it is today totally incapable of doing any job right. We should stop depending on it for anything. And we should certainly shut the faucet of tax dollars we are presently pouring into it. The discussion should not be what is the right tax scheme is for providing funds to the federal government, but how quickly can we shut as many of its corrupt and incompetent agencies down and fire as many of its corrupt workers as possible.

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NY/NJ bomber arrested in shootout

Mohammed

The FBI today arrested in a shoot-out an Afghanistan-born suspect in the bombings this weekend in both Manhattan and New Jersey.

A bar owner in Linden, New Jersey called police around 11am Monday morning, after finding 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami sleeping in the entryway of his business. When police arrived on the scene, Rahami brandished a weapon and started shooting at the cops – injuring two. Officers eventually shot Rahami in the right shoulder and he was taken from the scene in an ambulance, handcuffed to a stretcher.

Police released Rahami’s picture Monday morning, saying he was wanted for questioning in connection to the Saturday bombings in New York City and Seaside Park, New Jersey, as well as the foiled bombing of the Elizabeth, New Jersey train station on Sunday. Law enforcement say it was fingerprints left behind on an unexploded pressure cooker bomb in Manhattan that led them to Rahami. Twenty-nine people were injured when another bomb placed a few blocks away was detonated Saturday night.

Now that Rahami is in custody, investigators are now looking into whether he acted alone or was perhaps working with or for a larger terror network.

There are several facts about this weekend’s bombings, which can also be applied to this weekend’s knife attacks by an Islamic radical in Minnesota, that are instructive. First, everyone’s first and immediate assumption, including myself, was that they were planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists. I didn’t publish anything to say so, because I do not like to speculate. I do admit, however, to the same human biases as everyone else. Second, that assumption turned out to a reasonable assumption, since it, not surprisingly, turned out to be correct. Three, even before the suspect was identified, ISIS and Islamic supporters worldwide were celebrating the bombings and boldly announcing that more such attacks will be forthcoming.

The point here is that we need to recognize that we are at war. The Islamic world wishes to conquer and destroy the western world, and if we do not begin to realize this soon, we will find ourselves soon conquered by them. And if you think I am over-reacting, watch this video at this link.Or this video here.

I am sure they will be those quislings who will argue that it is our fault this situation exists, but the bottom line remains: Do we wish to live as in a society that believes in freedom, science, justice, and equal rights, or do we wish to be conquered by a medieval power-centered ideology that oppresses its population while giving as much power as possible to its rulers?

The choice is ours.

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Federal agencies question establishment of SpaceX spaceport and three liquefied natural gas plants in Brownsville

Two federal agencies are questioning the safety of establishing three liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants near SpaceX’s new spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is reviewing the applications for the LNG export terminals, which plan to take natural gas from the Eagle Ford south of San Antonio, liquefy it and export the LNG to overseas customers.

The Federal Aviation Administration hosted an Aug. 18 meeting to discuss space launch activities near the proposed LNG facilities, according to a FERC filing released on Thursday. During the meeting, FAA officials discussed their role and regulations regarding commercial space launches, as well as the agency’s licensing and public safety requirements prior to the launch of any future mission.

While it makes perfect sense to keep a rocket launchpad safely away from large amounts of liquefied natural gas, I found the article’s concluding paragraphs to be most revealing:

Meanwhile, environmentalists, who were critical of the SpaceX project and oppose the LNG plants, said the launch site is too close to the proposed export terminals. “This announcement should be a wake-up call and warning that putting LNG terminals within six miles of the SpaceX launch site is a bad idea,” Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club Chair Jim Chapman told the Business Journal. “Furthermore, Annova LNG wants to put its facility within the SpaceX launch closure area. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that idea won’t fly.” [emphasis mine]

Note how the environmentalists are essentially against everything. They really aren’t opposed to having these two facilities being placed too close to each other, what they really want is that nothing gets built at all. Most instructive.

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A detailed look at the Russian elections today

Link here. The analysis is detailed and thoughtful, and gives some perspective about the state of power and control by the present leaders in Russia.

Four parties are expected to secure again their representation in the Duma: the ruling United Russia (UR), the Liberal-Democratic Russian party (LDPR), led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Just Russia, led by Sergei Mironov, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), led by Gennadi Zyuganov.[1] In contrast, the democratic opposition has fewer chances of being represented. The opposition Russian Democratic Party (“Yabloko”) and People’s Party of Freedom (RPR-PARNAS), cofounded by murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov (October 9, 1959-February 27, 2015), will contest the elections separately – a suicidal tactic that mathematically further reduces their already slim chances to enter the Duma and further reduces the credibility of Russian liberalism. The democratic opposition is represented in the elections by yet another independent nominee -Maria Baronova, running with the support of Open Russia movement, founded by former oil tycoon-turned-activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, residing out of Russia after his release from long term jail.

Bottom line: Putin will remain in power, no matter what happens in today’s elections. Nonetheless, the article is worth reading because it gives some sense of what might happen after Putin.

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Suspicious climate data manipulation at NASA

The uncertainty of modern climate science isn’t merely because of the overall complexity of the data and the climate. Though there are numerous factors that contribute to the long term fluctuations of the climate that we do not yet completely understand or can quantify with any precision (the sun, dust, soot, volcanoes, carbon dioxide increase, to name just a few), there is a more tragic uncertainty that global warming scientists at NASA and NOAA have added to the mix, one that is entirely unjustified and harmful to the field of science and the questions that it is trying to answer.

In the case of this post, that tragic uncertainty has to do with sea level rise and the “adjustments,” without explanation, that NASA is making to its sea level data. Below is a graph taken from the link, showing the changes that have been made to published data from 1982 in order to eliminate a long period of almost no sea level rise from the mid 1950s through 1980.
» Read more

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House votes ease rules for firing VA employees

The House today voted 310-116 to make it easier to fire or punish employees of the Veterans Administration.

Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.), the VA committee’s ranking Democrat, led an unsuccessful floor fight to soften the misconduct provisions, as the Republican majority defeated every substantive amendment. In the end, with Miller citing support from 18 prominent veteran groups, 69 Democrats joined the united Republican front to pass the bill convincingly.

It would shorten the process to fire, demote or hear the appeal of rank-and-file VA employees, from an average of more than a year to no more than 77 days. It also would end involvement of the Merit Systems Protection Board in such actions for VA senior executives; give the VA secretary authority to recoup bonuses and relocation expenses from employees who misbehave, or to reduce pensions of senior executives convicted of felonies that influenced their performance reports. Additionally whistleblowers would get new protections from reprisals and the bill would mandate strict accountability to supervisors or colleagues who would reprise against them, the VA committee explained.

This bill should become the model for changing the rules for all federal employees. Right now it is so difficult to clean house of corrupt or incompetent federal employees that there are even circumstances where they actually commit crimes and steal federal money and still hold onto their jobs.

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