California Assemblywoman Calls for Audit of Planned Parenthood

by Douglas V. Gibbs

Melissa Melendez was my first endorsement when I ran for city council in Murrieta back in 2010.  Now, she's a veteran member of the California State Assembly, and one of the few good conservatives that works in Sacramento.  She began her climb to Sacramento as a member of the Lake Elsinore City Council, and now as an assemblywoman, she represents the cities of Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake, Murrieta, Menifee, Wildomar and a portion of Hemet.

As a Republican, Melendez represents a minority opinion in Sacramento, but she has proven that she is one to hammer away as necessary when her principles call her to.  In light of the videos that have emerged about how Planned Parenthood has been in the body part business, selling on a black market human tissue and organs from aborted babies, Melendez has officially requested to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee a state audit of Planned Parenthood.

The plan is for the audit to focus on Planned Parenthood’s financial stake in the body part black market.

“Planned Parenthood is running its own body part chop shop,” Melendez said. “The taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for this illegal activity.”

Independent video footage has revealed that Planned Parenthood, in violation of federal law, has engaged in the sale of human tissue from aborted babies.  The illegal profits made off of human tissue from an abortion procedure, represents a plain financial motive that violates the Hippocratic Oath.

“Planned Parenthood is subsidized with millions of taxpayers’ dollars each year, and should be held accountable and defunded for involving the California taxpayers in their black market human tissue schemes,” said Melendez.

Click Here To View A Copy Of The Official Audit Request

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Melendez Calls for Full State Audit of Planned Parenthood - Assembly GOP Melissa Melendez

The Strange Resiliency Of Sea Ice

by JASmius



Why can't we all just admit and agree that political climatologists don't know the first thing about climatology?:

Using new satellite data, researchers at University College London reported in Nature Geoscience on Monday that the total volume of sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere was well above average in the autumn of 2013, traditionally the end of the annual melt season, after an unusually cool summer when temperatures dropped to levels not seen since the 1990s.

“We now know it can recover by a significant amount if the melting season is cut short,” said the study’s lead author Rachel Tilling, a researcher who studies satellite observations of the Arctic. “The sea ice might be a little more resilient than we thought.”

Perhaps that's because you people keep expecting it to all flash into steam at the first cloud break.  Either than or you keep confusing sea ice with butter.

A steady decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice since the late 1970s has been....

....opportunistically....

....taken as a barometer of longer-term warming trends in the Northern hemisphere.

Just as harsher than "normal" winters in the mid-1970s were taken as a barometer that Earth was transforming into the Breen homeworld.  Boy, it turns out that climatology is hard, huh?

The U.S. Navy last year [was ordered to predict] that by 2030 the Arctic’s northern sea route could be ice-free and navigable for nine weeks every year.

And believe it or not, that was a moderate forecast, as Al Gore, if you'll recall, predicted that the Arctic polar cap would be gone entirely by two years ago - you know, when it had grown by approximately fifty percent.

Miss Tilling and her colleagues used new data....

They used data?  Non-cherry-picked?  Boy, if they keep doing wild, extreme, climate-denying things like that, they run the risk of becoming actual scientists.

....from the European Space Agency’s Cryosat-2 radar satellite, launched in 2010. For the first time, they measured changes in the overall volume of seasonal sea ice across the Arctic and Greenland. Until now, researchers have been able to track the extent of ice, but not its thickness.

In 2013, summer temperatures were about 5% cooler than the previous year and the volume of autumn ice jumped 41%, they said. [emphasis added]

Yeah, what the hell, if all else fails, conduct some measurements.  Who knows?  It just might work.

Exit question: All snark aside, is there any climatic Chicken Little prediction that has ever come remotely close to coming true?  The late-1970s anthropogenic ice age never  happened. Anthropogenic overpopulation didn't cause us all to starve to death in the 1980s.  Anthropogenic natural resource shortages never materialized in the 1990s.  We're still waiting on Ted Danza's prediction that "anthropogenic pollution" would kill everything in the oceans in the same decade.  And now the polar ice caps (plural) that were supposed to have vanished years ago turn out to be vastly more "resilient" than political climatologists wanted to believe, which is corroborated by the fact that some of them are being forced, wailing, kicking, screaming, and teeth-gnashing, to publicly admit it.

And aren't these some of the same people who deny that Islamic jihadism is Islamic?

Deny THAT, bitches.

Hard Starboard Radio: Yep, Hillary Clinton Has Gone Senile

The Boy Scouts of America's dismal new future; Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 found?; Is the GOP willing to risk a government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood?; Planned Parenthood Cannibalism IV: Trains, Brains & "Adjustments"; Hillary Clinton corruption & scandal updates; Is Big Labor about to pull the plug on Hillary?; House passes real VA reform. How do we know? Obama's gonna veto it; Obama's Iranian whistle-blowers; ObamaCare non-profit co-ops....drowning in red ink; Hillary Clinton email scandal rapidly boiling over; Obama is hiding unclassified Iran documents; and Hillary Clinton really is going senile.

But, hey, some Tea Partiers want to nominate Donald Trump, so she doesn't have the market cornered on lunacy by any means on Open Thighs Friday at 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific.

Yep, Hillary Clinton Has Gone Senile

by JASmius



Inside of forty-eight hours after stumbling into calling for the criminal investigation of the entire abortion industry, she's now whiplashed back to harvesting baby organs on her campaign plane:

Hillary Clinton 

✔@HillaryClinton

Proud to stand w/Planned Parenthood & for access to quality, affordable healthcare for women, men & young people. -H https://twitter.com/mayaharris_/status/626909449538539520 …

5:21 PM - 30 Jul 2015

•  
 
•  1,4041,404 Retweets
 
•  2,5612,561 favorites

The fact that her campaign is crammed to bursting with abortion industry denizens, including the daughter of Planned Parenthood Fuhrer Cecile Richards (Doesn't it seem odd that such a monster would have allowed her own offspring to live?), had absolutely nothing to do with this tweet, I'm sure.

Once again we see why this woman is never going to be president and still might not even be the 2016 Democrat nominee.  Practically every element of her incompetence as a candidate is on display in this episode: impulsive thoughtlessness, pathetic lying, transparent phoniness, plaintive weakness.  But even that doesn't capture the scope and magnitude of this blunder.  Let's put it in a way that nobody can fail to grasp: Hillary Clinton has managed to alienate feminist voters.  Your "Now I've seen everything" item of the day.

Until tomorrow, that is.

BTW, who says that Planned Parenthood "healthcare" is "quality" or "affordable"?  I interpret the former as meaning they have a close to 100% baby-killing rate, and the latter as "selling dead babies helps keep our prices down".  Has Mrs. Clinton ever used PP herself?

Which segues adequately to this story on the health of the elderly once and never queen:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Friday released details of her health records and planned to publish her recent tax returns to emphasize, aides said, her desire to be transparent with voters.

[Mrs.] Clinton, sixty-eight, “is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States,” said internist Lisa Bardack in a letter released by the campaign dated July 28th.

I translate that as meaning, "Mrs. Clinton will be dead by next Tuesday".

I hope she knows where the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic is, just in case.

Obama Hiding Unclassified Iran Documents

by JASmius



Whaffor?  Was he too lazy to have them classified?  We already know why he's hiding them, after all:

The Daily Beast reports a cache of eighteen documents is sitting in Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facilities (SCIFs) in the U.S. Capitol complex. Seventeen of the documents, however, are unclassified — which raises the question of why they are being stored in containers normally reserved for classified information.

Because O doesn't want Congress or the public to see them, because they may contain even more outrageous betrayals than even we suspect.  Duh.

The administration gave the eighteen documents to Congress on July 19th, and the legislative body is now tasked with reviewing them before it either approves or denies the landmark deal.

After which, in the highly unlikely event of the latter, it will therefore impose anyway.

The seventeen unclassified documents, however, do require a security clearance to view, reports the Daily Beast.

The arrangement of placing classified and unclassified documents together has confused lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill.

Also doubtless part of the White House's intent.

"The unclassified items … should be public. This is going to be the most important foreign policy decision that this Congress will make," a Republican Senate aide told the Daily Beast. "This is the administration that once said it would be the most transparent administration in history. They're not acting like it."

And undoubtedly with good reason, from their point of view.

Said another senior Republican congressional staffer, "Many in Congress view the administration's tactic of co-mingling unclassified documents with classified documents and requiring congressional staffers to have secret clearances just to view certain unclassified documents as an attempt by the administration to limit open debate."

No!  The hell you say!  They'd NEVER do anything like THAT!  Why, an administration like that would might do anything!  Like betray Israel via a secret U.S.-Iranian military alliance, or ship the mullahs our nuclear arsenal, or formally establish Shiite Islam as our national religion as Obama's first post-coup de tat royal decree.  Good thing all of that is beyond the realm of possibility, huh?

In other words, those eighteen documents don't concern us.  We don't need to see or read them.  They're none of our business.

Trust Obama.

Hey, "we" elected him twice, didn't we?

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Rapidly Boiling Over

by JASmius



Four classified emails on the Empress's private email server became five and now have exploded into hundreds, as Congress was "warned" today:

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.

The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.

Gee, ya think?

A U.S. official directly familiar with the notification, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the notification of possibly hundreds of additional emails with classified secrets came from the State Department Freedom of Information Act office to the Office of Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence. …

“We were informed by State FOIA officials that there are potentially hundreds of classified emails within the thirty thousand provided for former Secretary Clinton”....

Which is roughly half of the overall total number, recall, the rest having been preemptively wiped because she didn't deem it necessary for anybody else to read them.

DNI Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III late last week wrote Senator Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican; Senator Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat; Representative Devin Nunes, California-22 Republican; and Representative Adam B. Schiff, California-28 Democrat.

“We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked and transmitted via a secure server,” Mr. McCullough wrote the four lawmakers.

Like they need to be told that tens of thousands of emails all going through a private, unsecured server are going to have copious amounts of classified information and documents flowing through it "in the clear".  I realize that the IGs in their official capacity can only speak to the evidence they have at hand, but we all know that there were thousands of classified emails exposed in this fashion, not just hundreds, over a period of four years.  And it's only coming to light now, two and a half years after that.  That magnitude of national security damage cannot be "contained"; it cannot be imagined.  It's incalculable.

Think of it like this: Here's Hoover Dam.....



....and here's a spoon with which to put back the water.

But this wouldn't be a Hillary Clinton scandal if it couldn't still get even worse:

Hillary Clinton’s private lawyer has a thumb drive containing classified information from as many as five U.S. intelligence agencies — but the State Department told POLITICO the law firm is taking “appropriate measures” to secure the files. [emphasis added]

Note the present tense.  And that her long-time shyster is trusted with classified information on a small external storage device that anybody would walk away with, which he cannot possibly have full security clearance to have in his possession.  Not unlike how she conducted all her Libya intelligence gathering through Sidney Blumenthal instead of the CIA.  When you hear the tinfoil hatters and Fox Mulders and Alvin Kurtzweils talk about "the secret/shadow government," they're talking about La Clinton Nostra.

The agency declined to detail steps made to protect the sensitive information in attorney David Kendall’s possession....

Which means none have been or are being taken.

....but the issue is raising concern among Republicans on Capitol Hill who’ve criticized [Mrs.] Clinton’s handling of the email controversy. The thumb drive has copies of emails [Mrs.] Clinton kept on a private server while she served as secretary of state, a trove now known to contain classified documents.

The agency told POLITICO that [Mrs.] Clinton “does have counsel with clearance.” Kendall, a prominent Williams & Connolly attorney who defended former CIA director David Petraeus against charges of mishandling classified information, declined to comment. …

For which he was criminally investigated and ruined, which will never happen to her majesty.

“The thumb drive is secure,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the Democrat front-runner’s presidential campaign, referring questions to State. [emphasis added]

Which is also lying and stonewalling with all their might.  And how do we know that thumb drive is secure?  Because Hillary Clinton says so.  Trust her.  Just like she's assured us that her private server never had classified material on it at all, and then that the classified information she said her server didn't have that it did wasn't classified at the time it was on it, which, as I explained the other day, could only be the case if it was declassified, sent "in the clear", and then reclassified after the fact for no other purpose except to enable Mrs. Clinton to "truthfully" say that "My private server had no classified information on it".  Because she couldn't truthfully say that it "has" no classified information on it because she already had it wiped months ago.

And did I neglect to mention that every aspect of this entire caper is against the law?  Law which will never touch Her Nib, because she levitates serenely above it.

But her presidential dream?  That's another story.  And its denial will, for her, be a fate worse than any imprisonment.

Exit question: After the 2016 election, can we prosecute and jail her big, fat ass then?

Naugles Returns

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Perhaps this won't mean much to our readers that are not in Southern California, but for us down here in the land of heat, droughts, illegals, and Hollywood liberals, the return of Naugles is great news.

My last memory of Naugles was in 1985, when on the way to the USS Chandler DDG-996 berthed down in San Diego, of which I was a crewmember, after a beach-going weekend with family in Corona, I grabbed a Strawberry Shake from the Naugles in Lake Elsinore.  The strawberries in the shakes by Naugles were so numerous and beefy, that you had to toss the straw and lid and drink the shake in a shake-mustache-inducing style from the top of the cup.  Otherwise, the chunks of strawberries would get stuck in the straw.  The cup of beans with their red sauce and cheese on top, the tacos, the burgers, the burritos. . . it was all quite awesome.

My Navy career wound up keeping me away from the Inland Empire for the next few years, until I bought a home in Murrieta in 1989.  By then, Naugles was gone, for the most part.  The more than 200 franchises of the restaurant that had been birthed in Riverside were gone, merged into Del Taco in 1988, and within seven years, the last of the Naugles restaurants were gone.  And as Del Taco lost its original pizzazz, removing the slice of tomato they used to put on top of their tostada, for example, the longing for Naugles increased for the nostalgic natives of the area.  Naugles became a legend, in some ways, a lost remnant of a more glorious past when the quality of fast food in the Inland Empire was at its height.

Del Taco held on to the trademark of the name, a part of a woman's scorn against Don Naugle.  Don took his recipes up north and resurrected Pup-N-Taco.  The years passed.  The Naugles location in Corona on Main Street is now a Persian Restaurant.  A few other locations remain as Del Taco.  The unique blend of tastes that Naugles offered, we thought, was lost to Southern California, forever.

Fans, however, can be pesky critters.  One of the biggest fans of the lost tastes of Naugles has been a gentleman by the name of Christian Ziebarth, a web developer that has recreated the flavors through years of tinkering, holding Naugles food parties to test the flavors.

Ziebarth decided making the food for friends was not enough, so he leaped some legal hurdles, eventually taking his battle for the trademark to court, where he won.  The judge determined the Naugles trademark had lapsed, and Del Taco had lost control of it.  With that win, Ziebarth leaped into action, reviving Naugles at a new standalone spot in Fountain Valley.

Naugles is up and running at 18471 Mt. Langley in Fountain Valley, and though Ziebarth has indicated there will be only one location, I guarantee it won't be long before we see more than 200 Naugles locations in Southern California again.

The menu has been recreated, with the famous bean and cheese burritos, hard and soft-shelled tacos, cups of beans, tostadas, and so forth ready for you to order, and devour.  I need to visit this new Naugles myself to see if he recreated the shakes the way they are supposed to be, too; you know, with the big chunks of strawberries.

It's a great story.  An underdog story.  And through Ziebarth's hard work, we all get to enjoy the tastes of Naugles, once again.

Sometimes, nostalgia pays off.  In the case of Ziebarth, it also shows what one person can do, despite the odds, if he is willing to fight long enough, and hard enough.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Long Dead Mexican Food Franchise, Naugles, Reopens Today in Fountain Valley - L.A. Eater

Will Tim Tebow Fly Like an Eagle?

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The Philadelphia Eagles picked up Tim Tebow.  Folks say he can throw the ball better.  Others say he will play a myriad of roles on the team.  Eagles Linebacker Brandon Graham says Tebow will not only make the team, but will contribute a lot.

In the article Tebow is described as "the most polarizing Eagle."

Is it because of the questions regarding his talent?  Or is it because Tebow has been criticized for being an outspoken Christian?

I've always thought that Tebow has a lot to bring to any team, because he is positive, hard working, and encouraging.  Talent, or not, he's a positive influence in a locker room.

We'll see how he works out in Philadelphia.

Personally, I think he needs to give up on his quarterback schtick, and become a Full Back.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Baby Parts

By Douglas V. Gibbs

When I wrote my book on abortion, Silenced Screams: Abortion in a Virtuous Society, I mentioned the reality of abortion doctors tearing the babies into pieces as they pull the little bodies out of the womb, and about how some of these doctors save parts of the babies as trophies.  One abortion clinic worker finally left the clinic when she discovered the doctor saved the feet of the aborted babies in a jar.  She later became a pro-life warrior.

But I never imagined, when I wrote the book, that we would see the emergence of the horrors of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts like criminals selling goods on a black market.

The abortionists claim that these unborn babies are not persons.

My four-year-old granddaughter, Alexya, saw a rubber model of a 10-week-old unborn child on my desk, and she said to me, "Look, Grandpa, a baby."

Even a little child understands the truth that an unborn baby, no matter how small it is, is a baby.

And now, to hide their crimes against humanity, the pro-abortionists are going after the folks that made the video that revealed the "baby parts" controversy. . . legally.  And leftist judges are complying with the sick baby killers.

Judge blocks group from releasing more Planned Parenthood videos...

Abortionists joke about dead fetus...

President: We will not be defeated by extremists...

VP SAYS FETUSES MAY COME OUT INTACT, AGREES PAYMENTS SPECIFIC TO THE SPECIMEN...

Abortion provider received $100 million from USAID after lobbying Clinton's State Department...

Groups plan nationwide protests...

Website 'Hack' PR Stunt?

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

ObamaCare Nonprofit Co-Ops....Drowning In Red Ink

by JASmius



Of course they are.  And you know what THAT means: Here come the federal bailouts!:

Nonprofit co-ops – ObamaCare's alternative to big insurers – are bleeding red ink, with many falling far short of their sign-up goals, according to a government watchdog audit.

Under the healthcare reform law, taxpayers provided $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going, but only one out of twenty-three – in Maine – made money last year, the report finds.

The audit by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office also found thirteen of the twenty-three were far behind 2014 enrollment projections.

"The low enrollments and net losses might limit the ability of some co-ops to repay startup and solvency loans, and to remain viable and sustainable," according to the audit.

Kentucky’s co-op, which is faring the worst, lost about $50 million; on enrollment, Arizona’s co-op signed up just 869 people, compared to a goal of about 24,000....

Oh, come on, falling 96.4% short of one's goal isn't THAT bad.....

Iowa and Nebraska’s co-op was shut down in February because of financial problems, and Louisiana’s co-op announced this week it wouldn't offer coverage next year.

I'd quote the Obama Regime's lame attempt to spin this latest debacle, but why bother, since we've heard the same BS countless times before?  Suffice it to say, this helps explain why the White House is essentially abolishing the inspector-general function throughout the federal government.  Can't have the American people finding out that his majesty's little socialized medicine hobby horses are death-spiraling down the fiscal drain even faster than their private health insurance carrier prey, now can we?

Obama's Iranian Whistle-Blowers

by JASmius



Throughout the farcical, perfidious, circle-jerk Iran nuclear weapons "negotiations," it was a consistent dynamic that if we wanted to find out what was REALLY going on in them, all we had to do was listen to or read the statements of Iranian Imperial officials, because since they were getting everything they wanted and more, they had much less incentive to lie and bluster about anything, while the Obama Regime, which was giving away a lot more than just the proverbial store and pretty much capitulating across the board and beyond, had a great deal to conceal from the American people and a Congress which had itself already given up its Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 treaty ratification power three months ago and consequently lacked any real power to block any "deal".

Clearly that dynamic isn't going away now that the "deal" is done:

An Iranian official says that the Obama administration is making ambiguous claims about the nuclear deal in an effort to alleviate the concerns that members of Congress may have about the agreement, Iran's state-controlled media is reporting.

Hamid Baeidinejad, who is the director general for Political Affairs at the Iranian Foreign Ministry and one of the negotiators for Iran, said in an interview on state-controlled radio that all the rhetoric Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. government officials are using to sell the deal to lawmakers is "aimed at domestic consumption," the Fars News Agency reported.

"The remarks by the western officials are ambiguous comments which are merely uttered for domestic use and therefore we should say that there is no ambiguity in this (nuclear) agreement," Baeidinejad said.

He added that the claims are being made by the administration officials to "calm opponents in the Congress and Zionist lobbies to soothe the internal conditions prevailing over debates on the nuclear agreement in that country," the Washington Free Beacon is reporting.

I don't want to pay the mullahs any compliments by any means, but is there any syllable of Baeidinejad's comments that isn't absolutely, 100% on-target?  And does that not speak to their overflowing confidence bordering on justifiable arrogance not just that they blew us out in this "deal" but shut us out as well?  And that they have grown so contemptuous of us that they don't fear their indiscretion will trigger a backlash in our country that, if it did arise, they also have full confidence that The One would brutally crush it?

While O is trying to defraud Congress and the American people on his pro-Iranian treachery, the mullahs have moved on, and are certainly accelerating their plans for regional conquest and nuclear war against Israel, Europe, and the U.S.  I would expect those plans to launch as early as next fall, depending upon the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.  Indeed, that's one more pretext for the anticipated Obama coup de tat.

And if you're wondering where that process is at any time between now and then, go to the Fars News Agency website, because you're never going to get a straight, truthful answer out of the White House or the American media.

Unusual Illegality

Instructor: Douglas V. Gibbs

In the 8th Amendment, the clause says that no "unusual punishments" shall be "inflicted." What, however, is the definition of an unusual punishment?

The key is to understand the word "unusual." Today's politicians have decided that term means "unacceptable," but that is not necessarily the case in this clause. Based on the debates in Madison's Notes of the Federal Convention in 1787, and the State Ratification Convention debates, the meaning was intended to be more along the lines of uniformity. In other words, if the usual punishment for a particular crime is ten years imprisonment, then the punishments for all persons regarding that crime should be fairly consistent. However, if a person comes along and then suddenly gets 20 years for the same crime, that would be considered an unusual punishment.

The uniformity concept is a common one in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers believed that preferential treatment of citizens of the United States was not a good thing. There should be no protected groups, or laws that provide preferential treatment.

Understanding that preferential treatment was not something the Founding Fathers found favor in, what do you think they would think of some of today's laws, or governmental practices? Would they approve of affirmative action? What about politicians exempting themselves from laws, such as Obamacare? Do you think they would agree with the lawsuits brought against businesses who refuse, on religious grounds, to perform certain services such as bake a "gay cake," while homosexual bakeries are not prosecuted for refusing to bake a "Christian Cake?" What would the founders think about the preferential treatment Muslims receive because those administering the law are too afraid to offend Islam? Do all lives matter? Or only black lives?

The 8th Amendment is one of three amendments we will be discussing tonight in the Temecula Constitution Class at 6:30 pm. Join us tonight for the conversation.

Temecula Constitution Class
Thursdays at 6:30 pm
Faith Armory
41669 Winchester Road
Temecula, CA 92590

House Passes Real VA Reform. How Do We Know? Obama's Going To Veto It

by JASmius



Because unionized public sector employees' jobs and salaries and benefits and pensions are more important than veterans' health and very lives:

The VA Accountability Act of 2015 passed Tuesday largely along party lines by a vote of 256-170, however, it did have some Democrat support, the Washington Post is reporting.

The bill was authored by House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller. The Florida-1 Republican said that it will allow the VA secretary "to remove or demote any employee for poor performance or misconduct."

"At-will" employment, in essence, just like the private sector.

However, prior to the vote, the White House released a statement saying that it would veto the measure if it makes it to Barack Obama's desk, the Military Times reported.

"The bill could have a significant impact on the VA's ability to retain and recruit qualified professionals and may result in a loss of qualified and capable staff to other government agencies or the private sector," the statement said.

A retarded statement, indeed, because "qualified professionals" would, one would like to presume, not produce "poor performance or misconduct," or they wouldn't be "qualified professionals".  Unless the term "qualified professionals" means something else entirely to the White House and the VA than it does to, you know, normal people.

Which, of course, it does.  Namely, "Players of smart-phone Tetris for fifty bucks an hour while courageous wounded American warriors wither and die on the bureaucratic vine by the thousands like they deserve to".

The Republicans think the bill is necessary because there has not been an increase in firings after the scandal that hit, in which VA patients allegedly died while their names were put on fake wait lists. [emphasis added]

Something that obviously nobody was supposed to notice, and which Chairman Miller and his committee majority did.  Hence, Obama's veto threat.  You can see it in the Democrats' flat-footed reaction:

During debates on the measure, which had no support from Democrats on the House VA committee, the Post says that Miller pointed out several times that Obama and the Democrats supported similar rules that allowed only VA senior officials to be fired in the last VA reform bill, which the president signed in 2014.

Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, told the Post that "We are amazed that this bill, which mirrors last year's Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, is only now causing alarm within the administration."

It didn't last year for two reasons: (1) The VA scandal was still front-page news back then and hadn't blown over yet; and (2) "We've changed the secretary, we've changed the rules, we've given them a tremendous amount more money" was just window dressing that was never going to affect the real, core problem, which is that the VA is government-run, single-payer socialized medicine.  Sword-falling and money-throwing is how Congress usually "fixes" things, and then makes the problems worse so that they can throw even more money and create even bigger bureaucracies and so on.  The VA Accountability Act of 2015 still doesn't do what actually needs to be done - privatize the VA - but it is clearly a step in the right direction, judging by the Dems' reflexive, lock-step opposition to it.

It will obviously not become law....for now.  It'll almost certainly be filibustered to death in the Senate before it can even reach Obama's desk to be vetoed.  But it does line the VA scandal up nicely on the 2016 issue table as "Why do the Democrats hate veterans and want them to die?" - if, of course, the GOP recognizes the plumb opportunity.

Hard Starboard Radio: "Let It Burn" vs "United We Stand, Combined, We Kick Butt"

ObamaCare is accelerating healthcare spending; Yet another anti-Boehner House "coup"?; Tom Brady tried to cover up "Deflate-gate"; Is Hillary Clinton going senile?; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey commits career suicide; Donald Trump endorses amnesty (again); The Boy Scouts of America's dismal new future; Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 found?; Is the GOP willing to risk a government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood?; Planned Parenthood Cannibalism IV: Trains, Brains & "Adjustments"; Hillary Clinton corruption & scandal updates; Is Big Labor about to pull the plug on Hillary?; and which psychological path should defeated conservatives take - Heath Ledger's Joker or Douglas V. Gibbs?

At what point does "pessimism" become realism at 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific.

Big Labor Poised To Defect From Hillary Clinton

by JASmius



Four weeks ago we reported how the Big Labor rank & file were chafing in the Hillary Trap and noisily yearning to break free and flock to the socialist banner of "Weekend Bernie" Sanders, but the national labor leadership were forcibly holding them back.  Five days ago we reported how that grassroots pressure has escalated on the national labor leadership to the point where even they are stalling on issuing the expectedly obligatory endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Now the two sides of this Big Labor civil war are about to have it out once and for all:

I spent yesterday staking out the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland, where the leaders of the fifty-six unions that make up the federation are gathering behind closed doors to mull a possible endorsement in the Democrat presidential primary. Sanders got an hour to make his pitch Wednesday; [Mrs.] Clinton will get an hour this afternoon. Then the union chiefs, who represent 12.5 million workers, will debate privately over what to do. Two-thirds of them need to sign onto any endorsement. That could be difficult at this stage in the nominating fight, especially with Sanders looking as strong as he does right now.

Top political operatives inside organized labor – already reeling from long-term declines in membership – do not want to lose even more juice by backing the quixotic bid of a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont. But others lower in the ranks, and those who have worked closely with Sanders over his twenty-five years in Congress, are more concerned about ideological purity than anything else. [emphasis added]

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?  The differences being (1) neither Rodham nor Sanders is electable next November after eight years of Obama- a quarter-century of Clinton- fatigue, whereas we have a candidate (Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker) who actually can win; and (2) Sanders actually is an ideologically "pure" leftist, especially compared to Mrs. Clinton, whereas the candidate most Tea Partiers are backing - Donald Trump - is a Democrat in Pachyderm clothing.

At any rate, it should be entertaining to watch, no matter which way the fur flies.  If the Big Labor high command forces Hillary on the rank & file, we can watch their enthusiasm plummet, and if the latter forces Weekend Bernie on the the former - or the first option happens and a large chunk of the labor movement secedes and joins Senator Sanders anyway - then one of the Dems' biggest electoral assets will be functionally neutralized.

Maybe.  That's something so politically suicidal it seems something only the Tea Party would do.  But maybe the same purity fetishism that has bedeviled the Right over the past few years has jumped the "aisle" and will start burning through the Left as well.

We can only hope, pray, and have the popcorn and frosty beverages ready to go.


UPDATE: Um, if Mrs. Clinton's intent and goal was to have the proletarians leaping to their feet, pumping their fists, and shouting her name loud enough to rattle the rafters, I don't think this weaksauce is going to be enough:

Hillary Clinton on Thursday offered some support for a proposal in the Senate that would raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour, hinting that the higher rate sought by labor unions doesn't have enough support.

Congressional Democrat leaders have backed legislation sponsored by Washington Senator Patty Murray that would increase the rate to $12 an hour by 2020, which is several dollars less than the $15 backed by labor and [pro]-poverty [extrem]ists.

Big Labor, like the rest of the Nutroots, doesn't want to hear about political reality or any other reason why Her Nib can't deliver them what they want.  They want what they want, period, and any candidate who doesn't reflexively bark, "[Gender honorific], yes, [Gender honorific]!" is going to leave town buried in tar and feathers.  And they were highly inclined to do that to the old puffgut anyway.

Of course, if she'd told them what they wanted to hear, they wouldn't have believed her anyway.  But it might have at least bought her some time.  At this point, she needs every edge she can get.

Hillary Clinton Corruption/Scandal Update

by JASmius



First, another incestuous triangle between then-Commissar Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and yet another big, rich bank:

A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts....

If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.

Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement — an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.

First came the quid; then came the pro quo:

From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according the foundation and the bank.

The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.

The Wall Street Journal goes toadyingly out of its way to emphasize that there is no direct evidence of a mutual back-scratching arrangement.  But then when has La Clinton Nostra ever been so sloppy as to leave that obvious a trail of bread crumbs to follow, other than Mr. Bill's pecker tracks on Monica Lewinsky's dress?  They're consummate professionals at covering up their criminal racketeering and providing themselves with as many layers of separation as necessary to keep themselves out of the slammer.  UBS wouldn't be any different.

As continues to be the case, the risk for the Clinton Crime Family isn't legal or criminal, it's political.  Sure, the UBS case for a corrupt quid pro quo is "purely" circumstantial, but it is parsecs from being an isolated instance, but part of a well-established pattern.  Sixty grand in total contributions increasing tenfold plus seven-figure speaking fees for Sick Willie ever since after Her Nib did the Swiss Bank a huge favor in her official capacity as "pure coincidence" is an awful lot for even a low-information voter to swallow.  It simply contributes to the solidifying, across-the-ideological-spectrum public perception of Hillary as being corrupt, dishonest, and money-grubbing.  Which, combined with all her other political handicaps, does not bode well for her even winning the Democrat nomination, much less the forty-fifth presidency itself.

Meanwhile, the Ugly Dutchess's "I neither sent nor received any classified email information in my entire four year tenure at State" howler continues to disintegrate:

Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter.

The public Benghazi email contained information from the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a spy agency that maps and tracks satellite imagery, according to the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The other four classified emails contained information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, the official said.

No single one of these stories would ever be enough to derail Mrs. Clinton.  But the constant drip, drip, drip, drip is steadily, inexorably eroding her electability day by day by day.

What is it Charles Xavier said in the final scene of X-Men Days Of Future Past?:

Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripples, and you change the tide.

Planned Parenthood Cannibalism IV: Trains, Brains & "Adjustments"

by JASmius



Maybe we should start calling this film franchise the PPVU - "Planned Parenthood Vivisection Universe":

New undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ Vice President and Medical Director, Dr. Savita Ginde, negotiating a fetal body parts deal, agreeing multiple times to illicit pricing per body part harvested, and suggesting ways to avoid legal consequences.

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) is a wealthy, multi-state Planned Parenthood affiliate that [slaughters over ten thousand babies] per year. PPRM has a contract to supply aborted fetal tissue to Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

In the video, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Ginde at the abortion-clinic headquarters of PPRM in Denver to discuss a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs. When the actors request intact fetal specimens, Ginde reveals that in PPRM’s abortion practice, “Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then we are intact.”

Since PPRM does not use digoxin or other feticide in its second trimester procedures, any intact deliveries before an abortion are potentially born-alive infants under federal law (1 USC 8).

“We’d have to do a little bit of training with the providers or something to make sure that they don’t crush” fetal organs during second trimester abortions, says Ginde, brainstorming ways to ensure the abortion doctors at PPRM provide usable fetal organs.

Apologies if the dissection scene turns your stomachs, but....actually I do not apologize, because this is what abortion is all about.  This is what abortion is....



...."The same organization that insists it only removes 'clumps of cells' has its technician pushing a fetal brain around the pie plate, while pointing out the child’s kidneys, adrenal glands, stomach, heart, and eyeballs."

This is why the defunding effort is worthwhile.  The Democrats must be forced to defend this barbarity head-on, and not allowed to continue to hide behind the lies and propaganda euphemisms behind which they've smugly and self-righteously cowered for decades.  They must be given no choice but to own the ocean of blood and guts through which they stubbornly continue to wade up to their armpits.  And if a majority of Americans are fine with that and vote that way next November, then we'll have all the confirmation we need that American culture is ripe and overdue for an avalanche of divine judgment.

And if not?  Then, perhaps and perchance, it's the butchers of Planned Parenthood whose metaphorical brains, kidneys, adrenal glands, stomachs, hearts, and eyeballs will be splattered all across the fruitless plain.

God willing.


UPDATE: Well, whaddaya know?  The Dems are in a panic because they don't know what to do:

The videos, produced by the [pro-life] nonprofit and self-described “citizen journalist” project Center for Medical Progress (CMP), have put Planned Parenthood on the defensive — and the Democrat candidates for president, too. For Democrats, the push against Planned Parenthood is eerily reminiscent of a debate their party started to lose nearly twenty years ago, when abortion opponents used the politics of revulsion to sway public opinion on....partial-birth abortion.

In other words, the CMP videos have given pro-lifers plenty of gross-out pull quotes, leaving Democrats in the presidential race struggling to respond. …

But ask a Democrat candidate about the videos, and answers are less than forthcoming.

They've always been "less than forthcoming," because the "politics of revulsion" and "gross-out quotes" are the truth.  Look at that pic above again - that's what abortion is, and these CMP videos prove that PP knows it every bit as much as we do, and heartily approves of every last dismembered corpse and drop of shed blood.  No wonder Dems are left going "humina-humina-humina".

As Dave Weigel chronicles, the Left's read Hillary's "the entire abortion industry should be investigated" gaffe the same way I did:

[Mrs.] Clinton’s “disturbing” comment, made in an interview with New Hampshire’s Union Leader, landed poorly. It did not matter that Planned Parenthood’s CEO Cecile Richards had apologized for the conversations in the video sting. The Democrat frontrunner, seemingly, had been forced into a defensive crouch. “She needs to clarify what her [point of view] is, and articulate it strongly and without apology,” former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt told MSNBC’s Irin Carmon. “I just think that when candidates get to the firing line of a campaign they get thrown off balance and waffle.” …

Conservative news sites, spotting an opportunity, have repeatedly asked the Democrat presidential candidates to talk about the videos. None have been willing to defend the videos’ contents.

Because none - and especially not the Empress - can.  Miss Feldt demands that she "strongly and without apology" defend that pile of gore depicted above, but if Mrs. Clinton did that, she would be kissing goodbye all but a very small fraction of the electorate, and even a large portion of Democrats.  "None have been willing to defend the videos' contents" because they are indefensible.  Nor can they be spun.  The truth, the reality of abortion can neither be obfuscated, hidden, camouflaged behind distractions and coy euphemisms when that truth is wetly and inescapably plopped before the entire country.

That's why the best the baby-killers have been able to do is try and directly censor any more CMP videos from coming out - itself a rather indiscrete indicator of what we already know they really think of freedom of speech and of the press - at which, by the way, they are not having much, if any, success.

The CMP vids are like hammering a nail into a wall.  Each successive vid is like each successive hammerblow - and Planned Parenhood is most definitely getting nailed.  And who knows?  Maybe this is the Götterdämmerung of the abortion movement itself.

If it isn't, there will never be one.

GOP Willing To Risk Government Shutdown To Defund Planned Parenthood?

by JASmius



Eh, maybe.  They were willing to do so a couple of years ago over ObamaCare defunding, at least for a while, and Planned Parenthood's illegal cannibalism has stirred up enough public disgust and outrage and sufficiently aroused the GOP grassroots that Boehner and McConnell will have to make some sort of at least token effort.

But it will still be the next episode of Failure Theater:

As controversy surrounding the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood continues to swirl, congressional Republicans are vowing to defund the group even if it forces a government shutdown, Politico reported.

On Wednesday, eighteen House Republicans told the leadership that they "cannot and will not support any funding resolution … that contains any funding for Planned Parenthood."

If that number were 218, we could rest easy.  But surely there must be thirty RINOs who will break the other way to keep the Planned Parenthood gravy train intact, right?

And social conservatives like Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama have said they would potentially introduce a rider to the spending bill that would eliminate the group's $528 million public funding.

"This is one of those line-in-the-sand type of issues," South Carolina-5 GOP Representative Mick Mulvaney told Politico. "Every time we say we don't want to spend money on something, the answer is it will provoke a shutdown." 

In the Senate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz is leading the charge, saying next week's Senate roll call to defund the group is a "legislative show vote" and he plans to do everything possible to force the issue, not barring a government shutdown.

All our troops are certainly saying the right things and making very good and valid points:

Sessions said Republicans "don't need to take no for an answer" after Democrats reject the provisions to defund it next week.

"Congress doesn't have to fund any program it doesn't think is justified. How does it get to be that a minority of the Democrats can dictate that a majority party has to fund programs it doesn't believe in?" Sessions said, according to Politico. "We don't need to go at it halfheartedly."

That's a question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves for a very long time, Senator.  And the answer is always the same: Whether in the majority or the minority, the Democrats run the country, and Republicans are powerless to stop them.  Period.

Largely because of the RINO mindset:

Republican lawmakers can forget about defunding Planned Parenthood for now — because it will never happen with a Democrat president in the White House, Senator Lindsey Graham tells Newsmax TV.

"We may get a majority but we'll never get a bill signed into law that defunds Planned Parenthood because Obama won't sign it," Graham, a South Carolina Republican and GOP presidential candidate, said Thursday on The Steve Malzberg Show.

"So if you want to defund Planned Parenthood, replace Obama, and do a lot of things that we would like, like build the [Keystone] pipeline, you'd better get a new president."

That was a more persuasive argument before the GOP retook the Senate last fall.  Now it misses the point of having unified control of Congress: (1) The power to set the agenda and (2) the power to determine the front-burner issues of the 2016 campaign to come.  This is what the Democrats have always done when they've been in the majority facing a Republican White House: pass their agenda, make the President veto one bill after another, rally their base, and then their candidates run on "Republican obstructionism" and "do-nothingism" and "the party of no," etc.  It's one of the primary advantages of controlling Congress, to make the opposition POTUS react to them instead of vice versa, to put the opposition on the defensive, to built political and electoral momentum.

Senator Graham purports to seek the right ends but he denies us the means.  He's not wrong that the inevitable Obama veto makes Planned Parenthood defunding impossible as a practical matter; but getting every last elected Democrat on record as voting in favor of PP's Naziesque butchery and accompanying illegal profiteering is part of the path to gaining even more seats and, most important of all, regaining the White House and unifying the government under Republican control.

In which case the GOP still wouldn't be able to defund Planned Parenthood without Mitchie The Kid "going nuclear":

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is also leading the charge to defund the pro-choice organization.

He said on Fox News' Hannity on Wednesday that he thinks there are fifty-eight senators who will vote for defunding, according to Breitbart....

He said he believes that there's at least three or four Democrats that could cross over and vote with the Republicans.

Or two votes short of breaking the inevitable Democrat filibuster, after which McConnell will wave the white flag, cave on full funding plus more for Planned Parenthood, and shrug and tell us, "Hey, we tried."  No matter what you might think, I don't enjoy being a killjoy and buzzkiller, but we all know this is going to be the endgame, shutdown or no shutdown.  Why should we get our hopes up?

I'd love to be wrong about this, but I'd also love to have somebody persuasively explain to me why I won't be spot on target.

Again.


UPDATE: Guess who was for Planned Parenthood before he was against it:

Until the eve of his presidential campaign, Jeb Bush was director of a philanthropy that gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and financed its advocacy of “unrestricted access to abortion” around the world. The charity also approved money to global abortion providers while he sat on its board.

In 2010, Jeb was named one of the founding directors of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, established as a tax-exempt foundation to advance the vision of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He resigned from the board at the end of 2014 to prepare his presidential campaign.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $50 million undertaking to expand “reproductive health,” including lobbying foreign nations to loosen restrictions on abortion.

Bloomberg announced a major partnership with Planned Parenthood – Global to train equip abortion [extrem]ists in pro-life countries. [emphasis added]

And no, Bush III's was not just a ceremonial position:

Bloomberg Philanthropies noted in a press release, “The directors will serve in an advisory and oversight capacity.” Bush earned $37,100 in compensation for his nearly five years of service.

“Bush’s people are probably right that as a board member he did not vote on every project,” Stephen Phelan, the director of mission communications at Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews. “But Bloomberg has been so open about his foundation’s goals for so long that it really stretches credibility to say that Bush or his people wouldn’t have known that the foundation pushes abortion and other population control efforts.”

Bloomberg clarified his goals while accepting his Planned Parenthood award last year. “You can’t fight every battle,” he said. “The things that are high on my priority list are sensible gun laws…I obviously care about a woman’s right to choose…Nobody’s a bigger supporter of gay rights.” He added that “we need a good immigration bill” that provides amnesty for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, “so we can continue our economy.”

Bloomberg has described abortion as a “fundamental human right, elevating it to a make-or-break position. “On this issue, you’re either with us or against us.” He once cited abortion among his reasons for endorsing Barack Obama in 2012.

House Bush is only "conservative" when one of them is seeking high elective office.  The rest of the time they're as filthy leftwingnut as any Democrat.  There's no way on Earth that Jeb couldn't have been aware of Bloomie's mission statement litany of Marxist-Alinskyist horrors.  He happily marinated in that poisonous swill for five years....until he resigned in order to run for president as a "conservative".

When Tea Partiers call "establishment" Republicans "snakes" and "liars" and "cockroaches," this is the kind of asshole they're talking about.  If they could ever develop political knowledge and discernment to match that passion, perhaps the Right could actually get someplace.  Stopping a third Bush presidency in a generation would be a really good place to start.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 Found?

by JASmius



It almost reached Madagascar?  Or is Reunion Island where the Indian Ocean currents ultimately carried the part(s) of the wreckage that didn't sink?:

Malaysia is "almost certain" that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said on Thursday, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370.

Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 on the ill-fated flight, which vanished without a trace in March last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.

Search efforts led by Australia have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from France's Reunion Island.

There have been four serious accidents involving 777s in the twenty years since the widebody jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.

That certainly narrows the range of possibilities.

French authorities said they were examining the debris, found washed up on Reunion Island east of Madagascar on Wednesday.

"No hypothesis can be ruled out, including that it would come from a Boeing 777," the Reunion prefecture and the French Justice Ministry said in a joint statement on Thursday.

This is one of those updates that tears the recently formed emotional scab right back off the wound:

For the families of those on board, lingering uncertainty surrounding the fate of the plane has been agony.

"Even if we find out that this piece of debris belongs to MH370, there is no way to prove that our people were with that plane," said Jiang Hui, forty-one, whose father was on the flight.

That's certainly true.  On the other hand, since no trace of the jetliner has turned up until now, it's also safe to assume that after a year and a half, it's highly unlikely that there are any survivors.  I can sympathize with wanting to cling to even the flimsiest reeds of hope, but as a general rule, sometimes in life one has to provide one's own cloture as a matter of tough-minded choice and move on.

But obviously not without scoring a hefty payday:

Zhang Qihuai, a lawyer representing some of the passengers' families, said a group of around thirty relatives had agreed they would proceed with a lawsuit against the airline if the debris was confirmed to be from MH370.

And if it's as difficult to make that confirmation as the "experts" are suggesting, that group of two and a half dozen next of kin aren't going to be able to obtain any financial cloture either.

One flaperon is a sad, pathetic memorial to the loss of flight MH370, the rest of which almost certainly sank closer to the area the Aussies have been searching, according to aviation consultant and former NTSB crash investigator Greg Feith.  But at least the more "fanciful" theories about the jetliner's fate can finally be put to rest....







....much to CNN's chagrin.

Behold, The Boy Scouts' Future

by JASmius



If the BSA truly believes that they're going to cut down on their legal bills by caving on homosexual recruiters pimps "scoutmasters," I would respectfully suggest that they think again:

Yet another man is charging the Boy Scouts with failing to protect him decades ago against a former St. Paul adult scout leader who allegedly abused him dozens of times when he was an adolescent and took naked photographs of him.

The scout leader, Leland "Lee" Opalinski, has been named in three other civil suits against the Boy Scouts of America since late June, when Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough announced he was seeking damages from the Scouts and the local Northern Star Council for four years of sexual abuse by Opalinski.

In a civil suit filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court, John Doe 153 charges that Opalinski repeatedly had "sexual contact ... [and] penetration" with him between 1967 and 1971, when he was twelve to sixteen.

The abuse allegedly occurred at First Covenant Church on St. Paul's East Side, where the troop was based, and at various camps and Opalinski's home.

What makes the suit different from the others are the child pornography allegations, as well as the fact that the plaintiff was one of two boys with whom Opalinski admitted taking "indecent liberties" in a 1971 court case. His guilty plea resulted in seven years' probation and banishment from scouting.

Now, of course, Opalinski's slate is clean and he can return to "scoutmastering," and there's not a damn thing the BSA can - or will - do about it.  Indeed, it is Jim McDonough and all the "John Does" who are in actual legal jeopardy because they have exposed their "homophobia" by filing these abuse suits.  Don't they understand that homosexual recruiters pimps "scoutmasters" now have a CON-STI-TUTIONAL RIGHT to abuse young boys?  And if anybody objects, they will be sued into bankruptcy and perhaps criminally prosecuted for good measure?

Like I said the other day, there are some issues on which no compromise is possible.  The BSA agreed to allow an army of Leland "Lee" Opalinskis into their ranks in order to try and deflect Gaystapo lawsuits, and now they've guaranteed that they will incur countless more abuse lawsuits from the other direction.  It's difficult to muster much sympathy for a worn-down organization whose ultimate cowardice will have brought its fate upon itself.

Exit question: Has anybody ever asked the Lavender Lobby to directly and substantively explain why it is so adamantly critical that homosexuals be Boy Scout leaders?  Because until they convincingly answer that question (i.e. not their rainbow propaganda and latent Christophobia), the self-evident answer will be "an army of Leland 'Lee' Opalinskis".

Trump Endorses Amnesty (Again)

by JASmius



Straight from the enormous piehole of "the Winston Churchill of our time": channeling the immigration policy of Barack Obama and Jeb Bush:

Donald Trump says as president he would ultimately give some illegal [alien]s legal status and isn't ruling out a pathway to citizenship, CNN reports.

That sounds different than what he said during his June 16th announcement speech when critics say he insulted Mexicans....

Those who are not committing crimes could find legal status under a Trump administration, he told CNN's Dana Bash in comments aired Wednesday on CNN's The Situation Room.

"It depends," Trump told Bash. "Look, it sound cold, and it sounds hard. … Our country is going to hell. We have to have a system where people are legally in our country."

I wonder - did Trump say this before or after Michael Savage unzipped his fly?

There are so many possible explanations for this mother of all gaffes.  He got confused; he thinks (not unreasonably) that since more people watch test patterns than CNN, he could afford to drop the "Hey, look at me, I'm what I think a Tea Partier is" ruse and commiserate with a "real person" (i.e. somebody from the BosWash corridor, outside of which are nothing but trolls, hobbits, Smaugs, billygoats, and whatever other mystical hillbilly creatures one finds in a Dungeons & Dragons Meets The Dukes of Hazzard game); he's planting this comment so that when his rivals throw the flagrant duplicity back in his face a week from now at the first debate, he can claim to be the victim of "unfair political attacks" and rally Tea Partiers to his side even more rabidly; or, most likely in my opinion, either (1) he thinks he's already got the GOP nomination wrapped up five months before the voting starts, or (2) he knows the RNC has bowed to his Ross Perot threats and they've already secretly rigged the nomination process for him.  You know, "treating him fairly".

Some of us have already taken notice:

One of Trump's GOP rivals, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, appeared immediately afterward, saying Trump's comments sound a lot like amnesty.

Ah, what else would you expect that snake-charming, elephant-riding RINO to say, right?

Exit questions: (1) Will this rather in-your-face betrayal break the Trump Spell, or will TPers now make excuses for Trump jumping in Jeb's "act of love" policy lap?  And (2) when Prime Minister Churchill addressed Parliament after the fall of France on June 4th, 1940 and concluded his remarks with....

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

....was he found in Neville Chamberlain's passionate embrace in a Ten Downing Street broom closet a week later, after which the latter was parachuted into Berlin to immediately sue for peace before Rudolph Hess could make it to Scotland?  Because that's not in my history textbook.

JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey Commits Career Suicide

by JASmius



Wow; first formerly incoming Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley and outgoing Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno, now soon-to-be outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and memoirs-writer Martin Dempsey - from where did this sudden transformation from cringing, boot-licking political yes-men to candid, outspoken military professionals come from?  Did a truth pathogen somehow get released into the Obamagon ventilation system?:

The Army's top general says it was never his military advice that the United States either make a nuclear deal with Iran or face the prospect of war....

Especially since making a nuclear deal with Iran is what will LEAD to war, on the mullahs' terms and timetable.

....a haunting choice Barack Obama has claimed Congress now faces in its scrutiny of a pact with Tehran.

That they gave up any hope of even creating the illusion of stopping three months ago.  O is really playing to the history textbook writers starting roughly ten years from now - you know, after the mullahs have EMP'd us back to the halcyon days before the invention of the cotton gin.

And General Dempsey has just made this particular chapter a LOT more interesting.  Fortunately for his infernal majesty, modern printing presses run on electricity.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate hearing Wednesday on the deal that he never presented Obama with an either-or choice for a nuclear proliferation agreement, National Review reports.

"At no time did that come up in our conversation nor did I make that comment," Dempsey told Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst. "I can tell you that we have a range of options and I always present them."

Fist-bump to the Iowa pig farmer and Iraq War veteran.  With one question she has laid bare that Obama strawman lie and turned General Dempsey back from the Dark Side.  Pity O's putter shoots Force Lightning.  I'd say it's a good thing that they have voice-operated PC software these days, but that runs on electricity too.  So the General is going to need to write that memoir in a really big hurry.

Maybe that explains his tepidly sycophantic opening statement:

Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker called Dempsey's brief opening statement a "tepid endorsement" of the accord and "damning disagreement with faint praise," but Dempsey disagreed, saying he supported the deal, Defense News reports.

While effectively militarily advising The One to reject it.  Sounds double-minded at best, clueless at worst.

And I do mean clueless:

Dempsey also told New Hampshire Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte that he advised Obama not to agree to the lifting of sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program and other arms.

"Yes, and I used the phrase 'as long as possible' and then that was the point at which the negotiation continued — but yes, that was my military advice," he said, NR reports.

And Obama ignored that advice.  So why didn't Dempsey just tell him to nuke Tehran and be done with it?  Especially since the General has now hastened his retirement anyway?  Other than that one of the secret side-deals probably requires us to ship the remaining U.S. nuclear arsenal (except for a handful of warheads to "maintain internal public order") and infrastructure to the mullahs.

Yet he seemed caught off guard when Ayotte pointed out the "plain language" of the bargain requires the United States "to help strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against sabotage of its nuclear program" — even to the point of warning Iran if Israel tries to launch cyberattacks against the program.

Stuxnet virus, we hardly knew ye.

"I hadn't thought about that, senator, and I would like to have the opportunity to do so," he responded, NR reports. [emphases added]

Two possibilities: (1) Dempsey knew, approved of this flagrant betrayal of the Israelis, and is lying to Senator Ayotte; or (2) Dempsey didn't know, which means that military intelligence is being kept from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - which is to say, the entire U.S. military - or whatever's left of it that isn't purposely dropping the soap and doesn't recognize the existence of five dozen genders and counting.  And that, in turn, will be another fascinating chapter in those history books only ten percent of us by best estimates will survive to read, huddled around those campfires, roasted coyote fragments on spits, and Gutenberg printers liberated from bombed out museums.

And General Dempsey's Burning Bed-esque memoirs, if we're lucky.


UPDATE: First Senator Ernst, then Senator Tom Cotton drills John Kerry like Nero did the planet Vulcan.  Can we get more conservative Iraq vets to run for high public office?  Pretty please?

Hard Starboard Radio: Coups, Silenced Screams & Stranger Things

The cost of Keystone XL's murder: $175 billion (and counting); The Republican front-runner shows how to put Donald Trump in his place; MSNBC: Accurately "gendering" Bruce Jenner should be a criminal offense; Donald Trump's "no third party" denials confirm third party run; Planned Parenthood Cannibalism III: The Recovering Organ Harvester; Jeb Bush's great, big, long, hard, throbbing Democrat donors; Gun popularity continues to "inexplicably" grow; Barack Obama's "I can't run for a third term" denials confirm his third term is assured; Irrelevant American majority rejects Iran nuclear sellout; For the Boy Scouts of America, foreplay with the Lavender Lobby isn't going to be enough; and Donald Trump canoodles with Sarah Palin.

Boy, does the stack grow quickly when I take a day off at 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific.