The morning after Al Sharpton was booted to the Sunday morning desert from his evening show, and not long after Ed Schultz and Alex Wagner were relieved of their hosting duties, Joe Scarborough has profusely thanked NBC News honcho Andrew Lack for making those changes.
On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough was discussing stunning poll results in which the first word that came to voters' minds about Hillary was "liar." Asked what was the worst thing said about him in such polling, Scarborough said "he works for MSNBC was always the worst." But Joe then added, his hands steepled in a gesture of gratefulness: "not any more though, cause things have changed. Thank you, Andy. Thank you very much."
MARK HALPERIN: They asked an open question: what's the first word you think of when you're asked the name of a presidential candidate? The leading answer for Hillary Clinton was "liar." The leading answer for Trump was "arrogant." And the leading word for Jeb Bush, Bush.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: That may be a problem.
NICOLLE WALLACE: It may be, it may not be. I mean, Bush is also the last name of one of our most popular former presidents, Bush 41, his father. I think the Republican primary voters are well aware of that. I would rather be known as Bush than a liar.
OE: Or arrogant. These are unprompted by the way. These questions, though, what happens is they ask in these polls, what. It's the part of these polls that always scared me the most because they were the most instructive. They're called verbates.
WALLACE: Like a focus group.
JOE: What's the first thing you think of when you think of Joe Scarborough. And then you have to sit there and read the sentences, and you go oh, my God!
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: How did you do? What were some of the worst?
JOE: He works for MSNBC. That was always the worst. Not any more, though, because things have changed. Thank you, Andy. That was the past, this is the now. Thank you, very much.
In 2011, pro-life Governor Sam Brownback signed a bill signed into law a bill that would shift funding away from the Planned Parenthood abortion business and stops abortion funding in health insurance programs. The Kansas Senate passed the measure on a 28-10 vote and the state House followed suit with an 86-30 vote.
The measure has the state budget directing over $300,000 in Title 10 money to local full-service health clinics instead of Planed Parenthood and it places $300,000 into the Stan Clark grant-matched fund for pregnancy support and adoption counseling.
Now, the Obama administration, in the wake of additional states cutting Planned Parenthood funding following the massive scandal, is going after one state that already cut tax-funding to the abortion company. According to an AP report: “The federal government reduced its Title X funding to the state by about the $370,000 annually in Title X money that two Planned Parenthood facilities in Wichita and Hays and an unaffiliated clinic in Dodge City had been receiving.”
While Kansas revoked taxpayer dollars for an abortion business, the Obama administration’s decision hurts women’s health and deprives them of legitimate medical and health care.
As AP reports, “Medical providers say that means low-income patients are finding it harder to access birth control, cancer screenings and other reproductive health care services.
“People have fewer places to go, and for those with limited means that may make utilizing those services even more difficult,” said J’Vonnah Maryman, director for public health at the Sedgwick County Health Department.
In terms of the pro-life law de-funding Planned Parenthood, the insurance portion of the legislation prohibits private health insurance companies from forcing enrollees to pay for abortions and it makes those who want to potentially have abortion coverage pay for an insurance rider. It also ensures abortions can’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars through the state exchanges set up under the federal Obamacare health care law.
A group of pro-life leaders will hold a press conference Thursday in Washington, D.C., to demand that a bust of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, be removed from the National Portrait Gallery.
The bust of Sanger is currently displayed in the National Portrait Gallery’s “Struggle for Justice” exhibit.
In an interview, ForAmerica Chairman Brent Bozell, who will attend the conference, told The Daily Signal that the bust “doesn’t belong in a taxpayer-funded museum.”
For her image to stand alongside the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, he said, “is an insult.”
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Bozell said the pro-abortion movement has become “so militant, so radicalized,” that they “celebrate her as their patron saint.”
“In a very real way, Margaret Sanger symbolizes Planned Parenthood,” Bozell said.
The exhibit website hails Sanger’s “crusade” against “laws forbidding dissemination of contraceptive information.” The website acknowledges her “association with the eugenics movement” but asserts that eugenics was a philosophy “that for a time was endorsed by many of the era’s prominent thinkers.”
Upon learning that Sanger was included in the exhibit alongside figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Susan B. Anthony, Bishop E.W. Jackson, the president of STAND, enlisted fellow pastors and launched a petition to request that the museum remove the bust from the exhibit. More than 13,000 people signed the petition, but the museum declined the request.
In a statement, Jackson called the National Portrait Gallery’s initial response “unserious and disrespectful.”
“They say they are simply acknowledging Sanger’s contribution to making contraceptives—and later abortion—available to poor women, not making her a hero,” Jackson said. “But displaying her bust in a ‘Struggle for Justice’ exhibit alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks is calling her a hero. Sanger was no hero. Her motive was not to help poor women, but to stop them from having children that she didn’t believe were fit to live. She saw them as defective.”
Bozell, Jackson, and pastors will be joined at the press conference by Lila Rose, the founder and president of Live Action, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, among others.
Sanger, a proponent of eugenics, founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.
In an article titled “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” published in 1919, Sanger wrote that the “diseased and incompetent masses” threaten to “overwhelm all that eugenics can do among those whose economic condition is better.”
“Birth Control, on the other hand, not only opens the way to the eugenist, but it preserves his work,” Sanger wrote.
Sanger wrote in her book “Woman and the New Race” that the population control methods she advocated would bring about the “materials of a new race.”
“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives,” Sanger wrote.
On its website, Planned Parenthood calls Sanger one of the pro-choice movement’s “great heroes.” The organization holds annual award ceremonies in her honor.
A four-year investigation has concluded that officials of the solar company Solyndra misrepresented facts and omitted key information in their efforts to get a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government.
The company's collapse soon after getting federal backing provided ammunition to lawmakers and other critics who portrayed it as wasteful government spending. The company's failure likely will cost taxpayers more than $500 million.
The report by the Energy Department's inspector general was released Wednesday. It's designed to provide federal officials with lessons learned as it proceeds to grant billions of dollars in additional loan guarantees. The inspector general found fault with the Department of Energy, describing its due diligence work as "less than fully effective." The report also said department employees felt tremendous pressure to process loan guarantee applications.
In the end, however, the inspector general said the actions of the Solyndra officials "were at the heart of this matter."
"In our view, the investigative record suggests that the actions of certain Solyndra officials were, at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the department," the IG's report said.
A federal loan guarantee program for energy projects was established in 2005 during President George W. Bush's administration. Four years later, the Democratic-led Congress passed an economic stimulus bill that substantially expanded the program. In the ensuing two years, the department disbursed more than $500 million to Solyndra, but in September 2011, the company laid off 1,100 employees, ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy protection. Obama personally visited the plant in 2010 to cite it as an example of economic progress stemming from the Democratic-led stimulus bill.
The IG's report did not provide any response to its findings from a Solyndra representative. Nor did it identify by name any particular Solyndra leader who gave misleading information. Miles Ehrlich, counsel for the company's former CEO, Chris Gronet, disputed the findings. He said the allegations were investigated by three of the most aggressive federal prosecutors in the country, and each time, "they rejected this DOE spin as contrary to the actual facts."
"Solyndra executives were completely truthful and accurate in their representations during this loan process, and the DOE was never misled about Solyndra's business or prospects," Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich said the real cause of Solyndra's failure had nothing to do with fraud, but was caused by the unexpected dumping of solar panels subsidized by China's government.
The report notes that federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also participated in the interviewing of witnesses and the examination of hundreds of thousands of documents. In early 2015, the Department of Justice informed the inspector general's office that it would not pursue criminal prosecution of any Solyndra officials.
The inspector general's report said the department relied on third-party evaluations for part of its analysis of Solyndra. In one case, an engineering firm, R.W. Beck, Inc., issued a report on the solar panel market relying on company representations that it had $1.4 billion in revenue under contract through 2012. The report said Solyndra's "firm" sales contracts supported its financial model. But, by the time Beck issued its final report, all four of Solyndra's customers had been offered price concessions.
"Solyndra's failure to directly disclose these significant material changes in its contractual relationships distorted the view the department and its consultants had of the market for Solyndra's products," the inspector general said.
Solyndra was also required to hire an outside firm, Fitch Ratings Inc., to prepare a credit assessment of the project, located in Fremont, Calif. A Fitch official told investigators that he asked Solyndra if any contract customers had received price concessions and was told no. Additionally, the company's largest customer had informed the company it would not buy more panels in 2009 because Solyndra's price was too high. A Fitch official told investigators that if it had been aware of price concessions it would have assigned Solyndra a lower credit rating.
The report was less detailed about the Energy Department's shortcomings in conducting due diligence. It said the department needed to consider using "new and more intrusive validation techniques." It also said consultants the department hires must be held accountable for their work.
Solyndra's failure was the subject of numerous congressional hearings and a report from Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The August 2012 report concluded that Solyndra was a cautionary tale on how political pressures and other factors can result in poor decision-making.
"The red flags about Solyndra's financial condition and the turbulence in the solar market were there for DOE to see when it reviewed Solyndra's application in 2009. DOE staff and (Office of Management and Budget) staff noted these concerns at the time the loan guarantee was under consideration," the congressional report concluded.
The Department of Energy (DOE) will pay a “Diversity and Inclusion Specialist” up to $118,000 a year, according to a new job opening with the federal government.
The full-time position, which opened up on Monday, will pay a minimum of $90,000 a year to a person who will come up with “effective inclusive practices and policies” for the agency.
“The Diversity and Inclusion Specialist position is located in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),” the job posting stated. “The office is responsible for providing leadership, direction, coordination, evaluation and support for managing a diverse workforce and establishing effective inclusive practices and policies at DOE.”
To apply, one must be a diversity and inclusion “expert.” The person hired will provide DOE managers with guidance.
“The Diversity and Inclusion Specialist serves as a subject matter expert and advisor to the Department of Energy (DOE) leadership on diversity management and inclusive practices, and assists with leading the integration of diversity and inclusion principles of into DOE’s workplace culture,” the posting said. “Provides advice and guidance to supervisors and managers on best practices associated with leading employees from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and aligns inclusion initiatives with the organizational mission, goals, strategies and metrics, in accordance with Executive Order 13583, and guidance provided by the Office of Personnel Management.”
The position also requires developing a “DOE-wide action plan to accomplish diversity and inclusion outcomes” every year. The plans were mandated by the executive order signed by President Barack Obama in August 2011.
The position does not require a college degree and pays between $90,823.00 and $118,069.00 a year.
San Jose’s Lori Rodriguez says the city seized her 12 guns after her husband was forced to undergo a “72-hour psychiatric evaluation,” and she is suing the city to get back the guns.
The city does not deny seizing the guns, and City Attorney Rick Doyle said they acted out of a concern for public safety.
According to Fox News, Doyle said, “Are we acting with an abundance of caution? Yeah. We’re concerned about someone having access to firearms that shouldn’t.”
Rodriquez’s husband lost legal access to guns because of the psychiatric evaluation, and Doyle argues that there is no guarantee that he wouldn’t get his hands on them if they were given back to Lori Rodriguez.” But NBC Bay Area reports that Rodriquez attorney, Don Kilmer, countered Doyle’s contention by claiming there are no grounds for the city keeping the guns if Rodriguez follows state law and puts them “in a gun safe.”
Rodriguez lost when she tried to get her guns back via a state court, so now she is asking a federal court to order their return.
Doyle said, “We don’t want to turn the guns over and we don’t have to turn the guns over, the courts have agreed with us.”
Breitbart News previously reported that a similar situation unfolded in New Jersey in June when a state appellate court ruled that a husband could be denied the right to own guns because his wife was a felon “[who’d] been accused of domestic violence.”
These cases highlight the danger Breitbart News, the NRA, and Gun Owners of America have warned about in instances where domestic violence and other issues are used as a Trojan Horse for gun control. The push is insidious, and once those promoting gun control get their foot in the door, they often simply continue pushing.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
A new Quinnipiac poll has more bad news for theHillary Clinton campaign, with poll results showing voters think of Clinton as “dishonest” and a “liar.”
“What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton?” Quinnipiac asked. All three of the most popular answers were along the same lines: “liar,” “dishonest,” and “untrustworthy.” After those responses, Clinton nets a few positive responses, such as “experience” and “strong.” But then the negative qualifiers begin again, with responses like “crook,” “untruthful,” “criminal,” and “deceitful.”
The same question was asked of Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. The top three responses for Trump were “arrogant,” “blowhard,” and “idiot,” while the top responses for Bush were “Bush,” “family,” and “honest.”
The same poll found Clinton with low favorables. A majority of voters, 51%, say that they have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton while only 39% says they have a favorable opinion.
The most transparent administration in American history is at it again — dodging sunlight and evading public disclosure.
Joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her secret servers, former IRS witch hunt queen Lois Lerner and her secret email accounts, former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her Internet alter egos, and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his non-public email account is White House science czar John Holdren.
President Obama’s top climate change adviser is defending his hide-and-seek game in federal court. Earlier this month, the Washington, D.C.-basedCompetitive Enterprise Institute appealed a D.C. district court ruling protecting Holdren’s personal email communications from Freedom of Information Act requests.
CEI argues that federal transparency law “applies to the work-related records of agency employees regardless of where they are stored. Many agencies routinely instruct their staff to preserve any such documents that they might have on their personal email accounts.” Yet, as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Holdren has placed himself above the law and spirit of transparency that Obama fraudulently vowed to uphold.
“It makes little sense to claim that an agency is not ‘withholding’ documents when it refuses to produce documents held by its own chief executive that relate to ‘agency business,'” CEI’s legal brief rightly argues. “Even if OSTP had demonstrated that these emails were not within its actual control — which it did not — its failure to search its director’s personal account would still violate FOIA because any agency records in that account fall within the agency’s ‘constructive control.'”
The White House science czar’s private email account–which was uncovered when CEI unmasked former EPA head Lisa Jackson’s private email aliases, which were used to conduct government business–resides with his former employer, the Woods Hole Research Center. It’s a far-left eco-alarmist group that pushes radical anti-capitalist interventions (Remember “cap and trade”?) to eliminate the decades-long hyped “global climatic catastrophe.” Their ultimate goal? Establishing government rule by eco-technocrats who detest humanity.
To this day, Holdren has escaped questions about his freaky-deaky population-control agenda. Remember, this is the unrepentant sky-is-falling guru who joined fellow whack jobs Paul and Anne Ehrlich in co-authoring “Ecoscience,” a creepy tome that called for saving the planet by proposing that:
–Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not.
–The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or food.
–Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise.
–People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
–A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy obstinately refused to answer my questions for Holdren on his views about forced abortions and mass sterilizations or on his continued embrace of forced-abortion advocate and eugenics guru Harrison Brown, whom he credits with inspiring him to become a scientist. Holdren’s mentor likened the global population to a “pulsating mass of maggots.”
These are not harmless dalliances of the past. Holdren’s insidious ideology — and his hidden policy communications — now have an untold impact on American taxpayers. He is the top strategist in Obama’s war on carbon, war on coal, war on the West and war on the economy. Holdren is the zealot “right at the heart” (as The New York Times put it) of devising White House climate change initiatives that reward environmental cronies, send electricity rates skyrocketing and kill jobs.
Who is Holdren conducting government business with, and what is he hiding from the public? What data is being doctored, what scientific evidence is being stonewalled in the name of rescuing the planet and consolidating power in the hands of the green elite? It’s time to turn up the heat.
“I thought it was best to write about my own raw terror,” says activist Naomi Klein, in a moving interview in today’s Guardian.
Is she talking about the time she flew to Raqqa in Syria to try to audition for the al-Khansa brigade only to discover that the other girls found her politics a bit extreme and that, anyway, like, black so totally didn’t suit her?
Or the time she saw – eek! – a really big spider in her bath?
Or the occasion when the airline said: “Sorry Ms Klein. Business is fully booked. I’m afraid we’re going to have put you in coach.”?
Nope. She’s talking about climate change – and how she has sought to make it exciting and relevant to her readership, with special reference to Hurricane Katrina ten years ago.
“A lot of the way we communicate climate change doesn’t acknowledge the emotional side of it,” she explains.
Which, actually, when you think about it, is about as 1000 per cent the opposite of true as anything even Pinocchio would be capable of saying with his fingers crossed behind his back on International Liar Liar Pants Are On Fire Day.
The way we communicate climate change doesn’t acknowledge the emotional side of it?
The way your lot communicates climate change, Naomi, does nothing else butacknowledge the emotional side of it. That’s because it’s the only remaining vaguely functional weapon you’ve got left in your armoury. The science abandoned you long ago. The business case for environmentalism has all the credibility of “an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is.” All you greenies have left is raw emotion: never mind the awkward facts, just feel the world’s pain and enlightenment will follow.
No doubt this is why Klein has felt compelled to invent a deadly new “cocktail” to liven up her moribund doomsday thesis. It’s a bit like Al Gore’s ManBearPig, only worthier because it has the all important issues of “race” and “inequality” chucked into the mix. The cocktail came into her head – where else? – in New Orleans. It was while she was covering the floods after Hurricane Katrina ten years ago:
It was this cocktail of heavy weather, racism, and crumbling infrastructure. It felt like I was looking into the future. People said it was like science fiction, with a rich country abandoning the residents of one of its cities, vigilantes roaming the streets, with anyone around after curfew fair game.
For someone with a background of economic justice, what scared me about climate change is not just that the sea level will rise and we’ll have more storms, it’s how this intersects with that cocktail of inequality and racism.
Woah! Sounds terrible!
Except, of course, it is based on a fundamental lie. Hurricane Katrina was NOT caused by climate change.
This was acknowledged as far back as 2007 even by the fervently alarmist New Scientist.
The chaotic nature of weather makes it impossible to prove that any single event such asHurricane Katrina is due to global warming. It is also impossible to prove that global warming did not play a part, so debates about the causes of individual events are futile.
But that wasn’t going to stop shysters like Al Gore trying to make hay while the wind blew (in an address to the Sierra Club)
“Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in power in England — which wasn’t sure that the threat was real — he said, ‘They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.” He continued, “The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences.”
Among the longest records of active hurricane zones is on the US east coast. NOAA’sHurricane Research Division has data back to 1851. No major hurricane (category 3 or more) has hit the continental US since Wilma in October 2005. That is the longest pause on record. NOAA says “It is premature to conclude that human activities — and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming — have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane activity.
Hence Naomi Klein’s desperate – and risibly dishonest – attempts to hide the decline in hurricane activity by throwing “race” and “inequality” into the mix.
Yes, it may well be that “race” remains a toxic issue in the US.
And we can all agree with her on “equality”: truly it is unconscionable and wrong that millionaire climate racketeers like Al Gore and Tom Steyer are able to enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary taxpaying folk by manipulating green legislation to their financial advantage.
But “climate change” as a justification for “raw terror”? Not so much. Certainly not on the basis of any current scientific evidence…
(CNSNews.com) – In the latest undercover investigative video of Planned Parenthood, a biotech CEO says her company could handle delivery of “another 50 livers a week” taken from aborted babies and then, while discussing the shipment of intact baby heads and brains, the CEO laughs about making sure the child’s eyes are closed and says, “Tell the lab it’s coming!”
This conversation occurs during a luncheon meeting with StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer and the “buyers” (actors) representing a fetal tissue procurement company, and one other unidentified man at the table. The undercover video was made by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and it is the eighth video to be released since mid-July.
The CEO of StemExpress, shown in the video, is Cate Dyer. Her older sister, Charlotte Ivancic is the outgoing health policy adviser to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
During the lunch conversation, which took place on May 22, 2015, one of the “buyers” asks Dyer, “What would make your lab happy?”
“Another 50 livers a week,” Dyer responds. “We’re working with almost like triple digit number clinics,” she explains, “and we still need more.”
Dyer added that, “Planned Parenthood has volume, because they are a volume institution.”
StemExpress, in Placerville, Calif., acted as a middleman between Planned Parenthood abortion clinics and research institutions looking for aborted baby parts. The company cut ties with Planned Parenthood on Aug. 14, following the outcry over the investigative videos that were released in late July and which named StemExpress.
