Conservative Happenings

Monday, June 8, 2015

5 killed, 27 wounded in weekend shootings across Chicago

Five people were killed and at least 27 others have been hurt in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening.

The most recent fatal shooting happened early Sunday in the West Side Austin neighborhood.

Two males were driving in the 1600 block of North Cicero about 3:50 a.m. when a light-colored vehicle pulled up alongside and someone inside fired shots, police said.

One of the males was shot in his head and the other male was shot multiple times in his body, police said. Their ages were not immediately available.

Both were taken to Stroger Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, police said. The Cook County medical examiner’s office could not immediately confirm the fatalities.

Early Saturday, a 17-year-old boy dead in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

Richard Edwards and an 18-year-old man had left a party about 2:15 a.m. after they were “involved in an altercation,” according to Chicago Police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

As they were driving in a van in the 700 block of West 35th Street, a light-colored SUV pulled up and someone inside opened fire, police said.

Edwards, of the 3900 block of South Lake Park, was shot in the armpit and was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

The man was shot in the hand and shoulder and taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition stabilized, police said.

As police investigated, a woman who said she was the teen’s mother was a half block away on Halsted, crying and pleading with officers to let her see her son’s body, which was covered by a sheet.

“I just want my child,” she said. “I need to touch him. I need to hold him. I need to feel him.”

Late Friday, a 27-year-old man was discovered fatally shot in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

Juan Ugalde was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the side of his face just before 10 p.m. in the 2300 block of South Washtenaw, authorities said. Ugalde, of the 2800 block of West 21st Street, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The weekend’s first shooting left 34-year-old Laurance Boyd dead Friday evening in the West Pullman neighborhood, authorities said.

Boyd was sitting in a parked vehicle about 6 p.m. in the 1300 block of West 122nd Street when a gunman walked up and fired multiple shots, police said. The shooter then ran off eastbound.

Edwards, of the 12700 of South May in Calumet Park, was shot twice in the back and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he later died, officials said.

Early Saturday, five people were shot when gunfire erupted outside an Austin neighborhood party on the West Side.

Via: Chicago Sun-Times

In effort to fix woes in VA care, Moulton taps own experience

By Jessica Meyers GLOBE STAFF JUNE 05, 2015

WASHINGTON – Seth Moulton had earned two medals in Iraq for his valor. He’d witnessed brutal combat in four tours with the Marines. But none of that mattered when he showed up at the Veterans Health Administration hospital in Washington, D.C., where staff could not find records.

“We’ll consider taking you as a humanitarian case,” a hospital staffer told Moulton, unaware that the would-be hernia patient was also a newly elected Massachusetts congressman.

Thus began Moulton’s frustrating experience with the Veterans Affairs health system, a personal sampling of a chronically troubled medical bureaucracy that has drawn complaints from veterans, demands for improvements from Congress, and multiple investigations.

“If it wasn’t so sad, it would have been comical,” Moulton said in an interview as he recounted his VA odyssey.

n addition to enduring missing records and computer glitches, Moulton said, he was prescribed the wrong medicine, which in his case did not imperil his health but is in the category of a medical error that can be extremely dangerous in some cases, even fatal.

The VA refused to discuss Moulton’s case, citing patient privacy laws, even after Moulton gave the administration written and verbal authorization to do so.

Moulton’s encounter with the VA health system led to his first legislative initiative — a package of bills designed to strengthen training and recruitment of VA health care professionals.

Via: The Boston Globe

NY Times: Hillary Embraces Obama's Strategy Over Bill's

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is using President Barack Obama's campaign strategy rather than the one that got her husband, Bill Clinton, twice elected to the White House, The New York Times reports.

That's because the electorate has changed, former Clinton strategist James Carville told the Times.

"The highest-premium voter in '92 was a voter who would vote for one party some and for another party some," Carville said. "Now the highest-premium voter is somebody with a high probability to vote for you and low probability to turn out. That’s the golden list. And that’s a humongous change in basic strategic doctrine."

That shift means focusing on certain states where the party's liberal base is strong, but perhaps not motivated to get to the polls, while ignoring more conservative states with a larger number of swing voters.

Don’t cry for Big Insurance if federal Obamacare subsidies go away, folks.

A helpful reminder: “…the dirty secret is that insurers stand to lose the most from King v. Burwell… The giant players — United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, Anthem and Humana — have seen stock prices double, triple, even quadruple since the law was passed in 2010. The coming ruling threatens to put an end to their gravy train.” As Betsy [McCaughey] noted elsewhere in that article, the insurance companies were more than happy to sign onto a program where they had a guaranteed – dare we say, mandated? – customer pool; and one where sweet, sweet tax revenue could be used to stitch together any gaps in this Frankenstein’s Monster* of a health care market.

Which means that health care insurers have absolutely no reason to complain that the State giveth, and the State taketh away. That’s what the State does; and the insurers took the State’s Shilling. It’s hardly our fault that this turned out to be unwise.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: A bailout of the insurance industry, by the way, would be most unwise. The Right was not in favor ofsuch a thing in 2014; we’re certainly not going to be more in love with the idea now. As Betsy [McCaughey] also noted in the above article, removing the subsidies in the federal Obamacare exchange will effectively destroy the various mandates anyway. It might be worth keeping those subsidies around temporarily in exchange for formally killing the individual/employer mandates: I haven’t made up my mind about that yet. But it’s certainly true that if King v. Burwell goes away the mandates will have to as well. One way, or the other.

*One that is, by the way, the sole fault of Democrats.

Via: Red State

CA Dems Want State’s Overdrawn Pension Systems to Dump Fossil-Fuel Stocks

California’s two mammoth public-pension funds — the California Public Employees Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — are short a shocking $225 billion that they’re going to need to pay for the retirements of government workers. But what is it about the two pension funds that worries the state’s Democratic Party? Their fossil-fuel investments.

Delegates to the state’s annual Democratic Party convention voted over Memorial Day weekend in favor of a resolution urging the funds to dump oil, natural gas, and coal stocks. The vote follows the introduction earlier this year of state legislation that would require the pension funds to sell all coal-related stocks and study the implications of dropping oil and natural gas stocks. With the resolution, local Democrats jumped on the divestment bandwagon, inspired by radical environmentalist Bill McKibben, which has so far persuaded the endowment funds of about two dozen universities to sell shares in fossil-fuel companies. Yet if CalPERS and CalSTRS’s past social-investing records are any indication, the real losers from divestment won’t be the energy companies, but California taxpayers.

“I’ve been involved in five divestments for our fund,” CalSTRS chief investment officer Chris Ailman told his board earlier this year. “All five of them we’ve lost money, and all five of them have not brought about social change.”

For several decades, California’s pension funds have been subjected to a dizzying array of social-investment prerogatives. A 2011 Mercer Consulting study found that CalPERS investment officials had to follow 111 different investment priorities relating to the environment, social conditions, and corporate governance. Many of these directives have proven calamitous to the two funds’ bottom lines. Eight years after CalSTRS and CalPERS divested their portfolios of tobacco stocks in 2000, a study found that the move cost CalSTRS $1 billion and CalPERS about $750 million in foregone profits. CalPERS also ditched investments in developing countries such as Thailand and India, because board members objected to labor standards in these countries. A 2007 report found that avoiding investments in developing counties cost CalPERS about $400 million.

Via: California Political Review

Sunday, June 7, 2015

After criticism, Obama nominates inspector general for Interior Dept.

President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2015, after posthumously bestowing the Medal Of Honor on Army Sgt. William Shemin and Army Pvt. Henry Johnson during a ceremony. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) ** FILE **

Criticized by Republicans for delaying nominations of government watchdogs, President Obama

has announced plans to nominate a permanent inspector general at the Interior Department — albeit a candidate who’s already run afoul of the GOP.

Mr. Obama said he will nominate Mary Kendall, currently the deputy inspector general at Interior

, as the permanent inspector general.

Her nomination comes two days after Republican senators blasted the White House in a hearing for being slow to install permanent IGs in a variety of federal agencies. And House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, and other House GOP leaders wrote to Mr. Obama this week, seeking a nomination for a permanent IG at Interior.

SEE ALSO: White House slammed for slew of Inspector Generals vacancies

But Republicans

already have expressed disappointment with Ms. Kendall’s job as acting IG, saying her her tenure has been marred by “significant congressional oversight and controversy.”

Seven federal agencies lack a permanent inspector general. The Project on Government

Oversight said the administration’s average time for filling IG vacancies is 613 days, twice that of previous administrations.

Under President

Clinton, the gap was 453 days, and it fell to 280 days under President George W. Bush. By law, the posts should be vacant for no more than 210 days.

Via: Washington Post

[EDITORIAL] Behind Barack Obama’s delusions of global respect

At a town-hall meeting last week, President Obama proudly bragged that “today, once again, the United States is the most respected country on earth.”

That jaw-dropper makes sense to him — because the only opinion that counts for the president is the opinion of folks who share his ideology: above all, the belief that America should never use its power unless “world opinion” (i.e., pretty much those same folks) agrees.

So it doesn’t matter that Vladimir Putin laughs at Obama’s America — continuing his invasion of Ukraine with just enough “deniability” that Obama can pretend it’s something else.

Or that China knows it can continue its grab of key sea areas, even building vast artificial islands on which to plant its flag (and weapons), because Obama will never risk confrontation.

Or that both Moscow and Beijing continue to give their hackers free rein to attack US targets — confident that Obama will overlook anything as ethereal as cyberspace.

Or that Bashar al-Assad is back to using chemical weapons, because Obama has already proved he lacks the will to enforce his own “red line.”

(Bonus disrespect: The Syrian butcher is also helping ISIS slaughter rival anti-Assad
forces because he figures “world opinion” will support his own odious regime once ISIS is the only other choice.)

Do Poland or the Czech Republic respect Obama after he pulled US anti-missile bases out of their territory as part of his pathetic “reset button” bid to win Putin’s love? Or, eyes on Ukraine, do they worry how else Obama’s America will fail them?

Time and again, Obama told Israelis he has their back. He promised all options were on the table to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Now he says military action is off the table — and his planned nuclear deal, by his own account, leaves Tehran set to build nukes within a dozen years.

The Saudis and other Arab rulers feel just as abandoned: That’s why most of them declined to even show for Obama’s “Arab summit” last month.

As for Iran: It’s already breaking the “interim” nuclear deal by building enriched-uranium stockpiles far larger than it promised to hold as of June 30. The mullahs plainly figure he won’t call them on it — nor on any “deniable” violations of whatever accord he winds up with.

Via: New York Post

The Anti-Poverty Experiment

In the U.S. and abroad, a new generation of data-driven programs is testing ways to help the poor to save more, live better and find their own way to economic security

The U.S. and other wealthy nations have spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century trying to lift the world’s poorest people out of penury, with largely disappointing results. In 1966, shortly after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty, 14.7% of Americans were poor, under the official definition of the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2013, 14.5% of Americans were poor.

World-wide, in 1981, 2.6 billion people subsisted on less than $2 a day; in 2011, 2.2 billion did. Most of that progress came in China, while poverty has barely budged in large swaths of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

Is it time for a new approach? Many experts who study poverty think so. They see great promise in a new generation of experimental programs focusing not on large-scale social support and development but on helping the poor and indebted to save more, live better and scramble up in their own way.

Linda Hanson of Duluth, Minn., 64 years old, works as an administrative assistant at a local organization for the disabled; her husband, Glenn, 65, is a retired city bus driver. Today, the Hansons have achieved some financial stability, but by early 2014, they were in trouble: Linda had lost her previous job, their catering business had failed and they had racked up about $28,000 on their credit cards.

Overwhelmed by the debt, they struggled even to make the minimum monthly payments, said Mrs. Hanson—until they heard about Pay and Win, an experimental program offered by Lutheran Social Services in Duluth to encourage struggling borrowers to manage their debts. Those who steadily pay down their loans each month are eligible for raffle drawings.

“When you know you have a hope of winning,” says Mrs. Hanson, “what a motivation!” The Hansons soon got their finances in order and felt less overwhelmed. In January, the Hansons got a surprise windfall: They won the program’s grand prize of $5,000, which they committed to use to pay down the principal on their debt. “We’re going to be OK now,” says Mr. Hansen.

Via: Wall Street Journal

Legal Expert: Obama Is ‘Undermining The Rule Of Law’

John Yoo, the son of Korean immigrants, begins this exclusive 34-minute video interview with The Daily Caller exhibiting his characteristic sense of humor as he reacts to the “amusing circus” of radical progressives who show up regularly and want him fired from the University of California – Berkeley because his views are supposedly unacceptable.

As for the man with a huge paper mache head in the likeness of Yoo’s head, Yoo wonders, “How much rent does he pay to store my head?”

Working in a very left-wing area, Yoo explains why he doesn’t want liberals to be in charge of running anything.

Apart from being an irritant to the left, John Yoo is Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law School of Law at Cal Berkeley. He is also a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. Graduating from Harvard, he attended law school at Yale, clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and has authored seven books and over 90 articles for scholarly journals.

Yoo is an erudite scholar, a popular speaker and an avid columnist. He was a senior legal adviser at the Justice Department in the George W. Bush Administration and became well known for his opinion about presidential powers.

According to Yoo, President Obama is, without precedent, “undermining the rule of law” by picking winners and losers in the enforcement of laws, as opposed to how they were dictated by Congress.

John Yoo invokes Superman’s “Bizarro World,” where things are the opposite of what they are supposed to be, in assessing Obama’s presidency. To Yoo, Obama’s view of the presidency — exhibiting weakness abroad and yet dominance in domestic politics — this is “the reverse of what the framers’ presidency” prescribed.

Via: The Daily Caller

[COMMENTARY] Bowing to the Big Lie of Bruce Jenner by L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham

The story of Bruce Jenner declaring against human reality that he's a woman was already a tired old story, exhausted last month in a one-hour prime-time ABC "news" special. But that's not how the grand pooh-bahs of our news and entertainment media see it.

They can't get enough. Deconstruction is a tonic. And so the Kardashian-Jenner Inc. rollout continues, a perfect combination of shameless TV hucksterism and a leftist revolt against the old-fashioned notion of natural humanity. How yesterday.

We know — everyone knows — Vanity Fair rolled out a new cover of Bruce Jenner gaudily underdressed as a woman with the headline "Call Me Caitlyn." Not a cover story, mind you, just a cover image. The media went bananas. ABC, CBS and NBC offered more than 48 minutes of coverage in two days, as if Jenner was now the Queen of America.

ISIS. The 2016 campaign. Hillary's scandals. The crashing economy. Who the hell cares about that?

It would be shocking if anywhere in that 48-plus minutes of enthusiasm there was one discouraging word of dissent. Fawning is mandatory, dissent forbidden. Babbling morning hosts cooed over the Internet "buzz" (which they were fueling). Somehow they forgot to mention that a hefty portion of it expressed sadness, disgust and outrage at all the pandering.

So the Big Lie is a big hit. The emperor wears women's clothes, and everyone must bow and praise the beautiful rollout. GLAAD will destroy anyone who fails to be re-educated.

Via: CNS News

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NY Teacher Exam Thrown Out For Being Discriminatory

A federal judge in New York has struck down a test used by New York City to vet potential teachers, finding the test of knowledge illegally discriminated against racial minorities due to their lower scores.

At first glance, the city’s second Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST-2) seems fairly innocuous. Unlike the unfair literacy tests of Jim Crow, LAST-2 was given to every teaching candidate in New York, and it was simply a test to make sure that teachers had a basic high school-level understanding of both the liberal arts and the sciences.

One sample question from the test asked prospective educators to identify the mathematical principle of a linear relationship when given four examples; another asked them to read four passages from the Constitution and identify which illustrated checks and balances. Besides factual knowledge, the test also checks basic academic skills, such as reading comprehension and the ability to read basic charts and graphs.

Nevertheless, this apparently neutral subject matter contained an insidious kernel of racism, because Hispanic and black applicants had a passage rate only 54 to 75 percent of the passage rate for whites.

Once their higher failure rate was established, the burden shifted to New York to prove that LAST-2 measured skills that were essential for teachers and therefore was justified in having a racially unequal outcome. While it might seem obvious that possessing basic subject knowledge is a key skill for a teacher, District Judge Kimba Wood said the state hadn’t met that burden.

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts,” Wood wrote in her opinion, according to The New York Times.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Gopher Gate Exposes VA Fraud and Corruption

Fellow Veterans and Friends of Veterans

As we know, the Secretary of the VA’s top assistants and Congressman Ted Lieu’s senior deputies seem to have intentionally lied to Veterans. and the general public about a “gate opening” ceremony being canceled because of gopher holes.

To the contrary, a “private ceremony” was held for these same entrusted public servants along with selected wealthy and powerful attendees, while everyday Veterans and local residents were intentionally deceived to and denied equal attendance.

Thus, nothing has changed as it’s “business as usual” and reminiscent of the days when Sue Young, former executive director of Veterans Park Conservancy (VPC), held her “private parties” for her wealthy cronies.

Now it’s Carolina Winston Barrie, a former member of VPC’s board of directors, who is continuing with this private and privileged tradition as the Gopher Gate “private ceremony” scam was her idea.

In fact, Carolina Barrie was able to accomplish what Sue Young was unable to achieve for nearly a quarter century, and that is to open the front gates and turn this sacred land into a public park—and she did it without an illegal “sharing agreement” but with the blessings of the Secretary of the VA. She’s even having her own special plaques made to hang on the front, which we will address at another time.

Via: Canada Free Press

In 2008, Clinton couldn’t buy Iowans’ love. So she bought them snow shovels.

AMES, Iowa — In Phyllis Peters’s garage, there is a snow shovel. A nice one: green, shiny, with an ergonomic steel handle. It came from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And it plays a part in a modern-day political legend, about some of the strangest money a candidate has ever spent.

Eight years ago, Peters was a volunteer for Clinton’s first presidential run. She had been an admirer of Clinton since her time as first lady. But just before Clinton lost the Iowa caucuses, her staffers did something odd: They bought shovels for Peters and the hundreds of other volunteers.

“If you’re in Iowa, you have a snow shovel” already, Peters said. But she accepted. To be nice. This is Iowa. “We’re not rude people,” Peters said.

Today, the story of Clinton’s snow shovels is being told again in Iowa, as supporters worry that her second campaign could repeat the mistakes of the first. For both those who gave out the shovels and those who received them, they came to symbolize a candidate who never quite got their home state.

Clinton doesn’t face near the same challenge in Iowa in 2016. But the state still matters as a test of basic politics, a gauge of whether she has gotten any better at connecting with the people she wants to vote for her.

Last time around, Clinton tried to win over Iowans with bloodless logic, touting her résumé and her grinding work ethic. When that fell short, Clinton’s well-funded campaign — unable to buy her love — started buying everything else.

Via: Washington Post

Monday, June 8, 2015

Sunday, June 7, 2015

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