Teachers Unions Personified

Moonbattery
VERBATIM POST
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No wonder children are coming out of our exorbitantly expensive public schools unable to read or write. This obnoxious freak is not a stand-up comic, but President of the Chicago Teachers Union and Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers:

Good Lord! She has a husband? Miracles never cease.
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By the way, she’s sorry she ridiculed Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — though she blames right-wing bloggers for making an issue of it. No apologies for boasting about her excessive use of illicit drugs; if the President of the USA can do it, why can’t Karen Lewis?

Dear Committee: Main Street Says Look at Pensions

Via Tom

THE so-called supercommittee in Congress has until Nov. 23 to find more than a trillion dollars of new savings in the federal budget.

Here’s one idea: Stop reimbursing the costs of pensions and other retirement benefits at huge, and hugely profitable, defense contractors. Over 10 years, such a move could save an estimated $30 billion — the amount by which these pensions are collectively underfunded. (That figure could change, depending on pension performance.)

True, that might seem like a drop in the bucket, given that the committee’s 12 members are trying to save $1.2 trillion over all. But examining this longstanding practice seems worthy in lean times.

The government also promises to help defense companies shore up their pension funds when they become underfunded. Many of these funds have lost money in recent years in declining financial markets or on bad investments, so the bill for taxpayers has been growing.

Considering how much ordinary Americans have lost in their own retirement accounts — losses that the government does not cover — reimbursing contractors looks like classic corporate welfare.

These reimbursements are considered a cost of performing work under the terms of the contracts the companies sign with Uncle Sam. The expenses that the companies recover are allocated to the business units that do the contracting work and are determined each year based on actuarial assumptions.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation determines which costs — like those related to pensions — are allowable under the reimbursement programs. For example, advertising costs are generally not covered. Neither is excess severance paid to employees in the event that their companies are acquired.

Defense contractors are not the only companies that get such reimbursements.

According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Energy had 46 contracts with private companies and nonprofit organizations as of September 2010. These contracts covered nearly 200,000 current and former employees and their beneficiaries, the report said, for such expenses as pensions, dental care and life insurance.

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Learn To Make Terror Your Friend

Via Jaded Haven

How This Will End

So what’s in store for us? It seems that major trends have lives of their own, and almost nothing can turn them around. Could anything have stopped the collapse of the Roman Empire? I doubt it, based on the fact that the long decline really started after four good emperors in a row (Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius). Could, therefore, the election of Ron Paul in the US turn around the ship of state? No. Even if he were still willing and able to do anything after he got a severe talking to by the heads of various Praetorian agencies, he’d find the populace too corrupted, indebted and apathetic to change. These things have lives of their own. That’s the point the Kondratieff Wave theory and the generational theory of Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning and Bob Prechter in his Elliott Wave theory publications all make.

MORE, MUCH MORE.

Tough times: Life inside the hardest hit county in the U.S.

Via Survival

Not long ago, Rowan County, NC was home to 31 millionaires, the highest per capita number in the entire country. Today it has earned a counter-distinction: Rowan has been hit harder by the recession than virtually any other place in the United States.

When the doors open at the local homeless shelter at 6 p.m., Kevin Parham, 47, is among those first in line. He has been laid off three times in five years, and suffered two heart attacks since he moved into the shelter a year and a half ago. He has been unable to land any kind of job.

“The thought of people living in their cars in my county takes my breath away,” said Kyna Foster, executive director of Rowan Helping Ministries, a collective of Christian churches that runs the shelter. Her organization has helped 23,000 families in the past three years, a figure that represents nearly half of this county’s 53,000 households. She took the job 18 months ago when she herself was laid off from a corporate job at Food Lion, a major grocer that was founded here in 1957 and helped generate its original wealth.

Rowan County is not the poorest in America, but it is among those that have experienced the most stunning loss during Barack Obama’s first term. Once a blue-collar county, Rowan has morphed into an unemployed one, where everything from federal stimulus money to state home loans to government retraining programs have failed to impede a deeper slide into poverty.

“Everything has been reset. Like we have to start all over again,” said Susan Kluttz, a Democrat who has served as mayor of Salisbury for seven terms, or 14 years.

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What a Deal: Poker Champ Pays No Taxes on $8.7 Million

Via Survival

There's Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan. There's the Buffett Rule.

But of all the tax plans we've heard lately, Pius Heinz's All for Me deal is our favorite.

Heinz is the German ace who recently won the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, earning $8,715,636 -- tax-free.

Under the U.S.-Germany Tax Treaty, Germans' gambling income earned on U.S. soil isn't taxed by the IRS, reports Taxabletalk.com. Back in Germany, gambling winnings are also tax-exempt. So Heinz won't have to ante up one penny to any government, while most of his competition is paying a full house or more.

"All power to him," Taxable Talk author Russell Fox told DailyFinance.

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The Women of the Confederacy Monument, Raleigh NC

The mothers of the South had sent their sons to the front as the Spartan mother when she delivered the shield to her son with the command: “Return with it or upon it.”

I cannot count the number of times my mother said this to me.
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The Legacy of the Confederacy:

(North Carolina Governor Locke Craig, accepting the Monument to the Women of the Confederacy, unveiled at Raleigh, June 10, 1914)

“The State accepts this monument with grateful appreciation.

It is the tribute of a knightly soldier to the Women of the Confederacy. The statue is epic: Arms and the Man. Its theme is heroism and devotion; the inheritance of the children of the South. To the earnest beholder, the statue is illumined with unfolding meaning. His vision will determine its revelation.

As we look upon it, there rises out of the past a time when the spirit of war moved upon the depths of human thought, and summoned the elemental forces to titanic strife. We feel the throes of the mighty upheaval. We see “the marshaling in arms, and battle’s magnificently stern array.” Lovers say good-bye with tokens of plighted troth; the young mother and the father in uniform, kneel together, weeping over the cradle of their new born babe; there are tears and everlasting farewells; the cavalcades are filing off; the tramp of innumerable armies is heard. In secret the mother – this Woman of the Confederacy – prays and weeps with breaking heart for the boy who marches away to the wild, grand music of the bugles.

At home alone, the wives and mothers, these Women of the Confederacy, in patience and suffering, are listening for the coming of those who will never return – will never return, but march on forever in the militant hosts of the heroic of all kindred and nations, that have redeemed and glorified the world.

We dedicate this monument as a symbol of our veneration. We dedicate this monument as a covenant that we too, in blessed remembrance of them, shall strive for fidelity and courage.

That people survives, gathers strength, becomes puissant in human destiny that has the faith and the courage for the supreme issue. The immediate result is not the final judgment. Who won at Thermopylae, the Persians or the Spartans? Who was victorious at the Alamo, Santa Anna or Travis? Who triumphed, Socrates or his judges; Jesus or Pontius Pilate?

The glory of France is the Old Guard at Waterloo. The noblest feelings of the English heart are stirred by the Light Brigade charging to death at Balaklava. Lexington and Guilford Courthouse are as dear to us as Trenton and Yorktown.

Disaster does not always destroy. Armies may be destroyed, “Far called, our navies melt away”; yet from a land consecrated by the blood of the brave, from a soil enriched by glorious tradition, tried and purified by fire, a nobler, stronger race will come. Upon a land blighted by the cowardice of those who should defend it, there is the judgment of decay and death.

The heroic past is our priceless inheritance. Our armies were destroyed; our land was smitten by war; our homes were ravaged by avenging armies. We were plundered by the hordes of reconstruction. But standing in this land that has suffered, amid this throng of grey-haired veterans, and their kindred and descendants, I declare that the legacy of the war is our richest possession.

I utter the sentiments of every maimed soldier; of every soldier who gave the best of his young life to “the storm-cradled nation that fell,” of every bereaved widow and mother; and if I could speak for the dead, I would utter the sentiment of the forty thousand sons of the State who fell upon the fields of battle, when I declare that they would not revoke that sacrifice.

Some of you can remember when the young soldier was brought home dead when the maiden was clothed in her first sorrow, and the old gray head was bowed in the last grief. The mothers of the South had sent their sons to the front as the Spartan mother when she delivered the shield to her son with the command: “Return with it or upon it.”

They wept in silent desolation, but in their grief there was exaltation, for they knew that their sons had done a soldier’s part, that in the tumult of historic days they had fought and fallen beneath the advancing flag; that in strange lands, wounded and neglected, they had suffered without complaint, and bequeathing a message for home, had died, as conquerors, without a murmur.

Hail to you, Women of the Confederacy, that bore them and nurtured them, and offered them for sacrifice! In you and in your descendants is vouchsafed the promise to Abraham: Henceforth all generations shall call you blessed.

From the shadow of war we sweep into the grander day. The earth is hallowed because it is the sepulcher of the brave; not men whose victories have been inscribed upon triumphal columns, but men whose memorial is, that in courage and loyalty for conviction, they were steadfast unto death; men who have been stoned and scourged, and quailed not before the mighty.

“Their heroic sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven out of all lands and out of all times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic actions as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph.” They are the conquerors. The South has forever a part in that chorus of victory.”

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The Women of the Confederacy Monument, Raleigh NC

Sen. Sessions: 'Deeply Disturbed' Over Kagan's Role in Obamacare

Republican pressure is growing for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to step down from the vital hearing that will decide the future of America’s healthcare next year.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is leading the charge saying that newly released emails seem to show that Kagan was heavily involved in policy discussions on how to make sure Obamacare passed through Congress.

Now Sessions is putting pressure on embattled Attorney General Eric Holder – who, at the time was Kagan’s boss – to come clean on what she knew and when she knew it.

Sessions, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Holder he is “deeply disturbed,” that the emails were not released at Kagan’s confirmation hearings in June last year.

Kagan is responsible for making the decision whether she should recuse herself from the case when the Supreme Court hears challenges to President Barack Obama’s signature law next spring. A decision on the constitutionality of the law is expected by late June or July, just in time for the two political parties’ National Conventions.

She has to decide whether her role as Obama’s Solicitor General at the time the law was drawn up and passed could be seen as an unacceptable conflict of interest. The law says, “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

It goes on to say they should also quit a case “where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”

Sessions, who was attorney general of Alabama before he took his seat in the Senate in 1997, fired off a letter to Holder on Tuesday, demanding written testimony on why the emails were not presented before.

“I am deeply disturbed by these developments and believe that the Justice Department should have provided these documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee during Justice Kagan’s confirmation hearing,” he wrote.

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National Bank of Ukraine Introduces a Program of Gold & Silver Coins

This development is remarkable, and a huge leap for individual liberties for the Ukrainian people. This event is gliding well below the radars of goldbugs, but is a near model for what Ron Paul envisions for the American people if elected. The NBU is providing a competitive exchange medium for fiat currencies - - rightfully believing that citizens will replace their saving of foreign fiats (dollars?) with un-taxed precious metals .

Let's hope our own CIA or surrogate troublemakers don't prod unrest by tormenting this young country. And to you Russia: Hands Off the Ukrainians!

Give your mind the cursory thought that other central banks will follow!

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DOJ: Make It a Federal Crime to “Lie” on the Internet

Via III Percent Patriots

"........someone who uses a fake name in their Facebook profile, or sheds a few pounds in their Match.com description — both of which are forbidden by those sites’ terms of service,” Couts notes. If implemented, the government will not use the law to prosecute people who use fake names on Facebook, although it may use it selectively to prosecute “cyber-criminals.”

How gullible do you think we are?
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Modifying the CFAA appears to be an attempt silence government critics and journalists who “lie” about 9/11 and other official narratives.

1984.

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For Illegal Alien Students Only: Fall 2011 CIFE Scholarships

Via Cousin Bill

Big surprise, it's from Los Angeles. Maybe we should contact Sonia for a possible exemption........
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Perhaps you know of students who could benefit from this scholarship or are at least interested.

--Temoc

From: Sonia Rodriguez [mailto:srodr021@ucr.edu]
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 3:33 PM
To: Figueroa, Cuauhtemoc
Subject: Fall 2011 CIFE Scholarship - For Undocumented Students

Hi Cuauhtemoc,

Here's a scholarship for undocumented high school students. Please forward the information to anyone that might be interested.
Gracias,

Sonia

HERE

Communism Tonight

Via Stacy Berrnard

Occupy Cal (U.C. Berkeley) time-travels back to the ’60s

Via Moonbattery

The privileged Occupy kiddies of U.C. Berkeley were back in action again yesterday, play-acting at revolution to entertain their professors.

More with many pictures

CNN Poll: Obama ranks low among recent incumbents

Via The Dorkfish Express

President Barack Obama's overall approval rating remains in the mid-40s, where it has been since July, and he continues to receive much higher marks for foreign policy than for domestic issues, according to a new national survey out one year before he is up for re-election.

A CNN/ORC International Poll released Tuesday indicates that 52% of all Americans approve of how the president is handling the situation in Iraq, an indication that Americans tend to favor Obama's decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from that country by year's end. Forty-eight percent of those questioned approve of how he is handling the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, only 35% have a positive view of his economic track record, and just 38% approve of how he is handling health care policy.

Full results (pdf)

It all adds up to an overall 46% approval rating for the president, with 52% saying they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job in the White House.

"That's par for the course for Obama, whose overall approval rating has been hovering in the mid 40s in every CNN poll conducted since June," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

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The European Project is Now Sustained by Coup

What we have witnessed is a coup d’état: bloodless and genteel, but a coup d’état none the less. In Athens and in Rome, elected prime ministers have been toppled in favour of Eurocrats — respectively a former Vice-President of the European Central Bank and a former European Commissioner. Both countries now have what are called ‘national governments’, though they have been put together for the sole purpose of implementing policies that would be rejected in a general election. Italy and Greece are satrapies of Brussels, just as surely as Bosnia or Kosovo. In its Balkan protectorates, the EU overtly favours technocracy as the antidote to ‘populism’ (ie, democracy). Left to themselves, the locals have a tendency to vote for parties that want ethnographic frontiers. The EU’s solution is to rule through a series of appointed governors — diplomats (and the odd retired politician) in Bosnia, generals in Kosovo.

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Rick Perry Wants to Take Aggressive Action to Overhaul Washington

Godfather Politics

VERBATIM POST

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Just a few days ago Rick Perry announced his desire to start all foreign aid at zero dollars and then require nations to justify why they should receive financial aid from the US. Many thought this to be a drastic move, but wait, there’s more.

On Tuesday, Perry told a crowd in Iowa that he wants to be aggressive in making changes to Washington. Among the more drastic measures he has revealed his intention of cutting Congresses salary in half; require a two-thirds majority vote for any tax increases and to end the lifetime appointments of all federal judges.

And he indicated that this is just the start to his reform measures to clean up Washington and spur the economy. Unlike the current administration whose legislation has added thousands to the federal payroll, Perry wants to cut government down to an affordable size.

I’ve been advocating the end of the tradition of lifetime appointments for federal judges for years. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the Constitution or Amendments that state a federal judicial appointment is for the life of the judge. What the Constitution does say is that they are to serve in ‘good behavior’, nothing more.

I would go further that Perry and promote a Constitutional Amendment stating term limits for all federal judges, including the US Supreme Court. In the case of SCOTUS, I would set terms of three years with a maximum of three terms. With nine members on the Court, their terms would be staggered so that three members of the Court would be up for renewal or replacement every year.

For federal courts such as the US District Court of Appeals that have three judges, I would set the same term limits as with SCOTUS, so that one of the members of the bench would come up for reappointment or replacement every year.

In addition to term limits, I would create a review process of all decisions rendered by every federal judge. The process would look at their decisions to determine constitutionality, possible favoritism or influence from outside sources such as lobbyists and financial supporters. The review process would result in a grading of sorts where the judge would have to have a rating high enough to designate them as serving in ‘good behavior’ as the Constitution states. If they fail to meet the minimum standards, then they will not be eligible to retain their seat on the bench when their three year term expires.

If done properly, it should lead more judges ruling on the law and not their own personal beliefs or the desires of those filling their pockets with all kinds of gratuities.

I pray that Rick Perry along with the rest of the Republican candidates read this Amendment proposal and that it will prompt them to adopt this as part of their campaign platform.

New poll shows 4-way tie in Iowa as Ron Paul moves to top tier

The Iowa caucuses are just seven weeks away, but Republican voters in the nation's first presidential nominating state seem as torn as ever over the GOP field.

A new Bloomberg poll of likely caucus participants shows a four-way tie in Iowa, with Rep. Ron Paul joining Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain in the top tier of candidates. Underscoring the uncertainty in the race, 60 percent of respondents said they could be persuaded to back someone other than their first choice for the nomination.

The poll, conducted November 10 - 12 by the West Des Moines-based firm Selzer & Co, shows Cain in the lead with 20 percent, while Paul comes in at 19 percent. Romney wins 18 percent support, and Gingrich earns 17 percent. The margin of error is 4.4 percent.

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Grassley: Whistleblower cases stuck ‘in limbo’ under Holder

The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is challenging the commitment to whistleblowers of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole as one FBI case “continues to languish” after nine years and another has “sat in limbo” for more than four years.

“Whistleblowers are key to unlocking many of the secrets hidden deep in the closets of the federal government. Allowing a case to sit in limbo for more than nine years shows a lack of commitment to resolving issues for these courageous people,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

“The excessive time to make a judgment on these cases indicates that the process for adjudicating FBI whistleblower claims is broken and needs to be fixed,” he said, adding that a recent decision by Mr. Cole “to remand a nine-year-old case for further proceedings is mind-boggling and calls into question his commitment to help support whistleblowers.”

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On the 17th, we going to burn New York City to the f-cking ground.

Verum Serum
VERBATIM POST
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LANGUAGE

Just in time for the Thanksgiving Day parade! The headlined quote comes at about a minute in, but there is plenty more of the sort of “non-violent” talk OWS has become known for leading up to this point.

On the 17th, we going to burn New York City to the f-cking ground.

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Ain’t no more talking, They got guns we got bodies. They got bricks we got rocks. Let’s see what they got.

[Young man in the background] They got missiles, we got bombs.

I want them…I want them to make that decision so they can see…in a few days you going to see what a molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.

Says the man as he…signs an autograph?

Who the hell is this guy, to make what can only be described as a terrorist threat so brazenly with cameras rolling. I’d joke and say he must be a tea party infiltrator, but seriously, does anyone have any contacts with the NYPD or the DHS? This is way, way over the line.

Starkey: ‘Britain is a White Mono-Culture and Schools Should Focus on Our Own History’

David Starkey has provoked more controversy by claiming that most of Britain is a ‘mono-culture’ and that immigrants should assimilate.

The TV historian rejected claims by other academics that it is a diverse country, describing it as 'absolutely and unmitigatingly white' outside of London.

His outburst comes three months after he blamed ‘black culture’ for the summer riots and claimed that parts of Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech had been right.

He made his latest comments during a historians conference discussing Education Secretary Michael Gove's announcement that he wanted to put ‘our island story’ at the heart of Britain's national curriculum.

Dr Starkey told the meeting that the National Curriculum should involve ‘a serious focus on your own culture’.

Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji asked him to explain what he meant, arguing that contemporary Britain was ‘rather diverse’.

But Dr Starkey cut in, telling her: ‘No it’s not. Most of Britain is a mono-culture. You think London is Britain. It isn’t.

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Gunwalker: They knew. Everybody knew. This one email proves it.

HERE