Women and Bacon

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USA Today: Don't ignore gun violence among black Americans

Via Angry Mike

With the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, gun violence is back in the news. With it are solutions that are questionable on both a constitutional and practical level. Likewise, many of the solutions ignore the real gun and violence problem in America – not one that occasionally shatters lives in white suburban America, but violence that brings daily Sandy Hooks to the doorsteps of black Americans.

The facts are clear. A series of infographics compiled by The Wall Street Journal based upon FBI data shows while the rest of the country may be largely shielded from the horrors of gun violence, approximately 47% of victims of the 165,000 homicides from 2000 to 2010 (including over 111,000 gun-related homicides) were black, and 40% of those committing homicides were black.

More @ USA Today

Republican Senators to Sell American People Out on Budget Proposal

                                                                               Trash.

At 7:45 on Friday morning reports indicated zero senate republicans were planning on voting for the Ryan-Murray House budget proposal. The GOP’s Senate leaders plan is to launch a procedural effort to kill the plan over a laundry list of objections – including a claim that it short-changes military veterans and other government retirees, which is does, of course.

Dick (turban) Durbin told reporters on Thursday, “We need Republican votes to pass the budget agreement, period. We need at least five. And I’m hoping that there will be more than that.” As of Friday morning he had none.

The GOP’s three most senior senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have announced that they will vote ‘no.’

As one would expect, Senator Ted Cruz said the proposal, “spends more, taxes more, and allows continued funding for Obamacare. I cannot support it.” Thanks Paul Ryan, for selling us out, and lying to Mark Levin on national radio about it.

One GOP Senate staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity said, “This is the agreement’s ‘pixie dust approach to budgeting. We’re doing what we always do. We set out a ten-year plan while knowing full well that we have a decade to undo it and shift gears again.”

Unless they can somehow find the republican senators they need, the federal government will be headed for another dreaded “SHUTDOWN” (dun-dun-dun) in three months.

That was Friday morning.

My how things change in the backrooms at the Senate in a matter of hours.

At approximately 10:00 Friday night, Politico reported:

More @ Freedom Outpost

Reports of erroneous WA health exchange debits

 

For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it's causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.
 

Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said. 

The Bruners enrolled for insurance on the Washington Healthplanfinder website, last October. They say they selected the bill pay date to be December 24th. Instead the Washington Healthplanfinder drafted the 835 dollar premium Monday.

More @ KGW

Fact Check: Paul Ryan Twisted Truth to Sell Budget Deal to House

 

House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) misled his colleagues in the House of Representatives about several major areas of the budget deal he cut with Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Breitbart News has learned.

Misrepresentations include serious budget details ranging from how much deficit reduction is actually in the plan to how spending in this plan compares to spending if the current law, the Budget Control Act (BCA), remains the law of the land.

The budget deal passed the House 332-94 on Thursday evening, with 169 Republicans voting for it and 62 Republicans voting against it. The GOP support was thanks to Ryan’s selling of the plan among his colleagues, who largely trust him despite many figures of the conservative movement turning against him. Now, it turns out, Ryan used a series of statements whose veracity is questionable at best to convince his colleagues to support the bill.

More @ Breitbart

Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional

 

 

In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents’ “slippery slope” arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional. 

In his 91-page opinion in Brown v. Buhman, on Dec. 13, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down Utah’s law making polygamy a crime. In so doing, he may have opened Pandora’s Box.

As a condition for becoming a state in 1896, Congress required Utah to outlaw polygamy, which is marriage between three or more persons. This case involved a family of fundamentalist offshoots of nineteenth-century Mormonism. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints disavowed polygamy in 1890, and again in 1904, but some splinter groups continue the practice.

More @ Breitbart

Woman killed by negligent discharge before SWAT-style raid

 

It appears that an officer in a paramilitary “stack” about to raid a suspected drug location had a negligent discharge… which just happened to hit one of the suspects in the head:

A 35-year-old Ross County woman is dead after she was shot in the head during a raid Wednesday on U.S. 23, and it appears the shot was fired from the weapon of a law enforcement officer, Ross County Prosecutor Matt Schmidt said Thursday.

The dead woman is 35-year-old Krystal Barrows, who was inside the home at 467 U.S. 23 South in Ross County when the U.S. 23 Task Force entered at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. Schmidt confirmed the death to the Gazette late Thursday.

Schmidt said the round was not intentionally fired, and it’s unclear whether the gunfire was the result of a weapon malfunction or user error. He stressed that he was not at the scene and is not a spokesman for the Ross County Sheriff’s Office, but he does serve as its legal counsel.

Let’s cut the bull, Schmidt: it was user error, and everyone knows it. True weapon malfunctions leading to a discharge are so rare as to be almost nonexistent. The officer had his booger-hook on the bang switch, flinched, and pulled the trigger.

More @ Bearing Arms

Suppertime

Via Dashing

 

Vietnam

Via Dashing

 

Thousands of Obamacare sign-ups disappear into HealthCare.gov black hole

 

Nearly 15,000 enrollment records from Americans trying to sign up for Obamacare never made it to insurers — but the federal government does not know which records never made it to which insurer.

The federal analysis merely compares the number of times Obamacare enrollees clicked “enroll” to the number of plans HealthCare.gov sent to insurers, according to The Washington Post. Consumers who send the vanishing enrollments, or “orphan files,” are not notified that their information has not been processed and an insurer did not receive sensitive financial and health-related data, meaning that they could be in for an unpleasant surprise when the Dec. 23 deadline — the last day for customers to sign up for health insurance — comes and goes.

But government officials insist that less than one percent of enrollments disappeared into cyberspace since early December, even though their data does not include duplicated and erroneous enrollments.

More @ The Daily Caller