Representative Gowdy on why Obama is brushing off scandal questions

Via NC Renegade

The Plant Whisperer: 23 Pictures

Via Daily Timewaster

In Los Angeles, one woman lives in a miniature botanical garden of her own creation, with fruit trees, Peruvian cactuses and a pond with a turtle named Ting.

 

More @ The New York Times

Think Tank on Common Core: 'The Children Belong to All of Us'

Via III Percent Patriots

 

Yeah, right commie.  Come and take them.......... 

In addressing criticism of the Common Core national education standards, a panelist at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, said critics were a “tiny minority” who opposed standards altogether, which was unfair because “the children belong to all of us.”

The CAP was founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and now an adviser to President Barack Obama.  At a CAP event to promote Common Core on Friday, CNSNews.com asked about the critics who say federal monetary incentives attached to Common Core is driving the states to implement the standards.

More @ CNS News

Fisherman says he survived 14 months adrift in the Pacific

Via Ninety Miles From Tyranny

 

Frail, bearded but smiling, Jose Salvador Alvarenga came ashore on the island of Majuro on Monday after his terrible ordeal and spoke to MailOnline

Jose only survived by catching, birds, fish, turtles and drinking their blood

He said: 'I thank God and I thank the birds I caught to eat. I caught fish and at times I drank my own urine to have liquid'

Rambling at times, he can remember very little of his past life

He looked plumper than expected, but a doctor said it was because his body has swollen from the conditions he endured

But questions have started to creep in about his 'incredible' story. A local official said: 'I'm not sure if I believe his story. I may have some doubts'

Claims he left Mexico for El Salvador in December 2012 with a companion, aged between 15 and 18, who died after four weeks

 

More @ Daily Mail

How A Simple New Invention Seals A Gunshot Wound In 15 Seconds

Via Resister In The Rockies

 

 How A Simple New Invention Seals A Gunshot Wound In 15 Seconds

When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery. It’s an agonizing process that doesn't always work--if bleeding hasn't stopped after three minutes of applying direct pressure, the medic must pull out all the gauze and start over again. It’s so painful, “you take the guy’s gun away first,” says former U.S. Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh.

Even with this emergency treatment, many soldiers still bleed to death; hemorrhage is a leading cause of death on the battlefield. "Gauze bandages just don't work for anything serious," says Steinbaugh, who tended to injured soldiers during more than a dozen deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. When Steinbaugh retired in April 2012 after a head injury, he joined an Oregon-based startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers who were working on a better way to stop bleeding.

More @ Popular Science

NC: Storm troopers' terrorize citizens

Operation “Something Bruin” was run by the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission (NCWRC), in conjunction with the United States Forest Service (USFS). This four-year, $2 million undercover operation was conducted to uncover bear poaching rings in our state. However, it has instead raised serious questions about the officers and agents involved in the operation. 

Rather than pursuing legitimate poaching arrests, “Something Bruin” reportedly exposed 81 hunters and their families to terrible abuses at the hands of the undercover agents and officers. Hunters caught up in the operation report entrapment, killing of bears by the agents themselves, and the use of storm trooper tactics against hunters and their families. Ms. Linda Crisp and her daughter, Michelle, describe having their homes invaded, and family heirlooms seized by agents wearing body armor and carrying fully automatic weapons. As this occurred, parents were detained outside while small children were left screaming, scared and alone inside homes. 

Scores of arrests yielded very few convictions. State charges against most of the hunters have reportedly been dismissed, while only a few were later rearrested on federal charges. These are not the statistics you would expect to see from a legitimate undercover operation. 

Valone demands answers
 
Now GRNC President F. Paul Valone is demanding answers—and action. Pursuant to a conversation about the travesty between Valone and Congressman Mark Meadows (R-11, GRNC ****), Meadows sent letters to Inspectors General at the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture demanding an investigation.

Valone has already delivered letters to Governor McCrory and Senator Burr, calling for both state and federal investigations and, if illegal entrapment occurred, for criminal prosecution of the agents responsible. Said Valone: "If it can be proven that USFS or NCWRC officers committed wildlife violations or illegally entrapped hunters, the citizens victimized by their actions deserve to see appropriate criminal charges filed," Valone further demanded that the Attorney General Roy Cooper conduct an investigation of the NCWRC officers involved. 

Action, please

Doctor Refuses To Accept Obamacare: “We Choose Dignity and Personal Service Over Disrespect”

 

The following letter to Aetna from Dr. Held has been reprinted in full.

Dear Mr. Bertolini,

With a deep sense of sadness, I must inform you that I will no longer serve as a physician for Aetna patients under the terms of our contractual agreement, which you most recently unilaterally changed.

I have been privileged and honored to care for thousands of patients covered by Aetna policies since the 1990’s. I have devoted my life to providing the very best, state-of-the-art care to these individuals. We have formed a patient-doctor relationship, which I hope many will chose to continue in spite of my severing ties with Aetna. You see, health insurance has evolved such that insurers and government have inserted themselves smack-dab in the middle of the once sacred patient-doctor relationship. I am called a provider- not a doctor. My patient is now yours- not mine. What I can do as a physician now has strangulating strings and nonsensical numbers attached- to you and government and money-not the best interests of the patients.

Obamacare, the “law of the land”, contains ever-changing-at-the-whim-of-HHS, politically-expedient mandates, rewards, penalties, rules and regulations with which I cannot rationally or morally treat my patients and run a practice, much-less interpret, implement, or comply.

Millions of Americans have lost coverage because of the healthcare law and must now shop on a defective, insecure government website and sign up for more expensive policies through Federal and State exchanges. Only by logging in as a prospective patient did my office manager and I discover that Aetna was selling plans for which I am a provider-effectively selling my services without even asking, much less informing me that my services would be sold on such a site, under the auspices of new terms with which I will not comply.

Then, after the fact, I received a form letter informing me of Aetna’s “new allowables”. I will not sell my services under such terms. While treated as such, patients and doctors are not commodities worthy of such impersonal, inconsiderate, and cavalier treatment. We choose dignity and personal service over disrespect and form letters.

So here we are, you are getting new business offering health insurance plans featuring my services without my consent under terms which are unacceptable to me. Accept this as my official written notice that the changes that you have unilaterally made to our contract are unacceptable to me and make our contract null and void. You must explain this to your patients. You must tell them that they have purchased a product that was misrepresented to them and that you cannot deliver. It saddens me to think of the decreased access to care from actual physicians and the shockingly increased costs Aetna patients will now experience because of your choice to collude with big government rather than collaborate with patients and physicians.

Kristin S. Held, MD

More @ Freedom Outpost

Goodies From Ol' Remus

 Ol' Remus

Current politics amounts to the Republican-Democrat Party versus—we'll use a catch-all phrase here—the tea party. The tea party isn't an upstart, it isn't even a party, it's part of a counterinsurgency. Gains must come at somebody's expense. That somebody is the Republican wing of The Party, and why not, they're giving away the high ground with both hands. They may be content to be the progressive's cleanup crew and tax collector but the people have higher aspirations. Liberty, mainly.

Liberty is winning. DC is losing. DC knows it and DC fears it. With their street barricades and check points and retread military equipment, the place looks like Berlin in the Reich's last days of 1945. They're violating and assaulting and even murdering people for petty or imagined offenses, or for no reason at all. Then there's the steady drip-drip of purges and unexplained deaths and puzzling resignations, the conflicting laws and regulations enforced by dozens of overlapping agencies. Some write their own warrants as they swing through the doors and windows. The place ought to be tested for rabies. 

 **********************************

  "Katyn" full length movie on YouTube - Polish with English subtitles, 240p, 1h 56m 56s. Description: The Katyn massacre was a mass murder of 22,000 of Polish prisoners of war, primarily military officers, intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.

The governance of the United States can be divided into four distinct epochs, delineated as follows:

March 4, 1789: the first day of constitutional government,
April 13, 1861: the first day of un-constitutional government,
December 8, 1941: the first day of non-constitutional government, and
January 20, 2009: the first day of anti-constitutional government.
James Rawles at survivalblog.com

 The board of the New York state teachers union this weekend unanimously withdrew its support for the Common Core standards as they have been implemented — a major blow for Common Core advocates who have been touting support from teachers as proof that the standards will succeed in classrooms nationwide... The board also unanimously voted no confidence in New York Education Commissioner John King Jr. and urged the state’s Board of Regents to remove him from office.
Stephanie Simon at politico.com

DC - Three times people banged on the door of the Northeast Washington firehouse seeking help for a man who had collapsed. Each time, the rescuers inside turned them away. In a nearby parking lot, Marie Mills cradled her 77-year-old father in her arms... the firefighters said that they couldn’t respond unless someone called 911. It took 15 to 20 minutes for help to show up ... then only because a D.C. police officer flagged down an ambulance that happened to pass by. [He died]
Jahi Chikwendiu at washingtonpost.com

Obama's MyRA - The aim is simple – dupe unwitting Americans to plow their retirement savings into the US government’s shrinking coffers. I have personally written since 2009 that the US government would one day push US citizens into the ‘safety and security’ of US Treasuries. Jim Rogers nailed this right on the head when he and Ron Paul told our audience that the government would try to take your retirement funds. I don’t know how much more clear I can be: this is happening. This is exactly what bankrupt governments do, says Simon Black in this article, IRA confiscation: it’s happening, at Sovereign Man.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we stand with our eyes averted, burning with humiliation, while our spouses or children are groped above and below the waist by blue-gloved government prison guards—only we are in an airport in a free country, and not in a prison!

Or are we? A virtual open-air prison, where government security agents can pat down ordinary citizens at will is the accepted "new normal." Did that happen often in East Germany, I wonder? In the Soviet Union? Does it happen today in Cuba? Officially sanctioned crotch groping in the name of "security?"
Matt Bracken at westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com 

  Illegal aliens - Those who want to argue that kids  that were brought here illegally should get a pass are equally bereft of logic. That the child is innocent of wrong-doing is immaterial to the reality, which is that his or her parents  broke the law, and the correct place for the child is with the parents. There are those who argue that tight border controls are somehow inhumane or wrong, and that labor should be free to flow as it desires. That would be fine if  there was no public support system, but there is  and it's not going to go away, says Karl Denninger in this article, Immigration Reform: Tell Me More Lies Mr. Ryan, at Market Ticker.

Atlanta - Common sense should tell you that when the road is slick you, oh, I dunno, start braking gently and early, allow plenty of time to start forward movement from a dead standstill, take turns slowly, ease off the gas to avoid fishtailing, all that Drivers Ed 101 stuff... As someone who lives in a region that only has four seasons—early winter, mid winter, late winter, and next winter—it’s kind of amusing and frustrating to see the footage of these highways turned into bumper car arenas. I just wanna shout at the screen “Slow the frak down and you’ll be fine!”
Commander Zero at commanderzero.com/blog

 Governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on global warming, and what do we have to show for it? Nothing but a frozen country and some tampered data. You would think that with all the money they spent, they could have at least given us a warm winter. After 17 years of no warming, that works out to 0.0 degrees per billion dollars.
Steven Goddard at stevengoddard.wordpress.com 

To the extent that the GOP's major figures spout lip service to pro-freedom ideals but legitimize a tyrannical ruling party by failing to oppose them with all available forces, they are collaborating with the enemies of freedom. They have betrayed their oaths of office and have no more claim to a seat in the chambers of power than you or I. In that view, the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, who are at least open about their disdain for freedom, the Constitution, and the good of the nation.
Francis Porretto at bastionofliberty.blogspot.com

Boehner - If its civil war the speaker wants, its civil war he'll get. Establishment Republicans may have the dough, but the grassroots outnumbers them roughly three to one. The commitment and passion are with the grassroots. At war's end, it's the speaker and his ilk who'll be trundling off on yet another retreat—and, this time, for good.
J. Smith at americanthinker.com 

A modest proposal - To make up for the excess demand, what if kidneys were made part of eminent domain? What if, when we died, our bodies became property of the state, allowing the government to take ownership of our organs for public use? Because people have two kidneys but need only one to live, we all have a spare. Kidneys would not be taken simply at the whim of the medical profession but for the sole purpose of saving lives... Most importantly, we need to address the kidney shortage. It’s time to stop being nice and start saving lives.
Judith Thomson, via Kathy Shaidle at takimag.com

$43,000 found in Goodwill Clothing

 

“You’re gonna need a bigger bag.”

That was the one thought Tyler Gedelian had on his mind when a police officer carrying a small, zippered bag came to his Goodwill store in Monroe, Mich., to collect what was found inside some donated suits and a robe.

Gedelian, the 29-year-old store manager was utterly stunned last Wednesday when he and his colleague Laura Pietscher discovered envelopes containing stacks of $100 bills that totaled more than $43,000.

“We might find a quarter in somebody’s jeans,” he told the Monroe News. “But that [huge amount] blows my mind.”

More @ WND

FAA halts beer deliveries via drone to Minnesota ice fisherman

It's apparently a hazard faced by ice fisherman -- running out of beer while hunkered down on the ice. So it must have been a godsend when Minnesota's Lakemaid Brewery devised an ingenious solution -- using a six-rotor drone to deliver its six packs!


But, alas, this example of Yankee ingenuity was shot down by FAA in the latest case of big government making life miserable for businesses and ordinary Americans. What raised the FAA's ire? As aviation website AVweb explained: 

 "FAA rules allow the recreational use of remote control aircraft by hobbyists below 400 feet but the beer runs are a commercial operation and therefore illegal." None of this made sense to beer-deprived ice fishermen and nor to Lakemaid Brewery owner Jack Supple, who told NPR: "We were a little surprised at the FAA interest in this since we thought we were operating under the 400-foot limit."

More @ American Thinker