Fire Hydrant of Freedom

AP Interview: Santorum undecided in 2016 bid

Associated Press
By PHILIP ELLIOTT 6 hours ago
 
Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., poses for a portrait in his publishers office Wednesday, April 23, 2014 in Washington, before an interview about his recently released book titled "Blue Color Conservative." The once and perhaps future presidential candidate has lots of policy ideas for fellow Republicans seeking public office. He's just not sure he’ll be one of those hopefuls ever again. "Yeah, I don’t know if I can do this. It’s just tough," Santorum said about another White House run. In the interview, Santorum said the GOP will struggle to win races unless candidates came up with policies that help working Americans. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The once and perhaps future presidential candidate Rick Santorum has lots of policy ideas for fellow Republicans seeking public office.

He's just not sure he'll be one of those hopefuls ever again.

"Yeah, I don't know if I can do this. It's just tough," Santorum said about another White House run.

The former Pennsylvania senator tells The Associated Press in an interview that he isn't ruling out a 2016 candidacy.

But, he says, there are plenty of reasons why he wouldn't do it.

He is enjoying a second career as a movie studio executive. His daughter's health remains a concern.

And, Santorum writes in a new book, he can help shape his party's future from offstage.

In the interview, Santorum said the GOP will struggle to win races unless candidates came up with policies that help working Americans.

Victories will be tough, he said, unless elected officials stop being obstructionists.

Santorum said the libertarian streak running through his party distorts the definition of freedom, and that politicians wrongly look to President Ronald Reagan's policies to address today's challenges.

Then there's Santorum's slap at Republicans who demonize social welfare programs.

"Do Republicans really care less about the person at the bottom of the ladder than Democrats do? To be painfully honest, I would have to say in some ways 'yes,'" Santorum writes in his book, "Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works."

The tough talk raises questions about Santorum's viability in what could be a crowded 2016 primary field.

Also, he's not rushing to camp out in early nominating Iowa or New Hampshire again.

"A while. A year at least, probably," he said of his timeline to decide on a 2016 bid.

Santorum ran an upstart campaign in 2012, surviving long enough to be Mitt Romney's last remaining rival. He struggled to raise money or support among establishment-minded Republicans, but his socially conservative profile drew enough backing for Santorum to pick up victories in 11 states.

Even in victory, his disorganized campaign cost him, including failing to qualify for the ballot in Virginia.

"We cannot run the campaign we ran last time if we run this time," Santorum said.

How Republicans win is the focus of Santorum's latest book, to be released Monday.

Santorum offers ideas on energy, education, the economy and health care. It comes across as part think tank policy paper, part campaign playbook and part communications advice on how to connect with working-class voters.

For instance, Republicans should not focus exclusively on business leaders and "job creators" and should speak to employees, Santorum said.

Anxiety among those voters remains high, and Republicans have for too long talked to the top earners and not the workers.

"A rising tide lifts all boats — unless your boat has a hole in it. A lot of Americans, we've got holes in our boats," Santorum said. "Millions and millions of Americans (are) out there who want good lives but have holes in their boats. ... They just see the water level going up and their boat sinking."

That's why, he argues, candidates need to put forward policies to help those voters.

"I'm looking at 2014 and I'm thinking the Republican Party is heading toward No-ville, which is 'we're against this, we're against that, we're against this.' We're not painting a positive vision for America," Santorum said in the interview.

After the 2012 campaign, he signed on as CEO of EchoLight Studies, which produces movies rooted in faith and family.

"I saw an opportunity to do something in the space where we need to have movies that have a faith message in them that are better than the movies that have been done," Santorum said.

At home, 5-year-old daughter Bella keeps Santorum busy. She has a genetic disorder, Trisomy 18, which causes brain, heart and internal organ developmental abnormalities. Almost all children die within the first year of life.

Bella turns 6 in May and the senator is at work on a book about his daughter. Her difficult nights have sometimes kept Santorum at her bedside.

Santorum said family issues would drive his decision to run or not, and Bella would be a key factor.

His other six other children, Santorum said, are "all very open to dad doing this again."

But Santorum isn't rushing into anything. A primary might feature the libertarian wing of the party, led in part by two prominent tea partyers, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.

"There's a strain within the Republican Party now that smacks of the no-government conservatism," Santorum said. "That wasn't Ronald Regan. It wasn't Teddy Roosevelt. It wasn't Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't any Republican that I'm aware of. It wasn't Calvin Coolidge. And yet there seems to be this creation of this strain of conservatism that has no basis in conservatism."

Santorum said Republicans should respect Reagan, but he doubted the former president would offer the same policies today that he did during the 1970s and 1980s.

Santorum also includes plenty of incendiary rhetoric in his book that he acknowledges could haunt him should he run again.

In addition to the sentence about Republicans and social safety nets, Santorum writes that poor voters "took their lie about sex without consequences as gospel" and calls climate change a "hyped-up crisis."

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

On MSLSD last night, I think, the noted her great achievement as Secretary of State was the wise move it was to become a Sec of St under Obama.  They then showed her popularity in the poles soared while she was Sec of St and are now down again.

So the spin is not what she accomplished other than it improved her popularity - at least that is what I deduced the logic to be.

This kind of slime brings back the gut wrenching memories of the 90s.   

Unfortunately we don't have an honest person in the WH now either.

Scientists alter fat metabolism in animals to prevent most common type of heart disease

Working with mice and rabbits, Johns Hopkins scientists have found a way to block abnormal cholesterol production, transport and breakdown, successfully preventing the development of atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attacks and strokes and the number-one cause of death among humans. The condition develops when fat builds inside blood vessels over time and renders them stiff, narrowed and hardened, greatly reducing their ability to feed oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle and the brain.

In a series of experiments, described April 7 in the journal Circulation, the Johns Hopkins team says it identified and halted the action of a single molecular culprit responsible for a range of biological glitches that affect the body's ability to properly use, transport and purge itself of cholesterol—the fatty substance that accumulates inside vessels and fuels heart disease.

The offender, the researchers say, is a fat-and-sugar molecule called glycosphingolipid, or GSL, which resides in the membranes of all cells, and is mostly known for regulating cell growth. Results of the experiments, the scientists say, reveal that this very same molecule also regulates the way the body handles cholesterol.

The Johns Hopkins team used an existing man-made compound called D-PDMP to block the synthesis of the GSL molecule, and by doing so, prevented the development of heart disease in mice and rabbits fed a high-fat, cholesterol-laden diet. The findings reveal that D-PDMP appears to work by interfering with a constellation of genetic pathways that regulate fat metabolism on multiple fronts—from the way cells derive and absorb cholesterol from food, to the way cholesterol is transported to tissues and organs and is then broken down by the liver and excreted from the body.

"Current cholesterol-lowering medications tackle the problem on a single front—either by blocking cholesterol synthesis or by preventing the body from absorbing too much of it," says lead investigator Subroto Chatterjee, Ph.D., a cardio-metabolic expert at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "But atherosclerosis is a multi-factorial problem that requires hitting the abnormal cholesterol cycle at many points. By inhibiting the synthesis of GSL, we believe we have achieved exactly that."

Specifically, the experiments showed that treatment with D-PDMP led to:
•a drop in the animals' levels of so-called bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein, LDL;
•a drop in oxidized LDL, a particularly virulent form of fat that forms when LDL encounters free radicals. Oxidized LDL easily sticks to the walls of blood vessels, where it ignites inflammation, damaging the vessel walls and promoting the growth of fatty plaque;
•a surge in good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein, HDL, known to counteract the effects of LDL by mopping it up; and
•a significant drop in triglycerides, another type of plaque-building fat.
 

     

The treatment also prevented fatty plaque and calcium deposits from building up inside the animals' vessels. These effects were observed in animals on a daily D-PDMP treatment even though they ate a diet made up of 20 percent triglycerides—the human equivalent of eating a greasy burger for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In addition, the researchers say, D-PDMP appears to precision-target the worst byproducts of aberrant cell growth signaling, such as oxidized LDL and the activity of certain chemicals that fuel vessel inflammation, without altering cell growth itself.

D-PDMP, which is already widely used in basic research to experimentally block and study cell growth and other basic cell functions, is deemed safe in animals, the investigators say. For example, animals in the current study had no side effects even when given D-PDMP doses 10 times higher than the minimum effective dose, the study found. The research team is currently designing a compound drug with D-PDMP, which they soon plan to test in other animals and, eventually, in humans.

Mice used in the experiments were genetically engineered to lack a protein essential in the breakdown of fats and thus were predisposed to atherosclerosis. The researchers fed the animals a high-fat diet over the course of several months, but also gave a third of the animals a low-dose of D-PDMP. They gave a double dose of the same inhibitor to another third and placebo to the rest.

When scientists measured the thickness of the animals' aortas—the body's largest vessel and one that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body—they found striking differences among the groups. As expected, the aortas of mice that got placebo had grown thicker from the accumulation of fat and calcium deposits inside them. The aortas of mice on low-dose D-PDMP, however, were significantly thinner with little to no obstruction. To the researchers' surprise, Chatterjee says, mice eating high-fat foods and treated with high-dose D-PDMP had nearly pristine arteries free of obstruction, indistinguishable from those of healthy mice.

Next, the researchers measured how well and how fast blood traveled through the animals' blood vessels. Slower blood flow signals clogging of the vessel and is a marker of atherosclerosis. The vessels of mice fed a high-fat diet plus D-PDMP had normal blood flow. Mice receiving a high-fat diet without D-PDMP predictably had compromised blood flow.

When researchers examined cells from the animals' livers—the main site of fat synthesis and breakdown—they noticed marked differences in the expression of several genes that regulate cholesterol metabolism. The activity of these genes is heralded by the levels of enzymes they produce, Chatterjee says. Mice treated with D-PDMP had notably higher levels of two enzymes responsible for maintaining the body's delicate fat homeostasis by regulating the way cells take in and break down cholesterol. Specifically, the scientists say, the inhibitor appeared to stimulate the action and efficacy of a class of protein pumps in the cell responsible for maintaining healthy cholesterol levels by transporting cholesterol in and out of the bloodstream. In addition, mice treated that way had higher levels of lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme responsible for the breakdown of triglycerides. A deficiency in this enzyme causes dangerous buildup of blood triglycerides.

Treatment with a D-PDMP also boosted the activity of an enzyme responsible for purging the body of fats by converting these fats into bile, the fat-dissolving substance secreted by the liver.

In a final set of experiments, researchers compared the effects of treatment with D-PDMP in two groups of healthy rabbits, both fed high-fat diets, with half of them receiving treatment. Rabbits that ate high-fat food alone developed all the classic signs of atherosclerosis—fatty plaque buildup in the arteries and stiff, narrowed blood vessels. Their cholesterol levels shot up 17-fold. By contrast, rabbits treated with D-PDMP never developed atherosclerosis. Their cholesterol levels also remained normal or near-normal.

The World Health Organizations estimates that high cholesterol claims 2.6 million lives worldwide each year. More than 70 million Americans have high cholesterol, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Current cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as statins, do not work in about one-third of people who take them, experts say.

Have we had such an obvious racist on the Supreme Court besides Justice Taney?:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/dogs-meet-sister_n_3455235.html

By Scott Conroy - April 23, 2014

A new round of polls released on Wednesday offered generally upbeat news for Democrats in four U.S. Senate contests in Southern states considered key to the party's hopes of retaining its majority in November.  

According to the New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation surveys, vulnerable incumbent Democrats are holding on to leads in Louisiana and Arkansas and effectively tied in North Carolina. Upstart challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes, meanwhile, is trailing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell by just a single point in Kentucky.

All four races are critical to Republicans’ hopes of netting the six seats they need to regain control of the upper chamber.

Though he narrowly lost North Carolina in 2012, President Obama was blown out by margins ranging from 17 to 24 percentage points in the other three states, suggesting that the Democratic Senate candidates are running strong campaigns in a region that has grown increasingly hostile to their party in federal elections.  

In North Carolina, Sen. Kay Hagan leads state House Speaker Thom Tillis -- the frontrunner in the Republican primary -- 42 percent to 40 percent, according to the new poll.

In Louisiana’s still largely unsettled contest, in which there are no primaries, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu leads the Republican frontrunner, Rep. Bill Cassidy, by a 42 percent to 18 percent margin, with 20 percent of respondents having no opinion.

The most surprising result of the new surveys comes in Arkansas, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor enjoys a 10-point advantage over Republican Rep. Tom Cotton. Pryor has long been considered the most vulnerable Senate Democrat this November, but he leads Cotton by 2.2 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.  

National Democratic operatives moved quickly to highlight the Arkansas poll, in particular, on Wednesday morning. “DC convention wisdom is flat out wrong in Arkansas and there’s mounting evidence of Mark Pryor’s strength,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Justin Barasky said in an emailed statement.

Meanwhile, Republicans were eager to cast doubt on the polls’ methodology, noting, among other concerns, that the head-to-head surveys measured support among registered voters rather than likely voters. They also questioned the validity of the samplings.

The Weekly Standard noted that the percentage of respondents in each of the four Southern states who said they had voted for Obama was much higher than the actual 2012 results.

Scott Conroy is a national political reporter for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at sconroy@realclearpolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter @RealClearScott.

Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/04/23/senate_polls_buoy_southern_dems_gop_is_skeptical_122387.html#ixzz2zoRfkrK8
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter

Well this is something Americans can be proud of.  The immigrants are coming here and working past a lot of our own and what do we do?  Get stoned.

I can only hope that the lure of marijuana will wear itself out and people will realize they are wasting the lives smoking this shit:

http://news.yahoo.com/colorado-pot-holiday-tries-mainstream-074215765.html

But think of the good the tax income will do???   Using GMs phrase:  bahaha.

Thomas Piketty:   A new favorite of Obama and his economic council, Jack Lew Treasury Secretary and the rest of the globalist progressive crowd. 

*********Economist Receives Rock Star Treatment

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLERAPRIL 18, 2014

French economists who boldly question the dominance of capital over labor — and call for a progressive global tax on wealth — visit the American halls of power about as often as French rock stars headline Madison Square Garden.

But those halls of power are where Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old professor at the Paris School of Economics, has been singing his song of late.

Since touching down in Washington this week to promote his new book, “Capital in the 21st Century,” Mr. Piketty has met with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, given a talk to President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and lectured at the International Monetary Fund, before flying to New York for an appearance at the United Nations, a sold-out public discussion with the Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and meetings with media outlets ranging from The Harvard Business Review to New York Magazine to The Nation.

The response from  fellow economists, so far mainly from the liberal side of the spectrum, has verged on the rapturous. Mr. Krugman,  a columnist for The New York Times,  predicted  in The New York Review of Books that Mr. Piketty’s book would “change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.”

   Thomas Piketty at one of his New York talks this week. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times 
But through all the accolades, Mr. Piketty seems to be maintaining a most un-rock-star-like modesty, brushing away comparisons to Tocqueville and Marx with an embarrassed grimace and a Gallic puff of the lips.

“It makes very little sense: How can you compare?” he said on Thursday between gulps of yogurt during a break in his packed schedule — before going on to list the 19th-century data sets that Marx neglected to draw on in “Das Kapital,” his 1867 magnum opus.

“If Marx had looked at them, it would have made him think a bit more,” he said. “When I started collecting data, I had no idea where it would go.”

Mr. Piketty’s dedication to data has long made him a star among economists, who credit his work on income inequality (with Emmanuel Saez and others) for diving deep into seemingly dull tax archives to bring an unprecedented historical perspective to the subject.

But “Capital in the 21st Century,” which analyzes more than two centuries of data on the even murkier topic of accumulated wealth, has elicited a response of an entirely different order. Months before its originally scheduled April publication, it was generating intense discussion on blogs, prompting Harvard University Press to push the release forward to mid-February.

Since then, it has hit the New York Times best-seller list, and sold some 46,000 copies (hardback and e-book) — a stratospheric number for a nearly 700-page scholarly tome dotted with charts and graphs (as well as references to Balzac, Jane Austen and “Titanic”).

And not all those readers are economists. Six years after the financial crisis, “people are looking for a bible of sorts,” said Julia Ott, an assistant professor of the history of capitalism at the New School, who appeared on a panel with Mr. Piketty at New York University on Thursday. “He’s speaking to a real feeling out there that things haven’t been fixed, that we need to take stock, that we need big ideas, big proposals, big global solutions.”
Photo

Mr. Piketty's book on sale after he spoke Wednesday at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times 
Those big ideas, and the hunger for them, were on ample display at N.Y.U., where the standing-room crowd was treated to Mr. Piketty’s apology for having written such a long book, followed by a breakneck PowerPoint presentation of its main arguments, illustrated with striking charts.

At the book’s center is Mr. Piketty’s contention — contrary to the influential theory developed by Simon Kuznets in the 1950s and ’60s — that mature capitalist economies do not inevitably evolve toward greater economic equality. Instead, Mr. Piketty contends, the data reveals a deeper historical tendency for the rate of return on capital to outstrip the overall rate of economic growth, leading to greater and greater concentrations of wealth at the very top.

Despite this inevitable-seeming drift toward “patrimonial capitalism” that his charts seemed to show, Mr. Piketty rejected any economic determinism. “It all depends on what the political system decides,” he said.

Such statements, along with Mr. Piketty’s proposal for a progressive wealth tax and income tax rates up to 80 percent, have aroused strong interest among those eager to recapture the momentum of the Occupy movement. The Nation ran a nearly 10,000-word cover article  placing his book within a rising tide of neo-Marxist thought, while National Review Online dismissed it as confirmation of the left’s “dearest ‘Das Kapital’ fantasies.”

But Mr. Piketty, who writes in the book that the collapse of Communism in 1989 left him “vaccinated for life” against the “lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism,” is no Marxian revolutionary. “I believe in private property,” he said in the interview. “But capitalism and markets should be the slave of democracy and not the opposite.”

Even if he doesn’t expect his policy proposals to find favor in Washington anytime soon, Mr. Piketty called his meetings there gratifying. Mr. Lew, he said, seemed to have read parts of the book carefully. A member of the Council on Economic Advisers corrected a small error concerning Balzac’s novel “Le Père Goriot,” which includes a discussion of getting ahead through advantageous marriage rather than hard work. “I was impressed,” Mr. Piketty said.

His book, however, ends not with an appeal to policy makers, but with a call for all citizens to “take a serious interest in money, its measurement, the facts surrounding it and its history.”

“It’s too easy for ordinary people to just say, ‘I don’t know anything about economics,’ ” he said, before rushing to his next appearance. “But economics is not just for economists.”
 

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Economist Receives Rock Star Treatment.********

I have to ask my surgeon friends as usually they get a quick path report back that should have told this trainee it was not the appendix.  Or with in
a day.  Sometimes surgeons now treat appendicitis with antibiotics alone and do not perform surgery.  I am not clear which is best in pregnancy.
There is risk to many antibiotics and pregnancy too.

https://en-maktoob.entertainment.yahoo.com/blogs/parenting/pregnant-woman-dies-horrifying-medical-mixup-200700512.html

BACK ANY CANDIDATE YOU WANT AS LONG AS IT'S ONE OF THESE THREE

April 16, 2014
 
As those of you who follow my hate mail know, I am opposed to running untested candidates against perfectly good incumbent Republican senators this election cycle. It will be a long time before Republicans have as good a year as this to win a Senate majority.

 Unfortunately, we have idiots doing the idiot thing, pretending to be "tea partiers," while challenging sitting Republican senators over fairly minor ideological differences.

 Anyone opposing an incumbent Republican for any reason other than amnesty is a fraud or an idiot. Right now, immigration and Obamacare are the only things that matter. Since every Republican voted against Obamacare, that leaves only immigration.

 Conservatives who ignore amnesty while carping about the debt ceiling, TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), the Internet tax bill or Benghazi are too stupid to help their country.

 Suppose the Senate had passed a bill that would cut Texas out of the Union? Would that get your attention, fake tea partiers? Without Texas, Republicans would immediately lose 38 electoral votes, two senators and 24 members of Congress. (Democrats would lose only 12 House members.)

 How would you rate the prospect of repealing Obamacare if Republicans could: never win another presidential election; never win another majority in the House; and never again win a Senate majority? Oh, and how does the expression "President Nancy Pelosi" grab you?

 Would that bill be slightly more important to you than the Internet tax bill?

 Well, guess what? Amnesty will produce the exact same result as losing the entire state of Texas. In fact, merely continuing our current immigration policies will achieve the same result; it will just take a little longer. (But wow, I'm sure glad we got "Octomom"! What a boon she's been to our American way of life.)

 The population of Texas is about 27 million. With amnestied illegal aliens allowed to bring in their cousins and brothers-in-law under our insane "family reunification" policies, the 12 million illegal immigrants already here will quickly balloon to 30 million new voters -- who happen to break 8-to-2 for the Democrats.

Consequently, before running off and staging a primary fight against a sitting Republican, anyone who truly loved his country would ask himself the following three questions:

 (1) Does the incumbent Republican support amnesty? And by the way, "Supports amnesty" includes anyone who says one of the following:

 -- "We already have de facto amnesty"

 -- "What are you going to do -- round up 12 million illegals?"

 -- "They're doing jobs American just won't do," or

 -- "Our housekeeper, Lupe, is like family."

 (2) Is a primary challenge unlikely to flip a Republican seat to the Democrats?

 (3) Am I fairly certain the challenger is smart enough to avoid the (apparently) rocky shoals of being asked about abortion in the case of rape?

 There are at least three Republican primary candidates who pass this test with flying colors. They're smart, attractive, articulate and unlikely to ever use the phrase "legitimate rape."

 No incumbent Republican senators are in jeopardy -- the one Senate race is for a seat currently held by a Democrat, and the other two races are for House seats in reasonably safe Republican districts.

 Finally, all three races represent the battle at the heart of the Republican Party: Are we the party of soulless businessmen who care nothing about the country but only want higher profits for themselves? Or are we the party of middle-class and working-class Americans?

 If you don't think the Republican Party should speak exclusively for Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the Chamber of Commerce, then you have to support:

 -- Dr. Greg Brannon, running in the Republican primary against foreign-labor cheerleader Thom Tillis, to challenge the Democratic senator from North Carolina, Kay Hagan. (Primary: May 6)

 -- Frank Roche, running against the lying, amnesty-supporting Renee Ellmers in North Carolina's 2nd Congressional District. (Primary: May 6)

 -- Dave Brat, economics professor, challenging the amnesty-addled Eric Cantor in Virginia's 7th Congressional District. (Primary: June 10)

 State legislator Tillis championed a bill making it easier for North Carolina employers to hire foreign workers. Instead of temporary guest workers coming in for a few months a year to do farm work, Tillis' bill expanded "farm labor" to "all industries," and expanded "seasonal" to "nine months."

 This wasn't an idle vote cast thoughtlessly: After the Republican governor vetoed Tillis' job-killing bill, Tillis led the legislature to override his veto.

 Tillis has been well repaid by business interests. North Carolinians can repay him for driving down their wages on May 6.

 Frank Roche, who is challenging two-term incumbent Renee Ellmers, speaks more knowledgeably about immigration than almost any sitting member of Congress. (After two decades in international banking in New York, he moved to North Carolina and became an economics professor and talk-radio host -- so he can talk.)

 Roche has this crazy idea that a nation's immigration policies should be good for the citizens of that country. (Somebody get this guy in leather restraints!)

 By contrast, his opponent, Rep. Ellmers, has dedicated herself to supporting the needs of her rich donors by being strident, rude and utterly cliched on the subject of immigration.

 Naturally, she is supported by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg -- because who cares about the needs of North Carolina workers more than a Silicon Valley one-hit wonder seeking cheap foreign labor? (I'm sure Zuckerberg has the very best interests of the country at heart.)

 Every exchange Ellmers has about immigration seems to end in a blizzard of shouts and insults. After failing to tear at the heartstrings of talk radio's Laura Ingraham with tales of rich farmers who need cheap foreign labor, Ellmers shouted that Ingraham was "ignorant" and "emotional."

 About a week later, Ellmers denounced a constituent who criticized her on immigration, telling him that he didn't have "any damn facts" and was full of "hatred and vitriol."

 (Zuckerberg apparently pays his politicians better than he pays his computer programmers.)

 For the cherry on top, both Ellmers and Tillis go around claiming they're opposed to amnesty -- while doing everything they can to sneak foreign workers into North Carolina.

 So at least they know amnesty is not popular with voters. Here's an idea! Instead of running candidates who have to lie about their position on immigration, let's run Republicans who actually agree with the voters!

 Sucking up to businessmen may have brought Tillis and Ellmers a lot of campaign cash, but it's unlikely to help them with North Carolina's population, which, by the way, is 22 percent black. Recall that Mitt Romney won an astounding 20 percent of the young black male vote by being the toughest presidential candidate on immigration in 50 years. (I guess they do want the jobs "Americans just won't do.")

 Dave Brat, an economics professor like Roche, is challenging Rep. Eric Cantor: Maniacal Amnesty Supporter. Cantor says "immigration reform could be an economic boon to this country."

 You don't have to be an economics professor to know that bringing in millions of workers is not "an economic boon" to the workers already here. (If only we could bring in millions of workers to compete for Cantor's job.)

 Brat responded to Cantor's baby-talk, saying immigration "lowers wages, adds to unemployment, and the taxpayer pays the tab for any benefits to folks coming in."

 Republicans aren't at much risk of losing any of these seats, with or without primary fights. But we'll lose them all within a decade if Republicans like Tillis, Ellmers and Cantor aren't stopped.

Brannon, Roche and Brat are the candidates true patriots should support with everything they have.

 COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER
 DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK

David H 44 minutes ago

A Short History of Democrats, Republicans, and Racism

 The following are a few basic historical facts that every American should know.

 Fact: The Republican Party was founded primarily to oppose slavery, and Republicans eventually abolished slavery. The Democratic Party fought them and tried to maintain and expand slavery.

 Why is this indisputable fact so rarely mentioned? PBS documentaries about slavery and the Civil War barely mention it, for example. One can certainly argue that the parties have changed dramatically in 150 years, but that does not change the historical fact that it was the Democrats who supported slavery and the Republicans who opposed it. And that indisputable fact should not be airbrushed out for fear that it will tarnish the modern Democratic Party.

 Had the positions of the parties been the opposite, and the Democrats had fought the Republicans to end slavery, the historical party roles would no doubt be repeated incessantly in these documentaries. Funny how that works.

 Fact: During the Civil War era, the "Radical Republicans" were given that name because they wanted to not only end slavery but also to endow the freed slaves with full citizenship, equality, and rights.

 Yes, that was indeed a radical idea at the time!

 Fact: Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was a strongly pro-Union (but also pro-slavery) Democrat who had been chosen as a compromise running mate to attract Democrats. After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson thwarted Republican efforts in Congress to recognize the civil rights of the freed slaves, and Southern Democrats continued to thwart any such efforts for nearly a century.

 Fact: The Ku Klux Klan was originally and primarily an arm of the Southern Democratic Party, and its mission was to terrorize freed slaves and Republicans who sympathized with them.

 Why is this fact conveniently omitted in so many popular histories and depictions of the KKK, including PBS documentaries? Had the KKK been founded by Republicans, that fact would no doubt be repeated constantly on those shows.

 Fact: In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, a Republican, integrated the US military and promoted civil rights for minorities. Eisenhower pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. One of Eisenhower's primary political opponents on civil rights prior to 1957 was none other than Lyndon Johnson, then the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. LBJ had voted the straight segregationist line until he changed his position and supported the 1957 Act.

 Fact: The historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress. In the House, 80 percent of the Republicans and 63 percent of the Democrats voted in favor. In the Senate, 82 percent of the Republicans and 69 percent of the Democrats voted for it.

 Fact: Contrary to popular misconception, the parties never "switched" on racism.

 Following the epic civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the South began a major demographic shift from Democratic to Republican dominance. Many believe that this shift was motivated mainly by racism. While it is certainly true that many Southern racists abandoned the Democratic Party over its new support for racial equality and integration, the notion that they would flock to the Republican Party -- which was a century ahead of the Democrats on those issues -- makes no sense whatsoever.

 Yet virtually every liberal, when pressed on the matter, will inevitably claim that the parties "switched," and most racist Democrats became Republicans! In their minds, this historical ju jitsu maneuver apparently transfers all the past sins of the Democrats (slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, etc.) onto the Republicans and all the past virtues of the Republicans (e.g., ending slavery) onto the Democrats! That's quite a feat!

 It is true that Barry Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 probably attracted some racist Democrats to the Republican Party. However, Goldwater was not a racist -- at least not an overt racist like so many Southern Democrats of the time, such as George Wallace and Bull Connor. He publicly professed racial equality, and his opposition to the 1964 Act was based on principled grounds of states rights. In any case, his libertarian views were out of step with the mainstream of the Republican Party, and he lost the 1964 Presidential election to LBJ in a landslide.

 But Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act provided liberals an opening to tar the Republican Party as racist, and they have tenaciously repeated that label so often over the years that it is now the conventional wisdom among liberals. But it is really nothing more than an unsubstantiated myth -- a convenient political lie. If the Republican Party was any more racist than the Democratic Party even in 1964, why did a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act? The idea that Goldwater's vote on the 1964 Civil Rights Act trumps a century of history of the Republican Party is ridiculous, to say the least.

 Every political party has its racists, but the notion that Republicans are more racist than Democrats or any other party is based on nothing more than a constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated innuendo and assertions by Leftists, constantly echoed by the liberal media. It is a classic example of a Big Lie that becomes "true" simply by virtue of being repeated so many times.

 A more likely explanation for the long-term shift from Democratic to Republican dominance in the South was the perception, fair or not, that the Democratic Party had rejected traditional Christian religious values and embraced radical secularism. That includes its hardline support for abortion, its rejection of prayer in public schools, its promotion of the gay agenda, and many other issues.

 In the 1960s the Democratic Party essentially changed its strategy for dealing with African Americans. Thanks largely to earlier Republican initiatives on civil rights, blatant racial oppression was no longer a viable political option. Whereas before that time Southern Democrats had overtly and proudly segregated and terrorized blacks, the national Democratic Party decided instead to be more subtle and get them as dependent on government as possible. As LBJ so elegantly put it (in a famous moment of candor that was recorded for posterity), "I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." At the same time, the Democrats started a persistent campaign of lies and innuendo, falsely equating any opposition to their welfare state with racism.

 From a purely cynical political perspective, the Democratic strategy of black dependence has been extremely effective. LBJ knew exactly what he was doing. African Americans routinely vote well over 90 percent Democratic for fear that Republicans will cut their government benefits and welfare programs. And what is the result? Before LBJ's Great Society welfare programs, the black illegitimacy rate was as low as 23 percent, but now it has more than tripled to 72 percent.

 Most major American city governments have been run by liberal Democrats for decades, and most of those cities have large black sections that are essentially dysfunctional anarchies. Cities like Detroit are overrun by gangs and drug dealers, with burned out homes on every block in some areas. The land values are so low due to crime, blight, and lack of economic opportunity that condemned homes are not even worth rebuilding. Who wants to build a home in an urban war zone? Yet they keep electing liberal Democrats -- and blaming "racist" Republicans for their problems!

 Washington DC is another city that has been dominated by liberal Democrats for decades. It spends more per capita on students than almost any other city in the world, yet it has some of the worst academic achievement anywhere and is a drug-infested hellhole. Barack Obama would not dream of sending his own precious daughters to the DC public schools, of course -- but he assures us that those schools are good enough for everyone else. In fact, Obama was instrumental in killing a popular and effective school voucher program in DC, effectively killing hopes for many poor black families trapped in those dysfunctional public schools. His allegiance to the teachers unions apparently trumps his concern for poor black families.

 A strong argument could also be made that Democratic support for perpetual affirmative action is racist. It is, after all, the antithesis of Martin Luther King's vision of a color-blind society. Not only is it "reverse racism," but it is based on the premise that African Americans are incapable of competing in the free market on a level playing field. In other words, it is based on the notion of white supremacy, albeit "benevolent" white supremacy rather than the openly hostile white supremacy of the pre-1960s Democratic Party.

 The next time someone claims that Republicans are racist and Democrats are not, don't fall for it.

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AlSxVU7WnQMxIqs7fuohHzCbvZx4?p=phelps+swim+underwater&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-745

By Daniela Drake 16 hours ago The Daily Beast

Why Your Doctor Hates His Job

By the end of this year, it’s estimated that 300 physicians will commit suicide. While depression amongst physicians is not new—a few years back, it was named the second most suicidal occupation—the level of sheer unhappiness amongst physicians is on the rise.

Simply put, being a doctor has become a miserable and humiliating undertaking. Indeed, many doctors feel that America has declared war on physicians—and both physicians and patients are the losers.

Not surprisingly, many doctors want out. Medical students opt for high-paying specialties so they can retire as quickly as possible. Physician MBA programs—that promise doctors a way into management—are flourishing. The website known as the Drop-Out-Club—which hooks doctors up with jobs at hedge funds and venture capital firms—has a solid following. In fact, physicians are so bummed out that 9 out of 10 doctors would discourage anyone from entering the profession.

It’s hard for anyone outside the profession to understand just how rotten the job has become—and what bad news that is for America’s healthcare system. Perhaps that’s why author Malcolm Gladwell recently implied that to fix the healthcare crisis, the public needs to understand what it’s like to be a physician. Imagine, for things to get better for patients, they need to empathize with physicians—that’s a tall order in our noxious and decidedly un-empathetic times.

After all, the public sees ophthalmologists and radiologists making out like bandits and wonder why they should feel anything but scorn for such doctors—especially when Americans haven’t gotten a raise in decades. But being a primary care physician is not like being, say, a plastic surgeon—a profession that garners both respect and retirement savings. Given that primary care doctors do the work that no one else is willing to do, being a primary care physician is more like being a janitor—but without the social status or union protections.

Unfortunately, things are only getting worse for most doctors, especially those who still accept health insurance. Just processing the insurance forms costs $58 dollars for every patient encounter, according to Dr. Stephen Schimpff, an internist and former CEO of University of Maryland Medical Center who is writing a book about the crisis in primary care. To make ends meet, physicians have had to increase the number of patients they see. The end result is that the average face-to-face clinic visit lasts about 12 minutes.

Neither patients nor doctors are happy about that. What worries many doctors, however, is that the Affordable Care Act has codified this broken system into law. While forcing everyone to buy health insurance, ACA might have mandated a uniform or streamlined claims procedure that would have gone a long way to improving access to care. As Malcolm Gladwell noted, “You don’t train someone for all of those years in [medicine]… and then have them run a claims processing operation for insurance companies.”

In fact, difficulty dealing with insurers has caused many physicians to close their practices and become employees. But for patients, seeing an employed doctor doesn’t give them more time with the doctor—since employed physicians also have high patient loads. “A panel size of 2,000 to 2,500 patients is too many,” says Dr. Schimpff. That’s the number of patients primary care doctors typically are forced to carry—and that means seeing 24 or more patients a day, and often these patients have 10 or more medical problems. As any seasoned physician knows, this is do-able, but it’s certainly not optimal.

Most patients have experienced the rushed clinic visit—and that’s where the breakdown in good medical care starts. “Doctors who are in a rush, don’t have the time to listen,” says Dr. Schimpff. “Often, patients get referred to specialists when the problem can be solved in the office visit.” It’s true that specialist referrals are on the rise, but the time crunch also causes doctors to rely on guidelines instead of personally tailoring medical care. Unfortunately, mindlessly following guidelines can result in bad outcomes.

Yet physicians have to go along, constantly trying to improve their “productivity” and patient satisfaction scores—or risk losing their jobs. Industry leaders are fixated on patient satisfaction, despite the fact that high scores are correlated with worse outcomes and higher costs. Indeed, trying to please whatever patient comes along destroys the integrity of our work. It’s a fact that doctors acquiesce to patient demands—for narcotics, x-rays, doctor’s notes—despite what survey advocates claim. And now that Medicare payments will be tied to patient satisfaction—this problem will get worse. Doctors need to have the ability to say no. If not, when patients go to see the doctor, they won’t actually have a physician—they’ll have a hostage.

But the primary care doctor doesn’t have the political power to say no to anything—so the “to-do” list continues to lengthen. A stunning and unmanageable number of forms—often illegible—show up daily on a physician’s desk needing to be signed. Reams of lab results, refill requests, emails, and callbacks pop up continually on the computer screen. Calls to plead with insurance companies are peppered throughout the day. Every decision carries with it an implied threat of malpractice litigation. Failing to attend to these things brings prompt disciplining or patient complaint. And mercilessly, all of these tasks have to be done on the exhausted doctor’s personal time.

Almost comically, the response of medical leadership—their solution— is to call for more physician testing. In fact, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)—in its own act of hostage-taking—has just decided that doctors should be tested not every ten years, but every two years. If a physician doesn’t comply by the end of this month, the ABIM will strip away the doctor’s board certification status.

In an era when nurse practitioners and physician assistants have shown that they can provide excellent primary care, it’s nonsensical to raise the barriers for physicians to participate. In an era when you can call up guidelines on your smartphone, demanding more physician testing is a ludicrous and self-serving response.

It is tone deaf. It is punitive. It is wrong. And practicing doctors can’t do a damn thing about it. No wonder doctors are suicidal. No wonder young doctors want nothing to do with primary care.

But what is a bit of a wonder is how things got this bad. 

Certainly, the relentlessly negative press coverage of physicians sets the tone. “There’s a media narrative that blames physicians for things the doctor has no control over,” says Kevin Pho, MD, an internist with a popular blog where physicians often vent their frustrations. Indeed, in the popular press recently doctors have been held responsible for everything from the wheelchair-unfriendly furniture to lab fees for pap smears.

The meme is that doctors are getting away with something and need constant training, watching and regulating. With this in mind, it’s almost a reflex for policy makers to pile on the regulations. Regulating the physician is an easy sell because it is a fantasy—a Freudian fever dream—the wish to diminish, punish and control a disappointing parent, give him a report card, and tell him to wash his hands.

To be sure many people with good intentions are working toward solving the healthcare crisis. But the answers they’ve come up with are driving up costs and driving out doctors.  Maybe it’s too much to ask for empathy, and maybe physician lives don’t matter to most people.

But for America’s health to be safeguarded, the wellbeing of America’s caretakers is going to have to start mattering to someone. 



 

Just think if this student had claimed he was bullied because he is gay.   The news would be front page of all the major MSM outlets around the Western World.

Anderson Cooper would spend a week going over this.

*****Hillary Clinton Psychoanalyzes Vladimir Putin

 By Liz Kreutz
@Liz_Kreutz
Follow on Twitter
   
Apr 8, 2014 9:24pm

AP Hillary Clinton ml 140409 16x9 608 Hillary Clinton Psychoanalyzes Vladimir Putin
Credit: Timothy J. Gonzalez/Statesman Journal/AP Photo

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have a buff physique, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sees right through it.

During a Q&A at a marketing summit in California today, Clinton gave a deep read on Putin’s personality, and compared the encounters she’s had with him to those she’s experienced on an elementary school playground.

“I have had my personal experiences with him,” she said, when answering a question about Putin and the recent situation in Crimea. “He’s a fascinating guy. Obviously he is determined.”

Clinton then proceeded to dissect his psyche.

“He is very difficult to read personally,” she said. “He is always looking for advantage. So he will try to put you ill at ease. He will even throw an insult your way. He will look bored and dismissive. He’ll do all of that.”

But Clinton said she was never fazed.

“I have a lot of experience with people acting like that,” she quipped. “Go back to elementary school. I’ve seen all of that, so I’m not impressed by it.”

Clinton made the comments during her first leg of a jam-packed, four-day long speaking tour through the West Coast at Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit in San Francisco.

During her speech and the following Q&A, with Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez, Clinton spoke on issues including technology, immigration, income inequality, and advancement for women in the workplace.

The event wrapped up with the inevitable question about 2016. But when asked if she plans to run for president, Clinton gave no more of an indication that she had made a decision either way. She said that she is still thinking about it, and that she is “going to continue to think about it for a while.”

Even Clinton, however, admitted she’s become an expert at dodging the question.

“I danced around that pretty well, don’t you think?” she remarked with a smile.*****

Hillary knows not to let Putin's "buff" physique fool her.   I wonder if he knows not to let her hideous physique fool him.  Using HER school yard metaphor she sound like the ugly duckling who can't get the popular athlete so she simply has to insult him.

Low information voters will swoon over her nonsense.

 

The famous dogs and lion pals in Oklahoma zoo:

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AjoD3Cvs23s9NSCYFLiw8VGbvZx4?p=dog+and+lion+oklahoma+zoo&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-301

Health Care "policy" is all about the elites as well.

Thanks Denny.

With regards to the New Age World Government it does seem Obama is a true believer.

Wikipedia's One World Government history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_government

Is she serious?  She claims she does not understand the opposition to the ACA!   Why would anyone be so upset about all the free or cheap benefits it brings she wonders?

Totally absent from her argument is who is paying for this stuff and loss of freedom.  Not one iota mentioned of that.   She completely blocks it all out.   Most people I see have higher deductibles and copays, higher rates, more restricted formularies and other tests.  This aspect is totally ignored by the left.   

******IRRATIONAL HATRED OF OBAMACARE IS HARD TO FATHOM
Cynthia Tucker
By Cynthia Tucker 5 hours ago

My friend Isatou has just received an invoice from Kaiser Permanente, testament to her new coverage through the Affordable Care Act -- usually called "Obamacare." She's thrilled to finally have health insurance so she can get regular checkups, including dental care.

A reasonably healthy middle-aged woman, she knows she needs routine mammograms and screenings for maladies such as hypertension. But before Obamacare, she struggled to pay for those things. She once had to resort to the emergency room, which left her with a bill for nearly $20,000. (She settled the bill for far less, but it still left her deeply in debt.)

She is one of more than 7 million people who have signed up for health insurance through the ACA, stark evidence of the overwhelming market demand. Despite a badly bungled initial roll-out, a multimillion dollar conservative media campaign designed to discourage sign-ups, and a years-long Republican crusade against it (50 votes to change the law), millions got health insurance.

That hardly means Obamacare is a raging success. It's much too early to know how it will affect health outcomes for the previously uninsured. But it's abundantly clear that the ACA has already made great strides in improving access to health care. And that alone is quite an accomplishment.

Now, young adults can stay on their parents' health insurance policies until they are 26 years old -- a boon in an economy where many young folks are struggling to find decent jobs. Now, patients with previously diagnosed illnesses ("pre-existing conditions," in insurance lingo) can't be denied coverage. Now, the chronically ill don't have to worry about hitting a lifetime cap that would deny them essential procedures or pharmaceuticals. Now, working folks who don't get insurance through their employers can purchase affordable policies.

Factoring in the Medicaid expansion, the ACA has extended health care coverage to an additional 9.5 million people, according to the Los Angeles Times, which gathered data from national surveys. Needless to say, millions more would have been covered if so many Republican governors, mostly located in Southern states, had not callously refused to accept the Medicaid expansion despite the fact that it is largely paid through federal government funds.

The GOP's relentless opposition has been puzzling. Republicans have resorted to extreme measures to try to derail Obamacare, including an implicit threat to prevent the National Football League from participating in a marketing campaign to encourage people to sign up.

Oh, did I mention 50 votes to repeal or alter the law?

Even acknowledging that our politics have become bitterly polarized, I don't understand this one. Even taking into account the GOP's irrational hatred for President Obama, I don't get it. Even though I know that Republicans believe in less government, I don't understand their approach to Obamacare.

First off, the ACA adheres to market-based ideas, many of which were first suggested by conservatives. Instead of a single-payer system like, say, Medicare, the ACA relies on private insurance companies. It adopts the individual mandate that was supported by many Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, back in the 1990s and later adopted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

Second, Republicans are free to offer up a health care scheme that is more in keeping with conservative principles. But the "repeal and replace" mantra is rarely heard anymore since it has become increasingly clear that the GOP has no intention of coming up with a plan to replace Obamacare. While there are various counter-proposals floating about, none has garnered the support of a majority of Republicans in Congress.

Is the ACA perfect? Absolutely not. There is much in the law that needs to be worked on, refined, improved. But the GOP doesn't seem interested in that. Instead, its members have taken to engaging in increasingly ridiculous criticisms, including the charge that the White House has made up the number of successful enrollees.

It's strange. Could it be that Republicans are simply furious that millions of Americans like Isatou finally have health insurance?

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

"Bid to cut voter roles" is of course the way the NYT describes this.

It wouldn't surprise me if 1,000,000 voters nationwide are fraudulent.

It can't even be measured.

The myth about Ruth's famed called shot into the bleachers.  Took a life of its own.   Early on Ruth himself said he was simply pointing out it only takes "one"   He said that if did actually pointing a location in field to hit one would invited getting beaned.  And it was ridiculous to think anyone could know where the ball is going in advance.

But legends live on when there are living and loving admirers still alive who can verify what they are "sure" he did.

His living 96 yr. old daughter says her did do it.  He pointed to a bleacher and hit a colossal shot right into that same bleacher.


My take is he was ordering a hotdog from a vendor when he lifted his finger.
 

Anyone care to guess which party these frauds voted for?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/374882/nc-state-board-finds-more-35k-incidents-double-voting-2012-andrew-johnson

I really don't know much about it - off my radar:::

*****Get to know the Common Core marketing overlords
 by Michelle Malkin

Copyright 2014

They’re everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV, The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families to support the beleaguered federal education standards/testing/technology racket. Who’s funding these public relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big Business interests.

The foundational myth of Common Core is that it’s a “state-led” initiative with grassroots support that was crafted by local educators for the good of all of our children. But the cash and power behind the new ad campaign tell you all you need to know. For parents in the know, this will be a refresher course. But repeated lies must be countered with redoubled truths.

The Bipartisan Policy Center is one of the leading Common Core ad sponsors. It’s a self-described nonprofit “think tank” founded by a pantheon of Beltway barnacles: former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell.

“Lobbying tank” would be more accurate. The BPC’s “senior fellows” include K Street influence peddlers such as liberal Republican Robert Bennett, the big-spending Utah senator-turned-lobbyist booted from office by tea party conservatives; former Democratic Agriculture Secretary and House member-turned-lobbyist Dan Glickman; and liberal Democrat Byron Dorgan, the former North Dakota senator who crusaded as an anti-D.C. lobbying populist before retiring from office to work as, you guessed it, a D.C. lobbyist.

Jeb Bush’s “Foundation for Excellence in Education” is also saturating the airwaves with ads trying to salvage Common Core in the face of truly bipartisan, truly grassroots opposition in his own home state of Florida. As I’ve reported previously, the former GOP governor’s foundation is tied at the hip to the federally funded testing consortium called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), which pulled in $186 million through the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program to develop Common Core tests.

One of the Bush foundation’s top corporate sponsors is Pearson, the multibillion-dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate. Pearson snagged $23 million in contracts to design the first wave of PARCC test items and $1 billion for overpriced, insecure Common Core iPads purchased by the Los Angeles Unified School District, and is leading the $13.4 billion edutech cash-in catalyzed by Common Core’s technology mandates.

In December, you should know, the state of New York determined that Pearson’s nonprofit foundation had abused the law by siphoning charitable assets to benefit its for-profit arm in order to curry favor with the Common Core-peddling Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Pearson paid a $7.7 million settlement after the attorney general concluded that the company’s charitable arm was marketing Common Core course material it believed could be sold by the for-profit side for “tens of millions of dollars.” After being smoked out, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to its corporate sibling for $15.1 million.

Then there’s the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has joined the Clintonite-stocked Center for American Progress to promote Common Core and has earmarked more than $52 million on D.C. lobbying efforts.

Two D.C. trade associations, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, continue to rubber-stamp Common Core propaganda. They are both recipients of tens of millions of dollars in Gates Foundation money. NGA employed Democratic education wonk Dane Linn to help shepherd through the standards; Linn now flacks for Common Core at the D.C.-based Business Roundtable lobbying shop, another leading sponsor of the ads now bombarding your TVs and radios.

Despite its misleading name, the NGA does not represent all of the nation’s governors, holds only nonbinding resolution votes, and serves primarily as an “unelected, unrepresentative networking forum,” as Heartland Institute scholar Joy Pullmann put it, with funding from both taxpayers and private corporations. NGA’s Common Core standards writing meetings were convened in secret and are protected by confidentiality agreements.

Direct public input was nil. Of the 25 people in the NGA and CCSSO’s two Common Core standards-writing “working groups,” EdWeek blogger Anthony Cody reported in 2009, six were associated with the test-makers from the College Board, five were with fellow test-publishers ACT, and four were with Achieve Inc. Several had zero experience in standards writing.

Achieve Inc., you may recall from my previous work, is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit stocked with education lobbyists who’ve been working on federal standards schemes since the Clinton years. In fact, Achieve’s president, Michael Cohen, is a veteran Clinton-era educrat who also used to direct education policy for the NGA. In addition to staffing the standards writing committee and acting as lead Common Core coordinating mouthpiece, Achieve Inc. is the “project management partner” of the Common Core-aligned, tax-subsidized PARCC testing conglomerate.

Who’s behind Achieve? Reminder: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has dumped $37 million into the group since 1999 to promote Common Core. According to a new analysis by former Georgia State University professor Jack Hassard, the Gates Foundation has now doled out an estimated total of $2.3 billion on Common Core-related grants to thousands of recipients in addition to NGA, CCSSO, the Foundation for Excellence in Education and Achieve.

As they prop up astroturfed front groups and agitprop, D.C.’s Common Core p.r. blitzers scoff at their critics as “black helicopter” theorists. Don’t read their lips. Just follow the money. This bipartisan power grab is Washington-led and Washington-fed. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s elementary: All Common Core roads lead to K Street.*****

                 

Rush was trying to explain how the FBI was coming up with all these stings against Democrats, especially Mayors now.

A year ahead of an election.  Dems cleaning house now?   He wondered how Obama would permit this.

Not clear.  It is just as hard to believe the FBI is independently non political during this Administration.  We know the DOJ is not.  I would like to think the FBI is but it is so hard not to be cynical these days.

 

I heard this on Michael Savage.  Interesting how political operatives from both sides of the political spectrum use the same "agents":

******Glenn Beck’s Agent is Liberal Operative Matt Hiltzik

Posted on Oct 28, 2009 in Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck and his agent, Matthew Hiltzik, seem put ideological differences aside for the money…

Hiltzik is a Democratic PR operative that works for Beck, but also worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, Eliot Spitzer’s 1998 attorney general campaign, and for studio head Harvey Weinstein. He also represents Katie Couric, Alec Baldwin, Annie Leibovitz and Don Imus. Matthew’s father, George Hiltzik, brokered the radio gigs of blogger Matt Drudge and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

The close friendship and lucrative business relationship that has developed between the 45-year-old conservative firebrand and the 37-year-old former Democratic operative shows how partisan media personalities get discovered, promoted and catapulted into the political stratosphere, even when the talent and the talent broker have opposing ideologies. But for Hiltzik’s former Democratic allies, the alliance is still mostly shocking.

It was also interesting that Matt Hiltzik considers “Democratic activist and public relations powerbroker” Ken Sunshine a mentor. Sunshine advises Color of Change and Green for All, two groups founded by Van Jones, who was repeatedly attacked by Beck.

And it’s not just Sunshine’s clients who are subject to Beck’s drubbings, it’s also his onetime mentor. The current secretary of state, for example, did not respond to calls about Hiltzik and his top client’s tirades against the Obama administration. Asked if he thought Hillary Clinton approved of his current promotion of Beck, who has called her, among other things, “the antichrist,” Hiltzik said, “She has a lot more important things to worry about.”

“Matt Hiltzik is a top professional who can’t save Glenn Beck from his vulgar, hateful ignorance,” said Robert Zimmerman, a public relations executive in New York, Democratic National Committee member and close friend of Hiltzik’s. “But he can get him extensive publicity while he goes down in flames.”*********

Doug,

So how long can we go on with this charade?