"Since it’s a great time of year to make lists, President Barack Obama said he’s made one of his own — the top 10 things that happened in 2015.
From the economy to healthcare, Obama spent his weekly address counting the accomplishments of the year thus far “that should make every American confident about 2016.”
Climate Change - The distraction they want you to focus on while they concentrate on their real mission.
Muslim airline cancels flight rather than allow Jewish passengers | Pamela Geller "More “moderation” from “moderate” Muslim countries.
But it proves yet again that Islamic Jew-hatred is a basic tenet of Islam and the very existence of the tiny Jewish state is deeply offensive to Muslim countries (no matter how many they have). The thought of one Jewish state drives the Muslim world bloody mad. Kuwait hates Jews so much that its national airline has ditched a popular and lucrative New York-to-London flight rather than allow Israelis on its planes, authorities said Thursday. The airline says they cannot allow Israelis on the planes because the Middle Eastern kingdom prohibits it citizens from doing business with citizens of the Jewish state. “On December 15th, Kuwait Airways informed the United States Department of Transportation that they will be eliminating service between JFK and London Heathrow,” said a department spokesperson. The airline has at least twice refused to let customers with Israeli passports buy tickets on flights from New York to London because of the Islamic state’s ban on trade with Israel... We went to war for these bastards."
History for December 22 - On-This-Day.com Lady Bird Johnson 1912, Barbara Billingsley 1922, Steve Garvey 1948 - Baseball player, Robin Gibb (Bee Gees) 1949, Maurice Gibb (Bee Gees) 1949, Ralph Fiennes 1962, Ted Cruz 1970 - Politician from Texas 1864 - During the American Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to U.S. President Lincoln from Georgia. The message read, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah." 1894 - French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial that triggered worldwide charges of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was eventually vindicated. 1895 - German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen made the first X-ray, of his wife's hand. 1939 - Gloria Jacobs became the first girl to hold a world pistol record when she shot 299 out of a possible 300 points. She was 17 years old at the time. 1961 - James Davis became the first U.S. soldier to die in Vietnam, while U.S. involvement was still limited to the provision of military advisers. 1984 - New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot four black youths on a Manhattan subway. Goetz claimed they were about to rob him. 1989 - Romania's hard-line Communist ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, was overthrown in a popular uprising. 1990 - Lech Walesa was sworn in as Poland's first popularly elected president.
"According to Walsh, the first step for “revolutionaries” — or, conservatives, Tea Partiers and grassroots activists — is to “clean out the Republican Party.” If that does not work, he said, a new political party or movement could be on the horizon."
19 Signs That You Live In A Country That Has Gone Completely Insane | RedFlag News Do you ever feel like you are living in a “Bizarro World”? #1 When those occupying the highest offices in the land tell you that an $18,000,000,000,000 debt is “under control“, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #3 When the greatest dream in life for millions of your fellow citizens is to win the Powerball jackpot, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #6 When a boy can sue his high school for not letting him use the girls’ restrooms and win $75,000 in “damages”, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #10 When30 million of your fellow citizens are taking antidepressants, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #11 When an endless stream of gang members, drug dealers, sexual predators, welfare parasites and Middle Eastern terrorists can enter the country illegally and nothing is done, but anyone who criticizes this is in danger of being put on an “enemies list“, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #13 When your military airdrops huge loads of weapons into the hands of the very terrorists that they are supposed to be fighting, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #15 When a fifth-grade student can get suspended from school for making an imaginary gun with his fingers, you live in a country that has gone completely insane. #16 When Congress has to pass a law to keep federal workers from watching porn all day long, you live in a country that has gone completely insane." Read on.
Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future - The New York Times:
"The money poured in by the millions, then by the hundreds of millions, and finally by the billions. Over weak coffee in a conference room in Midtown Manhattan last year, a half-dozen Puerto Rican officials exhaled: Their cash-starved island had persuaded some of the country’s biggest hedge funds to lend them more than $3 billion to keep the government afloat.
There were plenty of reasons for the hedge funds to like the deal:
They would be earning, in effect, a 20 percent return.
And under the island’s Constitution, Puerto Rico was required to pay back its debt before almost any other bills, whether for retirees’ health care or teachers’ salaries. But within months, Puerto Rico was saying it had run out of money, and the relationship between the impoverished United States territory and its unlikely saviors fell apart, setting up an extraordinary political and financial fight over Puerto Rico’s future..." Read on. This is gonna be EXPENSIVE!!
"Ting also emphasized that critics who believe prospective immigrants are having their rights infringed are forgetting something.
"In this case, we're talking about people outside the United States who want to come into the United States," he said. "They're outside knocking on our door. The Supreme Court has clearly said, 'You know what? We can use any criteria we want in letting people in or out.'
"The people outside the United States do not have any constitutional right to come into the United States if the government of the United States doesn't want them to," Ting said."
He shut me down when I said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton has killed many Muslims under the administration when we were discussing Trump, and ironically for a GOP strategist, he shut me down when I talked about how Democrats have enacted some of the most deadliest and discriminatory policies against Muslims. . . .
The edited version of the focus group interview was mainly about proving our American identity, condemning terrorism, and Trump’s bashing of Muslim-Americans. This is problematic.
He kept saying how he felt bad that no one listens to Muslims and how he wanted to give us an opportunity to talk to the general population. But how can that happen when we’re manipulatively edited to have us fit their own narrative and agenda?
"They call that journalism, these days. Interesting that they muted criticism of Obama and Hillary, but focused on complaints about Trump.Posted at 5:09 pm by Glenn Reynolds"
National 2015 NAEP Scores | StudentsFirst.org:
"Proficiency Comparison
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a nationally representative and continuing assessment of what American students know and can do in different grades and subjects. In 2015, the percentage of 4th and 8th grade students scoring proficient or advanced decreased in every case except 4th grade reading, which increased slightly. More than 60% of 4th and 8th graders scored below proficient levels in math and/or reading."
Star Wars Conspiracy: Is Star Wars About the Holocaust? Is there a resemblance between the Darth Sidious Dictatorship and Adolf Hitler's? Take a look at how the past can quickly repeat itself if we don’t stand up to the Dark Side. Learn More & discover which Star Wars character you are!: http://libertyawakens.learnliberty.org/
Ironically enough, in 2008 the FBI forbade any outreach to CAIR because of its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently President Obama won’t even listen to his own FBI.
“Why would the White House include CAIR when FBI policy is to avoid the group?” terrorism expert Steve Emerson asked."
Jackpot-fixing investigation expands to more state lotteries - The Washington Post:
"DES MOINES, Iowa — The allegations read like a movie plot: a lottery industry insider installs undetectable software giving him advance knowledge of winning numbers, then enlists accomplices to play those numbers and collect the jackpots.
And they secretly enrich themselves for years — until a misstep exposes them. Eddie Tipton, former security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, has been convicted of fraud for fixing one jackpot in Des Moines, but prosecutors say his high-tech scheme extended far beyond Iowa.
He’s accused of tampering with lottery drawings in four states over six years, and investigators are expanding their inquiry nationwide.
Investigators have asked states to review jackpots produced by the number-generators Tipton had access to, and whose winning numbers were specifically requested by the ticket buyer.
They hope to talk with anyone aware of such payouts being collected by someone other than the person who ends up with the money, said Rob Sand, a state prosecutor in Des Moines who is leading the probe..."
Homeless reign over LaGuardia to come to an end: Port Authority | New York Post:
"The Port Authority said Friday it will turn La Guardia Airport into a bum-free zone — but not until after the holidays. The agency made the move following an exposé in The Post showing that at least 50 homeless squatters had moved into the busy airport, sleeping on vents, stealing food from shops and getting naked to wash themselves in the bathrooms.
The homeless have also been taking up chairs meant for passengers while snoring under blaring televisions.
Some hang around during the day, arguing with cleaning crews and bothering shop workers.
PA officials said they made the decision because the growing homeless population forced them to station dozens of cops at the airport to keep the vagrants under control, and that safety had become a huge concern..."
Plan is dubbed Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization
It will include automated systems that will help restore power within 7 days
Follows a warning by General Keith Alexander that the US is at a growing risk of cyber attacks, with energy infrastructure a prime target
The US is at an ever growing risk of a cyber attacks, with energy infrastructure likely to be hackers' prime target.
This was the stark warning made by General Keith Alexander, the retired general and former chief of the National Security Agency, earlier this year.
Now, the Pentagon says it has a plan to do something about the threat.
Its research division, Darpa, has launched a new program to target security threats that have the potential to wipe out all of America's power systems.
The US is at an ever growing risk of a cyber attacks, with energy infrastructure likely to be hacker's prime target. This was the stark warning made by General Keith Alexander, the retired four-star general and former chief of the National Security Agency, earlier this year
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE NOT PREPARED FOR A CYBER ATTACK
Nuclear power plants throughout the world are in denial over the risk of a serious cyber attack, a report has warned.
The study claims that the civil nuclear infrastructure in most countries is unprepared for such attacks.
The consequences could be devastating, as even a small-scale attack, it found, could release deadly radiation into the local area.
The report claims that cyber criminals could trigger an incident similar to that seen at Fukushima Daichi in Japan in 2011.
Nearly 16,000 people lost their lives in the natural disaster and subsequent devastation.
Published by think tank Chatham House, it looked at cyber security in power plants over a period of 18-months and cites 50 incidents globally, of which only a handful have been made public.
The report found a worrying lack of security protocols at nuclear plants throughout the world.
For instance, standard factory-set passwords, such as '1234', were found to be on a range of computer systems that control a power plant's critical system.
An early warning capability for power suppliers could prevent an attack entirely or blunt its effects, such as damage to equipment.
...'The greatest risk is a catastrophic attack on the energy infrastructure. We are not prepared for that,' General Keith Alexander said earlier this year.
He envisioned a worst case-scenario where hackers targeted oil refineries, power stations, and the electric grid. The payments nexus of the major banks could also be paralysed he warned.
'We need something like an integrated air-defence system for the whole energy sector,' he said.
The current NSA chief Michael Rogers testified late last year that China is capable of cyber attacks that could cause 'catastrophic failures' of the water system or the electricity grid.
"In response to President Barack Obama trying to bar people on the “no-fly list” from purchasing firearms, Rep. Trey Gowdy issued a bombshell proposal of his own that made a whole lot more sense, both logically and legally.
“If we’re going to create a list with, by the way, no due process, called a watchlist — then at a minimum you ought to give the list of visa overstays to federally licensed firearms dealers, because that list already exists,” he explained to two Obama officials at a congressional hearing on Thursday."
It’s one reason why we can’t rationally discuss things As we and many others have pointed out, many policy debates these days devolve quickly into emotionalism.
Should we be surprised when too many American students lack the tools with which to engage in public discourse? According to the Nation’s Report Card, produced by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which is considered the gold-standard for evaluating the job schools are doing educating students, only a paltry percentage of high school seniors know their history. Yes, only a meager 12% of high school seniors are considered “proficient” in U.S. history.
If you’d like to examine the test, you can do so here.
We’ll probably do some separate posts on it. These statistics show how videos like the one below are possible.
In the video, Rhonda Fink-Whitman who is a daughter of a Holocaust survivor “interviews Pennsylvania public school graduates currently enrolled at four different Pennsylvania universities to see what they know about the Holocaust, World War II, and genocide in general.” Here’s one question: Rhonda Fink-Whitman: Which country was Adolf Hitler the leader of? Student: I think it’s Amsterdam. Watch and weep.
If you have no baseline for history or civics, how can you rationally engage in discussions?
You can’t.
It’s that simple. Sure, you can have an opinion and you can vote, but you have no real understanding of the lessons of the past, both good and bad.
Indeed, if you don’t know your history, you have no idea where we have come from and how it formed the present.
The future is not yours to shape, but merely to stumble blindly into. Time for a new education system?"
History for December 21 - On-This-Day.com Benjamin Disraeli 1804 - Author, statesman: "No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition.", Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili) 1879 - Georgian Marxist revolutionary and later dictator of USSR (1928-53), Carl Wilson (The Beach Boys) 1946 - Musician (The Beach Boys) Samuel L. Jackson 1948 - Actor ("Pulp Fiction," "A Time to Kill"), Chris Evert 1954 - Tennis player, she won her first Wimbledon title in 1974 at age 19, Kiefer Sutherland 1966 - Actor ("The Lost Boys," "Young Guns," "A Time to Kill"), son of actor Donald Sutherland 1620 - The "Mayflower", and its passengers, pilgrims from England, landed at Plymouth Rock, MA. 1898 - Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium. 1937 - Walt Disney debuted the first, full-length, animated feature in Hollywood, CA. The movie was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." 1945 - U.S. Gen. George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident. 1968 - Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon. The craft landed safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27. 1978 - Police in Des Plaines, IL, arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of killing. 1988 - 270 people were killed when Pan Am Boeing 747 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to a terrorist attack. 1998 - The first vaccine for Lyme disease was approved.
"Hillary Clinton rejected the notion that arming more civilians would make America safer after the San Bernardino terror attack, suggesting that the opposite is in fact true.
The Democratic frontrunner made the claim when asked at Saturday’s Democratic debate if Americans are “wrong” to want to place more guns in the hands of individuals to harden soft targets.
“In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, you all emphasized gun control. But our latest poll shows that more Americans believe arming people, not stricter gun laws, is the best defense against terrorism. Are they wrong?” the moderator asked."
RED ALERT: Obama Makes His Move to CENSOR Fox News... Spread This Everywhere:
"A Washington, D.C.-based federal court heard arguments from a former Federal Communications Commission commissioner and First Amendment advocacy groups that the Obama FCC’s new “net neutrality” rules might allow the government to censor conservative outlets like Fox News or the Drudge Report.
According to the Washington Examiner, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit began hearing oral arguments on the case Dec. 4. A variety of advocacy groups claim the new rules, which went into effect in June and treat broadband providers as “conduits, not speakers” and “as a platform for expression,” could do just the opposite."
Blog: Go ahead #BlackLivesMatter: Make my day Surely this incident will attract protests from “BlacklivesMatter. A black man, 52 year old Andrew Coffee, Jr., was riding home from a convenience store in Indian River County, Florida, after purchasing cigarettes in the wee hours of the morning, when he was pulled over by Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Lester. Coffee’s son later commented, “It’s crazy how it happened,” said Roderick Scott, 35, the son…
“I don’t understand how it happened, from you going to the store on a scooter.
What was the point of stopping him?” (snip) “He wants to do better for his kids and his grandkids,” Scott said. “It’s been rough, but he finds different jobs in landscaping on a daily basis.” Cue the righteous indignation!
The excuse for pulling him over: Lester pulled over Coffee because the scooter did not have a license tag, which is required. Ahem. License tags are required.
Not having one is indeed a good reason for a traffic stop. But what made it more interesting is what happened after the stop.
Here is the dashcam video:
As Will Greenlee and Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm describe it: A dashboard camera video released by the Sheriff’s Office showed Lester directing Coffee to place his hands on the hood of his patrol car. “Don’t reach for anything,” Lester said. After Coffee walked to the front of the patrol car, he swung his fist and struck Lester in the face, the video shows.
As Lester fell, Coffee pulled a gun from his waistband and began firing at the deputy, who fired back, sheriff’s officials said.
....Some background on the man pulled over: Andrew Coffee Jr., 52, of the 4200 block of 26th Avenue in Vero Beach, was released last year from prison after serving two decades for attempted murder, according to the state Department of Corrections. In the time he was incarcerated, Coffee’s four children had 21 grandchildren. Lots of his descendants populating America. And he is well known to the Sheriff’s Department: Coffee Jr. has been arrested about 20 times, almost always by the Sheriff’s Office, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records. His first arrest was in October 1981 when he was 18, and his most recent was on Dec. 3 on drug-related charges. Coffee Jr.’s other arrests were on charges including disorderly conduct, aggravated assault, battery, disorderly intoxication, sexual assault, cocaine possession and aggravated battery. Fortunately, both men survived their gunshot wounds. So go ahead, BLM: Make my day."
"Since it’s a great time of year to make lists, President Barack Obama said he’s made one of his own — the top 10 things that happened in 2015.
The thought of one Jewish state drives the Muslim world bloody mad.
Former Republican Congressman Calls for Political ‘Revolution’ Among GOP — and Has Eye-Opening Words About Violence | TheBlaze.com:
19 Signs That You Live In A Country That Has Gone Completely Insane | RedFlag News
Their cash-starved island had persuaded some of the country’s biggest hedge funds to lend them more than $3 billion to keep the government afloat.
"Ting also emphasized that critics who believe prospective immigrants are having their rights infringed are forgetting something.
...'The greatest risk is a catastrophic attack on the energy infrastructure. 
FED UP Trey Gowdy Destroys Obama Official, Makes 1 Simple Proposal to Help End Terror Attacks:
It’s one reason why we can’t rationally discuss things
"Hillary Clinton rejected the notion that arming more civilians would make America safer after the San Bernardino terror attack, suggesting that the opposite is in fact true.
