Month: November 2013

John & Ken (640am) Eviscerate LAUSD`s iPad Program

Published by Papa Giorgio

Money from current and future taxes taken from property owners originally meant to fix dilapidated schools and build new structures is being “sequestered” to buy overpriced iPads that will cost well over 1-Billion dollars. Here is tyhe story via Daily Caller:

Los Angeles public schools officials were forced to admit this week that their iPad program would end up costing even more money than previously believed — and Common Core’s infamous textbook company Pearson is partly to blame.

Outgoing superintendent John Deasy has long wanted to supply every student in the district with an iPad device — at the cost of $1 billion to taxpayers. Trouble set in quickly as schools began implementing the plan, however. The devices are expensive, and many low-income parents worried that they would be on the hook for damages. Teachers also had to enable the security settings so that the devices couldn’t be used at home, though some students were able to circumvent those barriers. Dozens of iPads have already been lost, broken or stolen. (RELATED: LA schools give every kid an iPad—what could go wrong?)

But little could prepare iPad skeptics for the latest revelation: LA schools must pay an extra $60 million each year starting three years from now in order to re-license the English and math curriculum software on the devices. This contradicts earlier statements made by district officials that the software would not need to be rented multiple times.

The new information leaked out during a recent school board meeting.

“We’ll need to purchase licenses after three years if we want to continue to use the content,” said Hugh Tucker, deputy director of facilities contracts, according to The Los Angeles Times.

This drew the ire of school board member Monica Ratliff.

“OK, stop right there,” said Ratliff. “At the end of three years, that content is going to disappear or we’re going to be violating something by attempting to use this content?”

Tucker told her that this was indeed true.

Frogs and Global Warming

Published by Papa Giorgio

There are too many stories like this to post, so this one is a reminder that what appears on the front pages of the legacy media are often retracted years later on some back page of the newspaper or website. The newest “death knell” for a theory that even made it into Al Gore’s An Inconvinient Truth, as far back as 2010, was falling apart:

A Frog Revival

About 15 to 20 years ago, folks began to notice problems in amphibian communities around the world. At first, physical deformities were being noticed and then large population declines were being documented.

The finger was initially pointed at the coal industry, with an idea that perhaps mercury was leading to the deformities. But this didn’t pan out. Next, farm practices came under fire, as excess fertilizer running off into farm ponds became the leading suspect. But that theory didn’t hold water either. Then, attention turned to the ozone hole, with the idea that increased ultraviolet radiation was killing the frogs. No luck there either.

Then came the Eureka moment—aha, it must be global warming!

This played to widespread audiences, received beaucoup media attention and, of course, found its way into Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

But, alas, this theory, too, wilted under the harsh glare of science, as new research has now pretty definitively linked an infection of the chytrid fungus to declines, and even local extinctions, of frog and toad species around the world….

…read more…

Here is the WUWT story from this week:

From UC Davis: National survey finds frog abnormalities rare

A 10-year study shows some good news for frogs and toads on national wildlife refuges. The rate of abnormalities such as shortened or missing legs was less than 2 percent overall — indicating that the malformations first reported in the mid-1990s were rarer than feared. But much higher rates were found in local “hotspots,” suggesting that where these problems occur they have local causes. The results were published Nov. 18 in the journal PLOS ONE.

“We now know what the baseline is and the 2 percent level is relatively good news, but some regions need a deeper look,” said Marcel Holyoak, professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis, and a co-author on the study. Hotspot regions included the Mississippi River Valley, California and south-central and eastern Alaska.

Mari Reeves, a graduate student working with Holyoak, led the data analysis and is corresponding author on the paper. Reeves now works at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska.

Fieldwork for the study was carried out by the Fish and Wildlife Service at 152 refuges across the country between 2000 and 2009. Researchers collected more than 68,000 frogs and toads for the study.

[….]

The results show that abnormality hotspots occur in specific places, but within these hotspots the rate of malformations can change over time, Holyoak said.

“We see them at an elevated frequency one year or for a few years, and then they recover,” he said.

The most common problems observed were missing or shortened toes or legs, and skin cysts. Only 12 cases of frogs with extra legs were found.

…read more…

Nine years, 68,000 frogs/toads… and they recover, from the 12-cases of extra legs.

Texas Enroll America Communications Lead Chris Tarango, Busted! ~ Project Veritas

Published by Papa Giorgio

Video Description:

Texas Enroll America Communications Lead Chris Tarango conspires to release private data to help a political action committee and admits this type of thing has happened in the past.

To support further investigations, click here to donate to Project Veritas: https://www.projectveritas.com/donate/

Enroll America is a a Sebelius-linked group dedicated to signing people up for Obamacare, conspiring to release private data to help a political action committee.

Sebelius’ relationship with Enroll America is under investigation by a government ethics audit and Cause of Action has questioned Enroll America’s tax-exempt status, asking the attorney general of Texas to further investigate this matter.

This is the third video in an investigative series into Obamacare fraud. The first two videos exposed Obamacare navigators counseling applicants to lie and cheat the health care system by erroneously reporting income status and health history.

The full, raw video plays immediately following the exposé.

The Intolerance of the Left Exemplified by Mary Cheney

Published by Papa Giorgio

Looking around the legacy medias landscape, headlines are predictable, my favorite however, is this one, “Liz Cheney attacks Mary Cheney’s marriage.”

What? Liz Cheney has said repeatedly this is a states issue… as the Constitution allows. And like many conservative libertarian gay people I know, they also want the courts to stay out of it. HotAir has these two excerpts where Liz explains her position, which the the above article says is “attacking her sisters relationship” .. believing the Constitution and its delegated rights to states is now bigotry.

The unmitigated nerve!

Firstly, it must be pointed out that Tammy Bruce (lesbian) supports Liz… a lot. Mizz’ Bruce likewise has written two books dealing with the militant tendencies of the Left to suppress differing opinions. In her books, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds,” and her later book, “The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values,” you are introduced to examples of how the Left tries to suppress not only speech… but thought as well. Two greatly recommended reads from Republitarian.

From the left there seems to be a militarizing of action against divergent thinking. On FaceBook people are unfriended for such thinking, and routinely those who stand for traditional marriage are called bigots. Another example of how this thinking is shoring up comes from The Daily Beast‘s Peter Beinart, who also teaches journalism at the City University of New York.

NewsBusters comments on the above video:

Beinart condemned all opponents of same-sex marriage:

“This has been the right wing’s kind of line for a couple of years now, basically that ‘we just happen to disagree with you about these issues, but of course we love you and respect you and we feel compassion.’ No. We get to a stage as a society which says if you don’t accept that people have the same basic rights as other people, African- Americans, Jews, Muslims, you don’t respect them.”

Liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan said Liz Cheney’s public opposition to same-sex marriage was a “kick in the gut” to her lesbian sister:

“[Y]ou can talk about political matters in an abstract way. But when it comes to your own family, something like someone’s marriage becomes pretty non- negotiable as a matter of respect. And for actually go out there and campaign to deny your sister the very institution that she belongs in, the very marriage that she has cannot but kick Mary in the gut.”

Jeff Toobin perfectly summed up the panel’s liberal New York bias: “And we all sit here on West 58th Street and think the world is changing so quickly. It’s not changing that fast in Wyoming.”

Not to mention that Beinart made a nonsequitur comparison between race and sex:

There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not. (Prager)

Another meme recently seen by myself on — you guessed it — FaceBook, is the following:

Really? Homophobia is defined today as anyone who is for traditional marriage… you know, the idea of male/female marriage that pervades every culture, religion, and time (history). The view that the historical status quo is extreme (read here: traditional marriage supporters)… is… well, extreme.

So this gay man explaining why he is against same-sex marriage is a homophobe?

——————————————————
One of the most respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:

✫ Foster the bonding between men and women
✫ Foster the birth and rearing of children
✫ Foster the bonding between men and children
✫ Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
✫ Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults

Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival, … every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively . … Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”

Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea” …[he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.”

And then I posted this short video of another gay man explaining the importance of marriage and how same-sex marriage will undefine it:

Let us visualize what is being done in the name of “tolerance”

Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:The "Sweep Under the Rug" Argument

  • Racist
  • Sexist
  • Homophobic
  • Islamophobic
  • Imperialist
  • Bigoted
  • Intolerant

And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:

  • Peace
  • Fairness
  • Tolerance
  • The poor
  • The disenfranchised
  • The environment

These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.

First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.

Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal — essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal — they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.

Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself — by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.

Examples could fill a book.

Harry Reid, as noted above, supplied a classic one. Instead of grappling with the enormously significant question of how to maintain American identity and values with tens of millions of non-Americans coming into America, the Democratic leader and others on the Left simply label attempts to keep English as a unifying language as “racist.”

Another classic example of liberal non-thought was the reaction to former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers’ mere question about whether the female and male brains were wired differently. Again, instead of grappling with the issue, Harvard and other liberals merely dismissed Summers as “sexist.”

A third example is the use of the term “racist” to end debate about race-based affirmative action or even to describe a Capitol police officer who stops a black congresswoman who has no ID badge.

“Phobic” is the current one-word favorite among liberal dismissals of ideological opponents. It combines instant moral dismissal with instant psychological analysis. If you do not support society redefining marriage to include members of the same sex you are “homophobic” — and further thought is unnecessary. If you articulate a concern about the moral state of Islam today, you are “Islamophobic” — and again further thought is unnecessary. And if you seek to retain English as America’s unifying language, you are not only racist, you are, as the New York Times editorial describes you, “xenophobic” and “Latinophobic,” the latest phobia uncovered by the Left.

There is a steep price paid for the liberal one-wording of complex ideas — the decline of liberal thought. But with more and more Americans graduating college and therefore taught the liberal list of one-word reactions instead of critical thinking, many liberals do not see any pressing need to think through issues. They therefore do not believe they have paid any price at all.

But American society is paying a steep price. Every car that has a bumper sticker declaring “War is not the answer” powerfully testifies to the intellectual decline of the well educated and to the devolution of “liberal thought” into an oxymoron.

The lack of introspection from the left is A M A Z I N G !

Something Missing? `Under God` Removed by President from Gettysburg Address

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Breitbart:

Washington DC talk show host Chris Plante reported today that Barack Obama omitted the words “under God” from the Gettysburg Address when reciting the great speech for a Ken Burns documentary.

Burns had filmed all living presidents as well as various Hollywood personalities and luminaries to pay homage to the speech which was delivered by Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, today.

[….

WMAL reports: 

Curiously enough, in his version of the speech, President Barack Obama’s delivery contained an omission – in a line that every other celebrity delivered as “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” the President left out the words “under God.”

…read more…

Obama does this often, in quoting the Declaration of Independence, removing God from the Thanksgiving Declaration, and even reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

ObamaCare So-Called Success Story Says She Can`t Afford ObamaCare ~ CNN

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Gateway Pundit:

The Weekly Standard reported:

“Jessica Sanford was cited by the president as an Obamacare success story at a health care event he had here at the White House in the Rose Garden on October 21,” says a reporter for CNN from the White House. “That of course being just last month. The 48-year-old single mom from Washington state purchased what she considered to be affordable health care, life-changing event, she said, on the Washington state health exchange. She decided she was so excited about this news, she wanted to write an e-mail to the president to say that this had really changed her life and that she was thankful for the Afforable Care Act. The president included her e-mail in his remarks to people on hand for the event. Here’s a bit of what the president had to say.”

The CNN report quotes President Obama as saying, “I recently received a letter from a woman named Jessica Sanford in Washington state. And here’s what she wrote, I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed. and I haven’t had insurance for 15 years because it’s too expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so much stress lifted.”