World News Korner

"Okay that's it! My hair is challenging all of ya'll to a duel. Dandruff specks and fifty paces!"

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material.

The new cut-and-paste job follows reports by BuzzFeed, Politico, and MSNBC that Paul had plagiarized speeches either from Wikipedia or news reports. The book was published in August 2013 by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group.

In this case, Paul included a link to the Heritage case study in the book’s footnotes, though he made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Heritage.

A Paul aide defended the senator, saying he makes clear in the book’s “notes and sources” that he didn’t individually research each case.

“In the book Government Bullies all the information… was sourced by end notes. In the two cases described, the end notes clearly define the sourcing for the book. In no case has the Senator used information without attribution,” said Doug Stafford, an advisor to Sen. Paul who co-wrote the book. “There were 150 endnotes and cites including The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. This is a witch hunt and grasping at straws.”

Yes pointing out that a nationally known politician with aspirations fro the White House has engaged in cutting and pasting huge portions of text from an online site or has taken entire blocks of information, verbatim, from a case study without making it perfectly clear that they have done so is NOT grasping at straws. It is a little thing called reporting the the facts.

Very, very troubling facts.

I have it on good authority that Paul's hair is not original to him as well, and may in fact have been manufactured elsewhere and then passed off as his own. Truly there is nothing about the man that can be believed.

Is anybody else looking forward to watching Rachel tonight as much as I am ?

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Courtesy of the Southern Poverty Center:

The 23-year-old man who allegedly killed a TSA official at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday was carrying a one-page “manifesto” that included references to the “New World Order,” the Federal Reserve and “fiat currency,” according to a knowledgeable source with ranking law enforcement contacts.

Paul Anthony Ciancia, who allegedly wounded three other TSA workers before being shot and critically wounded himself, also expressed antagonism toward the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its chief until she resigned in August, Janet Napolitano, the source said. Ciancia’s note called former Secretary Napolitano a “bull dyke” and contained the phrase “FU Janet Napolitano,” the source said.

Ciancia’s language and references seemed to put him squarely in the conspiracy-minded world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement. The New World Order refers to a longstanding conspiracy theory that today, in its most popular iteration, claims that global elites are plotting to form a socialistic “one-world government” that would crush American freedoms. Often, the root of the alleged conspiracy is traced to the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and the adoption of fiat currency — paper money that is not backed by gold, as it was once was in the U.S.

So-called Patriots also increasingly see the DHS, which produces intelligence assessments of extremists that are distributed to other law enforcement agencies, as an enemy and even a collaborator in the New World Order conspiracy. Many believe DHS has targeted their movement and is somehow connected to the alleged construction of concentration camps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purported camps are thought to be meant for those Americans who resist a coming national seizure of all weapons from U.S. citizens.

If you are wondering where you have heard of the "Patriot" movement and references to the "New World Order" before well it just might have been right here among multiple posts about Alex Jones or Glenn Beck, who warn about the encroachment of government into all of our lives with an evangelical fervor, and who believe that we are moving to a one world government that will dictate European laws to American citizens.

However it is not only the fringe who embrace this point of view, the Tea Party itself is very enmeshed with that kind of thinking, as well as both Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul.

You know if you think about it, constantly screaming that America is under attack by communists and socialists, while advocating the ownership of guns while also warning that the government is working to restrict your access, can really only have one result ultimately.

This is domestic terrorism, one of the shooter's notes found in a bag said that he wanted to "instill fear in your traitorous minds." If this were a Muslim who had done this we would know immediately who had inspired him, or who gave him his instructions to kill.

But since this seems to have been inspired by our own Right Wing terror network it, so far, appears that the media is hesitant to make the connections.

That is not only bad journalism, but it also puts Americans at risk.

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I know this is a little long, but at the 8:28 portion Rebecca starts to tell the story of her interview with Wolf Blitzer. However it is around the 9:40 mark that she tells what it is like to be put in a position that every Atheist living in the Bible Belt fears.

Her emotion is so raw, and so honest, that it may serve to explain to those who are religious what it is like for those of us living in America who are not.

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Courtesy of USA Today:

Just how tough are new voter identification requirements in Texas? Apparently tough enough that former U.S. House speaker Jim Wright reportedly was denied a voter ID card on Saturday.

"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," Wright, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 1989, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about his experience at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.

The 90-year-old told the newspaper he realized last week that he didn't have a valid ID to vote in Tuesday's elections. He was refused a voter ID card because his driver's license expired in 2010 and his faculty identification from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he teaches, doesn't meet requirements under the state law enacted in 2011.

Well look at that, in their attempt to reduce the number of voters for Wendy Davis they have stopped an elderly white guy as well.

They disenfranchise enough to THEM and it will be the republicans who will find their voter ranks trimmed down to the bone.

And by the way this is, once again, a solution without a legitimate problem.

This from Politifact who looked into voter fraud in Texas:

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us records showing that from August 2002 through September 2012, the office received 616 allegations of election-code violations and recorded 78 election-code prosecutions.

By our count, 46 of the prosecutions ended with a conviction, guilty plea, no-contest plea or guilty plea as part of deferred adjudication. Of those, 18 cases appeared to involve fraud committed by individual voters: 12 cases with ineligible voters, five cases of voter impersonation and one case of voting more than once.

So, by our reading of the attorney general’s records, 18 instances of voter fraud have been confirmed in Texas since 2002.

18 instances of somebody voting using somebody else's name in ten years.

And THAT was enough of a reason to disenfranchise thousands of potential voters, and one former Speaker of the House?



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You know many years ago I engaged in a marathon of a debate with a seminary student who claimed vehemently that there were several references to Jesus to be found in ancient texts outside of the Bible.

At the time I lacked the resources to argue against his assertions effectively, however in the years since my findings are much like those expressed by Dr. Ehrman.

Kind of seems odd for a man who supposedly had such an incredible impact on the century in whihc he lived, don't you think?

P.S. I am aware that there are some of you who will disagree with this, but if you do please cite your sources so they can be verified.

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NBC Drops Bomb: Obama Found Birth Certificate April 14, 2011; Why Order One?

The following is absolutely unbelievable. NBC News' Today Show book section published excerpts from the soon-to-be released book 'Double Down' written by "journalists/politicalhacks/mediabigwigs" Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. They report Obama found his birth certificate, with footprints on it, at his house in Chicago on April 14th, 2011, while rummaging through some old boxes. Halperin and Heilemann also write Obama's mother died 7 years earlier even though Ann Dunham reportedly died in 1995. They write Obama was furious over the birther issue.

Excerpts: 'Double Down': How Obama beat the birthers in 2012
Mark Halperin and John Heilemann | TODAY books

Obama had contended with birtherism since the previous campaign, when rumors surfaced that there was no record of his birth in Hawaii. The fringe theorists had grown distractingly shrill and increasingly insistent; after he won the nomination in June 2008, his team deemed it necessary to post his short-form birth certificate on the Web. The charge was lunacy, Obama thought. Simply mental. But it wouldn't go away. A recent New YorkTimes poll had found that 45 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of voters overall believed he was foreign born. And with Trump serving as a human bullhorn, the faux controversy had escaped the confines of Fox News and conservative talk radio, reverberating in the mainstream media. Just that morning, before Obama departed for Chicago, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos had asked him about it in an interview, specifically citing Trump—twice.

As Obama made his fund-raising rounds that night, he avoided mentioning Trump, yet the issue remained much on his mind. What confounded him about the problem, beyond its absurdity, was that there was no ready solution. Although Trump was braying for his original long-form birth certificate, officials in Obama’s home state were legally prohibited from releasing it on their own, and the president had no earthly idea where his family’s copy was. All he could do was joke about the topic, as he did at his final event of the night: “I grew up here in Chicago,” Obama told the crowd at Navy Pier, then added awkwardly, “I wasn't born here—just want to be clear. I was born in Hawaii.”

Obama was looking forward to spending the night at his house in Kenwood, on the city’s South Side—the redbrick Georgian Revival pile that he and Michelle and their daughters left behind when they took up residence in the White House. He arrived fairly late, after 10:00 p.m., but then stayed up even later, intrigued by some old boxes that had belonged to his late mother, Ann Dunham.

Dunham had died seven years earlier, but Obama hadn't sorted through all her things. Now, alone in his old house for just the third night since he’d become president, he started rummaging through the boxes, digging, digging, until suddenly he found it: a small, four-paneled paper booklet the world had never seen before. On the front was an ink drawing of Kapi‘olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital, in Honolulu. On the back was a picture of a Hawaiian queen. On one inside page were his name, his mother’s name, and his date of birth; on the other were his infant footprints.

The next morning, Marty Nesbitt came over to have breakfast with Obama. The CEO of an airport parking-lot company, Nesbitt was part of a tiny circle of Chicago friends on whom the president relied to keep him anchored in a reality outside the Washington funhouse. The two men had bonded playing pickup basketball two decades earlier; their relationship was still firmly rooted in sports, talking smack, and all around regular-guyness. After chatting for a while at the kitchen table, Obama went upstairs and came back down, wearing a cat-who-ate-a-whole-flock-of-canaries grin, waving the booklet in the air, and then placing it in front of Nesbitt.

“Now, that’s some funny s__t,” Nesbitt said, and burst out laughing.

Clambering into his heavily armored SUV, Obama headed back north to the InterContinental hotel, where he had an interview scheduled with the Associated Press. He pulled aside his senior adviser David Plouffe and press secretary Jay Carney, and eagerly showed them his discovery.

Plouffe studied the thing, befuddled and wary: Is that the birth certificate? he thought.

Carney was bewildered, too, but excited: This is the birth certificate? Awesome.

Obama didn't know what to think, but he flew back to Washington hoping that maybe, just maybe, he now had a stake to drive through the heart of birtherism, killing it once and for all—and slaying Trump in the bargain. Striding into a meeting with his senior advisers in the Oval Office the next Monday morning, he reached into his suit pocket and whipped out the booklet, infinitely pleased with himself. [...] Continued/Video @ Today Show.

So, April 14th, 2011, Obama found his actual birth documentation with his actual footprints on it yet on April 22nd, 2011, he had his attorney send a letter to Hawaii requesting two copies of his birth certificate. He then publishes a manipulated pdf of a purported birth certificate on the Internet.

Question is; Why order/create one when you purportedly have the one with PRINTS on it?





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Author: thesmokinggun.com