Crusaders get blown out by PCU (Political Correctness University)

Yet another institution has bowed down to the political correctness bullies.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/31/christian-college-in-wisconsin-drops-crusaders-nickname/

“Our world has changed since 9/11 and we’ve become a more global society with the Internet. The heartbeat behind this was not political correctness, but expanded opportunities for our students.”

Expanded opportunities? Meaning to enroll more LGBT students as one outcome? Of course they won’t come out and say that, but the motivation seems clear.

Let’s look at it this way. If you’re an LGBT member of society, would you feel inclined to attend this Christian college merely because they changed their sports moniker in order to be more ‘inclusive’? I certainly wouldn’t. I would know it’s nothing more than lip service.

Unless they’ve truly changed their thinking and believe that all factions of society should be celebrated as the LGBT community desires even if it directly contradicts the written word a Christian school should be abiding by.

I would suggest a book burning to eradicate the Bible, the Word of God, from their campus. That way they wouldn’t come across as hypocritical.

If this is the ‘new’ global society enabled by the internet, why not go all in and eradicate all the ‘outdated’ beliefs we have? The movement is well underway to do just that with the Constitution, although it could be argued it has become irrelevant already since our system of checks and balances at the federal government level is non-existent anyway.

Just as you can’t ‘blend’ socialism type policies in with a free market, liberty based society, neither can you mold religion to fit the political/sociological views of the day.

Principle are only bedrocks if they stand true to the test of time. Opponents realize that the way to eradicate them is to first ‘mold’ them to a changing society before going all in to eliminate them.

It certainly seems to be working, doesn’t it?

Sen. Mike Lee response to SOTU 2014

If you’re like me, you certainly didn’t waste any of your valuable time watching last night’s SOTU dictatorial drivel. Might as well have been Castro or Chavez. Better to watch the Tea Party response. The comments are indicative of just how frustrated the left gets when they attack the Tea Party.

Is Flint, MI really a strong city with an impressive master plan? HUD says it is

So I was reading the Sunday local news about Flint, MI yesterday when I came across a standard liberal hypocrisy. First, I saw the story announcing Flint as a recipient of Obama’s HUD department as a selectee of its expansion of the Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative. Secretary Shaun Donovan said this.

“One of the things that really impressed us about Flint is that there is a brand new master plan and provides a clear road map strategy for the city and we really felt we could be helpful on.”

Sounds promising. A new master plan. A clear road map. Good stuff. Then I read on. I came across this op-ed from the emergency manager appointed to over see Flint’s finances, Darnell Earley.

On Friday, Jan. 3 the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated an injunction prohibiting the city of Flint from modifying health care for city of Flint retirees until the case is decided. The injunction was sought by a small group of retirees who seek to prevent the city from making any changes to their healthcare coverage.

As a city whose negative financial position has placed it into state receivership, Flint cannot afford to continue paying for the previous very generous level of healthcare coverage. If the federal district court’s decision is not reversed, it is almost certain that Flint will soon be unable to provide even the most basic level of city services.

Should the retirees be blamed for suing to get their healthcare benefits restored? No. Should the city be blamed for promising these benefits to retirees in the first place when they had no long-term plan in place to insure solvency? Absolutely. Who should pay for it now? No good options here. The city of Flint today is funded by taxpayers who shouldn’t be responsible for past discretions. Reality says it will be a combination of retiree benefit reductions, tax increases and future city worker compromises combined that will pay.

Then I found this story. A new water supply pipeline is under construction to supply Lake Huron water to Flint and bypass Detroit as its primary water source. Accordingly, Detroit gave Flint a notice to terminate its current contract after the city decided to join in the Karegnondi Water Authority, which is building its own pipeline to Lake Huron.

Detroit has made no decision on whether or not to continue water sales to Flint after April 17th when the current contract expires. If they do, Flint will be forced to obtain its water for now from the Flint River, hardly a clear blue supply. It will cost considerably more due to treatment if this is the case.

There is more. Consumers Energy has scrapped a planned $750 million dollar power plant scheduled for Genesee County where Flint resides – http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/01/commissioner_calls_consumer_en.html#incart_river_default. Chalk up another casualty to President Obama’s war on coal as Consumers elected to purchase an existing natural gas power plant in another area of the state. It will cost the Flint area hundreds of construction jobs as well as permanent jobs to maintain the plant upon its completion.

Does this sound like a city with a strong master plan? A potentially crippling bankruptcy looming. One-third of tax revenues dedicated toward retiree benefits. No concrete plan in place for the water supply. The loss of a huge construction project and the corresponding jobs. A declining population. So much so that a biogas project to treat the city’s waste is actually lacking enough of it – Flint population loss leaves Swedish Biogas project at a standstill. The declining population has been devastating to the school districts as well. Flint Community Schools are still struggling with a plan to address the financial shortfall – http://michiganradio.org/post/flint-school-board-discuss-compensation-cut-tonight. The district is paying teachers with loans – http://www.abc12.com/story/24625294/flint-school-district-using-loans-to-pay-teachers.

Flint certainly fits the bill for yet another award and a new socialism project. This CAPCON article breaks down the decline.

In 2006, the city of Flint operated at a $5.9 million surplus. Four years later, the city was $48.1 million in the red.

For example, the city’s revenue from property tax, income tax and state-shared revenue dropped a combined $19.2 million from 2006 to 2011. Yet, the city’s contributions to the pension and benefit trust funds increased by $6 million over five years. It jumped from $22.2 million in 2006 to $28.2 million in 2011, a 27-percent increase.

City records show that Flint spent $45.2 million on public safety in 2006. Within two years, the city spent $78 million on public safety.

Overall, the city’s workforce dropped from 1,104.5 full-time jobs in 2006 to 835.3 full-time jobs in 2011. Despite a 24 percent reduction in the full-time workforce, the city’s expenses went up 28 percent. Expenses for “total government activities” increased from $109.9 million in 2006 to $140.8 million in 2011. Brown said about 80 percent of the city’s costs are tied to employees’ costs.

Fact is that socialist policies always fail when attempting to execute them within a free society, particularly one that purports to be a free market, capitalist one. Promising completely unsustainable lifetime benefits to public-sector workers is a toxic recipe to the future of any community. Flint will have to face its demons just as Detroit is. The only question is will the citizens allow their elected officials to take them right back down the same road in the aftermath.

Dreams I’ll never see

Should this be the Obama theme song when it comes to the American dream?

Republican caused global warming shuts down federal government

Those darn Republicans have managed to shut down the federal government again today. Let’s hope the media does its part to alert America of the tragic implications of a government shut down even if it’s just for a day.

OK, actually it’s no big deal. It’s just a winter storm. The government could shut down many, many more days and you wouldn’t notice it either. But that just shows the hypocrisy of the alarmists.

A positive aspect is that the feds are being proactive on this. Just as they are with security at the Russian Winter Olympic ganes. They are pre – positioning assets throughout the region in response to the potential threat. You know, the way they should have in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11. Could have potentially saved the lives of 4 Americans.

Way to go Commander-in-Chief.

World’s 85 wealthiest people own as much the entire bottom half of the population

Here is a picture of an 85 seat bus. What can we imagine that we can stuff into such a bus? How about the 85 wealthiest people in the world who collectively own as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the world’s population!

Via the L.A. Times – http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-oxfam-world-economic-forum-income-inequality-20140120,0,7080817.story#axzz2qxEXoTZW

The 85 richest people on Earth have the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the population, according to a new report that highlights growing income inequality as political and business leaders gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Those wealthy individuals are a small part of the richest 1% of the population, which combined owns about 46% of global wealth, according to the report from British humanitarian group Oxfam International.

The study found the richest 1% had $110 trillion in wealth — 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the population.
That bottom half of the population owned about $1.7 trillion, or about 0.7% of the world’s wealth. That’s the same amount as owned by the 85 richest people, the report said.

Care to see if you made the list? Here is a link to the Forbes Top 100 – http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/

Nuclear capable Iran schools the world in diplomacy – UPDATED 1/22/14

Via WND – http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/iran-2-to-3-weeks-from-nuclear-bomb/

If Iran breaks its deal with the West tomorrow, the country would be only two to three weeks away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I was on-board with this thinking right from the outset. It only makes sense. Why would Iran, a country that has withstood decades of crippling sanctions, decide to just throw up their hands and surrender at the 11th hour? Because they have mastered uranium enrichment to the point where they can build a bomb in short order. It’s certainly conceivable that they already possess one but why take the risk of having the IAEA discover it and blow the scam when all they really need is a short-term build option?

In this way they can have their cake and eat it too. Get the sanctions reduced and be able to conduct foreign policy as well as state-sponsored terrorism with the knowledge that they are carrying a big stick. And their adversaries all know it. Obama the enabler will do his part. The media will try to sell it as if Obama has been hoodwinked and outsmarted but that’s a complete falsehood. Obama is complicit. Just ask his main and most trustworthy advisor, Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.

This is why the Iranian leader can make this statement.

In remarks to the Iranian people, President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday the new Geneva agreement “means the big powers surrender to the great Iranian nation” and that it “means the global acceptance of Iran’s peaceful nuclear technology,” according to state news service Fars.

Normally, any comments such as these are just bluster, but this time it would seem Iran got the world to blink.

UPDATE*** Here is another confirmation of the above – http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/22/politics/iran-us-nuclear/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

How to create a global warming crisis where none existed

Here is a must read from Steven Goddard’s Real Science blog – http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/just-hit-the-noaa-motherlode/

I spent the evening comparing USHCN V1 and V2 graphs, and discovered a huge discrepancy between their V1 and V2 adjustments.

But when they switched to V2, they started adjusting older temperatures downwards, and left post-2000 temperatures more or less intact. This created a huge jump (greater than one degree) downwards for all years prior to 2000.

They created a significant warming by reversing polarity of the adjustment in the pre-2000 years.

Bottom line is that there is clearly a huge error in the USHCN adjustments which has added a non-existent one degree hockey stick warming to the official US temperature record, and I now know just where to look for it in their code.

NOAA made a big deal about 2012 blowing away all temperature records, but the temperature they reported is the result of a huge error. This affects all NOAA and NASA US temperature graphs, and is part of the cause of this famous shift.

I highly recommend you go to the link and review the multitude of graphs and decide for yourself. Global warming has never been anything more than crony-capitalism with tremendous profits at stake. Clear thinking people have accepted climate change as a normal course of events as well as the fact that humans do indeed have an impact on it. However, it’s negligible in the big picture. That won’t stop the stakeholders from pushing it endlessly as there is simply too much money to be made.

Please do your part to spread the truth.

Biden thanks Ford for “saving our ass” yet he and the media continue with the lie that Ford didn’t get a bailout

For Vice President Joe Biden, it was a victory lap of sorts. His visit Thursday to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit was a chance to bask in the bailout of Chrysler and GM.

Last year was a great one for both companies – even more so for Ford, which took no bailout money.

That fact prompted an extraordinary quip from the Vice President as he toured the show with Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford, Jr. “Thank you for saving our ass,” Biden told Ford.

You can read the rest of this story at FOX or any of a plethora of media outlets peddling the same misinformation.

Misinformation? What am I talking about? The notion that Ford took no bailout money which is regurgitated as fact across the media spectrum. Lets review the facts once again.

A corporation may be comprised of various divisions, branches, arms, etc. which all may be separate and distinctive from one another but still fall under the umbrella of the corporation. This is the case with Ford Motor Corporation. In fact, if you go here and take a look at this financial report from Ford for the 3rd quarter of 2013 you will see two distinct sectors listed, automotive and financial.

The automotive sector is further broken down geographically around the world. The financial sector also lists Ford Motor Credit as well as other financial services the corporation is involved in. It is here where seemingly the entire world looks past the fact that Ford Motor Credit did indeed receive a bailout. In fact, a bigger bailout than GM or Chrysler at least when it comes to the credit arena. Spellchek covered this story back in 2010.

https://spellchek.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/ford-was-bailed-out-by-the-fed-after-all/

$15.9 billion dollars is nothing to sneeze at in anybody’s book. Particularly when you consider the entire auto bailout total was $85 billion for all corporations, sectors and suppliers.

So when you continue to hear people repeating this point that Ford was above the bailout snafu, you can correct them with the facts. Ford Motor Credit is every bit as vital to the corporation as the manufacturing sector is when it comes to corporate profits. Ford did indeed receive a bailout.

U.S. State Dept. identifies chief Benghazi suspect a terrorist and posts $10 million dollar reward

The U.S. State Dept. has elected to designate former Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu a Specially Designated Global Terrorists under E.O. 13224. The organization bin Qumu fronted in Libya, Ansar al-Shari’a, was also designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity under section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224.

The State Dept. at long last has also added the Benghazi suspects to its Rewards for Justice Program with a $10 million dollar reward. The omission was noted last October in news reports. Rewards typically run up to $25 million so the $10 million dollar amount would seem to be artificially low particularly in light of the State Dept. policy in such matters.

The Secretary is authorized to pay a reward greater than $25 million if he/she determines that a greater amount is necessary to combat terrorism or to defend the United States against terrorist acts. Read more – http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=Rewards_program&language=english

Sec. of State John Kerry has the authorization to raise the amount and since his dept. has stated that bin Qumu WAS responsible for the attacks on Benghazi, he would seem to qualify for a larger amount.

Created separately after the fall of the Qadhafi regime, Ansar al-Shari’a in Benghazi and Ansar al-Shari’a in Darnah have been involved in terrorist attacks against civilian targets, frequent assassinations, and attempted assassinations of security officials and political actors in eastern Libya, and the September 11, 2012 attacks against the U.S. Special Mission and Annex in Benghazi, Libya.

The statement “have been involved” is not the same as suspected or accused, it is stated as a matter of fact. Regardless, this reward and designation have long been overdue.

In keeping in line with the recent N.Y. Times expose, the State Dept. was careful not to include any specific references to al-Qaeda.

Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu is extremely important to the Benghazi investigation not just for his connection to the attacks, perhaps just as important is why he was even able to coordinate them. Bin Qumu was a CIA detainee at Guantanamo Bay from May 5, 2002 until he was released into the custody of the Libyan government in 2007. This despite his assessment as an enemy combatant while at Guantanamo as recently as 2004.

We were alerted to the status of bin Qumu by none other than Wikileaks with the release of a secret DOD document which you can read here.

Spellchek reported on this story back in November of 2012 – https://spellchek.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/who-is-abu-sufian-ibrahim-ahmed-hamuda-bin-qumu-is-he-the-reason-for-the-benghazi-cover-up/.

After reviewing the case history against bin Qumu, one can only wonder why the Bush Administration saw fit to release an enemy combatant who was considered an active threat against the U.S. and its interests. Here at Spellchek, we surmise the reason to be utilizing bin Qumu as a CIA double agent in order to gather further intelligence against al-Qaeda. In fact, the DOD hasn’t followed the lead of the Obama Administration in overtly omitting any ties of bin Qumu to al-Qaeda. The DOD listed bin Qumu as a “probable member of Al Qaida” in the secret report obtained by Wikileaks.