If you haven’t seen this video, you should take three minutes to watch it. The video was produced by US Marines at the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. These servicemen and women show that they can keep a great sense of humor even while deployed far away from family and friends in an increasingly hostile environment.
Photo credit: AtlanticRebel
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has signaled a preference in the U.S. presidential campaign by comparing Mitt Romney to his own challenger.
Chavez, who is up for re-election a month before U.S. President Barack Obama, has in recent weeks expressed a clear preference for the man currently in the White House.
In a campaign speech Saturday night, Chavez equated the agenda of his challenger, Henrique Capriles, with that of Romney, saying both men represent the callously selfish capitalist elite.
Chavez claims Capriles, a moderate former governor, is trying to trick Venezuelans into believing he genuinely cares about the poor, the core of Venezuelan president’s constituency.
“I believe the person to best explain the loser’s agenda isn’t Barack Obama but rather Romney, because it’s the extreme right-wing agenda that borders on the fascism of the United States,” Chavez told tens of thousands of supporters in the western city of Maracaibo.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: vaXzine
The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
“I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust,” said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Read more from this story HERE.
Related to the increasing US poverty rate, Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press also reported today that the world is suffering the worst economic slowdown since “the dark days of 2009”:
Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession. The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world – China, India and Brazil – are in no position to come to the rescue. They’re slowing, too.
The lengthening shadow over the world’s economy illustrates one of the consequences of globalization: There’s nowhere to hide.
Economies around the world have never been so tightly linked – which means that as one region weakens, others do, too. That’s why Europe’s slowdown is hurting factories in China. And why those Chinese factories are buying less iron ore from Brazil.
As a result of this global economic slowdown, the International Monetary Fund has reduced its forecast for world growth this year to 3.5 percent, the slowest since a 0.6 percent drop in 2009. Some economists predict the global economy will grow a full percentage point less.
For now, few foresee another global recession. Central banks in China, Britain, Brazil, South Korea and Europe have cut interest rates in the past month to try to jolt growth. European leaders have begun to focus more on promoting growth, not just shrinking debt and cutting budgets.
Read more from this story HERE.
Democrats in Michigan are facing criticism from pro-life advocates for silencing a pro-life candidate wanting to participate in a candidate event.
On July 16, Right to Life of Michigan PAC-endorsed candidate Bob Costello was prevented from speaking at a forum for congressional candidates in the 14th Congressional District and was forced to leave the forum after attempting to speak. The forum was supposed to be an open forum for the Democratic congressional candidates of the 14th District but Costello (who is one of the five Democratic candidates on the ballot) wasn’t invited.
As RLM indicates, “Costello, a prolife Democrat, was one of four congressional candidates who attended the event even though he was threatened with arrest if he attempted to speak at this event by the president of the Grosse Pointe Democratic Club. Costello believes his pro-life beliefs were the reason he wasn’t invited to the event and was prevented from speaking.”
“The main focus of Costello’s campaign is the protection of religious freedom which Obamacare’s HHS mandate violates by forcing religious institutions which operate schools and hospitals to violate their beliefs by providing coverage for services they object to,” RLM said. “The other candidates who attended the forum (Gary Peters, Mary Waters and Brenda Lawrence) remained shamelessly silent as their co-candidate was prevented from speaking.”
Costello has been very public with his opposition to the Obama HHS mandate: “As an attorney, a Catholic, and an American, I am stunned, angered, and worried by the federal government ordering Catholics and the Catholic Church to violate our long held religious and moral values . . .”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Steve Rhodes
Shooting suspect James Holmes applied to join a Colorado gun range last month but never became a member because of his behavior and a “bizarre” message on his voice mail greeting, the range’s owner said Sunday.
Police said James Holmes began buying guns at Denver-area stores nearly two months before Friday’s shooting. He also received at least 50 packages in four months at his home and the University of Colorado that authorities are investigating to see whether they contained materials for the potentially deadly booby traps that police found in his apartment.
At the same time, the quiet 24-year-old was in the final weeks of the first year of a rigorous Ph.D. neuroscience program, where he took a three-part final exam required for students to progress in the program and was scheduled to give a presentation on MicroRNA Biomarkers before abruptly leaving in June.
Holmes is being held without bond on suspicion of multiple counts of first-degree murder after a shooting rampage minutes into a premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora early Friday that left 12 people dead and 58 injured.
He is scheduled for an initial hearing Monday and has been assigned a public defender.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Rob Jung
Christian Bale, who stars in “The Dark Knight Rises” as Bruce Wayne / Batman, released a statement on Saturday, July 21, about the shooting at a midnight screening of the film in Aurora, Colorado, where a gunman killed at least 12 people and left 59 people injured.
The 38-year-old actor said in his statement obtained by OnTheRedCarpet.com, “Words cannot express the horror that I feel. I cannot begin to truly understand the pain and grief of the victims and their loved ones, but my heart goes out to them.”
Christopher Nolan, the director of “The Dark Knight Rises,” released a statement on July 20 and called the shooting “devastating.”
“The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me,” part of Nolan’s statement said. “Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families.”
James Eagan Holmes, a 24-year-old University of Colorado medical school student, was arrested for the shootings.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Thorsten Becker
A 19-year-old man stepped up when he saw a young mother and her children in danger the night of the Batman premier theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Jarell Brooks is by all accounts a hero, but he doesn’t want you to think of him that way. However, he very possibly saved three lives early Friday morning, and for that, he deserves the highest praise one can get.
Brooks and Patricia Legarreta, the woman whose life he saved, reunited on Good Morning America yesterday to talk about their experiences. Legarreta said she doesn’t remember everything that happened but is aware that without Brooks, she and her children would not be alive today.
Brooks said that he didn’t know that James Eagan Holmes had entered the theater until he saw and heard the gunshots because he was just six rows from back of the theater. He obviously didn’t realize that Legarreta’s boyfriend (now fiancé), Jamie Rohrs, had run out after leaving four-month-old Ethan on the floor after panicking. All he saw during the chaos and the smoke was a woman struggling to get her scared children out of harm’s way.
Legarreta’s four-year-old daughter, Azeria, was asleep when the shooting began, so when she woke up, she was disoriented. She fell in the process of trying to escape because of that, and Legarreta described tearfully how she did what she could to get her out. “Just blocking her, shoving her, just making sure she’s not getting hurt,” she said, obviously distraught and shaken at the thought of how close she came to losing her children that night.
Brooks was on his way out the door and was at the end of the aisle when he saw her. “My kids!” she yelled, and the teenager knew what he had to do. “My goal was to get this family out, without getting hit myself. I managed to do one.” Both he and Legarreta were hit by the gunman’s bullets.
Read more from this story HERE.
A jaw-dropping moment really can make time appear to stand still – or at least slow down, new research suggests.
Regular “awesome” experiences may also improve our mental health and make us nicer people, claim psychologists.
The findings raise the prospect of “awe therapy” to overcome the stressful effects of fast-paced modern life.
Awe is the emotion felt when encountering something so vast and overwhelming it alters one’s mental perspective.
Examples might include experiencing a breathtaking view of the Grand Canyon, taking in the ethereal beauty of the Northern Lights, or becoming lost in a dazzling display of stars on a clear, dark night.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Schwebbes
Barrow, Alaska – When the United States Coast Guard arrived in this remote corner of the Arctic this month to begin its biggest patrol presence in the waters north of Alaska, only one helicopter hangar was available for rent, and it was not, to put it mildly, the Ritz. Built by someone apparently more familiar with the tropics than the tundra, the structure had sunk several feet into the permafrost, with the hangar entrance getting lower as the building sank. Squeezing two H-60 helicopters into the tiny space? Think of parallel parking a stretch limousine. And for this — the only game in town, take it or leave it — the owner demanded $60,000 a month, a price that made Coast Guard leaders gasp.
“Not perfect, but you’ve got to learn to do it somehow,” Josh Harris, a Coast Guard aircraft mechanic, said as he stood surveying his first and not entirely straight attempt at towing in an aircraft.
In the land of the midnight sun, the Coast Guard’s learning curve is steep indeed.
The effort, called Arctic Shield, began this month as a pilot project combining search and rescue responsibilities with disaster response and maritime safety enforcement. It will presumably only expand, Coast Guard officials say, as global warming melts these once ice-locked waters.
With air operations based here in the nation’s northernmost community, more than 300 miles past the Arctic Circle, the assignment is expensive, logistically complicated to supply and far from backup should things go wrong.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Juliancolton2
White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed Donald Trump’s position earlier this week that should Obama keep insisting Mitt Romney release his tax returns, Romney should demand that Barry Soetoro, Barrack Hussein Obama, or whatever his name is, first make his college records public information.
Of course, rather than address the issue at hand, the administration consciously chose to launch into an Alinsky style personal attack on Trump. Carney called the suggestion “preposterous,” dismissing Trump as the “guy who insisted that he didn’t believe the president was born in the United States.”
Never mind that the current White House occupant signed an Executive Order hiding every last one of his personal documents from public view on his first day in office. For “the most transparent administration in history,” transparency is meant for everyone else, not themselves.
In typical Progressive “do as I say, not as I do” fashion, the White House has launched repeated attacks on the presumptive GOP presidential nominee over questions about the timing of his departure from private equity firm Bain Capital. One campaign spokeswoman even suggested that Romney committed a felony.
The White House and fellow Democrats keep insisting that several companies filed for bankruptcy and/or shipped jobs overseas under Romney’s Bain leadership. They’re obviously trying to create the theme that Romney only wants to help fellow millionaires, not working people.
Romney has maintained he is not responsible for many of those decisions because they took place after he took a leave of absence in February 1999 to oversee the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games. According to recently released documents, regulatory filings show that Romney was still in charge of Bain through 2002. However, Bain officials, including Democrats, say that he was not involved with the company’s day-to-day operations during that time.
The White House is also criticizing Romney for setting up offshore bank accounts and refusing to release additional information concerning his personal fortune, estimated to be as much as $250 million.
Romney countered this week that, “John McCain ran for president and released two years of tax returns. John Kerry ran for president, and his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow this wasn’t an issue. The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more, more things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try and make a mountain out of and distort and to be dishonest about.”
But Progressives keep insisting that Romney’s supposed secrecy goes to the “trust factor.” This is the absolute height of hypocrisy. When it comes to secrecy and the trust factor, how on earth can policy wonks who insist on hiding the Oval Office occupant’s entire past claim even a sliver of the moral high ground? Perhaps Progressives need a lesson on how trust is a two way street. They should start with answering the following:
Why was the “Affordable Care Act” passed without Congress reading it first?
Why weren’t the New Black Panthers prosecuted for the voter intimidation that was clearly documented?
Why did the NLRB sue Boeing?
Why has the administration stifled the production of cheap energy through EPA regulations and denial of permits?
Why has the administration abandoned national border security while suing States attempting to enforce federal law and granting blanket protection from prosecution for breaking immigration laws to millions of illegal aliens?
Why is the administration suing States that passed Voter ID laws intended solely to protect the integrity of America’s voting process?
Why has the counting of American votes in the November 2012 election been outsourced to a Spanish company?
Why does the White House continue insisting that average, everyday Americans are not being taxed by the “Affordable Care Act” when enforcement of the “penalty” falls to the IRS?
When did the IRS suddenly leave the Department of Treasury and move to the Department of Health and Human Services?
Why did so many millions of taxpayer dollars go to green energy companies whose executives just happened to have been big time Progressive bundlers for the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign?
Where is the justification for using Executive Privilege to hide the truth about Operation Fast and Furious which resulted in the murder of American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?
The White House calling for transparency from the Mitt Romney campaign might make more sense if Obama practiced what his administration has preached. But he has not. “The most transparent administration in history” has practiced anything but transparency. The American people won’t suffer this level of horrendous duplicity much longer.
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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/
Photo credit: Chude