Knife-Wielding Man Injures 22 Children in China

photo credit: the ewan

BEIJING (Reuters) – A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

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A Deficit of Courage

photo credit: the eggplant

At the heart of the impending “fiscal cliff” is a problem more challenging than reaching whatever mix of revenue increases and spending cuts will be needed to bring America’s massive debt under control.

From the halls of government to corporate boardrooms and the corridors of America’s great universities, America seems gripped by fear.

Administration and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle appear immobilized by their own dread of constituents’ reactions to higher tax rates or austerity measures — or both.

Business leaders, knowing the need for realignment in a changing marketplace, nevertheless stand motionless because of the unknowns of new taxes and regulations and the fear of the reactions of shareholders and analysts.

On the campus of Penn State, it was fear that caused university administrators to sweep the horrendous crimes of an experienced coach under the rug.

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ObamaCare Will Bring Bureaucracy, Endless Rules And Coercion, But Improve Nothing

A few years ago, my small local hospital asked a senate staffer if she could assist them in obtaining federal money for a new building. So she did, expediting the process by which that particular corner of northern New Hampshire was deemed to be “underserved” and thus eligible for the fed gravy.

At the ribbon-cutting, she was an honored guest, and they were abundant in their praise. Alas, in the fullness of time, the political pendulum swung, her senator departed the scene, and she was obliged to take a job out of state.

Last summer, she returned to the old neighborhood and thought she’d look for a doctor. The sweet old guy with the tweed jacket in the neatly painted cape on Main Street had taken down his shingle and retired.

Most towns in the North Country now have fewer doctors than they did in the 19th century, and the smaller towns have none. The Yellow Pages list more health insurers than physicians, which would not seem to be an obvious business model. So she wound up going to the health center she’d endowed so lavishly with your tax dollars just a few years earlier.

They gave her the usual form to fill in, full of perceptive inquiries on her medical condition: Do you wear a seat belt? Do you own a gun? How many bisexual men are you now having sex with?

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Prosecutor: SEIU Organizer Committed Voter Fraud in 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

Prosecutors believe a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organizer fraudulently voted in a 2011 election in Wisconsin, according to documents provided to the Daily Caller by the Wisconsin-based government watchdog group Media Trackers.

An investigation by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has led to a subpoena of SEIU’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and has implicated the prominent labor union in a voter fraud case that threatens to lead to criminal prosecution.

Then-SEIU Senior Organizer-in-Training Clarence S. Haynes, who is no longer affiliated with the union and whose whereabouts are currently unknown, voted in the hotly contested April 2011 election for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat despite not being a resident of Wisconsin and leaving the state shortly after voting, according to an October 19, 2012 affidavit prepared by Bruce J. Landgraf, the assistant district attorney for Milwaukee County.

Haynes, who maintained an official permanent residence in Clearwater, Florida, allegedly voted along with two other SEIU organizers in Glendale, Wisconsin on April 5, 2011 — using a Residence Inn as their official address.

Haynes’ Bank of America debit card was used to make a final transaction in Glendale, Wisconsin on April 11, 2011. He checked out of the Residence Inn on April 18. His debit card transactions from May through August 2011 “appear to be concentrated for the most part in the State of Florida,” according to the affidavit.

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Washington Post Suggests Selling Alaska to Solve Nation’s Debt Problem

photo credit: alaska dude

The prospect of once again hitting the federal debt ceiling has provoked the ritual round of hand-wringing about the intractable nature of this $16 trillion conundrum. But there is a simple, elegant option that involves no tax increases, no spending cuts and just a bit of imagination.

Sell Alaska.

That’s right. Put the entire state — from Juneau to Deadhorse, from the Bering Strait to the Beaufort Sea — on the auction block.

Absurd? No more absurd than the spectacle taking place right now as we skid closer to the “fiscal cliff.”

Selling real estate at top dollar is all about timing, and now’s a great time to unload the Klondike state. The federal government, which owns 69 percent of Alaska, could cash in on the vast, resource-rich state at a time when oil prices are high and wild salmon is flying off the shelves at Whole Foods. Selling Alaska could fetch at least $2.5 trillion and maybe twice that amount, enough to lop off a huge chunk of the national debt and perhaps as much money as President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner hope to save or raise over the next decade.

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Obama on Connecticut School Shooting: We Must “Take Meaningful Action … Regardless of the Politics”

As the nation just began to mourn the killing of at least 26, including 18 children, at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut today, a teary-eyed Obama didn’t waste a minute in his first televised statement on the massacre to politicize things. He suggest that his administration is going to “take meaningful action” to address these type of crimes.

As it’s unlikely that Obama is going to call for arming teachers, don’t be surprised when you hear that a major piece of gun control legislation is in the works.

Here’s a portion of his comments: “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies over the last few years. And each time I hear the news I react not as a president but as anyone else would, a parent…”

“As a country, we have been through this too many times, whether it’s an elementary school in Newton, a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent tragedies like this regardless of the politics.”

Boehner Is Giving Away The Farm

photo credit: gage skidmore

House Speaker John Boehner has already conceded the biggest tax increase in history – $800 billion – in negotiations with Barack Obama and Democrats.

But now he is reportedly offering much more than that if the administration will agree to much deeper cuts to entitlement programs.

There are several problems with this that illustrate, again, why it is totally unacceptable for Boehner to remain in the position as the most powerful Republican in Washington.

No. 1: The definition of “cuts” in Washington: Most Americans think of budget cuts as actual money not spent. That is the not the definition Washington uses. Each and every year, spending for entitlements and many other budget line items increases automatically and substantially. When government programs don’t grow as much as they would normally grow, that is considered a “cut” in Washington. Under that definition, even when the budget is growing, in Washingtonese, the politicians say they are “cutting” spending.

No. 2: The only cuts that are really meaningful are those proposed and enacted in the current session of Congress. Most of the “cuts” talked about in these negotiations are phantom cuts Congress will try to impose on future Congresses – something they don’t have the authority and enforcement power to do. That means to have any real impact, the cuts have to be made between January 2013 and January 2015. You have to front load them. Believe me, Obama and the Democrats will never do that.

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New Hampshire Woman Tased by Police for Trying to Buy Too Many iPhones

Blood-curdling screams stunned holiday shoppers at a New Hampshire mall this week as police tackled a 44-year-old woman to the ground and tased her outside an Apple store. Her offense? She tried to buy too many iPhones and wouldn’t leave the Apple store when asked, according to police.

Xiaojie Li of Newton, Massachusetts, said she bought two iPhones at the Apple store in Nashua’s Pheasant Lane Mall last week. Store policy wouldn’t allow her to buy more than two phones.

The store restricts iPhone purchases to two per person because of concerns over resellers buying the smartphone and selling them at marked-up prices overseas.

Li, who doesn’t speak English, decided to return to the store on Tuesday to see if she could buy additional phones, despite the policy. She said she planned to give the phones as gifts to her family in China.

When the store refused to sell her more phones, police asked her to leave and she refused, police said. Bruce Hansen of the Nashua Police Department said Li was told repeatedly that she was under arrest but that she refused to submit.

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Many Who Voted for Obama Now Seeing Weekly Job Hours Slashed Below 30 as Obamacare Kicks In

photo credit: elvert barnes

It is the ultimate example of how you reap what you sow: Huge numbers of American workers who voted for Obama are now seeing their own jobs slashed below 30 hours a week as employers desperately try to avoid “Obamacare bankruptcy.”

Obamacare mandates for businesses only apply to those working 30 hours a week or more, and while many businesses do not want to cut workers’ hours, they are being forced to in order to stay afloat. This necessary action is causing businesses to lose money and become less competitive while at the same time destroying American jobs.

Some businesses are also slashing job positions in an effort to get below the 50-employee threshold above which Obamacare mandates kick in. So across the country, we’re not only seeing workers lose hours thanks to Obamacare; we’re also seeing workers losing their jobs.

But the Obama administration will announce these results to be a huge “job creation success!” because workers must now find two part-time jobs that usually pay less than the one full-time job they used to have. The raw job numbers, however, will be spun by the White House into a victory pronouncement of “twice as many jobs exist now!”

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Radical Texas Curriculum Under Fire for Teaching That Founders Were Terrorists, ‘Allah is the Almighty God,’ and More

In the 70 percent of Texas public schools where a private curriculum has been installed, students are learning the “fact” that “Allah is the Almighty God,” charge critics of a new online curriculum that already is facing condemnation for its secrecy and restrictions on oversight.

The program, called CSCOPE, is a private venture operating under the umbrella of the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, whose incorporation documents state its independence from the State Board of Education of the Texas Education Agency.

Other reports previously have raised alarm over the curriculum’s depiction of the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act on par with the 9/11 attack.

According to documentation that has leaked out, the program describes the Boston Tea Party this way: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”

There also have been reports that the curriculum – contrary to recent Supreme Court rulings – says the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms, is limited to state-run organizations.

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