Common Core: Gates Foundation Launches Giant Database on School Children ‘inBloom’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $100 million to fund a giant database to collect private information of American school children starting in early education and extending all the way through high school.

Promoted as a technological tool to help teachers tailor education to the individual needs of students, inBloom is a database that stores student’s scores, attendance, special needs, disabilities, etc. The intent is to exploit the technology that is available today to replace antiquated paper records.

Launched in February of 2013, inBloom is working with nine states representing over 11 million students. The nonprofit organization was launched to help educators keep up with the ever changing standards of state Common Core education.

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Bible Stops Two Bullets to Save Life of Ohio Bus Driver

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A Bible saved the life of a Ohio bus driver after the man was shot twice in the chest early Monday, police said.

Rickey Waggoner, a Dayton RTA bus driver, was making a mechanical fix outside his bus when three assailants approached him and shot him in what appears to have been a gang initiation, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Waggoner was shot twice in the chest at close range, but a contemporary version of the Bible, titled “The Message,” absorbed the bullets that would otherwise have killed the 49-year-old bus driver, according to police documents obtained by the newspaper.

“I’ve heard stories about that happening during the second World War. I’m glad to be in the club.”

“There was obviously some kind of intervention involved in this incident because (Waggoner) should probably not be here,” Dayton Police Sgt. Michael Pauley told the paper at the scene.

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German Cartoon of Facebook’s Zuckerberg Compared to Nazi Imagery

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Photo Credit: TwitterA caricature of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg published on Friday by a German newspaper was sharply criticized by Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) as reminiscent of Nazi imagery.

SWC Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Monday called the cartoon “an outrage” and said that the artist was guilty of anti-Semitism.

The cartoon, published by Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and entitled “Krake Facebook,” German for “Facebook Octopus,” shows Zuckerberg as a half-human sea giant grasping with tentacles at computers around him. Depicted with a hooked nose, the 29-year-old entrepreneur is shown smiling while his curly hair creeps out from under an oversized hat that has the Facebook logo on its brim.

One of the creature’s tentacles holds the logo of WhatsApp, the world’s largest mobile messaging service, recently acquired by Facebook.

Cooper told The Algemeiner, “The nefarious Jew/octopus was a caricature deployed by Nazis. That was used pretty much as a staple by the Nazis in terms of their hateful campaign against the Jews in the 1930s. [An] exaggerated Jewish nose removes any question if this was unconscious anti-Semitism.”

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Pew Survey: Palestinian Arabs Dislike America More Than Any Other Group

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Photo Credit: Screenshot / Pew Research CenterA new Pew Research Center survey showed that people living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas dislike the U.S. more than any other group, with 76% of respondents, the most on the list, qualifying America as an “enemy.”

Alternatively, In Israel, 90% of respondents qualified the U.S. as a “partner,” putting the Jewish state at the top spot on the pro-America list. Just 1% of Israelis view the U.S. as an “enemy.”

Following the “Palestinian Territories” on the “enemy” list are Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon and Venezuela; following Israel on the “partner” list are El Salvador, Senegal, the Philippines and Kenya.

Asked another way, if their view of the U.S. was “favorable” or “unfavorable,” the “Palestinian Territories” also scored highly with 79% of respondents being “unfavorable,” preceded by Jordan (85%) and Egypt (81%).

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Alaska National Guard Members Face Accusations of Sexual Misconduct

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Photo Credit: The National Guard/flickrA dozen members of the Alaska National Guard face charges of sexual misconduct in what members of the guard call a severe problem in the ranks.

Five were members of the guard’s recruiting unit and are alleged to have committed the offenses against potential recruits, new recruits, subordinates and others.

Two of those recruiters also allegedly threatened the National Guard investigator and one was arrested last month after being accused of saying he was going to blow up a building on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

The investigations come as current and former members of the Alaska National Guard, including chaplains, have said there is a serious sexual assault and harassment problem that needs to be dealt with.

The Alaska guard said it has a dozen sexual misconduct investigations, most of which are now complete. The investigations are followed by internal board hearings to weigh the evidence and decide whether the soldiers should be forced out of the service.

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Bravo-Foxtrot-Oscar: Taliban will resurge after US drawdown

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Photo Credit: allenbwestLast week, the Pentagon issued a report based on an independent study on the future of Afghanistan. As reported in the Washington Free Beacon, the Taliban will resurge in Afghanistan following the drawdown of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan later this year.

That is what I call a Bravo-Foxtrot-Oscar (Blinding Flash of the Obvious).

The report says the Taliban are expected to regenerate their capabilities in sanctuaries in Pakistan as military pressure on them declines. Over the next three years, the Taliban will expand control and influence in areas left undefended by U.S. and allied troops. They also are expected to “encircle key cities and conduct high-profile attacks.

This is truly dire news for President Obama and his proposed “zero option” force posture for Afghanistan – how’s that working out for Iraq? It seems former SecDef Gates’ assessment of Obama is true: his heart is not in it.

No wonder Karzai is letting Taliban prisoners go free.

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Piers Morgan Threatens National Rifle Association

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Photo Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/APAfter the National Rifle Association tweeted the news of Morgan’s departure on Twitter, he fired back a response.

“I wouldn’t get too excited @NRA – I’m not done with you yet,” he wrote using the hashtag #GunControlNow.

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In South Carolina, Clinton Forces Try to Tap Obama Magic (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNNTo hear some tell it, the 2008 South Carolina primary clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was a few steps away from a full-blown race riot.

“It was unbelievable down here in 2007 and 2008,” said Bridget Tripp, a Democratic organizer from Lexington who supported Obama in that year’s primary. “Bill Clinton was going through downtown Columbia calling Barack Obama a racist.”

It never got that bad, of course. But in the runup to the contest and in its aftermath, the Clinton campaign scrambled to explain away comments that rankled the black community: Hillary Clinton seeming to downplay Martin Luther King Jr.’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act, Bill Clinton’s biting characterization of Obama’s campaign as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen” and a range of remarks from Clinton allies that seemed to belittle Obama’s achievements.

Bill Clinton’s remarks in particular went over so poorly that South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, then the state’s highest-ranking African-American in Congress, went on national television and told the former president to “chill.” The morning after Obama’s crushing 28-point victory, Bill Clinton waved it off in glib terms, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, just another black candidate with black support.

The loss was a stinging defeat for the Clintons, a Southern power couple who viewed their longstanding friendships in the African-American community as crucial bulwark against any Democratic foe.

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Iraq Signs Deal to Buy Arms, Ammunition from Iran

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Photo Credit: APIran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195 million, according to documents seen by Reuters – a move that would break a U.N. embargo on weapons sales by Tehran.

The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned from lobbying the Obama administration in Washington for extra weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants.

Some in Washington are nervous about providing sensitive U.S. military equipment to a country they worry is becoming too close to Iran. Several Iraqi lawmakers said Maliki had made the deal because he was fed up with delays in U.S. arms deliveries.

A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister would not confirm or deny the sale, but said such a deal would be understandable given Iraq’s current security troubles.

“We are launching a war against terrorism and we want to win this war. Nothing prevents us from buying arms and ammunition from any party and it’s only ammunition helping us to fight terrorists,” said the spokesman, Ali Mussawi.

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DoD Budget Seeks Cuts in BAH, Commissary, Tricare Benefits

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Photo Credit: Military TimesThe Pentagon on Monday proposed the deepest and most far-reaching cuts to military compensation in the 40-year history of the all-volunteer force, explaining that such cuts are necessary in order to pay for more modern gear and high-tech weaponry.

Some highlights of the Defense Department’s budget proposal for fiscal 2015 include the first-ever rollback in Basic Allowance for Housing; a military pay raise that would match last year’s 1 percent hike, the lowest in the volunteer era; massive cuts to commissary subsidies; and potentially increased health care fees for both active-duty families and retirees.

Together, the proposals signal an end to a decade-plus wartime era of rising pay and benefits for troops. Even after the proposed cuts, military compensation would remain comparatively more generous than it was in the 1980s and ’90s. But the Pentagon has never before sought to pare back existing benefits in the all-volunteer era.

Moreover, personnel costs would be slashed further by significant reductions to the size of the force, including the smallest Army since the before the Second World War.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the changes are part of an overarching decision to protect big-ticket programs and research projects by saving money on people.

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