Pro-Vet “Rolling Thunder” Rally Comes to DC As VA Fails Veterans

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Photo Credit: TownHall By Kevin Glass.

Rolling Thunder, a biker rally in Washington, D.C. created during the Vietnam War to honor American veterans, comes to the Capitol during Memorial Day weekend during the VA health scandal in which the government has been falsifying information about their ability to help America’s veterans.

The rally is held every year during Memorial Day, and they expect over 500,000 motorcyclists to participate this year.

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty VA scandal fits an established Obama narrative: skilled politician, lousy manager

By Doyle McManus.

We don’t normally expect our presidents to pay close attention to how long veterans are being asked to wait for care in the vast medical system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But we do expect presidents to appoint Cabinet officers and other aides who can run the federal government well — well enough, at least, to prevent full-blown scandals from erupting.

That’s what the VA’s long-running scheduling problems have turned into after reports that veterans died while waiting for medical care — and bureaucrats apparently manipulated records to make their performance look good when it wasn’t.

No one can read the stories of individual veterans who suffered at the hands of the bureaucracy — like Edward Laird, a 76-year-old Navy veteran who lost half of his nose because he had to wait two years for cancer tests — without feeling helpless fury.

And those stories are certain to keep coming.

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7 Dead in Drive-By Shooting Near UC Santa Barbara

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Photo Credit: AP The Daily Nexus, Daniel SlovinskyBy Raquel Maria Dillon and Julie Watson.

A drive-by shooter went on a nighttime rampage near a Santa Barbara university campus that left seven people dead, including the attacker, and seven others wounded, authorities said Saturday.

The gunman got into two gun battles with deputies Friday night in the beachside community of Isla Vista before crashing his black BMW into a parked car, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Deputies found him dead with a gunshot wound to the head, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether he was killed by gunfire or if he committed suicide, he said.

A semi-automatic handgun was recovered from the scene near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Investigators know the gunman’s name, but Brown said he couldn’t release it pending notification of relatives.

“We’re analyzing both written and videotaped evidence that suggests that this atrocity was a premeditated mass murder,” Brown said.

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Photo Credit: Facebook Santa Barbara Mass Shooting: Son of ‘Hunger Games’ Second Unit Director Is Suspected Gunman

By Erik Hayden.

A 22-year-old gunman killed six people in an Isla Vista rampage that began with a 140-page manifesto and an apartment stabbing and ended with a crashed BMW and an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“It all has to come to this,” Elliot Rodger stated during a nearly seven-minute “Retribution” video uploaded to YouTube on May 23. He later added: “After I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there.”

Rodger, who died of a gunshot wound in the BMW, is the son of Hunger Games second unit director Peter Rodger. He had been a student who attended Santa Barbara City College classes sporadically since 2011.

The Santa Barbara sheriff’s office had made contact with Rodger three times prior to the mass shooting, including an April 30 incident where deputies followed up on a request from a family member who asked that police check on his welfare.

“The deputies contacted the suspect, at the time found him to be polite and courteous, he downplayed the concerns for his welfare and the deputies cleared the call,” stated Sheriff Bill Brown at a Saturday evening press conference carried live on local stations and cable broadcasters.

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Now South Carolina: 3 Dead, 1 Wounded at Beach Motel

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Photo Credit: AP / The Sun News, Janet Blackmon MorganThree people were killed and a fourth person was wounded in a shooting at an oceanfront motel in Myrtle Beach, one of South Carolina’s most popular tourist destinations.

The shootings took place around 11 p.m. Saturday in front of crowds of tourists at the Bermuda Sands Motel along the beach’s new boardwalk, Myrtle Beach Police Capt. David Knipes said.

Officers draped towels over the balcony of a breezeway just outside the doors to the rooms of the motel to shield two of the bodies from people on nearby Ocean Boulevard.

“We’ve got detectives working on it around the clock,” Knipes said Sunday. “We don’t have any suspects in custody.”

Knipes would not say whether detectives have determined a motive for the shooting, but said it didn’t appear to be a random shooting.

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Afghan President Turns Down Invitation To Meet With Obama

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Photo Credit: Richard Pohle – Pool / GettyAfghan President Hamid Karzai turned down an invitation to meet with President Barack Obama Sunday. A White House official issued a statement to the press pool attributing Karzai’s decision to the “short notice” of the request and the fact Obama’s surprise visit to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan was dedicated to meeting with U.S. troops ahead of the Memorial Day holiday.

“As we said, we weren’t planning for a bilateral meeting with President Karzai or a trip to the palace, as this trip is focused on thanking our troops,” the official said. “We did offer him the opportunity to come to Bagram, but we’re not surprised that it didn’t work on short notice.”

Karzai, who became president in late 2001 after U.S. troops helped topple the Taliban regime, has had a difficult relationship with America. In an interview with the Washington Post in March, he said the relationship between America and Afghanistan “has been at a low point for a long time.”

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Scientists Rebut White House Global Warming Claims

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Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo & VideoA group of independent scientists, economists, and meteorologists has issued a pointed response to the scientific foundation of the Obama administration’s claims that humans are drastically changing the climate by burning fossil fuels.

With expertise in multiple disciplines, including climate research, weather modeling, physics, geology, statistical analysis, engineering, and economics, the 15 signers make the case that the foundation of the White House National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a “masterpiece of marketing” that crumbles like a “house of cards” under the weight of real-world evidence.

“They promote their ‘Climate Models’ as a reliable way to predict the future climate. But these models dramatically fail basic verification tests. Nowhere do they admit to these well-known failures. Instead, we are led to believe that their climate models are close to perfection,” assert the scientists.

The 829-page NCA report was released on May 6 and was characterized by administration officials as “the most comprehensive, authoritative, transparent scientific report on U.S. climate change impacts ever generated.”

The administration seized on the NCA findings as justification for its push to further regulate the fossil-fuel industry and to bolster alternative green-energy sources.

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Obama Seizes N.M. Land for National Monument in Bundy-Like Showdown (+video)

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaPresident Obama on Wednesday will declare a national monument in southern New Mexico, delivering a win for environmentalists but angering ranchers and local law enforcement, who say the land restrictions will end up creating a safe haven for drug cartels to operate within the U.S.

Mr. Obama will declare about 500,000 acres as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. About half of that land is expected to be set aside as wilderness, meaning it will be closed to vehicles and construction.

Local ranchers say it’s a land grab that will interfere with their grazing rights, and border security advocates said the move will make it tougher for federal agents and local police to patrol the land, leaving a security gap that Mexican smuggling cartels will exploit.

“This is about opposing so many thousands of acres that is going to create nothing more than a pathway for criminals to get into this country to do their criminal acts,” Dona Ana County Sheriff Todd Garrison told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Monday.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency refuted the claim that the national monument designation would threaten border security.

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Rep. Bridenstine: Why Does USDA Need Submachine Guns?

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Photo Credit: USDAgovFollowing the Department of Agriculture’s May 7 solicitation for submachine guns with 30-round magazine clips, Rep. Jim Bridenstine is demanding an explanation.

“The fear of my constituents is that the USDA is expanding outside of its intended mission,” the Oklahoma Republican wrote the agency on Wednesday.

According to AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, the timing of the USDA request for the weaponry is suspect, coming “just one month after the [Cliven] Bundy embarrassment.”

“It seems that the USDA, which oversees America’s vast tracks of forested land, may be preparing itself in the event some cowboys want their heads of cattle to munch government-owned grass,” the website stated.

Bundy gained national attention in April during an armed standoff in Nevada over cattle grazing rights.

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Allen West: Confidential Source Reveals to Me What Really Happened in Benghazi

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Today as I returned from Detroit, I had a moment that I truly felt was God sent, as I don’t believe in coincidences. It happened on one of my flights, and it was two hours I will never forget.

I was seated beside someone who personally knew one of the men who was there on the roof in Benghazi. This person was excited to share with me the “ground truth” of what happened September 11, 2012.

My seat mate drew schematics to orient me to the “time and spacing” and the direction of the attack. I learned about the repeated orders to the men at the CIA annex to stand down and do nothing — thank God two of them, Glenn Doherty and Ty Woods, lived up to their code of honor and ran to the sound of the guns, resulting in their loss of life — but the preservation of life for others, their fellow Americans.

I learned about the proximity of the staging area of the attack to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, and the attackers were indeed Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated with al-Qaida. I came to understand why Ambassador Chris Stevens was there in the first place and that he had in fact requested better security but was denied – the question is, by whom? And I learned that the Martyrs of 17 February Brigade were in charge of security and were the ones who opened the gates, then fled.

I learned there are those who are being threatened with their pensions being cut off if they come forth to speak.

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WATCH: Teacher Says He Helped Write Common Core to End White Privilege

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Photo Credit: YouTube A teacher told attendees at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics Monday night that he helped write the controversial Common Core education standards to end white privilege.

Dr. David Pook, a professor at Granite State College and chair of the History department at The Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, argued in favor of Common Core.

“The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society I am given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn.”

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High School Senior Told He’s ‘Not Welcome’ at School after Raising Gadsden Flag

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Photo Credit: Greg StoneburnerGreg Stoneburner, a senior who just graduated from Central High School in Grand Junction, Colo., said he was told in no uncertain terms that he was no longer welcome at the school after raising a Gadsden flag on the school’s flagpole. Moreover, he told Examiner.com in an exclusive interview Friday, the principal withheld his flag and his diploma until after his graduation walk.

The incident, he said on Facebook, took place on May 9. That’s when he replaced the school’s flag with the yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” banner often associated with the Tea Party as a senior prank. He also posted a paper to the pole that told the history of the flag.

The prank didn’t sit too well with Jodie Diers, the principal of Central High School, who was livid over the prank. Other students, Stoneburner told Examiner, claimed she was angrily yelling to have the flag pulled down when she first saw it. According to Stoneburner, she pulled him out of a scholarship breakfast and told him and his parents the flag was a “slap in the face” to the school. She then said he was “not welcome” at Central High.

“She also confiscated my flag,” he wrote, even though she admitted he had not violated any law or school policy. Her reasoning, Stoneburner said, was that anything on the pole was school property.

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