A gunman killed two people and injured nine others late Thursday when he opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun in a Lafayette, La. movie theater before turning the weapon on himself, the city’s police chief said.
Chief Jim Craft told reporters that authorities had identified the shooter as a 58-year-old white man, but did not release his name, citing the ongoing investigation. Craft later said that the gunman had a criminal record, but had not been in trouble with the law recently. He did not elaborate further, and added that no motive had been established. Early Friday, Craft said that investigators were investigating possible addresses for the shooter in multiple Southern states.
The chief said that one of the injured victims was in critical condition and the ages of the wounded ranged from the late teens to early 60s. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said that one victim had been released from a local hospital.
Late Thursday, authorities said they had found the gunman’s vehicle with a suspicious package inside. A bomb squad and hazmat team were called in and the area near the theater was evacuated. Minutes later, an Associated Press reporter on the scene heard a number of short bursts similar to firecrackers coming from that vicinity. Craft later said that the suspicious object was found to be harmless.
Col. Mike Edmonson of the Louisiana State Police said that there are no other suspects apart from the deceased shooter. He added that police believe the gunman fired shots only at the theater and had not waged an attack anywhere else beforehand. (Read more from “At Least 3 Dead After Gunman Opens Fire at Lafayette, La. Movie Theater” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-24 03:07:452016-04-11 10:58:34At Least 3 Dead After Gunman Opens Fire at Lafayette, La. Movie Theater
As the push continues in various locations around the country to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the real world consequences of such a move have begun to surface.
Seattle became the first city in the nation to implement the $15 per hour minimum wage this past spring. Fox News reports that one unintended effect is that workers who are earning the higher wage are asking for fewer hours, so they can remain eligible for low income government benefits like childcare and tax credits.
Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.
Local radio talk show host Jason Rantz on KIRO-FM noted the irony: “If [employees] cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn’t actually help get them out of poverty, all you’ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people.”
“Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state’s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376,” according to Fox News. (Read more from “Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Law Just Came Back to Bite Them in a Totally Unexpected Way” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-24 03:07:342016-04-11 10:58:34Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Law Just Came Back to Bite Them in a Totally Unexpected Way
Fresh off the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring all states to issue same-sex marriage licenses, gay rights activists in Alaska and across the nation are pressuring legislators to pass measures mandating wider acceptance of the LGBTQ lifestyle and ideology in schools.
In a June 6 email to Alaskans, ACLU of Alaska Executive Director Joshua Decker praised the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, but then noted that “the fight for full equality is not yet over.”
Decker claimed that due to harassment of homosexual and transgendered students, a nationwide law is needed to root out bullying in schools.
Decker encouraged Alaskans to write U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan urging them to vote in favor of the newly reintroduced Student Non-Discrimination ACT (SNDA) which mandates that schools recognize and affirm the “perceived sexual orientation” of students regardless of their biological sex. According to the law, students who feel that their perceived sexual orientation is not properly recognized and affirmed could request a judicial proceeding.
According to Decker, such a law is needed, in part, so that schools will allow students to use the restrooms of the sex they identify with regardless of their biology, and so that schools will let students take same-sex dates to prom.
“The battle for equality isn’t over yet, but we’re proud to fight for it with you,” Decker concluded his letter.
The growing push to impose legal penalties against individuals and groups that do not accept gender ideologies celebrating homosexual, bisexual and transgender expression has caught the attention of Pope Francis.
Earlier this year the pope lamented the growing use of tactics to force gender theory on individuals and governments that do not agree with homosexual and transgender theories of human sexuality.
Speaking in March on his voyage to Naples, Italy, Pope Francis spoke of the “ideological colonization” of families seen throughout Europe and the West.
Most recently, in his new encyclical teaching “Laudato si,” the pope noted: “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.”
He added: “Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek “to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.” (Published with permission from the author, “Buoyed by Court Ruling Alaska Gay Rights Activists Turn to Schools”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-24 03:07:202016-04-11 10:58:34Buoyed by Court Ruling Alaska Gay Rights Activists Turn to Schools
A retired Los Angeles Police Department detective is the so-called Snowbird Bandit who’s responsible for a string of bank robberies across Orange County, authorities say.
Randolph Bruce Adair, 70, was arrested Wednesday in Rancho Santa Margarita in connection with five robberies this year . . .
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says Adair’s family members contacted deputies alerting them that they had information about the robberies.
Adair robbed the First Citizens Bank in Rancho Santa Margarita Tuesday for the second time in a two-month span, according to City News Service. Adair reportedly used a weapon to threaten the tellers.
During some of his robberies, Adair had displayed a revolver as he demanded cash. During a robbery at a Wells Fargo in Mission Viejo in early June, he was seen carrying a white pouch with the word “medic” on it. Adair was also named in robberies in Monarch Beach and Ladera Ranch. (Read more from “Elusive ‘Snowbird Bandit’ Is Former LAPD Detective, Authorities Say” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-24 03:07:062016-04-11 10:58:34Elusive ‘Snowbird Bandit’ Is Former LAPD Detective, Authorities Say
By Alexa West. After disgusting videos emerged that allegedly show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted body parts, Republicans in Congress are pushing to strip the organization of its federal funding . . .
Thanks to 2nd Vote, a website that follows the financial flow from consumers to political causes, you can now see the 41 companies that donate directly to the abortion provider . . .
1. Adobe
2. American Cancer Society
3. American Express
4. AT&T
5. Avon
6. Bank of America
7. Bath & Body Works
8. Ben & Jerry’s
9. Clorox
10. Coca-Cola
11. Converse
12. Deutsche Bank
13. Dockers
14. Energizer
15. Expedia
16. ExxonMobil
17. Fannie Mae
18. Ford
19. Groupon
20. Intuit
21. Johnson & Johnson
22. La Senza
23. Levi Strauss
24. Liberty Mutual
25. Macy’s
26. March of Dimes
27. Microsoft
28. Morgan Stanley
29. Nike
30. Oracle
31. PepsiCo
32. Pfizer
33. Progressive
34. Starbucks
35. Susan G. Komen
36. Tostitos
37. Unilever
38. United Way
39. Verizon
40. Wells Fargo
41. Xerox
(Read more from “Here Are the 41 Companies That Donate DIRECTLY to Planned Parenthood” HERE)
By Joe Carter. 3% – Planned Parenthood (hereafter PP) often claims that that abortions account for only 3 percent of the services they provide. While this may be technically true, it is a highly misleading statistic. PP considers an “activity” any separate action, exam, or test they do for a patient. If patient comes in for an abortion they may also give her an HIV test, a STI test, a pap test, medication to prevent a urinary tract infection, and some oral contraceptives. PP counts each as an “activity.” Even if a pregnant woman came to a PP clinic specifically for an abortion, the actual abortion would only count, in this example, as 16 percent (1 of 6) of the “activities” for that particular woman.
77 — That’s the number of years that Planned Parenthood Federation of America, commonly shortened to Planned Parenthood, has been in existence. The precursor of the organization, the American Birth Control League, was started in 1921. That group became PP in 1942.
$470 — The median charge for a surgical abortion at 10 weeks’ gestation (2009 figures).
700 — The approximate number of “health centers” PP connected to PP in America. PP works on franchise model, so each of the centers is part of a network of 66 independently incorporated affiliates.
$60,319 — The average amount American taxpayers (at the local, state, and federal level) give PP every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2015-07-23 02:29:222016-04-11 10:58:34Here Are the 41 Companies That Donate DIRECTLY to Planned Parenthood
In his ruling on same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony Kennedy discovered what I call the “Oprah Winfrey Clause” in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bars any law that might inflict “dignitary” harm on any citizen.
To respect the dignity of the 1.5 percent of Americans who are same-sex attracted, and from among them whatever slice really craves the lifelong, monogamous covenant of marriage, a majority of the Court was willing to rewrite the Constitution, overrule the sovereignty of 50 states, steamroll over voters and imperil the religious liberty of Americans. Those judges were willing to dump orthodox Christianity into the same fever swamp as white supremacism, and marginalize the faiths that founded America, tacitly granting the point of Obama’s Solicitor General that recalcitrant churches might share the fate of those that once rejected interracial unions — losing their tax exemptions, since they don’t serve the public good.
So the human dignity of our minority groups is really, really important in America, right? Organizations that don’t promote it don’t serve the public good. Is that what we’re meant to believe?
So why does the U.S. government pour $528 million per year (as of 2014) into a supposedly non-profit “charity” like Planned Parenthood, which was founded by racist eugenicists, which aborts hundreds of thousands of Americans every year — and which we now know, thanks to a sting video released today by the Center for Medical Progress, sells baby parts for profit, even haggling with customers over the price? This, by the way, is the second of their undercover videos of Planned Parenthood. The first was equally disturbing.
There is no rational case to be made that Planned Parenthood serves the public good. As more facts emerge, it’s becoming clear that it is engaged in the lowest, most ghoulish form of human trafficking imaginable.
It is hard to wrap our heads around this. The details are so sickening that you don’t want to watch the videos. What sane person would? The Allies in World War II were likewise at first incredulous when reports from Jewish escapees from Hitler’s Europe began to expose the full extent of the Final Solution, as historian Walter Laqueur documented in The Terrible Secret. If men such as Churchill and Roosevelt had trouble accepting the truth about a regime they knew was evil, whose utter defeat they hastened by firebombing its cities, why should we be surprised that this new truth is so difficult to grasp?
The villains this time aren’t foreigners in outlandish uniforms who hold menacing torch lit rallies and worship Wotan. They are pretty, well-coiffed women like Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards, and spunky legislators in pink running shoes like former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis. They are also self-styled Catholic politicians like Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who talk all the time about social justice and helping the poor. They include a president who sings “Amazing Grace” inside a church.
They are affable policy wonks like Steven Levitt and Stephen Dunbar, whose specious argument in Freakonomics purported to “prove” that legal abortion explains the drop in the crime rate. They are the neighbors we run into at Olive Garden, who worry about the need for “paring back the welfare rolls” and write checks to groups like Planned Parenthood that promise to help. They are normal, even nice people who spook themselves into thinking that restricting abortion would somehow bring back an age of sexual “repression” and hypocrisy. Their very normality fools us and lulls us to sleep.
This has happened before. In 1830, when the British Empire finally outlawed slavery, Parliament was only able to pass such a bill if it agreed to compensate slaveowners for the value of their “property.” In a noble expenditure, the British government devoted 40 percent of its budget that year to paying the price of freedom — which was doled out to some 46,000 British owners of black slaves in the Caribbean, including the ancestors of novelist George Orwell and Prime Minister David Cameron. These people weren’t moustache-twirling wielders of whips in the field, but ordinary Englishmen who had invested in a “business overseas” that produced sugar, tobacco or rum. It just happened to be the business of squeezing cheap labor out of black people at the point of a gun.
It had required a 30-year religious crusade on the part of men such as William Wilberforce, and a crushing bill to be paid by British taxpayers in 1830, to end Britain’s role in exploiting slaves. Part of the reason this reform took so long was the sheer unwillingness of people to look at evil squarely, to see that its tendrils extended into their neighborhoods and their bank accounts, their churches and their Parliament.
We Americans are lucky. We don’t need to spend some 40 percent of next year’s budget to end Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funded role in human organ trafficking. In fact, we can save the taxpayers $1.4 million dollars a day by cutting off that organization’s public funding. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has bravely stepped forward among other legislators who seek to defund Planned Parenthood as part of upcoming negotiations over U.S. highway funding. The next step should be to revoke the profiteering Planned Parenthood’s tax exemption as a nonprofit.
We can do this. It would save us a half-billion dollars. It would make every American’s hands just a little bit cleaner. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. The Obama administration has already doubled down in defense of Planned Parenthood, whose organ sales it called “ethical.” We will have to look long and hard at the monster that we have been feeding, petting and training. We will need to be a little bit ashamed of ourselves. We need to in order to galvanize our attention for longer than a news cycle or two.
The enemies of life will not rest in their pursuit of a culture of death. Neither can we. (Posted with permission of the author, “Human Dignity Is Priceless, but Baby Organs Start at $74.99”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-23 02:24:222016-04-11 10:58:34Human Dignity Is Priceless, but Baby Organs Start at $74.99 [+video]
By Rob Quinn. Ottawa, best known as the capital of Canada, also features the National Gallery of Canada, the annual Bluesfest, winter skating on the Rideau Canal—and, perhaps, a staggering amount of illicit sex.
Recently hacked affair hookup site Ashley Madison has 189,810 Ottawans on its books, which is roughly 20% of the city’s population and the highest sign-up rate for the site in Canada and possibly the world, according to Reuters.
“My G_d, my phones will be busy,” a private investigator told the Ottawa Sun after hackers calling themselves the “Impact Team” threatened to put details of the site’s 37 million users online. (Read more from “20% of This City Reportedly Has an Account on This Site That Allows You to Cheat on Spouses” HERE)
By Joe Kovacks. The odds were 37 million to 1, but a Massachusetts man is the first unlucky person to be publicly identified in connection with the recent hack on the popular online adultery site Ashley Madison, whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair.”
According to the Enterprise in Brockton, Massachusetts, the local resident’s name, profile ID, home address, email address and a “list of fantasies” were included in a manifesto message as an example of the information hackers had learned.
The information revealed is “intensely personal.”
“I have only two personal interests on this site,” the man’s profile reads. “Making sure that you are comfortable with me should I be so fortunate to hold your attention and making sure I take the role of discretion to an artform. I mean isn’t this why we are here, to be as discreet as possible?”
WBZ-TV in Boston reports, “Among the data released about the Brockton client of Ashley Madison: His user ID is ‘Heavy73′; he listed himself as ‘married/attached’; he joined the site the day after Valentine’s Day, 2014; he likes ‘cuddling & hugging’ and is into ‘discretion & secrecy.’” (Read more from this story, “Encouraging People to Cheat on Spouses” HERE)
The Bible says, “be sure your sin will find you out.” Ashley Madison, the website for people who want to cheat on their spouses was hacked this weekend. Their slogan is: “Life is short. Have an affair.” Hackers threatened to reveal personal data related to 37 million users. I have news for all those worried cheaters out there wringing their hands—God already knew! His holy Word says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). Times may have changed, but God’s laws and standards never change—all sin has a price. The New York Daily News calls this an “#adultery website.” Isn’t it a shame that immorality is such big business?
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-23 02:24:012016-04-11 10:58:3420% of This City Uses This Site to Cheat on Spouses; Hackers Promise to Release Cheaters’ Names
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that was broadcasted tonight Republican candidate for president Donald Trump berated the reporter for continuing to address polls that shed him in a negative light instead of polls showing his upper-tier status.
“I am leading across the board,” Trump said in the interview. “And then you hit me with this poll that I didn’t see before, where oh, gee, it’s not even that kind of a poll. All i know is I have a very big group of support. And I think one of the reasons.”
“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why,” Trump lectured Cooper.
Trump also said the American dream is “dead,” but he will revive it and “make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”
“You know I tell the story, the American dream — I talk about the American dream in speeches,” Ttump said. “The American dream is dead but I’m going to make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before. The American dream is dead. But i’m going to make it bigger, stronger. Right. And I go ‘boom!’ and I do it with great bravado and the audience goes crazy.” (Read more from “Trump Schools Anderson Cooper: ‘No One Trusts You or the Media'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-23 02:23:462016-04-11 10:58:35Trump Schools Anderson Cooper: ‘No One Trusts You or the Media’ [+video]
In response to the Chattanooga shootings, Andy Hallinan, the owner of Florida Gun Supply in Inverness said he felt threatened by Muslims in his store and that it was his “right” to deny firearms and training to anyone he deems a threat.
As Hallinan says in his video, “I’m not going to be asking every person who walks in what their religious background is. That’s not my business, but I do have the right to deny firearms and training to anyone I deem as a threat.”
“I have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of all patriots in my community, and so effective immediately, I’m declaring Florida Gun Supply as a Muslim-free zone. I will not arm and train those who wish to do harm to my fellow patriots.”
“I’m not going to be asking every person who walks in what their religious background is. That’s not my business,” he told WFLA. “But I do have the right to deny firearms and training to anyone I deem as a threat.”
Predictably CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, called on the Justice Department to investigate possible federal civil rights violations by the Florida business. They also had their attorney, Jenifer Wicks, send a complaint to then Attorney General Eric Holder when another store owner, Jan Morgan, decided against arming Muslims. (Read more from “Gun Store Owner Bans Muslims, Then This Happens Immediately” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-23 02:23:312016-04-11 10:58:35Gun Store Owner Bans Muslims, Then This Happens Immediately [+video]
A higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Tuesday.
About 22% of children in the U.S. lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared with 18% in 2008, the foundation’s 2015 Kids Count Data Book reported. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Human and Health Service’s official poverty line was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children.
“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” said Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, a non-profit based in Baltimore. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.” The foundation says its mission is to help low-income children in the U.S. by providing grants and advocating for policies that promote economic opportunity.
The report examined data from several federal agencies ranging from 2008 to 2013 to assess state-by-state trends of 16 factors of children’s well-being, including economics, education, health and family and community. It found that one in four children — a total of 18.7 million kids — lived in low-income households in 2013; low-income families were defined as those who use more than 30% of their pre-tax income for housing.
However, the numbers are from 2013, and Speer said the outcome may be different now that the unemployment rate has lowered to 5.3%; it was 7.5% in June 2013. Speer said more employed parents would naturally lead to fewer impoverished kids, but she doubted it would change the number of children in low-income neighborhoods. (Read more from “More Children Living in Poverty Now Than During Recession” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2015-07-23 02:23:122016-04-11 10:58:35Another Obama First: More Children Living in Poverty Now Than During Great Recession