Heating Up: Climate Change Advocates Try to Silence Krauthammer

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Photo Credit: Fox News Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.”

He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.”

How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday.

Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech.

Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress staffer, boasted on Twitter that 110,000 people had urged the newspaper “to stop publishing climate lies” like the Krauthammer piece.

Read more this story HERE.

Apple’s Security Breach Should Scare You More Than Target’s Did

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockApple’s security protocol breach is nearly as bad as handing your credit card straight to a hacker rather than making them steal the information through the magnetic stripe readers.

The flaw in Apple’s iOs and OS X platforms essentially allows a hacker to get in between the initial verification “handshake” connection between the user and the destination server, enabling the adversary to masquerade as a trusted endpoint. This means the connection which is supposed to be encrypted between you and your bank, email server, healthcare provider and more is open to attack.

Security experts across the web recommend updating iPhones and iPads with the available iOS patches now, and using browsers other than Safari for OS X systems without an available Apple fix.

Usually to achieve encrypted web traffic, a handshake is accomplished through a Secure Sockets Layer — SSL for short — or more recently, Transport Layer Security, or TLS; both are Internet protocols that provide a secure channel between two machines operating over the Internet or an internal network.

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

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%).

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more this story HERE.

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.

Read more this story HERE.