Amid Churchgoers, an Orphan Pleads for a Family

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Photo Credit: MELISSA LYTTLE | TimesAs soon as they pulled into the church lot, Davion changed his mind.

“Miss! Hey, Miss!” he called to his caseworker, who was driving. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

In the back seat, he hugged the Bible someone had given him at the foster home. “You’re going to be great,” Connie Going said.

Outside St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, she straightened his tie. Like his too-big black suit, the white tie had been donated. It zipped up around the neck, which helped. No one had ever taught Davion, 15, how to tie one…

This had been his idea. He’d heard something about God helping people who help themselves. So here he was, on a Sunday in September, surrounded by strangers, taking his future into his sweaty hands.

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David Ellis Edwards, Principal, Raped Boy In Office While Parent Was Outside: Cops (+video)

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Photo Credit: Nieve44/LuzA former middle school principal in North Carolina is accused of sexually assaulting a student while the boy’s unsuspecting parent was outside the room.

David Ellis Edwards, 49, was arrested Friday and charged with second-degree forcible sex offense, sexual acts with a student, taking indecent liberties with a minor and crimes against nature, WTVD reported.

Deputies say that between 2009 and 2011, Edwards molested at least three boys between the ages of 11 and 14. At least one of the incidents allegedly occurred in Edward’s office while the victim’s parent sat in a nearby waiting area.

WNCN: News, Weather for Raleigh. Durham, Fayetteville

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Senate Deal Weakens Congress On Debt Ceiling (+video)

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Capitol Hill talk regarding the Senate deal apparently includes a provision that would take away the Congress’ power to increase the debt ceiling. According to Politico, it looks like the buzz appears to be true.:

The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt ceiling would be raised.
National Journal reported last week:

Whether it’s four weeks from now or in one year, there’d be even less reason to put faith in a last-minute deal next time the U.S. is up against the debt limit.

There’s only one foolproof way to avoid a future crisis: Fundamentally change the way the debt ceiling works.

This approach isn’t all that radical. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., proposed a reform in January that would change the debt-ceiling mechanism so that Congress would vote to disapprove of an increase, as opposed to approving one. Such a change would limit debt-ceiling negotiations to a veto-proof majority, while still leaving Congress with some power.

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Privacy Threat Found in ObamaCare Website

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsTo enroll in a new ObamaCare health insurance plan on the federal marketplace, most consumers must first provide private personal information.

But buried in that website’s blueprint (known as “source code”) lies an alarming warning first unearthed by the Weekly Standard.

“You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system,” reads the disclaimer, which does not appear on the site’s visible “Terms and Conditions” page.

The disclaimer continues: “At any time, and for any lawful Government purpose, the government may monitor, intercept, and search and seize any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.”

Now security experts are worried this paragraph beneath the surface at HealthCare.gov may represent an ominous sign — that the U.S. government is ill-equipped to handle identity thieves.

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In Restoring America: The Harder the Conflict, the More Glorious the Triumph

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Nothing could be clearer to me based on what we all witnessed in Washington during these last few weeks and these last five years, than Barack Obama and the Democratically controlled Senate have no interest in making anything approaching a “grand bargain.”

The Democrats in Congress have had several opportunities to be the sort of statesmen and stateswomen that the times require, but they would not do it. They are ideologically committed to not only maintaining but growing the entitlement state, regardless of the perilous fiscal consequences to our country.

Although I haven’t given up on my party, I must admit that it is looking more and more like Glenn Beck may be right: we are living under a one-party system.
 
The Washington establishment continues to muddle blithely on as though all is right with the world, seemingly oblivious to the impending train wreck just over the horizon. 

 
Establishment Republicans are so deluded as to think that everything will be all better with a little more technology, better messaging, and milquetoast candidates who are acceptable to Democrats and the press. 
 
I have a word for them: It’s the debt, stupid!
 
Going along to get along in Washington is simply not going to fix the problem. As Senator Ted Cruz recently pointed out, it took a whole lot of bipartisan cooperation to get us $17 trillion into debt.
 
If we stay on our current trajectory, the National Debt will have nearly doubled on President Obama’s watch, to say nothing of the estimated $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This Administration will have committed your children and grandchildren to as much debt in eight short years as all the previous presidents combined. 
 
Common sense tells us that we can no longer afford the status quo. Not only does it threaten our children’s future, it is an existential threat to our security here and now.
 
In 2010 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs declared the National Debt as our number one National Security threat, and the debt has since increased by more than thirty percent.
 
During Mark Begich’s short 5-year tenure in the United States Senate, the deficit nearly quadrupled, and the national debt has risen by more than 60 percent.

Alaskans must never forget that Senator Begich was the 60th and decisive vote for Obamacare: a vote he continues to staunchly defend. He does so despite virtually none of the promises about the new entitlement program proving to be true. Further, the estimated costs of the so-called Affordable Care Act have skyrocketed from $900 billion when the bill was passed in 2010 to a CBO projected $1.6 trillion last year to the most recent projections finding it may cost upwards of $3 trillion.
 
All this has resulted in the downgrading of our credit rating, massive quantitative easing from the Fed, and the consequent devaluing of our currency. 
 
Just this week it was reported that the United States faces the possibility of another credit downgrade if we do not squarely face our massive debt and deficits. 
 
This news comes amidst Democrats most recent bargaining position calling for an end to the Sequester cuts: the only fiscally rational action that has been undertaken during the entire five years of the Obama Administration. 
 
Yet the junior senator continues to march in lock-step with Harry Reid and Barack Obama as they bring us ever closer to fiscal collapse.  
 
Make no mistake about it, Senator Mark Begich is part of the problem. It’s time to send him packing! 
 
We need a senator who can make the hard choices, and confront the challenges facing our nation in these turbulent times. There’s too much at stake to settle for pyrrhic victories.
 
Now is no time milquetoast candidates more interested in holding a position than linking arm-in-arm with those committed to bringing about a restoration of common sense to American politics. We have the words of Thomas Paine to spur us on in the fight:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
 
If you are ready to remedy the crisis of leadership in Washington, I need your help today!
 
This is our moment. Let’s return Washington to fiscal sanity, and save the future of the country we love.

For the Future,

Joe

Study: Conservative Baby Boom will Shift Nation Further Right

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Photo Credit: APA baby boom among conservatives could push the nation’s politics further right in the coming decades, especially since liberals aren’t having as many children, according to a new study of online dating habits of conservatives and liberals.

The study featured in a Harvard University Shorenstein Center review of recent surveys released Tuesday on how political polarization of the nation is impacting Washington’s budget talks is the first to challenge left-leaning pundits who have claimed that as the white population shrinks, the GOP will become marginalized.

Instead, the study in the authoritative journal Political Behavior, conducted by scholars from Brown and Penn State University, suggested that liberals could be the endangered species in the coming decades as conservatives, typically white, have more children than liberals. And those children, this study and others show, commonly follow the politics of their parents.

Deep in the study, “The Dating Preferences of Liberals and Conservatives,” the authors cite indications that conservative families are having more children than liberals and that could change the political tilt of the nation, according to their simulations. And, they added, it could happen faster than their tests show.

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Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All.

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Photo Credit: Josh Haner/The New York TimesEventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time be different? Short of an economic meltdown, there is only one thing that might produce meaningful change: a mass movement for tax, spending and entitlement reform led by the cohort that is the least organized but will be the most affected if we don’t think long term — today’s young people.

Whether they realize it or not, they’re the ones who will really get hit by all the cans we’re kicking down the road. After we baby boomers get done retiring — at a rate of 7,000 to 11,000 a day — if current taxes and entitlement promises are not reformed, the cupboard will be largely bare for today’s Facebook generation. But what are the chances of them getting out of Facebook and into their parents’ faces — and demanding not only that the wealthy do their part but that the next generation as a whole leaves something for this one? Too bad young people aren’t paying attention. Or are they?

Wait! Who is that speaking to crowds of students at Berkeley, Stanford, Brown, U.S.C., Bowdoin, Notre Dame and N.Y.U. — urging these “future seniors” to start a movement to protect their interests? That’s Stan Druckenmiller, the legendary investor who made a fortune predicting the subprime bust, often accompanied by Geoffrey Canada, the president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, of which Druckenmiller is the biggest funder. What are they doing on a Mick Jagger-like college tour where they don’t sing, don’t dance, and just go through a set of charts showing young people how badly they’ll be hammered if our current taxes, growth rates, defense spending and entitlements stay where they are?

“My generation — we brought down the president in the ’60s because we didn’t want to go into the war against Vietnam,” Druckenmiller told an overflow crowd at Notre Dame last week. “People say young people don’t vote; young people don’t care. I’m hoping after tonight, you will care. There is a clear danger to you and your children.”

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Chase Bank Limits Cash Withdrawals, Bans International Wire Transfers (+video)

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Photo Credit: Infowars Chase Bank has moved to limit cash withdrawals while banning business customers from sending international wire transfers from November 17 onwards, prompting speculation that the bank is preparing for a looming financial crisis in the United States by imposing capital controls.

Numerous business customers with Chase BusinessSelect Checking and Chase BusinessClassic accounts have received letters over the past week informing them that cash activity (both deposits and withdrawals) will be limited to a $50,000 total per statement cycle from November 17 onwards.

The letter reads;

Dear Business Customer,

Starting November 17, 2013:

– You will no longer be able to send international wire transfers. You will still be able to send domestic wires and receive both domestic and international wires. We’ll cancel any international wire transfers, including reccurring ones, you scheduled to be sent after this date.

– Your cash activity limit for these accounts(s) will be $50,000 per statement cycle, per account. Cash activity is the combined total of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash withdrawals made at branches (including purchases of money orders) and ATMs.

These changes will help us more effectively manage the risks involved with these types of transactions.

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White House: ‘There Are No Winners Here’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APWhile Democrats are being cast as the early winners in the deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit, the White House doesn’t see itself as the victor.

“There are no winners here,” press secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing Wednesday. “We said that from the beginning, and we’re going to say it right up to the end because it’s true. The American people have paid a price for this.”

Earlier this month, a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal that “we are winning” with a drawn-out shutdown, but the White House pushed back on that quote in much the same way that Carney did on Wednesday.

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The Wannabe Oppressed

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Photo Credit: Yuya TamaiWhat do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to themselves, as well as to others — without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll save you.” Yet deep down they’re thinking, “Oppress me.”

In his important new book, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings, French intellectual gadfly Pascal Bruckner does the most thorough job yet of explaining the climate movement as a secular religion, an odd combination of deformed Christianity and reconstructed Marxism. (You can find Bruckner’s excellent article based on the book here.) Bruckner describes a historical process wherein “the long list of emblematic victims — Jews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized peoples — was replaced, little by little, with the Planet.” The planet, says Bruckner, “has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation.”

But why? Bruckner finds it odd that a “mood of catastrophe” should prevail in the West, the most well-off part of the world. The reason, I think, is that the only way to turn the prosperous into victims is to threaten the very existence of a world they otherwise command.

And why should the privileged wish to become victims? To alleviate guilt and to appropriate the victim’s superior prestige. In the neo-Marxist dispensation now regnant on our college campuses, after all, the advantaged are ignorant and guilty while the oppressed are innocent and wise. The initial solution to this problem was for the privileged to identify with “struggling groups” by wearing, say, a Palestinian keffiyeh. Yet better than merely empathizing with the oppressed is to be oppressed. This is the climate movement’s signal innovation.

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