$200,000 USDA Training: ‘Pilgrims Were Illegal Aliens’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: cliff1066™The department most associated with Thanksgiving–the U.S. Department of Agriculture–is training workers to refer to the Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving as “illegal aliens.”

In a department “cultural sensitivity training” video uncovered and released by the public watchdog group Judicial Watch, a diversity trainer is shown saying: “I want you to say that America was founded by outsiders – say that – who are today’s insiders, who are very nervous about today’s outsiders. I want you to say, ‘The pilgrims were illegal aliens.’ Say, ‘The pilgrims never gave their passports to the Indians.”

Ag Department workers are heard loudly joining in.

The videos posted on Judicial Watch website show diversity instructor Samuel Betances urging USDA workers to think differently about illegals and minorities, who he calls “emerging majorities.”

According to Judicial Watch, “The sensitivity training sessions, described as ‘a huge expense’ by diversity awareness trainer and self-described ‘citizen of the world; Samuel Betances, were held on USDA premises. The diversity event is apparently part of what USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack described in a memo sent to all agency employees as a ‘new era of Civil Rights’ and ‘a broader effort towards cultural transformation at USDA.’ In 2011 and 2012, the USDA paid Betances and his firm nearly $200,000 for their part in the ‘cultural transformation’ program.'”

See video:

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Islamists Rally For Egypt’s Mursi In Cairo

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Thousands of Islamists rallied in Cairo on Friday in support of Mohamed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood president who has been the target of protester rage in weeks of violent demonstrations.

Repeating the pattern of recent weeks, Mursi’s opponents rallied again on Friday, this time gathering outside El-Quba, one of the presidential palaces in the northern suburbs of Cairo. The activists dubbed it “Checkmate Friday”.

The protest, which drew several hundred people by afternoon descended into violence as night fell. State media reported that “troublemakers” had thrown rocks and petrol bombs. Security forces unleashed tear gas and water cannon, it said.

The pro-Mursi rally was called by a hardline Salafi Islamist group, Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, in what it described as a protest under the banner “Together Against Violence”.

The group waged an armed insurrection against the state in the 1990s but its leadership renounced violence more than a decade ago. It has entered mainstream politics since autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

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What Is Obama’s Real Objective?

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I write this column with a certain amount of trepidation, knowing the subject not only believes he has the power to order targeted assassinations of American citizens, but has actually already misused that perceived authority. So here goes.

I have come to the conclusion that nearly everything Barack Obama does under the color of his authority as president is designed to weaken our country economically, militarily and morally.

I don’t think I could ever make that statement about any of his predecessors – and there have been some real bad ones.

Let’s begin with his economic policies. It’s not that those policies have not worked as intended. The problem is that they have worked exactly as intended. As he told us while campaigning in 2008, it’s about redistributing the wealth. That’s what he thinks his job is. That’s what he believes he was elected to do. That’s what he thinks he has the power to do, and he fully intends to use it as he has through his first term.

Worse, he does this not with misguided idealism and benevolent intentions. He does it as socialists always do, to break the back of free enterprise, private property rights and an economy that while no means perfect is the best mankind has been able to use to uplift the poor and provide individual citizens with the incentives to be as productive as possible.

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65.4 Million Gun Purchases Since Obama Took Office, 91% More Than Bush’s First-Term Total

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Photo Credit: ElCapitanBSC There have been 65,376,373 background checks completed for Americans purchasing firearms since February of 2009, the first full month of Barack Obama’s presidency.

According to data compiled by the FBI, the number of Americans purchasing guns has skyrocketed since Obama was elected.

In 2009, there were 13,984,953 background checks for Americans buying firearms. If we subtract the 1,212,860 checks completed in the month of January, the total checks for the year under Obama were 12,772,090.

For 2010, background checks totaled 14,320,489. In 2011, checks were 16,336,732, and in 2012, 19,463,832. Background checks for the month of January 2013 were 2,483,230.

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How the U.S. Aids Hamas Through the Palestinian Authority

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On February 5, 2013, the reconstituted US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa held a subcommittee hearing on the subject of “Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation: Threatening Peace Prospects.”

Two senior expert witnesses from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified and expressed optimism that US trained Palestinian Security Forces, affiliated with the Fatah, will combat the Hamas terror group which competes for power in the nascent Palestinian Arab entity.

Yet the Fatah policy and attitude towards Hamas can be summarized in an exchange that I had with Fatah founder Yasser Arafat at a press conference in Oslo, on December 10, 1994, the night before Arafat became one of the recipeints of the Nobel Peace Prize.

My question/statement: “Mr. Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs Peres said a few hours ago in answer to my question, that you deserve the peace prize because you have committed yourself to crushing the Hamas terror organization.”

Arafat response: “I do not understand the question. Hamas are my brothers.”

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Susan Rice: Clinton ‘Didn’t Want To’ Talk on Sunday Shows After Benghazi (+video)

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photo credit: Donkey HoteySusan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she spoke on the Sunday news shows following the terror attack on Benghazi because then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “didn’t want to.”

“I’ve spent many a Sunday doing the Sunday shows,” she told “The Daily Show” host John Stewart on Thursday. “In this case, Secretary Clinton, who had been asked originally to do it, felt that she didn’t want to, couldn’t do it that week, having been through quite a pretty intense week with the loss of our colleagues in Benghazi, the violence against our embassies all over the Arab and Muslim world, and then also that Friday having to join President Obama in greeting the families of our fallen colleagues and bringing their bodies back.”

Pressed about confusion over the talking points she was given on September 16, which blamed the attack on an allegedly anti-Muslim YouTube video, Rice said the notes she was given was the best information the intelligence staff had then.

“I shared the best information that our intelligence community had at the time, and they provided the talking points that I used,” she said. “They were wrong in one respect, we learned subsequently.”

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The Anti-Stimulus Economists Agree: Unemployment Benefits Hurt Employment Rates

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Photo Credit: APUnemployment insurance and other forms of government benefits act as a disincentive to work, economists across the political spectrum agree.

Three different economic experts testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs on Thursday afternoon during a heated and contentious hearing. All said that government benefits that kick in during unemployment decrease the economic incentive to pursue work, although they disagreed about the extent of the benefits’ effect.

“The focus of today’s hearing is on the unintended consequences that too often stem from well-intentioned policies,” said Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) in his opening statement for the hearing, “Unintended Consequences: Is Government Effectively Addressing the Unemployment Crisis?”

Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and author of a recent book on the effect that safety net programs have had on employment, argued that the government’s expansion of assistance programs in the wake of the recession actually has made it financially harmful to return to work in some cases.

He called the loss of benefits caused by employment the “job acceptance penalty,” and noted that a high penalty—100 percent of profit in some cases—is associated with low employment rates.

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Obama and Murkowski Back Green Tech Cash

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photo credit: TakverAt first blush, the White House and a top Senate Republican both like the idea of steering money from oil-and-gas development on federal lands and waters into green energy R&D.

President Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to create an “Energy Security Trust” that would direct some revenues into technologies that help wean cars and trucks off of oil, like electric vehicles.

Turns out Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s top Republican, is pitching a version of the same thing.

Her plan, part of a wider energy blueprint unveiled last week, would create an “Advanced Energy Trust Fund” to seed initiatives on renewable power, advanced vehicles and other green tech.

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Encroachment: Russian Nuclear Bombers Circle Guam

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photo credit: Andrey BelenkoTwo Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam this week in the latest sign of Moscow’s growing strategic assertiveness toward the United States.

The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time—hours before President Barack Obama’s state of the union address.

Air Force Capt. Kim Bender, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Force in Hawaii, confirmed the incident to the Washington Free Beacon and said Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, “scrambled and responded to the aircraft.”

“The Tu-95s were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction. No further actions occurred,” she said. Bender said no other details would be released “for operational security reasons.”

The bomber incident was considered highly unusual. Russian strategic bombers are not known to have conducted such operations in the past into the south Pacific from bomber bases in the Russian Far East, which is thousands of miles away and over water.

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House Leaders Demand Investigation of Claims NASA Leaked U.S. Space Defense Secrets, Justice Department Quashed Prosecutions

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Congressmen Lamar Smith and Frank Wolf want investigations by the FBI and the Department of Justice Inspector General into charges of improper political interference with prosecution of foreign nationals who allegedly stole U.S. space defense secrets and passed them to China.

“We have been told by sources close to this investigation that the FBI’s case is substantially complete and was referred to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California for prosecution, but it has been stalled for more than a year and that an assistant U.S. attorney was reassigned from the case,” Smith and Wolf said in Feb. 8, 2013, letters to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and DOJ IG Michael Horowitz.

“We are deeply concerned that political pressure may be a factor,” the two congressmen said.

Smith, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Committee, while Wolf, a Virginia Republican, heads the panel’s appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the National Aerospace and Space Administration.

The FBI’s targets were foreign nationals working at NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Francisco. The center’s director is retired Air Force Gen. Simon “Pete” Worden.

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