US black teen, Gabby Douglas, makes Olympic history, publicly praises God

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Photo credit: ClaraDon

By USWeekly Staff.  Gabby Douglas, 16, made history Thursday when the U.S. Olympic gymnast won the gold medal in the women’s all-around final competition. She became the first African-American to win the top prize.

“Someone mentioned that I was the first black American (to win the all-around gold), and I said, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that!’ I feel so honored,” she told reporters via The Associated Press after her win.

Gabby was raised in Virginia and began training at the age of 6. When she was 9, her father, Air Force Staff Sgt. Timothy Douglas, went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I just had to pray to God just to keep him safe and tell the angels to keep my dad safe and come home,” she recently explained to NBC Nightly News of her father being away.

After having to miss many of her competitions, Gabby’s father was able to attend her U.S. Olympic trials on June 29. It was the first time he had seen his daughter for the first time since October 2010, according to USA Today. Holding an American flag with “Go Gabby Douglas, Love, Dad” on the front, Gabby was thrilled to see her dad in the stands.

“I’m like, ‘Who’s calling my name?’ And then I look up. It was my dad and his friend, and I haven’t seen him in a while,” Gabby explained. “They were holding up the flag. And I almost felt like bawling. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, Dad!”  Read more from this story HERE.

iTickets.com also reports:  Following her emotional win the 16 year old gave an interview with NBC and celebrated the moment by praising God and offering her thanks for an amazing blessing.

“It is everything I thought it would be; being the Olympic champion, it definitely is an amazing feeling. And I give all the glory to God. It is kind of a win win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me,” Douglas testified in the interview.

Later she also took to social networking site Twitter to continue her praise. She tweeted, Let all that I am praise the LORD; may I never forget the good things He does for me.

Douglas also stated on her Twitter account that she “loves my family, dogs & most importantly God.”

Douglas, a Virginia native, earned her spot on the U.S. Womens Gymnastics team after she defied expectations at the American Cup in March. She initially only competed in the cup as an alternate, but she outscored the favorite in the U.S. Gymnastic team, Jordyn Wieber.  Read more from this story HERE.

Are the Chinese winning Olympic medals through child cruelty & torture? (+video)

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Photo credit: familymwr

By Matt Blake.  Her face etched with pain, a child trains for Olympic glory while her gymnastics trainer stands on her legs.

The cartoon space rockets and animal astronauts on her tiny red leotard are a stark and powerful reminder of this little girl’s tender age as she trains as hard as any adult athlete in the Western world.

Nanning Gymnasium in Nanning, China, is one of many ruthless training camps across the country to which parents send their children to learn how to be champions.

But while training techniques appear extreme to Western eyes, they provide an insight into why China’s athletes at London 2012 seem so easily able to swim, dive, lift and shoot their way to victory.

Gymnastic stars are known for starting at an incredibly early age, and this group of children appear no different as they battled to complete the demanding routines on bars, rings, and mats.  Read more from this story HERE.

Here is a video collage of Chinese children going through ruthless training, entitled “Chinese Olympics training or child cruelty?”:

 

Video: Allen West lambasts government dependency, asks “Whatever happened to the American Dream?”

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In this short but compelling video, Allen West talks about the federal farm bill and the fact that 80% of it consists of food stamp funding. He notes that the feds are encouraging even more dependency and warns that the American Dream is in real trouble.

U.S. Chamber: Law of the Sea Treaty Will Pass

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The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce– the nation’s premier group representing business interests — said Thursday that he believes the U.S. Senate will pass the Law of the Sea Treaty during its next session.

Despite Tom Donahue’s prediction, the international treaty has been languishing in the Senate for three decades. Just last month, a total of 34 Republican senators went on record as opposing the treaty — and since a two-thirds vote of the Senate is needed to pass it, the treaty seemed as dead as ever.

Donahue told a breakfast of the American Security Project, a bipartisan think tank, that he believes some of those Republicans will change their minds, although it’s hard for them to align themselves with the nation’s top Democrat during a presidential election year.

According to Donahue, passing the treaty is vital to America’s economic and security interests. He says that without it, the United States will not have a seat at the table when it comes to developing offshore oil and gas beyond its 200-mile territorial limit.

Alaska Sens. Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski both welcomed the news, although a spokesperson for Begich seemed doubtful that Republicans could manage such an about-face.

But Murkowski, a moderate Republican, said she thought such a turnaround could indeed take place. She says that modifcations to the treaty have made it a much better deal for the U.S., and that it would be foolish for the U.S. not to adopt the updated version of the treaty.

“We have been doing serious mapping off the coast of Alaska off our northern waters,” Murkowski said. “And (the treaty provides) the opportunity to claim an area about the size of the state of California, that we could effectively annex as part of an area that would be able to control.”

More conservative Republicans disagree including Joe Miller, Murkowski’s former rival for her Senate seat.

“To transfer two-thirds of the earth’s surface over to the governance of the United Nations is just a crazy thought,” Miller said Thursday. “And whether or not there’s some short-term economic benefit, (it) is a terrible thing to do, if you love this country and are really supporting its continued sovereignty.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Chick-fil-A “Appreciation Day” results in unprecedented sales; CFO fired for protest (+videos)

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By Jacques Couret.  So just how much did Chick-fil-A Inc.’s sales skyrocket on “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day”?

“While we don’t release exact sales numbers, it was an unprecedented day,” Chick-fil-A Executive Vice President of Marketing Steve Robinson said in a statement. “We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country. Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was not a company promotion; it was initiated by others.”

The Atlanta-based chain is private and therefore doesn’t reveal its bottom line. It discloses annual sales figures, with last year’s record haul hitting $4 billion. There are 52 weeks in a year and Chick-fil-A isn’t open on Sundays. So it operates roughly 312 days of the year. Sales of $4 billion divided by 312 is about $12.8 million a day.

One can only guess how much more than $12.8 million Chick-fil-A considers “unprecedented” for sales on Aug. 1.

In other daily Chick-fil-A controversy news, the Newnan [Ga.] Times-Herald published a guest column from Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, N.Y., and Atlanta. Reed comes out swinging in defense of Chick-fil-A, calling public figures who have come out against the chain “smug, self-righteous, power-wielding, small-time Nazi-types.”  Read more from this story HERE.

In a related story, the CFO of a major Tucson, Arizona company was fired for the following Appreciation Day “protest” against Chick-fil-A:

 

Finally, if you’re a Tim Hawkins fan, here’s his hilarious Chick-fil-A music video:

Obama Campaign & Democrats sue to prevent soldiers from voting

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President Barack Obama, along with many Democrats, likes to say that, while they may disagree with the GOP on many issues related to national security, they absolutely share their admiration and dedication to members of our armed forces. Obama, in particular, enjoys being seen visiting troops and having photos taken with members of our military. So, why is his campaign and the Democrat party suing to restrict their ability to vote in the upcoming election?

On July 17th, the Obama for America Campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Ohio Democratic Party filed suit in OH to strike down part of that state’s law governing voting by members of the military. Their suit said that part of the law is “arbitrary” with “no discernible rational basis.”

Currently, Ohio allows the public to vote early in-person up until the Friday before the election. Members of the military are given three extra days to do so. While the Democrats may see this as “arbitrary” and having “no discernible rational basis,” I think it is entirely reasonable given the demands on servicemen and women’s time and their obligations to their sworn duty.

The National Defense Committee reports:

[f]or each of the last three years, the Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program has reported to the President and the Congress that the number one reason for military voter disenfranchisement is inadequate time to successfully vote.

I think it’s unconscionable that we as a nation wouldn’t make it as easy as possible for members of the military to vote. They arguably have more right to vote than the rest of us, since it is their service and sacrifice that ensures we have the right to vote in the first place.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama administration released illegal aliens who went on to commit thousands of crimes

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By Stephen Dinan.  The Obama administration released illegal immigrants who went on to commit more crimes, including charges of 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, the House Judiciary Committee said in a report Tuesday.

All told, 16 percent of the nearly 47,000 illegal immigrants the administration was notified of but declined to deport between 2008 and 2011 under its Secure Communities program have gone on to be charged with other crimes, the committee said.

They were part of the nearly 160,000 immigrants — most of them here legally — who were flagged by Secure Communities during the three-year period and who were later charged in nearly 60,000 more crimes, according to the committee and the Congressional Research Service, which looked at data the committee subpoenaed from the Homeland Security Department.

The Secure Communities program was designed to identify immigrants who end up in state and local prisons and jails who the administration decides it wants to deport.

While hundreds of thousands of aliens have been sent back home under the program, 159,286 were not put in deportation proceedings during the period under review, CRS said.  Read more from this story HERE.

This story comes on the heels of DHS’s Janet Napolitano’s admission that terrorists are entering the US through the Mexican border.

Government gone wild: IRS paying billions in fraudulent tax refunds

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Photo credit: saturnism

The IRS is paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds to identity thieves; a problem that the tax service’s inspector general told CNBC is a “growing problem” involving numbers that are increasing “exponentially.”

In a new report to be issued Thursday, the inspector general for the IRS says that tax thieves are stealing the identities of taxpayers and then filing bogus returns on their behalf and collecting fraudulent refunds as a result.

The inspector general estimates that the IRS could issue as much as $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years.

The scam is so rampant that thieves are apparently sending in false returns in bulk without even bothering to change the mailing address on the returns. The inspector general said it found one residential address in Lansing, Michigan that was the source of an astonishing 2,137 tax returns, and to which the IRS directed more than $3.3 million in potentially fraudulent refunds.

In another case, a single residential address in Chicago was the source of 765 tax returns, generating more than $900,000 in potentially fraudulent refunds, the report said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s rebels in Syria committing Christian genocide

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U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.

The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.

During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.

Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.

Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.  Read more from this story HERE.

If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video.  [warning: explicit content]

More Pentagon incompetency: Hugo Chavez “does not represent a threat to US security”

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U.S. Gen. Douglas Fraser on Tuesday backed up President Obama’s appraisal that Venezuela does not represent a threat to U.S. security. The only thing that statement proves is that both men refuse to acknowledge a menace that has grown worse on their watch.

Gen. Fraser is the last in a long line of regional commanders who have refused to mud-wrestle with Hugo Chavez. I have profound respect for men and women who are willing to risk their lives fighting our enemies or ordering others to do so, and I understand fully why they want to keep such conflicts to a minimum. However, the best way to prevent such confrontations is to kick over rocks to find the hidden threats and to take careful measure of our foes.

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez has consolidated a narco-state in Venezuela. U.S. law enforcement and federal prosecutors have gathered fresh, compelling evidence implicating Venezuela’s National Assembly president, minister of defense and Mr. Chavez himself in narcotics trafficking. If a foreign military using its personnel, vehicles and aircraft to shovel cocaine onto U.S. streets and schoolyards is not a national security threat, what is? If such activities by Venezuela’s government are not a threat, why do we spend billions of dollars to counter the problem? Why does Gen. Fraser’s own command website call drug trafficking “a significant threat to security and stability in the Western Hemisphere”?

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, Mr. Chavez and his senior military commanders have provided material, financial, logistical and political support for Colombian drug traffickers who are branded terrorists by the U.S. government. American authorities know Mr. Chavez’s regime has issued Venezuelan passports or visas to thousands of Middle Eastern terrorists and offered safe haven to Hezbollah trainers, operatives, recruiters and fundraisers. During a March visit to Southern Command headquarters in Miami, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin E. Dempsey said, “[W]e recognize the threat that transnational organized crime presents, not just because of what they transport to our shores, but what they could also transport — terrorists and weapons and weapons of mass destruction.”

On Gen. Fraser’s watch, a half-dozen Iranian companies sanctioned by United Nations, U.S. or European authorities have built suspicious industrial installations at various sites in Venezuela. Those facilities were important enough to attract secret visits by Iranian Maj. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace commander, who previously headed Iran’s missile program, in July 2009 and November 2011.

Read more from this story HERE.