July 4 Barbecue Costs Climb to Record

Photo Credit: Bloomberg Rising prices for beef, ice cream and lettuce mean Americans will spend the most ever for Fourth of July barbecues this year.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows an index tracking U.S. retail prices for seven foods commonly consumed while grilling climbed 5.1 percent in May from a year earlier to the highest ever for the month, the latest data from Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

Independence Day is the most popular time of the year for Americans to cook outdoors, according to the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association. The holiday falls on a Friday this year, increasing chances that revelers will keep celebrating into the weekend. Prices for ground beef are 16 percent higher than a year earlier, while ice cream climbed 1.7 percent and tomatoes soared 12 percent, government data show.

Read more from this story HERE.

Team McDaniel: We Have Found 3,300+ Ineligible Votes, Half of Number Needed for Challange

Photo Credit: APState Sen. Chris McDaniel’s campaign told Breitbart News that the conservative firebrand is already halfway to finding enough allegedly ineligible votes counted to launch a legitimate challenge to the results of last Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff against incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).

With more than half of the state’s counties—and many of the state’s African American-majority counties, where many of the ineligible crossover votes are suspected to have occurred—still uncounted, McDaniel’s team told Breitbart News he has at least 3,300 ineligible votes counted. That 3,300 is, according to the McDaniel campaign, just from looking at voters who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary, then crossed over—allegedly illegally—to vote in the June 24 GOP primary runoff.

“Our volunteers on the ground have found over 3,300 irregular votes after examining fewer than half of Mississippi’s counties, and that total does not include the Delta counties or even the more than 18,000 absentee ballots, which are sure to include many more irregularities, since that was the prime focus of Cochran’s Get Out the Democrat Vote strategy,” McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch told Breitbart News.

Breitbart News has not independently verified any of the ballots the McDaniel campaign says are illegitimate.

Election integrity group True The Vote alleges, in a new lawsuit filed on Tuesday against Mississippi GOP chairman Joe Nosef and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, that the two are not cooperating with McDaniel’s campaign’s or other independent groups’ efforts to verify the election results. True The Vote’s lawsuit seeks a federal judge to order the state government and party officials to share election records to be inspected for ineligible votes.

Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APThad Cochran’s Campaign Hangs Up On Entire National Media

By Matthew Boyle.

Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) top campaign operatives hung up on numerous members of the national media after a press conference call Wednesday. The call was intended to rebut state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s campaign’s allegations of voter fraud in Mississippi’s GOP primary runoff. Instead, it turned into a circus.

“Quick question,” an unidentified man interrupted senior Cochran campaign adviser Austin Barbour on the press call.

“You’ll have an opportunity to ask a question at the end of the call,” Barbour fired back. “Listen, I will give everyone an opportunity to ask a question when we get through. We’ll be happy to answer any questions from any members of the media.”

As Barbour tried to get going again with his message, the man interrupted him again: “I’d like to know if black people were harvesting cotton, why do you think it’s okay to harvest their votes? They’re not animals. Why are you treating black people like they’re animals?”

“Sir, I don’t know where you’re calling from,” Barbour responded. “But I’m happy to address any question, no matter the lunacy of it, when we get to the end of this call.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Responsibility and Freedom

Photo Credit: TownHall By Jackie Gingrich Cushman.

We declared our independence from Great Britain 238 years ago this week. It was a declaration long in coming, brought about by the overreaching rule of King George III and Britain’s insistence on taxation without representation.

The taxation began in the 1760s, the Boston Massacre occurred in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1993 and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.

Patrick Henry’s call to action, “Give me liberty or give me death,” was the first strong public statement that, if we were to be free, if we were to have liberty, then we would have to fight Britain. Prior to Henry’s speech to the gathering of Virginia delegates in Richmond, the prevailing belief was that we could negotiate with Britain.

Henry laid down the gauntlet and clearly presented his understanding of what we were facing.

Our choice was liberty or death.

Read more from this story HERE.

___________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Andy Carpenean / Laramie Boomerang / APLand of the free? Not so much. Americans’ sense of freedom drops, poll finds.

By Gram Slattery.

This Independence Day, Americans will celebrate the nation’s core values, especially freedom. But according to a new international poll, Americans have become significantly “less satisfied with the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives.”

Seventy-nine percent of US residents are satisfied with their level of freedom, down from 91 percent in 2006, according to the Gallup survey, released Tuesday.

That 12-point drop pushes the United States from among the highest in the world in terms of perceived freedom to 36th place, outside the top quartile of the 120 countries sampled, trailing Paraguay, Rwanda, and the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Ranked ‘Worst President’ Since World War II

Photo Credit: Pete SouzaPresident Obama reached a new milestone, but not one he’s likely to tout. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, Obama ranks as the worst president since World War II.

When presented with a list of presidents since Harry S Truman and asked which they would consider “the worst,” 33 percent of respondents chose Obama. The president surpassed his predecessor, George W. Bush, by 5 points.

In contrast, Ronald Reagan ranked as the best president since Truman at 35 percent. Bill Clinton earned second place and John F. Kennedy third with 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI: Colorado Woman Aimed to Go to Syria for Jihad

Photo Credit: ReutersFBI agents tried more than once to discourage a 19-year-old suburban Denver woman who said she was intent on waging jihad in the Middle East before arresting her in April as she boarded a flight she hoped would ultimately get her to Syria, court documents unsealed Wednesday show.

Shannon Maureen Conley had told agents that she wanted to use her American military training from the U.S. Army Explorers to start a holy war overseas, even though she knew that it was illegal, according to the newly released federal court records. Her “legitimate targets of attack” included military facilities, government employees and public officials, the documents say.

Conley, a Muslim convert, was arrested April 8 at Denver International Airport, telling agents she planned to live with a suitor she met online, apparently a Tunisian man who claimed to be fighting for an al-Qaida splinter group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The militant group also known as ISIL or ISIS has recently overrun parts of Iraq and Syria.

Conley has been charged with conspiring to help a foreign terrorist organization. Her federal public defender did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

What the New Caliphate Means for World

Photo Credit: Getty Images By Joel Richardson.

Two weeks ago, our illustrious President Obama stood in the White House and made the following statement:

“[T]he truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be – if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

On Sunday afternoon, my Twitter account lit up, as the various radical Muslims I follow erupted with jubilant declarations that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) had officially declared a caliphate – an Islamic state ruled by Islamic Shariah. No longer is it ISIS, but simply the Islamic State (IS). After an official meeting of ISIS’ shura (religious) council, they named their shadowy leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, to be the Emir al-Mu’minin, or the commander of the faithful – the first “caliph” in roughly 90 years. The caliph is essentially a Muslim pope, president and general all rolled into one.

The potential implications for the world are absolutely profound. First, according to Islamic jurisprudence, once a caliph has been declared, it is mandatory upon all Muslims to make a pledge of allegiance to the sitting caliph, known in Arabic as the bay’ah. The bay’ah translated is as follows:

“I pledge my allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful, to hear and obey, in hardship and in blessings, to establish the religion of Allah, and to enforce Allah’s Shariah, and to expand the order of Allah, to establish the global Islamic state.”

Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Global Research The Islamic State, the “Caliphate Project” and the “Global War on Terrorism”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky.

The Al Qaeda legend and the threat of the “Outside Enemy” is sustained through extensive media and government propaganda.

In the post 9/11 era, the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda constitutes the building block of US-NATO military doctrine. It justifies –under a humanitarian mandate– the conduct of “counter-terrorism operations” Worldwide.

Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which in turn oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.

While the US State Department is accusing several countries of “harboring terrorists”, America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism”: The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) –which operates in both Syria and Iraq– is covertly supported and financed by the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Moreover, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan, among others.

The US-led Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) constitutes the cornerstone of US military doctrine. “Going after Islamic terrorists” is part and parcel of non-conventional warfare. The underlying objective is to justify the conduct of counter-terrorism operations Worldwide, which enables the US and its allies to intervene in the affairs of sovereign countries.

Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Gov’t Sues Wisconsin Company, Says English-Language Requirement is 'Discrimination'

Photo Credit: CNS News The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing workplace discrimination laws, is suing a private American business for firing a group of Hispanic and Asian employees over their inability to speak English at work, claiming that the English-language requirement in a U.S. business constitutes “discrimination.”

Judicial Watch reported Tuesday that the government is accusing Wisconsin Plastics, Inc. of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on “national origin.” The government argues this includes the “linguistic characteristics of a national origin group.”

Irene Garcia, the blog editor and Spanish media liaison for Judicial Watch, called the EEOC’s accusation “ludicrous.”

“That’s ludicrous and an overreaching of government,” Garcia told CNSNews.com. “If you are a private company in the United States, you should be able to require your employees to speak English.”

According to a news release from the EEOC, Chicago Regional Attorney John C. Hendrickson said the Green Bay-based company’s English requirement is based on “superficial” reasoning.

Read more from this story HERE.

Burger King Sells Gay Pride Whopper

Photo Credit: Burger KingBy Bruce Horovitz.

Burger King has concocted yet another way to have it your way: a gay pride burger.

The Proud Whopper, as it’s called, comes wrapped in a rainbow colored wrapper with this inscription: “We are all the same inside.” It will be sold through Thursday at one Burger King restaurant on San Francisco’s Market Street, that was at the heart of the route for last weekend’s 44th annual San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade.

Burger King on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. EST plans to post a two-minute video about the Proud Whopper on its YouTube channel.

“It showcases who we are as a brand,” says Fernando Machado, senior vice president of global brand management at Burger King. “It shows how we, as a brand, believe in self-expression.”

The inspiration behind the unusual burger wrap and video, he says, is Burger King’s localized efforts to put into motion actions that support its recently-tweaked slogan: “Be Your Way.”

Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: AFPSecond Employee Alleges Chase Bank Surveyed Staff’s LGBT Loyalty

By Austin Ruse.

A second source has confirmed that JP Morgan Chase has asked each of its employees whether they are “an ally of the LGBT community,” which employees have taken as a veiled threat.

Each year JP Morgan Chase sends its employees a survey asking questions related to management and other non-controversial issues. A longtime Chase employee told Professor Robert George of Princeton that the survey this year included the following questions for the first time:
Are you:

1) A person with disabilities;
2) A person with children with disabilities;
3) A person with a spouse/domestic partner with disabilities;
4) A member of the LGBT community.
5) An ally of the LGBT community, but not personally identifying as LGBT.

This employee was alarmed to receive the final question. If he answered no, he feared, he would be opened up to criticism that may affect his employment. Only a few months ago Brendan Eich was hounded out of the CEO role at Mozilla for not supporting LGBT marriage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union’s Free Spending Raised Free Speech Concerns at Issue in Court Case

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative CommonsUnion leaders based in Chicago racked up more than $13,000 in hotel charges to attend President Obama’s second inauguration and more than $6,000 to purchase booze for a Christmas party the month before.

If the bosses of the Service Employees International Union plan to continue spending in that fashion, though, they may have to find some new sources of cash to cover expenses such as the $1.1 million in travel their Indiana-Illinois health care unit logged in fiscal 2013. The SEIU no longer can force home-based personal care assistants to pay dues-like fees to the union.

That’s because Pamela Harris, an Illinois mother who provides health care services to her disabled son prevailed yesterday in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenged compulsory union dues as unconstitutional under the First and 14th amendments.

The case, in which justices decided 5-4 in Harris’s favor, is known as Harris v. Quinn. Harris and six of the other seven plaintiffs provide care for disabled family members in Illinois. They are paid under the state’s Medicaid program but are hired by the patients they serve.

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Majority Support Hobby Lobby Decision

Photo Credit: TownHallAmericans largely support the Supreme Court’s ruling on Hobby Lobby and feel the outcome will not affect where they seek employment, a Rasmussen Reports poll found.

Forty-nine percent (49%) believe a business should be allowed to opt out of providing coverage for contraceptives if providing such health insurance coverage violates the religious beliefs of the business’ owner. Thirty-nine percent (39%) disagree, while 12% more are undecided.

The White House suggested that by refusing to offer contraceptive coverage to employees, business owners will be endangering women’s health; however, the poll suggests that this isn’t a major concern for most workers.

Just 38% of voters say it is at least somewhat important to their decision where to work whether a company pays for all contraceptive coverage. Fifty-eight percent (58%) say it’s not important.

Read more from this story HERE.