As Children Are Forced To Dance With The Devil (Boko Haram)---What Took Us So Long To Act?

Islamist terrorist have zeroed in on what they regard as a mortal threat: girls going to school...NY Post

• I---as well as many others---have been raising the alarm about children being kidnapped and murdered by Islamist. Last August, I wrote a piece entitled, "Our Anemic Response To Islamist Contributions To Peace: One Christian Body At A Time." And last month, I reinforced the earlier piece with one entitled: "As Islamist Continue To Stack One Body On Other, Our Media Remains Largely Silent."
• All of that changed last month when Boko Haram kidnapped almost 300 school girls from a government girls secondary school in Nigeria. And earlier this week, one of the leaders of Boko Haram said the girls would be sold into slavery. "I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market...There is a market for selling humans. Allah said I should sell. He commands me to sell. I sell women. I sell women," said the thug claiming to be the leader.
• According to intelligence sources, Boko Haram is a terrorist group that has received training from al-Qaeda. This terrorist group of human filth has been terrorizing mostly Christians for over a decade (they were founded in 2002). They've murdered thousands of people at schools, villages, government buildings, and churches. In this most recent attack, in addition to kidnapping the girls, 16 other people were murdered. In the last two years alone, they've been responsible for about 30 terrorist attacks including the killing of students at other schools and bus bombings. If you're so inclined, you can read a listing of the crimes committed by these beasts in the two posts I referenced above.
• So with all of this information and disturbing history, you can imagine my surprise (perhaps I should not have been surprised considering her own history) when The Daily Beast (a left-of-center publication) reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton had refused to brand Boko Haram a terrorist group when she was Secretary of State. In fact, the piece by Josh Rogin begins: "The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al-Qaeda linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years." (By the way, you can always identify a progressive rag when they refer to terrorists as "militants"). As of this week, the good news is we are providing some assistance to the Nigerian government especially in the form of intelligence. Drones anyone?

Climate Change Now The New "Big Distraction" From The Obama Administration's Scandals + Blunders

Global Warming May Be Irreversible By 2006...In The Onion in 2011

• I'm one of those people who doesn't know who should be believed when it comes to climate change. The misinformation and disinformation is both disturbing and overwhelming. However, I do lean to being skeptical considering Al Gore has been one of the "leaders" in this controversy. It's also been interesting to me that the activists now refer to global warming as climate change. Climate changes every second. The question is: are we responsible for it?  There's been global warming and cooling going back billions of years prior to any human footprints or tire track disturbing the earth's soil. So you decide.
• But that's not the main point of this post today. It's clear that the Obama administration and the complicit media have glomed on to the climate change train to divert attention from the administration's many scandals and blunders. This week it's to divert attention from the Benghazi scandal. We watched the Obama administration make use of these diversions and distractions for the last six years. For example, during the campaign, they threw out a variety of cultural-war diversions from class warfare to gender warfare. Romney was a bully {the opposition went back 40 years accusing him of attacking an alleged gay student}. Harry Reid, the most miserable prick in Congress and bold-faced liar, accused Romney of not paying taxes for years {he did and donated more money to charity than the combined salaries of almost every senator}. The Washington Post declared Reid a liar with that assertion. They even attacked Romney for being wealthy. In other words, it's okay for someone like Oprah, a democrat to be one of the wealthiest women in the world, but Romney---he's a bad guy.
• And the complicit media has been doing its best covering for the Obama administration for the last 6 years. One doesn't have to go back six years. In the last several months, MSNBC and CNN have been obsessed with either Bridgegate or the missing Malaysian aircraft while they barely touched any of the major scandals surrounding this administration.

How Is A Nation To Respond To Lying By The Political Class That Leads To Americans Dying?

"I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything my government tells me." The late, great comedian George Carlin

• With Benghazi finally getting the attention it deserves (it's been trending on Twitter for days), it brings to mind an important question: How is a nation to respond to lying by the political class that leads to Americans dying? And Benghazi is just one example. The new revelations regarding the VA is another of many, but I'll get to that in a moment.
• With the new email revelations regarding Benghazi, it now appears the administration---along with its complicit media---shifted the focus from its failed foreign policy to blame the attack on an inconspicuous video. And it also appears that was done to ensure Pres. Obama was re-elected (by the way, if you want a good summary of what we knew about the attack and what we now know, feel free to visit my 9/23/13 post on it).
• But if that wasn't enough, it got much worse. In addition to the apparent cover-up and stone-walling by the administration, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the families of the fallen the same false story: that their death was the result of an obscure anti-Muslim video. In other words, they told them a lie regarding the circumstances of their deaths because the administration already knew the truth (that is wasn't).
• And the depictions of betrayal and deceit did not end with Benghazi. We now also know the first impulse of this administration has been to lie. We've seen this unconscionable behavior from Benghazi to Obamacare to the IRS and even to our foreign policy.
• But now we're also seeing it manifested by the Veteran's Administration. Last month, a retired VA doctor blew the whistle on the VA in Phoenix, Arizona. He charged that the medical center purposely evaded legal requirements that veterans be seen in a timely fashion (In the late 1990's, Congress passed legislation requiring veterans be seen within 30 days of needing an appointment. The General Accounting Office reported that the waiting period has been a problem since the legislation was enacted. (I have to mention my own experience with a particular VA has generally been good with few exceptions including long waits in the waiting rooms and the fact that I've seldom been seen by a physician. More often than not, it's been a nurse practitioner. However,  I have to admit, she's good and gives me a lot of personal attention and time).
• Charges have now arisen that at least 40 veterans died at the Phoenix VA largely due to the secret waiting list exposed by the former VA physician. And it's not been the first time. In their piece, "Hospital Delays Are Killing America's War Vets" CNN reported similar problems at VA medical centers in Augusta, GA and Columbia, SC. Last year, in my Dedicated To Heroes blog, I reported about the back-log of VA disability claims. At the time, the back-log was about 600,000. The VA reports it's now down to under 400,000 but critics---including veteran organizations---are charging the decrease in numbers is the result of the VA denying more applications for disability.
• So I ask again. With these new revelations:  How is a nation to respond to a political class whose first impulse is to lie---even as Americans die as a direct or indirect result of those lies?

Postscript: 

Progressives Keep Flashing The Race Card As They Continue To Subjugate Minorities Into Failing Schools + No Jobs

Report: Our High Schools Might Not Adequately Prepare Dropouts For Unemployment...The Onion

• Progressives have a lot of cards in their deck. But the card they enjoy dealing out with relish is the race card. In the last month, the race card has been dealt repeatedly during the Sterling and Bundy episodes. 
• However, along with the gender, sexual orientation, and income inequality cards, perhaps the race card illustrates perfectly their striking hypocrisy. This has been clearly in evidence in many urban school districts where many minority students have been subjugated to failing and segregated schools for decades. As I reported several months ago, in New York City alone, at 53 schools, no African American students passed the state's recent math exams. At 48 schools, no Hispanics passed the same test. Similar data was found in other schools and in other studies, e.g. English language proficiency. In fact, in 69 schools, English proficiency was 3% or less. This achievement gap is conspicuous even on the national level. For example, drop-out rates for minority students in Trenton, N.J. is approximately 60%, in Baltimore it's 65%, in Cleveland it's also about 65%. 

• And this is certainly unfortunate and a disgrace considering the facts reveal that most minorities excel in good performing schools.  For example, in NYC Catholic parochial schools, minority graduation rates are almost 100% with 98% moving on to college (NYC Catholic parochial schools minority population stands at approximately 15%). And while there are some charter schools that perform no better than public schools, there are many charters that outperform their public school counterparts. Success Academy had 82% of its students passing the state's math exams. For the public schools, it was 30%. In other words, minority students learn well because they are at many other schools outside of the public school system. In addition, many of the better performing schools are not hamstrung by union contracts or the overwhelming bureaucracy found in the public school system. This fact was substantiated by Fahari Academy in NYC. It's a charter completely staff by the United Federation of Teachers. It was rated the single-worst school in the entire city. After Fahari unionized, only 7% passed the English state test down from 40% the previous year. In math, the students didn't perform much better with only 10% passing, down from 60% the previous year.
• And the jobs picture is not much better for minorities. Most recent data from the Department of Labor reports that unemployment among blacks is about 13% or double the rate among whites. Among Hispanics, the rate hovers around 9%. And the rates among minority youth---depending on the geographic area---exceed 50%.
• In the face of all this failure, total expenditures to elementary and secondary schools amount to about $640B a year or $12,800 per public school student. Since the start of the recession, the federal government has spent over $11B on just one jobs program (The Workforce Investment Act). The feds have approximately 50 federal employment and training programs that cost the American taxpayer $18B a year.
• As you review this data, you also need to know that, on average, school superintendents earn approximately $162,000 per year. Teachers about $55,000.00. In addition, in many states, retired school administrators still ride the gravy train funded by taxpayers. In California alone, those receiving pensions exceeding $100K a year rose by 650% between 2005 and 2011.

• So as progressives keep flashing the race card (keep in mind, most city governments that are failing are run by progressive democrats), it's they who continue to subjugate minorities into failing schools and no jobs. It's clear who is failing. It's even clearer who is suffering.

Sources for this post include, but are not limited to, The NY Post, The NY Daily News, The Labor Department, The NY Times, CATO Institute, Great Schools, Dept. of Education, and Institute of Education Sciences.