Marine surprises wife at Haverhill graduation
Yesterday my son Andy graduated from Northern Essex Community College (with honors might I add) and my wife and I could not be prouder of his accomplishment. We love you so much Andy! Congratulations; you worked so hard and you deserved it.
Besides seeing my son receive his diploma there was another special moment at yesterday’s graduation ceremony. As the ceremony progressed I noticed a Marine standing off in the corner in full dress uniform and I thought it was strange but I did not put two and two together until the ceremony was stopped before one woman received her diploma. By the time I realized what was about to happen it was too late for me to get a video so I simply watched it unfold.
We heard about her story; she met a man in a class at NECCO and eventually they fell in love and got married. Ten days after the wedding he was deployed and she had not seen him since. This was the marine I saw standing off in the corner; he was not supposed to be there but he was there to surprise his wife, making the day doubly sweet for his beloved.
As he and his wife embraced the whole audience was on its feet cheering and I think more than one tear of joy was shed. It was an unbelievable event to witness firsthand, I often watch videos of these surprise homecomings and they always make me emotional but to witness one firsthand was something that I will never forget. It made Andy’s graduation even more special than it already was to me.
Here is the video, I only wish it had more of the speech leading up to the climatic event:
According to this article it is estimated that over 1 million Americans have received the wrong amount in subsidies to purchase their Obamacare healthcare plans.
The government may be paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the situation.
The problem means that potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve. They are part of a large group of Americans who listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly — either too low or too high — from those on file with the Internal Revenue Service, documents show.
This should come as no surprise to readers of America’s Watchtower for early last December I wrote about this very subject: Because the payment part of the Federal healthcare exchange was not yet built the Federal government decided to let the insurers estimate what the government subsidies would be. Once that portion of the website was complete the Federal government would then make the payments right. What could possibly go wrong?
Here is the open thread for Sunday, May 18th; please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Back in my youth Boston had a pretty good local music scene which I used to be in tune with so today I give you the Boston band ‘Treat Her Right’ performing a song called ‘I Think She Likes Me’ from back in the day
Enjoy:
Hillary Clinton gave a speech the other day, a possible kick off to her potential 2016 campaign, and I have to admit that I have only read a few excerpts but I found them interesting.
In this speech she railed against the .01 percent, here is part of what she had to say:
“Not just the top one percent, but the top 0.1 percent, or the top 0.01 percent of the population has risen sharply over the last generation,” Clinton said. “Some are calling it a throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber barons.”
This is an interesting statement and she made this statement for a reason. Hillary Clinton is trying to capture the Occupy vote but she has a problem; she and her husband are rich and some would say they are part of the 1 percent the Occupy movement is trying to rally against. So she had to distance herself from the 1 percent by pointing the finger of blame at those who have more money than the Clinton’s. See, the real problem is not with 1 percenters such as the Clinton’s, but rather with the elite among the elite.
Just a couple of weeks ago Dartmouth University was forced to cancel a Cinco de Mayo fundraiser because it was deemed “exploitative” and “inappropriate.” This event was supposed to raise money for cardiac research and was not meant to be offensive in the least but apparently serving tacos to raise money for research is no longer acceptable in today’s politically correct America.
Now the politically correct police seem to have struck again; this time it involves a “Hump Day” celebration planned by the University of St. Thomas which had to be canceled. Their sin? They planned to have a small petting zoo which included a camel that people could have their picture taken with. See, this could be seen as being offensive to Muslims. Here is more:
Veterans Affairs official resigns amid scandal…..but he was already scheduled to retire
In an attempt to make it appear as if the Department of Veterans Affairs is holding people accountable for the growing scandal which is engulfing the department, today VA Secretary Eric Shinseki announced the resignation of Under Secretary for Health Affairs Robert Petzel.
Here is what Mister Shinseki had to say:
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Shinseki said in a statement. ”As we know from the Veteran community, most Veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA health care, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care.”
There is just one small problem with this; Mister Petzel had already announced he was going to retire in 2014 and his replacement had already been chosen.
A leading climate scientist, Lennart Bengtsson, who recently rethought his position and joined the climate denier (I prefer the term “realist’) organization, GWPF, has resigned his new position after facing immense pressure from those who want to shut down all opposing viewpoints.
Here is more:
His views on the weakness of the “consensus” haven’t changed. But as he admits in his resignation letter, he has been so badly bullied by his alarmist former colleagues that he is worried his health and career will suffer.
Bengtsson’s recruitment by the GWPF (the London-based think tank set up by former Chancellor Lord Lawson) represented a huge coup for the climate realist cause. The Swedish climatologist, meteorologist, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and winner, in 2006, of the 51st IMO Prize of the World Meteorological Organization for his pioneering work in numerical weather prediction – was by some margin the most distinguished scientist to change sides.
This was an embarrassment to the global warming alarmists so they had to do something about it and apparently they have succeeded. Here is what he said in his resignation letter:
Firewall with Bill Whittle: Gaslighting
Here is the latest Firewall video by Bill Whittle entitled ‘Gaslighting.’ In this video Mister Whittle explains how Barack Obama has been gaslighting the American people on Russia, Benghazi, and Obamacare. Don’t know what gaslighting is? Don’t worry Bill Whittle will explain it all.
This is a…..well, nevermind, you know what it is.
We all read the horrific story about the 40 veterans who died while allegedly being place on a secret waiting list which was designed to hide how inefficient the hospital was. Now, if this story is true, a second Veterans Affairs Hospital is also guilt of creating a secret waiting list–this time in Chicago.
Here is more:
A Chicago-area Veterans Affairs Hospital has allegedly been maintaining secret waiting lists to conceal how long patients have to wait before being seen by a physician, adding to the growing list of complaints leveled at the Department of Veterans Affairs, CBS News reported.
A social worker and employee at the Hines VA Medical Center in Illinois, Germaine Clarno, told CBS there are secret waiting lists from “all over the hospital,” including inpatient, outpatient, surgery, and radiology departments, designed to give the false impression that veterans are being seen within the mandated two-week maximum.
And the report, which you can watch below, also states that the reason hospital officials are interested in keeping the waiting period down is because they receive bonuses for short waiting periods. Bonuses vs veterans healthcare–bonuses win out I guess.
I have a feeling this is just the beginning and there is more of this which will be revealed as we learn more about what has been happening. Oh, and by the way, this is what we can all expect once the government realizes its goal of single-payer healthcare.
I do not care which side of the abortion issue you are on, this story should be troubling. Democrats in California have killed a bill which would have banned abortions simply based on the sex of the baby. Here is more:
The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (AB 2336) ran into opposition by all of the Democrats on the committee, who saw the bill as a prelude to broader abortion restrictions, according to a report from LifeNews.com. Instead, Democrats introduced a resolution to condemn sex-selection abortion–but not to outlaw it.
The bill was introduced on May 6th by Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), who said in her opening testimony that “the U.N. estimates that upwards of 200 million girls around the world have been aborted merely because they were ‘the wrong gender.'” She explained that countries like India and China are dominated by a male-child mentality, with mothers preferring future working men and family providers over the “burden” of baby girls.
“This is the real war on women,” Grove told the committee. “Girls are being killed simply for being girls and it’s happening right here in California and not just Third World Nations.
I have to admit that I have no idea how many babies are being aborted in California based on sex. Shannon Grove claims that people from countries where this practice is outlawed are coming to California to abort female babies and she wanted to show a video as evidence but was denied:
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