Here is the open thread for Sunday, May 11th; 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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Today is Mother’s Day and I would like to wish all the mothers out there a very happy Mother’s Day, but especially my Mom; I love you Mom. In honor of Mother’s day I give you Johnny Cash singing ‘There’s a Mother Always Waiting at Home.’
This is a bittersweet Mother’s day here are America’s Watchtower because last week I lost my mother-in-law. This song is sad to me for it seems as if Nancy is no longer at home waiting for us, but then I remember that Nancy is truly home now and she is waiting for us to come home one last time when we will all meet again.
Hillary Clinton under fire over Boko Haram
For the last several days Hillary Clinton has come under fire for her refusal to label Boko Haram as a terrorist organization while she was the Secretary of State despite the fact the CIA and the FBI both wanted this designation.
Here is more:
[Clinton’s] own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.
“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”
However, I have a different question; why would she?
Last week Monica Lewinsky published a story in Vanity Fair in which she talked about what she has gone through since her affair with Bill Clinton first came to light.
When I heard about this my first reaction–and I wish I wrote about this before Lynne Cheney did–was that this was an attempt to air Hillary Clinton’s dirty laundry while she prepares her 2016 presidential run. Get it out of the way now so questions would not be brought up at a much more inconvenient time, and if they did come up they could claim this old news because this was all covered two years ago.
As you all know by now the House voted to hold Lois Lerner in Contempt of the Congress yesterday. As I wrote here I was opposed to this decision because, in addition to my Constitutional concerns, I felt that this was not the best way to get Lois Lerner to talk. I felt at that time that the House would have been better off granting Lois Lerner immunity because it would have freed her up to talk and her testimony could quite possibly lead to people higher up in the Obama regime, because I feel the targeting order came down from the highest levels of the Obama regime.
However, just one day after the Contempt vote the IRS has decided to hand over all of Lois Lerner’s emails related to the scandal. More can be read here.
This news is just coming over the wire: the House has voted to hold Lois Lerner in Contempt of the Congress for refusing to testify about her role in the IRS targeting scandal.
Here is more:
The United States House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to hold ex-IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information about her role in the improper IRS targeting of conservative groups between 2010 and 2012.
The House voted to hold Lerner in contempt 231-187. The vote went mostly along party lines, with six Democrats voting in favor of contempt. The House also voted 250-168 in favor of a resolution calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS scandal.
Is the FEC planning to regulate online conservative outlets the same way it regulates PACs?
Back in February there was a report that the FCC wanted to put monitors in newsrooms in order to find out how these media outlets determined which stories to cover and which ones to ignore–so much for freedom of the press! This plan was dropped after outcry from the public, which was concerned with what the Federal government intended to do with this information.
However, if this story is true, the Obama regime may be looking at another way to manipulate and control the media. At least one FEC official believes the Obama regime is seriously considering regulating some online news outlets–such as Drudge–by regulating them in the same manner as PACs.
Here is more:
Yesterday America’s Watchtower briefly covered MSNBC’s racist and stereotypical “tribute” to Cinco de Mayo. You can read that post here. Today the propaganda arm of the Obama regime apologized online and they are set to issue an on air apology tomorrow, claiming the segment was not meant to be offensive.
Here is more:
MSNBC is apologizing for a Cinco de Mayo segment that featured a staff member onscreen wearing a sombrero, shaking maracas and taking a swig from a bottle of tequila.
The network said Tuesday the interlude on its “Way Too Early” show Monday featuring correspondent Louis Burgdorf and host Thomas Roberts wasn’t intended to be disrespectful. The show apologized online and will express its regret Wednesday on the air.
If you are a member of the left I have but one question; is this enough? It seems to me that if this was a right-leaning news organization there would be calls for a boycott until Louis Burgdorf was fired.
MSNBC’s racist Cinco de Mayo “tribute”
I have been unable to find a You Tube video of MSNBC’s “tribute” to Cinco de Mayo but if you are interested you can watch it here. The “tribute” featured a host dancing around in a sombrero, shaking maracas, and drinking tequila. Quite stereotypical, don’t you think? And might I add racist to boot,at least by the standards set by the left, and this is coming from the propaganda arm of the Obama regime.
While searching for this story I came across several articles which all asked the same question; what would the outcry from the left be if this were Fox News which ran this segment instead of MSNBC, but we all know MSNBC would be the first media outlet to condemn this so I am not even going to bother to parrot what so many others have already said.
John Podesta says there is nothing the Congress can do to stop Barack Obama from acting on global warming
When cap and trade legislation was defeated in the Congress a few years ago Barack Obama proclaimed “there is more than one way to skin a cat.” We all knew back then what he meant by this; he was going to use the EPA and Executive Orders to unilaterally pass the legislation, thereby bypassing the Congress to implement his radical agenda.
White House adviser John Podesta today stated that Barack Obama was prepared to use Executive Orders to pass what basically amounts to cap and trade legislation and he said there was nothing the Congress could do to stop him.
White House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration’s efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming.
Podesta said that the president was committed to using executive orders to pass regulations under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions that they say cause global warming.
“They may try, but there are no takers at this end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Podesta told reporters at a Monday press conference at the White House.
Death is Not the End
Officially this is the open thread for May 4th, however I have dispensed my normal formalities with the open thread because today I have something much more important to write about than the shadowy game of politics which so many of us here at America’s Watchtower follow so closely. See, real life has this way of sneaking up on you and kicking you when you least expect it and when this happens it serves as a reminder of what is really important in this world, and that is exactly what happened to me and my family last Sunday morning. There is nothing in this world which is more important to me than my family and this post is dedicated to them.
I sat down last week at least two times and attempted to write something along the lines of which I am about to post today, but each time I did so I was overcome with emotion and was unable to write anything which I felt was fitting. While on the outside I was trying to be strong for my family I found myself weak in private. The ironic thing is that I found out on Friday morning how strong my family was and they ended up giving me the strength to write this post.
I can only hope and pray that what I am about to write is half as good as the tribute Lauri, Debbie, and Tamie gave to their mother when they stood in front of the church Friday morning and delivered the most beautiful tribute to a person that I have ever heard. This is going to be hard, the emotions are already getting to me again, but here we go. Read more…
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