Greg welcomes guests Jonna Spilbor, Nick DiPaolo and Michael Moynihan.
Boko Haram has attacked 50 churches since 2012
The Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram has "bombed, burned, or attacked" 50 churches in Nigeria since January 2012, according to a new factsheet published by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The 50 attacks have killed at least 366 persons.
According to the commission, Boko Haram has also engaged in "31 separate attacks on Christians or [southern Nigerians] perceived to be Christian, killing at least 166 persons; 23 targeted attacks on clerics or senior Islamic figures critical of Boko Haram, killing at least 60 persons; and 21 attacks on 'un-Islamic' institutions or persons engaged in 'un-Islamic' behavior, killing at least 74."
Miley Cyrus's behavior at the VMAs was grotesque, but isn't new; Madonna and Lady Gaga have given us plenty examples in recent history. And even back in the 1930's, there were several slutty grotesque performers. But which comes first? A society which exemplifies this behavior, or lewd behavior which leads to a societal downfall? Watch this Afterburner with Bill Whittle to find out.
Greg welcomes Jim Norton and Remi Spencer. TV's Andy Levy joins the panel.
Once upon a time, Dear Leader promoted his health care plan by insisting that the individual mandate wasn't a tax. Then, his minions argued before the Supreme Court that it was a tax. But guess what? The regime doesn't want you to think about all that. So instead of calling the penalty a tax (the Supreme Court decided that ObamaCare is constitutional because the mandate is a tax) it is to be referred to only as the "shared responsibility payment."
The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) final rule on Obamacare's individual mandate, released this week, uses the term "Shared Responsibility Payments" 63 times to describe the mandate's non-compliance penalty, which the Supreme Court in 2012 defined as a tax.
The 75-page rule published by the IRS, which is tasked with enforcing Obamacare as the law is fully implemented in 2014, is entitled "Shared Responsibility Payment for Not Maintaining Minimum Essential Coverage."
While the Obama administration originally pitched the individual mandate as a penalty, not a tax, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ruled in June 2012 that Obamacare is only constitutional because the individual mandate is technically a tax.
Using the term "shared responsibility payment" to refer to what was legally defined as a tax might constitute an act of dishonesty on the part of the Obama administration, according to one expert.
Dana Perino hosts! She welcomes guests Janice Dean, Gavin McInnes and Dan Bova.
Report: Obama Admin Wants Syria Action 'Just Muscular Enough Not to Get Mocked'
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a US official briefed on the Obama administration's prospective response to Syria would be "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not strong enough to provoke action from Iran or Russia. "They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic," the official said.
The Obama administration's response to the Syrian crisis has prompted enormous debate throughout the international community, with France and Britain backing action, and Russia and China opposing it. Iran is closely allied with Syria, and has threatened action against Israel should the United States pursue military action in Syria.
Typical groupthink of the Left. Remember MSNBC's Chris Hayes back in May 2012? Perhaps Steven Salaita should speak to a few actual servicemen or women and get their opinion on the subject...
In addition to donating change to the troops, we are repeatedly impelled to "support our troops" or to "thank our troops." God constantly blesses them. Politicians exalt them. We are warned, "If you can't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them." One wonders if our troops are the ass-kicking force of P.R. lore or an agglomeration of oversensitive duds and beggars.
Such troop worship is trite and tiresome, but that's not its primary danger. A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to "support our troops" is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.
I am neither smart nor foolish enough to define "heroism," but I am comfortable saying the mere fact of being a soldier doesn't automatically make one a hero, just as the mere fact of being in prison doesn't necessarily make one evil.
If we recognize that the troops are in fact human beings, then we simultaneously accept that they are too complex to be reduced to patriotic ephemera. Such recognition is unusual, though. People speak frequently of "our troops," highlighting the pronoun as if it is imperative to their sense of national belonging. It is an act of possession that projects fantasies of virtue onto an idealized demographic in the absence of substantive virtuous practices that might otherwise foster national pride.
Al Jazeera America's opening week a ratings disaster
Al Jazeera America launched last week, and we have the ratings from Nielsen Media Research for its first few days.
Not surprisingly given the low-rated channel it replaced (Current TV), and the fact that it lost a few million homes from AT&T before launch (it is currently in just over 40 million homes), AJAM’s launch ratings were pretty low by traditional cable news standards.
The highest rated show on AJAM last week was the Thursday evening edition of "Real Money with Ali Velshi," which drew 54,000 total viewers.
The 2 PM Saturday edition of "News Live" averaged 48,000 viewers, while "Inside Story" Thursday at 12:30 PM averaged 41,000 viewers. "News Live" Thursday from 12-12:30 averaged 40,000. The debut edition of "The Stream" on Tuesday averaged 38,000 viewers, below Nielsen's accuracy threshold, while the debut of "America Tonight" averaged 34,000 viewers.
Meanwhile, over at RHN (Race Hustle Network), still known by its industry name "MSNBC"...
MSNBC Ratings Down Double Digits From a Year Ago
MSNBC's ratings tumble continued with a poor August showing, with some programs seeing nearly a 50-percent drop in viewership from a year ago, TV Newser reports.
Among the lowlights were the worst showings yet by its leading program The Rachel Maddow Show, with 43 percent and 47 percent drops in total viewers and the 25-54 demographic, respectively, and 40- and 42-percent drops in the same areas for The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell.
8 p.m.'s All In With Chris Hayes, whose host acknowledged in a New Yorker article that his ratings are "bad right now," was down 48 percent and 42 percent in total and the 25-54 demo as well.
"Morning Joe" was down -9% in total viewers and -17% in the A25-54 demographic compared to the same month last year, which actually was a better result than many of the programs that came later in the day.
In primetime, "The Rachel Maddow Show" posted all-time low ratings in total and demo viewers, down -43% and -47%, respectively. "The Last Word" posted a low in total viewers, losing -40% of its total viewer audience and -42% of its demo audience. at 8 PM, "All In" was down -48% and -42% in total and demo viewers, respectively, placing behind CNN for the hour.
In dayside, MSNBC was down double digits in pretty much every hour in total and demo viewers, including 6 PM's "PoliticsNation," which was down -31% and -37% in total and demo viewers, and 3 PM's "The Cycle," which was down -15% and -18% in total and demo viewers.
TV's Andy Levy takes the wheel and welcomes guests Buck Sexton, Jake Fogelnest and Imogen Lloyd Webber. Jedediah Bila sits in for Andy.
Oh, Miley... It's not that you have to be black to twerk...it's that you've gotta have some junk to throw out there. All of her backup dancers had ample junk in the trunk, which only made Billy Ray's little girl look even more ridiculous. It's easy to forget that she's supposed to be a singer. That, of course, is probably the point... For me, though, the most disturbing thing was the non-stop tongue foo. What the hell was THAT? She's been doing this stuff all year long but last night's MTV Video Music Awards performance was the ultimate example of Miley's twerkin' jerkin' & Jersey Turnpikin' minstrel show.
The VMAs belonged to Miley Cyrus. Cyrus did her own striptease, down to a flesh-toned bra and panties; she stuck out her tongue a lot and humped, in turn, a gigantic teddy bear, a foam "We're #1!" finger, and Robin Thicke. But the shock that Cyrus was peddling wasn't sex. It was all about race.
Cyrus has spent a lot of time recently toying with racial imagery. We've seen Cyrus twerking her way through the video for her big hit "We Can't Stop," professing her love for "hood music," and claiming spiritual affinity with Lil' Kim. Last night, as Cyrus stalked the stage, mugging and twerking, and paused to spank and simulate analingus upon the ass of a thickly set African-American backup dancer, her act tipped over into what we may as well just call racism: a minstrel show routine whose ghoulishness was heightened by Cyrus's madcap charisma, and by the dark beauty of "We Can't Stop" — by a good distance, the most powerful pop hit of 2013.
Cyrus's twerk act gives minstrelsy a postmodern careerist spin. Cyrus is annexing working-class black "ratchet" culture, the potent sexual symbolism of black female bodies, to the cause of her reinvention: her transformation from squeaky-clean Disney-pop poster girl to grown-up hipster-provocateur. (Want to wipe away the sickly-sweet scent of the Magic Kingdom? Go slumming in a black strip club.) Cyrus may indeed feel a cosmic connection to Lil' Kim and the music of "the hood." But the reason that these affinities are coming out now, at the VMAs and elsewhere, is because it’s good for business.
While I agree that Miley is trying way too hard to let us all know that she's no virgin and also has black and gay friends, I disagree with the idea that she wasn't selling sex. Of course she was...
I should say that if Miley's goal here was simply to be provocative and get people talking about her in the mistaken belief that "there's no such thing as bad publicity," then I guess it was working for her. But since she wasn't exactly obscure before last night I don't really see the upside to making a complete fool of herself. I'm not even sure she realizes how bad it was...although if she doesn't it's not because people haven't let her know.
The recipient of this year's Madonna in a wedding dress/Britney in a glittery thong/Kanye West "I'mma let you finish…" water-cooler buzz is Miley Cyrus, who personified the concept of "trying too hard" with her performance on Sunday night's show. The whirling dervish of crass, empty-calorie provocation that was her performance of "We Can't Stop" and "Blurred Lines" with Robin Thicke shocked people for a number of reasons, but one accusation as absurd as the dancing Furries Miley was twerking with is the idea that her performance was racist.
It is the year 2013, which means that she-who-played Hannah Montana feigning masturbation with a giant foam finger is the pitch for a flood of cultural think pieces, all of which hit the internet Monday morning. A lot of the reaction was pegged to the forced edginess Cyrus littered her performance with, from simulating analingus on a seven-foot-tall black woman to grinding her butt on Robin Thicke's crotch while licking the air - the alternately concerning and fascinating reality that this is what a 20-year-old girl thinks constitutes being sexual.
And then there was Clinton Yates of the Washington Post leaping to Miley's defense against Jody Rosen's "minstrel" accusation.
Miley Cyrus is America's worst nightmare. Last night, with her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, she proved that many people in this country are still pre-occupied with slut-shaming and coded racial condescension in the context of entertainment.
Her performance of "We Can't Stop," a catchy and otherwise seemingly harmless pop song, that transitioned to a duet with Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," is clearly the most talked about moment of the show, but for all the wrong reasons.
Her bawdy performance, that featured Miley and other dancers twerking on stage, drew criticism as lewd, grotesque and shameful. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say Cyrus "is obviously deeply troubled, deeply disturbed, clearly has confidence issues, probably eating disorder," on Morning Joe Monday. But what exactly is so disturbing about Miley Cyrus?
What's so disturbing? Gosh, whatever could it be...
But since the VMA's are technically about music, who better to pass final judgment than the Queen herself:
Dear Leader claims to have some secret "Republican" friends who only want what's best for him and his agenda. Unfortunately, they're afraid of what the Conservatives will say and do, so they have to remain in the closet. In other words, they don't want their elite beltway status harmed by having to actually be accountable to their constituencies. And just like Stalin needed a Trotsky to be "the enemy," Dear Leader has El Rushbo.
The difference, of course, is that Rush has always been a loud and proud Conservative which meant that during the administration of the last Democrat POTUS, he was directly blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing. This was the notorious Dick Morris-inspired smearing of Limbaugh as well as Speaker Newt Gingrich and the House GOP in preparation for Clinton's re-election run. (Which, by the way, should be your response anytime a Democrat whines about the Willie Horton ad in 1988.)
Despite the best efforts of his enemies, Limbaugh recently celebrated a quarter-century on the air and has signed a new 3-year deal with Cumulus Media. So much for Media Matters and all the other pathetic "Stop Rush" nutjobs. Maybe one of these days the Kool-aid Brigade will learn not to mess with the People's Champion...
So Obama has resorted to blaming a radio personality for all his problems in Washington. Well isn't that special? Even Howard Kurtz thinks it's ridiculous:
Really? A guy with a microphone is preventing the president of the United States from getting his way on Capitol Hill? Is Rush that powerful?
And made another excellent point:
So Obama was indulging in a bit of shorthand by saying his problem is El Rushbo - and in the process elevated Limbaugh to his level.
Naturally, Limbaugh knocked Obama's curveball right out of the park. As he explained to Politico:
"The true irony here is the Republicans are not listening to me. I don't know who the Republicans are listening to outside of their consultants, but they're not listening to me," he said.
Later Limbaugh said that the president keeps portraying Limbaugh as "his No. 1 obstacle."
"The president of the United States seems to think that I'm something more than relevant, seems to think that I am something more than an entertainer," he added. "The president of the United States has blamed me more than he's blamed Boehner or McConnell or anybody else in the Republican organizational chart."
"Here I just leapfrogged over George W. Bush, over the Republican Party, over the speaker of the House. I've leapfrogged over the ridge. I am at the top of the enemies list," Limbaugh said.
Limbaugh further makes the point that people simply aren't listening to Obama anymore, and that Dear Leader doesn't "command nearly the attention or the interest that he [did]." This is why Obama is once again blaming Limbaugh. As Greta Van Susteren said to Rush: "Man oh man, do you live rent-free in Obama's head!"
PersonhoodUSA went after Planned Parenthood on BuzzFeed last week and left-wing supporters of the abortion mills were not at all pleased by that. The outrage was that BuzzFeed's community page dared provide a platform that could be used to promote - gasp! - Conservative views. As everybody knows, diverse opinions are shunned by the Left.
While BuzzFeed wisely resisted the temptation to remove the offending post, the kittens-and-GIFs cool kids did add a disclaimer, just to remind their fans that they didn't do it. "Community posts are made by members of the community, and are not vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed."
The list of appalling and illegal behavior on the part of Planned Parenthood includes offering sex-selective abortions, covering up child sex trafficking, failing to report statutory rape and, of course, the lie that Planned Parenthood is more about mammograms than abortion...
Tom Shillue fills in for Greg and welcomes guests Amy Holmes, Jamie Weinstein and John Gibson.
Meet the Radical Lawyers Suing Bobby Jindal to Block School Choice
Personnel is policy, and the Obama administration knows it. That's why they hired swarms of committed leftist lawyers to populate the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
Bobby Jindal and school choice advocates are finding out the hard way how it works.
Mike Flynn at Breitbart covers a lawsuit filed last week to block school choice in Louisiana by the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division. (Copy of complaint is here.) The lawsuit alleges that school choice in Louisiana means too many white kids are going to private schools. Never mind the fact that black children can do the same thing.
People regularly underestimate the enormous power held by radical bureaucrats. People often wrongly assume Eric Holder or President Obama are masterminding these radical and absurd policies. They are wrong. Holder and his downstream political appointees often only green-light radical legal theories cooked up by lifelong radicals.
So let's meet the lifelong radicals attacking Bobby Jindal's state education policies, as profiled in the PJ Media Every Single One series.
This past week the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) issued a new report that identifies Ayo Kimathi, an employee of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security, as "the Irritated Genie," the proprietor of a site that calls for the mass murder of whites and homosexuals. The site, War on the Horizon, is dedicated to intellectually, spiritually, psychologically and physically preparing blacks for "a global clash that will mean the end of white rule on this planet or the end of the Black Race as we know it."
By day, Ayo Kimathi works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a small business specialist in a unit that buys such items as handcuffs, ammunition and guns.
Off-duty, he calls himself "the Irritated Genie." He's a gay-bashing, revenge-seeking black nationalist who advocates on his website – War on the Horizon – the mass murder of whites and the "ethnic cleansing" of "black-skinned Uncle Tom race traitors."
"Warfare is eminent," the website declares, "and in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count."
A former supervisor of Kimathi's at the DHS told Hatewatch, "Everybody in the office is afraid of him."
"This guy is filled with hate," the supervisor continued. "People are afraid he will come in with a gun someday and go postal. I am astounded, he's employed by the federal government, let alone Homeland Security."
Ah yes, Homeland "Security." What a bureaucratic nightmare it has turned out to be. It was Big Sis Janet Napolitano's DHS that four years ago produced a thoroughly execrable report on the dangers of extreme "right-wing terrorism." How much trust can the people have in an agency that either couldn't or wouldn't deal with this maniac until an outside group, in this case the SPLC, brought it to their attention?
Because the left-wing SPLC issued a report the left-wing media had no choice but to hold their noses and cover the story. But notice how they managed to work in references to Westboro and Stormfront. While it's true that they're all haters, it's as if Raw Story is implying that Kimathi is merely the black franchise of a Westboro-Stormfront homophobic-racist complex rather than an organic product of the black community.
Among the videos available on his site are ones in which he warns that "the Homophiles are coming," and that "black resistance to the white-sex [gay] assault" begins with "the Brothers and Sisters on the Afrikan continent…taking true leadership in the fight against the expansion of white-sex among Black people." He criticizes President Obama for being "a treasonous mulatto scum dweller…who will fight against reparations for Black people in amerikkka, but in favor of [gay] rights for freaks in amerikkka and Afrika."
In this respect, Kimathi's rhetoric mirrors that of many anti-LGBT and white supremacist groups, whether it be the stream of anti-LGBT statements from Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church or the white nationalist National Vanguard, which writes of "the certainty that multiracialism is a death sentence for any society that attempts it [so] it is inevitable that at some point the distribution of power and authority in America - and the rest of the White world - will change dramatically."
Abby Ohlheiser at The Atlantic Wire was even more specific in making the comparison.
The content of Kimathi's advocacy demands some clarification. In some (white, conservative) circles, the term "black supremacist" is applied with a very wide brush. Black supremacy was the implication of Maine Governor Paul LePage's reported comments that President Obama "hates white people," for instance. Kimathi's site is not in this vein of this imagined threat - on the contrary, War on the Horizon calls Obama a "a treasonous mulatto scum dweller," and lists him among the movement's enemies (also on the list? Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, and Condoleezza Rice, among others).
And, of course, the real threat is not a maniac like Kimathi and those who take him seriously and approve of his views but rather white Conservatives who raise awareness about it.
Conservatives don't tend to be fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center: this is the same group that labeled The American Family Association and pretty much the entire anti-Islam movement as hate groups. But their report seems primed to stoke the fires of a set of American conservatives who already believe the DHS is hoarding ammunition (contrary to the evidence), either to build a secret army, or to prevent gun owners from accessing it.
As a federal employee, Kimathi was required to get permission to operate his website. Apparently this wasn't all that difficult.
Kimathi obtained official permission but only by misrepresenting the true nature of his endeavor. He told management that it was an entertainment website selling videos of concerts and lectures. He called it simply WOH, never saying that WOH stood for War on the Horizon.
"If he had adequately and truthfully described his group," the supervisor said, "I can't imagine for a minute he would have been granted permission."
That's your Department of Homeland Security, folks. Nothing gets past them. For the record, ICE did respond to The Atlantic Wire with this statement:
ICE does not condone any type of hateful rhetoric or advocacy of violence of any kind against anyone. Every ICE employee is held to the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct. Accusations of misconduct are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken.
Yesterday Fox News reported that on Friday the DHS announced that Kimathi had been placed on "paid leave." Paid leave is bureaucratic double-talk for "vacation." His website is still up but YouTube shut down his account. Nevertheless, here's a short clip of a typical Kimathi rant.
Greg welcomes guests Jedediah Bila, Constantine Maroulis and Terry Schappert. Tucker Carlson sits in for TV's Andy Levy.
Bloomberg's key to success: Don't go to the bathroom
Bladder control.
That's one of the keys to success that Mayor Michael Bloomberg touted on his weekly radio show this morning – saying he took fewer bathroom breaks than others as part of his tough-as-nails work ethic.
"I always tried to be the first one in [to work] in the morning and the last one to leave at night, take the fewest vacations and the least time away from the desk to go to the bathroom or have lunch. You gotta be there,” Bloomberg said on WOR AM 710. "Everybody says, 'Oh that's crazy.' But if you want to succeed, you can't control how lucky you are, you can't control how smart you are, but you can control how hard you work."
It looks as though Dear Leader's Internal Revenue Stasi are up to their old tricks again. Now they're targeting the American Legion.
The veterans' service group says it recently learned about a so-called IRS "audit manual" that requires American Legion posts to keep dates of service and member records or perhaps face a $1,000-a-day fine, according to The Daily Caller.
The American Legion was referring to a 13-part section of Part 4, Chapter 76 of the Internal Revenue Manual pertaining to "veterans' organizations."
The section falls under "Exempt Organizations Examination Guidelines," which is the jurisdiction of Exempt Organizations head Lois Lerner, who apologized for improperly targeting tea party groups and tried to plead the Fifth Amendment in a congressional hearing.
"The American Legion has recently learned of the so-called IRS 'audit manual' and is concerned that portions of it attempt to amend statutes passed by Congress and approved by the president," American Legion legal counsel Philip Onderdonk, Jr. told The Daily Caller.
"Resolutions recommending action by the Legion's legislative division on two of the most egregious sections of the IRS document are being presented for a vote by members at The American Legion's annual national convention in Houston [this] week. If the resolutions are adopted, the Legion will be empowered as a body to urge correction of the veterans service organization-related portion(s) of the IRS manual and suggest congressional review of the entire 38 section IRS document," Onderdonk said.
The American Legion was founded in 1919 by veterans returning from Europe after World War I, and was later chartered as an official American patriotic society under Title 36 of the United States Code. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, and also has offices in Washington, DC. The group has nearly 3 million members in over 14,000 Posts worldwide.
In addition to organizing commemorative events and volunteer veteran support activities, the Legion's primary political activity is lobbying on behalf of the interests of veterans and service members, including support for veterans benefits such as pensions and the Veterans Affairs hospital system.
Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas sees the toxic influence of Lois Lerner at work in the targeting.
"On the heels of Americans' anger over revelations that the IRS intentionally targeted certain groups, it has been brought to my attention that the IRS is now turning their sights toward our nation's veterans,” Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said. "The IRS seems to be auditing veteran service organizations by requiring private member military service forms."
"If a post is unable or not willing to turn over this personal information, it's possible they could face a fine of $1,000 per day," Moran continued.
"I am deeply concerned about this revelation and will insist on answers. This policy seems to be crafted with the oversight of Lois Lerner and deserves, at a minimum, a thorough look to make certain the IRS is not overstepping bounds of privacy and respect for our nation's heroes," Moran added.
Greg welcomes guests Buck Sexton, Michael Moynihan and Jo Ling Kent. Liz MacDonald sits in for TV's Andy Levy.
Feds are building a detective squad to target consumers and companies that don't follow ObamaCare's rules
- Post-Obamacare law hiring at the Department of Health and Human Services included 86 'criminal investigators,' but just two 'consumer safety' officers
- On the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, HHS received authority to make 1,814 new hires
- The authorization included positions for 50 criminal investigators. The agency increased that number to 86
- The agency was also authorized to hire 261 'consumer safety officers.' Only two such employees were hired
