Category Archives: Liberals

They’re off!

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The 2016 campaign season started this week with GOP sessions in Iowa and other locales. Ted Cruz, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio received applause. Rand Paul a few less, mainly due to his lack of support for national security. Apparently Rand Paul has no problems with the Castros in Cuba. Cruz and Rubio, do. In Arizona, John McCain was booed at the AZ state GOP meeting and Sarah Palin hinted she may consider running again in 2016. Of course, the liberal media went into hysterics. All-in-all, it was a good start.

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Everyone is watching the scenes and positions: Conservatives vs. RINOs, RINOs and Liberals against Conservatives. There  is another, less well known, battle going on in, of all places, the gamer and science-fiction communities. Have you heard about Gamergate and the controversy in the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) over the Hugo Award? Most people think the conservative vs. progressive conflict involved only politics. Wrong!

Gamergate is…complicated. The SFWA controversy less so. Both involve censorship and attacks by ‘progressives’ against more conservative participants. Gamergate, a term created by Firefly actor, Adam Baldwin, began with a controversy involving sexism, feminism in on-line games. Self-declared critics quickly took sides and the battle was on. Taken as a whole, Gamergate is trivial. Viewed as a cultural battle, it is another battleground used by the progressive movement to change American culture into a tyranny where free speech and expression do not exist.

It issue became so controversial that Wiki banned five feminist editors from touching the topic. The issue was ‘fairness.’ ‘Fairness,’ however, depends on your personal viewpoint. Wiki strives to maintain impartiality for their online encyclopedia. Usually, they are successful and this ban is a response to maintain that impartiality.

The SFWA/Hugo Award controversy is less confused. Larry Corriea, a SF/Fantasy writer is on one side, that of conservatives, many of them members of the Baen writers group. Baen writers are generally conservative. Many of the writers product military science fiction and write with a more conservative viewpoint. On the other side is John Scalzi, a self-declared liberal and progressive, and the progressive members of SFWA.

An explanation about the Hugo awards controversy

Posted on April 24, 2014 by correia45

A few days ago the finalists for the Hugo were announced. The Hugos are the big prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy. One of my books was a finalist for best novel. A bunch of other works that I recommended showed up in other categories. Because I’m an outspoken right winger, hilarity ensued.

Many of you have never heard of me before, but the internet was quick to explain to you what a horrible person I am. There have been allegations of fraud, vote buying, log rolling, and making up fake accounts. The character assassination has started as well, and my detractors posted and tweeted and told anyone who would listen about how I was a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist, a rape apologist, an angry white man, a religious fanatic, and how I wanted to drag homosexuals to death behind my pickup truck.

The libel and slander over the last few days have been so ridiculous that my wife was contacted by people she hasn’t talked to for years, concerned that she was married to such a horrible, awful, hateful, bad person, and that they were worried for her safety.

I wish I was exaggerating. Don’t take my word for it. My readers have been collecting a lot of them in the comments of the previous Hugo post and on my Facebook page. Plug my name into Google for the last few days. Make sure to read the comments to the various articles too. They’re fantastic.

Of course, none of this stuff is true, but it was expected. I knew if I succeeded I would be attacked. To the perpetually outraged the truth doesn’t matter, just feelings and narrative. I’d actually like to thank all of those people making stuff up about me because they are proving the point I was trying to make to begin with.

Allow me to explain why the presence of my slate on the Hugo nominations is so controversial. This is complicated and your time is valuable, so short explanation first, longer explanation if you care after.

Short Version:

  1. I said a chunk of the Hugo voters are biased toward the left, and put the author’s politics far ahead of the quality of the work. Those openly on the right are sabotaged. This was denied.
  2. So I got some right wingers on the ballot.
  3. The biased voters immediately got all outraged and mobilized to do exactly what I said they’d do.
  4. Point made.

The column continues with a discussion about motives and issues surrounding the award process. If you read all of Correia’s post, you will notice the controversy is not about books, novels, nor much about their quality nor content. It’s about politics—conservatives vs. liberals.

On the other side, among many, is John Scalzi, past President of SFWA whose term expired in 2013. Scalzi, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, chose to not run again for office. His name was the only one on the ballot when he was elected.

Correia and Vox Day have been accused of attempting to stuff the ballot box by creating proxy memberships in SFWA. Scalzi admits that the tactic has been used before by liberal writers in their attempts to win Hugos. The tactic is fine when liberal writers do it. But when Correia gathers some real conservative writers and persuades them to join SFWA, it suddenly become controversial. Another form of the liberal bias is the weighted voting system. Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher, had the most votes for Editor Long Form award, but came in 2nd due to WSFS’s (World Science Fiction Society) weighted voting system. Baen’s conservative books are an anathema in the SFWA.

Scalzi wrote this posting after the Hugo Awards were announced. I’ve never heard of the winning writers, Charles Stross excepted, and I’ve been reading science fiction since I was in grade school sixty years ago. Of the winners, however, every single one of them is a progressive who push their political agenda openly in their novels. Even USA Today noticed the conflict.

Thoughts On the Hugo Awards, 2014

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In no particular order (and for reference, the winners are here):

1. I am super-delighted that the Hugo Best Novel Award went to Ancillary Justice. One, because it’s fantastic, but two, because I feel entirely unwarranted pride in Ann Leckie’s career, because I gave her her first professional sale, and was delighted to give Ancillary Justice a blurb for when it came out. I had nothing to do with the book’s success, other than receive the pleasure of letting people know I thought it was great. I’m still super proud of its clean sweep of the major SF/F awards, and of Ann. This is just great.

2. I’m also giggling that Charlie Stross name-checked me and Lou Anders when he won for Equoid; I remember that fateful night in Denver in 2008, when the messy seeds of that story were planted with two words, the two words being “unicorn bukkake.” And now, Charlie’s got a Hugo out of it. That’s just about perfect.

3. Also: Mary Robinette Kowal! Who is one of my favorite people on the planet. Some of you may know that her Hugo-wining novelette was disqualified last year, despite having enough nominations to make the slate, because its first appearance was in audio form. It then appeared in word form, and here we are. I’m thrilled that it got a chance to be considered in another year, although frankly it should have never been disqualified at all. I do believe a proposed rule change would have audio-first stories considered in fiction categories along with print-first stories. I think that’s wise.

4. And generally I am delighted with the slate of winners in other categories as well. I think there was a fair amount of concern that the large increase of Hugo voters this year was going to be evidence of (for lack of a better phrase for them) “single issue” voters — specifically those voting only for Wheel of Time or participating because of the “sad puppy” slate of conservative writers. But the voting tallies suggest that if there were “single issue” voters, they were swamped out by people who did their homework and then voted from there. To which I say: Well done, Loncon 3 voters! You done good.

5. You’ve seen me snark about it, I’m sure, but now that the voting is over, what did I really think of the “sad puppy” slate of nominees championed by Larry Correia and others? What I thought at the beginning, which was: The folks pushing the slate played within the rules, so game on, and the game is to convince people that the work deserves the Hugo. It does not appear the voters were convinced. As a multiple Hugo loser myself, I can say: That’s the breaks, and better luck another year.

With that said, Correia was foolish to put his own personal capital as a successful and best selling novelist into championing Vox Day and his novelette, because Vox Day is a real bigoted shithole of a human being, and his novelette was, to put it charitably, not good (less charitably: It was like Gene Wolfe strained through a thick and rancid cheesecloth of stupid). Doing that changed the argument from something perfectly legitimate, if debatable — that conservative writers are often ignored for or discounted on award ballots because their personal politics generally conflict with those of the award voters — into a different argument entirely, i.e., fuck you, we got an undeserving bigoted shithole on the Hugo ballot, how you like them apples.

Which is a shame. It’s fine for Correia to beclown himself with Day, if such is his joy, and he deserves to reap the fruits of such an association. I suspect, however, there are others whom he championed for his “sad puppy” slate who were less thrilled to find themselves looped in with Day by involuntary association. Likewise, Correia is a good writer and his works are fun to read and easy to enjoy; others he championed are likewise fine writers, and their works deserving of award consideration. He didn’t do his work, or the work of these other writers, any favors by muddling his message with Day’s nonsense.

Now, I understand Correia will be happy to tell you that his Hugo loss doesn’t matter to him, which is fine. I do wonder if he considered how other people that were seen as part of his slate feel the same way, or whether he’d do them or their careers any damage by associating them with a bigoted shithole, or that if he really wanted to make the argument that a particular set of writers are ignored by award voters, that he went about making the argument in just about the worst way possible. Bad strategy, bad tactics, bad result.

6. About the entire Wheel of Time series being nominated, again, fully within the rules, so game on, and I would have been honestly happy for Brandon Sanderson if he’d picked up the Hugo with Robert Jordan. I think people underestimate the skill and talent required to do what Brandon did over the course of three books, which was to satisfy the long-term fans of the series, bring the series to a well-developed end with all the story arcs closed up and and emotions earned, and to keep his own ego as a writer in check as he did it. Think that’s easy? I sure as hell don’t — and as a writer, I couldn’t have done it. If Wheel of Time had won, Brandon would have earned every millimeter of that rocket, and I would have been cheering for him.

Likewise, I was never particularly worried about Wheel of Time voters being “single issue” voters — that is, voting only for Wheel of Time and then blowing off the rest of the ballot. Anecdotally, I know a fair sampling of Wheel of Time readers, and none of them only read Wheel of Time. Having the series on the ballot may have brought in new voters, but it seems like they took their voting seriously. So there you have it.

7. In sum: A very good year for the Hugos; indeed, a vintage year. Congratulations to the winners; congratulations to the nominees; congratulations to the voters. See you next year in Spokane.

Culture wars exist. More specifically, it is one culture war masquerading as many. In the end, it still comes down to this: it’s them or us. I know which side I’m on.

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Alpha and Omega

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Revelation 1:8 King James Version (KJV)

8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

In the passage above, God is the beginning and the end. In today’s world, democrats and liberals want to usurp that authority.

To an extent, they have done so at the beginning with widespread abortions upon demand. Now another liberal and Obamacare architect, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, wants to kill us when we reach age 75. “Seventy-five years is enough,” he says. Death at the beginning and end by government fiat.

Whenever we chip away a bit at abortion, the abortionists scream and froth at the mouth. This month, Missouri passed a bill over democrat Jay Nixon’s veto, to extend the waiting period from 24 hours to 72 hours. It’s a small thing, giving a pregnant woman three days to think over her irretrievable decision. But if you listen to the abortionist’s protest, you would think Missouri had banned all abortions completely.

They lie, of course.

A woman doesn’t know if she is pregnant for a month or more after conception. Frequently more, two, sometimes three months before observable changes occur. The abortionists want us to believe that three days is critical? Why? Is it really the woman’s decision or the abortionists? The abortionists, according to democrats and liberals.

When Nixon’s veto was overridden, I knew it wasn’t the end. I was right. The abortionists have changed tactics. They are shipping pregnant women out-ot-state for abortions…like cattle to slaughter. All because of another 48 hours delay.

‘Out-of-state abortion providers ready to treat more Missouri women,’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “One of the strictest abortion laws in the country is about to take effect in Missouri, and some out-of-state providers say they are prepared to treat more Missouri women if they show up at their clinics. Starting Oct. 10, women who want to stay in Missouri for the elective procedure will have to wait 72 hours after consulting a physician before they can receive an abortion. That’s triple the previous 24-hour waiting period. There are no exemptions in the case of rape or incest. The state has only one abortion provider left, Planned Parenthood in St. Louis.

 

“Dr. Erin King, the associate medical director at Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, said she’s not sure if more women will show up, but she’s ready to respond if they do. Her clinic is about 15 minutes from downtown St. Louis. The state of Illinois has no waiting period for women age 18 or older. … King said her group tries to provide as much information about women’s options and the state-imposed wait times on its website. … The price for an abortion varies depending on the stage of the pregnancy, which also dictates the type of abortion. The price ranges from $465 for the abortion pill to $3,720 for a procedure performed at 23 weeks, according to Hope Clinic for Women’s website. A patient then submits an itemized summary to her insurance carrier but is not always reimbursed, according to a Hope Clinic staffer. King’s clinic performs more than 5,000 procedures a year, according to its website, and is one of the closest clinics to Missouri. A Planned Parenthood and the Center for Women’s Health, located in Overland Park, Kan., serve metropolitan Kansas City. A third provider, Aid for Women, closed its doors in July, according to its website.” — PoliticMO and the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Why all this effort to kill people from the left? Perhaps it is because they view us as commodities—commodities to be used and discarded when we are no longer useful to them. We have the abortionists at the beginning of life slaughtering innocents and then we have others, like Dr. Emmanuel, at the other end waiting to dispose of us.

In his controversial essay that appears in the October issue of The Atlantic, the prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argues that longevity — living into your 80s, 90s and beyond — often comes at the expense of quality of life. Emanuel says he will be perfectly content if he dies at age 75.

“By the time I reach 75, I will have lived a complete life,” Emanuel writes in the magazine. “I will have loved and been loved. My children will be grown and in the midst of their own rich lives. I will have seen my grandchildren born and beginning their lives. I will have pursued my life’s projects and made whatever contributions, important or not, I am going to make. And hopefully, I will not have too many mental and physical limitations.”

Emanuel, the director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and head of the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, helped develop President Obama’s health care reform law. — CBS News.

Dr. Emanuel reminds me of the movie, Soylent Green. Sarah Palin’s Death Panels exist. Dr. Emanuel created them in Obamacare.

 

And people shake their heads when I predict an upcoming civil war. The left will continue to push, push, push their agenda of maximum control until the rest of us get fed up and refuse to comply. When that happens, the gloves come off and the left will unleash their goons to force us into compliance…and we will refuse. That’s why the government is creating para-military groups in the Department of Education, the IRS, USDA and other federal agencies that have nothing to do with violence except what they create themselves. Perhaps the Surgeon General’s Riot Control Police will appear next.

Is it possible to prevent a civil war? Yes, of course. But we won’t when we have leadership like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell leading the congressional ‘Pubs. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

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A change for two liberals

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http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014-06-10-Gates-Corona.jpgBill Gates and his wife Melinda have an organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that funds a number of charitable and liberal agencies. In the past, they helped fund much of the liberal agenda across the country.

That is changing. A few days ago, they announced their Foundation would no longer fund abortions, alluding in another article that they have never funded abortions. Now, they are dropping support for Common Core.

Gates Advocates Hitting the Brakes on Consequences Associated with Common Core

Brittany Corona / /

Even Bill Gates is starting to have second thoughts about the consequences associated with Common Core.

On Tuesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation— the second-largest financial backer of Common Core after the federal government— issued a letter calling for a two-year delay of the full implementation of Common Core, which is set to take effect this 2014-15 school year.

In the letter, Vicki Phillips, the director of education for the Gates Foundation, writes:

“[The] Gates Foundation agrees with those who’ve decided that assessment results should not be taken into account in high-stakes decisions on teacher evaluation or student promotion for the next two years, during this transition [into Common Core]…. It’s valuable for students to take the Common Core-aligned tests without consequences during this period, so that teachers can get familiar with the tests, have a chance to offer their feedback, and get a feel for the students’ successes and challenges.”

The Gates Foundation has financed and promoted Common Core from day one. As the Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton points out, “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.”

But the hasty roll-out of Common Core has given even its staunchest proponents pause.

With this letter, the Gates Foundation now joins the American Federation for Teachers, the National Education Association and the United Federation for Teachers in calling for a moratorium on the consequences attached to test scores and teacher evaluations in Common Core.

“You think Obamacare implementation is bad. The implementation of Common Core is far worse,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten last November after AFT called for a pause on Common Core implementation.

Although Gates and the teachers unions are not opposed to national standards, their pushback against the stakes associated with the Common Core national tests reveals the natural result of such centralization: it further distances the most important stakeholders—parents and teachers— from the educational decision-making process.

As University of Arkansas Professor Jay Greene argues:

“Supporters say states, districts and individual schools would be free to surpass the national standards, just not fall below them. But testing would constrain what was taught and when…. States would be penalized with lower scores on the national test if they taught subjects at a different time and in a different manner than what Common Core requires.”

Children are unique, with unique learning needs. It’s why one size does not fit all in education.

A moratorium will do nothing to solve the problem of teacher-preparedness with Common Core. The problem lies with the push for centralized educational standards.

But there is good news. Opposition to this centralization of education continues to mount as the consequences of adopting Common Core become more evident. To date, 17 states have either withdrawn from the testing consortia or paused implementation—including three that have exited Common Core fully.

Bill Gates is no dummy. He may have little formal education (he was a college dropout,) but he is enough of a businessman to build a multi-billion dollar business and make himself one of the wealthiest men on the planet. I would suspect one of his motivations for this change in direction is one of profit and loss. Are the gains/losses of the project, abortion and Common Core, worth the money being spent? It appears that Bill Gates view of that balance sheet is, “No, they aren’t worth the money being spent. End funding.”

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How do you like it now?

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Obamacare is in force. Not surprisingly, there are…issues.  Yeah, let’s call them issues, it sounds so innocuous.

It seems some hospitals, attempting to use Obamacare, had problems. A surgeon, attempting to get permission to perform a surgery, spent hours trying to verify a patient’s insurance…and finally gave up.

Paperwork problems almost delayed suburban Chicago resident Sheri Zajcew’s scheduled surgery Thursday, but Dr. John Venetos decided to operate without a routine go-ahead from the insurance company. That was after Venetos’ office manager spent two hours on hold with the insurer Thursday, trying to get an answer about whether the patient needed prior authorization for the surgery. The office manager finally gave up.

“I’m not a happy camper,” said Nate Zajcew, the patient’s husband. The couple signed up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield bronze plan through the federal HealthCare.gov site on Dec. 16. — CBS News.

In other locations, people arriving for care at some ERs were left in frustration because the ER could not verify their insurance.

‘They had no idea if my insurance was active or not!’: Obamacare confusion reigns as frustrated patients walk out of hospitals without treatment — UK Daily Mail.

  • MailOnline spoke with patients who were told they would have to pay their bills in full if they couldn’t prove they had insurance
  • One was faced with a $3,000 hospital room charge and opted to leave the hospital after experiencing chest pains
  • ‘Should I be in the hospital? Probably,’ she said
  • Another, coughing in the cold, walked out without receiving a needed chest x-ray
  • Consumers face sticker-shock from medical costs under the new Obamacare system, made worse if they can’t prove they’re insured
  • As many as one-third of new enrollees’ applications have seen problems when the government transmits them to insurance companies

No, it’s not an auspicious rollout for Obamacare. In fact, it’s so bad, the rats are jumping ship. A second Obamacare official quit this week.

PORTLAND, Ore. –  The man who led Oregon’s problem-plagued health insurance exchange has submitted his resignation.

Rocky King has been on medical leave since Dec. 2. His resignation is effective at the end of his leave, March 5.

The news came in a letter sent by King to the board of Cover Oregon on Wednesday. The board wrote to the agency’s staff on Thursday that it would begin looking for a permanent director.

King is the second official connected to the exchange to resign. He came under fire when the online enrollment system failed to go live in October. Technical problems with the exchange have been an embarrassment to the state and forced Oregonians to apply using paper applications. The state had to hire or reassign nearly 500 people to process applications by hand. — FOXNews.

Even for libs, it is not going well. A woman, an icon for publicizing Obamacare was astounded to discover she could not afford insurance under Obamacare as she assumed. 

Assumed. When I was in the Air Force, I was quickly taught the consequences of ‘assume’. It is a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Perhaps if this lib had spent a few days in boot-camp, she, too, would have learned the consequences of ‘assuming.’

PORTLAND, Ore. (CBS Seattle/AP) — One Oregon mother says that she is unable to afford health insurance for her and her 18-month-old son because it’s too expensive.

Kate Holly, 33, tells KOIN-TV that she originally championed President Barack Obama’s signature health care law because she thought it would help people in her situation.

“I’ve been a cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act since I heard about it and I assumed that it was designed for people in my situation,” Holly, a freelance yoga instructor, told KOIN. “I was planning on using the Affordable Care Act and I had done the online calculator in advance to make sure I was going to be able to afford it.”

Holly’s husband works for a non-profit organization that pays for his health care, but the couple is unable to afford to have her and their son covered under his plan. And she’s been told their combined income is too much to qualify for a subsidized health care plan under Cover Oregon.

“It wasn’t until I started the process and got an agent that I started hearing from them I wasn’t going to qualify for subsidies because I qualify on my husband’s insurance,” she told KOIN.

Holly is hoping things work out but she doesn’t know if she will have health care for her and her son.

“I guess I’m hoping that I will find out there’s a way around this, but I don’t know yet,” Holly told KOIN.

It’s always a wake-up call to libs when they discover their assumptions are nothing more than vapor. Reality bites.

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A script for failure

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I listen to a lot of talk radio, in the morning, the afternoon, occasionally, depending on what I’m doing, in the early evening.  Needless to say, they are conservative radio shows…except for one.

In the afternoon, one of our local radio stations has a program with two hosts—I call them the neocon and the dummy. Sometimes, in my own mind, I have other descriptions for the dummy.

I listen because most of the time, the issues aren’t political. They discuss local news items, other news from across the the country and cultural issues. The neocon has over the last year or two, become more conservative, fiscal and social. The dummy is a former TV ‘journalist’ frozen in the liberal mindset.

Much of the time, the show is worth a few laughs. That is one reason that I listen. The other reason is that it’s too much trouble to change stations. It’s an old radio and the slide-rule dial doesn’t work anymore.

This week, the two hosts had a blowup. According to reports in the following days, it included one host, the dummy, throwing things at the other during off-air time during a commercial. Libs do that when they aren’t winning the argument.

What was the argument? Supporting kids when they have unreachable, or apparently so, dreams. The neocon apparently called the dummy a dream-killer. The dummy replied that it was a waste of time and effort for the kids to pursue dreams manifestly impossible to achieve. Yes, she’s a helicopter mom.

I pity her kids. She has several kids, teens and near-teens. While the dummy thinks she is preventing her kids from the pain of failure, she refuses to recognize that failure is only a step on the path to success. But…her kids will never know how to cope with failure.

No, the dummy has cocooned her kids. They are not allowed to achieve because they may fail. They aren’t allowed to have dreams because mommy thinks those dreams are silly and unreachable. They aren’t allowed to fail because mommy thinks failing can’t teach anything.

Mommy knows best. She will insure her kids never know the joy of working towards a dream, will never know the pain of failure that teaches the kids to stand back, analyze the failure and make a new plan to achieve the dream, or to modify the dream to one that can be achieved.

The dummy lives her liberal principles. She knows best. Only she has the ability to decide what her kids can do, can achieve, in what manner, and woe betide any of her kids, her chattel property, that deviates from her chosen path. It’s a script for life failure.

In the not too distant future her kids will finish high school. Will they be allowed to choose their path in life? No. Mommy knows best. I’m sure she will push them into a suitable, liberally cultured university, who will continue her philosophy of life micromanagement. They will insure her children graduate, maybe, with a useless degree, probably social work, with no life skills necessary for them to survive on their own.

Her kids will not know how to handle failure, and fail they will. They will expect mommy to bail them out and when mommy won’t or can’t do that, they’ll look towards mommy’s mommy, the government, to bail them out.

What the dummy has bred is another generation of social dependents, incapable of success because they’ve never been allowed to succeed. She has created a new generation of failures, dependent on government.

What a detestable life. The neocon had the temerity to point this out to the dummy and when she couldn’t support her arguments, she threw things, a typical reaction from a lib whose life is one of control and who fears the consequences of her micromanagement.

I find it hard to have sympathy for her. No, that’s not right, she deserves no sympathy. Her kids, who she has forced onto the path of failure, a path not of their choosing, do deserve sympathy…until they have kids and repeat the cycle of life failure, lessons taught to them by their mother.

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Liberalism in the news

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The lead story for today is another example of liberal agendas. This time in a public library. For years, the Hudson Falls Free Library, NY, had a summer reading program. It was limited to school children. The one who read the most books won. It was a competition.

Tyler Weaver, age 9, won this year by reading 63 books in six weeks. The library director decided that instead of awarding the prize to Tyler, the winner would be drawn from a hat, “to make it fair.”  You see, Tyler had won five years in a row. That unset the library director.

Lita Casey, who worked as an aide at the Hudson Falls Free Library for 28 years, said she was “stunned” after a library board member called her with the bad news on Monday night. — New York Daily News.

The news of the rule change was leaked and the controversy began.

Library Director Marie Gandron, wanted to change the rules to end the child’s winning streak. Gandron reportedly said the boy “hogs” the contest and should “step aside.” — New York Daily News.

Casey objected. When TV news crews and international reporters arrived. The library board acted. Gandron was suddenly gone after 41 years at the library. But that wasn’t all. Lita Casey was told she was fired too, after 28 years as a reading aid. When Casey asked why she was fired, she was ignored. I suspect Casey was fired because she objected when Gandron tried to implement her “redistribution of achievement.” Gandron created the controversy and was rightly fired. Casey objected to Gandron’s act of tyranny and the library board could not allow that.

Just another day in a liberal paradise.

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What goes around, comes around. In this case, it’s to come to Chief Justice Roberts.

Exclusive: Rand Paul wants Chief Justice Roberts, all federal workers, to enroll in Obamacare

12:40 AM 09/23/2013

Arguing federal workers should not get special treatment, Rand Paul says he does not want taxpayers subsidizing the personal health-care plans of any federal employee — including Chief Justice John Roberts — anymore.

With some in Congress arguing lawmakers and their staff should not get subsidies to cover their health insurance as President Obama’s health-care law goes into effect, the Republican senator from Kentucky told The Daily Caller on Sunday that he’s going to start pushing a constitutional amendment that goes even further.

Paul’s proposal — outlawing any special exemptions for government employees — would mean all federal workers would have to purchase health insurance on the new Obamacare exchanges instead of getting taxpayer-funded subsidies. Some critics say those subsidies amount to special treatment. The Obamacare health insurance exchange opens Oct 1.

“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too,” Paul told TheDC by phone on Sunday from Mackinac Island in Michigan, where he won a straw poll of potential Republican candidates for president in 2016.

“See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer,” Paul said. “And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”

Roberts famously voted to uphold the constitutionality of Obama’s unpopular health-care law when it went before the Supreme Court last year.

Paul’s constitutional amendment says no federal employees should get special exemptions from laws. The senator also plans to push a proposal requiring that Congress and all federal employees rely on Obamacare for their insurance.

His proposal comes after outrage from conservatives about a so-called “exemption” for members of Congress and their staff from Obamacare.

There’s much more at the Daily Caller website, go and read the rest of the story…like the ‘Pub Senator who created the exemption.

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Abuses of power. We seem to see more and more examples, a ground-swell of political, prosecutorial and judicial abuses of power. The article below fell into my email box this morning. It was triggered by the news of Tom DeLay’s acquittal. There there were other instances where federal prosecutors abused their authority as well.

High-profile cases show a pattern of misuse of prosecutorial powers

By Jeffrey Scott Shapiro — Special to The Washington Times

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Despite the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy prohibition, federal civil rights statutes enable U.S. prosecutors to pursue felony charges against a defendant in limited instances even if they have been acquitted of underlying state crimes.

Evidence in the New Orleans case was compelling, and the officers were convicted, but U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt ordered a new trial last week, saying the government “engaged in a secret public relations campaign” by anonymously making extrajudicial statements against the defendants on a New Orleans news site.

“This case started as one featuring allegations of brazen abuse of authority, violation of the law and corruption of the criminal justice system,” he wrote in his order. “Unfortunately the focus has switched from the accused to the accusers. The government’s actions, and initial lack of candor and credibility thereafter, is like scar tissue that will long evidence infidelity to the principles of ethics, professionalism and basic fairness and common sense necessary to every criminal prosecutor, wherever it should occur in this country.”

The Duke University lacrosse players’ case is one of the most notorious of selective prosecution designed for political gain. North Carolina prosecutor Michael Nifong made numerous public statements incriminating the team and turning the media against the defendants.

Despite the accuser’s history of falsely reporting incidents and lack of evidence, Mr. Nifong pushed the politically popular case in the midst of his re-election campaign. State officials took over the case, dismissing all charges, taking the unusual step of declaring the defendants innocent — not merely “not guilty” — and Mr. Nifong was ultimately disbarred.

Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said that “you can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners.” The same could be said of how fairly a judicial system prosecutes its accused defendants. Arrogance, not ethics, is emerging as criteria for prosecutorial discretion, and the result is a society based on fear, not freedom.

• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C.

I suppose it is a stretch to call governmental abuses liberalism. It’s pure corruption and has been present whenever government seizes too much power—and immunity. In these instances, the abusive acts have rebounded on their perpetrators. It’s a good start.

Gettin’ outa Dodge

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My wife and I will be tied up today and tomorrow. I don’t have the time to write a full, long-winded, wordy blog. I’m gonna cheat.

It’s Cartoons of the Week day!

Heh, heh!  How’s blaming equity capitalists working for ya, BO?

Cultists! Yep, that fits.

Ca$hablanca.

You all have a great weekend, here?

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