Occupy RNC ends in tears, frustration

Republican National Convention protesters sobbed in each other’s arms as their weeklong series of protests came to an abrupt and unremarkable end.
As Mitt Romney delivered his remarks at the RNC on Thursday night, marking the end of planned events, demonstrators living in the “Romneyville” protest camp led a final march through the streets of Tampa.
Following a fragmented march against the GOP, TheDC’s photo team spoke to several protesters who said they were disappointed by low turnout at protests and the lack of open discussion between protesters and Republican leadership.
Referencing the large number of bicycle-based police officers, a protester named Lash told TheDC, “we can see liberty crumbling on bikes.”
Lash, 26, described himself as a “conservative” and “a member of the Libertarian Party for six years” as he sobbed on the shoulder of Mike, a fellow protester.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/31/occupy-rnc-ends-in-tears-frustration/#ixzz25D8htZmX

Scientists test new marine robot hurricane-hunters

As Tropical Storm Isaac was on its path through the Caribbean before becoming a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico this week, U.S. scientists were testing an experimental new weather spy tool - an unmanned, marine robot about the size of a surfboard that can gather storm data at sea level.
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)research laboratory in Miami sent the "Wave Glider," a floating platform of sensors with an underwater stabilizer christened Alex, into ocean waters about 100 miles north of Puerto Rico last week to try to intercept Isaac.
"Isaac did not barrel right over it," said Alan Leonardi, deputy director of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, after the storm passed to the south of the island before turning north and making landfall near New Orleans as a Category 1 hurricane.
"But Isaac being the size storm it is, the Wave Glider was able to collect data from the outer rain bands. We can't steer a hurricane, but we did get good data out of it."
A few days later, scientists got a second look at Isaac, from another Wave Glider - named G2 - on a separate oil and gas mission in the Gulf of Mexico.
The eye of Isaac passed barely 60 miles east of G2, enabling it to collect valuable ocean data, including evidence of a dramatic drop in water temperature, "suggesting that Isaac was vacuuming the heat from the Gulf," according to its manufacturers, Liquid Robotics, based in Sunnyvale, California.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-usa-noaa-robots-idUSBRE87U17A20120831

Expand Health Care, Not Healthcare Bureaucracy

In a recent op-ed piece, former New Mexico Lt. Governor (under Bill Richardson) Diane Denish advocated the politically correct, but medically and fiscally ludicrous party line about Medicaid expansion.  Her magical thinking and ill-founded policy recommendation cannot go unanswered.
It is true that "having 25% of our population uninsured is a huge cost."  But before we ask where all that money is going, note that at least one quarter of all the uninsured are so by choice.  The 2010 Report on Uninsured Americans from the GAO shows that 12-15 million qualify for government assistance but refuse to sign up.  Will expanding Medicaid eligibility suddenly make them change their minds?
Next, there is the ever-popular "jobs" card -- the claim that expanding Medicaid will bring billions of free federal dollars into any other state listening to Washington's siren call.  Those dollars could then be used, according to Denish, to "sustain our doctors and other health-care providers" and to create thousands of new jobs.
First, those free federal dollars are anything but free.  They get added to the deficit, an ever-expanding bill we are passing on for our children to pay.  Will the big government advocates ever accept that putting shackles on the future to pay for the present is a bad idea?  For proof, they need only turn their gaze to the cradle of Western civilization: Greece.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/expand_health_care_not_healthcare_bureaucracy.html#ixzz25D7nMSJi

Will Tel Aviv burn while Obama fiddles?

The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, released on Thursday, should give all of us pause. It shows that Iran has made dramatic progress in just the past three months in expanding uranium enrichment all the while it continues to stiff arm international inspectors seeking to gain access to an alleged nuclear weapons development site.
Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium on hand, “if further enriched … to make five nuclear weapons,” according to the Institute for Science and International Security.
We also now know that over just the past three months, the Iranians have doubled the number of centrifuges at the previously secret Fordow enrichment site, which is buried deep inside a mountain outside the city of Qom.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has repelled repeated attempts by the IAEA to send inspectors to a suspected nuclear weapons development site in Parchin, just south of Tehran, despite multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions obligating Iran to comply with the IAEA inspectors.
We’ve been hearing of war and rumors of war for many months. Some have pointed to October 1 as the absolute deadline for Israel to make a decision whether to take military action against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities.
But what has our government been doing in the meantime? And why should all eyes be turned toward Jerusalem, and not Washington, D.C.? Have we ceased to be the leader of the Free World?
On Thursday, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out with an extraordinary statement. Speaking to journalists in London, he warned that an Israeli air strike on Iran (who said Israel would launch air strikes?) would be ineffective in shutting down Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/31/will-tel-aviv-burn-while-obama-fiddles/#ixzz25D77zj3L

There's A Secret Ruling That The NSA's Domestic Spying Violates The 4th Amendment

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is suing the Justice Department for details of last month's ruling by a secretive U.S. court that National Security Agency's domestic spying program violated the U.S. Constitution, Jon Brodkin of arstechnica reports.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that "on at least one occasion" the NSA had violated the Fourth Amendment’s restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The decision is classified “because of the sensitive intelligence matters" it concerns, according to a letter from Seb. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to Congress that was acquired by Wired.
The EFF wants the information because of its current lawsuit against the NSA (i.e. Jewel vs. NSA) that alleges the U.S. government operates an illegal mass domestic surveillance program. Three NSA whistleblowers—including William Binney—agreed to provide evidence that the NSA has been running a domestic spying program since 2001.
The kicker is that there is ample evidence that the NSA has gone above and beyond the powers granted through the 2008 FISA Amendment Act by actively spying on the electronic communications of American citizens within the U.S. and by coercing service providers to feed it any and all information it wants.
That is what FISC found and what the government does not want to admit.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-spying-4th-amendment-2012-8#ixzz25D6dfVs5

The Rich: Taxes Paid, Polls, and Reality

We have all heard from President Barack Hussein "kill list" Obama that "the rich don't pay their fair share."  While polling data reaffirms that view with the U.S. population, there are polls, and then there is reality.
On August 28, 2012, at Iowa State University, Obama, speaking about taxes and tax rates, said, "We tried this for 10 years before I was elected.  It didn't work out so well.  It didn't work out then; it won't work now."  Isn't it rather ironic that Obama, with his massively failed economic track record, would make such a statement?  His economic policies have not even come close to working.  Yet he continues to say that "the rich don't pay their fair share." 
Polls indicate that the U.S. public agrees with him.
A Pew Research Center poll said that 58 percent of the U.S. population say the rich don't pay enough in taxes.  Twenty-six percent believe that the rich pay their fair share of taxes, while 8 percent say they pay too much.  Further, "[t]he poll found that many Americans believe rich people to be intelligent [43%] and hardworking [42%] but also greedy [55%] and less honest [34%] than the average American."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/the_rich_taxes_paid_polls_and_reality.html#ixzz25D62Qao2

Obama speech to soldiers met with silence

President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas.
His praise for the soldiers — and for his own national-security policies — won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hanger.
The audience remains quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers’ families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The audience’s reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd.
“Hey, I hear you,” he said amid silence.
The selected soldiers who were arrayed behind the president sat quietly throughout the speech.
CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/31/obama-speech-to-soldiers-met-with-silence/#ixzz25D5g4kyN