My favorite cartoon of the year



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2014: The Year The Liberal Lies Died

Every single thing liberals say is a lie. No exceptions.

We conservatives always knew it, but 2014 was the year when the rest of America began to understand. And 2014 was the year that Americans had to choose sides – would they stand with the liberal liars or with us conservatives? Last November, they chose us conservatives, and maybe the truth will be enough to stop Hillary Clinton and save our country in 2016.

The truth is poison to liberalism, so no wonder liberals hate the idea of a free press – after all, they are the ones who argued to the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case that the government has the right to ban books. Conservative magazines like National Review long fought the fight alone. But it is only recently that we saw the rise of a truly free press as technology put a camera in everyone’s cellphone and conservative new media (including social media) created a path around the gates that the liberal mainstream media kept.

The mainstream media used to get to decide what was and was not the truth. But the truth has been set free, and the mainstream media has been revealed as the guardian of the lies that the liberal establishment needs to fool normal Americans just enough to secure their votes. That’s why we should laugh and cheer at the mainstream media’s agonized death throes.

Let’s look at a few of the lies we saw collapse in 2014. Not one would have been revealed if the mainstream media was still in control.

How about the Grubering of America? Obamacare was built and sold on a foundation of lies, buttressed with contempt and condescension toward normal Americans. Without the citizen journalists working in conservative new media, would we have ever seen Obamacare’s architect on video laughing at the giant scam he and the Democrats pulled on the American people? Would we have seen video compilations of Obama promising that if we liked our health plan we could keep it?

You think we would? Really? My unicorn’s name is Chet. What do you call yours?

Everyone knows Obamacare is a giant lie. We saw Jonathan Gruber on tape giggling about how the Democrats knew it. But the New York Times didn’t tell you that. The Washington Post didn’t tell you that. It was the citizen journalists who Andrew Breitbart inspired who told you that. If it weren’t for Andrew and his progeny, most American would still not know it. But now they do.

SOURCE

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Black Conservatives Slam Obama's 'Better Off' Comments

President Barack Obama said recently that African Americans were better off now than when he took office six years ago, but many black conservatives disputed that to Newsmax — citing such widespread ills a high unemployment, poor education levels and spiraling gun violence in the nation's inner cities.

"Here we are again with our president clearly demonstrating his severe disconnect with blacks in America, as he has ginned up racial hatred and … completely ignoring the fact that he's the first black president and holds a historic role that is intended to mend and rebuild America's fractured racial history," said Stacy Washington, a radio talk-show host in St. Louis.

She noted Obama's "dereliction of duty" in ignoring such statistics as high black unemployment and "the lack of educational resources for children who are trapped in failed inner-city schools and his refusal to even acknowledge that voucher programs and school choice play a large role in African-American children escaping poverty and escaping inner cities."

In November, the black unemployment rate stood at 27.6 percent, compared with 14.5 percent for whites, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Not only is he disconnected, but he's actually being facetious," Washington concluded. "I dare say he's even lying about the state of blacks in America."

Dave Chadwick, a software-sales entrepreneur in North Carolina, noted how more African Americans are stuck at the bottom of the nation's economic ladder because of the many government entitlement programs that have exploded on Obama's watch.

"But we're on a leash, for crying out loud, when you're down there like that," Chadwick told Newsmax. "When you're the recipient of these programs, you're really on a leash."

At his final news conference for the year, Obama said on Dec. 19 that that he believed African Americans were better off now than when he took office in 2009, though the income gap between blacks and whites persist.

"Like the rest of America, black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when I came into office," he said in response to a reporter's question at the White House.

"The gap between income and wealth of white and black America persists, and we've got more work to do on that front," Obama said.

He said that such initiatives as Obamacare and early childhood education programs, as well as an improving economy and better housing conditions, have benefited blacks.

"I’ve been consistent in saying that this is a legacy of a troubled racial past of Jim Crow and slavery," Obama said. "That’s not an excuse for black folks. And I think the overwhelming majority of black people understand it’s not an excuse.

"They’re working hard," the president added. "They’re out there hustling and trying to get an education, trying to send their kids to college. But they’re starting behind, oftentimes, in the race."

However, African-American conservatives told Newsmax that blacks are, indeed, starting from behind — and it's because of such Obama moves as his executive orders deferring deportation and granting work permits to as many as 6 million illegal immigrants and his administration's heavy regulations on business that stifle development and creativity.

"Instead of growing the economy and encouraging entrepreneurship, he's depressing it," Chadwick said. "So, all I've got to look forward to are these handouts that I get from the government programs.

"That's why he thinks we're better off. That's why he can say that with the kind of confidence he does."

Chadwick cited, for instance, Obama's delay in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. The $8 billion project would carry oil sands from Canada to refineries in Texas.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, has promised swift approval of the project next year. The GOP will control both houses of Congress come January.

"I know a lot of black folks who can cook like mad," Chadwick told Newsmax. "What if I had that Keystone Pipeline up and running or under construction? You don't think those guys out there on the pipeline who are working on it don't eat? They get hungry.

"So how many of these new companies that could pop up — food trucks and things like that — that could go out there and sell food to those guys?" he asked. "How many of those companies could have been the idea of an African American?"

But the Rev. Joseph Green, author and pastor of Antioch Assembly in Harrisburg, Pa., said the conditions facing African Americans do not rest with Obama. "I don't blame President Obama for those things, but by the same token, we can't give him credit for something that's obviously not the case," he said.

"There are a large number of African Americans now that continually look to the government as their source and put more emphasis on the government and the government's help than probably they would have in the past," Green told Newsmax. "It's kind of a mentality that now we're going to be OK because the president is black."

President Obama also referenced the shootings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in his response. He said the cases had "colored" race relations in America.

Brown, 18, was shot to death on Aug. 9 by a white police officer, while Garner, 43, died on July 17 from a chokehold by a white officer on Staten Island. Both men were unarmed.

Neither officer was indicted by grand juries. The decisions sparked widespread unrest in both communities.

On Dec. 20, two New York City officers were gunned down, execution style, by a man who claimed to be avenging the deaths. That man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, who had an extensive criminal history, later killed himself as city officers cornered him in a Brooklyn subway station.

"I actually think it’s been a healthy conversation that we’ve had," as a result of the protests, Obama said. "These are not new phenomenon.

"The fact that they’re now surfacing, in part because people are able to film what have just been, in the past, stories passed on around a kitchen table, allows people to make their own assessments and evaluations," he added. "And, you’re not going to solve a problem if it’s not being talked about."

Black conservatives slammed the remarks, charging the Obama administration with fostering a hostile environment among protesters instead of working on the underlying issues facing African Americans in this country.

Washington noted how Attorney General Eric Holder — "who just happens to be black and the first black man to hold that office — came to Ferguson in August and said, 'I'm one of you,' instead of saying, 'We have a bunch of really systemic problems that are in the black community that we should address.'"

She is a member of the Project 21 Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.

"Yes, it's horrible whenever someone dies at the hands of a police officer-involved shooting, but we have to be responsible for our own actions," Washington said.

She noted Brown's background with the local juvenile justice system and how he had allegedly robbed a convenience store before he was fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson, who resigned after the grand jury's decision last month.

"When asked to move out of the street, had he simply moved out of the street, we would be discussing another major news story instead of constantly referring back to the false 'hands-up, don't shoot' narrative that has taken over huge segments of the black population to our detriment," Washington said.

"He's right that race relations have been set back among blacks and whites, but not because of actual behavior that people need to be repenting for," she said of President Obama's remarks.

Green, however, laid the blame with both police and African Americans.

"A lot of times, the police officers may come with some preconceived notion: 'Some young black men are standing around with their pants sagging, so they must be up to no good.'

"Then on the other side, we have a generation of young, rebellious black men who, if the police come and approach them, they automatically have an aggressive posture towards the police.

"There definitely has to be some conversation and some dialogue for both sides so we don't repeat those types of issues," Green said.

The conservatives noted, moreover, that African Americans must take the lead in improving their communities instead of relying on the federal government and President Obama to do it.

"There's an epidemic of young black men being murdered in the country, but the vast majority of those young black men are being murdered by other black men," Green said. "That's the larger conversation we need to have: Why is that?

"Those issues aren't getting any better just because the president is black. Those issues haven't been resolved — and in certain instances, they've gotten worse" because blacks "are not holding the government accountable, because we tend to want to defend him even if criticism is valid."

"It's almost like you're a sellout if you're black," Green added. "How dare you disagree with him? I don't care, I voice my opinion anyway, but I would say more so that the criticism becomes a racial thing when people politically oppose the president."

SOURCE

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The war on privacy

Very little web and other electronic communication is secure. Those advertising themselves as such, including Skype (“Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011,”), websites designated as “https”—the final “s” standing for “secure”, and VPN “Virtual Private Networks”—are not.

The good news is that some forms of encryption remain secure. The bad news is that even encrypted data that remains secure today has no guarantee of remaining so: intelligence agencies capture and store everything indefinitely, so when in the future spies are able to crack today’s encryption they can go back and decrypt stored information.

Describing NSA’s BULLRUN decryption program

“for the past decade, NSA has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies,” and “vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.” Decryption, it turns out, works retroactively — once a system is broken, the agencies can look back in time in their databases and read stuff they could not read before.

Among the publicly available services that remain difficult-to-impossible for NSA and Five Eyes to crack:
• Heavily encrypted email service providers like Zoho
• The TOR network for surfing the web
• Truecrypt, a program for encrypting files on computers
• A protocol called Off-the-Record (OTR) for encrypting instant messaging
• The instant messaging system CSpace
• A system for Internet telephony (voice over IP) called ZRTP

Open-source technologies such as these are especially effective at thwarting spies: “Since anyone can view free and open source software, it becomes difficult to insert secret back doors without it being noticed.”

The startling take-away that ought to capture all of our attention is the fact that the NSA actively and purposely sets out to weaken encryption standards by “every means available.”

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

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