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Below are 9 quotes from the National Review’s Kevin Williamson’s new broadside, What Doomed Detroit that cover the primary reasons for the city’s collapse into bankruptcy. Be sure to check out our comprehensive review along with some great book recommendations from Williamson (holidays gifts for progressives, foundational books on political philosophy) if you missed them too.

1. Public-sector profligacy on steroids “Detroit is an extreme example of the fact that public-sector employment has become in effect a supplementary welfare state, with salaries and benefits – and above all, pensions – entirely disconnected from legitimate municipal purposes.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 2)

2. Monolithic Democratic governance “It is an irony of our history that the political home of black racism in American politics is also the historical political home of white racism: the Democratic Party.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 5)

3. Destruction of black communities due to Democratic policies “It is one of the great tragedies of American history that wherever black Americans go, from the Jim Crow South to the great industrial cities, they are persecuted by the Democratic Party, then help entrench the power of that party.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 7)

4. Urban sprawl prompted by federal spending on roads ”Ironically, it was Detroit’s signature product – the automobile – that hastened the city’s dissolution…The federal government paved the way to the suburbs [via the National Highway Act], and the city of Detroit gave its people ever more powerful incentives to take those roads and never look back.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 17)

(Photo via TheBlaze TV)

5. The belief that growth would go on forever ”It is disheartening to consider…what the United States and its industrial capital might have done had our political and economic leadership fully appreciated the uniqueness of our economic position and, most important, the inescapably transitory nature of that position. Instead, we set about building the welfare state…The model of government at the federal, state, and local level that emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s was built on a defective foundation: the belief that the postwar economic boom would last forever.” What Doomed Detroit (pgs. 18-19)

6. Identity politics “Detroit is a city in which black identity politics has trumped, and continues to trump, every other consideration, from basic finances to public safety…Detroit’s racial politics would come to full fruition with the election of Mayor Coleman Young…As James Q. Wilson put it, ‘Mayor Coleman Young rejected the integrationist goal in favor of a flamboyant, black-power style that won him loyal followers, but he left the city a fiscal and social wreck.’” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 24)

7. Divisive racial rhetoric from elected officials ”Young’s stock-in trade was blaming whites for the problems of an increasingly whites-free city, charging that, in his words, ‘the money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the white people.’” What Doomed Detroit (pgs. 24-25)

8. The toxic brew of racial politics and powerful unions ”From Cavanagh to Young to the current dispute over the city’s bankruptcy, the combination of racial politics and union financial interests has undermined every public institution in Detroit. And while the black-power style may be the most remarkable feature of Detroit’s poisonous political coalition, the unions have the upper hand. As life for black – and everybody else – in Detroit deteriorated, the ever more deeply entrenched unions installed political candidates who rewarded them with ever more extravagant promises of compensation, benefits, and retirement pensions.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 26)

In this Oct. 23, 2013 file photo protesters rally outside federal court during Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings. Judge Steven Rhodes, who is overseeing the case, found the city eligible to remake itself under Chapter 9 on Dec. 3 and also declared that pensions aren’t immune to cuts in a final plan. Rhodes said Monday, Dec. 16, 2013 that the decision can immediately be appealed to a higher court and he is thinking about whether he’ll recommend that a federal appeals court put the case on a fast track. (Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

9. Progressivism ultimately destroys legacy economic successes ”A highly productive economy can cover a lot of political misdeeds before it collapses under the burden. But there are limits.” What Doomed Detroit (pg. 33)

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The Honor Flight Network is doing its part, and Bill Krzyk of Honor Flight Myrtle Beach is asking for your help:

Mr. Calvin Harrison, a 91-year-old US Navy veteran of WWII, is terminally ill and feeling a bit forgotten and very much “down” during this (and most probably his final) holiday season. Mr. Harrison is in Hospice care in Florence, South Carolina.

PLEASE consider sending a card to Mr. Harrison:

Mr. Calvin Harrison
c/o Hospice Care of Tri-County
1402 South Meadows Farm Rd #D
Florence, S.C. 29505

The Honor Flight crew is also collecting cards to hand out to residents of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. If you can get your card to them by Friday, Dec. 20, they will deliver it to a deserving veteran of our armed forces.

If you’re interested in pitching in some holiday cheer, address these cards to:

Honor Flight Capital Region
3051 Idaho Ave, NW, #216
Washington, DC 20016

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Sixty-four percent of voters say Francis was the right choice while 10 percent say it should have been Snowden, who was the runner-up. Broken down by party, 73 percent of Democrats chose Francis, 57 percent of Republicans said the same, as did 61 percent of independents.

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@GayPatriot pic.twitter.com/sN7KMOrjws

— Matthew Covey (@MattinBoise) December 17, 2013

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Under President Obama, do you think America will become a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2013

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Unfortunately for them, however, bipartisanship doesn’t guarantee success. CNN reports:

A bipartisan group of political operatives leading a grassroots movement to induct pioneering British rock group Yes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has failed.

Republican political operative John Brabender joined forces in August with Democratic strategist Tad Devine and other operatives spanning the political spectrum to create the “Voices for Yes” campaign, aimed at inducting the beloved group into the celebrated club.

The progressive rockers were nominated and selected as finalists to join the 2014 class of Hall of Fame. Brabender and Devine’s group rallied devoted fans through social media and a campaign website to sign a petition to support the rock and roll icons.

But ultimately, the trail-blazing artists failed to make the cut.

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via Fox News Channel

“In the culture war for mankind’s future,” Buchanan writes in his latest column, “is he one of us?”

Buchanan goes on to say Putin’s positions in favor of traditional Russian values, particularly his opposition to same-sex marriage, mean he’s “seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.”

A little more:

[Putin] is seeking to redefine the “Us vs. Them” world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.

In September, Buchanan praised an op-ed Putin wrote for the New York Times, which was highly critical of the Obama administration. “I think, frankly, in the last week Vladimir Putin looks like a statesman,” Buchanan said on Fox News.

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Key findings of the poll, via CNSNews.com:

Belief in miracles, heaven and other religious teachings also declined in the latest poll, as follows:

–72 percent believe in miracles, down from 79 percent in 2005;

–68 percent believe in heaven, down from 75 percent;
–68 percent believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God, down from 72 percent;

–65 percent believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, down from 70 percent;

–64 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death, down from 69 percent;

–58 percent believe in the devil and hell, down from 62 percent;

–57 percent believe in the Virgin birth, down from 60 percent.

Aside from organized religions, the most religious group in general is African Americans, 70% of whom say they are “absolutely certain there is a God.”  The other top religious groups identified include: Republicans (65%), older Americans (62%), Baby Boomers (60%), Southerners (61%) and Midwesterners (58%), and those with a high school education or less (60%).

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Credit: Doug Mills

“Think, John. Where did you have it last?”– pavepaws

Runners-up…

Spy v.s. Spy– WhippedPuppy

“John, this is the Senate Building and we’re by the elevator.”– woodyee

“I love you…”
“No you don’t!”– Cosmos102

“No, John. We can go up or we can go down. But not sideways.”– Bohump

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The video, which is obviously about the conservative firebrand, is what it sounds like. And depending on your opinion of the Texas Senator, it’ll move you. Maybe just a little.

Enjoy:

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

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Photo: Andy Lidstone / Shutterstock.com)

Many of those involved, Beck maintained, are failing to keep one important fact first in their minds: Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist, and we have far bigger issues as a country to tackle.

“$17 trillion,” Beck said. “Our country is on the verge of collapse. Our president doesn’t obey the laws. Our people don’t obey the laws … The NSA is spying on us … The government has lied over and over again. We’re in wars we don’t even understand. But you want to know what color a fictional mouse is? You want to know what color?”

“I got news for ya,” Beck remarked. “You do the math on this. I hate to break it to you, kids, but Mickey Mouse isn’t real.”

Beck said there “should be no controversy” about what race a fictional character is, and “no one should be in trouble over it.”

“It’s not hateful to think that he’s white or black,” Beck said simply. “Doesn’t exist … A little helpful hint there. There is no Mickey Mouse.”

Complimentary Clip from TheBlaze TV

The full episode of The Glenn Beck Program, along with many other live streaming shows and thousands of hours of on-demand content, is available on just about any digital device. Get it all with a FREE TRIAL.

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#GetCovered at http://t.co/hD4Ax15jQ1 so you don't find yourself in a bind like this: pic.twitter.com/i2lYe6JO1q

— Covered California (@CoveredCA) December 17, 2013

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Media critics and political commentators weighed in, some saying Kelly is wrong because Santa isn’t a real person, others saying she’s technically right if she’s talking about the historical figure, Saint Nicholas.

In the spirit of the holidays, TheBlaze Blog, along with our friend Skip da Zip, has crafted a more inclusive Santa.

Introducing Sharpton Clause:

“Give the world a black Santa Clause” is a quote from a 2004 episode of “Boston Legal,” guest starring Rev. Al Sharpton himself.

“The image of Santa Claus has been crafted for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years,” Sharpton says in his cameo. “We’re supposed to be in a different day. Give the world a black Santa Claus, let the people have an African-American come down the chimney bearing joy and good will!”

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With another year on top of the competition, being the butt of the joke apparently bothers Fox very little if at all.

From The Wrap:

[Fox News Executive Vice President of Programming Bill] Shine dismisses the regular barbs the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” throw at the channel.

“For some reason people think some of the shows on Comedy Central are news shows. They’re not. They’re comedy shows,” Shine said, adding that the writers’ job is to cherry pick and produce entertaining content.

Asked whether the constant attacks harm the company’s ability to do its daily job, Shine said unequivocally, “No.”

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…comes help for Obamacare?

The White House is tapping the private sector for its next point man to fix the troubled Obamacare website.

The administration is set to announce that Kurt DelBene, an executive at Microsoft, will succeed Jeff Zients in leading the overhaul of the embattled HealthCare.gov, according to four sources with knowledge of the decision.

Politico also notes that DelBene is well-connected in Washington:

He was most recently the president of the Microsoft Office Division and has been with the company since 1992. He is also the husband of freshman Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.).

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AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

From a White House pool report filed Tuesday by The Guardian’s Dan Roberts, who is covering President Obama‘s meeting with leading technology executives about problems with the Obamacare website:

During the photo op, Obama can be heard asking the Netflix executive: “I’m just wondering if you brought advance copies of ‘House of Cards’?”

The executive laughed and invited Obama to do a cameo on the series.

Obama said of the series about Washington: “I wish things were that ruthlessly efficient.”

Obama mentions Kevin Spacey’s role in the show and said of him, “This guy’s getting a lot of stuff done.”

All the executives laughed.

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First, announce and advertise that everyone between the ages of 18 and 34 who enrolls on the health-care exchanges by the end of the year is automatically entered in a lottery. Winners will receive everything from a free iPhone or iPad to a full-year of health-care underwritten by Uncle Sam. Refer a friend and get a discount. Buy one (year), get one free. In states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use — Colorado and Washington — by all means, throw in a bag of cannabis.

It isn’t fair, you say? Who said life is fair? Obamacare is based on the idea of young, healthy people, who don’t use a lot of health-care services, subsidizing the sick and elderly. Their generation is on the hook for the debt incurred to provide for the baby boomers in retirement. So forget fair.

Second, get lenders into the act. Financial institutions could do for health-care what they did for real estate: lure potential borrowers with teaser rates that reset higher over the next few years. (Yes, the terms would be in the small print, but who reads that stuff?) Create collateralized debt obligations from health-care loans, slap a AAA-rating on them and drive the next bubble. Isn’t that what some smart economists are talking about right now: the need for another asset bubble to give the U.S. economy some added oomph?

Third, change the psychology so that it’s cool to have health care. Create a rap video with a half-naked heart throb gyrating to music as he sings, “Bye-bye ER, I’m gonna miss you.” Or the White House could ask its friends in Hollywood to develop a reality TV show.

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Credit: PatrickMcMullan.com

Interesting theory regarding the four day-long traffic jam on George Washington Bridge (which connects New Jersey to New York) two months ago and how it applies to Gov. Chris Christie‘s (R) chances in 2016, brought to us by Washington Post eccentricity coumnist Richard Cohen:

The New Jersey governor has asserted that he had nothing to do with the totally capricious lane closings. As for his aides who instigated the mayhem, they insisted they were not — as alleged — getting even with the mayor of Fort Lee, the Democrat Mark Sokolich, who had failed to endorse the Republican Christie’s reelection, as some 60 other Democratic officials had prudently done. They said the lane closings — which lasted four days — were imposed to conduct a traffic study that, oddly enough, no one knows anything about and, furthermore, cannot find. It might prove that if you close lanes, traffic will back up. …

Still, [Christie] would not be so reckless as to clog up a bridge but his aides … might be a different story. The facts remain that the lanes were indeed closed, no credible reason has been given and two Christie appointees left high-paying patronage posts for which their chief qualification apparently was friendship with the governor. This does not look good. It is, to say the least, not presidential.

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WATCH:

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The move will fuel speculation that Brown intends to challenge New Hampshire’s Democratic U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who is seeking re-election next year. Brown lost his Massachusetts Senate seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012.

Republicans need a net gain of six seats in the 2014 midterms to take control of the Senate. The party already has a majority in the U.S. House.

A former New Hampshire governor, Shaheen, 66, was elected in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote in a three-way race, according to the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office data. Two Republicans, former state Senator Jim Rubens and activist Karen Testerman, already have announced intentions to challenge Shaheen.

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I remember reading with amusement this summer that I was out at Fox News — and just two months earlier (May) I signed a long term new contract with a raise! Out? not exactly….in fact, I was in…and in for a long time!

And who were the sources for the stories that I was out of Fox? Anonymous sources!

But it gets worse….. after the first story, some journalists copied the earlier stories that I was out …and then sourced each of them as fact. I actually think they thought – in their sloppiness – that they had a source if they repeated what some other journalist published even though it was an anonymous source in the original story. Go figure, right? That’s another problem with anonymous sources – it creates the telephone game.

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18 of the best political pictures of the year

19% see Obamacare making a positive difference

87 hours in a modern Christmas shopping day

41% trust Obama; 41% trust Republicans

Stephen Colbert offers a remedy for government surveillance:

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How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether

The below represent twelve of Mansfield’s selected quotes; you’ll have to purchase the book for the complete list. And be sure to check out mansfieldsbookofmanlymen.com for much much more! 

And if you missed our manly book list, check it out here.

Quotes and commentary excerpted from Mansfield’s “The Fifty Essential Quotes for Manly Men” section.

1. ”Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.” Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation

Thomas Merton. (Image Source: PBS)

2. ”The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moment of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Strength to Love

3. ”We live in a feminist and effeminate culture. Because of this, at best, as a people we are uneasy with masculinity, and with increasing regularity, whenever it manages to appear somehow, we call for someone to do something about it.” Douglas Wilson in Future Men

4. ”Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves….The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spend in amusement.” Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics

Detail of Plato and Aristotle from The School of Athens by Raphael. (Image Credit: Ted Spiegel/ Ted Spiegel/CORBIS)

5. ”The difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely ‘conditions.’ The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds—making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.” C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

6. ”What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others.” Confucius from The Ethics of Confucius, Analetics

Confucius. (Image Source: Biography.com)

7. ”The small man gossips. The average man lets him. The great man stays silent and allows what is said of him to make him greater still.” Stephen Mansfield in Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

8. ”Fathers are to sons what blacksmiths are to swords. It is the job of the blacksmith not only to make a sword but also to maintain its edge of sharpness. It is the job of the father to keep his son sharp and save him from the dullness of foolishness. He gives his son that sharp edge through discipline.” Steve Farrar in King Me: What Every Son Wants and Needs from His Father

9. ”All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.” T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom

10. ”In this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us singlehanded against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth—the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher.” Thomas Hughes in The Manliness of Christ

11. ”History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.” Walter Bagehot from “The Use of Conflict” in Physics and Politics

Benjamin Disraeli. (Image Source: Wikipedia Commons)

12. ”Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.” Benjamin Disraeli in Coningsby: or The New Generation

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via Twitter.com/katiecouric

On Monday, Katie Couric apparently took a tour of Gracie Mansion, the soon-to-be home of New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. She tweeted a couple photos along the way, one of which was of herself sitting on a bed in a bedroom, champaign glass in hand.

“Mayor de Blasio will sleep here!” the tweet said, accompanied by the hashtag “#CreepyGracieMansionTour.”

Couric, who was recently named global anchor for Yahoo! News, followed up with a second tweet, this time it was a photo of herself sitting on a bathtub. “…And bathe here!” it said.

h/t Capital Playbook

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AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Last week Huckabee told the New York Times and the Washington Post that he’s considering a second run for president in 2016, after an abysmal loss in 2008. He made clear he wouldn’t be doing it out of pride.

But he may be doing it to promote a new news website he has started, according to ABC News:

The site will cover a range of topics from news and politics to sports and pop culture, according to the former governor’s son, David Huckabee.

A Craigslist ad was also recently spotted calling on reporters to apply for openings at “The Huckabee Post,” which supposedly has offices in both New York City and Washington, D.C.

After his loss in 2008, Huckabee went on to host a weekly show on Fox News.

America’s favorite game show host Donald Trump said for months in 2011 that he was considering a run for president. The mock run culminated in a press conference where he declared he would instead continue hosting NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”

@eScarry

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CNN’s Jake Tapper almost feels left out…

maybe i should start some fights now to make one of those "Best Media Feuds" lists.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 16, 2013

Good Guy Tapper even keeps his cool even when Piers Morgan tries to bait him:

You're over-rated, dull and ugly > RT @jaketapper maybe i should start some fights now to make one of those "Best Media Feuds" lists.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 16, 2013

Better luck next year, Jake.

Related: Glenn Beck says Tapper is “fantastic and fair”

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via The Advocate

The Advocate, a lifestyle magazine for gay men, has named Pope Francis its own POTY.

An excerpt:

Pope Francis is leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics all over the world. There are three times as many Catholics in the world than there are citizens in the United States. Like it or not, what he says makes a difference. Sure, we all know Catholics who fudge on the religion’s rules about morality. There’s a lot of disagreement, about the role of women, about contraception, and more. But none of that should lead us to underestimate any pope’s capacity for persuading hearts and minds in opening to LGBT people, and not only in the U.S. but globally. …

Francis’s view on how the Catholic Church should approach LGBT people was best explained in his own words during an in-depth interview with America magazine in September. He recalled, “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

Of course, Francis did receive the same designation from Time.

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“Waffles the Terrible,” as he’s named, can be seen preparing for the jump, but after leaping he “nosedives past his destination.”

According to the video’s description, “He is named Waffles the Terrible because he just is.”

At the time of publication, the video has just under 20k views.

Watch the video:

Follow Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) on Twitter

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MSNBC host Ed Schultz took to his radio show for a third consecutive time Monday to slam his critics, following media attention to his show’s financial support from unions and Salon’s reporting last week on his handling of a labor dispute at NBC. Decrying unspecified “flat-out lies” and “all kinds of envy on the left,” Schultz told listeners his “one-percenter” status was no secret, and said of unnamed critics, “That was my mistake, by ever just acknowledging that they breathe air.”

“I am being made out to be some money-grubbing pig that doesn’t care about workers, which is absolutely erroneous,” Schultz told listeners. Without directly addressing alleged union-busting by NBC Universal-owned Peacock Productions, which workers have asked MNSBC prime-time hosts to condemn, Schultz said, “My position with workers is unparalleled by anyone with this position in the media … That’s the truth.”

It was reported last week that union members who work under the NBC umbrella have sought the support of Schultz and other MSNBC primetime talent to combat alleged union-busting efforts by company bosses. Schultz, an outspoken supporter of unions, has apparently not come out as an ally.

Schultz has received approximately $250,000 from unions since 2012.

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The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.

John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits  over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his lies were a “crime of massive proportion” that were “offensive” to those who actually do dangerous work for the CIA.

Beale’s lawyer, while acknowledging his guilt, has asked for leniency and offered a psychological explanation for the climate expert’s bizarre tales.

“With the help of his therapist,” wrote attorney John Kern, “Mr. Beale has come to recognize that, beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior.” Kern also said Beale was driven “to manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives … that are fueled by his insecurities.”

In other words… he’s a liberal.

Also important:

Beyond Beale’s individual fate, his case raises larger questions about how he was able to get away with his admitted fraud for so long, according to federal and congressional investigators. Two new reports by the EPA inspector general’s office conclude that top officials at the agency “enabled” Bealeby failing to verify any of his phony cover stories about CIA work, and failing to check on hundreds of thousands of dollars paid him in undeserved bonuses and travel expenses — including first-class trips to London where he stayed at five-star hotels and racked up thousands in bills for limos and taxis.

So he’s a liberal… who works for the government.  

I honestly don’t know whether to buy this man a drink or spit on him.  Sure I hate the thought of anyone cheating us taxpayers, but you have to admit — this guy has flair.  It reminds me of that scene in “The Dark Knight” where the joker explains that Gotham “deserves a better class of criminal.”  Maybe that’s how Beale felt about Washington and decided to shake things up a bit…

At times, it seems Beale was just looking for ridiculous ways to abuse power purely for sport:

[Beale] also claimed to be suffering from malaria that he got while serving in Vietnam. According to his lawyer’s filing, he didn’t have malaria and never served in Vietnam. He told the story to EPA officials so he could get special handicap parking at a garage near EPA headquarters.

What’s worse, as Allahpundit also points out, Beale was this close to getting away with it (emphasis mine):

Despite an internal investigation and looming prison sentence, some of Beale’s more slow-witted pals at the EPA — who are crafting America’s environmental policy as I write this — apparently still believe that he’s a spy and is simply choosing to “take one for the team” by accepting jail time in order to preserve the secrecy of CIA operations in the field. Don’t underestimate a fool’s willingness to protect his ego by willingly continuing to be fooled. And the punchline is, if Beale hadn’t pushed his greed to an even more absurd length, he’d probably have gotten away with it. He threw a big retirement party for himself aboard a yacht in September 2011; six months later, his boss discovered that he was still on the payroll and the resulting probe uncovered that … he wasn’t officially retired. He was still collecting checks. Apparently, for whatever reason, the guy decided to stop using his CIA nonsense as an excuse not to show up to work and just … fake-retired instead. If he’d quit while he was ahead and retired in 2011 for real, there never would have been an investigation. Although I guess you could look at it the opposite way too: If he’d only concocted a story that was closer to his field of expertise, he could have carried on forever. Had he told them he was hard at work perfecting the ultimate computer model of global warming at his secret home laboratory but that it just wasn’t ready for anyone to see it, they’d probably have given him a raise. As it is, some true-believing moron who worked with him at the EPA is going to end up visiting Langley some day and stenciling an extra star on the wall of honor, Carrie-Mathison-style.

Read the whole bizarre story here.

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h/t Legal Insurrection

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h/t DetroitGOP

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First, Obama promised on numerous occasions that the average family of four will save $2,500 a year in premiums. Where did that number come from? Three Harvard economists wrote a memo in 2007 in which they claimed that then-Senator Obama’s health-care plan would reduce national health-care spending by $200 billion. Then, according to the New York Times, the authors “divided [$200 billion] by the country’s population, multiplied for a family of four, and rounded down slightly to a number that was easy to grasp: $2,500.”

In September, the Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services used far more rigorous methods to predict that Obamacare would increase national health-care spending by $621 billion. Using Obama’s own math, that would mean — according to Chris Conover, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute and Duke University — each family of four in America will spend an additional $7,450 thanks to Obamacare.

Of course, that methodology is still bogus. But it’s probably closer to the truth.

Continue reading…

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If you're watching an interviewer interview someone & the interviewer talks more than the someone – the interviewer is interviewing himself

— Larry King (@kingsthings) December 13, 2013

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Patti Stanger, the star of Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker,” which is based on her mate-finding service in California, was eager to help. “Most billionaires are control freaks, at least by my experience,” she said. “And, with three divorces, he seems to be doing something wrong. I would need to figure out what that is and break him.” Like a horse, apparently.

Her advice? Avoid gifts of cash, credit cards, condos or cars — the Four C’s. “Those are gifts for a wife, not a girlfriend,” Ms. Stanger said. Mr. Murdoch, at least early on, should avoid going on dates to places that may bring up bad memories of Ms. Deng. (Mental note, interested ladies of Los Angeles: Skip the House of Pies.)

For his part, Murdoch responded to the weekend Times piece thusly:

NYTimes says I'm most eligible bachelor! Wish I was forty years younger.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) December 15, 2013

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via Twitter.com/ianreifowitz

In two separate issues, the Post ran photos of Barack Obama with Thorning-Schmidt accompanied by headlines suggesting he was sexually attracted to her.

Here’s how S.U.N.Y history professor Ian Reifowitz interpreted those covers, writing in the Huffington Post:

[T]he Post’s front page calls forth one of the most disgusting racist tropes in our country’s history: the sexually aggressive black man pursuing a white woman. And it’s all the better that in this case she’s blond. Over decades, this trope resulted in the lynchings of thousands of black men accused, in some cases, of doing little more than looking a bit too long at a white woman. The brutal murder of Emmett Till falls into this category.

Really?!

@eScarry

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AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

… I remember in the early 1990s, shortly after I had made the transition from reporter to columnist, asking to speak to him about a column I was working on about him accepting honoraria for speaking engagements. Reid insisted to me that he needed the money to pay for his wife’s medical condition—she has Crohn’s disease—and when I suggested he was quite wealthy and could sell some of his vast real estate holdings (he reported assets of between $2.8 million and $6.3 million earlier this year), he responded by telling me he would not speak to me again if I wrote the column. I don’t believe he said goodbye.

I wrote it. And Reid cut me off for about two years.

I still recall the day the freeze-out ended. His longtime assistant, Marge Van Hoove, who died earlier this year, called to tell me the senator wanted to see me in his Las Vegas office. When I sat down in front of him, Reid told me, “I’ve decided to speak to you again.”

“Senator,” I replied, “you might have noticed that I continued to write about you all of this time. Who do you think lost in this proposition?”

As if he hadn’t heard me, Reid pivoted and began talking about some policy issue. I remember thinking: He just doesn’t care.

Indeed, he “just doesn’t care.” It’s a sentiment captured in TheBlaze Blog’s regular feature, “Absolute a**hole or honest?”

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“Ultimately, Scrooge realized he could treat people with a little more dignity and more respect,” Bonham notes. “And he did so without government force and without a mob of enraged liberals protesting outside of his shop.”

WATCH:

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For most people’s tastes he’s grazing way too close to the vicinity of her abdomen. And watch her reaction. Is it shock, awe, utter disbelief? Whatever the expression, she appeared to roll with it with her hands firmly in control of his at least until the shot was over.

(Image: Facebook/Daily Caller)

Parnes is no stranger to the vice president’s intimate nature, and Biden’s party picture is reminiscent of another awkward Joe moment:

This picture of Biden with the biker chic beats Air POTUS. http://t.co/h37emC58 #photoop

— Amie Parnes (@amieparnes) September 9, 2012

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“For Al Jazeera America, if its editorial vision is right and correct, ratings are not important,” said Wadah Khanfar, who served as director general of the main Al Jazeera network, which is a separate operation from its U.S. counterpart, from 2003-2011. “When I was with Al Jazeera for eight years the ratings were not the issue. We never had the ratings as an integral part of our vision regarding what should be done and what shouldn’t be done.” …

What is true about the relationship between Al Jazeera and Qatar internationally is also true with regard to its U.S. network, which is to say that for now it would rather accumulate prestige than profit.

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And in case you missed part I: 3 books for progressives friends and family members for the holidays.

1. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman

The book that had the greatest impact on my political philosophy was Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, which was required reading in my high-school economics course. It is still probably the best introduction to the free-market analysis of social problems. Because I had up-close-and-personal experience with the welfare state, my politics already were libertarian by that point, but Friedman was my first introduction to systematic libertarian argument.

2. Christianity and Culture by T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot’s essays on religion and culture remind us that it matters far more what kind of civilization we live in than what kind of laws we pass, that cult, or belief, is the first word in culture: “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

3. Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century by Roger Kimball

The New Criterion, which is named in honor of a journal founded by Eliot, works to carry on his critical mission and to understand our decadent culture without sentimentality. When I first encountered Against the Grain, I had no idea who most of the subjects of those essays were, to be honest. It was a book full of writing so far over my head that it was a true discovery, and my introduction to a dozen or so writers and subjects that are today a large part of my basis for understanding the world. In general, libertarians should pay much more attention to culture: “Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws,” and all that.”

–

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How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether

Four leading foundations and three individual philanthropists are supporting a significant expansion of NPR’s ability to deliver in-depth coverage of news and culture and re-imagine the public radio experience for digital listening. The grants, totaling $17 million, will both deepen and extend NPR’s  coverage of key issues – education, global health and development, and race, ethnicity and culture – and fund NPR and six Member Stations – KPCC, KQED, MPR, WBUR, WHYY and WNYC – in the creation of a seamless local-national listening platform, helping deliver the work of NPR and stations to tens of millions of Americans everywhere they want it, in words, images and sound.

This work is receiving generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Wallace Foundation and Ford Foundation, and individual contributions from Paul Haaga, acting President & CEO of NPR, and Heather Haaga; William Poorvu, former Vice Chair of the NPR Foundation and Trustee emeritus, and Lia Poorvu; and Howard Stevenson, former Chair of the NPR Board and NPR Foundation Trustee, and Fredericka Stevenson…

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MSNBC Host’s Radical Idea: ‘Every Non-Incarcerated Adult Citizen Gets a Monthly Check From the Government’

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How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether

The below is only a partial book list; you’ll have to purchase the book for the complete one. And be sure to check out mansfieldsbookofmanlymen.com for much much more! 

Excerpted from Mansfield’s “The Ten Essential Books for Manly Men” section.

1. Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldredge

This book gave Christian men, and perhaps men of faith generally, the tools for understanding and living out the essential passions of manhood. It also gave them permission to take seriously the “wildness” in their souls. This is a very important book. My favorite sentiment is one Eldredge expresses in a variety of ways: “You ask me, ‘Where are the men?’ I say, ‘You have made them women.”

2. The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood by William Bennett

Former secretary of education William Bennett has given men a great gift in this book. It is filled with the reflections speeches, biographies, and seminal writings of some of the most esteemed men in history. From Shakespeare’s rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V to an essay on fencing, from the description of a critical moment in Lincoln’s youth to the thoroughly relevant thoughts of Seneca, this magnificent volume allows a man to steep his soul in the thoughts and dreams of our fathers.

3. Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford

There is no better book than Buford’s on the transition a man must make in midlife in order to fulfill his purpose and finish his life well. Read it in youth to know what is coming. Read it in midlife so you have a plan. Read it in old age to understand what you have done and can lead others in the same path. 

4. Future Men by Douglas Wilson

Calling young boys “thunder puppies,” Wilson teaches parents how to respect the emerging manhood in their sons while providing the safe, consistent discipline that allows manhood to thrive, strong and secure.

5. The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man by Brett and Kate McKay

I love the Art of Manliness empire in all its manifestations. The absolutely essential website. Thebooks. The podcasts. You simply don’t want to be without the McKays’ help in your pursuit of vital manhood. You will learn how to carve a turkey one day, how to maintain manly friendships the next, and on the third you will be moved by a discussion of the manly virtues in the Middle Ages. Wonderful.

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How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

From a White House pool report filed Sunday by the Dallas Morning News’s Nick Swartsell, who was covering the first family’s attendance at “Christmas in Washington,” an annual concert for charity:

Actor Hugh Jackman hosts. The lineup is a 1990s nostalgia jackpot, including performances by the Backstreet Boys and Sheryl Crow along with a special guest appearance by retired NBA star and sports commentator Charles Barkley.

“At this time of year, we’re grateful for the rebounding economy,” Barkley says, playing on his NBA nickname, the “round mound of rebound.”

Sasha and Malia seem unimpressed by the Backstreet Boys performance, perhaps too young to remember the golden age of boy bands.

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MSNBC Host’s Radical Idea: ‘Every Non-Incarcerated Adult Citizen Gets a Monthly Check From the Government’

The Question Ted Cruz Reportedly Asked Dem Rep. After Getting an ‘Earful’ During Long Flight to South Africa

This Is How Far Rush Limbaugh Thinks the ‘Republican Establishment’ May Go to ‘Get Rid of the Tea Party’

Geraldo Slams ‘Another Right-Wing Jerk Off Rush Wannabe’ After Losing Syndication

How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether

Obamacare has lost support from the uninsured

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Peter O’Toole loved drink, feared the taxman

Dirty Jobs‘ Mike Rowe chats with Reason.tv:

Read more stories from TheBlaze

MSNBC Host’s Radical Idea: ‘Every Non-Incarcerated Adult Citizen Gets a Monthly Check From the Government’

The Question Ted Cruz Reportedly Asked Dem Rep. After Getting an ‘Earful’ During Long Flight to South Africa

This Is How Far Rush Limbaugh Thinks the ‘Republican Establishment’ May Go to ‘Get Rid of the Tea Party’

Geraldo Slams ‘Another Right-Wing Jerk Off Rush Wannabe’ After Losing Syndication

How One U.S. City Went From the ‘City of the Christmas Story’ to Banning a 60-Year Nativity Tradition Altogether