A luxury resort in Miami, Florida with police-guarded closed doors was the home of a secret George Soros-backed summit attended by deep-pocketed left-wing donors over the weekend of May 12. They met to plan their strategy for the 2012 elections and beyond. Yes, it was all hush hush and secret-like — so much for all that “transparency” those lefties are always braying about.

The event hosted by the leftist group Democracy Alliance was reported upon by the Washington Free Beacon from afar. I say from afar because the Soros-paid group refused the reporters access to the event.

Holding true to their hoary claims of the need for an open and transparent political system, the cadre of lefties had armed guards turn away reporters of the Beacon who tried to gain access to the summit after-party. The Beacon’s reporters were even harassed in front of the hotel by the rent-a-cops paid by Soros and his pals to keep the summit secret.

Attendees of the summit include a who’s who of left-wing One Percenters and Union thugs, including:

• Former Service Employees International Union Chief Andy Stern
• George Soros Spokesman Michael Vachon
• Media Matters Executive VP, Ari Rabin-Havt
• Neera Tanden, President of The Center for American Progress
• Former Representative Tom Perriello (D, Vir.)
• Former White House Advisor Van Jones
• Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.)

These and a long list of investment managers, left-wing think tankers, Obama administration advisors, and other members of the lefty fringe were noted by the Beacon.

Almost no reports of this conference were made by the Old Media, though, as the Beacon notes, the New York Times did report that that the conference was to be held. Still, The Times neither reported who was in attendance nor where it was to be held in order to help the Soros event maintain its secrecy — a benefit they’d never have offered a supposedly secret conservative event.

With all this secrecy it is most interesting to note how these same people are constantly scolding conservatives for not being “transparent” in their reporting of what they donate and to whom.

It isn’t surprising that the Old Media has helped Soros and his minions hide their secret event, though.

As unbelievable as it may sound for the sheer arrogance and audacity of it all, President Obama has injected himself into the bios pages of all our past presidents on the official White House website. So, when you go to read about our past presidents you’ll also get a campaign blurb about The One, the Obammessiah, the Lightbringer. If this isn’t chutzpah, what is?

In his arrogance Obama has added a small section tooting his own horn into the bios of every president but Gerald Ford — likely because his web team just missed Ford’s entry, not because Ford is sacrosanct or anything.

For instance, here is what Obama had his webteam add to the White House bio of Ronald Reagan:

Did you know?

• President Reagan designated Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday; today the Obama Administration honors this tradition, with the First and Second Families participating in service projects on this day.
• In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

There are entries similar to this for every president.

Seth Mandel who posted early on Tuesday about this outrage joked that The One sees himself as equal or superior to every past president because he is carrying forward every accomplishment “since Coolidge.” He goes on to say, “No wonder he always seems so proud of himself.”

ABC’s Jake Tapper also skewers our swelled-headed president saying his additions are not “historical, but rather something else entirely.”

I’d suggest that “something else” is hubris.

Conservatives have had fun at the Messiah’s expense today, though. On Twitter the hashtag #ObamaHistory was started and jokes and ridicule of Obama abound. The RNC also got in the act and started a tumblr page with photos of famous historical figures with Obama amusingly added into the background in photobomb-style (where people that don’t belong in a photo are added in as a joke).

Still, having fun or no, imagine if a Republican president had been so arrogant as to have added his own name the the bios of every president? It would have been the left’s outrage du jour and the Old Media would have skewered such a president were he a Republican. You’d never hear the end of this on late night talk shows or from comedians, either. If a Republican had been this arrogant the whole Old Media landscape from California through flyover country all the way to New York would be lit up with vitriol.

Obama does it and there’s crickets.

(ABC News) A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a “closed fracture” of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation.

Appears as if he was in a fight and had his head bashed into the ground.

(WFTV) WFTV has confirmed that autopsy results show 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles when he died.

The information could support George Zimmerman’s claim that Martin beat him up before Zimmerman shot and killed him.

As the article goes on to point out, there could be two reasons for this: Trayvon could have been the aggressor, or, he could have been defending himself/trying to get away. But, there has been no narrative that Zimmerman assaulted Trayvon prior to the shooting.

Liberals wanted some sort of cause to be able to scream “racism”, and they found it in Trayvon. Even though Zimmerman is a Hispanic. Liberals did not care about evidence and the rule of law, nor “innocent till proven guilty.” They wanted their gallon of blood.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Life News) Franciscan University appears to be the first casualty of the new Obama HHS mandate that requires Catholic colleges, groups and businesses to pay for drugs that may cause abortions and birth control for their employees.

Although President Barack Obama declared “If you like your health care coverage you can keep it,” when it came to passing Obamacare, a Catholic college in Ohio has determined it will no longer offer a student health insurance plan.

“The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” the university says in a new post on its website. “Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”

“Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future,” FUS continues.

“Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance,” the college said.

This is a direct result of Obamacare, a monstrous piece of legislation that went well beyond the original intent, which was simply to make sure that the 30-45 million Americans without health insurance had access to it, a worthy cause. However, we ended up with this pig of a bill that the majority of Americans hate and involves itself way too much with American’s health insurance and care, driving up costs and incentivizing organizations to drop their insurance. How, exactly, does it help make sure people have access to insurance by slapping even more mandates on to what must be offered in insurance plans?

Tom Crowe, an employee at Franciscan U., writes at Catholic Vote

But there you have it: thanks to the government’s firm desire to make sure the one or two women left in the country who did not have easy and cheap access to contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures, our 2,500 students will no longer have an insurance plan ready and waiting for them.

The rule was surely meant to pander to women by offering them “free” stuff (women should be insulted that the Obama administration thinks women aren’t capable of paying the small costs for contraceptives themselves) with an election coming up. There was zero reason for the contraceptive mandate. This was micro-managing in the market, and the Law Of Unintended Consequences has turned around and bit Team Obama in the posterior.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

As this story came to the fore recently one of the main sources that buttressed Warren’s now faltering claims that she is part Native American came from the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). Famously, or perhaps now infamously, NEHGS genealogist Christopher Child substantiated Warren’s claim that her great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, had Cherokee blood.

This evidence, Mr. Child claimed, is substantiated by a “marriage application” filed with the state of Oklahoma upon which, Child insists, is a section where this supposed native heritage is noted. This document, however, does not seem to actually exist.

Worse, according to the County Clerk of Logan County, Oklahoma, there was no such thing as a “marriage application” in the 1890s, the era in which O.C. Sarah Smith was married. The clerk said that people didn’t get “applications” back then, they just got a marriage certificate and that was all — there was no “application” process. So, not only does this document not exist, it couldn’t exist.

Naturally, the NEHGS has suddenly found that it no longer wants to be part of this debate! The NEHGS has shut down any communication about the claims made by its genealogist. William A. Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog tried to contact the NEHGS and found that the organization doesn’t have the integrity to stand up for its claims. Sadly, Jacobson found that the NEHGS is refusing to reply to any calls to prove that what they’ve said about Warren is true.

It is sad to see the New England Historic Genealogical Society allowing its reputation to be destroyed by its desires to buck up a Democrat running for office. Of course, Child and the NEHGS get a lot of cash from the state and one has to assume that they are just looking to find favor with a Democrat that they might assume will help them get more public money.

But what this all comes down to is Warren relying simply on family lore to claim that she has American Indian heritage. Now, this sort of foolish reliance on mere family myth is fine when a family is sitting around the dinner table or at family functions and shooting from the lip about their past. But basing legal and moral claims on such hearsay is not legitimate.

Warren has done just that, too. She’s used her unsubstantiated family mythos for financial gain. Worse, the university at which she teaches has done the same thing. Harvard University has used Warren’s faux Indian heritage to sell its programs and likely done so in efforts to get funding, as well.

Family lore is one thing, but when that lore is used for financial gain and it turns out to be based on nothing but lies, this is something else entirely.

Warren is being brazen about it all, too. Far from shying from the discussion she is doubling down on her fake claims of a Native American heritage saying she is “proud” of that heritage… that doesn’t actually exist.

So, what should we call this woman? Is her Indian name Lies Like The Wind? How about Faux-cahontis? Whatever names we call her, “American Indian” isn’t among them.

(Chicago Tribune) Dozens of demonstrators dashed into the Loop building housing President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters this morning, slipping past security guards and running up escalators as they kicked off what they called a “Week Without Capitalism.”

Obviously, Team Obama had a positive discussion over the issues that affect all Americans while attempting to create a consensus on doing away with capitalism and moving towards a more enlightened society, right? Uh, no

Eight protesters were led out in handcuffs about half an hour later after they refused to clear the lobby. They were cheered by other demonstrators who began dancing and singing folk and gospel songs.

The demonstration, organized by the Catholic Worker movement. began with about 100 demonstrators picketing at Prudential Plaza and passing out rolls to commuters in what they called a symbolic invitation to break bread with world leaders expected here this weekend for the NATO summit.

I guess Team Obama doesn’t like it when left side protestors/agitators use the same tactics on Team Obama.

As for the Occupiers, today is their Occupy Day Of Action where no person is illegal. And around a hundred officers from around the country are coming to Chicago to help keep the peace for the NATO summit in the week leading up to the official meetings on the 20th and 21st. Boeing has told its workers (who are part of the 99%) to work from home next week because of the probably disruptions from the Occupiers.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(CNS News) “This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper,” he said. “Politics seems nastier. Congress more gridlocked than ever. Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens.

“No wonder that faith in our institutions has never been lower, particularly when good news doesn’t get the same kind of ratings as bad news anymore,” Obama said. “Every day you receive a steady stream of sensationalism and scandal and stories with a message that suggest change isn’t possible; that you can’t make a difference; that you won’t be able to close that gap between life as it is and life as you want it to be.

Reporting was never like that before January 20, 2009. It was all lollipops and unicorns prior. The phrase “if it bleeds, it leads” wasn’t invented to that January day. Anyhow, Obama forgot to mention that the Executive Office hasn’t exactly been model government citizens, either. Unless the point of government is to waste taxpayer money on projects that are bound to fail, that reward campaign contributors, and/or are simply over-priced idiocy. Oh, and to walk guns across the border in Mexico and fail to track them.

“My job today is to tell you don’t believe it,” said Obama. “Because as tough as things have been, I am convinced you are tougher….

To some degree, that is a part of the job of the president, to provide an upbeat outlook. Interestingly, the media and liberals, including Obama, assailed George W. Bush for trying to have an upbeat and rosy outlook. On the other hand, there becomes a point when all the rhetoric becomes propaganda based on a fanciful and reality-lacking outlook.

…I’ve seen your passion and I’ve seen your service. I’ve seen you engage and I’ve seen you turn out in record numbers.

What else do they have to do? There are barely any jobs waiting for them after building all that debt for degrees in sociology, journalism, and fashion design. Of course, his point is that he wants these young and unemployed youths who aren’t eligible for unemployment (since they never worked) to get out and vote for him.

I’ve heard your voices amplified by creativity and a digital fluency that those of us in older generations can barely comprehend. I’ve seen a generation eager, impatient even, to step into the rushing waters of history and change its course.

“Can barely comprehend”? Besides being insulting to folks 40 and up, exactly how does being able to text, use Facebook, and use Twitter help them out? Does being able to use a phone camera to take a sexy picture in the mirror and post it to social media help with getting a job?

“And that defiant, can-do spirit is what runs through the veins of American history,” Obama said. “It’s the lifeblood of all our progress. And it is that spirit which we need your generation to embrace and rekindle right now.”

Right now, that generation is seeing record unemployment and student loans debt. And Obama has done less than nothing to turn that around. His policies have failed.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Symbolism is far, far more important to the childish, silly left in America than truth. Why do I say that? The newest Newsweek cover explains why as its May 21 cover proclaims that Barack Obama is “the first gay president.”

This, of course, is in reference to Obama’s announcement of his non-support of gay marriage made last week. It was a non-supporting announcement because really all he did was claim some personal belief in gay marriage but did not follow that up with any actual policy proposals meaning that regardless of how he claims he now feels, itself a departure of his many years of saying the opposite, nothing will change on the matter of gay marriage. It was pandering to his gay donors and little else.

Yet, now we have a gay columnist, the hack blogger Andrew Sullivan, claiming that Obama is “the first gay president.”

But he isn’t.

Obama is not gay. Whatever else he may or may not be, gay he most definitely is not. This whole silly claim is but meaningless symbolism. Obama became the first president to openly profess that gays should be allowed to marry hence he’s now somehow an honorary homosexual.

This isn’t the first time that foolish left-wingers have pronounced a president a “thing” that he wasn’t. You might recall back in 1998 when President Bill Clinton was absurdly proclaimed “the first black president.”

It was in 1998 that Toni Morrison proclaimed that Clinton is the “first black president” in the pages of the New Yorker. This was more gosh-gee-willikers, childishness from the self-proclaimed “sophisticated” left, more symbolism over truth. It was another example of how leftists prefer silly make-believe over reality.

This sort of child-like predilection to fall for surface glitz is why their “solutions” are more often than not just shiny facades rather than anything that actually fixes a problem.

This penchant to indulge effusiveness instead of focusing on real accomplishments mires the left in silliness like equality of outcome arguments, racial preferences, and other gestures that end up in meaningless distinctions that help no one.

There are Obama firsts, to be sure. He is the first black president — a real one, not the faux one that Clinton was. He’s the first president to have been brought up as a youth in a foreign country. He’s the first president that was as a youth considered a practicing Muslim. He’s also the first president to have spent considerable time as a youth living in Hawaii. He is not the first president to have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, though (that was Teddy Roosevelt).

Still, there are Obama firsts. If you want to know some of the things Obama is “first” for, there really is a list. In fact, this president has had a lot of firsts.

Here are a few of his firsts:

• First president to preside over a downgrade of America’s credit rating
• First to implement the DREAM Act and by executive fiat, by-passing Congress to do it
• First to illicitly make recess appointments
• First to pen two autobiographies before he was 50 years old
• First to attempt to force Americans to buy a product against their will
• First to have almost his entire pre-presidential history successfully withheld from the public
• First to tell a company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory
• First to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago….

… well, there are more, of course, but at least these are some real firsts, substantive things as opposed to the left’s little fantasies.

(Guardian) Which ticks more ethical boxes? Fairtrade organic olive oil from the Palestinian territories? Or organic chocolate grown by a co-operative of Grenadian peasant farmers on a solar-powered farm and transported to Europe from the Caribbean in a sailing ship with no engines?

The olive oil sells for £8.50 for a 500ml bottle, but the first 24,000 bars of “handpressed, single-estate, vanilla-free, vintage rootstock, grown-with-a-windward aspect” chocolate in the world arrives in Portsmouth next week – winds permitting – on the Tres Hombres, a 32-tonne square-rigged wooden sailing cargo ship.

The environmental impact of growing, processing and transporting the chocolate is said to be minimal, but the retail price for the food billed to taste of fruit, tobacco and grass is eye-watering….

That doesn’t actually sound like it tastes very good, does it? Especially because

A 100g bar of Gru Grococo will sell at an introductory price of £12.95, but if bought while still at sea will cost £60 for six bars – the equivalent of around £1.50 a mouthful.

That “introductory price” equates to almost $21 US for what is about the size of 2 Hershey bars. Which would cost you around $2 or less. And won’t taste like fruit, tobacco, and grass.

“This is only a beginning. The next step is to build a much larger sail-powered cargo ship, a 3,000 tonne EcoLiner equipped for container traffic and fully competitive with the oil guzzling competitors”, says Fairtransport director Jorne Langelaan. “We want to re-establish sailing ships as a natural alternative to an anti-ecological culture. We want to see a revival of the great age of sail, as a means of Fair transport for cargo around the Atlantic”.

Yes, Warmists do want to take us back to what life was like centuries ago. Hey, how many trees are killed to make these ships? As one person points out

“Carbon neutral”? So, how was the ship built and with what materials other than wood? Any steel or other refined metals in it. (According to one site, the framing is steel.) And the tools to build it – any steel or other refined metals? Screws, bolts, or nails holding it together? Metal in the blocks? Copper or other metallic sheathing of the hull? Hinges on the rudder? Navigation aids? Radio? Generator? Nav or other lights? Electrical cabling? Cooking equipment? Cooking fuel? Synthetic lines in the rigging? Even if the masts are wood, there’s bound to be metal reinforcement. (From the pix, they look like steel.) Paint, sealants, and other coatings to protect the wood and other surfaces from the elements? Any plastics? Are the sails canvas (or are they dacron/nylon)? ALL of these materials overwhelmingly contain carbon or carbon was oxidized to find, refine, and make them.

And then there is the environmental cost of the solar panels. But, hey, I bet the 1% in England loves their “fair trade carbon neutral” chocolate.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Politico) Mitt Romney and his top aides are building a strategy, partly by design and partly because of circumstance, around what they consider John McCain’s disastrously run campaign in 2008.

The strategy: whatever McCain did, do the opposite.

Many of the current strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include ruling out any vice presidential possibilities who could be seen as even remotely risky or unprepared; wrapping the entire campaign around economic issues, knowing this topic alone will swing undecided voters in the final days; and, slowly but steadily, building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.

McCain, according to Romney advisers, blew it on all three scores. And of the three, the most conscious effort by Romney’s team to do things differently will be in the V.P. selection process. One Republican official familiar with the campaign’s thinking said it will be designed to produce a pick who is safe and, by design, unexciting – a deliberate anti-Palin. The prized pick, said this official: an “incredibly boring white guy.”

Steve Schmidt, a top official on the McCain campaign, acknowledged the need for Romney to do things differently, saying that every major decision in 2008 had been made “through the prism that we were running in the worst political environment any Republican presidential candidate had every faced – it was just horrific.”

“That drove a culture of risk-taking and animated every aspect of the campaign,” Schmidt recalled. “The Romney campaign is in a totally winnable race, and their actions reflect that. They’re more cautious, where we were more elbows-out.”

In reality, there’s only one major thing Team Romney needs to avoid doing from what Team McCain did in 2008, and it’s not avoiding the pick of a dynamic person to be Mitt’s running mate: it’s making the huge, major, stupid pandering gaffe. Despite the talk about how McCain couldn’t have won, how Palin hurt him, the reality was much, much different.

Near the end of September 2008, the electoral map favored McCain over Obama. In the worst projections, it had lots and lots of toss-ups. It was when McCain said he was suspending his campaign and going to Washington to deal with the TARP legislation, then did……nothing to make it better, his campaign imploded.

Any huge pandering gaffes, or simply big gaffes, that Team Obama makes will be glossed over if not defended by the credentialed media. Romney will not have that luxury. What was Obama’s announcement regarding supporting gay marriage other than a huge pandering moment? The media won’t call him on that. They will barely acknowledge anything bad Obama does, and show little journalistic inquisitiveness on just what Obama policies have done. Consider Fast and Furious: most media have ignored it.

As for picking a boring running mate, that’s a good idea this year. McCain needed someone to fire up the conservative base. It worked. Mitt needs this election to be not about enthusiasm, but about vision and competence. He also needs to make a good appearance during the debates. If you listen to the McCain-Obama debates or read the transcripts, McCain tended to win. Watch them, and it was a draw or Obama win. Romney won’t make those same mistakes.

One mistake Romney seems to be attempting to avoid is blowing off “blue” states that he will most likely not win. McCain made a huge mistake in blowing these states off, especially Michigan. McCain put lots of them in play, yet, he didn’t campaign in those states much if at all. Team Romney looks like they want to make Obama defend those states.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.