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Just To Make You Feel Better…

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about that whole ‘missing the broad side of a barn’ thing!  😛

(from TFB)

Canadian Sniper Sets New Confirmed Kill Record at 2.2 Miles

Crushing a record previously held by a British sniper, a Canadian special forces member now holds the title title for the longest confirmed kill. Measured at 3,450 meters, or approximately 2.2 miles, the member of the Joint Task Force 2 killed an Islamic State insurgent in Iraq using a McMillan TAC-50 rifle. For obvious reasons, officials are not releasing the name of the soldier, but say that the shot was “confirmed by video and other data”. Now that’s a LiveLeak video I want to see,

2.2 Miles confirmed kill

Canadian elite special forces sniper sets record-breaking

Confirmed kill shot in Iraq

A sniper with Canada’s elite special forces in Iraq has shattered the world record for the longest confirmed kill shot in military history at a staggering distance of 3,450 metres.

Sources say a member of Joint Task Force 2 killed an Islamic State insurgent with a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle while firing from a high-rise during an operation that took place within the last month in Iraq. It took under 10 seconds to hit the target.

“The shot in question actually disrupted a Daesh [Islamic State] attack on Iraqi security forces,” said a military source, who stressed the operation fell within the strictures of the government’s advise and assist mission. “Instead of dropping a bomb that could potentially kill civilians in the area, it is a very precise application of force and because it was so far way, the bad guys didn’t have a clue what was happening.”

A sniper with Canada’s elite special forces in Iraq has shattered the world record for the longest confirmed kill shot in military history at a staggering distance of 3,450 metres.

Sources say a member of Joint Task Force 2 killed an Islamic State insurgent with a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle while firing from a high-rise during an operation that took place within the last month in Iraq. It took under 10 seconds to hit the target.

“The shot in question actually disrupted a Daesh [Islamic State] attack on Iraqi security forces,” said a military source, who stressed the operation fell within the strictures of the government’s advise and assist mission. “Instead of dropping a bomb that could potentially kill civilians in the area, it is a very precise application of force and because it was so far way, the bad guys didn’t have a clue what was happening.”

The kill was independently verified by video camera and other data, The Globe and Mail has learned.

“Hard data on this. It isn’t an opinion. It isn’t an approximation. There is a second location with eyes on with all the right equipment to capture exactly what the shot was,” another military source said.

A military insider told The Globe: “This is an incredible feat. It is a world record that might never be equaled.”

The world record was previously held by British sniper Craig Harrison, who shot a Taliban gunner with a 338 Lapua Magnum rifle from 2,475 metres away in 2009.

Previously, Canadian Corporal Rob Furlong had set the world record in 2002 at 2,430 metres when he gunned down an Afghan insurgent carrying an RPK machine gun during Operation Anaconda.

Weeks before, Canadian Master Cpl. Arron Perry briefly held the world’s best sniper record after he fatally shot an insurgent at 2,310 metres during the same operation. Both soldiers were members of the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

JTF2 special forces are primarily tasked with counterterrorism, sniper operations and hostage rescue. Much of the information about this elite organization is classified and not commented on by the government. The unit’s snipers and members of Canadian Special Operations Regiment, who are carrying out the main task of training Kurdish forces, have been operating in tough conditions in Iraq.

The Trudeau government pulled CF-18 fighter jets out of Iraq in 2016 but expanded the military mission, which will see the number of Canadian special forces trainers climb to 207 from 69 in an assist, train and advise mission. Canadian commandos are not supposed to be involved in direct combat, but are authorized to go up to the front lines on training missions with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and to paint targets for coalition air strikes.

For operational security reasons, sources would not reveal the names of the elite Canadian sniper and his partner, nor the location where the action took place.

A sniper and his observer partner are often sent to remote and dangerous locations to hunt down insurgents while having to carry heavy equipment. Once they have located the target, snipers follow the same methodical approach before each shot. Breathe in, out, in, out, find a natural pause and then squeeze the trigger.

Canada has a reputation among Western military forces for the quality of its snipers, despite the small size of the Canadian Armed Forces compared to the United States and Britain.

“Canada has a world-class sniper system. It is not just a sniper. They work in pairs. There is an observer,” a military source said. “This is a skill set that only a very few people have.”

The skill of the JTF2 sniper in taking down an insurgent at 3,450 metres required math skills, great eyesight, precision of ammunition and firearms, and superb training.

“It is at the distance where you have to account not just for the ballistics of the round, which change over time and distance, you have to adjust for wind, and the wind would be swirling,” said a source with expertise in training Canadian special forces.

“You have to adjust for him firing from a higher location downward and as the round drops you have to account for that. And from that distance you actually have to account for the curvature of the Earth.”

U.S. Sergeant Bryan Kremer has the longest confirmed sniper kill shot by a U.S. soldier. He killed an Iraqi insurgent with his Barrett M82A1 rifle at 2,300 metres in 2004.

Story and graphic credit: The Globe And Mail

Traditionally, I give the Canucks a lot of grief in GiA.

However, on this one, I salute them.

It Happened Again…

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A leftist, Democrat, criminal shot up the place!

Four people, including United States Congressman Steve Scalise were shot, the congressman critically.  The shooter reported had asked if the folks on the field were Democrats or Republicans, upon finding out they were the latter, returned to his car, obtained a rifle and handgun and began shooting.

The shooter’s (name redacted) Facebook page was rife with hate toward the Republicans.  He was also a Bernie Sanders supporter.  Bernie has expressed shock at this grievous act.

Of course, if these weren’t politicians, it’d only be a blip on the radar.

In Chicago last weekend, 43 people were shot, 6 of those fatally.

Do we know any of their names?

And, while we’re on the subject, when was the last time a right-winger, Republican, someone NOT a leftist shot up the place?

How many serial shooters are right-of-center?  Or libertarian?

I’ll bet the numbers are small, if any (?)

The Left constantly accuses The Right (tea partisans?) of being violent, bitter, gun owners.  But, when violence occurs, be it shootings, riots, stabbings, WHO are the responsible parties?

And then The Left screams for more gun control, when the police officers doing security on the scene stopped the shooter.  With firearms.

Prayers for all who are injured.  None (from me) for the suspect, who reportedly has been dispatched.

I Miss Our ‘Founding Brothers’!

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(from Peter-Bayou Renaissance Man)

“Every house divided against itself will not stand.” That goes for America, too.

In watching the brouhaha over alleged links between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, and allegations of who said what, when, to whom, and why, and what the words mean, I’m driven to a conclusion already reached by many.This nation is irreparably, irreconcilably divided against itself.

That became clear during the Presidential elections last year.  Even before the vote, researchers identified several key areas in which the two sides of our political divide have become more and more divided.  What’s more, that divide has come to dominate different areas and groups in our body politic.  To name just one example, since President Trump’s election, the mainstream news media (dominated to an extraordinary extent by the left, progressive wing of US politics) have unleashed a barrage of insults, disdain and attacks that is almost unprecedented in its uniformity.  Sure, past Presidents have faced similar attacks from a segment of US media;  but there were always almost equal and opposing resources to respond in kind.  That’s no longer the case, thanks to the domination of the media by left-wing money and groups and individuals.  Alternative views are all but drowned out by the hubbub.

What’s more, the mainstream media no longer care about non-partisanship.  They openly advocate for one side or the other.  A classic example is an article in the Washington Post last Sunday titled ‘Is media coverage of Trump too negative? You’re asking the wrong question.‘  A key quote:

The president’s supporters often say his accomplishments get short shrift. But let’s face it: Politicians have no right to expect equally balanced positive and negative coverage, or anything close to it. If a president is doing a rotten job, it’s the duty of the press to report how and why he’s doing a rotten job.

There’s more at the link.

I happen to believe, unlike the author, that the question in the title of the article is the right question, and needs answering:  and I believe that her cavalier dismissal of the president as ‘doing a rotten job’ is her own partisan perspective, rather than based on fact.  Therein lies the problem.  She would probably dismiss me as a ‘right-wing nut job’, rather than take my views seriously.  (I tried very hard to read her article with an open mind, but the partisanship of which it reeked made that very difficult indeed.)  Of course, the same bias and partisanship can be found in articles on the other side of the political divide, as well.  The problem cuts both ways.

A blogger writing under the name of Didact summed up the divide in an article last January.

On the one side, we have always had the small-government libertarian types. Back in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they were the Southern Democrats. They were primarily advocates of an agrarian-focused, decentralised, minimalist, small-government philosophy that generally left people the hell alone to get on with their own business.

On the other side, we have also always had the mercantilists, the industrialists, the big-government centralists. They believed that a strong central government was absolutely required to prevent the new nation from being overwhelmed by its competitors and sinking into irrelevance or slavery under a foreign power.

That ideological difference has persisted, in various forms and espoused by various parties, all the way through to the modern day. That is of course well known. Eventually, the divide became so deep and so bitter that it resulted in the War Between the States, which Northerners rather oxymoronically refer to as the Civil War, and Southerners somewhat more accurately refer to as the War of Northern Aggression.

That divide was eventually papered over, at least somewhat, by the North’s crushing victory over the South. To this day, the South still hasn’t fully recovered from that defeat and the years of the Reconstruction Era that followed- and the wounds and scars inflicted by that defeat still linger on.

But- and here is the key difference between then and now- even throughout those times of bitterest division and discord, the two sides were able to talk to each other, right up until the time for talking was over and there was nothing left to do but start shooting.

And that is precisely what America has now lost.

You will not find finer exemplars of the two spirits of America than Presidents Adams and Jefferson. One believed completely in a strong central government; the other believed equally completely in a weak one. The two argued, often contentiously and always with eloquence and conviction, in favour of their respective positions.

Yet the two of them were also closer than brothers. Their respect for each other transcended their political differences and united them in their love for their new country, and their desire to see it succeed. Not for nothing have they been called “Founding Brothers“.

This is what America has lost today. The two sides of the debate no longer talk to each other. They talk past each other.

Again, more at the link.

Many people recognize the existence of this divide in America;  but not many have thought about its implications for our nation as a whole.  Well, I’m a pastor, albeit a retired one.  I try to look at and think about this country from the perspective of my faith, just as others will see it through the filters of their own biases and perceptions and bedrock perspectives.  That faith makes me ask:  have things gone too far?  Have we reached a tipping point?

Jesus warned us:  “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”  Right now, our ‘kingdom’ (or country) is divided against itself.  Right now, our cities – overwhelmingly left-of-center in their political orientation – are divided against the heartland that feeds and sustains them.  Right now, our houses – our families – are often divided on political, social and economic issues.

Can this nation, in its present form, survive a divide so deep, so bitter, and so vitriolic?  I don’t know . . . but I have real and very serious doubts.  What say you, readers?

Peter

I remember stories of the politicians of old (the Sixties), who would yell at each other on the Senate or House floor, then meet afterward to share a beverage or two.
We have lost that civility, both in the legislature and the general population.
We already have discord, violence and riots in the streets.  And on the Internet.
What’s next – A shooting war?
😦

Adam West RIP

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I was never a fan of Batman, the television series.  Correction, I didn’t understand camp.

(You must understand, I was in junior high, preparing to graduate to high school, and thought myself a serious intellectual.  😛 )

I did remember Adam West from a previous episode of Robert Taylor’s The Detectives, though.  I liked him in that role.

Most persons who become type cast eventually fade away, unless they have amazing talent and staying power.  George Reeves killed himself (or was murdered).  And Baby Boomers will always associate him with the Superman TV series.

Mr. West worked long before he was Batman, and long afterward.  Sometimes as cartoon voice-overs, but not always.  He didn’t just do car shows with the Batmobile.  He embraced the Batman mythos, and made it his.

And, not unlike Patrick Stewart (in American Dad), he made his famous voice even more famous in ‘adult’ cartoons, like Family Guy. (as the Mayor of Quahog).

He passed after a short bout with leukemia.  Having had a blood disease, myself, this definitely got my attention.

He will be missed.

Convergence And Social Justice

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(copied in it’s entirety from Vox Populi)

On the convergence of Breitbart

Once an organization starts celebrating diversity, cucking and convergence are soon to follow:

The full exchange shows McHugh stating the truth that all mainstream media establishments seem to dance around, and then reminding someone who is not English that his opinion is not necessarily on point. In return, the Breitbart kaffeeklatsch erupted:

A number of Breitbart colleagues, who chose to remain anonymous, also attacked Ms McHugh for her Islamophobic comments. Speaking to CNN anonymously on Sunday, one said they found them “appalling” while another branded them “terrible”.

…This is by no means the first time she has made inflammatory remarks about race. She once told her 19,000 Twitter followers: “Mexicans wrecked Mexico and think invading the USA will magically cure them of their retarded dysfunction. Lol.”

It is rare for Breitbart, a publication which has been accused of writing racist and misogynist articles, to dismiss its employees for their controversial views. Although one exception is the case of Milo Yiannopoulos. In February, the alt-right figurehead, who was one of the site’s most high-profile writers, was forced to resign from the publication after his apparently pro-paedophilia remarks resurfaced in an old podcast.

McHugh said nothing that Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan and any conservative before 1965 would have admitted was true, and her comments are especially on point regarding recent Muslim terror attacks in the UK and France. If diversity did not exist, the problems of diversity — including the actions of other groups who want to dominate or destroy us — would not afflict us.

Breitbart has succumbed to DR3, or the tendency by conservatives to attempt to “prove” they are non-racist by accusing others of racism, creating a circular firing squad:

Many on the Dissident Right mock cuckservatives for engaging in “DR3” or DemsRRealRacists i.e. incapable of defending their values on their merits, they concede the Left’s moral premises, but accuse them of being the “real racists”, homophobes, sexists etc.

DR3 afflicts the mainstream Right, which struggles for “respectability” or at least less censorship in a Left-leaning time. Big internet giants like Google and Twitter, major publications and big donors often will drop and ignore any publication which crosses the line on race, which in late Leftism means anything but foaming-at-the-mouth advocacy of diversity or having multiple ethnic and racial groups in the same society.

As an implicit endorsement of diversity, DR3 subscribes to the “Magic Dirt” idea that if we take people from the third world, bring them to our lands and instruct them in propaganda for our system and culture, they will take it up and suddenly become us. This both replaces us and replaces their own culture with ours as a dominant colonial power.

When conservatives take up “magic dirt,” it shows that they have been captured by the very group they claim to oppose, namely the Left, since they have adopted Leftist policies like diversity, equality and indoctrination.

As I said in the Darkstream last night, to prevent convergence, you must resist the urge to excitedly embrace rival identities who happen – or merely claim – to share your values. In most cases, you will learn that identity trumps values, and when they bring in more of their identities, your values, no longer shared, will be rapidly jettisoned in favor of social justice values.

Isn’t this what the Left always does?  Consider the Fabian socialists.  They play the long game.

WE must remain honest and consistent in our values, lest they be polluted!

‘I Consider Myself A Guest Here’

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Canadian William Shatner REFUSES

To Trash Trump: ‘I Consider Myself a

Guest Here’

William Shanter, the ICONIC Star Trek actor himself, refuses to talk ill of President Donald Trump regardless of his feelings for politics. In a recent interview he had with the Daily Beast he spoke all about it, and his new book, ‘Spirit of the Horse’. During this interview, Shatner made it really clear that his name was not to be added to an open letter that was released out of Hollywood last year denouncing Trump’s candidacy.

“I didn’t do that. I would never have done that,” the actor said of the anti-Trump letter posted on the Trek Against Trump Facebook page last September.

There were however, notable personalities of the original star trek series like George Takei (of course) who played Hikaru Sulu, and Star Trek Into Darkness director JJ.Abrams, who was a very avid Clinton supporter did sign that letter.

The Beast reporter did attempt more than once to get Shatner to dish on Trump, and the actor stuck to his guns refusing to do so, making it very clear that he wasn’t willing to speak ill of the president.

“I don’t want to discuss Trump or [George] Takei,” Shatner said, adding: “Listen, I’m Canadian and I’m apolitical. I love America. I consider myself a guest here.”

“I won’t do anything that might get me deported,” the 86-year-old star joked.

The Priceline pitchman, known best for his role as Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise, also revealed that while he and Abrams have discussed him having a role in the rebooted Star Trek film franchise, the director hasn’t extended the offer.

“I’ve met with J.J. Abrams, who seems to be running the film franchise now,” Shatner said. “Though I’ve repeatedly expressed my interest in being in one of the Star Trek movies they seem to have no interest in bringing back old Captain James T. Kirk.”

Shatner, who made his small-screen debut as Captain Kirk in 1966, also revealed that he has never seen any of the new films.

A lifelong lover of horses, Shatner’s new book Spirit of the Horse is a love letter to his four-legged friends.

Although he is very liberal in his political beliefs, he knows how to stand for those beliefs without being ridiculous and out of line like his other Hollywood friends.

Yep. I could sit next to him on a plane, introduce myself as a conservative and he’d like me.

That’s how it’s suppose to be.

h/t Facebook, I Have the Truth.com

AMEN, Mr. Shatner and Mr. Wendal!

Now, I’m not an unabashed fan of the current President (although he is certainly a vast improvement over the last one!)  Having said that, I tire of the juvenile and sometimes criminal actions taken against the President.  Like it or not, he IS the President!  And deserves some respect.

(I’d preferred a more libertarian President, stopping this ongoing assault on the Fourth Amendment.  One with a better speaking style.  Wish in one hand…)

To see and hear (most) Hollywood types continue to attack and beat on him is more than shameful.  YES, everyone has a right to an opinion.

But, lets be adult about it, shall we?  Disagree on policy choices, not hairstyles!

 

Maxine Waters Admits: Obama Has Put In Place a Secret Database ‘Everything On Everyone’

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Liveleak unearthed an interview with Maxine

Waters where she admits that because eventually

he would not be in charge, that Obama has created

a HUGE “Secret Database”!

Waters was speaking in an interview on the Roland Martin show when he asked her, “What happens in 2016?

Waters very candidly admits:

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.

 

“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database  will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with  that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

That video only has 13,000 views. This was not done in secret. This video and interview was seen little and talked about less when it came out in 2013.

We are also reporting today that Freedom Watch has uncovered some disgusting information as well.

Our own Nancy Hayes reports that a massive amount of data on 47 hard drives from a government whistle blower was turned over to the Freedom Watch group recently.

Americans should be OUTRAGED! It looks pretty solid that Illegal and unconstitutional electronic surveillance was committed by the Obama administration. Not only did the illegal electronic surveillance involve Obama, it involved several top level officials within the NSA, CIA, DHS, FBI and Treasury Department. Heads should roll! President Trump was right when he said he was “wiretapped” by Obama and “The Hammer” is about to go down.

The information proves Obama and company spied on everyone. He has spied on Trump! He has most likely spied on many of you!

I remember how J. Edgar Hoover had something on everyone.  This enabled him to not be fired as FBI Director.  When he died (code name Open Territory) everyone scrambled to find the hidden files.

Or maybe that was just a Robert Ludlum book…?

Who knows?

The scary part is people like this keep getting reelected…

h/t Joe for America (in part)

Roger Moore, RIP

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Nope.  Not another character actor.

Well, maybe…

But, one from my youth.

I first knew him from Ivanhoe (TV) and Maverick (TV) followed by The Saint TV series.  Suave, but offbeat.  Drove a car similar in outward appearance to the Bond car (a Volvo, hardly an Aston Martin!), but I was a kid – what did I know?

Had clever lines, foiled the bad guys – who could want for more?

Eventually, he replaced Connery, Lazenby as Bond.  I’d read all the books by then, and, while I enjoyed Live And Let Die, it was NOT Connery nor Lazenby, and had a campy, Batmanesque manner to it.

Not the James Bond I had grown to love.

I ended up watching two or three more of the Moore Bond films (of the eventual seven) and gave up.

I did enjoy The Persuaders, a British TV romp opposite Tony Curtis.  But, it only lasted two years.

And there were non-Bond films, like Shout at the Devil (1976), The Wild Geese (1978) and North Sea Hijack (1979), among others.

But, I never forgave him for his the comic book portrayal of Bond.

He did take a conservative anti-Bond stance in an interview I once saw.  He was a conservative, religious man, and suggested Bond was not a very moral man.  Certainly not one he would like dating his daughter!  He was probably correct in this assessment.

And he made it to 89.  And was knighted.

You will be missed.

Just not as James Bond (by me, anyway).

Veterans Affairs Has 346 Workers Who Do ONLY Union Work

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(from Judicial Watch, in part)

An estimated 346 employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs do no actual work for taxpayers. Instead, they spend all of their time doing work on behalf of their union while drawing a federal salary, a practice known as “official time.”That’s according to a report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. But exactly what those VA workers are doing and why so many are doing it is not clear. The VA doesn’t track that, and the GAO report offers no clue.

Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, thinks the number on 100 percent official time may be much higher. He also notes that the 346 workers don’t include those who spend most, not all, of their time doing union work.

“The lack of accountability at the VA when it comes to monitoring official time suggests it might be worse,” said Arrington, who has introduced legislation that would require the department to track the use of official time, among other reforms.

Pointing to the waiting list scandals at the department, Arrington said the official time situation is reflective of the “broken culture at the heart of the VA” and adds, “I haven’t heard one good, acceptable reason why the practice has continued.”

The VA was not eager to discuss the matter with the Washington Examiner. After several days of inquiries, it responded with the following statement: “VA believes that the appropriate use of official time can be beneficial and in the public interest as stated in the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute, which governs how executive branch agencies treat official time. VA takes the position that labor and management have a shared responsibility to ensure that official time is authorized and used appropriately. VA practices are in compliance with the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute.”

Official time is allowed under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea behind it is to ensure that a federal employee who is also a union official won’t be penalized for being away from work if he or she is negotiating a contract or addressing a worker grievance, for example. It is essentially a trade-off for the limitations put on federal unions, such as prohibitions on striking.

At least 700 federal workers do nothing but work on official time, according to the GAO and data obtained from various Freedom of Information Act requests. The VA uses official time far more than any other agency.

“Employees spent approximately 1,057,00 hours on official time for union representation activities … In addition, the data show that 346 employees spent 100 percent of their time on official time,” the GAO found in a January report.

It is possible that even those figures are conservative. The GAO said the said the VA’s poor monitoring meant the data was “inconsistent and not reliable.”

The GAO didn’t know what the employees are doing with all of that time. “We just didn’t get into that in that particular study,” said Cindy Barnes, the GAO’s director of education, workforce and income security issues and author of the report.

Part of the explanation is that the VA is one of the largest federal agencies with 373,000 workers, making it second only to the Pentagon in the sheer size of its workforce. About 250,000 VA workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, according to the GAO, citing 2012 data. Arrington puts the covered figure at 285,000.

By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has 240,000 workers and the Department of Commerce has just under 44,000 workers. But those departments get by with proportionately far fewer people working exclusively on official time. DHS has 39, while Commerce has just four.

Another factor is that the VA’s workforce is represented by no less than five unions: The American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, National Nurses United, the National Federation of Federal Employees and the Service Employees International Union.

National Nurses United representative Irma Westmoreland was the only union official willing to talk about the practice with the Washington Examiner. She is one of five nurses union members who work exclusively on union time at the VA. The union has another nine who spent 80 percent of their time at the VA on official time, she said.

Westmoreland said her work was necessary because nurses can’t simply stop taking care of a patient to do something like address a worker grievance. People such as her do the union work and make it possible for the other nurses to focus on providing care.

“I have to travel across the country working with 23 VA facilities in four time zones,” she said. “The management teams want somebody at 100 percent official time so they don’t have to pull somebody out of care.”

But not everyone at the VA is involved in care. So what are the other 341 exclusive official time workers doing? Westmoreland had no insight.

“I don’t know how the other people do it,” she said.

American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox told Arrington’s subcommittee in February that official time involved activities such as “designing and delivering joint training of employees on work-related subjects and introduction of new programs and work methods that are initiated by the agency or by the union.”

He added that “in no way did the [February GAO] report suggest that the use of official time presents problems for the department.” The report sought only to quantify the amount of time used.

Arrington argues that the practice has to change if the VA is ever to be truly reformed. He has sponsored the Veterans, Employees and Taxpayer Protection Act, which would require the VA to track the use of official time. It also would prohibit employees involved with direct patient care from spending more than a quarter of their work hours on union activities and bar any VA employee from spending more than half of their time on official time.

The legislation would effectively put VA employees under right-to-work protection. The VA would be prohibited from agreeing to union contracts that force workers to join or otherwise support a union as a condition of employment.

Westmoreland said she has no trouble with better tracking the use of official time but warns against putting any limitations on its use.

“It makes it very difficult if you cannot have set official time,” she said.  (The Washington Examiner)

Our tax dollars at work?  Hardly.  The most regular visitor to the White House during the last administration was a big union guy.  One hopes this has changed, and that the inappropriate union influence in the federal government has ended.Or, as least, tricked down to STOP!

 

With A Stroke Of A Pen…

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(from Chris Farrell’s On Watch, in part)

 It’s time for some extreme transparency. 

You’ve heard President Trump talk about extreme vetting for persons seeking to the enter the US from terror hot-spots – well, we need to aggressively exercise a similar technique when it comes to government records that you are owed through the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA.

Judicial Watch files more FOIA requests and litigates more FOIA cases than any other organization in the country.  Much of the Washington corruption you have heard about in the news started with investigative work by Judicial Watch.  Cases like “Fast & Furious,” the political weaponization of the IRS, the effort to cover-up Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s reckless criminality concerning her outlaw email server, and many other cases.

The FOIA law allows for agencies and departments of the Executive Branch of government to make “discretionary disclosures.”  In plain English, that means President Trump and his cabinet secretaries can release whatever they want – whenever they wish to do so.  It’s up to them.  They can exercise their discretion to release records that are of broad general and news media interest concerning important public policy issues and/or the operations of the federal government.  These discretionary disclosures take nothing more than a stroke of the pen.

Ironically, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Sessions is currently making the exact same legal arguments as the Obama administration – and using all the double-talk and excuses from the Obama era, too.  The Justice Department remains in full cover-up mode for anything that would be embarrassing or illegal for the Obama administration.  That’s frustrating and disappointing, but you need to remember that the rank-and-file staff attorneys at Justice Department headquarters are largely Leftists that continue to support the Obama agenda.  President Trump appears to have a tough road ahead.  BUT, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Discretionary disclosures!  Extreme transparency!  With the stroke of a pen, President Trump and his cabinet secretaries can order the release of all government records concerning any number of important issues and lingering questions.

Here’s just a small sample of some of the cases Judicial Watch is investigating and litigating that could be released in full for the public and news media to examine:

  • FBI 302s – or investigative reports of interviews of President Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett during criminal investigation of Rod Blagojevich trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat.
  • The entire FBI’s investigative file of Secretary Clinton’s email practices.
  • Records about the tarmac meeting between former President Clinton and Attorney General Lynch at the Phoenix airport.
  • Draft indictments of Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared by Whitewater Deputy Independent Counsel Hickman Ewing, Jr.
  • Records about the Intelligence Community’s decision not to conduct a damage assessment of Secretary Clinton’s criminal email practices.
  • Records of notes, updates, or reports in the Office of the Secretary of State about Benghazi.

If you’re looking for some accountability for what’s happened in this country for the past eight years there’s a starting point.  But, there’s much, much more.

It’s time for extreme transparency.  Let’s get past the cover-ups and double-talk from the past eight years.  Your employees owe you records and answers. President Trump can provide them with the stroke of a pen.

I’m Chris Farrell . . . On Watch 

Or not.

And what about the current administration’s transparency and accountability?

So much for draining the swamp!

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