I was thinking the world could not be more absurd when I read that a Hamas official announced to Arab Israelis they should not be fearful of their attacks because the missiles were designed to kill Jews only. This development is so outstanding that the Norwegians -- citizens of probably the most anti-Semitic country in Europe -- who decide the winners of the Nobel peace prize undoubtedly secretly voted on the spot to award it to Hamas this year.

I was wrong, though, there must be some virus rapidly spreading across the globe that paralyzes brain cells, creating a world gone mad.

The diversity proponents who have long exaggerated the numbers of gays, lesbians, or bisexuals in our midst had a bad moment this week when the Washington Post reported the results of a U.S. National Health Interview Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Turns out that 96.6 percent of Americans say they are heterosexual; 1.1 percent declined to answer  which means less than three percent of the U.S. population are gay, lesbian, or homosexual. This means, if we follow the proportional argument of diversicrats like those at the University of Wisconsin who argue “for representational  equity” on race and ethnicity grounds, that conceding that on sexual grounds as well might mean disaster for a passel of Area studies which are grounded in gay/lesbian and bisexual culture.

As the clever Alex Bensky notes:

On one hand, Clarice, this means there are about as many Jews as there are homosexuals or bisexuals and that they’re a small minority that should not be invoked as a principal in most cases.

On the other hand, the left has made a fetish of “diversity.” OK. Let’s take women’s studies departments. As you know, the great majority of American women oppose third trimester abortion -- I’d assume that the percentage who support eighth month abortion is lower. What percentage of women’s studies faculty members express any doubts at all about abortion on demand? And I’d guess that the percentage of such departments’ faculties who are lesbian is more than two percent.

I may not agree with much of the gay political agenda but if someone sees herself as a lesbian or whatever,  fine. As the Victorian actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell said, do what you want but don’t do it in the street and scare the horses.

But if these faculties very much “overrepresent” lesbians and those who favor no restrictions on abortion at all, where is the “diversity?”

I’m just saying this for rhetorical purposes, Clarice. If anything is obvious from the last five and a half years, all the left means by “diversity” is people who look different but think exactly alike. In my younger days I never thought that it would be the left, and especially the academic left, that was the great threat to free speech and free thought. Well, I never thought I’d get used to the designated hitter rule and I have, sort of.

Equally nutty is the Democrat claim that the border is secure, as tens of thousands of illegals storm across it. I’m not making this up. Take a look at this video collection of Democrat politicians from Obama on down claiming that the border is more secure than ever.

Less funny than watching these bald-faced liars who hope to bamboozle voters and Congress into thinking it’s okay to pass  new amnesty legislation because the border is snapped shut and there will be no great tsunami of asylum seekers, is the knowledge that a fortune is being shelled out to house and feed and transport these people even as it is certainly falsely claimed by Obama that this is just temporary and many will be turned back. To hide what is going on -- and possibly to cover paybacks to cronies who help the sleight of hand, the leitmotif of this administration -- it has claimed and the media has repeated that the money is going to “faith-based” outfits. Just a little investigating by the Conservative Treehouse reveals that one major recipient, Baptist Child and Family Service (BCFS), which in one month alone received an almost $200 million grant, was not quite as represented:

...we are only half-way through the year and this entity has received over a QUARTER BILLION dollars.  OK, now you’re beginning to get the picture.

Taxpayer dollars.

I’m thinking BCFS can afford a few soccer balls, no?

So what in the world can a “faith based charity group” be spending all of that taxpayer money on ?…. and how big is this “charity” if the federal government portion therein is funding it to the tune of THAT MUCH money ?

Well, apparently, other than “Federal Grant Work”, not much.

In 2012 they pulled in $67,325,953.00 and $63,321,669 of taxpayer funds through DHS and HHS grants/contracts. That’s around 94% of their entire operational “charity revenue” from taxpayers.

“Baptist Child and Family Services” eh?

[snip]

It is important to remember this information is only for one of the “faith-based organizations” you have heard about recently. There are many others who are in the same operational business model as Baptist Child and Family Services. For the sake of this outline we stopped with what appears to be the newest and the one everyone was inquiring about.

However, given the scope of the expenditures, you might be interested to know that, again according to tax filing records,  the United States Catholic Bishops also received $69.5 million in HHS grants for 2012 (LINK).  Yes, that’s $69,500,000 in grants. And yes, that’s about 98% of the total charity revenue for the organization.  And yes, that’s for the exact same type of activity.

Federal Charity courtesy of the U.S. Taxpayer. Is it really “charity” when the federal government is using the IRS to collect the “offering”?

Other “religious charities” that have pushed for more generous immigration policies and are getting a substantial amount of their financing through tax revenues include the U.S. Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Episcopal Ministries, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Church World Service and World Relief Corp. 

Whatever your view on amnesty is, don’t you think it’s a conflict of interest to funnel hundreds of millions of tax dollars to groups that argue for it and then receive even more money to service the new immigrants?

Speaking of amnesty, if you believed the administration and the press, you’d have thought the country was clamoring for more generous immigration policies. On the other hand, the voters beg to differ. The latest Rasmussen poll indicates that 59% of likely voters (the most reliable of samplings) don’t want the border jumpers housed in their states and want Congress to focus on sending them back.

In Israel, young men and women are putting their lives at risk to destroy the Hamas tunnels (built with donations for concrete supplies and tunneling tools) which were constructed to allow for murders and kidnapping of civilians and to hide weapons which were not otherwise being stored in UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools and in hospitals and homes throughout Gaza. As the Israelis take extraordinary, unprecedented in wartime risks to spare civilians, Hamas deliberately puts Palestinians in harm’s way, hoping to create gory  propaganda film. They are once again Palywooding it, using pictures of dead and wounded children in Syria and elsewhere to pretend these are Gazan casualties. Any paper that prints these now without thorough vetting is complicit in this continuing anti-Semitic propagandizing. As is the Washington Post for publishing this viciously false cartoon.

And to wrap up the week, we had Obama once again demonstrating that without a written program in front of him, he is a gormless fraud, not the silver-tongued genius people like Michael Beschloss sold him to the voters as.

Faced with the apparently willful shooting down of a commercial airline with about 300 passengers, including 80 children, on the conflict- torn Eastern Ukraine/Russian border, he said “It looks like it may be  a terrible tragedy.” Then he told some scripted jokes, had a hamburger eating photo op, and attended a couple of fundraisers.

Obviously even his crack staff considered that inadequate. The next day he denounced the shootdown as an "outrage of unspeakable proportions”. He made it clear, though, that he’d take no action until  “a full investigation” of the incident had taken place. Like Thomas Lipscomb, I wonder when that will be, as it seems the black boxes were sent to Russia, the site is being restricted to the Russians and their allies in the rebel forces, the bodies are reportedly being dragged about and looted of jewelry, passports, and money. This doesn’t seem like it will ever be a fertile site for a ”full investigation”, But what do I know? The administration says it’s been  doing a lot of investigating but when pressed, claim all they know they learned from press accounts.