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Senior Navy civilians investigated in alleged scheme to defraud military for $1.6 million Federal authorities are investigating three senior Navy intelligence officials as part of a probe into an alleged contracting scheme that charged the military $1.6 million for homemade firearm silencers that cost only $8,000 to manufacture, court records show. The three civilian officials, who oversee highly classified programs, arranged for a hot-rod auto mechanic in California to build a specially ordered batch of unmarked and untraceable rifle silencers and sell them to the Navy at more than 200 times what they cost to manufacture, according to court...

Starting Friday, Joyce Lewis and her family will lose $44 from their monthly food stamp benefits. The food stamps buy a lot of economical rice-based meals for the family -- four adults and a grandson who live with Lewis in Spring Hill, Florida. Occasionally, when her grocery store is running a deal, Lewis indulges the family with spare ribs or chicken. The benefit -- totaling $800 for four adults -- never lasts Lewis and her family a full month. "When I get to the end, we always run out. I try to go to all the food pantries," Lewis said....

Nearly 2 million New Yorkers who rely on food stamps will have less to spend at the supermarket starting Friday — and it may only be the beginning. The average family of four on food stamps is expected to lose $36 each month, according to the Department of Agriculture, because funding added to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in 2009 under the federal stimulus program ran out Thursday.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Your Opportunity is Being Transitioned Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Do not panic. Everything is under control. Ladies and Gentlemen, Transmen and Transwomen and people of uncertain gender identities, some of you may be alarmed by recent reports of malfunctioning health care websites and policy cancellations. Do not be alarmed. We know what we are doing. Health care plans are not being cancelled. Opportunities are being transitioned. Some people are being moved from bad health care plans to good health care plans with higher deductibles and higher premiums that will provide transmen...

Food stamp recipients face a massive benefit cut set to kick in when stimulus funds expire Friday. The nationwide cut “is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three,” according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis using the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” CBPP called the roughly $5 billion annual cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “unprecedented” in “depth and breadth.” “If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New...

One of the reasons for being glad to be as old as I am is that I may be spared living to see a race war in America. Race wars are often wars in which nobody wins and everybody ends up much worse off than they were before. Initial skirmishes in that race war have already begun and have in fact been going on for some years. But public officials pretend that it is not happening, and the mainstream media seldom publish it at all, except in ways that conceal what is really taking place.

Four teenagers are being charged with capital murder in the fatal mugging of 87-year-old Lawrence E. 'Shine' Thornton of Greenville, Mississippi. Shine’ was a World War II veteran and a famous personality in the Delta region for his hot tamales. They were known as ‘Maria’s Famous Hot Tamales’, named after his wife Mary. He was crowned king of the 2012 Delta Hot Tamale Festival. According to Greenville police, Thornton was killed after being accosted in his own driveway on Oct. 18. He was pushed down and his wallet stolen. He passed away from his injuries two days later at the...

The collapse of American society is accelerating. For the moment, much of our social decay is being masked by the tremendous level of affluence that we are experiencing. It has been reported that 4 out of every 5 adults in the United States “struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives”, but in general Americans still enjoy a debt-fueled standard of living that is far beyond what most of the rest of the world enjoys. When that debt-fueled standard of living permanently disappears, it is going to unleash chaos unlike anything that America...

Kenya mall video of soldiers looting after shooting New security footage has emerged online after the Westgate mall attack in Kenya, the video shown below shows what looks like security soldiers taking goods from the mall and not paying for them. Last month the Kenya mall shooting left 67 dead after suspected al-Shabab militants stormed the Nairobi Westgate shopping centre on 21 September. The video below clearly shows Kenyan soldiers carrying white bags and taking goods from the store without consent, according to reports the Kenyan military are investigating the looting allegations. The mall sells food, mobile phones and televisions,...

The U.S. Army has appeared to do an about-face on some derogatory information recently released about the Christian conservative American Family Association (AFA). Fox News reported that in early October dozens of active duty and reserve Army troops were informed during a briefing at Camp Shelby in Mississippi that the respected pro-family organization should be classified as a hate group. According to Fox, during a slide presentation at the briefing the AFA was listed “alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam.” But after the story about the misinformation gained...

Veterans hold new protest of partial government shutdown at WWII Memorial

The Law of the Sea Treaty. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Yes, when it comes to international agreements that may seem harmless until you read the fine print, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty has plenty of company. Like the pacts cited above, the ATT has been signed by the U.S., but not ratified by the Senate. Nor is it likely to be. But that doesn’t mean it won’t prove damaging to the United States and its interests.

MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA) - Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits. Additional Links Computer issue, not government shutdown, likely cause of EBT card failures The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended. Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says...

Military bases see Pokemon X/Y copies delayed due to government shutdown Certainly not the worst part of the government shutdown here in the states, but a very annoying one! At least there's still an eShop option.

Political Director of ABC News, Rick Klein pleaded with investors today to tank the stock market in order to “shake things loose” in the GOP ranks. In his ABC’s The Note piece today, Klein seriously proposed a stock sell-off designed for the express purpose of breaking the will of Republicans. When does Wall Street cast its vote? Bipartisan meetings are nice, and new plans that depend on the other side budging certainly can’t hurt at this stage of a standoff. But there may be only one way to jolt the system: SELL. Klein’s rationale: recent talks with beltway strategists suggest the GOP is...

This time, President Barack Obama says, he’s not budging. This is the confrontational Obama, the “Make my day” president, betting Republicans blink to avoid a government shutdown or a first-ever default of the nation's debts. It’s a proposition not without risk and one with a history of last-minute accommodations on both sides. Brinkmanship between Obama and congressional Republicans has often stopped at the precipice’s edge. In this round, however, the president and his aides maintain that when it comes to raising the government’s borrowing authority and meeting its debt obligations, there’s no bargaining. To conservatives wishing to undo the 3-year-old...

Fort Worth police said the city "avoided a major tragedy" Tuesday night when a gunman tried to fire at least five shots inside crowded McDonald's restaurant but his pistol malfunctioned. Surveillance video released late Thursday shows Jestin Anthony Joseph, 24, pulling the trigger several times while attempting to rob customers and employees, police said. Incredibly, the gunman walked outside and fired his gun successfully in the air, police said. He walked back inside and tried to shoot again, but the gun again malfunctioned.

The kind of violence that typically plagues Chicago does not handily fit the terms of the national debate on assault weapons and mass shootings. While tragedies in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and other cities have made the nation stop and take notice, the nearly daily killings in Chicago more often make headlines only by the periodic tallying of their collective toll. Most often, the approximately 500 people slain last year in Chicago were shot one at a time, usually with a handgun that could be concealed in a waistband or jacket pocket. The gun violence that unfolded Thursday night at...

The following are photos taken on Friday, September 20, 2013 at the Ronald Reagan Sports Park in Temecula, California. The Reagan statue and monument was likely vandalized either the night before or in the early morning hours of Friday September 20. The cause of the damage appears to be vandalism by arson. Local police were called to the scene and an investigation is ongoing. - Photo of the Reagan Monument with missing damaged tiles. - The missing/vandalized tiles were removed by city staff ... notice the burn marks at the base of the structure. - Burned/damaged tiles on both side...

The recent ruling against stop-and-frisk has emboldened the city’s pistol-packing perps. In the month after federal judge Shira Scheindlin’s decision that the police procedure is unconstitutional, shootings spiked nearly 13 percent — and gun seizures plummeted more than 17 percent, The Post has learned. During the 28 days ending Sept. 8, there were 140 shootings across the Big Apple, compared with 124 during the same period last year, the figures show. And the number of gunshot victims was up more than 9 percent, with 164 people struck by bullets this year, compared with 150 shot over that month last year.