Sunday, May 4, 2014

Latest News

My FEV numbers were up to 1.5 Thursday morning, dropped back to 1.25 by Sunday morning. And on it goes. I feel about the same, fine sitting, tired and SOB (that's "short of breath" please) when walking. I walked around a flea market Saturday okay, but not exactly infantry pace. ~Bob

Nice Shirt

Top Democratic donor is also top recipient of Export-Import Bank
Excerpt: The third biggest donor to Democrats this election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, is Grover Connell and his wife. They own Connell Company. Connell Company also happens to be the No. 2 recipient of insurance issued by the Export-Import Bank of the United Statesaccording to this study by Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center. (It's a free country. You can give to whoever you want. Unless your name is Koch. ~Bob)

Ukraine crisis: Sloviansk rebels down army helicopters
Excerpt: Pro-Russian rebels have shot down two of Ukraine's army helicopters during an "anti-terror" operation in the eastern city of Sloviansk, Kiev has said.

Kremlin says it is weighing response to ‘thousands’ of pleas for help from Ukraine
Excerpt: The Kremlin is receiving “thousands” of calls for assistance from Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, and it has not yet decided what to do, a spokesman said Saturday, as Ukrainian authorities continued to move to push back separatists who have taken over key cities in the east after Ukraine suffered its bloodiest day in nearly three months.

Why the White House is Desperate to Bury Benghazi
Excerpt: Amidst new revelations concerning emails that show the Obama administration conspired to create a phony narrative around the Benghazi attacks, the true purpose behind the cover-up is being obfuscated – the fact that an annex near the U.S. embassy was being used by the CIA to transfer surface to air missiles to terrorists in Syria.

Major Arctic Sea Ice Story Lurking, but Is Anyone Watching? By Joe Bastardi
Excerpt: There is a huge event being forecasted this year by the CFSV2, and I don’t know if anyone else is mentioning this. For the first time in over a decade, the Arctic sea ice anomaly in the summer is forecast to be near or above normal for a time! (Can't be true. Al Gore, who like the Pope and Mohammad is never wrong, told us the arctic would be ice free by last summer. Don't believe your lying eyes. ~Bob)

Corporations Moving Abroad for Tax Reasons
Excerpt: American companies are increasingly merging with foreign companies in order to move abroad where tax rates are lower, says William McBride, chief economist at the Tax Foundation. A number of factors are encouraging U.S. companies to merge with, or acquire, foreign companies and move their headquarters outside of the United States. Corporate tax rates are much lower outside of the United States, where the top federal tax rate is 35 percent.

What Is the Best Way to Measure Inequality?
Excerpt: Income inequality has been the topic du jour, and recent studies have purported to show increased income inequality and income stagnation for the average household. Are these studies accurate? Traditionally, inequality has been calculated by comparing Americans' annual cash income. Annual cash income has, in fact, stagnated, while inequality has risen. However, this is not the most accurate way to measure income disparities. Instead, income should include the value of in-kind benefits, and it should be measured over the course of a lifetime, not just one year. By adding in in-kind benefits (such as health insurance and health care), incomes in the lower and middle quintiles have actually grown, and the growth of inequality is reduced. Furthermore, measuring income inequality over a lifetime rather than over the course of a year allows analysts to take into account a person's income fluctuations -- a low-income student, for example, may become a highly-paid executive years later.

The news isn't all bad: Teenager Takes His Great-Grandmother to Prom. By Todd Starnes
Excerpt: Delores Dennison never went to her high school prom. Times were tough. Money was scarce -- just enough for the necessities. ... A few months back, Delores received a telephone call from her great-grandson. Austin is 19-years-old, a senior at Parkway High School in Rockford, Ohio. And he had a very important question for his “Granny DD.” “I asked her if she would be my prom date,” Austin told me. “How cool would it be to take my great-grandmother to prom?”

Good Man: Airman dies saving daughter's life during Ark. tornado
Excerpt: Master Sgt. Dan "Bud" Wassom II's last action in this life was using his body to shield his 5-year-old daughter Lorelai as a tornado demolished his houseSunday, said his mother, Pamela Wassom. At the hospital, Lorelai told anyone who would listen that her father had saved her life, Pamela Wassom said. (Kyrie eleison. ~Bob)

Pelosi: “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi… Why Aren’t We Talking About Something Else?”
Excerpt: Liberals just want this to go away so they can go on to their next lie. Check it out: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Republicans are engaging in “diversion, subterfuge” by continuing to talk about the attack in Benghazi.

In Okla., little argument over the final outcome for inmate who died after botched execution
Excerpt: The case prompted state officials to order a review of the way executions are carried out and has revived a national debate over whether the death penalty is inhumane. But for Miller and many other Oklahomans, Lockett — who shot and ordered the live burial of 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman — got exactly what he deserved. “It’s like the Lord said: ‘You reap what you sow,’ ” said F.D. Sexton, who had just finished eating at a diner in Checotah, which bills itself as the Steer Wrestling Capital of the World. “And she died a terrible death.” (Less than he deserved, in my book. ~Bob)

The Dividends of Racial Politics. By Star Parker
Excerpt: Isn’t race supposed to be behind us? Hasn’t America elected, twice, a black man as its president? But these days our president is far less popular than he was when, with much fanfare, he was first elected. ... Race is not going to go away because it is too useful to the party of the left. In fact, it has never been so important. (Star Parker [a black writer] is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.)

Minnesota Unilaterally Changes Name of “Asian Carp” to Avoid Offending Anyone. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: The Minnesota Senate on Monday approved John Hoffman’s (D-MN) bill to change the name “Asian carp” so called because the species originates from Asia, to “invasive carp”. (Next up: Japanese beetles. Black Holes. Irish Pennants as Marines called the little stray threads on uniforms. Lots of work to do to sanitize the language, the most important issue of the 21st century. ~Bob

Planned School Massacre Thwarted By Concerned Citizen: Minnesota Woman Tips Off Police. By Trey Sanchez
Excerpt: :According to the Star Tribune, Chelsie Schellhas was washing dishes Tuesday evening when she noticed John LaDue, who was wearing a backpack and carrying a fast food bag, cut through her backyard and make his way over to a storage locker. ... It was then that Schellhas called police. The report states that three officers arrived at the storage facility at 7:24 PM and found LaDue inside the unit surrounded by ammo boxes, a scale, a pressure cooker and bomb-making materials. He was arrested and taken to the police station.

Hollywood's Sex Abuse Cover-Up. By Mark Judge
Excerpt: The movie is a defense of Lucien Carr's stalker and abuser, and the apotheosis of Allen Ginsberg, who made no secret about his love of young boys and even defended pedophilia. In the film Ginsberg is seen as the brave rebel who won't let the administration of Columbia lie about the gay love between Kammerer and Carr. This is a lie in service of child abuse. Caleb Carr makes this quite clear. My entire interview with Caleb Carr -- who, like me, has gay friends and is opposed to homophobia -- along with is account of the events that led up to his father killing Kammerer, can be found here.

Two Shootings This Week, But Only One Got Much Media Coverage
http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/05/two-shootings-week-one-got-much-media-coverage/
Excerpt: Two workplace shootings this week. One, at FedEx, where multiple people were shot, was all over the news. What about this one? Oh yeah, FedEx was a posted "gun-free" zone, and employees were sitting ducks. In Austin, Texas, the intended victim had his own weapon to return fire, and who knows how many lives he saved, including his own.

GOOD VIDEO: Straight-Talking Oregon Senate Hopeful Thrown Out of Meeting for Talking Straight.
Excerpt: Mark Callahan, a Republican U.S. Senate hopeful in Oregon, was thrown out of a candidate endorsement interview conducted by Portland publication Willamette Week after calling out the disrespectful reporters as "thin-skinned liberals" -- and it was all captured on video. Several GOP candidates were present for the paper to choose who it would endorse in the upcoming primary. (See, he was redundant--can't have that. ~Bob)

American Indian Murder, Inc. By Lloyd Billingsley
Excerpt: David Horowitz hired Van Patter to keep the books for the Educational Opportunities Corp., which ran a school for children of the Black Panthers. Betty Van Patter soon disappeared and “by the time the police fished her battered body out of San Francisco Bay in January 1975, I knew that her killers were the Panthers themselves.” Horowitz subsequently discovered that “the Panthers had killed more than a dozen people in the course of conducting extortion, prostitution and drug rackets in the Oakland ghetto. While these criminal activities were taking place, the group enjoyed the support of the American left, the Democratic Party.”

Taking a Toll: Administration wants to let states charge on interstate highways
Excerpt: In a major shift for how governments fund transportation projects, the administration wants to let states charge tolls on interstate highways. A federal ban currently bars states from doing so in most places, but the latest White House push could change that. Tucked into the GROW AMERICA Act, the White House's $302 billion transportation bill, is a toll provision that calls for eliminating “the prohibition on tolling existing free Interstate highways, subject to the approval of the Secretary, for purposes of reconstruction." (NOW we know why there are solar-powered surveillance cameras installed at all on/off ramps of interstates quietly over the years; toll booths can limit freedom of migration; can block and sort....Barb. Illinois--Obama-land--already does. ~Bob)

Excerpt: I have little sympathy for a rich old goat of a billionaire that forsakes his wife for little eye candy bimbos who would stoop to sleep with an 82 year old man for the furs and the diamonds. And I have even less sympathy for billionaire slum lords who get rich on Section 8 housing vouchers and illegal Mexicans. Having said that, there is so much more to say about the Donald Sterling fiasco and what the ramifications of this incident might have on your own personal liberties.

The media is turning on President Obama. By Michael Goodwin
Excerpt: With multiple crises spiraling out of control around the world, stories about the Obama presidency are taking on the air of postmortems. What went wrong, who’s to blame, what next — even The New York Times is starting to recognize that Dear Leader is a global flop.
“Obama Suffers Setbacks in Japan and the Mideast,” the paper declared on Friday’s front page. The double whammy of failure pushed the growing Russian menace in ­Europe to inside pages, but even they were chock-full of reports about utopia gone wrong. (Let's hope this is really true and the media finally climb out of Obama's pocket and start doing their job. --Del)

Beyond affirmative action to colorblindness. By Ben S. Carson
Excerpt: As a child growing up in Detroit and Boston, I had many opportunities to experience the ugly face of racism and witnessed the devastating toll exacted by its mean-spirited nature.
I was a victim of the racism of low expectations for black children, but in retrospect, I can see that many of those attitudes were based on ignorance. Large numbers of white people actually believed that blacks were intellectually inferior, and there were a host of other inaccurate beliefs that whites held about blacks and that blacks held about whites. (This man is not just intelligent and accomplished, but wise. He comes from as "authentic" a history of Black experience as any, but is not, first and foremost, Black. He is first and foremost a good man, an American, a hard working, responsible person, and the content of his character is beyond question. Or should be, but since he is a conservative, and religious, of course that means he gets to be attacked no matter what. People may say he doesn't have the experience to be a good politician. Maybe we need people in politics without the kind of experience that so many of our politicians have had. I believe, if elected, he would take great care to learn what he needed to learn, to surround himself with highly competent people, and do a damn find job. I hope he runs for something, so I can vote for him. --Del)

Duty, Honor, Country...vanishing sentiments
Excerpt: Duty, Honor, Country are in danger of vanishing... from the living rooms of America and the Halls of our public institutions. They are a dying sentiment, reserved for a few good men. A band of brothers few; whose, flame burns dimly, in the twilight of their nations greatness. The question remains who will rekindle the fire to serve: Duty, honor, country. (I have never been to a TEA Party rally and have no intentions of going, but Col. Nelson's comments are dead on. --MasterGuns.)

Obamacare news

Bending the cost curve...up! Biggest Jump in Health Care Spending in over 30 Years
excerpt: According to advance estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care spending grew a whopping 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014, reports Business Insider. The jump is the biggest percent change in health care spending in more than 30 years -- in 1980, health care spending rose 10 percent in the third quarter of the year. After adjusting for inflation, the United States is spending more on health care than ever before in history.

Obamacare’s doom. By George F. Will
Excerpt: It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The ACA passed the Senate on a party-line vote, and without a Democratic vote to spare, after a series of unsavory transactions that purchased the assent of several shrewdly extortionate Democrats. What will be argued on Thursday is that what was voted on — the ACA — was indisputably a revenue measure and unquestionably did not originate in the House, which later passed the ACA on another party-line vote.

More Americans Have Been Harmed by Obamacare Than Helped. By Conn Carroll
Excerpt: Take the recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, a poll conducted by an organization (the Kaiser Family Foundation) entirely sympathetic to Obama and Obamacare. Kaiser found that while just 18 percent of Americans say they have benefited from Obamacare, 30 percent say they have been "negatively affected." ... But among those who have been harmed by Obamacare, 54 percent said the law increased their health care costs, 9 percent said it decreased their options/choices, and 8 percent said they opposed the individual mandate. Surprisingly, just 6 percent of those claiming they have been harmed by Obamacare cited insurance policy cancellations as the cause.

Observation stays don't count for Medicare coverage, many seniors harshly learn
Excerpt “I just couldn't believe it,” Rickett said. “I was definitely in the hospital. I had to have surgery. I had a rod and a plate put in my foot.” An estimated 600,000 Medicare beneficiaries spent three or more nights in hospitals last year but did not qualify for nursing home stays under Medicare rules, according to the July report from the Inspector General. (There is a much longer message going around about this, quoting some gentleman somewhere about his personal experience. But it's simpler to show an actual article that explains the situation. If you are on Medicare and go to the hospital and they want to admit you for "Observation", the answer must be NO. Either they admit you for treatment or not, unless you want to be totally liable for whatever outlandish bills the hospital and doctors come up with for those days of observation. A nice little feature of the system that hardly anyone knows about. --Del. Hey, if we are going to pay for free birth control for yuppie law students, we have to cut someplace. Suck it up, old folks. ~Bob)

Obamacare's Success Depends on Where You Live. By Kevin Glass
Excerpt: A new report out from Avalere Health estimates the success of Obamacare exchanges by state enrollments. The bottom line: Obamacare's sign-up success largely depends on where you live. Some states are doing great when it comes to signing people up for Obamacare. Some... not so much:

Religion of Peace News

Nine soldiers killed as Islamist militants attack security HQ in Libya
Excerpt: Nine Libyan soldiers were killed on Friday when Islamist fighters tried to storm the Benghazi city security headquarters in an attack authorities blamed on the militant group Ansar al-Sharia. (That damn video is still causing trouble. Time for some more "lead from behind" action. ~Bob)

Syria truce 'to let rebels withdraw from besieged Homs'
Excerpt: Also on Friday, two bombs in Hama province reportedly killed at least 18. Eleven children were among the dead after suicide bombers struck in the villages of Jibrin and al-Humeiri, both under government control, state media said.

Brunei: ‘Stone the gays’ law to be phased in from tomorrow
As progressives say, "All cultures are equally valid--who are we to judge?" ~Bob. Excerpt: The Sultan of Brunei has confirmed that a law calling for homosexuals to be stoned to death will be phased in from tomorrow. The law was announced earlier this month, and replaces the maximum ten-year prison sentence for homosexuality with death by stoning.

Arresting Churchill. By Robert Spencer
Excerpt: Paul Weston, the chairman of a new political party in the United Kingdom called Liberty GB, was making a speech Saturday outside the Winchester Guildhall in Hampshire when suddenly everything went wrong. Weston made the mistake of quoting a notorious Islamophobe, whereupon a woman in the audience, disgusted by this hate speech, contacted police, and Weston was duly arrested. The Islamophobe in question was an obscure British politician of the distant past named Winston Churchill, who apparently had something to do with leading the British to victory over something called Nazi Germany in a conflict apparently known as “World War II.” However, the Nazis were vociferous critics of Zionism, and thus couldn’t have been all bad.

Eleven terrorists with links to Al Qaeda have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the disappearance of MH370
Excerpt: A group of 11 terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning bomb attacks in Muslim countries.

Paradise for terrorists: 36 Bali bombers that killed 92 Australians are walking free
Excerpt: FOR the survivors of the Bali bomb attacks it is a terrifying tally, but for the families of the 92 Australians killed it is simply heartbreaking.
All 36 Indonesian terrorists who were sentenced to anything less than life for their parts in the 2002 and 2005 bar and restaurant ­attacks, which killed a further 130 victims, are now free.

Excerpt: This report doesn’t give a hint as to Musab Mohamed Masmari’s motive; it doesn’t even give his full name. But in another report from February, we learn that an informant told the FBI before this attack that Masmari may be planning “terrorist activity,” and that Masmari “opined that homosexuals should be exterminated.”

Excerpt: Iranian security authorities raided an Easter service in a house-church in southern Tehran, on Friday, April 18, arresting those in attendance.

Car Bombs for Allah (Four Stories)

No comments:

Post a Comment