I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.
Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.
Worth reading: The Trump Card by Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: The boomlet for Donald Trump as a Republican nominee for President of the United States
Obama, Ryan and You
Excerpt: Both parties are being disingenuous about Medicare reform. So let me be the first to open Pandora's box and reveal three unpleasant truths. First, health care spending is growing at twice the rate of growth of our income — clearly an unsustainable and undesirable spending path. Second, any plan to reduce the growth rate of federal spending on health care without doing something about health care spending as a whole will necessarily shift costs — to the elderly, to the poor, to state governments, and to anybody other than the federal government. Third, neither party is offering a serious plan to control health care spending as a whole.
Raw Intelligence Report: A View from Syria
Excerpt: Support for the protests is mixed. Many of those out in the streets are there because someone close to them was killed. Think tribal mentality: I wasn’t mad at you before but you killed my cousin/brother/friend and now I am mad. People are gathering to defend their honor. There is almost no organization inside Syria United Kingdom Syria
Wrong advice, wrong policy
Excerpt: There has never been a comprehensive independent scientific review of any IPCC report by a member government or by an official audit body. Nonetheless, the following five events, drawn from a much larger group of happenings, have demonstrated to all the political nature of the IPCC and its scientific advisers, and greatly damaged the credibility of the organisation as a source of accurate policy advice on climate change: (From the Australian magazine Quadrant. Australia
IED Found on Texas Highway near Brownsville
Excerpt: Brownsville
A concerned citizen found the device around 4:54 p.m., police spokesman Eddie Garcia said.
Authorities shut down the expressway’s southbound lane from FM 1732 to
Alton Gloor Boulevard
Alton Gloor Boulevard
George Stephanopoulos: Nation's 'Gas Gripes' Are 'Knocking Down' Obama's Polls
Excerpt: The former Democratic operative turned journalist tried to put the best spin on Barack Obama's growing problems: "And, Jake, these gas prices are also knocking down President Obama's poll numbers, which is why he's out there nearly every day addressing this problem." Reporter Jake Tapper, on the other hand, provided a more balanced look, pointing out, "When President Obama was sworn in, gas averaged $1.84 a gallon. Today, it's $3.86. And as prices have spiked since January, the President's approval ratings have sunk."
Chris Matthews' Entire British Panel Corrects His Claim Blair Was Closer to Clinton - No, It Was Bush
Chris Matthews' Entire British Panel Corrects His Claim Blair Was Closer to Clinton - No, It Was Bush
Excerpt: There was a marvelous moment on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show" when the host literally stuck his foot in his mouth claiming in front of four British journalists that former Prime Minister Tony Blair "was much closer emotionally and politically to Bill Clinton" than George W. Bush. Guest's Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast and Gillian Tett of the Financial Times both immediately shook their heads as the BBC's Katty Kay and Matt Frei said "No" and "Wrong" ...
Boehner: Obama not being upfront about problem of deficit
Excerpt: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has accused President Obama of not being upfront with Americans about the country’s fiscal problems and criticized the president for not embracing more of his own fiscal commission’s ideas.
Boring but important: Who Owns the Fed?
Excerpt: Have you heard? The Federal Reserve System raked in profits of $79.3 billion last year, almost triple what runner-up ExxonMobil made. The Fed’s business model is a snap—just print money—and unlike poor beleaguered Exxon, the Fed has no competition to worry about. This means a gigantic windfall for the big banks because, although they don’t like to admit it, they actually own the Fed. Or not. These are all half-truths and distortions, all too easy to find on the Internet. Bloggers like to begin with the discovery that commercial banks hold shares of Fed stock and those shares pay an annual dividend. A further discovery that the Fed makes big profits is all it takes to send some of them off on a conspiracy tangent. Because shareholders in a profit-seeking corporation are its owners, so it must be with the Fed, they think. Profiteering, world-government schemes, and who knows what else, must surely follow. As I will show, these half-baked ideas are distractions from the serious issues that surround the Federal Reserve System.
Health Reform and Medical Malpractice Reform
Excerpt: The final version of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) included only two minor provisions related to medical malpractice. Section 6801 encourages states "to develop and test alternatives to the civil litigation system," say David A. Hyman, University of Illinois , and William M. Sage, University of Texas at Austin
Syrian tanks, soldiers lay siege to southern towns
When he’s “killing his own people,” doesn’t the Obama Doctrine call for a “no-fly_ zone and bombing everything that moves? ~Bob. Excerpt: Syrian leaders deployed tanks and troops against unarmed demonstrators Monday in a sharp escalation of their effort to crush the widening protest movement, prompting the Obama administration to condemn the deadly crackdown and weigh additional sanctions against the embattled government. The Syrian army entered the city of Daraa , the cradle of anti-government unrest near the border with Jordan Jableh
Taliban digs tunnel to free prisoners from Kandahar
If you shoot t6hem, you don’t have an escape problem. ~Bob. Excerpt: So much had changed in the three years since the Taliban blew up the barrier wall at Sarposa prison and sprung 900 inmates: imposing rows of concrete walls backed by razor wire, floodlights, video cameras, sand bags and 40 well-armed American soldiers watching from perimeter guard towers with Afghan police. Kandahar
Paper: Leaked documents describe potential al-Qaida plots discussed by Guantanamo
Excerpt: Classified military files obtained by the WikiLeaks website reveal a range of potential al-Qaida plots against the United States U.S. military assessments of terrorism suspects being held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba New York U.S.
Excerpt: A spokesman for an opposition coalition said on Monday that his group had received assurances in order to accept the deal. "We have given our final accord to the [Gulf] initiative after having received assurances from our brothers and American and European friends on our objections to certain clauses in the plan," Mohammed Qahtan said. He added that the Common Front, a Yemeni parliamentary opposition coalition, had notified Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) secretary-general Abdullatif al-Zayani of the decision. But many pro-democracy protesters, who are not members of the coalition that agreed to the peace talks, appear to be unconvinced by the Gulf-proposed deal and have called for fresh demonstrations, as security forces continued their crackdown. (Three down, another dozen or so to go. But, it seems unlikely we’ll enjoy what we’ve bought. Ron P.)
Strike Kills No. 2 Insurgent in Afghanistan
Excerpt: International Security Assistance Force officials confirmed today that an April 13 airstrike in Kunar province killed the No. 2 targeted insurgent in Afghanistan Afghanistan and Pakistan
FDA to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products
Excerpt: The Food and Drug Administration said Monday it plans to regulate smokeless electronic cigarettes as tobacco products and won't try to regulate them under stricter rules for drug-delivery devices. (…) The FDA lost a court case last year after trying to treat e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices, rather than tobacco products, because e-cigarettes heat nicotine extracted from tobacco. (…) Some sellers of e-cigarettes sued the FDA in 2009 after the agency told customs officials to refuse entry of shipments into the U.S.
Smugglers As Heroes
Excerpt: Smuggling is illegal. It becomes a sometimes-nasty criminal enterprise because those who engage in it tend to be people with an overall lower regard for the law. Since smuggling is illegal, disputes must be settled with guns and violence instead of courts. Plus, police and other public officials are corrupted. Worst of all is the reduced respect for laws by the public at large. After the 18th Amendment's repeal, virtually all of the crime and corruption associated with Prohibition disappeared. Not many Americans are aware of today's big smuggling activity -- cigarette smuggling. Confiscatory taxes that are as high as $7 a pack, in New York City
Human Smuggling Case Evokes South America 's Terror-Linked History
Excerpt: A Somali man used Brazil as a staging ground to smuggle people, including members of a terrorist group into the United States , witnesses are expected to testify during a sentencing hearing Thursday in San Antonio
How Health Reform Punishes Work
Excerpt: Supporters of ObamaCare acknowledge it will have some unintended consequences. Yet surprisingly little attention has been focused on the law's most problematic provision: government subsidies to help individuals and families purchase health insurance. This new entitlement—which the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates will cost more than $100 billion per year once it is fully implemented—will damage the country's long-term fiscal outlook. It also will introduce far-reaching negative effects on rewards to work and bizarre new inequities into American life. The health law establishes insurance exchanges—regulated marketplaces in which individuals and small businesses can shop for coverage—and minimum standards for the insurance policies that can be offered. Because the policies will be so costly, there's a subsidy for buyers that phases out as family income rises. This sounds reasonable—but the subsidies required to make a "qualifying" insurance policy affordable are so large that their phaseout creates chaos.
Egyptians Cool Toward U.S. ; Want to Scrap Peace Treaty With Israel
Excerpt: A new survey of Egyptians’ attitudes two months after President Hosni Mubarak’s departure depicts a society in which the Muslim Brotherhood is broadly popular, the United States is not, and more than half the country would like to scrap Egypt ’s peace treaty with Israel Pew Research Center Egypt
Excerpt: At a fundraiser in Southern California last week, where pump prices are the highest in the country, Obama acknowledged the political peril of high gas prices. He said, “My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people.” He tried to show that he feels motorists’ pain. “I admit, Secret Service doesn’t let me fill up the pump anymore,” he said. “But it hasn’t been that long since I did.” True. He had to pump his own gas when he commuted from the manicured lawns of Hyde Park with its private police force to whichever decrepit part of town two miles away he was “community-organizing” in. The Post’s reporters, Steven Mufson and Jon Cohen, neatly illustrate the “stubborn nature” of J-school reporting on this issue and “the difficulty of weaning” the media “off its dependence” on lazy tropes:
Remember this when you next fill up. ~Bob. Excerpt: Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska Chukchi Seas Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”
Economic Study: Despite Obama's Claim, the Poor are not Getting Poorer
Excerpt: In his mid-April speech on the budget deficit, President Obama echoed conventional wisdom when he cited the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer as a reason to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to reduce the national debt. Research, published at The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, from Cornell economist Richard Burkhauser, Joint Committee on Taxation economist Jeff Larrimore, and Indiana University
The Hidden Tax: Regulation
Excerpt: We see what Uncle Sam makes us pay every April. But a new edition of an annual report shows there’s an insidious fee we pay on a daily basis. (…) Yet we forget there’s a hidden tax which gnaws at our pocketbooks and the economy at large every day. It was pointed out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in their “Ten Thousand Commandments” report, released on Tax Day. Regulations cost $1.75 trillion in compliance costs, according to the Small Business Administration. That’s greater than the record federal budget deficit — projected at $1.48 trillion for FY 2011 — and greater even than all corporate pretax profits. (Holy, uh, socks, Batman! I knew there were over 75,000 pages of regulations, and I’ve always despised beancounters—partly as a matter of principle; it's like hating music critics that can’t sing or play, but still manage to find fault—but I never dreamed the cost could be this high. And, this figure is from the SBA, not some political group trying to make a point. Ron P.)
How the Obama administration is Using Executive Power to Support Union Goals
Excerpt: Indeed, it marks a new departure in the corporatist and statist policy of the Obama administration. For the first time, a government board dominated by pro-union appointees is being empowered to tell a private corporation where to build a new factory. The NLRB decision, as an editorial in The Examiner points out, violated the existing Boeing agreement with the IAM that allows the firm to build in other areas. Boeing must have been stunned at the NLRB’s complaint. (…) Evidently the money given by the government to Boeing in contracts, Export-Import Bank loans and the like is not as valuable to the administration now as using its power to placate the AFL-CIO and the IAM, which gives almost all of its contributions to Democrats, and hardly any to Republicans. A new election is looming, and the administration needs those union workers to get out the vote, man the phone banks and take to the streets in the forthcoming campaign.
The Finest Movie about the Railroad Industry Since Silver Streak
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/04/25/atlas_shrugged_review/?singlepage=trueExcerpt: But actually, as the film unfolded and gathered steam — to use an appropriately railroad-themed analogy — I sorta, kinda, perhaps in spite of myself, began to like it. (WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.) I’d say the film was more enjoyable than any of the Star Wars prequels, but that’s setting the bar awfully low, in retrospect. But I guess that’s the trade-off. In the era of political correctness, you can have zillion-dollar films that are shows about nothing, or a slightly stiff low-budget film that will give you plenty to talk—and argue—about afterwards.
Stuxnet Has Completely Paralyzed Iran’s Bushehr Plant
Excerpt: … Stuxnet has wreaked serious and perhaps fatal havoc on the foundations of energy structure and the operating systems of the Bushehr nuclear installation. According to the Green Liaison news group, over the past year and a half the Bushehr plant has incurred serious damage and has lost major capabilities. An individual involved in Iran ’s nuclear activities reports that this virus was placed in the system by one of the foreign experts contracted to Iran
Excerpt: The Professors are Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC and Don Giljum, business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers at Ameren UE in St. Louis
President Obama Chose To Worship On Easter At A Church That Hosted A Palestinian Hate-Israel Conference
Excerpt: It would be such a heart-warming picture of religious devotion except that the mainstream press neglected to mention a couple of things about the church which Obama chose for his Easter worship. The Shiloh Baptist Church hosted an anti-Israel hate fest in 2009at the same time as an associate minister of the church, Adam Russell Taylor, was serving as an Obama administration White House Fellow in the Office of Cabinet Affairs, Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Tin Foil Turbans: The 6 Stupidest Conspiracy Theories that Millions of Muslims Believe
Excerpt: Of course, the unpleasant fact is that the Muslim world has been in decline for centuries. Since this decline contradicts their self-image as a superior people, there must be some other explanation for their backwardness. Conspiracy theories provide that explanation, while short circuiting the very self-criticism that international Islam desperately needs to get itself out of its hole. It’s easy to laugh at these conspiracy theories, and maybe watch Jesse Ventura’s new show about them, “just for laughs.” However, as memorably laid out in one of my favorite books — The Cost of Deception: The Seduction of Modern Myths and Urban Legends, by John A. Williams — conspiracy theories, far from being harmless fun, actually pollute the public square. Misinformation undermines civil society by making trust in one’s fellow man a mug’s game. Paranoid cynicism becomes the default “sophisticated” worldview.
The Last Days of Ethanol?
Excerpt: A prosaic commodity—corn—is making strange political bedfellows. But their stance makes infinite sense. They oppose heavily subsidized ethanol, made from corn. Opposition comes from such diverse advocacy groups as the Democrat-aligned activist organization MoveOn.org to the Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks. Other opponents ranging across the ideological spectrum include the American Bankers Association, the Sierra Club and the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. They believe, as do sensible Americans, that using food for fuel is public policy insanity. The Environmental Protection Agency, keeping true to its usual irresponsible actions, decided earlier this year to allow the use of fuel containing ethanol in any gas-powered car or truck An agency that is supposed to protect the environment looks the other way despite such environmental consequences as water pollution from heavy application of farm chemicals applied to corn fields to increase production, clearing of wildlife habitat, and plowing marginal and erodible lands to boost corn supply. (Another green Chimera proves a disaster—but follow the money. ~Bob.)
'Leading from behind' could doom O
Excerpt: The reliably liberal New Yorker magazine isn't usually in the habit of presenting gifts to the Republican Party, but it has just published three little words that may prove central to the GOP effort to defeat President Obama next year. Those words are "leading from behind," and they appear at the end of a Ryan Lizza article on Obama's foreign policy. Lizza didn't coin the phrase. "Leading from behind" is a direct quote from of "one of [Obama's] advisers," who is describing his boss' policy on Libya. That same adviser goes on to say that the effort to lead from behind is "so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world. But it's necessary for shepherding us through this phase." And there you have it: the 2012 campaign against Obama's foreign policy in a nutshell. By the time Election Day rolls around, if the GOP knows what's good for it, the phrase "leading from behind" will be the "yes, we can" of 2012.
Petition to Redistribute GPA Scores?
Excerpt” Watch as Republican students at the University of California-Merced ask their Democrat counterparts to sign a petition that would redistribute excessive GPA points to the less fortunate. Do you think they will get any takers?
Iraq, Iran and the Next Move
Excerpt: The United States told the Iraqi government last week that if it wants U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond the deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, as stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, it would have to inform the United States quickly. Unless a new agreement is reached soon, the United States will be unable to remain. The implication in the U.S. position is that a complex planning process must be initiated to leave troops there and delays will not allow that process to take place. What is actually going on is that the United States is urging the Iraqi government to change its mind on U.S. withdrawal, and it would like Iraq to change its mind right now in order to influence some of the events taking place in the Persian Gulf. The Shiite uprising in Bahrain and the Saudi intervention, along with events in Yemen, have created an extremely unstable situation in the region, and the United States is afraid that completing the withdrawal would increase the instability.
The Left's Favorite Traitor --Treason Has Become a Fashion Statement
Excerpt: The only crime our government has committed against PFC Bradley Manning, the pudgy little arch-traitor adored by America’s left, is that the taxpayer is still paying to house, feed and medically treat him. After brazenly committing the worst security breach since the Rosenbergs passed our atomic bomb secrets to Stalin sixty-odd years ago—then bragging about it—Manning should have been tried by military tribunal, convicted based on the impregnable evidence he himself provided, sentenced to death and hanged promptly. Manning should no longer be an issue.
Shooting Jews at Prayer (Updated)
Excerpt: Palestinian police shouting "Allahu akbar" opened fire on Jews praying at Joseph's Tomb Sunday, killing one and wounding four. The worshippers were attacked as they were exiting the prayer site by PA policemen, who according to the IDF "were fully aware that the men they fired on were Israeli worshipers who were unarmed and posed no threat..." The murder was followed by Palestinians rioting and burning tires at Joseph's Tomb The attack is far from an aberration; it is an expectation of the religious intolerance Jewish worshippers have received and can expect if Palestinians gain their demands for control of Judaism's holiest sites. The incident is not the first Arab violence at Joseph's Tomb. Under the Oslo Agreement, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was committed to protecting it and other holy sites, Jewish and Christian, and to ensure access by all. On October 7th, 2000, Palestinians mobs overran the site, killed a soldier, and ransacked the place, burning Jewish prayer books, and reducing the sacred site to a smoldering heap of rubble.
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