Short Health Update from Monday's Surgical Bronchoscopy--the
news was neutral. ~Bob
Book Recommendation: Apache: Inside the Cockpit of the World's Most Deadly Fighting
Machine. By Ed Macy
A terrific combat memoir by a Brit chopper pilot in Afghanistan .
The details on the Apache and flying it are fascinating, but the combat scenes
are riveting. I literally couldn't put it down for the last few chapters, read
late into the night. Well written; military history buffs will love it. ~Bob
Excerpt: It is not easy to demonize people who have spent
hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to help educate poor
children. But some members of the education establishment are taking a shot at
it. The Walton Family Foundation — created by the people who created Walmart —
has given more than $300 million to charter schools, voucher programs and other
educational enterprises concerned with the education of poor and minority
students across the country. The Walton Family Foundation gave more than $58
million to the KIPP schools, which have had spectacular success in raising the
test scores of children in ghettoes
Worth Reading
Excerpt: The nation is experiencing a natural gas and oil
boom due in no small part to hydraulic fracturing. In many states, hydraulic
fracturing has been the driver behind economic growth. But the process is among
the environmentalist movement’s top targets. However, the scientific research
on the water-related concerns associated with fracturing suggests
environmentalists’ concerns are overblown: although the risks are real, their
occurrences are rare. (Ban fracking--support the Democrats #WaronthePoor. ~Bob)
Worth Reading
Excerpt: Yet a month after Obama's speech, two Harvard
economists, two Berkeley
economists, and one U.S. Treasury economist failed to find decreasing economic
mobility in a working paper they jointly published via the nonpartisan National
Bureau of Economic Research. "Contrary to the popular perception,"
the authors wrote, "we find that percentile rank-based measures of
intergenerational mobility have remained extremely stable for the 1971-1993
birth cohorts." According to their research, a child born into the bottom
quintile of income distribution in 1971 had an 8.4 percent chance to reach the
top quintile as an adult. For a child born in 1986, that chance had risen to 9
percent. If anything, they concluded, "mobility may have increased
slightly in recent cohorts."
where the other children are far behind in academic
performance. D.C. Prep, in Washington ,
whose students are mostly poor and black, has also received grants from the
Walton Family Foundation. Its test scores likewise exceed those of traditional
neighborhood schools, as well as the test scores of other local charter
schools.
In California
Excerpt: Pete Alexander celebrated the news that a federal
court in California had thrown out this state’s strict requirements for
obtaining a concealed-handgun permit — among the toughest in the nation — by
calling the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to apply for a permit he had
long wanted. “I’m a gun enthusiast,” said Mr. Alexander, a construction
contractor who lives in Fullerton .
“Crime is encroaching on our neighborhood, and I don’t feel as safe as I used
to. This is adding to the police force.” Mr. Alexander turned out to be the
beginning of a flood. (Interesting... but this will be in courts for years. Meanwhile,
in one place, the delay for getting interviewed for a permit is 30 months! But
if you live in CA, now is the time to get your name out there for a permit. --Del )
The
Democrats #WaronthePoor: The
'Unintended Effects' of Government-Mandated Ethanol
Excerpt: Moreover, the negative
consequences of including corn ethanol in the fuel supply are enormous. In
2000, more than 90 percent of the corn grown in the United States went to feed people
and livestock, including many people in undeveloped countries, and less than 5
percent was used to produce ethanol. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 dictated
that gasoline contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. By 2013, 40 percent
of the corn crop went to produce ethanol, 45 percent fed livestock, and just 15
percent was used for foods and beverages, according to a report from Forbes. (Corn-derived ethanol has been a bad idea from Day One,
but it SOUNDED so good to people and got sold by the environmental lobby, and
the government made it a policy without ever really understanding what it
meant. And it meant spending more energy to generate the alcohol than we get
back from it, while raising the price of food all over the world. Another
stupid move made on the basis of emotional response. And once in play, it makes
the corn growers more money than corn for food does, so they have lobbied to
keep it this wasteful way. And our politicians have mostly sold out to them.
Now there are some congress people who are ready to kill the subsidy and void
the rules requiring ethanol in fuel. Let's hope the rest of them climb out of
the pockets of the lobbyists and finally do the right thing for the country. --Del
Europeans detained in
Ukraine, raising stakes
Excerpt: International negotiators rushed to eastern Ukraine on
Saturday to seek the release of European military monitors who were captured
Friday and promptly branded “spies” by the pro-Russia militia that seized them.
Ignorance And Cronyism Are The Only Settled Sciences. Derek Hunter
Excerpt: You’d have better luck getting a devout
Scientologist to say L. Ron Hubbard was a horrible writer than you would to get
a progressive to admit the “science” behind climate change is not all it’s
cracked up to be. For one thing, it is based on models of
what could happen in 100 years, even though those models are mostly
unreliable when you use them to map what happened in the last 30.
Janet Yellen is shocked that the Fed’s price models don’t
work. By Nick Sorrentino
Excerpt: Ms. Yellen says doesn’t understand why inflation is
running hotter in the US than her models say it should be and why it ran cooler
in Japan recently than her models predicted. Models, it’s always the models
with Keynesians.
Nancy Pelosi is a
Power Hungry Monster
Excerpt: For many conservatives, one of the greatest
problems in our country today isn’t necessarily a particular issue, but the
people who make the decisions on those issues. Our politicians routinely push
the country in directions that the majority of Americans disagree with. A few
examples to provide evidence: Obamacare, abortion, gay marriage, raising taxes,
sending money and aid to countries that hate us and so much more. In state
after state, politicians prefer to legislate rather than to allow referendum or
popular opinion to decide the many issues of our day. California Representative
Nancy Pelosi is a perfect example of what so many of us hate about American
politics today.
Some gun advocates
are a bit more explicit about it than others. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt
After beginning with the usual call for "common sense
safety laws," Lucia McBath, national spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, writes:
No one said this fight would be easy and
I fully understand that changing the current gun culture across the nation will not take place
overnight. It will be a slow and sometimes emotionally taxing campaign, a
crusade that our opponents will often deride and say can't be won. But I also
understand that it a fight on which we must not back down. They want to
change the culture of gun
owners, not just the laws they must obey. I'm sure you can imagine other
communities that would not react with warmth if you appeared one day and announced,
"Hi, I'm here to change your culture!" I'm sure most of these
progressive gun control advocates think that one of history's greatest crimes
was the way that European colonists changed and in some cases eradicated the
cultures of native peoples… but in the here and now, they see absolutely
nothing wrong with going forth, encountering people who live differently from
them, and declaring, "these savages have to be civilized!" In short,
these progressives are intolerant of diversity.
The homophobic left: Straight talk about gay
Republican Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio
Excerpt: For instance, DeMaio has been the target of
homophobic attacks. But where are those attacks coming from? It’s not always
from the far right social conservatives you’d expect; rather, it’s been from
DeMaio’s left – the liberal and Democrat-affiliated groups that you’d think
would be proud that an openly gay successful businessman has decided to run for
office. One false attack drew the attention of the San Diego Ethics Commission.
An anonymous left-wing group funded a SuperPac and sent mailers of DeMaio
Photoshopped next to a drag queen to neighborhoods with a majority of elderly
and African-American voters, knowing that such a photo would depress support
for DeMaio. (The Left will be openly homophobic when it suits their purposes.
They have no principles other than winning. -- Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt)
Excerpt: In the course of his evangelizing, Mann has shown
little tolerance for heretics. A recent op-ed he penned for the New York
Times is illustrative. “If You See Something, Say Something,” the headline
blares, mimicking New York subway warnings and suggesting a not-so-subtle
parallel between the dangers of global-warming “denial” and the murderous
terrorism that brought down the Twin Towers. In the opening paragraph of the
piece, Mann castigates his critics as “a fringe minority of our populace” who
“cling[] to an irrational rejection of well-established science.” These
aristarchs, Mann contends, represent a “virulent strain of anti-science [that]
infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see
on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist.” Alas,
such comparisons are commonplace. In the rough and tumble of debate,
climate-change skeptics are routinely recast as climate-change deniers, an
insidious echo of the phrase “Holocaust deniers” and one that has been
contrived with no purpose other than to exclude the speaker from polite
society.
Excerpt: The Philippines
and the U.S. signed an
agreement that will boost the American troop presence in the Southeast Asian nation, as President Barack Obama said America ’s strategic rebalancing to Asia isn’t aimed at combating a
rising China.
How Now White Cowman?
By Mark Steyn
Excerpt: Like everyone else, Gavin McInnes has weighed
in on Nevada
rancher Cliven Bundy's observations on "the Negro". Mr McInnes concludes: "This isn't about some old guy's views on
slavery. It's about government control. We're not saying Bundy is the messiah
and we accept him as our personal savior. We're saying the government is
wrong." Let's stipulate that Cliven Bundy is a racist. Let's also assume,
if only to save time, that he's Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic. So
what? Does that make criticizing the Bureau of Land Management
"racist" or "homophobic"?
Excerpt: For the Democratic Party, history began and ended
with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every
world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic
Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House.
If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another
country hated America ,
it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia ,
Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica .
New York Rep. Grimm
arrested, facing federal charges
Excerpt: New York Rep. Michael Grimm was arrested Monday
morning, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to Fox News, as federal
prosecutors prepare to announce charges against the Republican congressman.
What Fourth
Amendment? Police Raids Go Beyond the War on Drugs. By Lucy Steigerwald
Excerpt: On April 15, seven police officers in Peoria , Illinois Del )
Michael
Bloomberg’s gun control team happy to take your questions … if you can get past
armed security. By Doug Powers
Excerpt: Watts had some
fairly beefy looking people around too. Gun control advocates wouldn’t be
using armed guards, would they? Well, if you were expecting a large
amount of hypocrisy from a group funded by a global
warming alarmist with eleven homes and
a private jet,
give your instincts a pat on the back.
Unhealthy Trends in Nation Beg for Conservative Leadership.
By Star Parker
Excerpt: And young Americans are far more likely to likely
to embrace non-traditional values such as same-sex marriage and out-of-wedlock
childbirth than older Americans. So it should come as no surprise that over
time, conjugal marriage is disappearing as a core American institution and that
increasing numbers – now over 40 percent – of babies are born today to unwed
mothers.
SWAT-ing Used by
Liberals to Target Conservatives
Excerpt: What would you do if you suddenly realized that
your house was surrounded by a heavily armed SWAT unit and they were calling
for your surrender? If you don’t think it could happen to you, then put
yourself in the shoes of a 17 year old computer gaming teenager in Long Beach , New
York
Excerpt: Until recently, I thought that the latter attitude
had become completely disreputable. The idea that we should tear down the good
just because they are good or the successful just because they are successful
is bad economics, bad ethics and an embarrassingly childish form of envy. But
it has recently re-emerged in large part because of Thomas Piketty's new
book, Capital in the Twenty First Century. Piketty argues
that we have been experiencing and will continue to experience growing
inequality of income and wealth. To prevent this he argues for punitive taxes
on high incomes and a worldwide tax on wealth. Piketty's book has created near
ecstasy on the political left, where it is taken as an unquestioned article of
faith that inequality of income and wealth is bad. ... What is more interesting
than the book itself is that the left now seems free to say things they
previously would have been embarrassed to say.
The Piketty
Phenomenon. By David Brooks
Excerpt: You go to fund-raisers or school functions and
there are always hedge fund managers and private equity people around. You get
more attention than them at parties, but your whole apartment could fit in
their dining room. You struggle with tuition, but their kids go off on ski
weekends. You wait in line at the post office, but they have staff to do it for
them. You see firsthand the explosion of wealth at the tippy-top. ... The
situation is ripe for the sort of class conflict the French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu used to describe: pitting those who are rich in cultural capital
against those who are rich in financial capital.
Excerpt: I had the pleasure of moderating the forum. I hate
debates and I made that clear to the candidates. The modern American political
debate consists of reporters with a liberal worldview asking gotcha questions
to conservatives that, by intention or otherwise, try to put them in a bad
light. When the conversation shifts to policy, the candidates try to
micro-nuance their agreements to make it sound like they disagree.
Excerpt: And that so many Americans – of all races — have
turned against him and his bigotry is a good thing. That’s what’s missing from
coverage of the Donald Sterling story. And if you want to know how seriously we
take Sterling ’s racist remarks, consider
this: CNN has finally ended its non-stop coverage of the missing Malaysian
jetliner and now is going all out on Sterling .
In a country of more than 300 million people there are always going to be some
bigots. But they’ve become outliers in our culture – outcasts, actually.
Filipino Protesters
Burn Effigy Of Barack Obama To Protest New Defense Deal
Excerpt: According
to NBC News, the crowd paraded through the streets with several figurines
that appeared constructed with the full detail of a parade float. The
centerpiece of the protest, however, was a large dog with the face of the
President of the Philippines , Benigno
Aquino III. The dog pulled a chariot controlled by a figurine of President
Barack Obama, which was burned in effigy while floating through the streets. The
activists, many members of the Philippines '
left wing political party, also threw rotten tomatoes and eggs at the effigies
before they were burned, according
to the Philippine Star. (Think a left-wing party might be pro China versus
their own country, just a left-wing Americans opposed fighting Hitler when he
was allied with Stalin? ~Bob)
Rep. Tom Mcclintock:
Legal Immigrants Most Angry About Illegal Immigration
Excerpt: Speaking at The New York Meeting on Monday, Rep.
Tom McClintock (R-CA) took a firm stance against illegal immigration, saying
massive illegal immigration angers legal immigrants and threatens to balkanize America . ...
"A lot of immigrants that I talk to... are the maddest about illegal
immigration because they're the ones who stood patiently in line, and obeyed
all of our laws, came here with a sincere desire to become Americans, and they
are watching 11 million people trying to cut in line and flout our laws,"
McClintock said. "I have found that legal immigrants, those people
who came here in order to become Americans, are the angriest about illegal
immigration and we need to appeal to them as well." (I met a black
waiter from West Africa in DC, citizen, very
bright guy, working on his second college degree, came here legally after years
of effort and jumping through hoops. he was livid about illegals going to the
head of the line. ~Bob)
Juan Williams Wife
Robbed, Wishes She Had Gun
Excerpt: Williams said his wife's response was, "I wish
I had a gun." Larson responded by saying, "God bless Mrs. Juan
Williams," and said Juan should buy her a gun "at the next opportunity."
(As the old joke goes, a conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night.
~Bob)
For three decades, Toyota has
called Torrance , California ,
home in the U.S.
-- but no more. The world's second largest automaker announced plans to take
5,000 jobs and head for the freer markets of Texas , putting it closer to its
manufacturing facilities. The LA Times reports that this is becoming a trend:
"Occidental Petroleum Corp. said in February that it was relocating from Los Angeles to Houston ,
making it one of around 60 companies that have moved to Texas since July 2012, according to Texas
Gov. Rick Perry." Why the exodus? Under decades of Democrat rule, California has become a
land of high taxes and burdensome regulation -- the perfect formula for chasing
business away. Texas has done the opposite,
and it should serve notice to leftists that the Lone
Star State
is wooing all the gold from the Golden
State
Excerpt: Remember poverty? It was once a chief preoccupation
of the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson made war on it. An entire ecosystem of
federal, state and local programs has been created over the course of the past
half-century to combat it, costing taxpayers more than $1 trillion annually.
Yet the Democratic Party seems to have forgotten the poor.
Worth Reading
Excerpt: B arack Obama had a foreign policy for about five
years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went
something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W.
Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush
had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed
to Obama a wise political approach.
Worth Reading
Excerpt: Weary of waiting for an economic recovery worth its
name, a frustrated American public has sent Barack Obama’s job approval rating
to a career low – with a majority in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll
favoring a Republican Congress to act as a check on his policies. Registered
voters by 53-39 percent in the national survey say they’d rather see the
Republicans in control of Congress as a counterbalance to Obama’s policies than
a Democratic-led Congress to help support him.
Worth Reading
Excerpt: All around, the fabric of peace and order is
fraying. The leaders of Russia
and Ukraine
escalate their apocalyptic rhetoric. The Sunni-Shiite split worsens as Syria and Iraq slide into chaos. China pushes
its weight around in the Pacific. (apparently "leading from behind"
works better in community organizing than in foreign policy. ~Bob)
Obamacare News
ObamaCare Provides
Insurance, Not Care
Excerpt: New ObamaCare enrollees are going to find it
difficult to access many prescription drugs, says Sally Pipes, president of the
Pacific Research Institute.Those who enrolled in the health care exchanges may
be in for a surprise once they start looking at their policies. Placing limits
on drug coverage is seen as a way to keep insurance costs down. But if drug
coverage is stingy, patients may simply forgo treatment altogether, turning
treatable conditions into expensive problems that ultimately mean higher costs,
for the individual as well as the entire health care system. According to the
Journal of Clinical Oncology, cancer patients facing higher copayments were 70
percent more likely to simply stop taking their cancer treatment and 42 percent
more likely to skip doses. This is not only a problem for patient health, but
for health care spending as a whole. According to Frank Lichtenberg, professor
at Columbia University
Much of Healthcare.gov is Still Under Construction. By Heather Ginsberg
Excerpt: Behind the scenes the website’s system is made up
of a tangle of workarounds moving billions of taxpayer dollars and premiums
between the government and insurers. One of the major parts that still isn’t
working properly is the function that accurately pays insurers. Experts say
that the longer they lag the more likely they will see serious accounting
problems that could lead the public to pay for higher premium subsidies or
higher health care costs.
Religion of Peace News
Excerpt: Today Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB
and candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, has been
arrested in Winchester .
At around 2pm Mr Weston was standing on the steps of Winchester Guildhall,
addressing the passers-by in the street with a megaphone. He quoted the
following excerpt about Islam from the book The River War by Winston Churchill:
Liberty, human rights
are godless and faithless ideologies, says Isma chief. By Syed Jaymal Zahiid
Excerpt: Equality, liberty and human rights are “godless”
and “faithless” ideologies created by atheists to destroy Islam, hardline
Islamic group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) said today.
Lethal bombing hits Karachi amid Pakistan
Excerpt: A powerful bomb exploded Friday in an upscale residential
area of southern Pakistan ,
killing at least four people and wounding 25, authorities said.
Bombing at southern
Thai beach kills 3 policemen
Excerpt: An explosion at a fishing competition Friday in Thailand 's
insurgency-plagued south has killed three policemen and wounded 17 other
people, police said. Police Col. Panya Karawanun said Muslim separatist
insurgents are suspected of detonating a homemade bomb at a beach in Pattani
province's Saiburi district.
Egyptian court seeks death sentence for Brotherhood leader,
682 supporters. By Yasmine Saleh
Excerpt: An Egyptian court sentenced the leader of the
Muslim Brotherhood and 682 supporters to death on Monday, intensifying a
crackdown on the movement that could trigger protests and political violence
ahead of an election next month.
Excerpt: Three aid workers are among 22 people killed in a
rebel attack on a clinic in northern Central African Republic , officials
have said. Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has confirmed that
three of its local staff were killed but has not given any further details. Fifteen
of the dead were local chiefs, according to the area's former MP. The attack
has been blamed on the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels, whose 2013 seizure of power
sparked the crisis.
Yemen begins southern
offensive against AQAP
Excerpt: Yemeni media reported yesterday that
the country's military is preparing for a new offensive against al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula on the heels of the three
successful US drone strikes last week that killed over 60
militants from the terrorist organization. Yemeni Popular Committees, local
armed resistance groups who played a large role alongside the military in
pushing out al Qaeda and its local affiliate Ansar al Shariah from Abyan
province in 2011, claimed yesterday that
this new offensive comes in response to information they received suggesting an
AQAP attempt to filter into Lawdar district in Abyan and seize control
of it.
Pakistani serial
killer 'wanted to teach gays a lesson.' By Waqar Hussain, Issam Ahmed
Excerpt: The 28-year-old father-of-two was arrested last
week and confessed to three brutal murders, saying he wanted to send out a
message about the "evils" of homosexuality, though police insist he
had sex with his victims first. The killings have sent shockwaves through the
underground gay community of the eastern city of Lahore , which fears Ejaz could be lionised as
a hero in a conservative Islamic society where homosexuality is stigmatised and
sodomy is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment