Month: May 2014
Our Daily Thread 5-23-14
Good Morning!
Today’s header photo is from Kim.
This one is from Cheryl.
It’s Friday! And even better, the start of a long weekend! 🙂
On this day in 1618 the Thirty Years War began when three opponents of the Reformation were thrown through a window.
In 1701, in London, Captain William Kidd was hanged after being convicted of murder and piracy.
In 1879 the first U.S. veterinary school was established by Iowa State University.
In 1900 Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, 37 years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.
In 1934 the notorious Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed by Texas Rangers.
And in 1960 Israel announced the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.
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Quote of the Day
“Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye;—
Not being but an outward phantasy,
That skims the surface of a tinted cheek,—
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer,—and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek:
Whose health is of no hue—to feel decay
With cheeks’ decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter’s clime.”
Thomas Hood
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Today is Artie Shaw’s birthday.
Today is also Charlie Hunter’s birthday, the master of the 8 string guitar.
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QoD?
What are your plans for the long weekend?
Prayer Requests 5-23-14
Anyone have a request or praise to share?
Today is Friday, so please remember the folks at The Nest.
Psalm 114
¹When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?
6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.
News/Politics 5-23-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Add another to the list, with a new twist.
From Miami/CBSLocal “People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”
Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.
“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.
Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.”
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2. Let the issuing of subpoenas begin!
From NBCNews “A House committee will order three top officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs to testify later this month about why they have not turned over documents about a troubled VA hospital in Phoenix.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee asked for the documents in an investigation into why as many as 40 people died waiting for treatment from the Phoenix facility, and into allegations of a secret patient wait list to hide delays in care.
The VA told the committee that it will release the documents in batches, not all at once. The committee, which wants to see VA emails and other communications about the hospital, called that response inadequate.”
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3. This could get interesting.
From TheDailyBeast “In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.
But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’”
Since that internal clash—and since Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union that “al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America”—the terror group has thrived throughout the Islamic world. In the last year alone, al Qaeda has established safe havens in Libya, Syria and Iraq.
And so naturally, the White House has softened its earlier position, concluding that al Qaeda and its affiliates still represented a serious threat. But the tension between the White House and many top military and intelligence officials fighting the long war remain.”
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4. Even veterans not relying on the VA for health care are suffering because of decisions from the White House.
From TheFreeBeacon “A California veteran is having trouble finding a doctor because of a faulty Obamacare plan.
Kyle, affected by chronic Lyme disease he contracted while on active duty, is frustrated with the lack of doctor availability on his Anthem BlueCross insurance plan. “I was on the phone with Anthem for two hours while they were trying to find me a doctor within 20 miles. Finally a supervisor came on the phone and said ‘Sir, we have to go, we have other people to help’ and advised me [that] I need to cancel my plan,” he told KPIX.
State law stipulates that insurers must have enough doctors to enable patients to get an appointment within 15 days within 15 miles of their home. Kyle was not able to find a doctor under these requirements and neither was Anthem. Inaccurately listed doctors are considered a violation of the law. The list of doctors given to CoveredCalifornia was incorrect.”
Insider emails suggest a worsening doctor shortage looms. Just like the VA.
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5. Just a reminder of what prominent voices on the left had to say about ObamaCare, and how the VA was the model.
From TruthRevolt “And herein lies the problem for the left: the failures at the VA, including its bureaucratic incompetence, its waiting lists, and its deaths, all debunk the notion that a government-run healthcare system will work. It’s a fresh slap in the face to all those commentators who, in pushing Obamacare, endorsed the VA as a model.
There are some pretty big names on that list. Paul Krugman in 2011 wrote of the VA’s “huge success story”:
Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense.
Krugman added, “Yes, this is ‘socialized medicine’…But it works, and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of US health care more broadly.”
You can add Nicholas Kristof from the NY Times, Ezra Klein, from WashPost, and a Princeton “scholar” to the list as well.
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6. You gotta love it. Some federal workers aren’t paying their fair share.
From TheAP “From workers in Congress and at the White House to active duty troops, more than 318,000 federal employees and retirees owe just over $3.3 billion in back taxes, the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday.”
“Those behind in their tax payments include 714 of the roughly 17,000 people working for the House and Senate, the agency said. IRS officials said the data used to compile the report did not indicate whether any of those delinquent taxpayers were members of Congress.
In addition, 36 of the nearly 1,800 people who work at the White House and its various agencies owe taxes, according to the IRS. The IRS provided no further breakdown of exactly where those delinquent taxpayers worked.”
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Our Daily Thread 5-22-14
Good Morning!
This pic is from Karen O. It’s her fuzzy dog Heidi.
On this day in 1841 Henry Kennedy received a patent for the first reclining chair.
In 1906 the Wright brothers received a patent their flying machine.
In 1967 “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” premiered on PBS.
And in 1977 Janet Guthrie set the fastest time of the second weekend of qualifying, becoming the first woman to earn a starting spot in the Indianapolis 500 since its inception in 1911.
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Quote of the Day
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Today is Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s birthday.
And this one is so I can play it for my daughter. It’s time to introduce her to Barry. I’ve been singing some of his songs for her, but his version’s a little better. 🙂
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Anyone have a QoD?
Prayer Requests 5-22-14
Anyone have a request or praise to share today?
And it’s Thursday, so please remember Jo and the folks in PNG.
Psalm 113
¹Praise ye the Lord. Praise, O ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.
2 Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and for evermore.
3 From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord‘s name is to be praised.
4 The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high,
6 Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!
7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;
8 That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
9 He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the Lord.
News/Politics 5-22-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Let the bailouts begin! More illegal changes to ObamaCare. And more money out of the taxpayers pockets.
From TheChicagoTribune “The Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money.
The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to hold down premium increases for next year, a top priority for the White House as the rates will be announced ahead of this fall’s congressional elections.”
“On Capitol Hill, Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee began circulating a memo on the issue and urging colleagues to fight what they are calling “another end-run around Congress.”
Obama administration officials said the new regulations would not put taxpayers at risk. “We are confident this three-year program will not create a shortfall,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said in a statement. “However, we want to be clear that in the highly unlikely event of a shortfall, HHS will use appropriations as available to fill it.”
Sure. I mean all their numbers have been dead on so far, right? 🙄
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2. Meanwhile, the investigations into state exchange failures begins.
From OregonLive “The federal criminal investigation of Oregon’s health insurance exchange took a step into public view Tuesday when the U.S. Attorney’s office issued broad subpoenas seeking information from Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority.
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interest in the exchange debacle had been previously reported, the legal demands dated May 13 indicate things may have moved beyond a preliminary inquiry to a full-blown investigation.
The investigation, led by federal prosecutors and the FBI, is seeking documents, memos, and emails between the two state entities that oversaw the botched health exchange with U.S. authorities in charge of dispensing federal money for the project.
Oregon has spent $250 million and three years on an ambitious IT project that failed to produce a fully functional exchange. Instead, what was produced was bug-ridden and largely unfinished, documents show.”
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3. I’m shocked. It appears that proponents of expanding immigration laws haven’t been honest about the need.
From NationalReview “The idea that we need to allow in more workers with science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) background is an article of faith among American business and political elite.
But in a new report, my Center for Immigration Studies colleague Karen Zeigler and I analyze the latest government data and find what other researchers have found: The country has well more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. Also consistent with other research, we find only modest levels of wage growth for such workers for more than a decade. Both employment and wage data indicate that such workers are not in short supply.
Reports by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute, and the National Research Council have all found no evidence that STEM workers are in short supply. PBS even published an opinion piece based on the EPI study entitled, “The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower U.S. Wages.” This is PBS, mind you, which is as likely to publish something skeptical of immigration as it is to publish something skeptical of taxpayer subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
RAND’s analysis looked backward in time and found, “Despite recurring concerns about potential shortages of STEM personnel . . . we did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon.”
It’s unnecessary and it will make things harder for unemployed Americans.
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4. The National Association for the Abortion of Colored People?
FromLifeNews “A pro-life legal group is having to go to court to help the state of Arizona protect its law it passed to ban race-based abortions. Here’s the ironic rub: the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the bill, which stops abortions done specifically if the baby is African-American (or any other specific race or gender).
It makes one wonder if the NAACP, which, for years has held a pro-abortion position and which recently won a court order to silence a black pro-life who was writing at LifeNews to expose it’s abortion advocacy, should be called the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit urging it to reject the NAACP’s lawsuit against an Arizona bill that prohibits sex- and race-based abortions.”
“A district court dismissed the lawsuit in October of last year, but American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing the Maricopa County branch of the NAACP and the National Asian-Pacific American Women’s Forum appealed that decision.”
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5. I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue, right?
From TheWashingtonExaminer “A State Department official struggled to discuss the religious import of Boko Haram’s ideology, despite the group’s repeated attacks on Christians, a rhetorical hesitancy that created tension during a rather bipartisan House hearing on the threat from the terrorist group.
Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., asked whether Boko Haram specifically targets Christians.
“I wish there was such discrimination in Boko Haram attacks,” State Department undersecretary Sarah Sewall replied during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. “Boko Haram attacks everyone who is Nigerian. Boko Haram is an equal-opportunity threat for all Nigerian citizens.”
That answer irritated Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the subcommittee panel on global human rights. “You said you wish they would differentiate or discriminate — they were so discriminating. Yes, they’ll hit other Nigerians, they’ll hit other westerners, but Christians are their main target,” he countered.”
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Our Daily Thread 5-21-14
Good Morning!
Today’s header photo is from Donna.
On this day in 1536 The Reformation was officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 1832 the Democratic Party held its first national convention.
In 1891 Peter Jackson and Jim Corbett fought for 61 rounds only to end in a draw.
In 1956 the U.S. exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean over Bikini Atoll. I recently learned the truth and it wasn’t a test at all. They were trying to kill Godzilla. 😯
And in 1968 the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
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Quote of the Day
“Try and live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs.”
Raymond Burr
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Today is Phil Baquie’s birthday.
Today is also Bill Champlin’s.
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Anyone have a QoD?
Prayer Requests 5-21-14
Who would like to share a request or praise with us today?
And it’s Wednesday, so don’t forget The Gambia.
Psalm 112
¹Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments.
2 His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever.
4 Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.
5 A good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion.
6 Surely he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.
7 He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.
8 His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies.
9 He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.
10 The wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish.
News/Politics 5-21-14
What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The VA has known about the records manipulation since at least 2010. But Obama just heard of it.
From TheWashingtonPost “Robert Petzel resigned last week as the top health official for the Department of Veterans Affairs, just one day after testifying before a Senate committee that he knew VA health clinics were using inappropriate scheduling practices as early as 2010.
Whistleblowers claim the schemes continued until this year, leading to a recent wave of outrage that sent the VA and White House scrambling to correct the alleged problems and restore confidence in the department.”
“Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”
The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days.”
Just heard about it on the news. Sure Barry. 🙄
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2. Just how dumb does he think we are? Pretty dumb apparently.
From NationalJournal “News quiz: President Obama and his communications team hope that Americans are: 1) Dumb; 2) Distracted; 3) Numb to government inefficiency; 4) All of above. Answer: 4, all of the above.
That answer along with utter incompetence are the best explanations for why the White House thought it could get away with claiming that the departure of Veterans Affairs official Robert Petzel was a step toward accountability for its scandalous treatment of war veterans.”
“Well, Secretary Shinseki accepted Dr. Petzel’s resignation this afternoon. He was due to retire early next month, and obviously there has been a nomination made for his replacement,” White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough told CBS’s Major Garrett last week. “I leave to Rick the explanation of his decision, but there is no question that this is a termination of his job there before he was planning to go.”
No. This was neither a termination nor a housecleaning. It was a scapegoating. For all of its 21st-century savvy in the field of campaign technology, the Obama White House has repeatedly proven that its communications philosophy is stuck in the 20th century. Before the Internet gave voters instantaneous access to information, including every public utterance of the president and his team, White House strategists could hope to wear out the truth: If you said a lie enough, people might believe it.“
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3. Another extensively vetted choice by the President. Oh wait….. never mind. Nothing like giving the fox the keys to the hen house.
From HotAir “In a changing world, it’s good to know that some things don’t change … like the ability of this White House to vet it Cabinet-level appointments. Barack Obama named Julian Castro as the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development last week, but no one checked with the Inspector General at HUD first. Late yesterday, Politico also named Castro as a subject of criticism in a 2012 IG report that alleged San Antonio misused HUD funds while Castro was mayor:
San Antonio failed to properly spend funds approved by Congress to combat the housing crisis while President Barack Obama’s expected nominee to run the Housing and Urban Development Department was mayor of the city, according to a 2012 report from the agency’s inspector general. …
San Antonio was awarded $8.6 million from HUD in 2008 as part of the national Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The city used the money to buy, refurbish and resell homes left vacant after eviction and to also renovate large apartment complexes in the city that were rented out to lower-income tenants.
The HUD IG audited how the money was being spent from 2009 to 2011 and found that city officials had awarded $2.5 million in renovation contracts without a competitive bidding process. Castro, 39, became mayor in May 2009, a job he continues to hold.”
Another million was misused elsewhere.
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4. And now you know why Obama insisted on a nation-wide database with everyone’s info stored together.
From CNSNews “The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS).”
“Health situational awareness includes biosurveillance and other health and non-health inputs (e.g., lab/diagnostics, health service utilization, active intelligence, and supply chain information), as well as systems and processes for effective communication among responders and critical health resource monitoring and allocation,” the draft states.
But Brase warns that the NHSS proposal would allow the federal government to monitor an individual’s behavior before, during and after any government-defined health “incident” – which could be anything from a local outbreak of the flu to a terrorist anthrax attack.
“It’s very broad. It doesn’t seem to have any limits, except they say something about, you know, properly protecting the data. But from our perspective, if the government gets access to this kind of data, [and] is allowed to do research with the data…then our privacy has already been compromised. The government has already said that our data is their data for their purposes of national health security,” Brase told CNSNews.com.”
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5. Think he’s right?
From TheHill “President Obama said Americans were “better off now than when I came into office,” during a fundraiser Monday night outside of Washington.
Obama also slammed congressional Republicans for their focus on the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the implementation of ObamaCare.”
“The president told attendees at the high-dollar soiree in Potomac, Md., that his Republican opposition in Congress had been “captured by ideologues” whose principal focus was on “how to make people sufficiently skeptical, so they can win the next election.”
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Wandering Views 