What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Remember the old days when they promised transparency and a “new” way of doing things? Good times…
From NationalReview “Even though Barack Obama rode into office in 2008 on a wave of media adulation, the Obama administration has exhibited a fiercely hostile attitude towards reporters. It has vigorously prosecuted low-level national-security leakers — while it ignores friendly leakers from the White House who puff up its image. This has led former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie to observe, “In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press.” Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded that Obama “will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.”
The White House’s contempt for the news-gathering process extends to the most petty incidents. On Monday, Michelle Obama came to Milwaukee to campaign for Democrat Mary Burke, who is challenging Governor Scott Walker. To the astonishment of reporter Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, aides to Obama and Burke told her she could not talk to the crowd at a Burke event in Milwaukee.”
“Reporters and photographers were cordoned off in a central area with chairs and tables. Several people in the crowd asked if they could have extra chairs reserved for the media — but reporters were initially forbidden from handing them over. Eventually, some of the Burke staff gave the extra chairs to attendees.”
President Obama himself has often demonstrated his thin skin when it comes to media coverage. In July, at a speech at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, he complained that the media is ignoring his economic successes: “Right now, there are more job openings in America than any time since 2007. That doesn’t always make headlines. It’s not sexy, so the news doesn’t report it, but it’s a big deal.” That’s only one of many complaints Obama has made about media coverage.”
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2. Not good, and not surprising.
From TheWashingtonTimes “Navy sailors harbor “widespread mistrust” in the admirals who command them, complaining of poor leadership and a disciplinary environment that tolerates absolutely no mistakes, says a survey of the fleet.
The disgruntlement runs deepest in the officer corps, where scores of commanders have been relieved of duty in recent years.
“Senior leadership should stop proactively highlighting the reliefs for cause of commanding officers, command master chiefs, and other senior enlisted advisors,” said the report “2014 Navy Retention Study.” “What was originally intended to demonstrate accountability to the public has, instead, resulted in a significant breach of trust with our sailors and resulting in an almost ‘reality TV’ mentality.”
The independent survey was released amid complaints by some aviators about excessive political correctness as the military seeks to stamp out sexual harassment and misconduct in an increasingly gender-integrated Navy.
“Most troubling is the perception sailors hold of senior leadership,” the report says under the heading “Widespread Distrust of Senior Leadership.”
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3. Given how they’ve lied about not spying on American citizens, and how police do illegal, warrantless searches of people’s phones at the drop of a hat, I have a hard time mustering much sympathy.
From Bloomberg “U.S. law enforcement officials are urging Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) to give authorities access to smartphone data that the companies have decided to block, and are weighing whether to appeal to executives or seek congressional legislation.
The new privacy features, announced two weeks ago by the California-based companies, will stymie investigations into crimes ranging from drug dealing to terrorism, law enforcement officials said.
“This is a very bad idea,” said Cathy Lanier, chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, in an interview. Smartphone communication is “going to be the preferred method of the pedophile and the criminal. We are going to lose a lot of investigative opportunities.”
The dispute is the latest flare-up that pits the federal government against the nation’s leading technology companies since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed last year the extent of U.S. snooping on phone and Internet communications — and how companies cooperated.
U.S. Justice Department and FBI officials are trying to understand how the new Apple and Google Android systems work and how the companies could change the encryption to make it accessible when court ordered. Their requests to the companies may include letters, personal appeals or congressional legislation, said a federal law official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.”
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4. The debate about whether or not to raise the minimum wage continues. In some states folks are already feeling the pinch.
From TheDailySignal “As far as Rob Pluta is concerned, New Jersey lawmakers who say they want to help restaurant workers by raising the state’s minimum wage for tipped employees have it all wrong.
If Trenton wants to help these workers, says Pluta, who owns and operates Leonardo’s II, an Italian eatery in Lawrenceville, it needs to promote the state, not enact even more mandates.”
“Pluta wasn’t wild about the constitutional amendment New Jersey voters approved last year that raised the state’s overall minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 and linked annual increases to the Consumer Price Index.
But he’s even more concerned about legislation introduced by Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, D-Paterson. Sumter’s bill, A857, which passed in the Assembly’s Labor Committee on a party-line vote last March, calls for an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers. It would increase the federal minimum of $2.13 per hour to $3.39 by the end of this year and $5.93 by 2016.
For restaurant owners, that’s even worse than it sounds, Pluta says. Under current law, if employees don’t make $8.25 counting tips and base, the employer makes up the rest. Pluta says he’s never had to pay—his employees routinely make $15 to $20 per hour or more.”
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5. This could get really bad if they are this clueless with just one case.
From TheNYTimes “The man who has become the first Ebola patient to develop symptoms in the United States told officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital last Friday that he had just arrived from West Africa but was not admitted that day because that information was not passed along at the hospital, officials acknowledged Wednesday.
The man, Thomas E. Duncan, was sent home under the mistaken belief that he had only a mild fever, a hospital administrator said; the information that he had traveled from Liberia, one of the nations at the heart of the Ebola epidemic, was overlooked.
Mr. Duncan came back to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday and was admitted for treatment, but in those two days in between, his contacts with a number of people — including five schoolchildren and the medics who helped transport him to the hospital — potentially exposed them to Ebola, forcing officials to monitor and isolate them in their homes and to begin a thorough cleaning of the schools the students attended. Mr. Duncan is now in serious but stable condition.”
“Officials said Wednesday that they believed Mr. Duncan came into contact with 12 to 18 people when he was experiencing active symptoms and when the disease was contagious, and that the daily monitoring of those people had not yet shown them to be infected.”
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Wandering Views 
Fascinating and so sad. I tell my ladies whenever people try to mix a God, money, power and politics– run!
Apparently Islam has the same problem–at least in Mecca!
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Michelle – on your link: One of the strangest sights I saw in West Africa was a promotional billboard from a communications company, offering the chance to enter a contest for an all-expenses paid hajj to Mecca. I find it fascinating that the author of the piece (who would have to be Muslim to get anywhere near Mecca) acknowledges that the destruction of the Islamic history is so dangerous. Indeed, I read somewhere, World perhaps, that in Mosul, ISIS has forbidden schools the teaching of history, as well as the arts, literature and anything to do with Christianity. Rather strange, don’t you think, that the liberal arts should be considered such a threat, as they are often discounted in comparison to the sciences here. I think we underestimate the power of culture.
It reminds me of the Proverb, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set”. Or in the word of George Santyana:
It is not only the Islamic peoples who are in danger of forgetting the where they have come from. I see it repeatedly here – the prosperity in the West is causing people to forget what our ancestors came through and why they did and I include all generations and all political sides in that observation.
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“Bush said recently that he used to speak with his predecessor, Bill Clinton, regularly while in office.
“But he said he has not heard from President Obama except when the president called with the news that Usama bin Laden had been killed.
” ‘He has not [called] on a regular basis, which is OK. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. It’s a decision he has made. Presidents tend to rely on the people they’re close to … and I understand that,’ said Bush. …”
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/10/02/exclusive-george-w-bush-says-some-us-forces-should-have-stayed-iraq
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I can’t find the article I read probably 25 years ago in the NY Times magazine about how Saudi Arabia was funding schools throughout the middle east–are they called madrasses, or something like that?
The article was chilling–basically boys were sent to these schools because they got fed and learned the Koran. Except, the Koran was in Arabic, so they memorized the Koran in a different language than they spoke.
There was nothing else.
No math, no science, no history, no social studies, no music; the only physical education was an old soccer ball tossed around a dirt lot. The only women they saw were the cooks in the kitchen. They were totally isolated from anything but memorizing the Koran.
Many schools like this cropped up in Pakistan and other places.
Even at the time, I felt so sad but burned with indignation. School is a place for your mind to expand, for you to learn more than your tiny life–these boys were being stunted at a young age about religion, the world and especially women. Tragic.
Then they grow up to become–what?
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I saw where someone at the UN (?) expressed concerns that ebola could mutate and become airborne. Roscuro or others who know, how likely or unlikely would that be? Doesn’t sound likely to me, but ….
Meanwhile, sounds like the list of possible contacts for the Dallas patient is expanding. I also was listening to the CNN special last night with Anderson Cooper — the question was asked how they are handling waste from patients, and the person he was interviewing (a medial expert of some kind) said he didn’t think the hospital in Dallas had even quite figure that out yet.
Other interviewees, journalists returning from Africa who’d done stories on ebola, said the U.S. airport screeners didn’t seem to know what the protocol was in cases where people who had (potentially) been exposed (but weren’t showing symptoms) were entering the country. It kind of alarmed them that everyone seemed so clueless as to a policy that should at least be in place by now?
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/02/texas-health-officials-widen-search-for-ebola-patients-contacts-to-100/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_fn
“It’s constantly evolving, people are going to get added, people are going to get dropped off,” Dallas County Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erikka Neroes told FoxNews.com. “How many people will contract Ebola, we don’t know that. [There’s a] possibility someone may. We’re out there working to make sure [it’s] under control.”
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As for #1, yep.
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The Soviets constantly updated history and history books. How can history be updated? Ask Howard Zinn!
The same goes for Math.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/01/the-new-new-math-byzantine-subtraction-in-common-core/
How do the highest scoring areas of the world teach math? Do what they do, not the latest fad.
And Roscuro, this stupidity comes from liberals, not conservatives. There aren’t enough conservatives in the university to push this through. Ain’t happenin’!
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Michelle,
It is worse than that. When the boys are sent to madrasas they can be targets for older men.
In Islam, sex between men is forbidden. If a male doesn’t have body hair they are not a man. They get involved with men; it is not homosexuality if the boy doesn’t have body hair.
A friend in the Army Reserve who had one tour in Iraq said that many boys come back from madrases not liking women at all. Women are good for having babies but the men like boys instead.
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Donna, the hospital should have been where the buck stopped. I can guarantee you that other visitors from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have entered the U.S. before this, without symptoms, and been allowed to enter. However, immediately the hospital workers were told that this man had been in Liberia, they should have isolated him and had him tested (he apparently was given routine blood tests, but ebola is not a routine blood test in North America), instead of sending him home with antibiotics, which as his symptoms were more of a viral illness, were absolutely useless. I have read suggestions that because he would have been uninsured, the hospital would have been eager to get rid of him to avoid running up costs – I can’t judge the probability of that scenario. However, there is no use crying over spilt milk. Some of his family may now contract the disease, but really, there is no reason why this can’t be contained, now that the CDC is involved. SARS was missed at first in Toronto, but once they realized what had happened, the disease was contained. It took a little longer, and, sadly, several people died; but it wasn’t the epidemic people feared it might become.
As for the possibility of mutation, I do wish officials high up would not think out loud – their musings are caught by the media and blown out of all proportion. There is always a possibility that viruses can mutate into other forms. However, in all the years Ebola has been identified, it has shown no signs of so doing. I should say here that it can be sprayed into the air, via water droplets (like sneezing); but that is different than an airborne disease like say, tuberculosis, which actually attaches to dust particles floating in the air. Droplets can only travel so far, but airborne particles can circulate freely.
The hemorrhagic fevers are a strange bunch – hantavirus, the hemorrhagic fever of North America, appears and disappears sporadically and no one quite knows why it has never become a real epidemic. Remember all the warnings about H1N1 and how it could mutate into a more virulent form – it didn’t. So, keep a cool head when scientists think out loud – they are just considering every possibility, even the most remote.
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Michelle @ 12:05
“Then they grow up to become–what?”
They grow up to be martyrs. In which case they get 72 women and have the stamina of 100 men. They can also designate (about?) fifty family members who get automatic assurance of heaven.
This is part of their training, but not part of the Koran. The Koran does promise great rewards for martyrdom, but nothing specific, other than entrance to heaven.
The mullahs would deny it, but I suspect that in the potential martyr’s mind (Remember, these are mostly young men..) their heaven is one everlasting sex orgy.
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Roscuro, I have only been to an emergency room once (that I can remember), but my impression is that they just wanted the guy to get his medicine and go.
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Bob Buckles, I have met a lot of conservative, often homeschooling types, which have completely failed to teach their children the entire picture. For example, I remember a man in our church talking about his daughter’s studies in the Crusades and he posited the view that all the brutality shown by the Crusaders was fine, because it was necessary for Christians to act that way against the Muslims. Thankfully, our pastor set him straight, but I encounter an awful lot of reinterpretation of history from conservatives, fundamentalist types. Often in their world, anything bad in history is due to liberals, anything good is due to conservatives. Failure to recognize the impact of fallen human nature upon everything humans attempt or do is not just a characteristic of liberals.
Michelle, they called them daras where I was. Some villages only allowed their children to attend such schools. They reminded me of the ultra-conservative homeschoolers in the West – belittling any secular knowledge gained by non-Christians. Oh yes, coming from that movement, there was a definite pull towards tossing out everything but the Bible – I sometimes felt guilty for liking history and literature, and wanting to study medicine.
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Thanks roscuro — I thought that sounded like a far-fetched scenario (about the virus mutating & becoming airborne) but I’ve seen enough movies-of-the-week about pandemics that it did make me wonder … 😉 (And the sneezing droplets also were addressed on the CNN show I listened to, with the experts saying yeah, it’s “possible,” but very unlikely it would spread that way). A bigger concern seemed to be how to dispose of the contaminated medical waste …
Meanwhile, there’s a new wrinkle:
http://www.aol.com/article/2014/10/02/us-ebola-patients-family-under-quarantine-as-he-faces-criminal-charges-liberia/20971446/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D539544
But at minimum, it’s probably time for the U.S./North America to get some policies in place to better screen for this.
And if there is a reliable blood test that can be used, we probably should be selectively using it for folks coming from that part of the world who have been exposed to ebola patients.
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Shamed in L.A.
http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/10/02/the-10-most-shameful-things-to-admit-in-los-angeles
(And yes, being a Christian definitely makes the list. Oh the horror.)
Intro: “Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the world. Unfortunately, that diversity doesn’t always extend to its opinions.
“This is a city that has virtually no Republican Party to speak of, that has banned plastic bags in supermarkets and condomless porn (while the state of California has banned foie gras and Kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola). Things that would be perfectly acceptable in other cities are treated as downright horrifying here. …”
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Did he lie, or was his crime only showing kindness to a neighbour?http://www.worldmag.com/2014/10/texas_ebola_patient_lied_about_exposure_on_travel_forms.
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I think it was the question he did not answer when flying out. In addition, his family, apparently, has slipped out of their home quarantine and people are unhappy with them. Police now involved.
I’m curious about what HRW would say about teaching Muslim students in his schools. Obviously, they haven’t been subjected to the same sort of mal-education as so many. It must make a difference to have to attend a school that offers more than rote learning in a language you don’t understand.
Some might argue the Catholic mass used to be the same–old said in Latin. Growing up at high masses said in Latin, I, personally, loved the mystery of it and it enables me to sort-of follow mass anywhere in the world. But, the cathecism was in English and focused on me understanding the purpose and the plan of the mass. Not the same thing as happening in the madrasas.
I haven’t heard about the sexual issues in the schools. So very sad if true. 😦
Perhaps we should be dropping off millstones . . .
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1. When I first heard about this incident, the aides struck me as just stupid. However in reading the article, the journalist is little over the top. Essentially the press aides had reserved some seats which they prevented the general public from using until it was more than obvious the press didn’t need them. Appears they were far too concerned about the journalist’s comfort and not the public. Complete misread by the journalist who thought they were being sequestrated.
2. Workers always complain about management.
3. Libertarians on the left and right are smiling.
4. The cities and states that raised the minimum wage experienced for the most part the greatest job gains. Having worked in the restaurant industry I have no sympathy for owners and management.
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Working in a public school that is about 40% muslim, the first thing you realize is Muslim girls make the best students. Like all immigrant communities, education is extremely important. And they much prefer education here (although they would prefer more discipline).
What I’ve come to realize is the incredible diversity in the Muslim community — from Albanians and Turks who act European to extremely conservative Arabs and Pakistanis and everything in between. Secular Arabs to Wahhabi Arabs. From this its easier to view much of what we don’t lime about Islam to be Arab culture specifically Saudi Wahhabist.
The madras schools which have sprung up in poorer Muslim countries are an extension of conservative Saudi culture. The bipartisan love affair with the Saudis is then even more reprehensible. We maintain a friendship with a regime that funds schools which create nonthinking religious fanatics. And yes Bob is correct these “schools” are a cess pool of physical and sexual abuse.
Given that our friendship with the Saudis is based on energy new sources of energy should be created. The extra cost will be balanced by less defense needs and less subsidies to oil companies. Not to mention we would no longer be associated with a regime that beheads more people than ISIS ( for sorcery even).
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Bob there is no right way to teach math. South Korea and Finland use completely different methods yet score extremely similar in international tests. I currently teach split class and to make it work I tend to teach the small group of eights like Finns and the larger group more like Koreans ( well more like old school Canadians).
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I hate math.
On the Ebola case, the problem seems to be with the questionnaire he didn’t answer:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a66e8369b45a4b12be803f0de4f4df4e/liberia-prosecute-man-who-brought-ebola-us
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The Liberian man infected with Ebola who brought the disease to the United States will be prosecuted when he returns home for lying on his airport screening questionnaire, Liberian authorities said Thursday.
With an Ebola epidemic raging in West Africa, passengers leaving Liberia are being screened for fever and are asked if they have had contact with anyone infected.
On the form obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by a government official, Thomas Eric Duncan answered “no” to questions about whether he had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of someone who had died in an area affected by Ebola.
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But did he know that the woman he helped had Ebola? Apparently, she never was admitted to hospital, and so would not have received a diagnosis. The neighbours would have been quite justified in thinking it was due to pregnancy problems – serious pregnancy conditions such as eclampsia or DIC can cause convulsions and even hemorrhaging.
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Has anyone seen The Kiterunner? I seem to remember the hero’s friend looked very effeminate. That may be more an Afghan thing but my Army friend said that many men liked boys much better than women. Women are good for having babies and for some men not much else. I wonder if the women do much of the hard labor?
What a sad and horrible way to live.
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