News/Politics

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News/Politics 1-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up today, some good news. And the people who profit from this industry blame the Tea Party. 🙂

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Some 22 states enacted 70 new provisions to target abortion last year, the second most ever, prompting an outcry from Planned Parenthood, which accused “out-of-touch Tea Party politicians” with using “every underhanded trick in the book to get these laws passed.”

““The historic rise of these attacks on women’s health can be traced back to 2010, when out-of-touch Tea Party politicians picked up key seats in legislatures across the country, promising to create jobs and boost our economy — but immediately focused on ending access to safe and legal abortion and limiting women’s health care options,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund.”

Thank you Tea Party. 🙂

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2. Al-Qaeda on the run? Hardly.

From TheWaPo  “A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.

The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war.”

“In Fallujah, where Marines fought the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war in 2004, the militants appeared to have the upper hand, underscoring the extent to which the Iraqi security forces have struggled to sustain the gains made by U.S. troops before they withdrew in December 2011.”

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3. This better be nothing more than a rumor. Even he can’t be this stupid. You’ll just give them another target in the area besides Israel.

From YahooNews  “Unconfirmed news reports out of Israel signal that an offer of US troops to secure the borders of a new Palestinian state is in the mix in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. US defense analysts urge caution.

Secretary of State John Kerry is proposing to offer up US troops to help secure the borders of the new state of Palestine, according to some unconfirmed news reports coming out of Israel.”

“The US troops would be tasked with helping to prevent anti-Israel forces from coming out of Jordan and reaching Israel, according to Debkafile, an Israeli intelligence and security news service.”

“Samantha Power, then a Harvard professor and now the US ambassador to the United Nations, seemed to indicate in a 2008 interview with Harry Kreisler of the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies that crisis in the region could possibly be ameliorated by the introduction of US troops to provide security needs.”

Samantha Power, the best friend of the UN and oppressive regimes everywhere. 🙄

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4. Another ObamaCare success story.

Or not. 🙄

From WashingtonCBSLocal  “The new year brought relief to some Illinois patients newly insured under the nation’s health care law. Others still weren’t sure whether they were covered, despite their best efforts to navigate the often-balky new system.

The major benefits of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul took effect Wednesday, the first day of 2014. By Thursday, the first business day of the new insurance system, it became clear that snags in the rollout of the Affordable Care Act still remained.”

“Paperwork problems almost delayed suburban Chicago resident Sheri Zajcew’s scheduled surgery Thursday, but Dr. John Venetos decided to operate without a routine go-ahead from the insurance company. That was after Venetos’ office manager spent two hours on hold with the insurer Thursday, trying to get an answer about whether the patient needed prior authorization for the surgery. The office manager finally gave up.

“I’m not a happy camper,” said Nate Zajcew, the patient’s husband. The couple signed up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield bronze plan through the federal HealthCare.gov site on Dec. 16. “I understand it’s just a matter of paperwork and yesterday was a holiday. I can be an SOB, too, at times, but since they’re going on with the procedure, it’s OK.”

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5. ObamaCare faces a new test in the coming days.

From TheHill  ” The number of people seeking to use their new ObamaCare coverage for the first time is expected to spike next week.”

“They’re expected to turn out in force at the nation’s clinics and hospitals as early as next Monday.

 “Two worries are paramount. The first is that a sizable number of consumers who show up at the doctor’s office will discover that they don’t have the insurance they thought they purchased.

A second is that people have enrolled in ObamaCare, but have to make a payment. Some will discover they don’t have the insurance they thought they purchased as a result .”

If the previous story is any indication, office managers at doctors offices everywhere are gonna be on hold for a loooong time.

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6. The Obama admin has released executive orders to further restrict access to guns. While I think we all agree that guns should be kept from the mentally ill, and I agree with the general idea, I just don’t trust them to not abuse the rules and be overly restrictive.

I also dislike the new reporting guidelines which doctors will be forced to comply with. Asking doctors to snitch on private conversations and personal health info will greatly restrict what patients may be willing to share with their doctor. Nobody likes a snitch.

From FoxNews  “The Obama administration on Friday proposed two new executive actions to make it easier for states to provide mental health information to the national background check system, wading back into the gun control debate after a months-long hiatus. 

Vice President Biden’s office announced the proposals Friday afternoon. Both pertain to the ability of states to provide information about the mentally ill and those seeking mental health treatment to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. 

One proposal would formally give permission to states to submit “the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” without having to worry about the privacy provisions in a law known as HIPAA.”

“The other proposal would clarify that those who are involuntarily committed to a mental institution — both inpatient and outpatient — count under the law as “committed to a mental institution.” According to the administration, this change will help clarify for states what information to provide to the background check system, as well as who is barred from having guns. “

That last proposal I don’t really have a problem with. But I don’t like all these lists and registries nonsense. Sounds too much like a national registry in bits and pieces. And how long would someone stay on the list if they did have something like this in their past? Is it a lifetime ban once your name hits the criminal background check system? And they’re not criminals, but you just added them to the criminal database as if it qualifies as a criminal background. Too many questions.

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News/Politics 1-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Why does this not surprise me? 

From TheHuffingtonPost  ” A dying former civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case but released early from prison has arrived in New York City.”

“The 74-year-old Stewart was released from Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday. A judge ordered her release after prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Prisons recommended she be set free because she has less than 18 months to live. She suffers from recurrent Stage 4 breast cancer.

Stewart was convicted of helping a blind Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers from prison.”

What HuffPo neglects to mention is it’s the blind sheik responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing. They also neglected to mention how unrepentant she is for her crimes. But hey, she’s a hero to many on the left, so again, it’s not surprising.

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2. The Obama admin has responded to their court loss to a bunch of nuns. And they’ve suffered another defeat, this time to a bunch of priests.

From HotAir  “It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to respond publicly to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s temporary injunction against HHS for enforcement of the contraceptive-coverage mandate. Expressing confidence in their position, the White House insisted that their “compromise” for religious organizations satisfied any risk to conscience objections.”

“The White House will need to argue in court that they know better how to be faithful to the tenets of Christianity than a bunch of nuns. And, for that matter, a bunch of priests, too:

In a huge victory for Priests for Life, a pro-life organization, a federal appeals court has issued a ruling saying it doesn’t have to pay massive fines to the federal government for not obeying the HHS mandate, which forces religious groups and companies to pay for birth control or abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

An emergency injunction granted late this afternoon in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit means that Priests for Life will not have to obey the contraception mandate contained in the Affordable Care Act as its appeal is being heard. It also means that, tomorrow, Priests for Life will not have to cancel health insurance for its employees.”

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3. So once again ObamaCare delivers the opposite of what they promised.

From TheNYTimes  “Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits because people would go to primary care doctors instead. But a rigorous new experiment in Oregon has raised questions about that assumption, finding that newly insured people actually went to the emergency room a good deal more often.

The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts during their first 18 months with insurance.       

The pattern was so strong that it held true across most demographic groups, times of day and types of visits, including those for conditions that were treatable in primary care settings.       

The findings cast doubt on the hope that expanded insurance coverage will help rein in emergency room costs just as more than two million people are gaining coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And they go against one of the central arguments of the law’s supporters, that extending insurance to large numbers of Americans would reduce emergency room use, and eventually save money.”

Yeah…..

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4. And some folks are discovering that just because you signed up, doesn’t mean you’re insured, and even if you are insured, you’ve got a huge deductible to satisfy first.

From TheDailyMail  “Hospital staff in Northern Virginia are turning away sick people on a frigid Thursday morning because they can’t determine whether their Obamacare insurance plans are in effect.

Patients in a close-in DC suburb who think they’ve signed up for new insurance plans are struggling to show their December enrollments are in force, and health care administrators aren’t taking their word for it.”

‘They had no idea if my insurance was active or not!’ a coughing Maria Galvez told MailOnline outside the Inova Healthplex facility in the town of Springfield.”

“It’s unlikely that a valid insurance card would have changed Galvez’ fortunes, however. Her Carefirst plan, identified on the Obamacare website as BlueChoice Plus Bronze, carries a $5,500 per-person deductible for 2014 – an amount she would have to pay out-of-pocket before her coverage would apply to medical expenses.”

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5. The Marines have delayed the new fitness standards for women after nearly half failed to meet the new standards.

From MSNNews  “More than half of female Marines in boot camp can’t do three pullups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year, prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement, part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs.

The delay rekindled sharp debate in the military on the question of whether women have the physical strength for some military jobs, as service branches move toward opening thousands of combat roles to them in 2016.”

“Starting with the new year, all female Marines were supposed to be able to do at least three pullups on their annual physical fitness test and eight for a perfect score. The requirement was tested in 2013 on female recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., but only 45 percent of women met the minimum, Krebs said.

The Marines had hoped to institute the pullups on the belief that pullups require the muscular strength necessary to perform common military tasks such as scaling a wall, climbing up a rope or lifting and carrying heavy munitions.”

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News/Politics 1-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Nixon would be so jealous. And unlike Nixon, they’ll get away with it.

From TheNYPost  “The personal e-mail account of a State Department whis­tle­­blower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The Post has learned.

The computer attack targeted the Gmail account of Diplomatic Security Service criminal investigator Richard Higbie, his lawyer, Cary Schulman, confirmed.

“They took all of his e-mails and then they deleted them all,” said Schulman. He said that he could not prove who was responsible for the hack job, but said the attack was “sophisticated” and called the targeting of Higbie “alarming.”

“The e-mails included evidence about misconduct by top officials at the department, communications with other potential whistleblowers there, and correspondence with members of Congress who are investigating the allegations, Schulman said.”

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2. Congressman Trey Gowdy is blasting the NY Times for their latest effort to provide cover for Hillary in the upcoming 2016 election. The NYT wrote an extensive piece on Benghazi, 15 months late I might add, yet not once was Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s name mentioned. Odd since all this happened on her watch.

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3. The folks over at The Week have finally seen the obvious, that ObamaCare is sucker punching the middle class. This is exactly what it was intended to do.

From TheWeek  “ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it’s sticker shock.

Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is a big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy?

In California, policies for about 900,000 Californians are being canceled because of ObamaCare’s mandates, and about two-thirds of these do not qualify for subsidies, according to The Chicago Tribune. The result: These folks will be paying higher premiums.

In Alabama, premiums have doubled for some middle-class families, like that of Courtney Long, a stay-at-home mother of four. She told WHNT News, “It’s devastating. I started crying.”

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4. I found this interesting. By now you’ve probably heard of the young California girl who underwent a tonsillectomy and ended up in a coma. The hospital wants to pull the plug, while the family got an injunction to stop it while they seek a private facility to take her. The family now has an ally assisting them, and it’s a name you’ll recognize.

From LifeNews  “The family of Terri Schiavo, who made international headlines when her husband starved and dehydrated her to death over the course of two weeks, has been quietly helping the family of Jahi McMath find a new hospital or medical facility that will provide her care.

News that Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler, also a LifeNews guest blogger, is assisting the McMath family, follows on a judge’s decision allowing the McMath family more time to secure transfer for Jahi to a facility. Schindler told LifeNews that, under the direction of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, he and other patient advocates have been working on behalf of Jahi McMath and her family in relative silence for the sake of the sensitivity of her case.

It also follows on a prominent pediatrician saying he believes Jahi is not brain dead and can recover with proper care and treatment.

Schindler said Terri’s Network, Life Legal Defense, Angela Clemente & Associates, The Wrongful Death & Injury Institute, New Beginnings and others defending Jahi’s life are now stepping forward publicly to represent the many supporters who have been working tirelessly to obtain Jahi’s release from Children’s Hospital Oakland and transfer her to a safe place.”

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5. A new study is out on the effects of “spirituality” on the brain.

From YahooNews  “For people at high risk of depression because of a family history, spirituality may offer some protection for the brain, a new study hints. Parts of the brain’s outer layer, the cortex, were thicker in high-risk study participants who said religion or spirituality was “important” to them versus those who cared less about religion.

“Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this,” Myrna Weissman told Reuters Health. “The brain is an extraordinary organ. It not only controls, but is controlled by our moods.”

“While the new study suggests a link between brain thickness and religiosity or spirituality, it cannot say that thicker brain regions cause people to be religious or spiritual, Weissman and her colleagues note in JAMA Psychiatry.

It might hint, however, that religiosity can enhance the brain’s resilience against depression in a very physical way, they write.”

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News/Politics 12-31-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

We’ll start with a huge CONTENT WARNING!!!!! for adult subject matter. This one is not acceptable reading for the kids.  

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I don’t even know where to start with this piece. It’s repulsive on many levels, and what is being advocated is monstrous in my personal opinion. It seeks to justify adult/child relationships that society has long shunned, and rightly so. It advocates preying on the young and vulnerable for adult gratification. I find it disgusting. 

So I don’t offend anyone, let me be clear here that I am not saying homosexuality and pedophilia are the same thing. Homosexuality is generally something between consenting adults. Pedophilia on the other hand involves preying on young, underage children. While I believe what the Bible says, that homosexuality is a sin, it’s not on the same level as pedophilia. We’ve talked before about “degrees of sin” and I think that applies here. While homosexuality is called a sin, pedophilia is called a crime, because there’s always a victim. They’re not the same by a long shot.

But the advocates of both are now using the same tactics. Not long ago homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and abnormal behavior. Over time, and with a concerted and well-funded effort, the gay community convinced the mental health community to abandon such labeling. It appears that the advocates of this have adopted a similar strategy and now seek to get the mental health community to provide them with cover to carry on with the advancement of what was long considered taboo.

Which brings us to the slippery slope. Looks pretty real now huh? This is exactly what those who spoke against acceptance of the homosexual “agenda” said would come, an ever quickening slide to the bottom. We were assured that allowing gay marriage and the lowering of societal standards and the like wouldn’t lead to things like this. Many of you have read those arguments numerous times. You read how folks like Joel Mark were mocked and ridiculed, and they said that he was exaggerating, and that it would never lead to this sort of thing. Just a straw man, hyperbole, nothing more…. 

And yet it has led to a lowering of standards. The question is how far are we as a society going to allow this to go? Will we again be silenced because we want to be kind and loving, and not be called bigots? Because hey, they can’t help it right? They were born this way according to this “expert.”

Pervert seems more accurate IMO. This nonsense needs to be squashed. I have no sympathy for these pedophiles, or those who would enable them. I’ll save the kindness and love for the real life victims who this sort of stuff scars for life. They actually need and deserve it.

I could go on, but I won’t. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it after you read the piece.

From The Toronto Star

“Pedophilia has been widely viewed as a psychological disorder triggered by early childhood trauma.

Now, many experts see it as a biologically rooted condition that does not change — like a sexual orientation — thanks largely to a decade of research by Dr. James Cantor at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Cantor’s team has found that pedophiles share a number of physical characteristics, including differences in brain wiring. It’s now thought that about 1 to 5 per cent of men are pedophiles, meaning they are primarily attracted to children.

These findings have been widely accepted among scientists, but have had little impact on social attitudes or law. However, we are left with the alarming question: if some men are born pedophiles, what should society do with them?

Bolstered by this research, pedophiles who have never molested children are seeking social acceptance.”

“Similar experiments are being conducted across the globe, most notably at Berlin’s Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, but Cantor’s research has greatly influenced the view among researchers that pedophilia has a biological basis.”

And that’s how it begins, a change in the views of the experts. Simple really, and it’s been done before.