Ebola

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News/Politics 10-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. A glitch in the program or intentional vote fraud by the programmers?

From CapitolCityProject  “An Illinois man was well aware of the stories dealing with votes being switched from Republican to Democrat on touch voting machines in his county and decided to record his own results using the camera on his phone.

What exactly did he capture as he was voting? His votes appear to be marked Democrat even though he is trying to vote Republican. The video is slowed down at points to show where his finger is landing.”

I’d have an easier time believing it’s a glitch if it didn’t always seem to favor the Democrats.

Here’s another.

From BaltimoreCBS/Local  “Early voting just started last week in Maryland, but there are already accusations that some voting machines are changing Republican votes to Democrat. Now Republicans are calling for an investigation by the State Board of Elections.”

“As Marylanders go to the polls, there are concerns that the vote you cast may not be for the candidate you want.

“We’ve heard from scores of citizens in our district and around the state who have had this problem where they hit one button to vote for one person, and when they go to the summary they see that the other person was checked,” said Del Nik Kipke, (R) Anne Arundel County.

Republicans say they’ve received several dozen reports of Republican votes being changed to Democrat.”

So is the SEIU still involved with machine maintenance and programming?

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2. Sure, and the dog ate my homework. 🙄

From TheDailyCaller  “The Democrat-controlled Senate Select Committee on Ethics said that it never received a complaint pertaining to Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and the Obama administration’s efforts to approve visas for certain investors, according to a government watchdog group, despite previously confirming that it received the complaint — and saying that it opened an investigation.

The nonprofit government accountability organization Cause of Action sent the ethics committee, chaired by Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a recent letter asking for follow-up on its Dec. 16, 2013 complaint, which detailed Reid’s ex parte communications with then-U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas, who now serves as deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.”

“Senate Ethics Committee Chief Counsel and Staff Director John C. Sassaman called Cause of Action to state over the phone that the committee “never received” the complaint, according to Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein.

But Cause of Action received a signed returned receipt from the Senate mail dated Dec. 20, 2013, according to the organization.”

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3. Doctors are opting out of ObamaCare exchanges.

From CNSNews  “Over 214,000 doctors won’t participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It’s also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In January, an estimated 70% of California’s physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1.      Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar – they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. “It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60,” a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. “For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California’s Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent.”

2.      Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that’s not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. “Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the PCPs time at lower pay,” says the study.

The study also points to two reasons that doctors might not get paid at all:“

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4. This lady has an attitude problem. The state is also seeking a court ordered quarantine.

From NBCNews  “Kaci Hickox, the nurse who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, vowed to fight Maine officials who are seeking a court order to force her to self-quarantine at home.

Hickox, who is holed up in a house in the town of Fort Kent, gave the state until Thursday to let her move freely and threatened to take the matter to court herself. But Maine Health Commissioner Mary Mayhew said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon that “when it is made clear by an individual in this risk category that they do not intend to voluntarily stay at home for the remaining 21 days, we will immediate see a court order.”

Mayhew didn’t use Hickox’s name because of privacy regulations, but Hickox is the only person in the state known to have had direct exposure to Ebola patients. Asked specifically about Hickox’s case, Mayhew replied, “We will make it mandatory.”

Hickox emerged from her home Wednesday to tell reporters that she and her attorneys had been in negotiations all day with state officials but that the impasse remained.”

The President says they’re unnecessary, yet the military is ordering it for returning soldiers. Talk about mixed messages.

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News/Politics 10-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. More US victims from F and F. What else are they hiding?

From JudicialWatch  ” Judicial Watch today announced that, based on information uncovered through a Judicial Watch public records lawsuit against the City of Phoenix, the U.S. Congress has confirmed that an AK 47 rifle used in a July 29, 2013, gang-style assault on an apartment building that left two people wounded was part of the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program.

An October 16 letter sent from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) to Deputy Attorney General James Cole discloses that “we have learned of another crime gun connected to Fast and Furious.  The [Justice] Department did not provide any notice to the Congress or the public about this gun.”  Grassley (Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Issa (Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) detail:

Based on the serial number [1977DX1654] from the police report obtained by Judicial Watch and documents obtained during our Fast and Furious investigation, we can confirm that the assault rifle recovered in the vehicle on July 30, 2013, was purchased by Sean Christopher Stewart. Stewart pled guilty to firearms trafficking charges resulting from his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious … Stewart purchased this particular firearm on December 8, 2009, one of 40 that he purchased that day while under ATF surveillance” (emphasis in original document).

The Phoenix Police reports, which the letter from Congress references, were obtained by Judicial Watch thanks to a lawsuit filed against the City of Phoenix, AZ, seeking the Police Department’s records about the gang assault (Judicial Watch v. City of Phoenix (No. CV2014- 012018)). The lawsuit was filed on October 2 after the City of Phoenix ignored an August 5, 2014, Arizona Public Records Law request for information about the crime and the guns.  Judicial Watch believed the reports detailed that a weapon or weapons used in the assault are connected to the federal government’s Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.  Today’s letter from Grassley and Issa is official confirmation of Judicial Watch’s understanding from other sources.”

“According to the Phoenix Police Department report, ATF traced the firearm on July 31, 2013, the day after Phoenix police officers recovered it. Yet, over a full year has passed, and the Department has failed to notify the Committees … This lack of transparency about the consequences of Fast and Furious undermines public confidence in law enforcement and gives the impression that the Department is seeking to suppress information and limit its exposure to public scrutiny.”

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2. Catch and release.

From Breitbart  “Deportations from the interior of the United States declined 34 percent this year from last, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, derived largely from an internal Department of Homeland Security document. 

The CIS report released Wednesday and authored by the group’s director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, details the decline in immigration enforcement and reveals that there remain nearly 167,000 convicted criminal immigrants with final orders of removal still in the United States and “currently at large.”

“Prosecutorial discretion as practiced by the Obama administration has transformed immigration enforcement into a massive catch-and-release program that makes a joke of the law, fails to deter illegal settlement, and allows even illegal aliens who commit crimes to remain here,” Vaughan said Wednesday.

“These policies inflict real harm on Americans and legal immigrants,” she continued, “in the form of lost jobs, depressed wages, additional social services, and even lost lives. In addition, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups around the world, our lax policies represent an unnecessary national security risk.”

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3. The CDC director says a travel ban would hurt African economies. Yet that’s exactly what many African nations are doing.

From TheAP  “Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries – and two of them appear to have snuffed out the disease.

The developments constitute a modest success in an otherwise bleak situation.

Officials credit tighter border controls, good patient-tracking and other medical practices, and just plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak was first identified nearly seven months ago.

Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization on Friday will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.”

Sealing the borders won’t happen under Obama, and if it does, it won’t be done until it’s too late.

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4. The Centers for Anything But Disease Control.

From TheNYPost  “At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. Those evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC funding increases in January larger than what President Obama requested.

What are we getting for this ever-increasing amount of money? Answer: A power-hungry busybody brigade of politicized blame-mongers.

Money, money, it’s always the money. Yet, while Ebola and enterovirus D68 wreak havoc on our health system, the CDC has been busying itself with an ever-widening array of non-disease-control campaigns, like these recent crusades:

Mandatory motorcycle-helmet laws

Video games and TV violence

“Social norming” in the schools”

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5. Neo-Victorianism on Campus.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Sexual liberation is having a nervous breakdown on college campuses. Conservatives should be cheering on its collapse; instead they sometimes sound as if they want to administer the victim smelling salts. 

It is impossible to overstate the growing weirdness of the college sex scene. Campus feminists are reimporting selective portions of a traditional sexual code that they have long scorned, in the name of ending what they preposterously call an epidemic of campus rape. They are once again making males the guardians of female safety and are portraying females as fainting, helpless victims of the untrammeled male libido. They are demanding that college administrators write highly technical rules for sex and aggressively enforce them, 50 years after the proponents of sexual liberation insisted that college adults stop policing student sexual behavior. While the campus feminists are not yet calling for an assistant dean to be present at their drunken couplings, they have created the next best thing: the opportunity to replay every grope and caress before a tribunal of voyeuristic administrators.

The ultimate result of the feminists’ crusade may be the same as if they were explicitly calling for a return to sexual modesty: a sharp decrease in casual, drunken sex. There is no downside to this development. “

Or if you prefer an alternate title, The Vindication of Christian Sexual Ethics.

From NationalReview  “It won’t work. Sure, there will be a chill that settles across some campuses (depending on enforcement), and there will be cases where the burden-shifting “works” (at least in the way that feminists want it to work) by ruining a man’s life in highly ambiguous circumstances. But the end result won’t be a net increase in healthy relationships but instead an increase in fear, confusion, and recriminations as neo-Victorianism butts up against the crazed ”sex week” culture that still infects campuses from the top to the bottom of the academic food chain. It’s decadence versus contractual morality that utterly defies human nature, and neither model is viable.

This is exactly the time when Christians should step forward with a different ideal, the holistic, healthy, and proven model of sobriety always, chastity before marriage, and fidelity afterwards — all because marriage is sacred, our bodies are a temple to God, and we love our spouses more than we love our own lives. 

Yet, sadly, many Christians have treated Christian sexual morality as something to be embarrassed about — to be shoved at the end of the conversation or minimized by reference to “other” good works. As if the formation of lifelong, loving relationships is somehow secondary to good deeds in soup kitchens or medical mission trips.”

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News/Politics 10-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. facepalm-double

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2. And if that video didn’t bring their incompetent response to all this into focus, this should.

From CNSNews  “Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a telephone press briefing Wednesday that you cannot get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but that infected or exposed persons should not ride public transportation because they could transmit the disease to someone else.”

“Frieden’s statement came in response to CNSNews.com’s question regarding a video message from President Barack Obama last week addressing Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, in which the president told residents they “cannot get [Ebola] through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.””

“My first question is, did the CDC vet this video message before it was released and posted on U.S. embassy websites, and is it true that a person runs absolutely no risk of contracting Ebola on public transportation, such as a bus?”

“Yes, CDC vetted the message, and, yes, we believe it’s accurate,” Frieden responded. “I think there are two different parts of that equation,” he continued. “The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no.”

“Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you,” he said.”

Take a moment to absorb the stupidity of these statements……

How is it that you can’t catch it on a bus, but you can infect others on the bus if you have it. What?

And these are the experts handling this? We are so …….

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3. More bad news.

From TheJournalOfEmergencyMedicalServices  ” International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.

 Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community.

“Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?” said Ekambaram who worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. “We’ve all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground.””

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4. Nope. No WMD’s here.

From TheNYTimes  “In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”

“The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.”

“Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.””

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5. Harvard educated lawyers are speaking out about the school’s new sexual misconduct policies.

From TheBostonGlobe  “Twenty-eight current and retired Harvard Law School professors are asking the university to abandon its new sexual misconduct policy and craft different guidelines for investigating allegations, asserting that the new rules violate the due process rights of the accused.

“This is an issue of political correctness run amok,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard Law professor who was among the faculty members signing an article, sent to the Globe’s Opinion page, that is critical of the new procedures.”

“In a statement Tuesday night, Harvard said the new policy was enacted after a two-year review of its practices and its guidelines “create an expert, neutral, fair, and objective mechanism for investigating sexual misconduct cases involving students.”

The misconduct policy, which Harvard announced in July and which took effect this fall, includes a provision to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard when determining whether sexual assault or harassment occurred.”

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News/Politics 10-15-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. We’ll start off today with some busted memes. First up, the “Ebola is the Republicans fault” meme.

From Gov. Bobby Jindal, writing at Politico  “In a paid speech last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to link spending restraints enacted by Congress—and signed into law by President Obama—to the fight against Ebola. Secretary Clinton claimed that the spending reductions mandated under sequestration “are really beginning to hurt,” citing the fight against Ebola: “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is another example on the response to Ebola—they’re working heroically, but they don’t have the resources they used to have.”

Her argument, like those made by others, misses the point. In recent years, the CDC has received significant amounts of funding. Unfortunately, however, many of those funds have been diverted away from programs that can fight infectious diseases, and toward programs far afield from the CDC’s original purpose.

Consider the Prevention and Public Health Fund, a new series of annual mandatory appropriations created by Obamacare. Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Yet only 6 percent—$180 million—of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Especially given the agency’s postwar roots as the Communicable Disease Center, one would think that “detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats” warrants a larger funding commitment.

Instead, the Obama administration has focused the CDC on other priorities. While protecting Americans from infectious diseases received only $180 million from the Prevention Fund, the community transformation grant program received nearly three times as much money—$517.3 million over the same five-year period.”

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More from EricErickson  “According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, in January the CDC won in the budget deal.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will see an 8.2 percent budget increase for fiscal 2014, thanks to a $1.1 trillion spending bill announced by Congress Jan. 13.

But not just that. There was also this nugget of news:

This influx of cash will raise the CDC budget to $6.9 billion, which is $567 million more than it received in 2013. This is more than the agency anticipated, because the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for it was just $6.6 billion — a decrease of $270 million from fiscal 2012.

Yes, you read that right. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to give the CDC more money that President Obama requested. And what did the CDC intend to do with all that money. Cure Ebola?

Well, umm . . . .

The CDC listed some of its top spending priorities in its fiscal 2014 budget request. It wants to boost spending for vaccines for children by $287 million and increase funds by $53 million for its “World Trade Center Health Program.” It requested a $40 million increase for AMD, $22 million more for Health Statistics, $20 million more for its National Violent Death Reporting System, almost $17 million more for Food Safety and an additional $15 million for polio eradication.”

Like I said, busted. And maybe they’d have appropriate funding if they weren’t wasting it on studies to find out why lesbians are overweight and other such nonsense. Just sayin’…..

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Next up, a double meme buster. The “Republican’s are the party of the rich” and the “Democrats are for the average guy” meme. It’s not just Democrat donors like Soros and Rich Richman that are busting these memes.

From MSN  “It has long been a given that politics is a rich man’s game, and there is nothing in Roll Call’s latest compilation of the 50 richest members of Congress to contradict that notion.

The publication’s annual report reveals that about one in ten of the 535 members of the House and Senate rank among the nation’s top one percent financially based on their net worth.

Some of those lawmakers may be troubled from time to time to be associated with so reviled an institution as Congress, which is saddled with an approval rating averaging a lowly 14 percent. But they can take solace in their personal financial balance sheets, with some showing their net worth in hundreds of millions of dollars.”

8 out of the top 8 are Democrats. This one’s all busted up.

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And the last one, also a double, the “Gun free zones stop crazy people with guns” meme and the “Mass shootings are on the rise” meme.

From Breitbart  “On October 9, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a revised report showing that 92% of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 took place in gun-free zones.

The CPRC report was released in response to an Everytown for Gun Safety study claiming only 14% of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones. Everytown actually claimed 86% of such incidents occurred in places where guns were allowed.

CPRC showed that the 86% claim rests on Everytown’s “inclusion of attacks in private homes” and “numerous errors in identifying whether citizens can defend themselves.” For example, Everytown “[ignores] rules that prevent general citizens from carrying guns [for self-defense]” in certain cities, and they fail to recognize that “allowing police to carry guns is not the same thing as letting civilians defend themselves.””

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More here from LegalInsurrection  “An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.”

But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of time is examined (1977 through the first half of 2014), deaths from Mass Public Shootings show only a slight, statistically insignificant, increase – an annual increase of less than one percent.

The FBI’s misleadingly includes cases that aren’t mass shootings – cases where no one or only one person was killed in a public place. While the FBI assures people that it “captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria,” their report missed 20 shootings where at least two people were killed in a public place. Most of these missing cases took place early on, biasing their results towards showing an increase.”“

Do these people ever tell the truth? Everything is half-truths and exaggerations from them.

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2. Another feel good idea bites the dust. Or at least it should, but they’ll probably just throw more money at it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “As school children continue to protest Michelle Obama’s push for healthier lunches by dumping their full trays into garbage bins, the nation’s school boards are joining in to demand that the Obama administration let them off the hook of serving the costly and tasteless meals.

Armed with a national poll for National School Lunch Week, the National School Boards Association on Monday demanded that Washington address the “onerous requirements for federal school meal programs.””

“The survey of school leaders revealed:

— 83.7 percent of school districts saw an increase in plate waste.

— 81.8 percent had an increase in cost.

— 76.5 percent saw a decrease in participation by students.

— 75 percent of school leaders want an increase in federal funding for school districts to comply with the new standards.”

It’s not working.

From CNSNews  “In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese.”

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3. Not good.

From TheHill  “Global health officials said Tuesday that the death rate in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 70 percent, up from 50 percent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement at a news conference in Geneva, where officials said there could be up to 10,000 new cases of the virus every week within two months.

A total of 4,447 people have died from Ebola this year, the WHO said, while 8,914 have been sickened. Experts believe the real number of Ebola victims is much bigger than the official figures due to difficulties in reporting the cases.

WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward underscored the need for a more robust international response to Ebola with a timetable.

If the effort to fight Ebola is not intensified within 60 days, he said, deaths will mount and the virus will become even harder to control.”

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4. Here’s more on the story 6 Arrows posted a link to last night, from the group fighting the overreach by city officials.

From AllianceDefendingFreedom  “City officials are upset over a voter lawsuit filed after the city council rejected valid petitions to repeal a law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other’s restrooms. ADF attorneys say the city is illegitimately demanding that the pastors, who are not party to the lawsuit, turn over their constitutionally protected sermons and other communications simply so the city can see if the pastors have ever opposed or criticized the city.

“City council members are supposed to be public servants, not ‘Big Brother’ overlords who will tolerate no dissent or challenge,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “In this case, they have embarked upon a witch-hunt, and we are asking the court to put a stop to it.”

“The city’s subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions. Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment.”

In June, the Houston City Council passed its “bathroom bill,” which sparked a citizen initiative to have the council either repeal the bill or place it on the ballot for voters to decide. The public submitted more than three times the legally required number of valid signatures, which the city secretary, who is entrusted by law to examine and certify petitions, certified as sufficient. The mayor and city attorney defied the law and rejected the certification.”

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5. Is the federal appeals court system stacking the deck for gay marriage rulings? Wouldn’t surprise me.

From BuzzFeed  ” The lawyer representing the group that supports Nevada’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages made an explosive claim on Monday: He argued that a federal appeals court appears to have picked specific judges “in order to influence the outcome” of marriage cases.”

“One of the reasons he asked for the rehearing, he claimed, is the “high likelihood that the number of Judges [Stephen] Reinhardt and [Marsha] Berzon’s assignments to the Relevant Cases, including this and the Hawaii and Idaho marriage cases (which we treat as one for these purposes), did not result from a neutral judge-assignment process.”

Stewart wrote that the claim was the result of “careful statistical analysis” by Dr. James H. Matis.

Stewart went further, writing, “The appearance of unfairness is not a close question here. Even without the aid of professional statisticians, a reasonable person will immediately sense that something is amiss when one judge out of more than thirty is assigned over a four and one-half year period to five of this Circuit’s eleven cases involving the federal constitutional rights of gay men and lesbians, another to four of those cases, and both of them to the momentous ‘gay marriage’ cases.”

In an affidavit filed and signed by Stewart with the filing, he noted the legal team’s decision to obtain the analysis from Matis and includes Stewart’s personal conclusion that the panel of judges that heard the Nevada marriage case was one of the most favorable possible panels for the same-sex couple plaintiffs and “among the least favorable” for “the man-woman marriage side.” He then added that “such preferences and conclusions are known and understood by all at the Ninth Circuit involved with the judge-assignment process.”

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6. Ah yes, the extortion racket. 🙄

That’s a lovely country you have there…..

Be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it…..

From Yahoo/Reuters  “The United States should provide billions of dollars to help Central American nations curb the flow of illegal migrants, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said, and his government warns the problem will get worse if Washington fails to help.

Fleeing violence, trying to reach relatives already in the United States or seeking jobs, record numbers of child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been stopped at the southern U.S. border this year, causing widespread alarm.

Last month, the three countries pitched Washington an ambitious development plan to confront the issue.

They want to pump about $10 billion into the region to create jobs and lift living standards, with the bulk of funding coming from the United States, Perez told Reuters.”

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News/Politics 10-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. “The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic.”

From MSN  “Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number 1.5 to two.

Ebola cases in West Africa have been doubling about every three weeks, and no data suggests a major change in that trendline.

“The speed at which things are moving on the ground, it’s hard for people to get their minds around. People don’t understand the concept of exponential growth,” said Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Exponential growth in the context of three weeks means, ‘If I know that X needs to be done, and I work my butt off and get it done in three weeks, it’s now half as good as it needs to be.’ ”

Frieden warned Thursday that without immediate, concerted, bold action, the Ebola virus could become a global calamity on the scale of HIV. He spoke at a gathering of global health officials and government leaders at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. The president of Guinea was at the table and the presidents of Liberia and Sierra Leone joined by video link. Amid much bureaucratic talk and table-thumping was an emerging theme: The virus is still outpacing the efforts to contain it.

“The situation is worse than it was 12 days ago. It’s entrenched in the capitals. Seventy percent of the people [who become infected] are definitely dying from this disease and it is accelerating in almost all settings,” Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, told the group.”

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2. Common sense or overreaction?

From NBCNews  “A majority of Americans support banning all flights to the United States from countries experiencing an Ebola outbreak, an exclusive NBC News online survey reveals.

The survey, which was conducted by SurveyMonkey and then weighted for age, race, sex, education and region to match U.S. Census data, found that 58 percent of Americans want a ban on incoming flights from West African countries hardest hit by the virus, such as Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Twenty percent of respondents opposed a travel ban, and the rest said they didn’t know. The survey was conducted a day before the first person diagnosed with Ebola inside the U.S. died Wednesday.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday announced new screening procedures at five American airports that see the most travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone: New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare and Atlanta. Staff will question and take the temperature of everyone coming from those countries and screen for signs of the illness. Approximately 150 passengers come to the U.S. from those countries each day, officials said.”

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3. Of course.

From TownHall  “HealthCare.gov, the online portal where millions of Americans must by health insurance, will not display premiums for 2015 until after the 2014 elections, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. 

Obama administration officials told the AP that Americans will not be able to find out if their health insurance premiums are going up “until the second week of November,” which conveniently falls after Americans will go to the polls November 4th.

“Insurers say one big challenge for next year will involve millions of returning customers,” the AP reports. “It’s not really a technology issue, but a time crunch that also coincides with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.”

“Existing customers who do nothing will be automatically re-enrolled in their current plan as of Jan. 1,” the AP continues. “But they will receive this year’s subsidy amount, which could be lower than what they’d be entitled to for 2015. And that could mean sticker shock over their new monthly premiums.””

Cowards.

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4. They can’t hide from all the consequences of this disaster. 

From FoxNews  “More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of people just before the midterm elections.

“It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so.

In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to cancel such policies, which generally fall out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act because they don’t offer the level of coverage the law requires.”

Vote accordingly.

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5. Fraud is all they have left.

From TheFreeBeacon  “A network of union-funded groups from Little Rock to Washington, D.C., working to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas have been implicated in a lawsuit alleging that operatives in the state forged notary signatures in order to get the question on November’s ballot.

The lawsuit, which has reached the Arkansas Supreme Court, is challenging the validity of a ballot question to raise the state’s minimum wage. Details in the complaint provide a window into connections between the seemingly disparate organizations.

Those organizations are ostensibly run by Arkansans, but public records suggest that they are part of a coordinated political effort with ties to a network of Washington-based Democratic groups supportive of Hillary Clinton.”

“Beyond deadline issues, Stephens alleges numerous defects that he says should invalidate tens of thousands of petition signatures. They include allegations that canvassers forged a notary’s signature on thousands of petition pages.”

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6. They’re getting desperate. Public opinion is turning, and they know it.

From TheCollegeFix  “The University of California – San Francisco will launch an online abortion course this Monday, an Internet class being hailed as the first of its kind. The course will delve into “clinical aspects of medication abortion, aspiration abortion, post-abortion contraception, and pain management for abortion,” as well as topics such as the history of abortion, “abortion stigma,” complications and counseling, its outline states.

“I think that if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful,” Dr. Jody Steinauer, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California – San Francisco, told The Daily Beast, which first reported on the class, noting an estimated 3,000 people have signed up so far.”

““Each week’s lectures will incorporate the stories of women who seek abortion in order to better portray abortion significance and rationale,” its outline states. “Other topics will include a brief history of abortion, the clinical aspects of medication and procedural abortions in and after the first trimester, an overview of patient-centered abortion-care, the basics of abortion counseling, the professional obligations of health care practitioners to ensure that women have access to safe abortion care, and the maze of restrictions that make safe abortion care inaccessible to many women.”

“In response to news of the course, Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told WORLD magazine that “obstetricians and gynecologists refuse to do abortions because they choose to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, not because their education didn’t cover abortions.”

And National Right To Life’s Randall O’Bannon, its director of education and research, stated the reason most medical schools and med students shun learning how to perform abortions is because they “recognize that abortion is the killing of human beings.””

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by

News/Politics 10-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Fuzzy Math.

Or if you prefer an alternate headline, Census Helping Cook the Unemployment Books.

From TheNTPost  “A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.

And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers. The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.

When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.”

“The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.”

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2. An update on the story from the other day about the electronic records problems in the Texas Ebola case. Another flawed product from another Obama donor and bundler, just like with ObamaCare’s website.

From NationalReview  “Here’s what I can tell you for sure: Texas Health contracts with Epic Systems for its electronic-medical-records system — and the Dallas hospital isn’t the only client that has complained about its costly information-sharing flaws and interoperability failures.

Epic was founded by billionaire Judy Faulkner, a top Obama donor whose company is the dominant EMR player in the U.S. health-care market. As I reported last year, Epic employees donated nearly $1 million to political parties and candidates between 1995 and 2012 — 82 percent of it to Democrats. The company’s top ten PAC recipients are all Democratic or left-wing outfits, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (nearly $230,000) to the DNC Services Corporation (nearly $175,000) and the America’s Families First Action Fund super PAC ($150,000).

Faulkner, an influential Obama campaign-finance bundler, served as an adviser to David Blumenthal. He’s the White House health-information-technology guru in charge of dispensing the federal electronic-medical-records subsidies that Faulkner pushed President Obama to adopt. Faulkner also served on the same committee Blumenthal chaired.”

“Epic and other large firms lobbied aggressively for nearly $30 billion in federal subsidies for their companies under the 2009 Obama stimulus package. The law penalizes medical providers that fail to comply with the one-size-fits-all mandate. Obama claimed that the new rules would cut costs and reduce errors. But health-care analysts at the RAND Corporation admitted last year that their cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year were vastly inflated.

Epic has been the subject of rising industry and provider complaints about its antiquated closed-end system — so much so that when Texas Health released its first statement about the software glitch in the Ebola case, Jack Shaffer, a health-care IT guru and top official at KRM Associates, immediately snarked on Twitter: “Guess Epic can’t share data even with itself!”

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3. And since we’re on the subject of Obama’s billionaire buddies…

Only someone completely tone-deaf, or a serial liar, can pull this off with a straight face while in the home of a billionaire named Rich Richman. I kid you not. 😆

From TheDailyMail  “President Barack Obama chided the Republican Party for catering to the ‘interests of billionaires’ in an email to supporters on Tuesday, then attended a series of high-dollar fundraisers, including one at real estate mogul Rich Richman’s house.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser at Richman’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut, cost as much as $32,400 a person, according to the White House. 

The other two events, held in New York and sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, cost between $1,000 and $32,400 to attend.”

“As Obama was yucking it up with wealthy Democratic donors, he sent out a fundraising email slamming the GOP for being in the pocket of billionaires, the Washington Times reports.

‘If the Republicans win, we know who they’ll be fighting for,’ Obama allegedly wrote. ‘Once again, the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class.'”

They must think their supporters are total morons.

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4. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The EPA is poised to “do an IRS” — similar to what the tax agency had to do with dismissed top official Lois G. Lerner — and officially notify the National Archives that it may have lost key electronic records, according to a think tank that’s suing to get text messages under an open-records request.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal court on Tuesday that the alert will be coming soon, in a case that’s shaping up as a significant battle over whether government agencies are required to keep cellphone text messages as “official” records.

An EPA spokeswoman said agency officials have acknowledged to the court and to the National Archives that the agency doesn’t have the text messages, but they contend the messages never had to be stored in the first place, since they were personal in nature and aren’t required to be preserved under open-records laws, nor turned over under the Freedom of Information Act.

“EPA is not aware of any evidence that federal records have been unlawfully destroyed,” said Liz Purchia, the EPA spokeswoman.”

Nothin’ to see here folks. Again.

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5. Thoughts?

From HotAir  “Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution, even courts can’t mess with it. (I think!) As The Atlantic notes, though, Cruz’s proposed amendment isn’t substantive. It’s procedural.

“It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage, but that is what the Supreme Court is implying today. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

“Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the Nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts.

“Marriage is a question for the States. That is why I have introduced legislation, S. 2024, to protect the authority of state legislatures to define marriage. And that is why, when Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.”

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6. How tolerant… 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky has a chilling message for Christian business owners who refuse service to LGBT organizations: leave your religion at home.”

“On Tuesday, a Lexington Human Rights Commission hearing examiner issued a recommended ruling that the owner of a T-shirt company violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination.”

The hearing examiner recommended the following punishment:

First, Hands On Originals cannot discriminate against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other words, the T-shirt company must service LGBT customers – no questions asked. The examiner also ordered Adamson to attend “diversity training” conducted by – wait for it – the Lexington Human Rights Commission.

“Take just a moment and let that sink in – a Christian business owner is being ordered to attend diversity training – because of his religious beliefs. That’s a pretty frightening concept and a mighty dangerous precedent.”

And I must say, I’m impressed with the updated terminology used. After all, “diversity training” sounds so much nicer than “re-education camp.”

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7. Reason number 6,453,627 not to use the public school system. PC stupidity run amok.

From NationalReview  “A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead.

“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training document given to middle-school teachers at the Lincoln Public Schools.

“Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.

The document also warns against asking students to “line up as boys or girls,” and suggests asking them to line up by whether they prefer “skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening.”

“Always ask yourself . . . ‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’” the document says.”

A better question for parents is to always ask yourself, “Do I want a wussified kid, that’s totally confused about gender and the differences between boys and girls, because everyone is treated as unisex now?” And if the answer is no, you don’t, then maybe you should find a better schooling option.

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by

News/Politics 10-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. How Ebola spread out of control.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), knew it was no simple matter to properly carry away a body loaded with Ebola virus. It takes four people wearing protective suits, one at each corner of the body bag. On that grim day near the end of August, in a makeshift Ebola ward in Monrovia, Liberia, burial teams already had lugged 60 victims to a truck for the trip to the crematorium.

Frieden had seen plenty of death over the years, but this was far worse than he expected, a plague on a medieval scale. “A scene out of Dante,” he called it.

Shaken, he flew back to the United States on Aug. 31 and immediately briefed President Obama by phone. The window to act was closing, he told the president in the 15-minute call.

That conversation, nearly six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) learned of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, was part of a mounting realization among world leaders that the battle against the virus was being lost. As of early September, with more than 1,800 confirmed Ebola deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there was still no coordinated global response. Alarmed U.S. officials realized they would need to call in the military.

 Obama eventually ordered 3,000 military personnel to West Africa; about 200 had arrived by the beginning of this month. They will be joined by health workers from countries such as Britain, China and Cuba. Canada and Japan are sending protective gear and mobile laboratories. Nonprofit organizations such as the Gates Foundation also are contributing. But it’s not at all clear that this belated muscular response will be enough to quell the epidemic before it takes tens of thousands of lives.”

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2. The Dallas hospital is blaming a flaw in the new electronic medical records for errors involving patient zero.

From CNSNews  “When a sick Liberian man walked into Texas Presbyterian Hospital last month, “Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses,” the hospital said in a statement released Thursday night.

The man told a nurse he had come from West Africa, where an Ebola epidemic is raging.

“However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.”

The hospital said its electronic health records include “separate physician and nursing workflows.” The hospital said the Liberian man’s travel history was located in the nurses’ portion of the EHR, but — “As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow.”

“As result of this discovery, Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa.”

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3. Yes please!

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Attorney General Eric Holder should be held in contempt of court for refusing to release “Fast and Furious” documents in line with a judge’s order — and even given jail time if necessary, lawmakers said.

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to fine Mr. Holder if he doesn’t comply with her own order issued back in August — the one where she said he couldn’t claim executive privilege to keep private certain documents related to the federal gun-running program, “Operation Fast and Furious,” Politico reported.

Mr. Holder was supposed to turn over the documents by Oct. 1. The attorney general has not — but instead, announced his resignation from office.

Lawyers for the lawmakers say the time has come when the judge should consider imposing fines on Mr. Holder, or even throwing him in jail.

“Should the Court determine that the Attorney General has violated that Order, the Court should impose on the Attorney General an appropriate penalty to coerce his compliance with the August 20 Order, including an escalating daily monetary fine against Eric H. Holder Jr., to be paid by Mr. Holder out of his personal assets, converting to incarceration if the payment of daily monetary fines does not produce compliance within a reasonable period of time,” House Counsel Kerry Kircher and other lawyers wrote in the filing, Politico reported.”

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4. Kick ineligible illegal immigrants off the exchange, get sued for violating their supposed rights. Don’t worry, I’m sure the DoJ has a settlement plan already in the pipeline.

From TheDailyCaller  “Two immigration groups have filed legal complaints against the Obama administration for kicking over one hundred thousand Obamacare customers off their insurance plans without sending notices in their native language, Modern Healthcare reports.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and Philadelphia’s Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition (SEAMACC) have both filed complaints with Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. The groups believe the Obama administration’s move to end the health plans of customers who failed to prove their legal immigration or citizenship status violate customers’ rights as immigrants.

The Obama administration terminated 115,000 customers’ Obamacare exchange health insurance on September 30, after customers failed to submit required documentation to prove their legal status in the U.S. 

The administration said it first reached out to each customer between eight and ten times through mail, phone and e-mail in an attempt to get them to update their documents on HealthCare.gov before finally kicking them off their plans.”

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5. The real war on women.

From CNSNews  “A record 55,553,000 women 16 years and older did not participate in the labor force in September, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that 55,553,000 women in the United States did not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.

The number of women not in the labor force increased from 55,345,000 in August to 55,553,000 in September, an increase of 208,000.

The participation rate for women also dipped in September to 56.7 percent; it has not been this low since September of 1988 when it was 56.6 percent. This means that only 56.7 percent of women participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one.”

But thanks to the Obama admin’s fuzzy math, the unemployment rate for women dropped anyway.

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6. Some good news.

From MSN  “Nearly two-thirds of the abortion clinics remaining in Texas must close immediately after a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the state may enforce a law that requires those facilities to be built to the same standards as hospitals.

That law — part of an omnibus bill with several measures that chip away at women’s access to abortion — was struck down in late August as unconstitutional by an Austin federal judge, who put it on hold while the state appeals.

But on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans tossed out U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel’s August injunction, which allowed the estimated 20 abortion clinics in Texas to continue operating during the appeals process. Without that injunction, only seven clinics will be left.

In its ruling, the 5th Circuit said the “central” question it considered was “whether the state has shown a likelihood of success” in fighting Yeakel’s ruling “regarding whether the ambulatory surgical center provision is unconstitutional. We conclude that it has.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued the state on behalf of a coalition of abortion clinics, said that Thursday’s decision will force nearly 1 million Texas women of reproductive age to drive a minimum of 300 miles round trip “to access their constitutional right to an abortion.”

Oh, the horror…. 🙄

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by

News/Politics 10-2-14

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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by

News/Politics 9-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The barbarians within our gates.

From Politico  “With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama is doing more than to knowingly enter a quagmire. He is doing more than play with the fates of two half-broken countries—Iraq and Syria—whose societies were gutted long before the Americans appeared on the horizon. Obama is stepping once again—and with understandably great reluctance—into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down.

 Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism—the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition—than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays—all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. With the dubious exception of the antiquated monarchies and emirates of the Gulf—which for the moment are holding out against the tide of chaos—and possibly Tunisia, there is no recognizable legitimacy left in the Arab world.

Is it any surprise that, like the vermin that take over a ruined city, the heirs to this self-destroyed civilization should be the nihilistic thugs of the Islamic State? And that there is no one else who can clean up the vast mess we Arabs have made of our world but the Americans and Western countries?”

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2. And no, barbarians is not too strong a word to use in describing them.

From TheNYPost  “Islamic State barbarians are raping thousands of women in Iraq and Syria to mass-produce spawn who’ll follow in their vile footsteps, The Post has learned.

Young militants are running wild to the chagrin of their more sophisticated and p.r.-savvy commanders, an Iraqi official told The Post.

The motivation of the rapists is twofold: They want to make ISIS babies — and they are just plain out for twisted thrills.”

“Each rapist’s goal is to impregnate multiple women and breed children within their villages and towns, he said, adding, “They want to intertwine themselves within the communities.

“They want to become part of the fabric of the cities they control so they can live on for generations.””

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3. ISIS is concentrating recruiting efforts in places like Minnesota. Maybe law enforcement should be concentrating their efforts there too.  

From TheStarTribune  “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has zeroed in on Minnesota, home to the largest Somali population in the country, as a target-rich recruiting ground for fighters such as the boy on Facebook.

Federal investigators, as well as community leaders like Farah, say a sophisticated new wave of extremism is trying to sell disaffected youth on joining militant brigades in Syria and Iraq.

In recent months, about a dozen Minnesotans, mostly Somali-Americans, have slipped away to fight or aid known terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. Federal authorities confirmed one Minnesota man died last month while fighting for ISIL. A second ­Minnesotan reportedly was killed in the same battle. Federal agents have intercepted young Somalis at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. At least three young women — including a 19-year-old from St. Paul — left the state three weeks ago and are believed to be in Syria.

As director of Ka Joog, a Somali youth outreach program, Farah is outmaneuvered, outspent and is quickly losing ground in the propaganda war being fought in cyber space.”

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4. So how much did it cost the Obama admin to buy Lois Lerner’s silence? About $100,000 a year.

From Politico  “Employers won’t hire her. She’s been berated with epithets like “dirty Jew.” Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS.

Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.””

“Lerner wants to work to help pay for her defense bills, though a source working on the congressional investigation said she’s receiving a $100,000 annual pension. But while even Miller, fired by Obama in the wake of the scandal, has landed on his feet at a Washington-based consulting group, Lerner is still untouchable.”

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5. The “dirt” on Hillary.

From Yahoo  “The annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, an initiative of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation dedicated to addressing “global challenges,” is taking place in New York this week. The Republican National Committee marked the occasion by dumping a huge opposition research file on Clinton to reporters.

Titled “Clinton Confab Complications,” the research briefing declared, “As Clinton World Gathers In New York, Problems Loom Over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign.” It highlighted several issues Republicans think can hurt Clinton, including her ties to “heads of state, business leaders, and actors” and alleged “conflicts of interest,” business dealings of some of her staffers, and potential progressive opposition to Clinton.

The GOP has previously used some of these same attacks on Clinton. This briefing makes clear that Republicans hope the separate points will contribute to an overall narrative that Clinton is ethically compromised and overly cozy with big business. The RNC is also clearly eager to capitalize on any potential dissatisfaction with Clinton among the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”

Seems like there’s a lot of dirt left to be dumped.

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6. The number of Ebola cases continue to climb and officials say it could get much, much worse.

From USAToday  “New estimates from the World Health Organization warn the number of Ebola cases could hit 21,000 in six weeks unless efforts to curb the outbreak are ramped up.

Since the first cases were reported six months ago, the tally of cases in West Africa has reached an estimated 5,800 illnesses. WHO officials say cases are continuing to increase exponentially and Ebola could sicken people for years to come without better control measures.

In recent weeks, health officials worldwide have stepped up efforts to provide aid but the virus is still spreading. There aren’t enough hospital beds, health workers or even soap and water in the hardest-hit West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.”

“The CDC calculations are based, in part, on assumptions that cases have been dramatically underreported. Other projections haven’t made the same kind of attempt to quantify illnesses that may have been missed in official counts.

CDC scientists conclude there may be as many as 21,000 reported and unreported cases in just those two countries as soon as the end of this month, according to a draft version of the report obtained by The Associated Press. They also predict that the two countries could have a staggering 550,000 to 1.4 million cases by late January.”

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by

News/Politics 9-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up today, an update to a story from last week.

From National Review  “An independent investigation released last week says: “It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated.”

In other words, the local government tolerated sexual violence on a vast scale. Why? In part, because the criminals who committed these sickening acts were Muslims from the local Pakistani community, and noticing their depravity was considered insensitive at best, racist at worst.

The British home secretary says “institutionalized political correctness” contributed to the abandonment of hundreds of girls to their tormentors. Imagine something out of the nightmarish world of Stieg Larsson, brought to life and abetted by the muddle-headed cowardice of people who fear the disapproval of the diversity police.

In Rotherham, multiculturalism triumphed over not just feminism, but over the law, over basic human decency, and over civilization itself.”

And over at Patheos the Anchoress raises some good questions.

From Patheos  “For days I avoided the story, as I know many others have. Coming on the heels of the atrocities of the Islamic State, the take-over of Mosul (now a holding camp for kidnapped Yazidi “brides”) the purging of the Iraqi Christians from their ancient lands and the pursuit of genocide — the disheartening knowledge that, despite the official pivot away by our government, there are still thousands on Mount Sinjar who will not be rescued, because they are very old, or very young, or very weak — who could take any more? Who could read about 15 years of rape and abuse, happening while authorities feared breaking the rules of political correctness by questioning cultural practices?

Download the report and read it. Note that over 100 babies have been born of all this. Note also how, again and again, the official response to this behavior seemed to be a puzzled shrug.

What Rotherham puts me in mind of is the behavior of the conqueror. One of the terrible after-effects of invasion and war has been the subjugation of the women, the rape of wives and daughters, the seed of the conqueror, inserted into a culture and a society — yet another tactic meant to subdue and eradicate.

And yet, there has been no old-fashioned “invasion” and no “war” in the southern part of Yorkshire. This conquering was invited, and it was invited throughout Europe, where Rotherham will be discovered to have been replicated. Why wouldn’t it be? Who in Europe would dare to prosecute?”

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2. Meanwhile, in liberal LaLa Land, DWS whines about an imaginary war on women, while ignoring real ones like the story above.

From TheJournalSentinel  “Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz ripped into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s record Wednesday during a round-table discussion on women’s issues at the Milwaukee Athletic Club.

The Florida congresswoman said: “Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality.”

Wasserman Schultz added: “What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back. It is not going to happen on our watch.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch said she was “shocked” that Wasserman Schultz used domestic violence language to discuss political disagreements.

“I think the remarks were absolutely hideous and the motive behind them was despicable,” Kleefisch said.”

And a perfect example of Debbie’s character.

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3. A federal judge has upheld Louisiana’s marriage law.

From ArkLaTex  “A federal court in New Orleans issued a landmark decision on Wednesday upholding Louisiana’s constitutional right to maintain its traditional definition of marriage.  Judge Martin L.C. Feldman ruled in Robicheaux, et al v. Caldwell, et al, that “[t]he State of Louisiana has a legitimate interest under a rational basis standard of review for addressing the meaning of marriage through the democratic process.” The opinion upholds Louisiana’s Defense of Marriage Constitutional Amendment (Art. XII, Sec. 15), which was adopted by a statewide vote of 78% in 2004. 

 Wednesday’s decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana is significant as it is the first federal court victory for traditional marriage in more than a year.  Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act last June in Windsor v. U.S., at least 40 consecutive lower courts have issued rulings that same-sex marriage must be imposed on the various states. 

 Attorneys representing Louisiana in Robicheaux applauded the ruling, and vowed to continue the state’s vigorous defense if the case is appealed.  “The decision today is precisely correct,” said Mike Johnson, a Shreveport attorney hired by the state to help defend its law.  “The Court has merely affirmed that it is the people of each state who have the authority to define and regulate marriage within their borders—rather than a handful of unelected federal judges.  We believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately uphold this important principle.””

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4. The Ebola outbreak in Africa continues to worsen.

From AtlantaCBSLocal  “The director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse.

Speaking to “CBS This Morning” following his trip to the West African countries dealing with the outbreak, Dr. Tom Frieden explained that they have to act now to try to get Ebola under control.

“It is the world’s first Ebola epidemic and it is spiraling out of control. It’s bad now and it’s going to get worse in the very near future,” Frieden told CBS News. “There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now.”

Frieden, who visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, will tell Washington tomorrow that the Ebola outbreak is “spiraling upward.” The CDC director explained that these countries still need help to deal with the deadly outbreak.”

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5. The surge in school taxes will be coming as well.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America who have recently crossed into the United States will cost state and local governments a staggering $761 million dollars this year, a group that favors immigration reduction has calculated.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is pushing for reduced legal immigration and stronger border security, made its calculation based on federal government data indicating that more than 37,000 children who are part of the recent border surge have now been placed with families across the United States and are eligible to attend public schools.

The immigrants will cost local schools far more than other students, FAIR contests, not only because they speak little English but because most have likely had little schooling.”

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