Friday, October 31, 2014
Qatar Awareness Campaign
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton of the Noisy Room blog posts a letter sent to President Obama by herself and several other notables. It is concerning the country of Qatar's financial support for terror in the Middle East and Africa.
Here are some excerpts of the letter:
Here are some excerpts of the letter:
Not only is Qatar a state sponsor of terror which has funded Hamas, Boko Haram and the Islamic State, but it is increasingly apparent that Qatar is a significant factor in the United States’ diplomatic rift with Israel and finances the genocidal Islamic State.Read more here.
There is an ongoing genocide across the Middle East against Christians, Kurds, Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities. The tactics being employed each and every day by the Islamic State are reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.
In these momentous times, what is lacking the most is truth. The terrible truth is that United States government under your leadership has been on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Arab Spring, and through the period of Islamist genocide in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and across several other countries.
There are other atrocities to be attributed to Qatar, including their penchant for slave labor. It is estimated that nearly 4,000 migrant workers will die constructing the stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, scheduled to be played in Doha. Not only slave labor, but sex slavery deserves to be mentioned: for Boko Haram was created by a Qatari proxy, set up as a money making venture. The individual who provided the funds now resides in Doha. In order to #BringBackOurGirls, #StopQatarNow.
Moreover, Qatar is involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking through a relationship with the Pakistani National Logistics Cell. The National Logistics Cell of Pakistan is currently a NATO subcontractor. With a stroke of your pen, this can change tomorrow.
The Coalition of the Qatar Awareness Campaign calls on you to cut all diplomatic, economic and political ties with Qatar; remove all American military personnel from Doha; and freeze all Qatari connected assets around the globe until the reigning, duplicitous Al-Thanis step down and surrender to a court of justice!
CNN anchor mocks Sarah Palin's daughter after she gets assaulted
How will voter fraud influence next week's election?
Nice Deb reminds us that
Greta Van Susteren takes a look at the issue:
Found here.
Republicans have to have a commanding lead – outside the margin of voter fraud – to win elections. Obama’s been importing millions of illegal immigrants, while his wing-man Holder has been suing states for passing voter integrity laws. No matter how good things look for Republicans, the fraud could surpass the margin of difference in places like Colorado, and North Carolina.
Greta Van Susteren takes a look at the issue:
Found here.
Politicizing the end of human lives
Victor Davis Hanson asks:
If we were to embrace the abjectly racist worldview of Eric Holder or Al Sharpton, where would the racialization of crime end? Who would decide which interracial crimes illustrated premeditated racial hatred — or criminal laxity on the part of the state — and deserved national attention? Which adjudicator could or would declare that one interracial incident was idiosyncratic without transcendent significance, but the other typical and thus representative of collective pathology?Read more here.
What exactly has this country stooped to, when our officials and public figures traffic in politicizing the end of human lives? We are becoming not just a sick country, but an amoral one as well. What Ferguson wrought will not end well.
Who the left supports in the Middle East
Daniel Greenfield writes:
The left's worst crime in the Middle East has been its support for the region's Arab-Muslim majority at the expense of its minorities.Read more here.
The left backed the Arab Spring which rewarded the ambitions of Arabist and Islamist activists at the expense of Coptic, African and other minorities. Its great regional obsession is statehood for the Arab Muslims of Israel, (better known by their local Palestinian brand), but has little to say about the Kurds in Turkey or the Azeri in Iran. The million Jewish refugees and the vanishing Christians of the region never come up in conversation. They certainly don't get their own lefty protest rallies.
For the left to shout racism when Americans empowered the Kurds in Iraq, or when Israeli soldiers stand watch over tiny strips of land where the region's oldest and most frequently oppressed minority finds shelter is the height of hypocrisy. It is the left which is racist. It is the left which backs theocracies and always supports the majority's oppression of the minority.
The left's worst crime in the Middle East is its craven love for tyranny, for grand empires built on race and religion, over the national and political rights of the minority. These Apartheid states are all they care about. Their greatest effort has been set not on resolving the stateless problems of the Kurdish minority, on the national borders of Armenia or ending the Turkish occupation and settlement of Cyprus-- but on adding yet another Arab-Muslim state to the region.
Palestine, the cynical project of Pan-Arabist and Pan-Islamist thugs, is the great obsession of the left. Because if there's one thing that the Middle East doesn't have enough of, it's totalitarian regimes built on Arab and Islamist identity. And the one thing it has too much of is democratic state with a non-Arab and non-Muslim majority. And that one thing is what they are committed to destroying.
The gray wave is here
Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox write:
For years we have been warned about the looming, profound impacts that the aging of the U.S. population will have on the country. Well, the gray wave has arrived. Since 2000, the senior population has increased 29% compared to overall population growth of 12%. The percentage of Americans in the senior set has risen from 12.4% to 14.1%, and their share of the population is projected to climb to 19.3% by 2030. There are two principal causes for this: the baby boom generation is reaching 65 years old, while the U.S. fertility rate has fallen markedly in recent decades, despite immigration, and now hovers around the replacement rate.Read more here.
One favorite meme of urban boosters is the assertion that seniors are heading to the inner city. The preponderance of evidence shows the opposite. Within the 52 largest metropolitan areas, the urban cores, measured at the small area level (zip codes) have lost seniors to the periphery. Between 2000 and 2010, the urban core senior population declined by 1.5 million, dropping from nearly 15% of the total population to 13%.The losses were pervasive, extending to all the 52 biggest MSAs except for San Diego (and there the urban core gain was miniscule, with 97% of the senior growth occurring in the suburbs and exurbs).
In contrast, suburbs and exurbs together gained over 2.82 million seniors. But the largest increases were farthest from core, in the newer, outer suburbs and exurbs. Together these areas gained 2.4 million seniors. Rather than headed into the core, the prevailing trend has been quite the opposite.
Letting the laughter in
Amy Julia Becker finds that
God’s Spirit wants to connect us to each other not just through “religious” experiences but in the midst of very ordinary and sometimes very desperate, days.Read more here.
Can you change?
Seth Godin asks:
Can you change?Found here.
Are you stuck with your habits, your knowledge, your weight, your fitness, your interpersonal skills? Is your future a slightly different rerun of your past?
We spend an enormous amount of time and money seeking to reinvent and upgrade ourselves, working to give up something, start something, build something or change something about who we are and what we do.
And we usually fail.
It's tempting to say, "this is who I am, habits are hardwired, it's in my DNA, I'm going to live with it." Tempting, and an easy way out.
Change is hard, sometimes nearly impossible. But if even one person as far behind as we are has dug in and done enough work to finish that marathon, to change that habit or to learn that skill, it means that it's not impossible. Merely (astonishingly) difficult.
Knowing that it's possible is 86% of the project.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Quick thinking
From Neatorama:
5 months ago, a reddit thread asked “911 Operators, what is that 1 call that you could never forget?” Crux1836 responded with this fascinating story:
I had a call that started out pretty dumb, but was actually pretty serious: I had a call that started out pretty dumb, but was actually pretty serious:
"911, where is you emergency?"
"123 Main St."
"Ok, what's going on there?"
"I'd like to order a pizza for delivery." (oh great, another prank call).
"Ma'am, you've reached 911"
"Yeah, I know. Can I have a large with half pepperoni, half mushroom and peppers?"
"Ummm…. I'm sorry, you know you've called 911 right?"
"Yeah, do you know how long it will be?"
"Ok, Ma'am, is everything ok over there? do you have an emergency?"
"Yes, I do."
"..And you can't talk about it because there's someone in the room with you?" (moment of realization)
"Yes, that's correct. Do you know how long it will be?"
"I have an officer about a mile from your location. Are there any weapons in your house?"
"Nope."
"Can you stay on the phone with me?"
"Nope. See you soon, thanks"
As we dispatch the call, I check the history at the address, and see there are multiple previous domestic violence calls. The officer arrives and finds a couple, female was kind of banged up, and boyfriend was drunk. Officer arrests him after she explains that the boyfriend had been beating her for a while. I thought she was pretty clever to use that trick. Definitely one of the most memorable calls.
Rossalyn Warren of BuzzFeed contacted the redditor for more information. His name is Keith Weisinger. From 2004-2006, he worked as a police dispatcher. Warren writes:
Weisinger stressed that although he helped in this situation, the credit needed to be given to the caller.
He praised the woman for her bravery and smart thinking. “Whether she had thought of this trick before, or it just came to her,” he said, “she indicated the urgency of her situation without giving away the true purpose of her call.”
Political mythmaking
Victor Davis Hanson writes about how the Obama administration has been evoking euphemisms to construct alternative realities on issue after issue. He elaborates by showing how that has been the case as it lied about The Affordable Care Act, the Islamic State, Ebola, Benghazi, the VA, IRS, NSA, GSA, Secret Service scandals that
must be quarantined from infecting the president’s progressive agenda.Read the whole thing here.
Such disregard for truth and facts is no accident, but the fruit of postmodernism. So-called “after modern” thought was a trendy late-20th-century way to reduce facts to stories.
Progressives believed that because traditional protocols, language, and standards were usually created by stuffy old establishment types, the rules no longer necessarily should apply. Instead, particular narratives and euphemisms that promoted perceived social justice became truthful. Bothersome facts were discarded.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
American veteran next to be beheaded
Jihadi John reveals who will be the next person to be beheaded by him: an American war veteran who was working to help refugees in Lebanon. Here he is with the despicable Jihadi John, who beheaded another Brit today.
Thanks to Mr. Conservative
Thanks to Mr. Conservative
Which man best fits that description?
Some "high-ranking official" in the Obama administration referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the "chicken sh#t prime minister." Here is Netanyahu's reply:
“As Prime Minister, I stand firm with regard to Israel’s security. I care about the lives of each and every citizen and each and every soldier. I have been on battlefields many times. I risked my life for this country, and I am not prepared to make concessions that will endanger it. And it must be understood, our supreme interests, first and foremost security and the unity of Jerusalem, are not the top priority of those same anonymous sources that attack us and me personally. I am being attacked only because I am protecting the State of Israel. If I did not protect the State of Israel, if I did not stand up decisively for our national and security interests, they would not attack me. And despite the attacks I face, I will continue to protect our country; I will continue to protect the citizens of Israel.”Thanks to Mr. Conservative.
Christian boxes
Ann Voskamp linked to a piece she wrote in 2006:
Isn’t being a Christian rather like being pregnant? You either wholly are or you really aren’t — is there an in between? How did we become known as “kinds” of Christian instead of being simply, humbly, loving Christians? What if following Christ was about a living faith not about wearing faith labels — about living Christ-behaviour, not living in Christian boxes?Read more here.
There may not often be great opportunities to change the world, but every single day there are small ones — and all the small can do nothing but add up to great.
Why ever be afraid of truth?
Ann Voskamp writes:
Do we ever have to be afraid of listening? Ann writes:
You only need fear the Truth of anything — if you think Christ isn’t capable of redeeming everything.
And if Christ is the Truth — then where there isn’t Truth, there isn’t Christ. Why ever be afraid of the Truth?
Do we ever have to be afraid of listening? Ann writes:
You never have to be afraid of just listening.Read more here.
Because yeah, too many people treat listening like it’s only a pause before their own shock and awe.
Because real listening is really a radical act of humility.
Because when you let yourself humbly listen, you let yourself be ‘holy’ remade.
Because listening is how you plant resurrection — Lazarus’s ear had to first hear before he could rise up and walk out of the grave.
Female atttractiveness
Chateau Heartiste, whose writing is colorful, to say the least, posted a graph a couple of days ago entitled The Female Total-Attractiveness Age Curve. Actually, he presented two curves, one by an unknown author, and then his own preferred version. The graphs talk about external and internal attractiveness. You can see them here. The CH blog is probably the least politically correct on the web.
On the subject of female internal attractiveness, CH writes:
What do you think of this? How about one for men?
On the subject of female internal attractiveness, CH writes:
A woman’s “internal attractiveness” covers a lot of territory, but if we are concerned with how she’ll fare romantically then we can pare back the number of relevant personality and temperament dimensions to only those that will contribute to, or subtract from, her dating or marital success. When it comes to “inner beauty”, the female traits that matter are those traits that men find delightful about women’s nonsexual (and sometimes sexual) company. This would include:
Her cheerfulness.
Her kindness.
Her submissiveness (to a greater or lesser degree).
Her coyness (suitably circumscribed).
Her fidelity (slutty aggressiveness has a short shelf life).
Her mothering instinct (does she love animals and children?).
Her gratitude (does she laugh at your jokes and swoon for your kingly mercies?).
Her femininity (does she love your teasing, return the favor, and do it all with a sparkle in her eyes?).
Her focused desire (she is desirous of you, and no other man).
Her patience (she warmly tolerates your masculine eccentricities).
Her self-restraint (she doesn’t nag).
What do you think of this? How about one for men?
Partisanship
Jonah Goldberg writes about how Harry Reid has doomed the reelections of several senators, including Colorado's Mark Udahl:
It's not just Democrats:
Indeed, so much of Obama’s politically poisonous indecisiveness, whether on Syria, Ukraine, the Islamic State, immigration reform, or the Keystone pipeline, seems driven by a powerful desire to kick the controversial decisions down the road and simply “win” the daily spin cycle. This tactic of protecting politicians from votes is a bipartisan practice that exacerbates the worst kind of partisanship.
It's not just Democrats:
In 2006, even though President George W. Bush supported a hike in the minimum wage (wrongly in my view), the House refused to take it up for a vote. It could have passed with a minority of Republicans joining the Democrats. Those Republicans mostly came from states where there were minimum-wage hikes on the ballot. If they’d been allowed to vote in favor of a “clean” raising of the wage, some of them might well have kept their seats, and the GOP might have kept its majority. Instead, the Democrats were swept in that year, and they got the minimum-wage hike anyway.Read more here.
This live-for-today approach — what GOP consultant Brad Blakeman calls “momentarianism” — protects the short-term interests of political elites but harms the long-term interests of just about everyone. It prevents Republicans from forging creative strategies for winning over Democrats and vice versa. But it also denies letting voters know what politicians are really for by concealing their true positions in a fog of procedural nonsense.
Gridlock is great when it reflects principled disagreements between duly elected representatives of the people, not when it’s used to protect politicians from their own constituents.
Do we need to rewrite the textbooks?
Is it time to rewrite textbooks are children are using at school? For example, how would you answer the following questions:
When I went to school, I was taught that there were nine planets in our solar system. How how many do scientists now say there are? Answer: eight. They have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. It is now considered to be one of five dwarf planets. An additional 40 billion Earth-sized planets are thought to be in the Milky Way galaxy. It has only been in the last few years that we even knew anything about other solar systems.
(Thanks to my daughter Sara.)
How many senses do you have?Go here to find out why.
Which of the following are magnetic: a tomato, you, paperclips?
What are the primary colors of pigments and paints?
What region of the tongue is responsible for sensing bitter tastes?
What are the states of matter?
If you answered five; paperclips; red, yellow and blue; the back of the tongue; and gas, liquid and solid, then you would have got full marks in any school exam. But you would have been wrong.
When I went to school, I was taught that there were nine planets in our solar system. How how many do scientists now say there are? Answer: eight. They have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. It is now considered to be one of five dwarf planets. An additional 40 billion Earth-sized planets are thought to be in the Milky Way galaxy. It has only been in the last few years that we even knew anything about other solar systems.
(Thanks to my daughter Sara.)
Pope Francis on creation, evolution
Speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Science, Pope Francis said that the Big Bang and evolution do not contradict the "intervention of God" as a creator, rather it requires it. (Reuters)
“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Francis's more conservative predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, espoused this view and found the American debate between creationists and those who backed evolution “absurd.” He asked in 2007 why “those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God.” And then went on:
This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favor of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? I believe this is of the utmost importance.
Read more here.
“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Francis's more conservative predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, espoused this view and found the American debate between creationists and those who backed evolution “absurd.” He asked in 2007 why “those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God.” And then went on:
This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favor of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? I believe this is of the utmost importance.
Read more here.
Numbers and excitement
Have you ever noticed how newspapers report corporations' disappointing financial news? When it involves some corporation other than their own, the disappointing news gets featured prominently. When it is their own disappointing news, you have to read far down in the story to find it.
For example, today the Denver Post printed a small story about its latest six months. The headlined blared "39% rise in digital replica editions." However, if you keep reading, you will find (in paragraph six) that the Sunday edition, including both digital and dead tree editions, has seen a 6% drop since the last report six months ago. Total daily circulation, including both digital and dead tree editions, has dropped 10% in the last six months (paragraph seven).
The previous six months also reported overall losses in readership. Nevertheless, the story's conclusion was "It's an exciting time to be a Denver Post subscriber," said Post publisher and CEO Mac Tully.
What is the total number of digital subscribers? Well, in May the number was 8,277 (which was not reported in today's story). A 39% increase would bring the total to 11,504, if I did my math correctly.
Read more here, and here.
For example, today the Denver Post printed a small story about its latest six months. The headlined blared "39% rise in digital replica editions." However, if you keep reading, you will find (in paragraph six) that the Sunday edition, including both digital and dead tree editions, has seen a 6% drop since the last report six months ago. Total daily circulation, including both digital and dead tree editions, has dropped 10% in the last six months (paragraph seven).
The previous six months also reported overall losses in readership. Nevertheless, the story's conclusion was "It's an exciting time to be a Denver Post subscriber," said Post publisher and CEO Mac Tully.
What is the total number of digital subscribers? Well, in May the number was 8,277 (which was not reported in today's story). A 39% increase would bring the total to 11,504, if I did my math correctly.
Read more here, and here.
Who else lives in our house?
If you were a scientist in biology, would you spend your time in a museum, or in dark caves where you might find new species? David Steinnman prefers to go into the caves, along with his wife and eleven-year-old son. Here is the new species of daddy long-legs he discovered recently in one of Colorado's more than 1000 caves.
The new Colorado daddy longlegs species Scelerobunus steinmanni. (Photo courtesy of David Steinmann)
Bruce Finley writes:
The new Colorado daddy longlegs species Scelerobunus steinmanni. (Photo courtesy of David Steinmann)
Bruce Finley writes:
Shiny orange with yellow stripes, their pea-sized bodies connect spiked legs up to an inch long. These arachnids are the latest of more than 100 that biologist Dave Steinmann has captured over 20 years while exploring caves and using special magnification glasses. Two years ago, Steinmann found a new millipede in a mountain cave near Eagle.Read more here.
"It takes looking really closely, turning over the right rock," said Steinmann, 48, a volunteer associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who also works as a consultant for wetlands restoration.
"This matters because we know of one planet in one solar system that houses life, and we know only a fraction of the species," said Paula Cushing, the museum's curator of invertebrate zoology. "Who else lives in our house? It's important to understand the biodiversity that exists on this planet."
Venturing into caves, "I sometimes feel anxious to get back out. But sometimes I feel at peace, enjoying it and that nobody on earth is going to bother me," Steinmann said.
Scientists see potential benefits in learning how arachnids evolving deep inside caves can survive on very little food. Some can live for up to two years without food.
He must like his chances
If you were a millionaire, what would you do for fun? Republican Bob Beauprez, a former banker and Congressman, decided to run for governor of Colorado. So far he has loaned his campaign over $884,000, including $317,000 in the past two weeks, so he must think he has a good chance to win!
Still, he is being vastly outspent by former brewer/restaurant owner and Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, whose campaign has spent $5.1 million, and he didn't even have to loan his campaign any money. Beauprez's campaign has spent $2.4 million.
Read more here.
Still, he is being vastly outspent by former brewer/restaurant owner and Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, whose campaign has spent $5.1 million, and he didn't even have to loan his campaign any money. Beauprez's campaign has spent $2.4 million.
Read more here.
Jilted
(Photo provided by Arapahoe County Sheriff)
This woman is Naomi Almodovar. She is accused of starting a fire that injured eight people in an apartment complex in Centennial, a suburb south of Denver. Why did she do it?
In court Tuesday, Detective Karl Ditus, a fire investigator with the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, said Almodovar was angered by the breakup with a woman she had a relationship with and plotted the fire to exact revenge against the victim and her new boyfriend.Read more here.
A protection order had been placed against Almodovar from contacting her former girlfriend, but in about a two-month period leading up to the fire, Almodovar made 57 calls or texts to the woman despite the order, Ditus said.
Among texts sent by Almodovar, according to Ditus, was one that said: "I will burn everything you love."
Gasoline was poured in front of a second-story apartment door and the fuel trailed down a hallway where it was ignited, Ditus said.
Residents from upper floors fled the flames using sheets tied together, while some jumped onto mattresses and blankets that neighbors set up or held below.
Almodovar remains in custody on a $1 million bail. The preliminary hearing was scheduled to continue Wednesday.
Tired of cold weather
(Courtesy Denver Police Department)
This man is Paul Kitterman. He lives in the high country of Colorado, in a town called Kremmling. Last Sunday he and his son and some friends came down from the mountains to attend a Denver Broncos football game. During half time he left his seat, and didn't come back. He just didn't want to face another cold winter, so he started walking south, ending up in Pueblo, which is 116 miles from the stadium. He was found yesterday in a K-Mart parking lot.
Read more here.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Remove the veil, or leave!
David Chazan reports for The Guardian:
A woman wearing a full-face Islamic veil was told to leave a Paris opera house after members of the cast refused to perform if she remained in the audience, officials said.Read more here.
The woman, described as “a tourist from a Gulf state”, was sitting on the front row during a performance of La Traviata at the Opéra Bastille, the deputy director, Jean-Philippe Thiellay, said.
France banned the wearing of the full-face veil, or niqab, in public in 2011. The ban was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year.
Mr Thiellay said performers told him during the second act that they would only continue if the woman left. During the interval, an attendant told her that she could stay if she removed her veil.
"He told her that in France there is a ban of this nature, asked her to either uncover her face or leave the room,” Mr Thiellay said. “The man asked the woman to get up, they left."
The Obama birth certificate
Bob Unruh writes:
A conversation between well-known conservative commentator Mark Steyn and an intrepid talk-radio show went beyond the contents of a new book Monday and delved directly into the controversy over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.
After mentioning his birthplace is Toronto, author, radio host and commentator Steyn jumped feet first into the eligibility issue in an interview with Peter Boyles on KNUS Radio in Denver.
To live in the United States, “I have to provide a long-form birth certificate,” Steyn said, “but if it’s the president, any old photocopy from Kinko’s will do.”
Steyn, whose new book, “The Undocumented Mark Steyn,” compiles some of his best work, also has authored “After America” and “Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And the Twilight of the West.” He’s been a guest host for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
He explained to Boyles, who regularly tackles the eligibility issue, he was born in Toronto, and “oddly enough as a condition of my presence in this country, I did have to provide my long-form birth certificate.”
“I don’t know whether I’m ready to go full birther, but I think it’s slightly odd,” Steyn said.
He said the questions raised over the president’s eligibility are legitimate.
“What I find odd is when people present it as a crazy conspiracy. I don’t think it is crazy,” he said. “I think it’s the kind of thing that could happen very easily if you’re audacious enough and have the cooperation of a relatively small number of people. You could do it.”
Obama’s qualification for president as a “natural born citizen” has been challenged in court since before he was first elected in 2008. The White House finally relented in 2011 and posted a birth certificate, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigative team concluded it is a forgery and promises even more startling revelations soon.
“Anyone who thinks it would be difficult to obtain a faked certificate of live birth is someone who just doesn’t know how these things work,” Steyn said.
Steyn said there are doubts not only about the birth certificate but about Obama’s whole life story.
“The fascinating thing about Obama is this mutable biography. Whatever happens at the moment,” he said. “For over 15 years, his publicist found it convenient to promote him as a man born in Kenya.”
More recently, Grace Vuoto of the World Tribune reported that among the experts challenging the birth certificate is certified document analyst Reed Hayes, who has served as an expert for Perkins Coie, the law firm that has been defending Obama in eligibility cases.
“We have obtained an affidavit from a certified document analyzer, Reed Hayes, that states the document is a 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it,” Zullo told the World Tribune.
“Mr. Obama’s operatives cannot discredit [Hayes],” the investigator told the news outlet. “Mr. Hayes has been used as the firm’s reliable expert. The very firm the president is using to defend him on the birth certificate case has used Mr. Hayes in their cases.”
The Tribune reported Hayes agreed to take a look at the documentation and called almost immediately.
“There is something wrong with this,” Hayes said.
Hayes produced a 40-page report in which he says “based on my observations and findings, it is clear that the Certificate of Live Birth I examined is not a scan of an original paper birth certificate, but a digitally manufactured document created by utilizing material from various sources.”
“In over 20 years of examining documentation of various types, I have never seen a document that is so seriously questionable in so many respects. In my opinion, the birth certificate is entirely fabricated,” he says in the report.
Anti-business, pro-class warfare
Stephen Moore writes:
To say Democrats hate business may seem harsh. But is it? The one industry booming today and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs is oil and gas. But the left despises it and seemingly every day conspires to tax, regulate and otherwise drive it out of business.Read more here.
Or consider the Democrats' class warfare theme, which isn't so much meant to help raise the poor out of poverty (as we all want to do), but to tear down the rich purely out of envy.
But who are these evil rich? Only a small percent become millionaires by giving political speeches as Hillary does or making a movie like Alec Baldwin. Most are small-business owners and operators. And as their business succeeds and they start to get rich, guess what? They hire more workers. Not too many Americans are hired for long by businesses that lose money — except for federal employees.
Quarantines
A Letter to the Editor from a Veterinarian:
Editor, Lewiston Morning Tribune:Thanks to Christopher Buckley
If I wish to import a horse into the United States from Liberia or any African country other than Morocco, the horse needs to undergo a 60 day quarantine period at a USDA approved quarantine facility prior to mingling with the general population of horses in this country. Africa has a disease called African Horse Sickness that does not exist in the US; this is the way we have kept it out of this country. African Horse Sickness does not cause disease in people, only horses; our government has determined that it would be devastating to the US horse industry if it were to come here.
The United States (and virtually all other countries) require a myriad of tests and often quarantine prior to bringing in a foreign animal.
I can’t legally cross state lines in the United States with a horse or cow without a health certificate signed by a USDA accredited veterinarian stating that the animal has been inspected and found free of infectious disease. In most cases blood tests are also required. In fact I can’t legally cross the Snake River and ride my horse in Idaho without a health certificate and a negative blood test for Equine Infectious Anemia.
I’m not complaining; the United States of America, the States of Idaho and Washington as well as the other 48 states take the health of our livestock very seriously, and we have a very good record at keeping foreign animal diseases out of our country. I am happy to do my part to maintain biosecurity in our animal population.
If I am a resident of Liberia incubating Ebola, to enter the United States all I need to do is present a valid visa, and lie when asked if I have been exposed to Ebola. Within hours (no quarantine required) I can be walking the streets of any city in the United States.
I feel very fortunate to live in a country that values our animals so highly.
David A. Rustebakke, DVM
Astonishing ignorance
Here is what she said...
Now she is "clarifying"...
Dan Calabrese responds:
Now she is "clarifying"...
“I short-handed this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades.”
“Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in America and workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out — not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas.”
Dan Calabrese responds:
What matters is the substance of what she actually said, which is that businesses and corporations don't create jobs. Those were the words that came out of her mouth.Read more here.
The only reason businesses "stash their profits overseas" is that the United States foolishly maintains a tax on repatriated profits. Companies who operate abroad and make money abroad can hang on to the money they earn there only if they keep it there. If they try to bring it back, they have to pay a tax on it. Solution: Repeal the tax on repatriated profits and watch as capital floods into the U.S. economy.
Does Hillary Clinton even know this? I doubt it.
If you don't want corporations getting "tax breaks" when they choose a certain method of securing labor, I have a solution: Get rid of all tax breaks. Simplify the tax code so everyone pays one, simple rate, and stop giving breaks to some while denying them to others on the basis of certain choices they make. Do you think Hillary Clinton would support that? I doubt it. Then again, I doubt she even knows enough about the tax code to know it's an issue.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Compare 2006 with 2014
How did the three major television networks cover the midterm elections in 2006 during the sixth year of George W. Bush's presidency, versus the sixth year of the Obama presidency?
Thanks to Mike's America
Thanks to Mike's America
Give it a rest, Democrats
Senator Mark Udahl isn't doing well in his campaign for reelection. First, in a debate, he referred to his challenger, Congressman Cory Gardner, as "Senator." Then he cited Martin Luther King and said Democrats judge people by the "content of their color." He needs an extended rest.
Michelle Obama was here to campaign for Udahl this week. She also made a gaffe, saying that Udahl, who was born in Arizona, was a "fifth generation Coloradan." No, actually, Michelle, Cory Gardner is a fifth generation Coloradan. He is Udahl's opponent.
Michelle Obama was here to campaign for Udahl this week. She also made a gaffe, saying that Udahl, who was born in Arizona, was a "fifth generation Coloradan." No, actually, Michelle, Cory Gardner is a fifth generation Coloradan. He is Udahl's opponent.
Under his aloof nose
Michelle Malkin catalogs many of the Islamic jihad attacks that have taken place on American soil during his presidency, and asks, where was Obama?
Where was Obama? Sabotaging our borders, restricting our gun rights, working to free Gitmo jihadists, decrying Islamophobia, demonizing conservatives, welcoming jihad sympathizers to the White House and putting politics over national security.Read more here.
Now “shaken” over the death of a Canadian soldier killed by a jihadist, our president has barely stirred in response to the homegrown Islamic terror campaign against our men and women in uniform under his own aloof nose.
New Harry Potter book coming out on Halloween
Abbey Stone reports:
J.K. Rowling has a very special treat in store for Harry Potter fans this Halloween. A series of games and riddles posted to Rowling’s website Pottermore.com this week culminated in Friday’s big reveal that the Rowling will release a new Harry Potter story on October 31.Read more here.
According to a statement obtained by Time, Rowling’s new story will feature one of the most terrifying characters in Potter’s world (no, not Nagini): Professor Umbridge.
“Umbridge is not only one of the most malicious Potter characters, she is the only person other than Lord Voldemort to leave a permanent physical scar on Harry,” Time reports Pottermore.com of saying. “The new exclusive J.K. Rowling content provides a rich, 1700-word back story about Umbridge’s life filled with many new details, as well as Rowling’s revealing first-person thoughts and reflections about the character.”
Dolores Umbridge, the pink-clad, giggly sadist, enters Harry’s life in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Hogwarts's new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. She finds immense pleasure in torturing her students, most notably with her blood quill—a piece of dark magic that etches all words written with the quill into the skin of the writer.
Will there be a repeat of the 1980s crash?
I remember all too well the early 1980s, when oil prices dropped severely. I was owner of a store in Durango, Colorado called The Greenery. We had just expanded into a 12,600 square foot store and started two satellite stores in downtown Durango. Then, the oil bust came, and Durango lost its usual visitors from Denver, Texas, and Oklahoma. From that point on it was a struggle to pay the rent each month.
In a column in the Denver Post today Jonathan Thompson recalls that bust/boom cycle in the oil and gas business and its effects on Colorado. Once again, in 2014,
In a column in the Denver Post today Jonathan Thompson recalls that bust/boom cycle in the oil and gas business and its effects on Colorado. Once again, in 2014,
One estimate has 30 percent of Denver's downtown office space occupied by oil and gas industry workers.Read more here.
Over the last couple of decades, Denver has transformed itself into a greener, transit-oriented city, and a trendy magnet for millennials. Fossil fuels have helped drive the metamorphosis. According to statistics by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Denver now has one of the healthiest gross domestic products in the nation. The metro area's GDP grew by 4 percent in 2013, about half of which is attributed to extractive industries. Close to 30,000 people are directly employed by the fossil fuel industry in northern Colorado, either in Denver offices or the oil fields of Weld County, which yielded some $4.5 billion worth of crude last year. Greeley, a cow-town north of Denver with a massive meatpacking plant, saw its GDP jump by a whopping 10 percent, and it has nothing to do with cattle.
A repeat of the 80s crash is unlikely — the preceding boom was driven less by scarcity than by geopolitics, first, and then federal price controls and massive subsidies, which were discontinued by the Reagan administration. This boom is driven by drilling technology and the rising price of oil, which is fueled by burgeoning demand from China, India and developing countries. That's not likely to go away entirely, but every boom busts someday, and when it does, Colorado may regret throwing away all those would-be severance tax revenues.
But when that day comes, Denver will be far better prepared to deal with it. Despite energy's outsized role, the economy is far more diversified than in the early '80s — finance, high tech and so-called cleantech, which includes wind and solar companies, are also big sectors. Plus, public funds have been invested wisely in infrastructure, transportation and in making the city a desirable place for companies — including oil companies — to relocate, with or without high taxes.
Come on in. Vote Democrat. Kill deputies.
CNN reports that one of the suspects in the California shooting spree had already been deported back to Mexico twice. No mention of our porous border in the story. Read more here.
How the Catholic vote became neutralized
Mark Gallagher explains how the Social Development and World Peace staff at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
prevailed and they pursued with the relevant bishops’ committees the first-ever Catholic voters guide published in 1976, called the “Political Responsibility Statement” (now called Faithful Citizenship).Laura Wood writes that this voters guide for Catholics
presented moral relativism as a reliable guide for Catholics’ consciences and declined to identify the pro-abortion position as one Catholics may never support by voting for candidates who hold it
Social Justice Warriors
Have you heard the term "Social Justice Warriors?" Roosch defines the term for us:
Social justice warriors believe in an extreme left-wing ideology that combines feminism, progressivism, and political correctness into a totalitarian system that attempts to censor speech and promote fringe lifestyles while actively discriminating against men, particularly white men. They are the internet activist arm of Western progressivism that acts as a vigilante group to ensure compliance and homogeny of far left thought.Read more here.
The true definition of SJW is up for debate, but most generally it has become a catch-all term that describes feminists and liberals who actively try to solve the perceived social injustices of modern society by organizing in online communities to disseminate propaganda, censor speech, and punish individuals by getting them terminated from their employment. They have also been successful at positioning themselves in the upper echelons of universities, media organizations, and tech companies.
The lack of such objectivity in SJWism is by design. It’s borrowed from Cultural Marxist thought, which argues that objectivity and the idea of right or wrong is less important than consensus.
You’ll often encounter SJW debate tactics trying to use consensus to persuade you: “How can you think X when so many people think Y?” As you may already know, consensus is a poor judge of facts or morality. Consensus used to believe that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth. Sadly, many great men were imprisoned or executed for going against consensus on beliefs that we know are true today. Consensus in America also supported the institution of slavery, which of course didn’t make it right. And not long ago consensus believed in segregation between whites and blacks, even in the north where slavery was not practiced. Consensus has been shown to be a dangerous method to validate ideas or behavior.
A big chunk of their activism depends on subjective feeling and perceived value of the parties involved. Before an SJW can make a decision on what is right or wrong, she must first know the race, gender, and sexuality of the involved participants so that she can decide whether or not to be outraged. A statement or idea in isolation is not enough for them to come to a conclusion on the acceptability of a statement. For example, consider the following statement:
“Abortion should not be used as a method of birth control.”
An SJW could not definitively respond to this statement unless they knew who uttered it. If I—a Caucasian man—published this statement on a popular site like CNN, the outrage would be immense. Most comments would accuse me of hating women and wanting to control their bodies. A petition would be started to prevent me from ever writing on CNN again. On the other hand, if a popular feminist like Jessica Valenti said this statement in the same publication, the response would be more balanced. She would receive some criticism but even support from individuals who would try to destroy my life had I said the exact same thing.
A person who believes in the scientific method would not be swayed by the messenger. They would analyze the statement and attempt to either verify it or not based on logic. SJW’s avoid such objective behavior.
Do they contribute to health?
The blogger at Cooling Inflammation writes:
The blogger goes on to make the following points:
More healthcare begets more health costs and less health. Tests detect symptoms that trigger treatment, but more often than not fail to contribute to health.
More public interaction and scrutiny is needed to keep the public safe from the health industry and to hold doctors to their pledge to do no harm.
The blogger goes on to make the following points:
Breast, Prostate and Pelvic Exams Lead to Costly, Harmful, Unnecessary InterventionsRead more here.
The Health Industry Pursues Profitable Tests and Treatment, not Causes and Cures
Anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle
writes:
From the heading of the blog entitled Cooling Inflammation:
Health is dependent on:Read more here.
an Anti-Inflammatory Diet,
gut flora adapted to your diet
exercise and
adequate sleep
The rest (genetics, vegan vs. paleo, environmental toxins, organic veggies, GMOs, etc.) are minor contributors, less than 10% in aggregate, to overall health.
From the heading of the blog entitled Cooling Inflammation:
Inflammation is the foundation for cancer and degenerative/autoimmune diseases. Small changes in diet and exercise, e.g. omega-3 oils, vitamin D, low starch, and maintaining muscle mass, can dramatically alter predisposition to disease and aging, and minimize the negative impact of genetic risks. Based on my experience in biological research, I am trying to explain how the anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle combat disease.
Cashing in
Roosh writes:
To which Hawaiian Libertarian adds:
Did you know that the NFL has appointed a new Vice President of "Social Responsibility?" Hawaiian Libertarian continues:
Haven’t you noticed what’s happening in the media and on the internet? Companies are cashing in on the backs of those with a brainwashed belief system. Sites like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Policy Mic, Medium, Huffington Post, and Gawker are raking in money hand over fist providing content which either acts as soothing soma for your modern progessive or emotional outrage at something that conflicts with their worldview. Providing content targeted at liberals, social justice warriors, and white knights who believe in mythical fantasies is now a huge profit-generating industry.
To which Hawaiian Libertarian adds:
Of course it's all tied in. It's not like the editors and publishers of all this $ocial Justice content need to micro-manage the journalists, bloggers, reporters, interviewers and writers to make sure they all adhere to the progressive party line. The University system has already taken care of indoctrinating several generations of students, and we have now reached a critical mass of brainwashed progressives in enough positions of media influence to ensure that the $ocial Justice narrative is our society's primary paradigm. With so many sheeple now in with the program, it's time for the managers of our proverbial feedlot of a society to cash in.
Out in these fringes of teh Interwebz, most recognize that Tell-A-Vision programming has basically become one big commercial broadcast to market to the consumer-driven vagina. Professional Sports represents the last bastion of male virtue. It is the last space in which athletic competition as proxy for war that appeals to the intrinsic males aggression and drive for victory through violence, is still recognized and celebrated to some degree.
It allows men to vicariously experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat from the comforts of home. Of course, I am one of those who has previously excoriated young men to find real, meaningful ways of satiating the male desire to engage in positive outlets for aggression and violence, instead of solely experiencing it as a passive spectator parked on the couch in front of the boob-tube.
Did you know that the NFL has appointed a new Vice President of "Social Responsibility?" Hawaiian Libertarian continues:
It's now just a matter of time before all NFL players and everyone else employed by the league, are soon going to be forced to attend workshops and conferences where they will be subjected to power point presentations, skits, videos and tearful testimonials of Women's Studies graduates and interns, all as a part of this new program for "sensitivity training" and "social responsibility."Read more here.
I'm sure this will undoubtedly improve the quality of the game.
Another "victim" lashes out
Paul Farrell gives us some facts about Jaylen Fryberg, the 14-year-old member of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington who shot other students this week. He had just broken up with his girlfriend whom he had taken to the homecoming dance on October 17 (he was named Freshman Homecoming King at the dance). He has been tweeting angry and despondent messages on social media. He shot his cousin in the head during the attack. Read more here.
Can your kid pull up his pants properly?
Do you know about TS Gold? Michelle Malkin writes:
“TS Gold” stands for Teaching Strategies Gold. This “school readiness assessment system” was mandated in our state several years ago. It has already permeated private day-care centers and preschools; pilot testing in publicly funded preschools and kindergartens is currently taking place. More than 42,000 kids in Colorado alone have been subjected to the assessments.Read more here.
Aligned to the federal Common Core standards, which were designed and copyrighted by a small cadre of Beltway educrats, TS Gold received $30 million in federal Race to the Top subsidies in 2012. The assessors have 38 “objectives” arranged under nine topics of academic learning, psychomotor data and social-emotional development. Students are rated and recorded on their ability to do things like “respond to emotional cues,” “interact cooperatively” and “cooperate and share ideas and materials in socially acceptable ways.”
TS Gold directs teachers to document student behaviors with videos, audio files, journals and photos — which are then uploaded to a central database cloud. Already overwhelmed by myriad testing burdens, teachers must undergo intensive training that takes scarce time away from actual instruction. Educators must gather disturbingly intimate and personal data every school day, collate and upload it, and then file lengthy “checkpoint ratings” on each child every 10 to 12 weeks.
Creeped out yet? This is just the tip of the data-mining iceberg. Last spring, parent Lauren Coker discovered that TS Gold assessors in her son’s Aurora, Colo., public preschool had recorded information about his trips to the bathroom, his hand-washing habits and his ability to pull up his pants.
“When I asked if we could opt out of the system,” Coker told me, school officials told her no. She pulled her son out of the school and still doesn’t know whether or how the data can be removed.
Edutech firms such as Pearson, Microsoft, Google and Knewton are salivating at the lucrative opportunities to exploit educational Big Data and sell “customized learning” products in the most data-mineable industry in the world. And the politicians who can hook them up are reaping rich rewards in their campaign coffers.
Today's America
35% of the students in Denver Public Schools are learning the English language! Only 53% of these students graduate from high school, which isn't much worse than the pitiful overall graduation rate of 61%. 40% of the students speak Spanish.
Yesenia Robles writes about the problem in today's Denver Post.
What are the figures in your community?
Yesenia Robles writes about the problem in today's Denver Post.
The 10 most common languages in the district:Read more here.
English: 44,587 (52.09 percent of district)
Spanish: 34,824 (40.68)
Arabic: 893 (1.04)
Vietnamese: 892 (1.04)
Amharic: 411 (0.48)
Somali: 405 (0.47)
French: 250 (0.29)
Russian: 250 (0.29)
Nepali: 232 (0.27)
Burmese: 194 (0.23)
Mandarin Chinese: 194 (0.23)
What are the figures in your community?
Saturday, October 25, 2014
The Second Amendment: Who is it for?
I think this explanation by Bill Whittle is one of the best I have seen, and very needed.
Friday, October 24, 2014
In his memory
Gateway Pundit reports that Michael Brown's mother, grandmother, and auntie had a brawl over rights to sell these tee shirts.
Russia now has more deployed nuclear warheads than the U.S.
Michaela Dodge reports that Russia now has more deployed nuclear warheads than the U.S. What can be done about it?
To reaffirm U.S. commitment to its allies and international security, the U.S. should withdraw from New START and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, modernize its nuclear forces and infrastructure (which have been underfunded for decades), develop and deploy a comprehensive layered missile defense system that would be capable of addressing Russia’s ballistic missile threat, and re-evaluate its strategic posture. U.S. and allied security and stability in the European theatre depend on these steps being taken.Read more here.
He was just obeying Mohammed
A man reported to have Islamic "extremist leanings" attacked police officers in New York City with a hatchet on Thursday, injuring two before being shot dead, police and a monitoring group said.Read more here.
The man, identified in the US media as Zale Thompson, had posted an array of statements on YouTube and Facebook that "display a hyper-racial focus in both religious and historical contexts, and ultimately hint at his extremist leanings," the SITE monitoring group said.
When the weapon becomes the warrior
Norway is one of many countries developing weapons that can operate without human control or surveillance.Read more here.
The technology raises moral questions, such as what happens when the human is removed from the battle field and machines are left to do the job? Or who will be responsible if the weapon makes mistakes or performs attacks violating international law?
Russian military provocations increasing
Russian military provocations have increased so much over the seven months since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine that Washington and its allies are scrambling defense assets on a nearly daily basis in response to air, sea and land incursions by Vladimir Putin’s forces.Read more here.
Not only is Moscow continuing to foment unrest in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. officials and regional security experts say Russian fighter jets are testing U.S. reaction times over Alaska and Japan’s ability to scramble planes over its northern islands — all while haunting Sweden’s navy and antagonizing Estonia’s tiny national security force.
Should you buy or sell?
Amazon is getting some bad publicity. For the seventh time in nine quarters the company missed expectations. It seems Jeff Bezos has been investing in new endeavors:
The company has made a recent string of investments that stand to affect the company's growth for years to come. These include Amazon Fresh, the same-day delivery service competing with the likes of Fresh Direct, and the nearly $1 billion acquisition of Twitch.Read more here.
Fighting to learn the truth
Judicial Watch (JW) has become an irreplaceably valuable instrument in the giht for the salvation of our republic. Today they reveal what they have learned from documents they received after filing a lawsuit to try to learn the truth about the Fast and Furious coverup.
Practically lost in the 1,000-plus pages of records is an index that shows Jarrett was brought in to manage the fact that Holder lied to Congress after the story about the disastrous gun-running operation broke in the media. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the once-secret program that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.Read more here.
The files received by JW include three electronic mails between Holder and Jarrett and one from former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to Jarrett. The e-mails with Holder are all from October 4, 2011, a significant date because, on the evening of October 3rd, Sheryl Attkisson (then at CBS news) released documents showing that Holder had been sent a briefing paper on Operation Fast and Furious on June 5, 2010. The paper was from the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, Michael Walther.
This directly contradicted Holder’s May 3, 2011 testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during which he stated that he, “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” The October 4, 2011 date may also be significant because it came shortly after the August 30, 2011 resignation of U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke and reassignment of acting ATF director Kenneth Melson to the position of “senior forensics advisor” at DOJ.
Playing Russian roulette with your mental health
One has to go to the UK newspapers to to learn the truth about marijuana:
Read more here.
A definitive 20-year study into the effects of long-term cannabis use has demolished the argument that the drug is safe.
Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found.
The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs advisor to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain. Professor Hall found:
One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it,
Cannabis doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia,
Cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development
One in ten adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs,
Driving after smoking cannabis doubles the risk of a car crash, a risk which increases substantially if the driver has also had a drink,
Smoking it while pregnant reduces the baby’s birth weight.
Last night Professor Hall, a professor of addiction policy at King’s College London, dismissed the views of those who say that cannabis is harmless.
‘If cannabis is not addictive then neither is heroin or alcohol,’ he said.
‘It is often harder to get people who are dependent on cannabis through withdrawal than for heroin – we just don’t know how to do it.’
Those who try to stop taking cannabis often suffer anxiety, insomnia, appetite disturbance and depression, he found. Even after treatment, less than half can stay off the drug for six months.
The paper states that teenagers and young adults are now as likely to take cannabis as they are to smoke cigarettes.
Mark Winstanley, of the charity Rethink Mental Illness, said: ‘Too often cannabis is wrongly seen as a safe drug, but as this review shows, there is a clear link with psychosis and schizophrenia, especially for teenagers.
‘The common view that smoking cannabis is nothing to get worked up about needs to be challenged more effectively. Instead of classifying and re-classifying, government time and money would be much better spent on educating young people about how smoking cannabis is essentially playing a very real game of Russian roulette with your mental health.’
Read more here.
Our Halloween nightmare
This is the kind of crap Colorado parents and children have to deal with this Halloween, because the drug dealers have taken over this state.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
AP feels the heat, changes headlines
Ace of Spades documents how AP changes its headlines in line with social media reaction to stories. Yesterday a Palestinian Hamas supporter terrorized people in Israel by driving his car into a group of people near a Jerusalem train station, killing a three-month-old baby. Israeli police shot the man as he fled the scene. The first AP headline was Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem. Outrage started to build on social media. The second headline was Car slams into east Jerusalem train station. Ace comments:
As outrage ballooned on social media, the AP finally gave the story the headline it deserved all along:
Um... the car didn't slam into the station of its own accord. It was driven by a terrorist attempting to kill Jews.
Incidentally, notice that while the world media took notice of the Ottawa shooting, the world media pretty much ignored this terrorist attack in Israel. In fact, AP originally tried to portray it as a story of Israelis shooting "a man" in Jerusalem.
As outrage ballooned on social media, the AP finally gave the story the headline it deserved all along:
Palestinian kills baby at Jerusalem station.Read more here.
A One-piece life
Ann Voskamp returns with her daughters from a trip to Rwanda.
And then we are only home a handful of days when some news headline bursts all pluming proud that Facebook and Apple were going to pony up to pay for the freezing of any female employee’s eggs.Read much more here.
And then they blare that some lovely actress, Renee Zellweger, maybe felt she had to freeze her beautiful face with a bit of Botox to find her way in a youth-obsessed culture?
When did someone start shilling that women need to be freed from the confines of their own God-fashioned biology … as if our God-formed state of growing children and growing older, is somehow wrong, as if we need to freeze the parts of us that makes us female and human and made in the image of God so we can hold some imaginary clock at 25 years of age?
Women aren’t burdened because we may birth children some decades or that we may wear the astonishing gift of growing older other decades — there is nothing inherently flawed with the way our Father formed us.
In our callings and vocations — Women aren’t called to suppress their femininity, their motherhood, or their age. Women are called to beautifully express it.
Instead of freezing eggs and faces, what if there was cultural support for family and ministry and vocation as fluid, and mothers could be with their daughters and sons, and daughters and sons could be with their mothers and witness this holistic modelling of a fluid One-Piece Life, could witness what our ministry and our service and our daily work look like, woven together, and that it wrinkles us and grows us and it is hard and it is wrenchingly beautiful — and it is not to be missed.
Women need to be free to mature beautifully and serve vocationally and mother fluidly.
Sure — Fight the cultural expectations of aging — but don’t ever fight the beauty of maturing.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Leavin' on a jet plane
Then there is news about three teens from a suburb of Denver who were on their way to Syria. They were stopped in Germany and put back on a plane to Denver. Their parents and F.B.I. agents met them at the Denver International Airport. Two of the girls are sisters, ages 15 and 17. The third is 16. The two sisters are of Somali descent, while the third girl is of Sudanese descent. Police in Frankfort, Germany detained the girls, then put them on the plane back to D.I.A. Read more here.
Busy day for terrorists in Canada
Robert Spencer reports that there have now been three confirmed shooting scenes in today's coordinated terror attacks in Ottawa. The third was at a mall. Read more here.
Where have all my Yard Signs Gone?
Guest post
By Curt Dale
A couple of serious questions! Are Democrats largely just inherently thieves, grifters, liars, scammers, nere-do-wells, and rioters, all without any regard for the rights of others? Where have all my Yard Signs gone? Due to damaged knees, I really can’t knock doors for my candidates and pass out handbills. So, my effort in political campaigns has been to obtain and give out political care window stickers and put out yard signs, particularly at key intersections in Parker Colorado. Am I being petty? Not at all! It’s a reflection of the lowdown ethic of the Democrat Party. I will justify my reason for concluding that.
I put out dozens of signs for Cory Gardner for Senate, Bob Beauprez for Governor, Chris Holbert, David Weaver, Tony Spurlock and other Republicans. They got jerked up by some larcenous Democrat and wee replaced by Guv Hookinlipper and Sen. Uterus signs at intersection after intersection. In some cases, mine were just jerked up and taken. No, it wasn’t the wind that blew them away and it wasn’t Republicans getting them to install in their own yards. I think I can lay down the accusation that they were stolen and deep-sixed by Democrats to make it look like nobody is interested in Gardner and suggest that The Dems are so popular in Douglas County. Fat chance!
Am I saying that all Democrats are that dishonest and want to shut down my freedom of speech? Well, I don’t know that I want to defend my position on that, one way or the other. The fact remains that somebody cleaned out the GOP signs for key races, and nobody has cleaned out the Dem ones. So, I I’m just say that Democrats are responsible for stealing my signs, and nobody seems to be stealing theirs. Just calling it like it is!
It’s not so much about the value of the signs, really! Or is it? Good Republican people contributed their hard earned money to buy those signs. So, every one stolen robs some Republican of the money they contributed to purchase them since the sign can’t do the job it was purchased to do. It’s definitely about the incredible disregard for my freedom of speech and expression of my political views. They want to take away my 2nd Amendment rights and have been successful to a degree in doing that. Certainly they are now taking away my freedom of speech. That started with Obama as he was elected, even before he was inaugurated. I was writing op eds for over 20 different newspapers weekly until October of 2007, and suddenly, I found myself persona non grata in the newspapers of 3 separate publishers across Colorado and across the country. Ultimately, one admitted that they’d gotten “the word” that if they wanted to remain solvent, they would have to stop publishing things critical of Obama’s administration as it came into power. ZAP! My freedom of speech was shot, and Freedom of the Press was clearly no longer a fact.
Now, these petty little Democrat thieves are methodically even stealing what I work hard to erect in support of my candidates. Am I supposed to tread softly in making such accusations? Well, if I’m supposed to walk softy and just accept impositions on my freedoms, then I won’t do what I’m supposed to do. Democrats seem to be thieves if they are in office, and their supporters as also thieves. That’s how I have to look at it. I take these “thefts” very personally on several fronts. They rob me of my time, my effort as a person with a walking disability, and rob me of my freedom of speech. And don’t come back at me and say, “Well, it happens on both sides!” If that’s the case, why is my town of Parker plastered with the Democrat signs and devoid of Republican signs? At least here, Democrats steal them. I don’t figure there are any other political parties out there stealing them. Purely a matter of deduction and logic! They steal! Oh, they don’t? How many Republicans do you figure were looting the stores in Ferguson, MO, a few weeks back? Not very likely! Obama sent Holder from the DOJ to ostensibly settle down the Obama Supporters who were tearing up the sheets there. Anytime the Democrat supporters get irritated, the first response seems to be looting. Oh, they’ll chant, march, threaten, cry and such, but the operative thing happening is getting more free stuff for nothing, cleaning off the shelves of the stores they raid. Looting is the same as stealing, but somewhat more violence is involved in looting in most cases.
So, in the future, I don’t think I’ll even bother with yard signs, except in my own lawn. I will keep them well in sight of the front windows and keep it well lit all night—hoping to discourage sneaking Democrats from stealing them right out of my yard. I will concentrate on influencing people to put stickers in their cars. Are they tacky? Maybe so, but they are my freedom of speech. Politics is a nasty thing to be involved in, but I don’t try to raise myself above it. I stay right in the middle of the mess as much as I can. Therefore, I am well informed. It bothers me when supposedly highly intelligent citizens tell me they really don’t know what is going on, who is running and what the issues are. That is intentional blindness to what is going on about us.
Anyway, I have some 11 political stickers on my van. It is a moving billboard for my candidates. Do I worry about somebody bashing or keying my car? Not one whit! If they do, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor. Thus far, I’ve only gotten good feedback and people asking me for signs.
So, where are my yard signs? Probably thrown over some hill, in some dumpster or in a ditch, put there by a cowardly Democrat!
Colonel Curtis D. Dale, PhD, USAF (Ret)
By Curt Dale
A couple of serious questions! Are Democrats largely just inherently thieves, grifters, liars, scammers, nere-do-wells, and rioters, all without any regard for the rights of others? Where have all my Yard Signs gone? Due to damaged knees, I really can’t knock doors for my candidates and pass out handbills. So, my effort in political campaigns has been to obtain and give out political care window stickers and put out yard signs, particularly at key intersections in Parker Colorado. Am I being petty? Not at all! It’s a reflection of the lowdown ethic of the Democrat Party. I will justify my reason for concluding that.
I put out dozens of signs for Cory Gardner for Senate, Bob Beauprez for Governor, Chris Holbert, David Weaver, Tony Spurlock and other Republicans. They got jerked up by some larcenous Democrat and wee replaced by Guv Hookinlipper and Sen. Uterus signs at intersection after intersection. In some cases, mine were just jerked up and taken. No, it wasn’t the wind that blew them away and it wasn’t Republicans getting them to install in their own yards. I think I can lay down the accusation that they were stolen and deep-sixed by Democrats to make it look like nobody is interested in Gardner and suggest that The Dems are so popular in Douglas County. Fat chance!
Am I saying that all Democrats are that dishonest and want to shut down my freedom of speech? Well, I don’t know that I want to defend my position on that, one way or the other. The fact remains that somebody cleaned out the GOP signs for key races, and nobody has cleaned out the Dem ones. So, I I’m just say that Democrats are responsible for stealing my signs, and nobody seems to be stealing theirs. Just calling it like it is!
It’s not so much about the value of the signs, really! Or is it? Good Republican people contributed their hard earned money to buy those signs. So, every one stolen robs some Republican of the money they contributed to purchase them since the sign can’t do the job it was purchased to do. It’s definitely about the incredible disregard for my freedom of speech and expression of my political views. They want to take away my 2nd Amendment rights and have been successful to a degree in doing that. Certainly they are now taking away my freedom of speech. That started with Obama as he was elected, even before he was inaugurated. I was writing op eds for over 20 different newspapers weekly until October of 2007, and suddenly, I found myself persona non grata in the newspapers of 3 separate publishers across Colorado and across the country. Ultimately, one admitted that they’d gotten “the word” that if they wanted to remain solvent, they would have to stop publishing things critical of Obama’s administration as it came into power. ZAP! My freedom of speech was shot, and Freedom of the Press was clearly no longer a fact.
Now, these petty little Democrat thieves are methodically even stealing what I work hard to erect in support of my candidates. Am I supposed to tread softly in making such accusations? Well, if I’m supposed to walk softy and just accept impositions on my freedoms, then I won’t do what I’m supposed to do. Democrats seem to be thieves if they are in office, and their supporters as also thieves. That’s how I have to look at it. I take these “thefts” very personally on several fronts. They rob me of my time, my effort as a person with a walking disability, and rob me of my freedom of speech. And don’t come back at me and say, “Well, it happens on both sides!” If that’s the case, why is my town of Parker plastered with the Democrat signs and devoid of Republican signs? At least here, Democrats steal them. I don’t figure there are any other political parties out there stealing them. Purely a matter of deduction and logic! They steal! Oh, they don’t? How many Republicans do you figure were looting the stores in Ferguson, MO, a few weeks back? Not very likely! Obama sent Holder from the DOJ to ostensibly settle down the Obama Supporters who were tearing up the sheets there. Anytime the Democrat supporters get irritated, the first response seems to be looting. Oh, they’ll chant, march, threaten, cry and such, but the operative thing happening is getting more free stuff for nothing, cleaning off the shelves of the stores they raid. Looting is the same as stealing, but somewhat more violence is involved in looting in most cases.
So, in the future, I don’t think I’ll even bother with yard signs, except in my own lawn. I will keep them well in sight of the front windows and keep it well lit all night—hoping to discourage sneaking Democrats from stealing them right out of my yard. I will concentrate on influencing people to put stickers in their cars. Are they tacky? Maybe so, but they are my freedom of speech. Politics is a nasty thing to be involved in, but I don’t try to raise myself above it. I stay right in the middle of the mess as much as I can. Therefore, I am well informed. It bothers me when supposedly highly intelligent citizens tell me they really don’t know what is going on, who is running and what the issues are. That is intentional blindness to what is going on about us.
Anyway, I have some 11 political stickers on my van. It is a moving billboard for my candidates. Do I worry about somebody bashing or keying my car? Not one whit! If they do, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor. Thus far, I’ve only gotten good feedback and people asking me for signs.
So, where are my yard signs? Probably thrown over some hill, in some dumpster or in a ditch, put there by a cowardly Democrat!
Colonel Curtis D. Dale, PhD, USAF (Ret)
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Illegal entry
The girl pictured above was charged with illegal entry when she got stuck in a chimney, trying to break into a house lived in by a man she met online. Her name is Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 28.
Rescue workers had to tear down part of the chimney with jackhammers and oil Nunez-Figueroa up with dish soap to get her out.Read more here.
Who benefits from racial divisiveness?
Victor Davis Hanson points out that
In an ever more racially diverse society where intermarriage is routine and assimilation often rapid, we have no discernible rules for what determines one’s race.Read more here.
The charlatan Ward Churchill, a noted activist, tried — and succeeded in — fabricating a Native American identity to land a job at the University of Colorado. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren invented a Native American pedigree and so became Harvard Law School’s first recognized Native American professor. When other elites hyphenate their last names and accentuate first names, they remind us that without such IDs, one might not otherwise learn — or care about — their particular racial pedigree.
But even if some can prove ethnically pure heritages, who gets an edge in racially mixed-up America and who does not — and why?
Will the tens of thousands of Central American children who recently crossed illegally into America soon be eligible for affirmative action? If so, on what grounds? That America welcomed, fed, clothed, and schooled those who were all but driven out from their oppressive Central American governments?
Will these newcomers soon be eligible for special consideration in a way that Syrian refugees who are scheduled to arrive legally to the United States will not?
In truth, the criterion for affirmative action is not superficial appearance. (Syrians are perhaps as much non-white in appearance as Central Americans.) It is not past discrimination. (Central American dictators have been as unkind as Syrian dictators.) Nor is it present prejudice. (Both groups are new to the United States and not past victims of American discrimination.)
Why continue with divisive racial self-identification?
Too many of our ethnic aristocrats and politicians benefit from a fossilized system of a past century that is now largely irrelevant in 21st-century America.
The lobbyist-laden, crony-socialist Obama administration
Remember when Solyndra waited until the day after the 2010 midterm election to announce its layoff of employees? Guess who was the political fixer who arranged for that timing? Ron Klain, the man whom Obama just appointed to be the ebola czar. Andrew McCarthy has all the relevant details here.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Victim of the century
"Poor me. I was the first person to have her reputation destroyed world-wide via the internet. If only I could collect some royalties. The F.B.I. threatened me with 27 years in prison. Anxiety, depression, sense of failure, and shame: I came close to disintegrating. Every day in 1998 I felt like I was being punched hard in the gut. I was shattered. It's hard to wrap your mind around where the humiliation ends. There are no borders. It feels like the whole world is laughing at you. My mantra: I wanted to die.
I was also victimized when I was younger, when my brother read my diary, and my seventh grade crush shared the love letter I had written him with everyone he knew.
I cringed, I yelled, I sobbed, and the mantra continued. Submerged in shame and public humiliation.
Online we've got a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis. To mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing."
Monica Lewinsky speaks out.
Update: Stacey McCain has written a powerful piece about Ms. Lewinsky here.
Update two: Don't miss what Scott Ott has to say here.
I was also victimized when I was younger, when my brother read my diary, and my seventh grade crush shared the love letter I had written him with everyone he knew.
I cringed, I yelled, I sobbed, and the mantra continued. Submerged in shame and public humiliation.
Online we've got a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis. To mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing."
Monica Lewinsky speaks out.
Update: Stacey McCain has written a powerful piece about Ms. Lewinsky here.
Update two: Don't miss what Scott Ott has to say here.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Advanced stages of collapse
David Warren writes:
Pope Paul was dead right in Humanae Vitae; that if we did not draw the line at contraception, we would be on the “slippery slope” to real, murderous barbarism.Read more here.
Moreover, every Christian denomination that has abandoned that front line — on sexual morality — is now in advanced stages of collapse, from one thing that led to another.
Hold off on the rockets for a while
Reuters is reporting that
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A daughter of the leader of Hamas in Gaza was admitted to an Israeli hospital for emergency medical treatment this month after she suffered complications from a routine procedure, two sources familiar with the case said.Read more here.
Israeli media has reported that one of Haniyeh's granddaughters was treated in an Israeli hospital last November, while his mother-in-law sought treatment in a Jerusalem hospital in June.
Implantable technologies
Mike Edelhart writes about the next big frontier in technology: implantable technology inside our bodies. Perhaps the most interesting one tome is smart dust.
Edelhart explains:
Go here to read and view the other technologies featured in Edelhart's article.
Edelhart explains:
Perhaps the most startling of current implantable innovations is smart dust, arrays of full computers with antennas, each much smaller than a grain of sand, that can organize themselves inside the body into as-needed networks to power a whole range of complex internal processes.
Imagine swarms of these nano-devices, called motes, attacking early cancer or bringing pain relief to a wound or even storing critical personal information in a manner that is deeply encrypted and hard to hack.
With smart dust, doctors will be able to act inside your body without opening you up, and information could be stored inside you, deeply encrypted, until you unlocked it from your very personal nano network.
Go here to read and view the other technologies featured in Edelhart's article.
Accelerating the aging process
Do you want to accelerate the aging process?
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco used a sample of 5300 healthy adults. Dr. Elissa Epel worked on the study for 5 years.REad more here.
“We think we can get away with drinking lots of soda as long as we are not gaining weight, but this suggests that there is an invisible pathway that leads to accelerated aging, regardless of weight,” said Dr. Epel.
Epel’s team discovered that in people who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages, the ends of their chromosomes, known as telomeres, were shorter.
The shorter the telomere, the less a cell can regenerate thus aging the body, and raising the risk of disease and early death.
“This finding is alarming because it suggest that soda may be aging us, in ways we are not even aware of,” said Dr. Epel.
Researchers found no link in cell aging, however, when drinking diet sodas and fruit juices.
Number 509 for Peyton Manning
Peyton Manning made Denver Broncos fans very happy tonight, breaking Brett Favre's all time NFL passing record with his 509th touchdown pass here.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Einstein's view of intelligent design
What was Albert Einstein's view of intelligent design?
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.As quoted in Real Science.
The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
- Albert Einstein
What was taught in the mosque attended by the Okahoma beheader
He names the two guys who went shooting with him. Won't they identify him?
Any ideas how to fix this?
What is your position on quarantine? Scott Alexander writes:
One day I woke up and they had politicized Ebola.Which tribe do you belong to: the blue tribe, or the red tribe? Alexander reports that the red tribe has been supporting quarantine, while the blue tribe opposes it. Then he goes on to discus how the two political tribes reacted to recent news items: Ebola, ISIS, the Rotherham scandal, Ferguson, nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, and global warming.
The Rotherham scandal was an incident in an English town where criminal gangs had been grooming and blackmailing thousands of young girls, then using them as sex slaves. This had been going on for at least ten years with minimal intervention by the police. An investigation was duly launched, which discovered that the police had been keeping quiet about the problem because the gangs were mostly Pakistani and the victims mostly white, and the police didn’t want to seem racist by cracking down too heavily. Researchers and officials who demanded that the abuse should be publicized or fought more vigorously were ordered to attend “diversity training” to learn why their demands were offensive. The police department couldn’t keep it under wraps forever, and eventually it broke and was a huge scandal.Read more here.
The Left then proceeded to totally ignore it, and the Right proceeded to never shut up about it for like an entire month, and every article about it had to include the “diversity training” aspect, so that if you type “rotherham d…” into Google, your two first options are “Rotherham Daily Mail” and “Rotherham diversity training”.
I don’t find this surprising at all. The Rotherham incident ties in perfectly to the Red Tribe narrative – scary foreigners trying to hurt us, politically correct traitors trying to prevent us from noticing. It doesn’t do anything for the Blue Tribe narrative, and indeed actively contradicts it at some points. So the Red Tribe wants to trumpet it to the world, and the Blue Tribe wants to stay quiet and distract.
John Durant did an interesting analysis of media coverage of the Rotherham scandal versus the “someone posted nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence” scandal.
He found left-leaning news website Slate had one story on the Rotherham child exploitation scandal, but four stories on nude Jennifer Lawrence.
He also found that feminist website Jezebel had only one story on the Rotherham child exploitation scandal, but six stories on nude Jennifer Lawrence.
This doesn’t surprise me much. Yes, you would think that the systematic rape of thousands of women with police taking no action might be a feminist issue. Or that it might outrage some people on Tumblr, a site which has many flaws but which has never been accused of being slow to outrage. But the goal here isn’t to push some kind of Platonic ideal of what’s important, it’s to support a certain narrative that ties into the Blue Tribe narrative. Rotherham does the opposite of that. The Jennifer Lawrence nudes, which center around how hackers (read: creepy internet nerds) shared nude pictures of a beloved celebrity on Reddit (read: creepy internet nerds) and 4Chan (read: creepy internet nerds) – and #Gamergate which does the same – are exactly the narrative they want to push, so they become the Stories Of The Century.
The Red Tribe and Blue Tribe have different narratives, which they use to tie together everything that happens into reasons why their tribe is good and the other tribe is bad.
Sometimes this results in them seizing upon different sides of an apparently nonpolitical issue when these support their narrative; for example, Republicans generally supporting a quarantine against Ebola, Democrats generally opposing it. Other times it results in a side trying to gain publicity for stories that support their narrative while sinking their opponents’ preferred stories – Rotherham for some Reds; Ferguson for some Blues.
This can sort of be prevented by not turning everything into a referendum on how great your tribe is and how stupid the opposing tribe is, or by trying to frame an issue in a way that respects or appeals to an out-group’s narrative.
Daily Kos or someone has a little label saying “supports liberal ideas”, but actually their incentive is to make liberals want to click on their pages and ads. If the quickest way to do that is by writing story after satisfying story of how dumb Republicans are, and what wonderful taste they have for being members of the Blue Tribe instead of evil mutants, then they’ll do that even if the effect on the entire system is to make Republicans hate them and by extension everything they stand for.
I don’t know how to fix this.
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