text:
As with girls and their love of male dominance, a woman's submission is won not with a club to the head but gradually intensifying demands and shows of defiance that weaken the female presumption of her romantic entitlement and undermine her reflex to pigeonhole you as one of the mediocre masses of beta males whom she can walk over.
Bob's Blog
This blog is looking for wisdom, to have and to share. it is also looking for other rare character traits like good humor, courage, and honor. It is not an easy road, because all of us fall short. But God is love, forgiveness and grace. Those who believe in Him and repent of their sins have the promise of His Holy Spirit to guide us and show us the Way.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
On dominance and submission
The latest from Chateau Heartiste:
Posted by Bob at 10:58 PM No comments:
Labels: dominance, submission
Challenging the moral cult of altruism
Loving people for their virtues. Make yourself worthy of love!
Posted by Bob at 10:48 PM No comments:
Labels: Ayn Rand, Mike Wallace
Tis the season
Posted by Bob at 9:34 PM No comments:
Labels: How do you buy for this crowd?
Bill, Schmill, Let's do an executive order!
Posted by Bob at 8:13 PM No comments:
Labels: Saturday Night Live
Something we all can contribute to
The first Biobus has been launched in Britain. It runs on a combination of your poop and your food waste.
Posted by Bob at 8:03 PM No comments:
Labels: poop power
See no identity theft. Hear no identity theft. Speak no identity theft.
Michelle Malkin writes:
See no identity theft. Hear no identity theft. Speak no identity theft.Read more here.
A high-profile immigration attorney crowed: "Good news for deferred action applicants: If you used a false Social Security card, you need not reveal the number on your deferred action application forms. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has clarified that when the forms ask for an applicant's Social Security number, it refers to Social Security numbers issued to the applicant. If you used a friend's number, a made-up number or a stolen number, you should answer N/A for 'not applicable' where it asks for the number."
Since then, more than 500,000 DACA applications have been approved with abysmal oversight, little public disclosure and total absolution for identity rip-off artists. The latest planned administrative amnesty will dwarf that ongoing fiasco.
Labels: identity theft, illegal immigration, Michelle Malkin
Saturday, November 22, 2014
How much snow did Buffalo get last week?
A vehicle, with a large chunk of snow on its top, drives along Route 20 after digging out after a massive snow fall in Lancaster, N.Y. on Nov. 19. Another two to three feet of snow is expected in the area. (Gary Wiepert/Associated Press)
Thanks to Ann Voskamp
Posted by Bob at 9:10 PM 1 comment:
Labels: globull warming
Embracing uniqueness, making each moment matter
A community's love for a teacher
Posted by Bob at 9:05 PM No comments:
A privilege shared by all of His creatures
African Wildlife Winner: A solitary Masai giraffe is showered by light in a magnificent sun burst at Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya.
The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History received over 20,000 entries from around the world to compete for the best wildlife and nature photo. Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Competition is open to all level of experience. The museum will be showcasing sixty honored and winning entries until April 20, 2015.
Thanks to Ann Voskamp
Posted by Bob at 8:09 PM No comments:
Labels: God's grace
More insights into the inner workings of Hell
Talk about unique! Manhattan Infidel has just landed an interview in Hell with dead anchorman Peter Jennings! Jennings gave him his perspective on the recent American mid-term elections. Read the full interview here.
New York Mayor late for two very important meetings
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio was late for a scheduled meeting with his pal Satan recently. Manhattan Infidel, as usual, has the scoop here. De Blasio was also late to a memorial service honoring victims of 9-11.
Posted by Bob at 7:35 PM No comments:
Labels: De Blasio
Jon Stewart mocks Gruber, Obama, Pelosi
Posted by Bob at 5:49 PM No comments:
Labels: When you've lost Jon Stewart...
Petty Woman
Posted by Bob at 5:37 PM No comments:
Labels: Jon Stewart, Nancy Pelosi
Free to come in, infect us, and commit crimes
A retired border agent talks about people coming in to the United States with communicable diseases, being members of criminal gangs, and being allowed to go free in America.
Posted by Bob at 5:29 PM No comments:
Labels: illegal immigration
Our too-big-to-fail gambling bankers and Bill Clinton
Dick Morris has a "history video" today in which he puts the blame on Bill Clinton for the failure of the economy in 2008 and the shakiness of the economy yet today. Go here to view it.
Posted by Bob at 4:58 PM No comments:
Labels: Bill Clinton, Doing damage to America
Friday, November 21, 2014
Checks and balances
Betsy Newmark
isn't necessarily opposed to some sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been here working, I'm still appalled by the President's action. This will send the message to anyone who wants to come here and not wait in line for legal documents that they just have to get here and wait around for amnesty. The border has to be better secured first before such a regularization of immigrants' legal status can go through or all we are doing is strengthening the magnet. But this has to be done legislatively. Every day I teach students about how the Constitution is supposed to work. And nowhere in there is there a section that says that a president who hasn't been able to get Congress to go along can just do it on his own. That violates every principle underlying the structure of our government. And once stretched like this by Obama, it will never return. We've been expanding the powers of the federal government and the president since 1788 but this is one huge increase of a different character that will fundamentally alter our system of supposed checks and balances.Read much more here.
Posted by Bob at 10:15 PM No comments:
Labels: Constitution, illegal immigration, Obama
LBJ orders pants
Thanks to Jonah Goldberg
Posted by Bob at 8:09 PM 1 comment:
Labels: nothing crude about LBJ
History is his co-pilot
Jonathan Goldberg notes how the scandals come fast and furiously. Now we are beyond Gruber and headlong into Obama's lawlessness on immigration.
Like Bill Clinton at an orgy, I don't know where to start with this. Placating Obama's wishes doesn't erase his lawless deed, it establishes a precedent for a new presidential power of lawless action. It's against the law for me to steal your car. If I do it anyway and then say, "Look, all you have to do to nullify my lawless action is sign over the title to me, that way it will all be nice and proper" does that really make it all better?Read more here.
We've heard a great deal lately about the "wrong side of history." It is one of the president's favorite ways to describe whatever side he isn't on, and it's been a phrase on the lips of progressives for quite a while. Among the myriad problems with the notion of a "wrong side of history," as many critics (including me) have long argued, is that in the domestic sphere it is a call for one's opponents to surrender to the inevitability of defeat, and in the international sphere it is deployed rhetorically to avoid deploying anything real.
So, for example, on the home front, liberals insist that opponents of same-sex marriage should give up now because they are sure to lose eventually. And on the international stage, when Barack Obama castigates Vladimir Putin for being on the wrong side of history, what he's really saying is, "Don't worry, we don't need to do anything, History and her long moral arc will do the heavy lifting for us." No wonder the British historian Robert Conquest complained that the phrase has a "Marxist twang."
While I think partisan motivations are a powerful driver of what Obama is doing, he clearly has an ideological framework that helps him justify it. And that framework is not the Constitution. It is History.
Barack Obama's leapfrog over the Constitution is perfectly consistent with Woodrow Wilson's hatred of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. It is of a piece with FDR's "Second Bill of Rights." It is the latest chapter in the progressive cult of History in which they — and only they — know what the universe requires and no mortal authority, and certainly not any old piece of paper, can stand in the way. Why? Because History is their co-pilot.
Posted by Bob at 8:07 PM No comments:
Labels: Jonah Goldberg, Obama, progressives
You don't have to try so hard
Posted by Bob at 6:45 PM No comments:
Labels: get up, Wash off the makeup
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Obama outlines his amnesty plan
As usual, the most thorough early analysis of President Obama's amnesty speech comes from outside America via The Daily Mail:
'We're not going to deport you': Obama announces amnesty for millions of 'anchor baby' parents and illegal immigrant children – as long as they've been in US for five yearsRead more here.
Obama addressed the nation to outline a new executive order that will allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the country
New plan has enraged Republicans who say he lacks the constitutional authority to pick and choose which to deport
Illegal immigrants can't apply for months and no one who arrived after January 1, 2010 is eligible
President acknowledges that it's a temporary fix and demands help from Congress to make it permanent
Anyone who takes advantage of the program will have to pass criminal and national security background checks, pay their taxes, pay a fee and prove their eligibility
Two Republican aides complained about an 'amnesty' for people who came to the US illegally and then had children here – calling their children 'anchor babies'
Posted by Bob at 10:29 PM No comments:
Labels: Obama's amnesty plan
If you have these qualities, you will attract attention from the opposite sex
What do men desire in women, and visa versa? Our leader Chateau Heartiste gives us his view:
As I've written before, what men like in women is simple. In descending order of importance, here are the female attractiveness traits that men desire in women:Read more here.
Sexual eagerness.
In descending order of importance, here are the male attractiveness traits that women desire in men:
Psychosocial dominance (game).
High status/fame.
Personality (passion/charisma/humor).
Good looks/height/muscularity.
Sexual prowess.
A man along the alpha-beta-omega axis will exhibit the above traits in varying degrees of magnitude. The more of each attractiveness trait a man possesses, especially of those traits at the top of the pyramid that most attract women, the greater in intensity, amount, and quality of female attention he will fetch. A super alpha is a man who has maxed out in each category of attractiveness. An omega is a man who possesses little to none of these traits. A typical beta provider is likely a man who is low in the top four traits, average in looks and smarts, high in dependability, and low in sexual prowess.
Posted by Bob at 10:00 PM No comments:
Labels: what men desire, what women desire
The science of choosing girls for long term investment and wife and mother investment
How many sex partners have you really had? How did you answer that question? Did you actually sit down and count? Or did you give a rough estimate? If you actually counted, your estimate will likely be more accurate and lower than those who just give a rough estimate. Read more here.
Chateau Heartiste offers this advice to his male readers:
Chateau Heartiste kindly offers this guide for men based on the number of sex partners the woman you wish to date has had:
Chateau Heartiste offers this advice to his male readers:
It is the inexperienced beta male who is most often in the dark about a woman's sexual history and liable to be victimized by the cheating slut.
Men subconsciously judge women's sluttiness for eminently practical reasons, just as women judge men on a host of alpha benchmarks for similarly practical reasons. No moral equation required. "Slut" is, in fact, a morally neutral term in the context of the sexual market, where a slutty girl is viewed, justifiably, desirably as an easy lay who will go all the way right away, and undesirably as a girlfriend or wife prospect in whom to invest precious resources. With the law and social institutions of the modern west arrayed against male interest as it hasn't been in all of human history, it is of critical importance that men get this part of choosing girls for long term investmest and wife and mother potential down to a science.
Chateau Heartiste kindly offers this guide for men based on the number of sex partners the woman you wish to date has had:
0 lifetime partners: Sweet virginal manna. A bit weird, but you're confident you'll break her in.Read more here.
3 lifetime partners: Typical woman. Wife and mother of your children material.
10 lifetime partners: Above average. Proceed with caution.
15 lifetime partners: Well above average. Be dominant or she'll cheat.
25 lifetime partners: A whole lot. Use her and lose her.
100 lifetime partners: Stopwatch material. You wonder how fast you can get her from "Hi" to "Spread your ass cheeks, I'm going in".
Posted by Bob at 8:00 PM No comments:
Labels: girlfriend or wife prospect
A cure for "Bubble Boy" disease
Christian and Alysia Padilla-Vaccaro and their healthy twins Annabella (left) and Evangelina. Now with a newly-restored immune system, Evangelina lives a normal and healthy life. Courtesy of UCLA
Alice Park writes:
Alysia Padilla-Vaccaro and Christian Vaccaro owe their daughter's life to stem cells. Evangelina, now two, is alive today because she saved herself with her own bone marrow cells.Read more here.
Evangelina, a twin, was born with a severe immune disorder caused by a genetic aberration that makes her vulnerable to any and all bacteria and viruses; even a simple cold could be fatal. But doctors at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Broad Stem Cell Research Center gave her a new treatment, using her own stem cells, that has essentially cured her disease. She's one of 18 children who have been treated with the cutting-edge therapy, and the study's leader, Dr. Donald Kohn, says that the strategy could also be used to treat other gene-based disorders such as sickle cell anemia.
Thanks to Christopher Buckley
Posted by Bob at 7:04 PM No comments:
What our kids are dealing with in school at all grade levels
Thanks to Christopher Buckley
Posted by Bob at 6:11 PM No comments:
Labels: political correctness 101
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
"I am nobody"
Posted by Bob at 10:19 PM No comments:
Labels: Charles Manson
Evolutionary female adaptations
Kevin Williamson writes:
Days of Broken Arrows writes a short history of Manson:
F. Roger Devlin writes:
Charles Manson is a penniless prisoner serving a life sentence at the Corcoran State Prison in California, his death sentence having been automatically commuted thanks to the state supreme court's suspension of the death penalty. The 80-year-old man, who is reasonably fit for a prisoner of his age but does have a swastika carved into his forehead, has just been issued a marriage license to wed Afton Elaine "Star" Burton, 26, an attractive young woman from Illinois who has been corresponding with Manson since she was 17, and who moved to California at 19 to be nearer to him. Manson is not permitted conjugal visits, but, if the couple is so inclined, the state of California will in its benevolence permit a clergyman or magistrate of their choosing to officiate at a prison wedding, which up to ten guests may attend.Read more of Kevin's thoughts here.
Days of Broken Arrows writes a short history of Manson:
Son of a prostitute.
No father.
Awful childhood.
Barely literate.
5'2″ tall.
Spent most of his youth in detention centers.
When he was finally released as an adult, he begged to stay inside, worrying he could not handle life on the outside.
With a few years he had harems of women.
Held orgies.
Orgies were so great that Beach Boy Dennis Wilson invited them to move in.
Dennis Wilson was a major Alpha Male rock star of the '60s.
Manson then order his women to kill.
They were so devoted that they did.
His women were not ugly losers — some were former cheerleaders.
Say what you will about the guy, but he had an innate Alpha quality. Shame it was put to such bad use. Guys who whine they can't get women should think about his life and how he managed to not only get women to sleep with him but basically make them servants to his will. He had some serious charisma.
I'm not surprised at the wife who is a fraction of his age. I'd be surprised if he didn't have groupies.
F. Roger Devlin writes:
The very first thing contemporary dating gurus teach men is not to be a "nice guy." Nor is this aversion to "niceness" exclusive to feminine psychology: even men understand the pejorative connotations of the word innocuous.Read more here.
Perhaps more important than piling up more examples to attest the phenomenon is giving a little thought to why female masochism occurs. Like other sex traits, it is an evolutionary adaptation. I am going to go way out on a limb and suggest that early hominid males may not have been quite so delicate as Tom Fleming, who becomes ill at the very thought of a woman being struck. African men are, by all accounts, pretty quick with their fists to this day. Gallantry is an achievement of civilization, not a part of our primitive nature.
Now, females in our "environment of evolutionary adaptation" were dependent on males for mating, protection, and access to resources. These males were bigger and stronger than females and could easily hurt them if angered or displeased. If our female ancestors had been delicate snowflakes unable to endure life with such brutes, we would not be here today. In other words, women adapted to male brutality, including occasional violence, learning how to get through or around it.
Think for a moment, men, how you would learn to behave if you were dependent for survival on an unpredictable and often violent creature larger and stronger than yourself. You would learn not simply to take what you wanted. You would learn to act when his back is turned, to use indirection, deception, manipulation. You would learn to conceal your true thoughts and keep Big Boy confused as to your true intentions. You would, in short, learn to act like a woman.
The battle of the sexes is a contest of force vs. cunning. Yes, civilized men learn to control their aggressive impulses and not beat women up every time they feel irritation with them. In the modern West, men have largely renounced the use of their natural weapon for controlling women, i.e., force. Have women renounced the use of their own weapons against men? Certainly we cannot expect women to shed millennial evolutionary adaptations automatically the instant men learn to behave.
Women's basic strategy during courtship is still to keep suitors confused. Their primary method of getting what they want is still the indirect route through influencing their men. When they express aggression, it still usually takes the form of passive aggression. And they are still both more frequent and more effective liars than men.
To judge by self-help literature aimed at women, most conceive the task of finding a mate as one of figuring out "how to flatter, tease, dupe, and otherwise manipulate a man into marriage" (Rhoads, p. 120). Does it never occur to women that if they really were loyal, sincere, and feminine, men might not need to be duped into marrying them?
While I am not holding my breath for feminism to demand an end to feminine wiles, I think it possible for women to overcome the uglier side of their nature just as men learn to control their temper and instinct for aggression.
In short, I would be more inclined to sympathize with all the campaigns opposing "violence against women" if they were coupled with their logical counterpart: opposing "fraud against men."
Posted by Bob at 9:26 PM No comments:
Labels: battle of the sexes, Charles Manson, female masochism, fraud against men, violence against women
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Unpredictability and ambiguity: two characteristics women love about men
Chateau Heartiste wrote this in 2012:
Women love two characteristics about men: unpredictability and ambiguity. The woman who can't readily predict or decipher your reaction, or the meaning of your words, is the woman who will make her desire more predictable and less ambiguous to you. She does not want your hostility or your sycophancy, both of which are as predictable as sunrises. She wants your mystery.
Posted by Bob at 10:21 PM No comments:
Are you a woman plagued by "the grass is always greener" syndrome?
Sheryl Paul writes:
I had a client last year who, in her own words, suffered terribly from the "grass is always greener" syndrome. She had initially called me about two months before her wedding and couldn't stop crying throughout her session because she was so tortured by the thought that she was making a mistake. She had been with her fiance for about five years but had struggled almost from the beginning with wondering if she was with the "right" man.Read more here.
At the root of the problem was her inability to let go of an ex-boyfriend. I'm not sure I can even qualify this other man as a boyfriend as he never fully committed to her. In fact, from the beginning, he frequently had women on the side. He lied to her, cheated on her, and was, in a word, a jerk. And even though she knew that he wasn't a good partner and that he would only bring her misery, even though he had broken her trust and her heart repeatedly, she couldn't stop thinking about him. Sure, he was witty and smart, but that wasn't what hooked her. The hook was the sex.
Is it possible that -- as she constantly agonized over it -- she just didn't love her husband and never would? Of course it's possible, but it's not likely. And she would never find out the truth as long as she remained obsessed with the jerk. Something in her was drawn to her husband from the beginning. In fact, she was the one who spotted him across the room, thought he was cute, and moved toward him. Something inside of her was attracted to his goodness and his capacity for commitment and real love. I would venture to say that it was something healthy inside of her that was drawn to a healthy man and something unhealthy that was drawn to an unhealthy man. But no matter how many times we discussed it, she would still come back to the same question: Maybe I just don't love my husband.
Happily, most of my clients are able to work through the issues that prevent them from embracing their partner and their life. They're able to address the fear, process the grief, and ultimately take responsibility for the thoughts that are creating their anxiety and causing them to project the negativity onto their partner. It takes a lot of work, but the efforts are well worth it because they inevitably are able to embrace the goodness and blessings of the life they're living. As for this client, the outcome remains to be seen. I can only hope that through a commitment to a process of self-responsibility and the gift of grace, she'll be able to appreciate the wonderful man and potential for a great marriage that stand before her.
Posted by Bob at 2:10 PM No comments:
The essence of the alpha attitude
What is the central characteristic of the alpha male? Chateau Heartiste says it is "outcome indifference."
A commenter adds:
Aloof doesn't mean silence. It means unconcern for women's reactions. Nonchalance. Which is not the same as avoiding any romantically-charged, sexually-escalating interaction with women.
A commenter adds:
She actually has to prove herself worthy and work to get your affection. People intrinsically value things they have to work for.Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 2:04 PM No comments:
Labels: Chateau Heartiste
Obama's tortured definitions of what is Islamic
Caroline Glick writes:
IS's persecution of those who have had the misfortune to fall under its control is a blight on the human race. And so is the persecution committed by Iran's puppets – the Assad regime in Syria, and its Lebanese terror army Hezbollah. Since the Syrian civil war began three years ago, the Iranian-controlled regime has killed somewhere between 120,000 and 200,000 people.Read more here.
And this brings us back to Obama and his insistence that IS is not Islamic, but the Iranian regime is Islamic. How are we to understand this seeming anomaly?
Throughout his tenure in office, Obama has gone out of his way to mainstream Muslim extremists. This has taken the form of granting senior appointments to people aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, amid a Congressional investigation into suspected leaks, Mohamed Elibiary, a senior fellow at the US Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council, resigned his position.
Just before his resignation, Elibiary tweeted that the rise of the caliphate is "inevitable." In 2004 he spoke at a conference in Dallas celebrating the legacy of Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini. As Robert Spencer has reported, the conference was titled, "A Tribute to a Great Islamic Visionary."
Moreover, Obama had befriended radical Islamic leaders who openly support terrorism, including Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
And of course, as we see more and more clearly each day, the centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy has been appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of achieving détente with the nuclear weapons pursuing state sponsor of terrorism.
In other words, Obama is neither an expert on Islam, nor a man moved by moral indignation.
He opposes IS because IS makes it hard for him to defend Islam from bad public relations. And he coos about the "Islamic Republic of Iran" because he is dedicated to his mission of whitewashing and mainstreaming the regime born of an Islamic revolution.
Posted by Bob at 1:22 PM No comments:
Millennials embrace a soft libertarianism
Matt Baauerlein writes that the Democrat
party's grip on the young may be loosening.Read more here.
The Senate contests were last fought in 2008, a presidential year, and here the plummet was startling. In North Carolina the rate at which young people voted Democratic fell to 54 percent this year from 71 percent in 2008. Virginia saw it slide to 50 percent from 71 percent. In Arkansas and Alaska, a majority of young voters went Republican.
A Pew Research Center survey released in March found that while 40 percent of millennials in 2006 considered themselves political independents, now 50 percent of them do.
When it comes to young voters, liberal politicians are victims of their culture-war success. They have pressed a laissez-faire posture in moral and private matters, and have won. But millennials have adopted not the posture of their liberal elders that fostered group identity (be it "union member," "disenfranchised minority" or "F.D.R. Democrat"), but a soft libertarianism that makes individual preference king.
This doesn't mean that the youth vote is going Republican. Party identity is meaningless to half of them, and that rate will rise. They pose a new kind of constituency, fluctuating and unpredictable, socially liberal but willing to back conservatives now and then, interested less in party ideologies than in actual individuals put forward as candidates, such as the cool young black senator in 2008. They form one-sixth to one-eighth of the electorate. If politicians take anything away from 2014, they must find a way to cultivate these voters that moves beyond party labels — indeed, beyond identity politics entirely.
Posted by Bob at 1:08 PM No comments:
Labels: millennials
Rand Paul: Long on posturing and short on heavy-lifting
John Yoo believes that Rand Paul
Yoo further charges that Paul is
should stay right where he is — in the Senate. We should never put someone in the Oval Office who thinks that the United States can only use force when it is actually attacked, as he argues. That is the mindset that led the United States to ignore events in Europe as they spiraled out of control 100 years ago and to withdraw from the continent in the interwar years, leaving it to fascists who ultimately drew the U.S. back into another destructive war. It is a point of view that would have led to defeat in the Cold War and would handcuff the United States' ability to protect itself by intervening against security threats before they arrive on our shores. It is a point of view that no serious candidate for president should hold and that no great president in our history has ever held.
Yoo further charges that Paul is
long on posturing and short on the heavy-lifting required to actually get legislation passed. If Senator Paul really believes that the war on the Islamic State is unconstitutional, then he should start by trying to cut off funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria. He will have his chance, though through no effort of his own, because the Obama administration is requesting additional funding from Congress for the operation.Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 12:53 PM No comments:
Labels: Rand Paul
Obamacare is forcing the closure of rural hospitals
Jayne O'Donnell and Laura Ungar report:
Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state's closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.Read more here.
Hospital officials contend that the Affordable Care Act's penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they're released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.
Rural hospital officials and others say that federal regulators — along with state governments — are now starving the hospitals they created with policies and reimbursement rates that make it nearly impossible for them to stay afloat.
Posted by Bob at 12:35 PM No comments:
Labels: obamacare
Departing from the standard of truth
Betsy Newmark writes:
It is time to judge policies by their results and not their benign intentions.Betsy links to an article by William Voegeli, who writes:
For progressives, the success of government programs takes a backseat to their own moral grandstanding.Read more here.
Liberals' ideals make them more culpable, not less, for the fact that government programs set up to do good don't reliably accomplish good. Doing good is often harder than do-gooders realize, but doing good is also more about the doing and the doer than it is about the good. Too often, as a result, liberals are content to treat gestures as the functional equivalent of deeds, and intentions as adequate substitutes for achievements.
Posted by Bob at 12:08 PM No comments:
Labels: efficacy, political prescriptions
Who will win the suburbs?
Joel Kotkin writes:
You are a political party, and you want to secure the electoral majority. But what happens, as is occurring to the Democrats, when the damned electorate that just won't live the way—in dense cities and apartments—that you have deemed is best for them?Read more here.
As will become even more obvious in the lame duck years, the political obsessions of the Obama Democrats largely mirror those of the cities: climate change, gay marriage, feminism, amnesty for the undocumented, and racial redress. These may sometimes be worthy causes, but they don't address basic issues that effect suburbanites, such as stagnant middle class wages, poor roads, high housing prices, or underperforming schools. None of these concerns elicit much passion among the party's true believers.
Since 2011 the most rapid growth in country, as noted by Trulia's Jed Kolko, continues to be in the suburbs and exurbs.
Nor is this trend likely to reverse in the near future. As Millennials head into their thirties, survey data suggests that most are looking for single family houses and most favor suburban locations where increasingly they will be joined by immigrants and minorities. And virtually all the fastest growth urban regions—Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Phoenix, Charlotte—remain largely suburban in form and character, while growth is much slower in the more traditional legacy cities such as San Francisco, New York, or Boston.
None of this suggests that that Republicans can take suburban votes for granted. The suburbs are changing in ways that could help progressives, notably by becoming more heavily minority and Millennial. The preferences of these new arrivals will differ from those of previous suburban generations—particularly their views on immigration, the need for open space and cultural liberalism. That said, how likely is it that these new suburbanites will embrace progressive ideologues who continually diss the very places they have chosen to live?
The progressive "clerisy" and their developer allies may wish to destroy the suburban dream, but they will not be able to stay in office for long with such attitudes. America remains, and likely will remain, a predominately suburban nation for decades to come. This demographic reality means that whoever wins the suburban vote in 2016 and beyond will inherit the political future.
Posted by Bob at 11:52 AM No comments:
Labels: Joel Kotkin
Oregon voters decisively say no to drivers licences for illegals
Jonathan J. Cooper and Nicholas Riccardi write:
Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver's licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.Read more here.
Opponents barely gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the ballot. Immigrant rights groups outspent their opponents 10-1. Still, the measure failed in every county but the state's most liberal one, Multnomah, home to Portland. Even there it trailed significantly behind other Democratic candidates and causes.
Posted by Bob at 11:37 AM No comments:
Feminism - a series of temper tantrums thrown by a small, privileged minority
David French writes that American feminists are characterized by their "appalling stupidity backed by their hysterical rage." Glenn Reynolds adds:
French continues:
Betsy Newmark adds:
Read more here.
So how are things going for feminism? Well, last week, some feminists took one of the great achievements of human history — landing a probe from Earth on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away — and made it all about the clothes.Read more here.
Yes, that's right. After years of effort, the European Space Agency's lander Philaelanded on a comet 300 million miles away. At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female "close pal," featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women. And suddenly, the triumph of the comet landing was drowned out by shouts of feminist outrage about ... what people were wearing. It was one small shirt for a man, one giant leap backward for womankind.
Thus, what should have been the greatest day in a man's life — accomplishing something never before done in the history of humanity — was instead derailed by people with their own axes to grind. As Chloe Price observed: "Imagine the ... storm if the scientist had been a woman and everyone focused solely on her clothes and not her achievements."
French continues:
Feminism doesn't really have a philosophy. It's barely even an ideology. It's mostly just a series of temper tantrums thrown by a small, privileged minority. And, unless it changes, it will soon be irrelevant.
Betsy Newmark adds:
Meanwhile, women are being sold into sexual slavery by ISIS, Iran executes a woman for killing her rapist in self defense, and Saudi Arabia routinely allows the rape and mistreatment of female migrant workers. Meanwhile, feminists are having meltdowns over the shirt that a scientist wore when he was interviewed after having landed a probe on a comet. Something is seriously wrong with these women if that is what it takes to outrage them.Read more here.
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 11:13 AM No comments:
Labels: feminism
"Rent-seeking remoras" sucking off of the government Leviathan.
Posted by Bob at 10:47 AM No comments:
Labels: Gruber, Jonah Goldberg, obamacare
Obama's legacy: government-induced chaos at home, moral equivalence abroad.
Victor Davis Hanson writes today:
The last but long gasp of the Obama administration is characterized not so much by deceit and incompetence as by growing chaos. Everything appears to be coming apart. The chariot of state now veers up and down with a terrified Phaethon clueless at the reins. Whether it is ISIS, Ebola, Putin, or Obamacare, the common strain is not simple incompetence, but a maladroitness born of intolerant ideological fundamentalism.These are just excerpts from VDH's latest brilliant piece. Please go here to read every paragraph.
Have our government agencies ever seemed more corrupt or useless or both, staffed by political cronies and leftist zealots? What ever happened to the old IRS, GSA, VA, Secret Service, NSA, NASA, EPA, or Justice Department? All seem now mere appendages to a larger agenda of fundamentally transforming America.
We are mired in the slowest recovery in modern times, alleviated only by recently falling oil prices, which came despite, not because of, the president's efforts. Fiscal sobriety is now redefined as a $600 billion annual deficit rather than the usual $1 trillion, again brought about by efforts other than Obama's own. Yet the president has an unfortunate habit of taking credit for the good that he opposed and fobbing off on others responsibility for the bad that he embraced. There is interest in watching Obama's press conferences, but mostly in appreciating how ingeniously he serially blames others for his own blunders.
I more or less divide the world into two camps: those who transcend their group identity, and those who cling to it as a redoubt. I do not feel any more intrinsic empathy with a Swedish-American in Minnesota by virtue of a shared ethnic heritage than I do with my Mexican-American neighbors and childhood friends. So why grant any such exemption to others, especially at this late date in the American experiment? This last election was about a cohort of new-generation women and minorities who won office without much reference to their tribe or gender, versus ossified activists who tried to gin up various pseudo-wars on women and minorities to disguise their own absence of an idea. The latter lost badly. When the U.S. is in extremis, the last thing we need is more silly talk about high cheekbones, a "wise Latina," or "my people" from our elites, who project their own careerist strategies upon a fragile body politic. Racial ecumenism versus racial separatism should not be a hard call. So the next time a public figure starts droning on about "my people" or blaming his own inadequacies on race, gender, or tribe, we need to tune him out and turn the channel. That Al Sharpton went from a buffoon to a presidential adviser is a mirror of the age.
Benjamin Netanyahu may be many things but he is certainly neither a coward nor a chickens**t. Such smears are the final sad epitaphs to this administration's failed relations with the Jewish state. It takes neither a genius nor a moralist to distinguish a liberal state that phones to warn apartment dwellers about the targeted areas of its attack, and the terrorist clique that shoots its own who try to follow such warnings and save themselves. Only a moral adolescent could fail to distinguish a tiny beleaguered democratic atoll from the surrounding violent seas of tribalism, misogyny, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, economic Neanderthalism, autocracy, and terrorism. It is not difficult to appreciate that the liberal society in question has led the way to global breakthroughs in everything from neurosurgery to drip irrigation, while the illiberal model surrounding it leads only in discovering ingenious variations on how to blow civilians up. Hating Israel, saying it is morally no better than its enemies, and damning its democracy as demonic proves also a good guide to what is insane in the present age.
Posted by Bob at 10:29 AM No comments:
Labels: corrupt and useless government agencies, Israel, ossified activists, presidential maladroitness, VDH
Where the money is: Botox and oil!
Gerard Baker tells us that
I seem to remember 2007. Wasn't that the year the economy tanked?
Read more here.
Companies are taking advantage of rising stock prices to secure big takeovers. Yesterday was one of the busiest days for mergers in years with more than $100 billion in deals. At roughly $3.1 trillion so far in 2014, the current dollar volume of announced mergers and offers globally is higher than in any full year since 2007, data show. Our story examines the factors behind this year's surge in M&A volume and reports on the latest activity, including Actavis agreeing to buy Botox-maker Allergan and Halliburton's plan to purchase smaller oil-field services rival Baker Hughes.
I seem to remember 2007. Wasn't that the year the economy tanked?
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 10:03 AM No comments:
Labels: stock mergers and acquisitions
Monday, November 17, 2014
Ageism is the last acceptable prejudice in America
Posted by Bob at 11:27 PM No comments:
Labels: Bill Maher
Lifting the veil
Matthew Blake reports:
A Saudi groom has divorced his bride on their wedding night after seeing her face for the first time when the photographer asked them to pose for pictures.found here.
The couple, from the Western Saudi town of Medinah, had agreed to marry each other despite having not met face to face - a popular custom in certain Middle Eastern countries.
But when the bride removed her veil and smiled for the camera, her new husband leapt to his feet in disgust.
'You are not the girl I want to marry,' he declared. 'You are not the one I had imagined. I am sorry, but I divorce you.'
According to local daily Okaz, the bride immediately collapsed in a fit of tears as panicked wedding guests stepped in to try to resolve the dispute.
But their efforts were to no avail.
'The groom said he had not been able to see his bride's face before marriage,' Okaz reported. 'When he divorced her, the bride collapsed and the wedding turned into a night of tears.'
Posted by Bob at 10:41 PM No comments:
Labels: rejection
The road to tyranny
Andrew McCarthy writes:
short of credibly threatening impeachment, Congress and the courts can neither compel a president to enforce the laws nor stop him from using his plenary pardon authority to grant a sweeping amnesty. That gets Obama two-thirds of the prize he is pursuing — namely, several million aliens whose illegal status has been purged, put on the path to inevitable voting rights that will give Democrats an invincible electoral majority.REad more here.
Against this backdrop, I am gratified that Fox News's Megyn Kelly and Charles Krauthammer have just given the topic of impeachment in the immigration context more of the serious consideration it deserves. Appearing on The Kelly File Thursday, Dr. Krauthammer asserted that the president's anticipated amnesty decree for millions of illegal aliens "is an impeachable offense."
He is plainly correct. As Faithless Execution elaborates, "high crimes and misdemeanors," the Constitution's trigger for impeachment, is a term of art for abuses of power that violate the president's fiduciary obligations to the American people he serves, the constitutional system he takes an oath to preserve, and the laws whose faithful execution is his core duty.
This is the theme of Faithless Execution: All Americans who aspire to sustain a nation of laws not men have a vital interest in rejecting executive lawlessness. The Framers understood that presidential usurpation of lawmaking power would be the road to tyranny. They were right . . . and avoiding tyranny should not be a partisan issue.
Posted by Bob at 10:03 PM No comments:
Labels: Andrew McCarthy, impeachment
Sunday, November 16, 2014
It worked for her!
Posted by Bob at 6:56 PM No comments:
Labels: IRS, Lois Lerner
Mother Nature spoils the party again
Posted by Bob at 6:35 PM No comments:
Labels: globull warming
Yes, by all means
Posted by Bob at 6:01 PM No comments:
Labels: Friend of Bill, Monica Lewinsky
How cold is it?
Posted by Bob at 5:10 PM No comments:
Labels: Brr
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Is Keystone now irrelevant?
The House of Representatives finally okayed development of the Keystone Pipeline, and the Senate is scheduled to vote on it this week. However, a couple of oil titans say that Keystone is old news, that the industry has moved on, finding other ways to move the oil.
Republican oil mogul Harold Hamm says Congress is wasting its time debating the Keystone XL pipeline.Read more here.
"It's not relevant at all in my opinion.
"If we have an … oil oversupply looking at us, do we need more Canadian oil here? Probably not," Hamm said.
Instead, he said, Washington should devote its efforts to lifting the 1970s-era U.S. ban on exporting crude oil — a cause that has gained momentum in Congress during the past year, even though Republicans have been divided. "They can lift that ban on exports and level the playing field and untie our hands," Hamm said. "That's the number one issue right there. If anybody's got a doubt, that's it."
TransCanada insists that Keystone is still needed, saying in a statement late Friday that the pipeline would aid energy independence by "[pushing] out other sources of crude oil from outside North America."
"We agree with Mr. Hamm that the approval process for this pipeline has taken far too long and we share his frustration in that regard," the company added. "However, our customers continue to be strongly in support of this pipeline because it represents an affordable, safe and environmentally responsible alternative to move large volumes of oil long distances."
Another reason to allow exports is to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin by lessening the reliance of Ukraine and other European countries on Russian fuel imports, Hamm said. Putin is too unpredictable and dangerous, he said.
"I mean, how far will this guy go again?" Hamm said. "If he had been there when we had the first Cold War, we probably wouldn't any of us be sitting here today."
Posted by Bob at 9:45 PM No comments:
Labels: lift the ban on exporting crude oil, Putin
Four entertainers having fun
Thanks to Ann Voskamp
Posted by Bob at 9:02 PM No comments:
Leopard lurking
This photo of a leopard was taken by nine-year-old Spaniard Carlos Perez Naval.
Thanks to Ann Voskamp for finding this at Wimp.com
Posted by Bob at 8:10 PM No comments:
Labels: a talented young photographer
What one thing would you change about yourself?
Thanks to Ann Voskamp
Posted by Bob at 2:58 PM No comments:
Is Jesus God?
Y-Jesus blog examines the question of all questions:
When one compares Jesus with the other great religious leaders, a remarkable distinction emerges. Ravi Zacharias has studied world religions and observed a fundamental distinction between Jesus Christ and the founders of other major religions. All religions provide instruction for a way of living. But it is only Jesus who offers deliverance, forgiveness for sin, and transformation. "Jesus did not only teach or expound His message. He was identical with His message.Read more here.
C.S. Lewis explains: "Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God….But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips."
In his quest for truth, Lewis knew that he could not have it both ways with the identity of Jesus. Either Jesus was who he claimed to be—God in the flesh—or his claims were false. And if they were false, Jesus could not be a great moral teacher. He would either be lying intentionally or he would be a lunatic with a God complex.
Many people have lied for personal gain. In fact, the motivation of most lies is some perceived benefit to oneself. What could Jesus have hoped to gain from lying about his identity? Power would be the most obvious answer. If people believed he was God, he would have tremendous power. (That is why many ancient leaders, such as the Caesars, claimed divine origin.)
The rub with this explanation is that Jesus shunned all attempts to move him in the direction of seated power, instead chastising those who abused such power and lived their lives pursuing it. He also chose to reach out to the outcasts (prostitutes and lepers), those without power, creating a network of people whose influence was less than zero. In a way that could only be described as bizarre, all that Jesus did and said moved diametrically in the other direction from power.
It would seem that if power was Jesus' motivation, he would have avoided the cross at all costs. Yet, on several occasions, he told his disciples that the cross was his destiny and mission. How would dying on a Roman cross bring one power?
To go with the option of liar seems to swim upstream against everything Jesus taught, lived, and died for. To most scholars, it just doesn't make sense. Yet, to deny Jesus' claims, one must come up with some explanation. And if Jesus' claims are not true, and he wasn't lying, the only option remaining is that he must have been self-deceived.
So, was Jesus a liar or a lunatic, or was he the Son of God? Could Jefferson have been right by labeling Jesus "only a good moral teacher" while denying his deity? Interestingly, the audience who heard Jesus—both believers and enemies—never regarded him as a mere moral teacher. Jesus produced three primary effects in the people who met him: hatred, terror, or adoration.
The greatest question in human history is, "Who is the real Jesus Christ?" Bono, Lewis, and countless others have concluded that God visited our planet in human form. But if that is true, then we would expect him to be alive today. And that is exactly what his followers believe.
The eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ actually spoke and acted like they believed he physically rose from the dead after his crucifixion. If they were wrong then Christianity has been founded upon a lie. But if they were right, such a miracle would substantiate all Jesus said about God, himself, and us.
Posted by Bob at 2:41 PM No comments:
Women's love for jerks
Chateau Heartiste looks again to science this week in trying to explain why some women prefer jerkboys to niceguys.
Male chimpanzees that wage a campaign of sustained aggression against females sire more offspring than their less violent counterparts, new research finds.Read more here
The results suggest that such nasty behavior from males evolved because it gave the meanest males a reproductive advantage, said study co-author Ian Gilby, a primatologist at Arizona State University in Phoenix.
This chimpanzee behavior could also provide some insight into the roots of sexual aggression in men.
"It is possible that in our early ancestors there may have been an adaptive value to male aggression against females," Gilby said.
Obviously, this isn't the whole human story, as niceguys are still with us, and women don't fall for jerks all the time every time. But there is clearly an observable female preference for jerkboys that has no parallel in a male preference for jerkgirls. Think of a jerkboy bell curve, and place women on it. At the far left, you find good girls who never go for men with even a hint of jerkish characteristics, in the middle are the majority of women who like their men best when they exhibit some jerkboy flair, and at the far right of the bell curve are your women who fall in love with serial killers and prisoners.
Posted by Bob at 1:38 PM No comments:
Labels: lessons from chimpanzees
Why the Democrats lost
Victor Davis Hanson asks, what were they going to campaign on? Foreign Policy?
The Obama economy? Did any candidate run a commercial that said,
Read more here.
Consider the failed Russia "reset," the bugout from Iraq, the "leading from behind" in Libya, the Benghazi scandal, the Iranian soon-to-be bomb, the smearing of Israel, the special relationship with a thuggish Erdogan, the dissolving Middle East, the eroding NATO, and an ever more bullying China. No Democrat will run on something like, "I fully support the Obama foreign policy initiatives and the brilliant work of Secretaries Clinton and Kerry." Foreign policy, then, cannot be a campaign issue, in the positive sense of defending the status quo. No Democrat even made the attempt.
Bigger and competent government? No Democratic congressman would wish to campaign on, "Obama made government work for you — just look at the new and dynamic IRS, VA, ICE, GSA, NSA, and Secret Service." "Not a smidgen of corruption" is not a viable campaign theme. No candidate even tried that.
"Soon Obamacare really will lower costs, expand coverage, and reduce our deficits in 2015 — just wait and see"? Or how about, "We almost had cap and trade in 2009; I'll make sure Obama finishes the job and gets it passed in 2015"? Or perhaps, "Thanks to my efforts, we stopped all new fracking leases on federal lands"? Bragging on record oil and gas production despite, not because of, Obama is not a rallying cry either.
The Obama economy? Did any candidate run a commercial that said,
"I made sure that we borrowed another $7 trillion and oversaw the $1 trillion stimulus. We kept GDP above 1% and unemployment below 7%."
No Democrat aired a radio spot like, "Those Central American children are just the beginning of what we can accomplish on the border. Let's keep our borders open and welcome in more of our neighbors." Democrats privately concluded that subverting immigration law to gain constituents was something to keep quiet on rather than boast about.
Polls suggest that this time around Democrats are on the wrong side of all these various wars against women, Latinos, blacks, gays, etc., in the sense that voters do not necessarily believe that there are any wars at all against anyone. And if there is a so-called war, many voters believe it is mostly waged by the alliance of the upper-class liberal aristocracy and the dependent underclass against the over-taxed, under-employed, often smeared, and widely reviled middle class.
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 1:20 PM No comments:
Are you a cynic?
Whittle: "Cynicism is easy, fun, and it makes you sound smart and cool. It's also a way to protect yourself from being heartbroken...again. But cynicism is a bill that's too high to pay. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cynicism is the cowardice of people who are unwilling tos take a claim for something good happening."
Klaven: "It's realism that we're looking for."
Klaven: "It's realism that we're looking for."
Until we know, we don't know!
Stephen Green writes:
But let us now assume that we know bad change is a-comin' and that we know what's causing it. Now we have to do something, right? Not so fast there, pardner. If it turns out carbon emissions are actually helping keep things warmer and better than they otherwise would be, it would be a mistake to play into the Hothians icy hands by reducing those emissions. But until we know, we don't know. Ignorance is neither bliss nor a basis for swift action.Read more here.
Earlier I said that expecting stasis on a planet where the continents are in motion would be insanity — and yet stasis is precisely what climate alarmists are trying to sell you, built on a foundation of ignorance. For what it's worth, even as science begins to answer these questions, always keep a wary eye on any political solution to a technical problem. We just saw earlier this week, ♡bamaCare!!! architect Jonathan Gruber practically bragging about all the lying and obfuscation he went through to get ♡bamaCare!!! passed into law — there's really no limit to what the Left will do or say to tighten its stranglehold on the economy.
Posted by Bob at 12:20 PM No comments:
Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime
Greg Richter writes about a man named Don Rosenberg, who is
a self-described "lifelong, very liberal Democrat," but he opposes President Barack Obama's plan to issue an executive order halting deportations for thousands of illegal immigrants.Read more here.
Rosenberg's son, Drew, was killed in 2010 by a man in the country illegally who accidentally hit him on his motorcycle. Drew Rosenberg did not die from the initial crash, which took place at slow speed, but when Roberto Galo tried to flee the scene he ran over him twice, finally stopping with his car on Rosenberg's abdomen.
"Before you illegally say, 'Welcome to America' to those who have caused so much pain and suffering, on your next trip to California let me take you to Drew's grave, and you tell him this is the right thing to do," Rosenberg says in the letter.
"My son and all of the others are considered collateral damage in the quest for votes and campaign contributions," Rosenberg writes. "Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime."
Posted by Bob at 12:05 PM No comments:
Brain changes
Are you a regular long time user of marijuana? Scientific research is showing that
How old you were when you began using seems to be an improtant factor, and how long you have continued to use. The science is still young.
Read more here.
the structural connectivity or 'wiring' of the brain starts degrading with prolonged marijuana use.
How old you were when you began using seems to be an improtant factor, and how long you have continued to use. The science is still young.
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 11:46 AM No comments:
Labels: marijuana users
How long are your telomeres?
These two men have been leading research into cell fitness.
Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine, and Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern. Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center
An article in MedicalXpress.com explains:
Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine, and Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern. Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center
An article in MedicalXpress.com explains:
A novel looping mechanism that involves the end caps of DNA may help explain the aging of cells and how they initiate and transmit disease, according to new research from UT Southwestern Medical Center cell biologists.Read more here.
The UT Southwestern team found that the length of the endcaps of DNA, called telomeres, form loops that determine whether certain genes are turned off when young and become activated later in life, thereby contributing to aging and disease.
"Our results suggest a potential novel mechanism for how the length of telomeres may silence genes early in life and then contribute to their activation later in life when telomeres are progressively shortened. This is a new way of gene regulation that is controlled by telomere length," said Dr. Jerry W. Shay, Professor and Vice Chairman of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern, who led the team with his colleague, Dr. Woodring E. Wright, Professor of Cell Biology and Internal Medicine.
Telomeres cap the ends of the cell's chromosomes to protect them from damage. But the telomeres become shorter every time the cell divides. Once they shorten to a critical length, the cell can no longer divide and enters into a senescent or growth-arrest phase in which the cell produces different products compared to a young quiescent cell. Most research in this area has focused on the role that the process plays in cancer, but telomere shortening also has been shown to influence which genes are active or silent.
Posted by Bob at 11:32 AM No comments:
Labels: gene activation, telomeres
Stop Chris Christie Now
Tom Tancredo is a controversial man. When he was in Congress he was known for his outspoken disapproval of illegal immigration, an issue that many Americans have now apparently come to agree with him on. He also spoke out against the threat of Islamic jihad. Later, he ran for governor in Colorado as a representative of something called the Conservative Party, after Republicans nominated a man who had no chance to win. That infuriated many Republicans in Colorado, who have not forgiven him.
One of the things Tancredo did was to come out strongly for Amendment 64, the bill legalizing marijuana in Colorado. He did it because he is for individual liberty. He is against the nanny state, whereby government leaders try to control individual freedoms. I voted against Amendment 64, and would do so again, because I believe drug dealers do not care about the danger to children of the widespread availability of edible marijuana that looks like candy.
Nevertheless, I respect Tancredo. His latest endeavor is to form a PAC called Stop Chris Christie Now.org. I agree with him that Chris Christie is a bully. Here is a recent video showing him bullying a man who wants him to help families that lost their homes in Hurricane Sandy.
Here is the man Christie was bullying in the video above.
One of the things Tancredo did was to come out strongly for Amendment 64, the bill legalizing marijuana in Colorado. He did it because he is for individual liberty. He is against the nanny state, whereby government leaders try to control individual freedoms. I voted against Amendment 64, and would do so again, because I believe drug dealers do not care about the danger to children of the widespread availability of edible marijuana that looks like candy.
Nevertheless, I respect Tancredo. His latest endeavor is to form a PAC called Stop Chris Christie Now.org. I agree with him that Chris Christie is a bully. Here is a recent video showing him bullying a man who wants him to help families that lost their homes in Hurricane Sandy.
Here is the man Christie was bullying in the video above.
Posted by Bob at 10:44 AM No comments:
Labels: Chris Christie, Tom Tancredo
Thursday, November 13, 2014
A mushy catchphrase
Victor Davis Hanson writes:
Everyone finds a lesson in the Republican midterm tsunami.Read more here.
One message was that so-called comprehensive immigration reform and broad amnesty have little national public support. Polls have long shown that, but so do last week's election results.
In reaction, President Obama sulked, threatening to quickly push through an unpopular amnesty by executive order. Obama apparently knows that he enjoys neither public nor congressional support for his planned executive fiat.
Voters assume that liberal-elite advocates of open borders who mock finishing the border fence still count on the fences around their own estates — whether Hollywood grandees, the former mayor of Los Angeles, or the president of the United States.
But will reform advocates say whether they would favor deporting those who just arrived in the cynical expectation of amnesty? Will they deport to their countries of origin those who sought public assistance instead of work in the U.S., or those who abused their guest status by committing crimes in their host country? So far, advocates of reform stay mostly mum on those topics. The result is that "comprehensive immigration reform" remains a mushy catchphrase that can mean anything and therefore means nothing.
Posted by Bob at 10:51 PM No comments:
Labels: "comprehensive immigration reform", VDH
Will Philae and Rosetta help us know more about the origins of life?
Doug Stanglin and Traci Watson write about Philae's landing on a comet. It is perched on the edge of a cliff, and its solar panels are caught in the cliff's shadow.
Despite years of careful preparation to keep the probe from bouncing upon impact, it shot back from the surface like off a trampoline, staying up for two hours before landing again a half mile away, "which makes it difficult to know where we are now," Ulamec said.Read more here.
The lander then took yet another small hop before settling down in rugged terrain beside the cliff.
Gravity on the comet is 1/100,000th that of Earth, meaning the washing machine-sized lander weighs just 1 gram (0.04 ounces) there and could simply glide away like a piece of paper.
Philae and Rosetta will use 21 instruments to analyze the comet over the coming months. Scientists hope the $1.62 billion project will help them better understand comets and other celestial objects, as well as possibly answer questions about the origins of life on Earth.
Posted by Bob at 10:30 PM No comments:
What will be the epitaph of NATO?
Victor Davis Hanson gives us some history of NATO and concludes:
By 2000, NATO had devolved into a sort of quasi-European Union organization that happened to include the United States largely for its money and guns.Read more here.
More importantly, the European Union's strain of post-Cold War socialism was at odds with the original notion of a muscular democratic and anti-communist NATO. This might explain why European NATO members have cut $45 billion from their annual defense budgets in the last two years alone. The EU gradually sought to consolidate many of the NATO members under the aegis of growing cradle-to-grave entitlements that by needs came at the expanse of military readiness. "Soft Power" was the EU answer to supposedly ossified NATO deterrence—a wonderful cop-out that allowed European social democracies to divert budgets to domestic spending while taking the moral high ground of outsourcing quaint and outdated ideas of hard power to a less sophisticated and rather unruly United States.
Few NATO countries since 1994 have kept their promises to invest at least 2% of their GDP in defense (the alliance-wide average was 1.6%). The few who did like Greece, Poland, or Estonia were not major international players. In the last twenty years, the United States has whined that it has provided a quarter of the yearly military wherewithal of the alliance—more if U.S. training and indirect support are included—even though by the logic of geography and geopolitics, America remains the most secure of its members.
Barack Obama, however, is a president of a different sort from his predecessors. By temperament and ideology he has no special investment in Europe. Indeed, his knowledge of recent European history is patchy (the Americans liberated Auschwitz; Austrians speak Austrian; the "death camps" were Polish, etc.). He envisions European social democracy and pacifism not as a NATO irritant, but as a model. After his own massive defense cuts and imposed sequestration, Obama will be the first president in modern history to see U.S. defense spending dip below 3% of GDP. Obama's retreat from foreign policy—the loud but symbolic "Asian pivot," "leading from behind," and the general recessional from the Middle East—are the public manifestations of a deeper reluctance to worry much about European security—or for that matter U.S. military primacy abroad.
Many observers are worried that NATO might dissolve if Vladimir Putin were soon to invade fellow member states like Estonia or Latvia, if only to dare the alliance to respond. But the organization might equally unwind were a volatile Turkey to start a regional war with almost any of its neighbors, given that many NATO members would prefer to side with Turkey's enemies rather that with Erdogan.
In sum, NATO is confronting a tripartite existential danger. First, Putin is a far more sophisticated adversary than the old Soviet apparatchiks—projecting confidence, religion, values, and traditions to appeal to the very states that he would absorb. His argument is that European appeasement and disarmament are not just dangerous for NATO members on Russian borders, but the logical ramification of an endemic social and cultural wasteland for which he offers a confident alternative.
Second, Turkey is a far more wayward member than France or the old member dictatorships ever were. The past NATO bond was anti-communism; and all members, from socialists to autocrats, agreed. But the new ostensible mission of NATO involves a deep distrust of Islamism and its many anti-Western agendas—from a would-be nuclear Iran to ISIS and al Qaeda. Every member but Turkey would agree. Turkey is not just aberrant in this regard, but increasingly antithetical to the entire democratic and liberal pretenses of NATO itself.
Third, Barack Obama is not the typical hectoring American president, but a European doppelganger who cannot chide NATO to man up to its responsibilities. Not only does he not believe that its members must step up, but he also does not believe that America should either.
The epitaph of NATO will be that its many weak members won their half-century philosophical argument over its one strong member. Europe got what it wanted and thereby by its indifference has almost destroyed the very organization that it so opportunistically slighted—and always counted on.
Posted by Bob at 10:10 PM No comments:
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
If at first you don't succeed,...
Posted by Bob at 9:47 PM No comments:
Ann Voskamp writes about how
Anger can kill you if you bury it — or if you don't give it to God.Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 9:09 PM No comments:
Labels: the therapy of giving thanks
Kindness and generosity
When your spouse asks for your attention, do you turn toward him or her? Do you show your partner appreciation and respect? Kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Emily Esfahani Smith reports here on a number of studies that have been conducted to find what makes relationships last.
Thanks to Heidi Kutney and Tanis Evans Westerman.
Thanks to Heidi Kutney and Tanis Evans Westerman.
Labels: What makes relationships last?
Boehner gets the gavel
Posted by Bob at 7:23 PM No comments:
Labels: ouch!
Dog teaches baby how to jump
Posted by Bob at 7:16 PM No comments:
A man from the South knows the keys
Can Americans make things again? Yes! "Kids, like myself, who are from the wrong zip codes, need choice! They need access to a better education system. A, you need a good education; B, you need a strong work ethic. The key is individual freedom and economic opportunity!"
Thanks to Scott Ott and Glenn Reynolds
Thanks to Scott Ott and Glenn Reynolds
Posted by Bob at 5:25 PM No comments:
Labels: Senator Tim Scott
Russian bombers to fly missions from the Arctic to the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico
VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV reports today that
Russia's long-range bombers will conduct regular patrol missions from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, the military said Wednesday, a show of muscle reflecting tensions with the West over Ukraine.
On Monday, the European Leadership Network issued a report that found a sharp rise in Russian-NATO military encounters since the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea, including violations of national airspace, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea, harassment of reconnaissance planes, close overflights over warships and Russian mock bombing raid missions.Read more here.
Three of the nearly 40 incidents, the think tank said, carried a "high probability" of causing casualties or triggering a direct military confrontation: a narrowly avoided collision between a civilian airliner and a Russian surveillance plane, the abduction of an Estonian intelligence officer and a large-scale Swedish hunt for a suspected Russian submarine that yielded no result.
In September, the report said, Russian strategic bombers in the Labrador Sea off Canada practiced cruise missile strikes on the U.S. Earlier this year, in May, the report said, Russian military aircraft approached within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the California coast, the closest such Russian military flight reported since the end of the Cold War.
Posted by Bob at 4:25 PM No comments:
Labels: A show of muscle
Franklin and Washington, the two who rose above partisanship to save our nation
Congratulations to Dave Krieger, who is the new editor of the Boulder Camera editorial page. After losing a radio gig with KOA's Dave Logan, Dave decided to do some reading about America's founders. He writes about the two men, Franklin and Washington, who rose above partisanship to save our nation.
So, what conclusion has Dave done from reading about our nation's founders?
Washington's ability to understand both sides of the partisan divide came largely from the war, the transformative experience of his life. He had been an aspiring aristocrat as a younger man, lobbying incessantly for a commission in the Royal British Army and for land grants to expand his wealth and holdings. It was the British refusal to give him the former and condescending method of adjudicating the latter that initially alienated him from the empire.
But during his eight years as commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, he grew so attached and so loyal to his men, who came from every walk of life, that he developed egalitarian values uncommon among plantation owners at the time.
Franklin came by his political moderation a different way. As a 17-year-old runaway landing in Philadelphia long before anyone thought of revolution, he was an aspiring leather-aproned tradesman, a printer. Through his prolific writing, much of it satiric, he became America's first champion of the middle class. He believed in hard work as the path to success and was suspicious of welfare programs for the poor, believing them an invitation to indolence.
On the other hand, he had a natural rebellious streak that made him skeptical of authority, particularly authority based on birthrights rather than virtues or talents. He viewed hereditary titles and wealth with disdain, believing the rich had no more right than the poor to unearned bounty. He was equally suspicious of the aristocracy and the great unwashed. He most admired the tradesmen and shopkeepers he saw as the backbone of the new world.
Washington and Franklin were diametrically different personalities, but they shared two key traits — pragmatism and a belief in behaving virtuously for its own sake. It was pragmatism that convinced Washington the federal government needed more power than Jefferson and the Republicans believed. As commander in chief, he was continually thwarted by a Congress powerless to raise money or do much of anything else. He watched his soldiers die by the hundreds for want of adequate clothing and supplies, then visited Philadelphia and found the privileged enjoying grand balls and feasts. Liberty from tyrannical authority was the point of the exercise, but if the colonies were to become a country, they would need a government that could raise and outfit an army for its defense, and that would require a federal authority to tax, among other things.
So, what conclusion has Dave done from reading about our nation's founders?
Political partisanship is nothing new. Politically partisan media are nothing new. The only thing we seem to lack today is the great leaders willing and able to bridge the gap.Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 4:06 PM No comments:
Labels: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington
Add these to the edible marijuana candies
In this photo taken Friday, Nov. 7, 2014, laundry detergent packets are held for a photo, in Chicago. Accidental poisonings from squishy laundry detergent packets sometimes mistaken for toys or candy landed more than 700 U.S. children in the hospital in just two years, researchers report. Coma and seizures were among the most serious complications. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Posted by Bob at 3:23 PM No comments:
Labels: yuck!
Oh yeah, let's let this kind old man develop a nuclear bomb!
The guy above with the cool beanie and robe yesterday published a plan to eliminate Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu responded:
"There is no moderation in Iran," said Netanyahu, who sent a letter to the P5+1 negotiators outlining Khamenei's extremist rhetoric. "It is unrepentant, unreformed."Read about it here.
Khamenei "calls for Israel's eradication, promotes international terrorism … and [Iran] continues to deceive the international community about its nuclear weapons program," Netanyahu said. "I call on the P5+1—don't rush into a deal that will let Iran rush to the bomb."
Posted by Bob at 3:01 PM No comments:
Labels: Iran, Israel, nuclear bomb
Who runs America's highest crime cities?
Which political party is running the cities with the highest crime rates in America? Larry O'Connor writes that it is the Democrat party, and he asks,
The top ten most dangerous places to live in America:
Detroit, MI - Mayor Mike Duggan - DEMOCRAT
Oakland, CA - Mayor Jean Quan - DEMOCRAT
Memphis, TN - Mayor A C Wharton - DEMOCRAT
St. Louis, MO - Mayor Francis G. Slay - DEMOCRAT
Cleveland, OH - Mayor Frank G. Jackson - DEMOCRAT
Baltimore, MD - Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake - DEMOCRAT
Milwaukee, WI - Mayor Tom Barrett - DEMOCRAT
Birmingham, AL - Mayor William A. Bell - DEMOCRAT
Newark, NJ - Mayor Ras Baraka - DEMOCRAT
Kansas City, MO - Mayor Sly James - Independent (but probably a DEMOCRAT)
Read more here.
Keep up the great work, Democrats. Doing a helluva job. Also, great job voting for one-party rule all you unions and inner-city residents. How's that working out for you?
The top ten most dangerous places to live in America:
Detroit, MI - Mayor Mike Duggan - DEMOCRAT
Oakland, CA - Mayor Jean Quan - DEMOCRAT
Memphis, TN - Mayor A C Wharton - DEMOCRAT
St. Louis, MO - Mayor Francis G. Slay - DEMOCRAT
Cleveland, OH - Mayor Frank G. Jackson - DEMOCRAT
Baltimore, MD - Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake - DEMOCRAT
Milwaukee, WI - Mayor Tom Barrett - DEMOCRAT
Birmingham, AL - Mayor William A. Bell - DEMOCRAT
Newark, NJ - Mayor Ras Baraka - DEMOCRAT
Kansas City, MO - Mayor Sly James - Independent (but probably a DEMOCRAT)
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 1:57 PM No comments:
Labels: Democrats, highest crime rates in America
Are we seeing the beginning of the end of radio?
Seth Godin is predicting the end of local radio.
I am a fan of conservative talk radio. I will admit, though, that I do change the station when the commercials come on. Nevertheless, I am thankful Colorado offers so many good choices for us fans of talk radio.
Eight years ago, I described how city-wide wifi would destroy the business of local radio. Once you have access to a million radio stations online, why would you listen to endless commercials and the top 40?
I realized last week that this has just happened. Not via wifi, but via Bluetooth and the smart phone.
The car-sharing driver (Bluetooth equipped car, with a smart phone, of course) who picked me up the other day was listening to a local radio station. It was almost as if he was smoking a pipe or driving a buggy. With so many podcasts, free downloads and Spotify stations to listen to, why? With traffic, weather and talking maps in your pocket, why wait for the announcer to get around to telling you what you need to know?
The first people to leave the radio audience will be the ones that the advertisers want most. And it will spiral down from there.
Just as newspapers fell off a cliff, radio is about to follow. It's going to happen faster than anyone expects. And of course, it will be replaced by a new thing, a long tail of audio that's similar (but completely different) from what we were looking for from radio all along. And that audience is just waiting for you to create something worth listening to.
I am a fan of conservative talk radio. I will admit, though, that I do change the station when the commercials come on. Nevertheless, I am thankful Colorado offers so many good choices for us fans of talk radio.
Posted by Bob at 1:43 PM No comments:
Labels: the end of radio
Partnering with the devil
You wonder why millions have been escaping Mexico? Have you heard about the 43 Mexican boys who were murdered, then burned? Reuben Navarrette gives us the story:
Mexico is suffering a national tragedy, the details of which make the Day of the Dead look like a walk in the park. And, for some Mexican officials, keeping up with the gruesome details can be exhausting.
Last week, in an off-the-cuff remark that went viral on social media, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told reporters he was worn out by the relentless questioning about the abduction and apparent massacre of 43 students who were training to be teachers.
"Ya me canse," Murillo told the journalists. The phrase means "I'm tired" — or in this case, more like, "I've had enough." As it deals with murder and mayhem, the question for Mexico is whether it, too, has had enough.
Murillo's comment came across as insensitive to the victims and their families, and it made the attorney general appear to be tone-deaf. And yet, during a television interview a few days later, he insisted he didn't regret his choice of words. "I was tired and that is the truth," he said.
Here is more truth: Murillo, like President Enrique Pena Nieto, belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). And the PRI historically has had plenty of blood on its hands. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least 2,000 people disappeared after clashing with the government and were never heard from again. Over the past 50 years, there have been several documented massacres of Mexicans by police and military.
The Mexican people are fully aware of this, and that's why they're taking to the streets and trying to storm the presidential palace. This is why they're demanding Pena Nieto resign immediately. It's all coming back to them that the PRI has long been the party of thugs, murderers and scoundrels.
There was a faint makeover intended to fool Mexicans into thinking the era of Pena Nieto would be different. But given that it took the federal government more than six weeks to tell people what happened to the students, the new Mexico looks a lot like the old Mexico.
The 43 — all young men, between the ages of 18 and 25, who were studying at a rural teachers college — went missing Sept. 26 after clashing with police. More than four dozen people have been arrested in the case, including police officers in the small town of Iguala, about 120 miles southwest of Mexico City, where the students had gone to protest. Mexican prosecutors believe it was there they caught the attention of Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa. Both are now in custody.
Also in custody are three members of a drug gang called Guerreros Unidos. They are providing details of what happened to the students, and their stories sound like a horror movie. Murillo, the attorney general, told reporters the gang members had confessed to killing the students and burning their bodies over a 12-hour period to cover up the crime.
The main villain in this drama is Abarca. Murillo believes the mayor was so worried the students might disrupt a speech to be delivered by his wife that he ordered the police chief to round them up. Officers then opened fire on the buses in which the students were traveling, killing six immediately while the rest — 43 of them — went missing. Eyewitnesses saw police officers cramming the young men into squad cars. According to Murillo, the police then turned the students over to Guerreros Unidos. The leader of the gang told authorities that he ordered his henchmen to make the young men disappear. They complied.
And to think, it wasn't that long ago that, under Mexican President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party, the government was at war with the drug cartels. In 2012, the PRI's main selling point in electing Pena Nieto was that it could stop the war and offer "peace and security" because it knew how to negotiate a truce with the drug traffickers. A war-weary Mexican public bought the pitch, and put Pena Nieto in office.
Get a good look at those charred bodies, Mexico. This is what happens when the government goes from battling the devil to partnering with him.
Posted by Bob at 1:18 PM No comments:
Labels: Life in Mexico
Just win, baby!
The Denver Broncos want to go back to the Super Bowl. They cannot do it with the offensive line they have now. So they are considering signing this guy:
His name is Richie Incognito. Richie has been incognito since he was released from the Miami Dolphins for bullying teammate Jonathan Martin. Incognito was an All Pro offensive lineman for the Dolphins.
Benjamin Hochman writes:
Oh, well then, okay! As Saul Alinsky might say, you do whatever you have to do to get the power you want. Read more here.
His name is Richie Incognito. Richie has been incognito since he was released from the Miami Dolphins for bullying teammate Jonathan Martin. Incognito was an All Pro offensive lineman for the Dolphins.
Benjamin Hochman writes:
One time, Richie Incognito approached a woman at a golf event, rubbed a golf club on her private parts, rubbed his own private parts on her backside and then poured a bottle of water on her face, this according to a police report.
And that's like the fifth-worst thing he ever allegedly did.
He is a despicable excuse for a man — but he might just be able to help the Broncos win the Super Bowl.
Oh, well then, okay! As Saul Alinsky might say, you do whatever you have to do to get the power you want. Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 1:15 PM No comments:
Labels: Denver Broncos, Richie Incognito
Although Colorado in recent years has been a blue state, there is one area that is solidly red: Colorado Springs. By a margin of 70 to 30, voters on November 4 there elected Republican Gordon "Dr. Chaps" Klingenschmitt, a man listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as the head of an LGBT hate group, the Pray in Jesus Name Project. Mark McVay writes:
According to SPLC's blog Hatewatch, Klingenschmitt is "best-known for his claims of casting demons out of LGBT people." Court-martialed by the Air Force in 2006 for disobeying an order and kicked out of the Navy for attending a political rally in front of the White House in March 2006 dressed in his Navy uniform (a violation of military regulations), Klingenschmitt "has claimed that gay people sexually abuse their own children and they should be discriminated against because they're not going to heaven and only people who go to heaven are entitled to equal treatment."Read more here.
In his 2012 book, "The Demons of Barack H. Obama," Klingenschmitt claims to have uncovered no fewer than 50 demons ruling President Obama, including the dark spirits of "sexual abuse," "genocide," "paganism," "witchcraft" and "homosexual lust."
Posted by Bob at 12:34 PM No comments:
Labels: this guy ain't no librull
Chivalry is not dead, or is it?
Obama is not the only one visiting China this week. Vladimer Putin is there, too. He is sitting next to Peng Liyuan, wife of the Chinese Communist ruler, who complains about being cold. Without hesitation, Putin gets up and puts his coat over her shoulders. She leaves it on for a few seconds, then gives it to a Chinese attendant, who gives her a Chinese coat.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 12:14 PM No comments:
Labels: Putin
Probe lands on comet
Lots of hugging going on in Europe today. The European Space Agency has successfully made a soft landing on a comet! Dave Gilbert writes:
But wait: there might be a problem:
Led by ESA with a consortium of partners including NASA, scientists on the Rosetta mission hope to learn more about the composition of comets and how they interact with the solar wind -- high energy particles blasted into space by the Sun.
Philae, which has spent 10 years fixed to the side of Rosetta during the journey across the solar system, could not be steered. Once it was released, it was on its own.
How Rosetta lands on the comet How Rosetta lands on the comet
Before the spacecraft separation, O'Rourke told CNN that the orbiter Rosetta had to be in the right position to allow the craft to "free fall" on the correct trajectory to the chosen landing site.
Scientists are hoping the probe will help us learn a lot more about the composition of comets and how they react when they get close to the Sun.
But wait: there might be a problem:
However, project scientists believe anchors that hold the probe to the surface failed to work properly and are now trying to find out why, according to ESA tweets.Read more here.
Posted by Bob at 12:02 PM No comments:
Labels: Now we'll have new questions
Time for a national policy on hypocrisy!
As I write this today it is 11 a.m. and -4 degrees outside. I am very fortunate to get this day off. Although I had planned to go to the gym and get a good workout, including both strength training and aerobics, I might decide to stay inside and use my own exercise equipment!
Oh, and by the way, fat Al Gore has moved on from globull warming, since our planet has not warmed in the last seventeen years, and now fat Al wants to regulate what we eat. He tweeted that it's time for a national policy on food. Rep. Steve Smith tweeted: It's time for a national policy on hypocrisy!
Oh, and by the way, fat Al Gore has moved on from globull warming, since our planet has not warmed in the last seventeen years, and now fat Al wants to regulate what we eat. He tweeted that it's time for a national policy on food. Rep. Steve Smith tweeted: It's time for a national policy on hypocrisy!
Posted by Bob at 11:36 AM No comments:
Labels: Al gore
What is causing this?
Do you know what is the fastest growing plastic surgery procedure in the US is? Butt surgery!
Dr. Matthew Schulman, who performs the procedure in New York, says this year has been busier than last. Schulman, who charges $10,000 to $13,000 for the three-hour surgery, does six to eight Brazilian butt lifts weekly, up about 25 percent from a year ago. He says when he asks patients which celebrity butt they want, the top names are Kardashian, Minaj and Lopez.
The downside is that women desperate for cheap options have risked their lives, going to phony doctors that inject silicone, and even bathroom caulk, into their buttocks. Deaths have been reported in Miami, New York, Las Vegas and Jackson, Mississippi.
Another problem is doctors performing surgeries that don't have experience: Schulman says about 20 percent of his patients to him so he can fix lumps, bumps and uneven butt cheeks done by unskilled doctors.
Not everyone is trying surgery, though.
DailyBurn, which streams workout videos, says views for its "Butt, Hips and Thighs" video doubled in January and have remained popular.
At a gym in Boston, there's a waitlist for a $30 class that features 120 squats in 45 minutes. The class, Booty by Brabants, was started by Kelly Brabants a year ago. Brabants starts most classes with Lopez's "Booty" song.
"Every girl now wants a booty," Brabants said.
Posted by Bob at 10:50 AM No comments:
Labels: booty
One blue state becomes purple
The Republican Senate Caucus poses for a photo all wearing their new Peyton Manning Broncos jerseys. The important number 18 is the number needed for a Republican majority. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)
Back in the 90s, number seven was the lucky number here in Colorado, as John Elway led the Denver Broncos to four Super Bowl trips.
Now, under the leadership of Peyton Manning, our lucky number is 18. Guess what? The GOP now has a 18-17 majority in the Colorado Senate! So, even though the House of Representatives and Governor's office are still in the hands of the left, our blue state is looking more purple every day.
Posted by Bob at 10:29 AM No comments:
Living their lives on social media
A Denver girl has 9000 tweets on Twitter. She and two other teenagers were lured by Islamic State jihadists to come to Syria. They were stopped in Germany and returned to their parents. Two of the girls were originally from Somalia and one from the Sudan.
Did the authorities return them to their parents because those parents are now going to put a stop to their use of social media?
From the Denver Post story:
Did the authorities return them to their parents because those parents are now going to put a stop to their use of social media?
From the Denver Post story:
Three Arapahoe County girls who apparently tried to join the Islamic State conversed through the Internet with at least two of its terrorists, including a high-level handler, and swiftly radicalized within the span of about a year, according to an international terror monitoring organization.Read more here.
An analysis of social media accounts held by the girls shows their departure from the mainstream and hasty acceptance of extremist views, the Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group, also known as SITE, said in a report this week.
The Bethesda, Md.-based nongovernmental organization conducts private threat assessments. It began looking into the girls' online activities after news reports about their failed attempt to travel to Syria.
Posted by Bob at 10:14 AM No comments:
Labels: afraid to parent
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text:
Florica (Floarea) Leonida (born January 13, 1987 in Bucharest, Romania) is a retired Romanian artistic gymnast. She is a silver world medalist and a silver European medalist with the team. She was a successful junior gymnast winning gold on beam and three silver medals (all around, floor and team) at the 2002 Junior European Championships.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Foye, Pinckney keep tabs on Wildcats from afar
|Written by Admin
|Wednesday, 25 March 2009 22:03
``It was good to see the seniors and let them know I appreciate it as a Villanova alum and just to keep it up,'' Foye said on Wednesday.
Two of Villanova's biggest fans, and greatest players, are keeping a close eye on Villanova's NCAA tournament run from Minnesota. Timberwolves guard Foye and assistant coach Ed Pinckney text and e-mail with their former teammates and coaches about Villanova's ride into the round of Sweet 16, and both stopped by practice on Tuesday to encourage this year's team.
regional semifinals.
Pinckney, one of two players to ever lead Villanova in points and rebounds four straight seasons, was the 1985 tournament's most outstanding player when he led the Wildcats to the national title under coach Rollie Massimino.
Both predicted Villanova would knock off Duke and advance to its first regional final since 2006 when Foye was playing his way into the NBA lottery.
``I think we'll beat them by about six,'' Foye said before Wednesday's game against the 76ers. ``I think it will be a tough fight though because Duke is similar to us,''
``I got us winning, man. I got us winning by five points,'' Pinckney said. ``They are looking confident which is a good sign,''
Foye and Pinckney made a pit stop at practice before the Wildcats left for Boston to play Thursday night's game. Foye told the Wildcats that he appreciated what they were doing in how they had kept the tournament tradition going. Foye said his senior class passed along leadership lessons that this year's class is now teaching coach Jay Wright's team.
Shortly after Foye went to Minnesota, Pinckney left his job as Wright's assistant to join him with the Timberwolves. Pinckney left his four-year stint with Villanova because he wanted to coach at the NBA level and a shot at reuniting with Foye played a big role in his decision. Pinckney said there ``was no doubt'' he wanted to be an NBA head coach.
k I'm more prepared than ever to do it,'' he said. ``I feel I'm fully prepared.''
Both players enjoyed the Philly homecoming. Foye felt familiar at the Wachovia Center where the Wildcats play two or three times a year, and smiled when he saw the ``V'' painted in the visitor's locker room.
Foye, second on the Timberwolves in scoring at 16.4 points, was not in the starting lineup as coach Kevin McHale wanted to shake things up with the team on a five-game losing streak.
When Foye committed to the Wildcats, they hadn't played in the NCAA tournament since 1999. That didn't deter Foye, who believed in Wright and wanted to help mold the Wildcats into Big East contenders and tournament regulars.
Mission accomplished.
``It just seemed to me like it was a family atmosphere,'' Foye said. ``You have to say to yourself, either I'm going to make it happen and try and turn this around or it's not going to happen for another five to 10 years. I just believed and we came out winners.''


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Tazewell County School District :: NOTIFICATIONS
Tazewell County Public Schools 209 West Fincastle Tazewell, VA 24651 Phone: (276) 988-5511 TTY: (276) 988-1971 Fax: (276) 988-6765
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Tazewell County is a county located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 45,078. Its county seat is ...
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The Tazewell County Public Schools School District is located in Tazewell, VA and includes 16 schools that serve 6,787 students in grades PK through 12.
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