Ace of Trump

Straw poll in Illinois?

2006-03-20T06:36:00.000-06:00

GOP candidate for governor Jim Oberweis has certainly come up with a novel way to decide who'll get the Republican nomination to run against Democratic incumbent Blagojevich.

At the end of a political campaign it's not uncommon for a candidate to grasp at straws, but Jim Oberweis literally proposed drawing straws to decide who should stay in the race for the Republican nomination for governor, two rivals said Saturday.

On the Democratic side, Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) extended his feud with his son-in-law, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, by featuring primary challenger Edwin Eisendrath at a bingo game of senior citizens in the ward. But Mell stopped short of a formal endorsement.

As the GOP candidates for governor fanned out across the state on the final weekend of the campaign, contenders Bill Brady and Ron Gidwitz said Oberweis early last week proposed a game of chance to decide which of the three should stay in the race with front-runner Judy Baar Topinka. Brady and Gidwitz said the odds were heavily stacked in Oberweis' favor.

"He wanted 10 straws and Brady and I each would have one straw," Gidwitz said Saturday, before the Elmhurst St. Patrick's Day Parade. He said Oberweis wanted 10 straws "because he's the leader and because neither one of us is, in his mind, in contention."

Gidwitz, a Chicago businessman, called the request "absurd" but said Oberweis was "totally serious" about it.

Brady, a state senator from Bloomington and, like Oberweis, a conservative, said he received a similar request.

"He said, `If God wanted you to be the candidate, it wouldn't matter how many straws you have,'" Brady recalled Oberweis saying. "I said, `Jim, I'm not interested.' It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The people of Illinois need to decide who the nominee should be, not straws."

Oberweis said he called Brady and Gidwitz and asked them to "pull out and support me" but declined to confirm the details. He said he was "stunned" that Brady would discuss a private conversation.

"I've told you five times I had a private conversation," he told a reporter. "I don't intend to discuss it."

Separately, Brady and Topinka said it was the second time Oberweis has proposed a drawing to determine the GOP contenders. Topinka said that at a December meeting at state Republican headquarters in Chicago, Oberweis suggested each contender draw the name of a statewide office out of a hat and run for the post.

"It leaves me stunned," Topinka said, calling Oberweis' latest request "bizarre." "Would you really want someone who does stuff like that to be the governor?" she asked.

Since Topinka is a shoo-in to win the nomination I think Oberweis's idea would lead to nothing significant. But, if he truly was serious, then the guy has a screw loose. Even if he was just playing around, he's doing further damage to the GOP in Illinois by making them look ridiculous.

Light blogging

2006-03-20T06:31:00.000-06:00

Taking the wife and kids away for a week. Have a good week all.

Oh, yes

2006-03-19T13:33:00.000-06:00

The Glittering Eye writes that the liberals who claim that George Bush is the worst President ever, apparently have forgotten about Jimmy Carter.

In a recent post Matthew Yglesias gently chides his fellows for the claim that George W. Bush is “the worst president this country has ever had”. Apparently, the Democratic Party leadership has forgotten the presidency of Jimmy Carter. I wish I could.

For those with short memories let me remind you of a few things:

Annual inflation rate 1980 Then: 11.83% Now: 3.99%

Unemployment rate 1980 Then: 7.5% Now: 4.8%

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: 1979

Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua: 1979

The Cambodian democide was in full swing. The period of the greatest number of deaths was 1975-1979. More than 2 million people died overall.
Carter supported the “realist” policy of his predecessors with respect to the genocide in East Timor.

I think we could add a lot of other presidents to that list, and I'm not even a big W fan myself. But it'd be pretty tough for a rational person to believe Carter was an improvement. That being said, I have personally heard liberals dispute that Carter was worse, because they literally believe that Bush is a Hitler-like dictator. It's bizarre, but there you go.

I think McClellan needs to go

2006-03-19T09:11:00.000-06:00

This is one of the things that drives me crazy about White House press Secretary Scott McClellan, and one of the main reasons I think he should be replaced with somebody else. Here a reporter (David Gregory) asks him a completely deranged question, and McClellan basically blows it off, which makes the reporters think the reporter who asked the question is possibly on to something. I realize that McClellan doesn't want to slam the guy, but there has to be a way to state that President Bush would not put lives at risk in order to boost his poll numbers without being a jerk about it. All this does is give more ammo to the moonbat contingent.

Soy formula

2006-03-19T09:06:00.000-06:00

There doesn't appear to be enough data to determine whether soy baby formula, who's safety has been questioned in the past, is hazardous to babies or not.

Soy has raised concerns not only because of its exploding consumption by U.S. infants and adults but also because studies have shown that genistein can interfere with hormonal function in rats and their offspring.

A variety of toxic effects, including stunted growth, sexual organ abnormalities, and decreased fertilization, have all been observed in laboratory animals. All of the effects appear to be caused by genistein’s ability to mimic the effects of natural estrogen. Some researchers also suspect soy of playing a role in reduced breast cancer rates in Japan, where soy consumption is very high.

The committee says it had “negligible” concern that usual intakes of genistein cause adverse health effects in newborns and infants who consume soy formula, though one expert -- Ruth Etzel, MD -- dissented from the conclusion. Etzel, a pediatrician at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, could not be reached for comment.

What's in our drinking water?

2006-03-19T08:52:00.000-06:00

Could metabolities of antibiotics in drinking water be causing an increase in antibiotic resistance in various parts of the nation?

University at Buffalo chemists have for the first time identified at wastewater treatment plants the metabolites of two antibiotics and a medical imaging agent.

The data, which the UB scientists will present tomorrow at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy being held in Orlando, will allow wastewater treatment plants to begin monitoring for these byproducts.

The results also reinforce concerns about excreted pharmaceutical compounds from wastewater systems that may end up in the water supply, potentially resulting in adverse effects for humans and the environment.

For example, antibiotics and their metabolites can significantly increase antibiotic resistance in the population. Synthetic hormones can act as endocrine disruptors, by mimicking or blocking hormones and disrupting the body's normal functions.

This is pretty intriguing, and pretty scary to boot. It amazes me that water treatment plants might not be removing these substances from the water we drink.

Gay versus Muslim soccer match

2006-03-18T08:31:00.001-06:00

Oh, this should be interesting. I'm defintely rooting for the gays. I also think that there's a lot of potential for some serious violence in the crowd, and in Holland after the game is over. I hope Dutch police are ready for this.(via Dhimmi Watch)

A Dutch multicultural group is organizing a soccer tournament between gays and Muslims, hoping to counter what a study published on Thursday said was a rising tide of fear among gays.

A nationwide survey by the Police Research Academy said that most gays questioned feel unsafe and reported experiencing verbal attacks in the last year.

Of the 776 homosexuals who responded to an internet questionnaire, 80 percent said they believed their safety was threatened at some time during the year, said academy director Frits Vlek, who commissioned the research.

Only 3 percent said they were physically assaulted, Vlek said in an interview, but some 40 percent claimed they had been insulted or verbally abused.

Youths from Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds often were blamed for the incidents, Vlek said, since homosexuality is not widely accepted in many Muslim cultures.

"Parts of the Muslim community still resist homosexuality and receive little education about it," he said.

Muslim-gay tension is the theme of the soccer tournament organized by the Institute of Multicultural Development, to be held next week.

An organizer of the group, Suzanne Ijsselmuiden, said she hoped the competition will "help ease these tensions so that people can openly talk about homosexuality."

This is an odd snippet:

Gay Muslims can take their choice of teams, she said. "People can have many identities."

How many gay Muslims are there anyway? Anybody know? Meanwhile, in a similar vein, the supposedly "moderate" Ali al-Sistani has recently stated that homosexuals should all be killed.

Q: What is the judgement on sodomy and lesbianism?

A: "Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible."

So, either al-Sistani is not the moderate he's said to be, or moderate Islam is a lot less moderate than people say it is. Neither choice is particularly appealing.

The joys of socialized medicine part 897

2006-03-18T08:22:00.000-06:00

Canada is facing very serious shortages of physicians, and the projection is that this will become much worse over the near future. This patient has been looking for a primary care doctor to take care of her for about two years, with no luck.

Edith Paulus had already endured two fruitless years of searching for a family physician in Barrie -- a city designated under Ontario's ministry of health as being under-serviced for family doctors -- when she found Dr. Derek Nesdoly's ad in a local community newspaper.

The general practitioner was seeking new patients. But when Paulus called Nesdoly's office in Midhurst, a community just west of Barrie, she was told the doctor wasn't accepting patients older than 55.

***

Nesdoly, however, denies that he discriminates against older people. He told CTV News that he has plenty of elderly patients, and felt he had to start making room in his practice for young families moving into the community.

"Then people felt rejected, turned away, belittled, or unimportant -- that was never our intent," the doctor told CTV News. "You have to say at some point (that) you can't fix the whole problem."

Nesdoly's position may be justified by a 2005 Statistics Canada Community Health Survey, which found that 95.2 per cent of people over 65 already have a family doctor, compared to 75.7 per cent for those between 20 to 34.

And the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons does not restrict a doctor's right to reject a person based on age.

***

Paulus's story highlights a struggle many Canadians may have to endure as the doctor shortage worsens.

In November of last year, an Ontario Medical Association study said the province could have a 2,400-doctor shortage by 2006 if action isn't taken immediately.

That shortage could jump to 2,800 physicians by 2010, says the report.

OMA President Dr. Greg Flynn said although the province has taken several steps to train more doctors and certify those trained abroad faster, "much more remains to be done, before we will see improvements."

Lipitor and MS

2006-03-18T08:16:00.000-06:00

The cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor may be useful in treating Multiple Sclerosis, as well as other autoimmmune diseases such as Rhematoid Arthritis.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University Medical Center are reporting compelling new evidence that the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin could prove an effective therapy for preventing the progression of, and reversing the severity of, multiple sclerosis (MS).

In the March 16 on-line edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, they report the results of a study that looked at the use of the drug (marketed as Lipitor) in combination with Glatiramer acetate (marketed as Copaxone), a drug already approved for treating MS.

The findings demonstrate, they say, that the drugs worked synergistically, preventing or diminishing paralysis in mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model disease that closely resembles multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis causes a variety of neurological symptoms including loss of motor control, visual loss or imbalance. A primary symptom is temporary, recurring paralysis in the limbs, as occurs in the mice.

Copaxone is known to boost the immune system's anti-inflammatory response, countering the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, or chemicals, unleashed when the immune system inadvertently turns against the brain's nervous tissue in MS. The drug is approved for treatment of relapsing-remitting MS, the most common form of the disease, but is effective in only a third of cases.

Lipitor is also known to have immunomodulatory properties, and recent evidence in mice and initial clinical trials suggest that it, and possibly other statins, may be effective in treating T-cell-mediated, autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as other inflammatory conditions. In fact, a 2002 study of mice with EAE by the UCSF-Stanford team (Nature, Nov. 7, 2002), has led to the establishment of a fourteen-center, placebo-controlled trial, led by UCSF scientists, to determine if Lipitor prevents conversion to definite multiple sclerosis in individuals who have had a first attack, known as a "clinically isolated syndrome."

Protecting the propagandists

2006-03-18T07:48:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I wrote that during a rampage in Gaza, Palestinian terrorists took an Associated Press photographer into "protective custody" so that nothing would happen to them. Now Tom Gross notes that the BBC office in Gaza was spared any destruction. It all goes to show that the Palestians understand that the AP and BBC (and others as well)are anti-Israeli news organizations doing their bidding. It's not really in dispute anymore, since the Palestinians have proven it to be true.

Alright, this seems more than a little weird

2006-03-17T15:55:00.000-06:00

Tourists have been canceling their trips to South Dakota locales such as Mt. Rushmore because of South Dakota passing a law banning most abortions. And, some people are actually planning trips there that they weren't planning on making because of the new law. Go figure.

The superintendent of Mount Rushmore was surprised at first when people from all over the country started calling up to express their opinion about South Dakota's ban on nearly all abortions.

Some callers said they were so upset that they would never visit Mount Rushmore, South Dakota's No. 1 tourist attraction. Others said they were so thrilled that they would make a point of coming to see the chiseled faces of four U.S. presidents in the Black Hills.

On further reflection, Superintendent Gerard Baker decided that the messages from far and wide made sense, because Mount Rushmore is a symbol of freedom.

"That's what we're all about here," he said. "That's what America is all about, people expressing their freedom and people expressing their choices and so forth."

In an uproar that has taken many South Dakotans by surprise, politicians and state agencies have been bombarded in the past few weeks with thousands upon thousands of calls, letters and e-mails — pro and con — from across the country and around the world.

And a few small groups have called for a tourism boycott of South Dakota, urging people to avoid such attractions as Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, and the Corn Palace, an arena in Mitchell whose walls are covered with colorful ears of corn.

Blogger's screwed up again

2006-03-17T14:06:00.000-06:00

I lost one post, and can't delete the double post I have. Using Blogger is getting pretty frustrating.

The judicial filibusters continue

2006-03-17T11:30:00.001-06:00

Robert Novak tells us that the Senate Democrats are still engaging in judicial filibusters even after the deal that was made to put an end to them. And, it seems that the GOP doesn't seem interested in doing anything about it.

On May 9, 2001, President Bush nominated U.S.
District Judge Terrence W. Boyle of Edenton, N.C., to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It took nearly four years for the Judiciary Committee to send his nomination to the Senate floor. It has languished there for more than a year with no prospect for Senate confirmation and no apparent interest by the Republican leadership.

Boyle has been on the federal bench for 22 years, and his only liability is that he is a conservative who spent a year on Sen. Jesse Helms's staff. While he is the Bush appellate court nominee who has been waiting for confirmation the longest, he is not alone. Ten other prospective appeals judges face Senate inaction, with the window of opportunity in the second Bush term already closing. They seem unaffected by last year's avoidance of a constitutional crisis over the confirmation process and the approval of two Supreme Court justices.

Sean Rushton of the Committee for Justice this week e-mailed his conservative network that the "push for appellate confirmations is on." But there has been no attention given Boyle and his fellow nominees by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has been taking victory laps after appearing to break the Senate judicial confirmation impasse. Asking whether Republicans will raise the issue to "excite conservatives, highlight liberal extremism and force Democrats into compromising choices," Rushton said, "November's election may rest on the decision."

The moderate bipartisan "Gang of 14" senators last year averted a showdown on whether Frist would use the "nuclear option" to break multiple judicial filibusters. That immediately resulted in confirmation of three nominees opposed by the liberals, but the fate of Boyle and the other four appellate nominees facing filibusters was left pending. Since then, only four Bush nominees have been confirmed. Six other appellate nominees await confirmation, and an additional nine such seats are vacant.

Bill Frist needs to go, since he's been absolutely uninterested in fighting for good judicial nominees.

Drugs on the 'net

2006-03-17T06:14:00.000-06:00

This is scary, scary stuff. Poorly regulated intenet pharmacies are bad enough. Now we have to worry about drug dealers dealing drugs over the internet as well.

Linda Surks remembers her son Jason as a good-natured kid who made friends easily. "He was always compliant and accommodating, and just a real pleasant person," she said.

So when Linda and her husband, Mark, got a call telling them their son Jason, a 19-year-old sophomore at Rutgers University, was in the hospital, they had no idea what to expect.

"We thought he had come down with something and really didn't have any idea when we got to the hospital," Surks said.

They were told their son had died of a drug overdose.

"It was a double whammy," she explained. "To hear that your child has passed away, but to hear it happened the way it did was a total shock. I had no clue he was abusing."

That's because Jason didn't buy typical street drugs from some corner dealer. He got his fix from the Internet, the latest front in the war on drugs.

"After we collected his belongings from the university we went through his computer and we found some Mexican pharmacy Web sites that he had visited," Surks said. "We also found some evidence of an account that he had with one of these pharmacies."

***

What most young people don't know is that prescription drugs like Xanax, when abused, can be as addictive and lethal as heroin.

"There's no fear of prescription drugs," said Steve Liga, executive director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of Middlesex County, N.J.

Liga said the Internet has the potential to change the way the younger generation gets hooked on drugs. "What we used to see before the Internet was that prescription drugs were a later-stage addiction," he explained. These users typically worked their way up through marijuana, cocaine and heroin, and were considered hardcore addicts who stole their drugs from a pharmacy or diverted them from a doctor.

***

Law enforcement agencies now face the daunting task of taking down dealers who are almost impossible to trace, because they conduct their business and then disappear into cyberspace.

In just a few years, the number of Web sites selling potentially dangerous drugs without a prescription has increased exponentially. Right now, you can buy drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, and Xanax with your credit card from more than 1,000 Web sites and have them delivered directly to your door. And they are the real thing.

Every time I post a story like this I wind up getting spam from these sleazebags that I'm writing about. Kind of proves my point, right?

The cost of March Madness

2006-03-16T11:34:00.000-06:00

This article estimates that because of employees being fixated on the NCAA basketball tournament, and watching games over the internet instead of working, the cost to US businesses will be about 250 million dollars!

For company bosses, the college basketball championship is perhaps the most disruptive sporting event — but this year, the upheaval will be worse than ever. The blame lies with CBS, the television network that broadcasts the month-long event. For the first time it will offer live “streaming” videos of games via the internet.

The headline in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram summed it up: “Don’t call in ‘sick’ — you can watch games from your desk.”

It’s the equivalent of the World Cup being broadcast on Google — and America’s IT managers are dreading the consequences, predicting a coast-to-coast network gridlock.

“Fans everywhere will have an opportunity to see their teams play live, at no charge, on NCAAsports.com via our new broadband channel, no matter where or when that game is being played,” Larry Kramer, the president of CBS Digital Media, said.

“We will have a direct pipeline to the games’ most ardent supporters.”

What Mr Kramer did not mention was the website’s Boss Button, which will instantly cover any viewer’s screen with a spreadsheet. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which helps to relocate employees after layoffs, the cost to American business can be estimated conservatively at $250 million (£140 million).

If businesses are going to lose money, it looks like bookmakers are going to make a mint, expecting upwards of 1.3 billion dollars in wagers on this thing.

Fans will not only be watching the games online, but also betting on them. Online book-makers are expecting to take $1.3 billion in wagers on the NCAA over the next 20 days.

And , there are actually real concerns that corporate websites won't be able to handle the bandwidth demands of all these fans trying to keep up with what's happening.

Bruce Kelley, the chief technology officer of NetScout Systems, is one of the many bloggers predicting disaster. “Think for a second of what 5-to-10 basketball addicts watching this at a remote site will do to your connection,” he wrote yesterday.

“Maybe nothing if you are only sending e-mail . . . but chances are, your network is running important finance or customised business applications that probably won’t like competing for bandwidth with the opening round games.” He added that games could even disrupt telephone services as many companies now route their calls via the internet.

It's sad, but it's sort of funny at the same time.

Blacks and Hispanics do not receive inferior health care

2006-03-16T06:59:00.000-06:00

In fact, here's a new study showing that Hispanic and Black patients actually recieve a better quality of care when they go to the doctor than white patients do.

Blacks and Hispanics tend to receive slightly better day-to-day medical care than whites when they see a doctor, a large and surprising study has found, starting a new debate about the impact of race on health in America.

The study, the most comprehensive examination of the quality of primary care in the United States, found no significant differences among patients from different ethnic groups or incomes once they get to see a doctor, but a slight trend toward better care for blacks and Hispanics.

The researchers stressed, however, that other disparities in health care do exist. Poor people and minorities, for example, are less likely to see a doctor in the first place and get far less expensive care. In addition, the minor variations among racial groups found in the new study are swamped by the low level of care everyone gets, they said.

Yes, it's true that minorities are less likely to see a doctor for preventitive care, or if they're having a problem. But what's surprising to me is this claim by the authors that most people in the US are receiving about half the medical care they should be receiving, but it didn't matter if they were White, Black, Hispanic, insured or uninsured.

"The bottom line of this study is patients are getting about half of recommended care, and it doesn't seem to matter where you live, whether you are white, black or Hispanic, are insured or uninsured," said Steven Asch, who helped conduct the study for the Rand Corp. "Everyone is at equal risk for poor quality of care."

I'm not sure how you get people to go to the doctor more often, but clearly that's supposed to be happening and it's not. But, it's encouraging that this notion that minorities receive inferior medical care has been shot down by as prestigious a medical journal as the New England Journal of Medicine.

But the findings, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, startled researchers because they appeared to run contrary to a large body of evidence that poor people and minorities tend to receive worse care than whites in all areas of health care, a disparity often cited to explain why their health tends to be worse and life spans shorter.

"So many previous studies have shown disparities," Asch said. "In that way, it is surprising. We looked in as many ways as we could to try to determine if there was a problem with our analysis. I'm convinced that's not the case."

Skeptics of the importance of discrimination in health care immediately pointed to the findings to support their belief that the focus on race has been misplaced.

"The obsession with racial disparities is a distraction from what we really need to do, which is improve health care for everyone," said Sally Satel, who studies health care at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "This shows us that, if anything, minority groups actually have even somewhat better outcomes."

A bit of bias at the The LA Times?

2006-03-16T06:14:00.000-06:00

The LA Times says the Moussaoui trial is "unraveling", and the Justice Department is trying to "salvage" it. Now, from where I stand, the worst thing that can happen in this trial is that Moussaoui goes to prison for the rest of his life. So, it's hard to argue that the trial needs to be salvaged, but if it makes the LA Times feel better to bash the prosecutors, and pretend things are going badly, so be it.

All week long, government lawyer Carla J. Martin badgered them. She sent them 100-plus-page court transcripts. She harried them with e-mails criticizing prosecutors and fretting about the government's image. She called them at home.

By Friday, Lynne A. Osmus had had enough. As a top security official at the Federal Aviation Administration — and soon to be a key prosecution witness in the death penalty trial of admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui — she did not like being used to further the lawyer's interest in making the FAA look good at the expense of telling the truth in a capital murder case.

Hmmm

2006-03-16T06:07:00.000-06:00

If you're an alcoholic, you may want to start drinking more coffee, according to this study.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found how coffee can reduce the risk of alcohol-induced pancreatitis.

Pancreatitis is a condition in which the pancreas becomes inflamed, causing severe abdominal pain. It is often triggered by alcohol consumption which causes digestive enzymes to digest part of the pancreas.

Scientists have known for some time that coffee can reduce the risk of alcoholic pancreatitis, but have been unable to determine how. Researchers at the University have now discovered that caffeine can partially close special channels within cells, reducing to some extent the damaging effects of alcohol products on the pancreas.

Professor Ole Petersen and Professor Robert Sutton, from the University's Physiological Laboratory and Division of Surgery, have found that cells in the pancreas can be damaged by products of alcohol and fat formed in the pancreas when oxygen levels in the organ are low. Under these conditions, excessive amounts of calcium are released from stores within the cells of the pancreas. Special organelles, called mitochondria, also become damaged and cannot produce the energiser that normally allows calcium to be pumped out of the cells. The excess calcium then activates protein breakdown, destroying the cells in the pancreas.

It turns out that the caffeine effect is fairly weak, but the study gives researchers a leg up on finding a good drug to treat this disease, which is extremely painful, and has no real treatment options at the present time.

Wow

2006-03-15T16:17:00.000-06:00

NHS Blog Doctor, which is written by a physician in Britain's National Health Service, posts about a particularly bad day he had recently at work. Anybody who is even remotely of the opinion that we should adopt a nationalized health care system in the United States should take a good look. I'll be blogrolling him so I can check in on his blog periodically. (via Right Wing News)

First patient is David. Elderly man. Charming. He was a tank commander during the war. He is in atrial fibrillation, he is not maintaining his blood pressure, he keeps flipping in and out of heart failure and is being admitted for pacing in two days. When Dr Crippen was a houseman, all patients such as this were “clerked in” by the houseman. That does not happen anymore. Nowadays, they are assessed by cardiac nurse specialist. She is much cleverer that Dr Crippen because she can do this assessment by telephone. David has had a letter saying that he should be at home by the phone this afternoon, waiting for her call. He is puzzled. “How can she assess my cardiac status over the phone?” Beats me. I have to use a stethoscope, but then I am only a doctor.

++++++++++

Third patient in is Mary, one of the local speech therapists. She is approaching retirement. I sent her husband into hospital three weeks ago in rip-roaring heart failure. He was on CCU for three days but now is on the far flung corner of Dixon, one of the medical wards. He is partially sighted due to an old stroke, and is hard of hearing. The nursing care is appalling. He has developed pressures sores on his sacrum and heels and, oddly, a suppurating area above both ears which Mary thinks is due to the oxygen mask he uses being too tight. He is losing weight because he cannot really manage to feed himself. Mary was in each day over the weekend. Uneaten food from Saturday was still on his bedside table on Sunday. Mary went to the nursing station at the end of the ward. The nurses were all eating take-away Pizza. Deep Pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Mary remembers that particularly. Mary thinks her husband is dying. She is not sure which consultant he is under, and has not been able to find a doctor to talk to. The nurses over the weekend do not speak English. She tried to tell them that her husband is partially sighted but they do not understand. They show here the nursing assessment. Under “visual problems” it says "none". Mary is in tears and asks what she should do. I suggest she phones the Chief Executive and makes a formal complaint.

Read the whole thing. It doesn't get any better.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

2006-03-15T11:07:00.000-06:00

This guy's "friend" stabbed him to death over ten bucks.

Police say a 26-year-old man who was stabbed to death Saturday died in a fight over $10.

Tyler Gorley was killed after a night of drinking with friends at a restaurant and bar called the Dutch Goose in Caldwell.

Police say the friends argued over $10 and started fighting.

Authorities say Gorley was stabbed four times with a fold-out pocket knife, and then was left on the road. He died later at a local hospital.

Clayton Adams has been arrested and is expected to be charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing. He is being held without bond in Canyon County jail.

"Fast Eddie" could be in some trouble

2006-03-15T10:44:00.000-06:00

A new Survey USA poll shows a dead heat between incumbent Pennsylvania Governor "Fast Eddie" Rendell, and challenger Lynn Swann. With the campaign having only begun recently, that the incumbent's poll numbers are so poor spells quite a bit of trouble for Rendell, as far as I'm concerned. And, I think as the campaign goes on and more people see and hear Swann and become more comfortable voting for him, Swann will start to pull away.

Feingold's dumbass censure attempt

2006-03-15T08:02:00.000-06:00

I would buy this editorial if I thought the American public was paying attention to Feingold's idiotic attempt to censure George Bush for spying on suspected terrorists in the United States. But, I don't think most people are following the story. i think at best this epeisode might fire up the conservative base a little bit, while revving up the ultra-left-wing moonbats a little more as well. Not that those leftist loons need anything to get them going.

The censure resolution is so obviously overreaching that other Senate Democrats are keeping their distance, although Sen. Barbara Boxer says she could vote for it and Minority Leader Harry Reid thinks it is worthy of serious debate. The resolution will surely strike most Americans as mindless partisanship. It also shifts the political debate back to ground favorable to the White House. The NSA program is relatively popular, indeed is one of the administration's most popular initiatives at the moment. The White House has a good case to make on its legality, and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee last week seemed to signal their willingness to acquiesce to a deal giving congressional blessing to the program in exchange for enhanced oversight.

Feingold hopes to blow this all up. Republicans should gladly rise to his challenge. Increasing Feingold's prominence as a spokesman for the Democrats on the War on Terror only benefits the GOP. He epitomizes the Left's do-nothing, or at least do-the-absolute-minimum, approach to the war. He voted against the Patriot Act, and its reauthorization. He opposes the NSA program. He was against the Iraq war, and opposes using coercive interrogation against terrorists abroad. He is against almost any measure in the War on Terror that doesn't fit neatly within the confines of the American law-enforcement system (and against even ones that do — the Patriot Act). It was telling that on the Senate floor Feingold highlighted past statements by President Bush saying that law enforcement needs a court order to get a wiretap, by way of supposedly proving the president's deceit. But the NSA surveillance is not a law-enforcement program; it is not being used to produce evidence of crimes, but to tip off American intelligence about potential plots and the whereabouts of terrorist agents.

Feingold has done himself a favor, but not his party. Where does Mehlman go for his hug?

More anarchy in Gaza

2006-03-15T07:50:00.000-06:00

Palestinian terorists have abducted ten foreigners in the Gaza Strip, and continue to hold at least three of them hostage.

The abductions came in the midst of the Jericho raid in which the Israel Defense Forces demanded the surrender of Ahmed Sa'adat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, responsible for Ze'evi's assassination. Five other wanted inmates were also sought for their ties to the assassination.

Several international relief agencies closed their offices in the Palestinian territories, while masked Palestinian policemen rounded up foreigners and whisked them to safety.

Frightened foreigners sought refuge at Palestinian security headquarters, and a UN jeep came under fire as it tried to leave the coastal strip. Angry Palestinians accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in Israel's siege of the prison and arrest of a leading Palestinian militant.

The outbreak of anti-foreigner violence was the second in recent weeks. Reacting to Danish cartoons disparaging the Prophet Muhammad, angry Palestinians stormed European buildings and briefly held some aid workers. The relief teams had just started trickling back into the coastal strip when Tuesday's violence sent them scurrying for safety again.

Several international aid agencies, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said they were temporarily pulling their staff out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Officials said UN operations would not be affected, as the 8,500 local Palestinian workers would remain on the job, while 13 foreign UN staffers were leaving the Palestinian areas.

In Gaza, gunmen went from room to room in hotels, looking for foreigners. By midafternoon, they had taken a Swiss Red Cross worker, two Australian teachers, two French medical workers and three journalists - one French and two South Korean, Palestinian and foreign officials said.

One clueless idiot says he feels sorry for the scum who snatched him.

The American professor, Douglas Johnson, said he was unharmed and understood his abductors' actions.

"They are angry over what is going on in Jericho. I feel sympathy with them," he told an AP reporter at an abandoned cemetery, where he was briefly held before being freed.

Meanwhile, these terrorists took an AP reporter into "protective custody" during the episode!

Palestinian security took some foreigners, including Associated Press photographer Emilio Morenatti, into protective custody, while others found their own way to security headquarters.

As if anybody needed any more evidence that The Associated Press is on the anti-Israeli side.

Did Britain aid Israel's nuclear wepons program?

2006-03-15T06:29:00.000-06:00

Melanie Philips looks at a recent BBC piece claiming that the British government helped Israel develop nuclear weapons and rips it to shreds.

Let’s look at all this a little more closely. The first point is that the claim that Britain’s plutonium helped make Israel’s bomb is absurdly over the top. As Crick himself acknowledged en passant, the amount Israel asked for was 10 mg, whereas 4 kg of plutonium would have been needed to make a bomb. The second point is that the story does not add up. It is extremely implausible that a middle ranking official such as Michaels would have had the power to reverse government policy in this way. Indeed, as Crick mentioned even more en passant, the Foreign Office – which we were told was originally dead against the deal – eventually agreed. There would almost certainly have been other, more significant actors playing a role in this drama. Indeed, since the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a very strong supporter of Israel, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he himself pursued a policy which was not declared in public. Who knows? All we have to go on is the connection made in the mind of one retired former defence intelligence analyst between his perception of a colleague’s behaviour and the fact that ‘his middle name was Israel’.

In another context, the suggestion that a middle-ranking official could reverse policy by himself would be ludicrous. But in the context of this item, it was something else entirely. For Michael Israel Michaels was not only presented as a deus ex machina covertly manipulating events behind the scenes so that the world was put in danger; he was specifically accused of having done so because he was a Jew. To hear the BBC single out, as the clinching proof of a perfidious disloyalty to the state by a British citizen, the fact that ‘his middle name was Israel’ is to strike a chill to the very bone. For of course the unspoken implication here goes far beyond this particular civil servant. The real message of that Newsnight item was surely this: forget Iran; forget the worry over thousands of Islamist terror supporters in Britain; the real danger to the world is Israel, and the real British fifth columnists are those Jews who support it.

Vicious, vicious stuff.

Taheri-Azar says Koran justified terrorism

2006-03-15T06:11:00.000-06:00

Mohammed Taheri-azar, the University of North Carolina graduate student who intentionally drove his SUV into a bunch of people on campus in an attempt to kill them, says that the Koran justified his terrorist attack, since it instructs Muslims to kill unbeleiers..(via Jihad Watch)

The University of North Carolina graduate charged with driving a sport utility vehicle through a plaza at the school, which he called revenge for America's treatment of Muslims, said in a letter the assault was justified based on his reading of Islam's holy book.

"Allah gives permission in the Koran for the followers of Allah to attack those who have raged war against them, with the expectation of eternal paradise in case of martyrdom," Mohammed Taheri-azar wrote in a two-page letter sent to a television news reporter and anchor at WTVD-TV, an ABC affiliate station in Durham.

Taheri-azar, 22, is charged with nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault. On March 3, police say, Taheri-azar raced through a crowded campus gathering spot in a rented Jeep Cherokee. No one was seriously injured, and Taheri-azar later called 911 to turn himself in. During the call, he said he wanted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world."

A native of Iran who grew up mostly in the Charlotte area, Taheri-azar has said he intended to kill the people he struck. He said he wants to defend himself in court and believes a trial will offer him the opportunity to educate people about the will of Allah.

By all means, use the trial to tell the world about what the Koran says. People need to know that the Koran justifies killing anyone who's not a devout Muslim.

Hmmm, no fooling?

2006-03-14T14:13:00.000-06:00

Ralph Peters is back from Bahgdad, and tells us that Iraqi stringers, from which we've been getting much of our news from Iraq, are either intentionally or unintentionally misleading us about what is really happening there. And, things are not even close to being as bad as the media is telling us it is.

While there are and have been any number of courageous, ethical journalists reporting from Iraq, others know little more of the reality of the streets than you do. They report what they are told by others, not what they have seen themselves. The result is a distorted, unfair and disheartening picture of a country struggling to rise above its miserable history.

This is yet another report that tells us that the story the media is telling us about chaos and civil war in Iraq is a bunch of you know what. But, since most people here are worried about a civil war in Iraq, obviously the propaganda is working.

This is your brain, and this is your brain on drugs...

2006-03-14T14:08:00.000-06:00

There was something I wanted to say about this story, but I don't seem to be able to remember what it was. Oh, well, never mind.

Adding a new twist to the debate over the effects of marijuana, Greek researchers say the minds of long-term pot smokers don't process things as well as those of other people.

People who smoked at least four joints a week performed worse on a variety of mental tests, including those measuring memory, attention and verbal fluency. And those who smoked for more than 10 years had the most problems of all, the researchers report in the March 14 issue of Neurology.

The study doesn't definitively link marijuana use to the cognitive problems, and it's possible that other factors could be to blame. Prior research has also offered conflicting findings about the mental effects of marijuana.

Still, the findings suggest that chronic pot smoking isn't a good idea over the long term, said Barbara Flannery, a drug and alcohol researcher who's familiar with the findings. "The longer you smoke marijuana, the more likely you are to experience a diminution of cognitive functions that are critical for 'normal' daily functioning," she said.

I'm joking (of course).

More good news for red wine drinkers

2006-03-14T13:41:00.000-06:00

Drinking red wine is good for your dental health.

Compounds known as polyphenols, which are found in red wine and are said to reduce cholesterol, are now also said to stave off gum disease.

Scientists from Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, found that polyphenols help to reduce the inflammation that arises from periodontitis, a condition that affects 65 per cent of adults over 50. It can attack gums and bone around teeth and cause tooth loss.

Beware the Ides of March!

2006-03-14T10:05:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is Eat an Animal for PETA Day. Eat accordingly, I know I certainly will.

And I used to wonder why stock analysts got a bad rap

2006-03-14T07:57:00.000-06:00

Let's see now, the investment bank Goldman Sachs was predicted by analysts to show profits of $3.29 per share for the first quarter of 2006. But, today they announced that their profits were actually $5.08 per share. So, the analysts were only off by about 50% or so. And for that they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Where can I sign up?

Strong revenues in investment banking, fixed income trading and asset management helped Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s first-quarter profits rise 62 percent from a year ago, the company said Tuesday. The results far outstripped Wall Street's forecasts.

For the quarter ending Feb. 24, Goldman Sachs earned $2.45 billion, or $5.08 per share, compared to $1.51 billion, or $2.94 per share, in the first quarter of 2005.

Revenues came to a record $10.34 billion, up 61 percent from $6.41 billion from a year ago and 42 percent higher than the previous quarterly record.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected the company to earn $3.29 per share on revenues of $7.19 billion.

Yes, but is it art?

2006-03-14T06:34:00.000-06:00

You know, I'm really not sure that this guy is "belittling the Holocaust." I think he genuinely is trying to do something to remember what happened, and to try to capture some of the experience of being put in a gas chamber. I certainly understand that seeing or hearing about this could be painful to many people. But, I don't think the artist is trying to be offensive.

An artist invited Germans to come and be symbolically gased with car exhaust fumes in a former synagogue. Jewish leaders and media commentators say he is belittling the Holocaust and insulting its victims. But hundreds of people have lined up for the experience.

Santiago Sierra, a Spanish performance artist, pledged on Monday to hold talks with Jewish community leaders outraged by his project to give people a sense of the Holocaust by pumping lethal car exhaust fumes into a former synagogue and letting visitors enter one by one with a breathing apparatus.

Sierra, known internationally for his controversial work, led hoses from the exhaust pipes of six parked cars into the building in the town of Pulheim-Stommeln near Cologne to create lethal levels of carbon monoxide there.

Around 200 visitors who lined up for the first gassing session on Sunday had to sign a declaration that they were aware of the risks before being allowed in wearing a breathing apparatus and accompanied by a fireman.

They were allowed to spend a maximum of five minutes in the synagogue, which is no longer used as a place of worship and only survived the Nazi era intact because it was sold to a farmer and used as a storage hall. "The smell of the exhaust may cling to clothing," visitors were warned.

The Nazis used gas chambers to murder many of the 6 million Jews they killed.

Sierra, 39, who lives in Mexico, was not present at the start and could not be reached for comment. He said in a statement distributed outside the synagogue that he was trying to counter the "trivialization of our memory of the Holocaust."

NCAA tournament

2006-03-14T06:23:00.000-06:00

Herb Gould from the Sun Times discusses his picks for the tournament over here. As usual, my brackets look nothing like most people's brackets, since I have UConn, Memphis, Villanova and LSU going to the Final Four, with UConn winning it all. Feel free to discuss your picks and why you picked them.

Some people call sports the toy department of a newspaper. Don't you believe it. When I first got into the newspaper business, I was on the news side. I started out as a deskman because I dreaded having to talk to the next of kin.

When I finally ended up as a reporter, I had to confront my fear. The strange part of it was, I didn't have a problem talking to the next of kin, and I talked to the families of some doozies. Kids playing in refrigerators. A girl who fell off an Egyptian pyramid. Hit-and-runs. A joy-riding random shooter in a good neighborhood. Brutal crimes.

There's nothing scarier, though, than putting your NCAA tournament picks in the paper for all the second-guessing world to see.

Because this is a guessing game.

But since everyone likes to play Beat the Pro, here you go. ...

There will be the usual early upsets. Utah State will surprise Washington, which will make Illinois fans happy for a while. Montana, which plays in a sleepy conference, will expose Nevada, which plays in another sleepy conference. And Seton Hall will take out Wichita State, providing fuel for the power conferences in their disrespect for the Missouri Valley controversy.

The Big East, which landed a record eight bids, is arguably the best conference in the land. It unquestionably is the biggest. That's why I like West Virginia and Pittsburgh, both seasoned by some tough battles, to pull off some surprises.

Led by a determined Dee Brown-like warrior at point guard in Carl Krauser, Pitt will surprise all the way to the Final Four. That's partly a product of the wide-open Oakland Regional, where Memphis looks like the shakiest No. 1 seed.

The Panthers will be joined in the Final Four by Connecticut and Duke, which have been the best two teams all season.

I was tempted to put Boston College in the Final Four, but I'll take Big Ten champion Ohio State -- which has experience, outside shooting, a good big man and a top-notch coach -- to edge the Eagles.

Yes, it is a guessing game, because even with as much basketball as some of us watch, there are teams we've never sewen play, and there are matchups that are very hard to figure out. But I think UConn is as close to a professional basketball team as you'll find in the NCAA. And, if they can keep their intensity up, it's there's for the taking. I also think this particular Duke team is one of the most over-rated teams I've seen in a long time. It'll be fun to see what happens.

Heh heh !

2006-03-13T15:56:00.000-06:00

It's a dream come true!

It almost seemed like a miracle to Haldis Gundersen when she turned on her kitchen faucet this weekend and found the water had turned into beer.

Two flights down, employees and customers at the Big Tower Bar were horrified when water poured out of the beer taps.

By an improbable feat of clumsy plumbing, someone at the bar in Kristiandsund, western Norway, had accidentally hooked the beer hoses to the water pipes for Gundersen's apartment.

The joys of socialized medicine part 896

2006-03-13T06:32:00.000-06:00

Yes, the new Medicare drug plan is socialized medicine. And yes, it is causing a lot of problems with pharmacists who are being paid low fees for their drugs, and are experiencing significant delays getting paid at all. I say, welcome to the club people. Doctors and hospitals have been there and done that for many years.

Pharmacists who say they have been losing money under Medicare's new prescription plan have taken their concerns to the White House, forcing the administration to confront political problems caused by the program's rocky start.

The druggists – all from Texas – told senior Bush adviser Karl Rove last week that many independent pharmacies might have to shut their doors because they were not being paid adequately or promptly under Medicare.

In the last two months, they said, pharmacists have given away millions of dollars' worth of medications for which Medicare drug plans should have paid.

Several of the pharmacists have close ties to Mr. Rove and President Bush. But their concerns are shared by retail pharmacists across the country, who said that Medicare drug plans were paying them less than it cost to fill prescriptions for the beneficiaries.

Bill C. Pittman, a former president of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy who is chairman of Pharmacists for Bush, a political fund-raising group, arranged the meeting, held Monday at the White House.

Richard E. Beck, one of the Texas pharmacists who met with Mr. Rove, said, "Pharmacies are losing money on Medicare." Slow payment by Medicare drug plans has caused cash-flow problems for many pharmacies, he said.

Mr. Pittman said he told Mr. Rove and other officials: "If pharmacists don't receive immediate relief, some will go broke. Others are hurting so bad that they will choose not to participate in Medicare and Medicaid."

Mr. Bush has described the drug benefit as "the greatest advance in health care for seniors since the founding of Medicare" in 1965. Administration officials said beneficiaries were saving large amounts of money because prescription drug plans had negotiated deep discounts with drug makers and pharmacies.

The new benefit is delivered by private health plans subsidized by Medicare. The drug plans have contracts with pharmacies. Medicare officials said they would help pharmacists enforce the terms of these contracts, but pharmacists have said they have still had problems.

The pharmacists underscored the political significance of their concerns in a report presented to Mr. Rove and Allan B. Hubbard, assistant to the president for economic policy.

"Most independent community pharmacists are small-business Republicans," the report said. "Pharmacists want to be supportive of this administration, and they can play an active role in the midterm elections. But pharmacists need to be able to point to some corrective actions being taken by the administration."

Trent D. Duffy, a White House spokesman, said: "We want to understand the concerns of pharmacists. They play a critical role in delivery of the drug benefit. At the same time, we want to make sure that seniors are getting the best possible deal."

As of mid-February, 342,000 people had enrolled in prescription drug plans in Texas, more than in any other state. An additional 230,000 Texans were in Medicare plans that covered drugs along with hospital care and doctors' services.

Even as pharmacists take on new duties under Medicare, they are discovering that they will be paid less than what they now receive under Medicaid, the program sponsored by federal and state governments for low-income people.

In February 2005, Mr. Bush proposed significant cuts in Medicaid payments to pharmacies. Many of those cuts were included in a deficit reduction bill that he signed into law last month. In his 2007 budget, Mr. Bush proposed further cuts.

Critics called the cuts immoral. Mr. Bush replied, "It's not immoral to make sure that prescription drug pharmacists don't overcharge the system."

In a letter to the president, James L. Martin, executive director of the Texas Pharmacy Association, said, "It has become obvious that you and your advisers do not understand the profession of pharmacy."

Mr. Martin, one of the pharmacists who met with Mr. Rove, said that Mr. Bush's comment was particularly galling to pharmacists because they had "bailed out the Medicare prescription drug program" in its first weeks.

Pharmacists helped hundreds of thousands of people sort through scores of prescription drug plans. They filled millions of prescriptions even though they could not get the information needed to verify eligibility.

Mike Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said pharmacists' efforts had been "nothing short of heroic." In the first month of the Medicare drug program, he said, many pharmacists provided "three-to-five day supplies of medicines to beneficiaries without payment."

In an e-mail message to Mr. Rove on Feb. 13, Mr. Beck wrote, "I have been a loyal Republican for a long time." But he said pharmacists were "distraught that a Republican president would attack our profession."

Mr. Beck, who is vice president of American Pharmacies, a purchasing co-op based in San Antonio, said the first six weeks of the new Medicare program had been "a total fiasco" for many pharmacists. "I have some members on the brink of going out of business," he said.

In an e-mail response, Mr. Rove said: "The president was not attacking pharmacists and pharmacies. He was responding to the Democrat leader of the Senate who called the Medicaid reforms 'immoral.' "

Pharmacists said that Medicare drug plans were paying them less than Medicaid and commercial insurers paid for the same services.

I'm sure it's not any better in other states either.

Yikes

2006-03-13T06:25:00.000-06:00

Most young Americans are not fit for military service, according to a new assessment of the situation by military recruiters. While that might make these young folks happy, it's not a good situation for the rest of us to be in.

Uncle Sam wants YOU, that famous Army recruiting poster says. But does he really? Not if you're a Ritalin-taking, overweight, Generation Y couch potato — or some combination of the above.

As for that fashionable "body art" that the military still calls a tattoo, having one is grounds for rejection, too.

With U.S. casualties rising in wars overseas and more opportunities in the civilian work force from an improved U.S. economy, many young people are shunning a career in the armed forces. But recruiting is still a two-way street — and the military, too, doesn't want most people in this prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24.

Of some 32 million Americans now in this group, the Army deems the vast majority too obese, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

"As you look at overall population and you start factoring out people, many are not eligible in the first place to apply," said Doug Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command.

Some experts are skeptical.

Previous Defense Department studies have found that 75 percent of young people are ineligible for military service, noted Charles Moskos of Northwestern University. While the professor emeritus who specializes in military sociology says it is "a baloney number," he acknowledges he has no figures to counter it.

"Recruiters are looking for reasons other than themselves," said David R. Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. "So they blame the pool."

The military's figures are estimates, based partly on census numbers. They are part of an elaborate analysis the military does as it struggles each year to compete with colleges and companies for the nation's best and brightest, plan for future needs and maintain diversity.

The Census Bureau estimates that the overall pool of people who would be in the military's prime target age has shrunk as American society ages. There were 1 million fewer 18- to 24-year olds in 2004 than in 2000, the agency says.

The pool shrinks to 13.6 million when only high school graduates and those who score in the upper half on a military service aptitude test are considered. The 30 percent who are high school dropouts are not the top choice of today's professional, all-volunteer and increasingly high-tech military force.

Texas parental consent law working well

2006-03-13T06:16:00.000-06:00

Not only have parental consent laws in Texas reduced the number of abortions in that state. But, it appears that they've also reduced the number of teen pregnancies as well. This makes sense, since if teenage girls know they'll have a more difficult time getting an abortion (since they'll have to get the permission of their parents) they'll be more vigilant as far as birth control is concerned.

Abortion rates among Texas minors have dropped, apparently because of the state's parental notification law, although it may be driving some older girls into second-trimester terminations.

The findings emerged from the first comprehensive analysis of teen abortion and birth rates since passage of Texas' parental notification act. The law, which took effect in 2000, requires a physician to notify the parent of a minor girl seeking an abortion.

The researchers found that the abortion rate among 15-year-olds was 18 percent lower in the three years after the law went into effect than it was in the two years before. For 16-year-olds, the rate dropped 25 percent, and for 17-year-olds it fell 22 percent.

Abortion rates in Texas and nationally have been falling for more than a decade, but the new study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that the law has accelerated this trend. Among 18-year-olds – girls closest in age to minors but unaffected by parental notification – the decline was 7 percent.

The larger drop in rates among younger girls suggests the law may be making the difference.

While other studies have examined parental notification, the authors of the new study tried to overcome flaws in previous work, said lead researcher Ted Joyce of the City University of New York. For example, the scientists pinned the analysis to a girl's age at conception, not just at delivery or abortion.

Other studies also have not effectively accounted for girls traveling to neighboring states for abortions.

[***]Dr. Levine pointed out that the rise in birth rate appeared only among one group of older 17-year-olds, and was not a broader trend among minors. "One way to interpret these results is there was a reduction in pregnancies as well."

All of these results are important to understand, the authors write in the journal, particularly as other states and the federal government consider similar parental notification requirements.

"These findings," they write, "are relevant to an assessment of the likely effect of pending legislation to extend such laws."

Whining like a liberal?

2006-03-12T12:57:00.000-06:00

Robert Bluey says it was Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim's "whining like a liberal" that was responsible for the fact that Syracuse beat Pitt to win the Big East tourney yesteday. Now, personally I'm not a fan of either team. But, I'm not at all clear on how Bluey can claim Boeheim was whining at the press conference after Syracuse beat Georgetown. All Boehim said was that without Gerry McNamara, his team "wouldn't have won ten f*cking games all season". And, he later apologized for using the obsenity. How this constitutes whining, and why Bluey thinks what Boeheim said would influence the officials in the Pitt/Syracuse game is beyond me. I watched that whole game, and Pitt just got beat, period. The officiating was fine, and the game was certainly not decided before it started as Bluey ridiculously asserts.

Bong hits 4 Jesus

2006-03-12T12:44:00.000-06:00

John Ray is concerned about this story where the 9th Circuit Appellate Court ruled that a high school was wrong to suspend a student for putting up a banner across the street from the school which said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". Now personally, I think the banner is pretty stupid. And, I think the student in question has been doing too many bong hits himself, because I don't think the banner makes a whole lotta sense. But, as much as it pains me to agree with the loons on the 9th Circuit, the school clearly violated this kid's right to free speech. John believes the banner is insulting to Christians, but be that as it may, it's still his right to do so. Besides, the banner is so stupid, I'm not sure it's all that insulting anyway.

An Alaska high school violated a student's free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday.

Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner -- which refers to smoking marijuana -- in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school.

Principal Deborah Morse seized the banner and suspended the 18-year-old for 10 days, saying he had undermined the school's educational mission and anti-drug stance.

Friday's ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a decision by a federal court in Alaska that backed Frederick's suspension and said his rights were not violated.

The appeals court said the banner was protected speech because it did not disrupt school activity and was displayed off school grounds during a non-curricular activity.

"Public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in the court's opinion.

The court also cleared the way for Frederick to seek damages, saying Morse was aware of relevant case law and should have known her actions violated his rights.

Oooh, I'm sooo scared!

2006-03-12T11:21:00.000-06:00

Your friendly neighborhood scumbags at Al Qaeda are warning the United States of two operations it has planned which will bring us to our knees. Like anything Al Qaeda could do to us could make us capitulate.

The threat suggests the attack will be far greater in magnitude than Sept. 11, 2001, because following this one, "there will be no one to analyze and investigate, because the mind and the heart will be unable to comprehend it. ... This will not be a single operation, but two; one bigger than the other, but we will begin with the big one and postpone the bigger one, in order to see [how] diligent the American people is [in preserving] its life. If it chooses life, [it must] carry out the demands of the Muslims, and if it chooses death, then we are its best perpetrators."

The warning appeared in Arabic and in English.

"Do not put your hopes on Bush and his clan, they are incapable of protecting you, and if they think they are, let them foil or stop the two upcoming operations, and punish those who are responsible for them," says the statement. "But if they could not identify and foil the devastating events coming your way, you must ask yourselves: How long will we continue allowing ourselves to be slaughtered with full advance knowledge of our fate?

"Let me now inform you why we opted to inform you about the two operations and your inability to stop them before they are carried out. The reason is simple: You cannot uncover or stop them except by letting them be carried out. Furthermore, the best you could do would be to accelerate the day of carrying out the operations. In other words, if we schedule the operation to take place tomorrow, the best you could do is to make it happen today."

The spokesman claims the operations are inevitable – even if the specific plans are uncovered by authorities.

Hah hah, bring it on you subhuman pieces of garbage. Meanwhile, I wonder if this has something to do with the above story.

The FBI has warned stadium operators of a possible suicide bomb attack at sporting events — even though it cannot assess the credibility of a posting about the alleged threat on an extremist message board nor is it aware of any imminent threat.

Still, the FBI says the message is getting broad distribution on known extremist Websites, described as a cost-efficient way to kill thousands of Americans.

The alert comes as college basketball tournaments around the country are getting under way.

The Big East tournament is being held at Madison Square Garden in New York and stadium and local police said they had been notified of the warning.

There was no visible sign of enhanced security Friday night, and spectators seemed to be taking the warning in stride.

"We're Americans and we're going to continue living our lives the way we always do, not be intimidated by anything," said a young man.

Another woman added, "After 9/11, we never let anything stop what we did. I mean, there's no use. … Life's short, enjoy it."

No specific stadium or sport was named, but the Website posting described in detail how an attack should take place — involving blonde or black American Muslims who could hide explosive belts under winter clothing.

Well, that kind of an attack should be relatively easy to prevent by searching everybody coming into the stadium. So, it makes me wonder if this particular threat is real, or some kind of a head fake, or just a completely empty threat. But, if Al Qaeda really wants to piss us off, attacking us during the NCAA tournament would be a good way of doing it. It would do the exact opposite of bringing us to our knees.

Ed Rendell loses it

2006-03-11T10:01:00.000-06:00

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, in response to a reporter's question about his political style, screamed at the reporter and took his tape recorder away from him. One of Rendell's handlers should remind him that the election is still 8 months away, and the difficult questions are only just beginning.

The Next Recession?

2006-03-11T09:47:00.000-06:00

Robert McHugh writes that because new Federal Reserve Board chief Ben Bernanke is voicing concern over commercial real estate loans, it signals that the Fed will start trying to cut back on them. And that, according to McHugh, has usually helped bring about a recession. It's an interesting analysis, but I have no way to tell whether it's correct or not.

It is official. A recession is coming. How do I know? Because this week new Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave an official warning to bankers about commercial real estate loans. That is always the kickoff to a recession. It is the starter's gun, the national anthem before a ballgame, the opening hymn at a church service. Here is how it works. The Fed has three official tools to control the money supply: Setting reserve requirements (telling banks how much of their deposits they cannot lend. The higher the reserve requirements, the less loans, the less money creation by the economy). The second tool is open market operations. Here they set the amount of money in the system by buying or selling securities. Third is setting the discount rate, the rate of interest banks must pay to borrow money at the Fed. Theoretically, the higher the rate, the less money banks will borrow, the less they have to lend, and the less money that is created by the banking system.

However, there is a fourth tool, a stealth tool, which has more power and impact than the other three. It is called the Federal Reserve Bank examiner. He/she is the person who goes into a bank about once a year and decides which loans are good and which are bad. Based upon their holy edict, a loan is classified in one of several categories which determines how much money the banks must set aside from earnings to reserve for possible losses. It is completely an estimation game. So the rules can and do change, based upon the whims of the examiner, taking his marching orders from the Fed Chairman. If the Fed wants the money supply to expand, then Fed examiners come in with reasonable standards for review of loans, and classify those loans with a general leaning that they will be repaid according to terms. Thus banks do not have to reserve as much for possible estimated losses and are in effect not discouraged from making more loans. When the Fed wants money supply to grow, aggressive lending standards often get passing grades. That's when you business people will see your friendly bank commercial lender more often, jawing you into that expansion project you've been thinking about, inviting you to golf outings and ball games. They want more loans. They need your expansion project.

However, once the Fed Chair sounds the alarm about commercial real estate loans, it starts an entire chain of events that ultimately and unequivocally leads to economic recession. Here's what happens. Out of the blue (that seems to be a favorite modus operandi for all Fed operations) those friendly back-slapping Federal Reserve examiners (not really, they are never overly nice -- okay I've met two or three out of a pool of three hundred -- Mike, Eddie, Eric, you know who you are and I know you read my stuff) show up with a scowl that droops like the golden arch. They ask for the files, a table, an outlet, a coffee pot, and the key to the little boys and girls room. About two days after they arrive, the banker knows something has changed, something serious, and he gets this knot in the pit of his stomach that will last for about three years. Examiner Margo asks for a meeting with banker Joe. She brings her supervisor to raise the fear level of the meeting. The Bank's President, Joe, brings his top commercial lender for protection of his fanny, and that lender brings his junior lender who will ultimately be the sacrificial lamb and get the ax should things blow up.

If you're interested in finance, then read the whole thing.

Banning the Quran?

2006-03-11T09:16:00.000-06:00

It'll never happen of course, but a group in Germany is trying to ban dissemination of the book for being a political book that is not consistent with the German constitution. It certainly is that, and much more, but I can't see Germany banning a book that is the centerpiece of the religion of millions of Germans.

A broad alliance of grass-roots movements have gone to the prosecutors of several states to hinder the dissemination of the Quran. According to the indictment, the Quran is not just a religious and historic book, but also a political book, which is incompatible with the constiution.

At the prosecutor’s office at Gorch-Forck-Wall 15 in Hamburg, an unusual letter was received Monday morning, containing an indictment filed this weekend. The indictment targeted the Quran, charging that the holy book of the Moslems, according to the accuser, is incompatible with the German constitution.

The accuser is “Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen (BVB)”, which concerns itself with, in its own words, “defending basic rights and freedoms” against Islam. The extensive international furore, allegedly caused by the Muhammed cartoons, has made clear the relevancy of the alliance. Its homepage is decorated with a Danish flag with the words “Support Denmark! Defend the Free World.” superimposed on it.

The indictment has been filed in several states, including Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bayern and probably more.

In several talkshows on German TV, conservative politicians have pointed out that the Quran is incompatible with the German constitution. The Turkish-born writer Serap Cileli said on January 29 this year that “the Quran must be considered a historic document. It is not compatible with our constitution and Human Rights.”

Now the alliance wants the matter tried at the courts.

Oh, well

2006-03-11T08:51:00.000-06:00

It looks like a number the seed for the NCAA tournament for the Illini. If they won the Big Ten tournament. they could've had a two seed, but I'm not sure there'd be that much of a difference. I won't be able to tell until I see the brackets.

As the only school that had reached the semi-finals in the first eight Big Ten tournaments, Illinois was trying to keep alive an impressive streak Friday night.

It didn't happen. Michigan State, which had lost five straight to Illinois, ended its drought 61-56, leaving the Illini on the sidelines of the Big Ten tournament semifinals for the first time.

The defeat also left coach Bruce Weber wondering whether his Illini will have a better sense of urgency in the NCAA tournament next week.

I'm wondering the same thing. there's definitely a lack of intensity that the Illini show in certain games. In the NCAA tournament that'll be death.

The Butcher of the Balkans bites it

2006-03-11T08:44:00.000-06:00

It's too bad his trial can't continue until it's completion, so he could be convicted for the heinous crimes he's so guilty of.

Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader branded "the butcher of the Balkans" for orchestrating a decade of wars that eventually broke up his country and led to his war crimes trial, was found dead in his prison cell Saturday.

Milosevic, 64, apparently died of natural causes, the U.N. tribunal said. He was found dead in his bed at the U.N. detention center, but it was unclear exactly when he had died.

"The guard immediately alerted the detention unit officer in command and the medical officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead," the tribunal said in a statement.

The tribunal said all prisoners at the detention center near The Hague are routinely checked every half hour, but it had no more information.

Milosevic has been on trial since February 2002, defending himself against 66 counts of crimes, including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The prosecution claimed Milosevic orchestrated a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Serbs during the collapse of the Yugoslav federation in an attempt to link Serbia with Serb-dominated areas of Croatia and Bosnia to create a new Greater Serbia.

But the trial repeatedly was interrupted by Milosevic's poor health and chronic heart condition.

How stupid is this?

2006-03-10T15:27:00.000-06:00

Visually impaired high school students in Chicago are now required to pass a written driver's exam in order to graduate.

Most high school students eagerly await the day they pass driver's education class. But 16-year-old Mayra Ramirez is indifferent about it.

Ramirez is blind, yet she and dozens of other visually impaired sophomores in Chicago schools are required to pass a written rules-of-the-road exam in order to graduate - a rule they say takes time away from subjects they might actually use.

"In other classes, you don't really feel different because you can do the work other people do," Ramirez said. "But in driver's ed, it does give us the feeling we're different. In a way, it brought me down, because it reminds me of something I can't do."

Hundreds of school districts in Illinois require students to pass driver's ed, although the state only requires that districts offer the courses. A state education official says districts that require it should exempt disabled students.

"It defies logic to require blind students to take this course," Meta Minton, spokeswoman for the state Board of Education, told the Chicago Tribune in a Friday story.

About 30 students at two Chicago high schools with programs for the visually impaired recently formed an advocacy group in part to change the policy.

A Chicago Public Schools official said the district would be open to waiving the requirement.

Interestingly, the schools are blaming the handicapped and their parents for not bringing the matter to their attention.

"I can't explain why up to this point no one has raised the issue and suggested a better way for visually impaired students to opt out of driver's ed," said Chicago schools spokesman Michael Vaughn.

Vaughn said parents of disabled students can, by law, request a change in their child's individual education plan, which could include a driver's ed exemption. But teachers and students said that is a little-known option, and that they have been told driver's ed is required to graduate.

Gee, didja think maybe the teachers of these classes might have had a bit of common sense and brought the issue up with the administration? Guess not.

More proof CNN sucks

2006-03-10T11:15:00.000-06:00

According to a recent CNN report, the life expectancy in countries which have socialized medicine is higher than it is here in the United States. Unfortunately, according to the World Health Organization, such does not appear to be the case. Of course, using life expectancies in other countries as proof that socialized medicine is better than the system we have here is completely idiotic anyway, but CNN intentionally or unintentionally getting the story wrong is inexcusable.

Another AP poll, yadda, yadda, yadda

2006-03-10T06:39:00.000-06:00

Nowhere in this new AP poll that purports that Bush's approval ratings are still falling do I see where they asked people about their political affiliation. Until I see those numbers there's no way to tell if this poll can be taken seriously or not. But besides that, I think when the midterm elections roll around, Democrats will vote for Democrats, Republicans will vote for Republicans, and independents will split mostly down the middle. And, the result will be pretty much what we have now plus or minus a couple of seats. So, the AP can keep cheering for the GOP's demise, but I highly doubt it's going to happen this year.

Update:

Well, Randy found the numbers I was looking four over here. I don't know how I managed to miss them, but as I expected, the political affiliation of the people in the poll doesn't match the nation as a whole, and many more people polled identified themselves as Democrats than Republicans. So, once again we have a poll that' rigged to make it seem like Bush's approval rating is continuing to slide. I fully understand that Bush's approval rating has gone down, but not as much as the media is claiming, and this dishonesty that I keep seeing in this media polls is really outrageous.

Peace, love, and understanding at DePaul

2006-03-10T06:15:00.000-06:00

Well, it certainly seems that somebody at DePaul isn't getting the politically correct message the administration has been trying to ram down the student's throats.

Chicago Police launched a hate crime investigation after racist graffiti and swastikas were found on the Lincoln Park campus of DePaul University.

Written in permanent marker, racial epithets and phrases such as whites only appeared on the walls of common areas, including hallways and stairwells, of the University Hall dormitory, the Chicago Tribune said. Graffiti was also found on the outside of the dorm as well as two other buildings.

The DePaul administration was quick to blame the evil conservatives on campus for this episode.

DePaul University spokesperson Denise Mattson told WBBM Radio the incident was an assault on the university's values.

Mattson said the campus has been politically charged since late January when a new campus organization, the DePaul Conservative Alliance, conducted an affirmative action bake sale at which blacks were charged less than whites.

That certainly created some dialogue about affirmative action policies and practices about minorities on campus, Mattson said.

If this really was in response to the conservative group protesting affirmative action on campus, which remains to be seen, one wonders why anti-Semitic graffiti was part of the equation. The whole episode doesn't really make any sense in that context, so I think we'll find that this had nothing to do with that at all despite the administration's attempts to blame it all on the Conservative Alliance.

Intercontinental Hotels wipes Israel off the map

2006-03-09T16:13:00.000-06:00

A four page ad placed in Business Traveller magazine by the Intercontinental Hotel chain omits Israel from a map, and substitutes "Palestine" in it's place. When contacted about this, Intercontinental made the preposterous claim that it was an inadvertant mistake on their part. Read the whole story, and decide whether that's believable or not, but I hardly think so.

That'll work

2006-03-09T15:36:00.000-06:00

The Dubai company DP World has agreed not to take over any port operations in the US. So, things look like they'll work out fine for Bush and the GOP. Bush doesn't have to risk further political damage by continuing to support a deal that most Americans don't like, and the Democrats lose an issue that they hoped to use against the Republicans for much longer than they're going to be able to.

Bowing to ferocious opposition in Congress, a Dubai-owned company signaled surrender Thursday in its quest to take over operations at U.S. ports.

"DP World will transfer fully the U.S. operations ... to a United States entity," the firm's top executive, H. Edward Bilkey, said in an announcement that capped weeks of controversy.

Relieved Republicans in Congress said the firm had pledged full divestiture, a decision that one senator said had been approved personally by the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

The announcement appeared to indicate an end to a politically tinged controversy that brought
President Bush and Republicans in Congress to the brink of an election-year veto battle on a terrorism-related issue.

A leading congressional critic of the ports deal, Rep. Peter King, applauded the decision but said he and others would wait to see the details. "It would have to be an American company with no links to DP World, and that would be a tremendous victory and very gratifying," said the New York Republican, chairman of the House
Homeland Security Committee.

"This should make the issue go away," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Tennessee Republican was one of several GOP leaders to tell President Bush earlier in the day that Congress was ready to ignore his veto threat and scuttle the deal.

Several Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Frist and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had been privately pressuring the firm to give up its plans.

More Americans believe Muslims are prone to violence

2006-03-09T15:26:00.000-06:00

Robert Spencer writes today about how Muslims can improve the rest of the world's perception of Islam in response to a new Washington Post poll showing that more Americans believe Islam is a violent religion now than five years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if the Post writers believe they are writing for adults. Of course there are millions of wonderful people out there who are Muslims. That is actually irrelevant to the question of whether or not Islam teaches violence. And while the assembled experts in this article spend a lot of time talking about how politicians and the media can improve public perceptions of Islam, no one mentions anything about what Muslims might be able to do.

So here are a few suggestions. If Muslims don't want Islam to be perceived as encouraging violence, they should:
1. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when you think no non-Muslims are around.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Do these five things, and you'll find, voila, that perceptions of Islam will begin miraculously to improve.

Sure, sure, just don't hold your breath waiting for any of those things to happen.

House panel votes to save their own skin

2006-03-09T06:10:00.000-06:00

Like I said, the ports deal is dead. Hey, that rhymes!

By 62-2, the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports. The landslide vote was the strongest signal yet that more than three weeks of White House efforts to stunt congressional opposition to the deal have not been successful.

The AP of course, can't just report the news. They just can't resist taking a swing at President Bush as well.

In a congressional election-year repudiation of President Bush, a House panel dominated by Republicans voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to block a Dubai-owned firm from taking control of some U.S port operations.

Yes, I'm sure all those people who voted no were doing it to repudiate the President. And, who use the word "repudiate" anyway? It's ridiculous.

Yeah, whatever

2006-03-08T09:17:00.000-06:00

I'm always (for some strange reason) fascinated by doomsday scenarios like this one. I'm really pretty savvy about financial issues, and while I admit that there are significant economic problems in the US, and worldwide as well, if I had a dollar for every doomsday scenario I've read that hasn't panned out (because they almost never do) I'd have retired a few years ago. Coming up with scenarios like this are very, very easy. That doesn't mean I'm against diversifying a portfolio, but just that I don't expect a worldwide depression anytime soon.

The port deal looks dead

2006-03-08T08:17:00.000-06:00

It would appear that there is a solid majority in Congress opposed to the port deal that's stirred up so much controversy lately, and that it doesn't have much of a chance at passing. personally, I don't think there was any problem with it, but I have no reason to want it passed if it's going to hurt the GOP to do so. So, I guess we'll just have to play these same stupid political games we keep playing over and over and over again. In any case, if the GOP shoots this thing down, the Dems will have difficulty using against them in the mid-term elections, but that won't stop them from trying.

House Republicans have united around legislation that would block DP World from taking over significant management of terminals at six U.S. ports, ignoring a veto threat from the president.

"We are going to send a very clear signal that we want to have American interests secured by leaders in America," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.

His House Appropriations Committee planned to attach the legislation Wednesday to a $91 billion measure for states recovering from Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Offering few specifics, Lewis said only that his legislation would not single out any one country or company but would effectively prevent DP World from operating U.S. port terminals.

He suggested that he would be open to changing the legislation, if needed, to get the Senate on board and reach middle ground with the White House. However, Lewis said, "we could have a confrontation at the other end."

A vote on the entire measure is expected next week, setting up a fight with the president, who wants the money but has threatened to veto any measure that would block or delay DP World being able to operate U.S. port terminals as part of its takeover of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., a British company that holds contracts at several U.S. ports.

This whole Iran thing is becoming comical

2006-03-08T07:57:00.000-06:00

Iran has threatened the United States with "harm and pain" if we refer them to the UN Security Council. Harm and pain, heh heh, that's a good one!

But the United States and its European allies said Iran's nuclear intransigence left the world no choice but to ask for Security Council action. The council could impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.

The statements were delivered to the 35-member board of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, which is meeting to focus on Tehran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.

The meeting is in effect the last step before the Security Council begins considering Iran's nuclear activities and international fears they could be misused to make weapons. It began with both Iran and nations which oppose its enrichment plans sticking to their positions, reflecting the deadlock that prompted the IAEA board to seek Security Council intervention.

"The United States has the power to cause harm and pain," said a statement delivered by the Iranian delegation. "But the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if that is the path that the U.S. wishes to choose, let the ball roll."

Yes, by all means, let the ball roll, you slimebuckets.

Yet even more on Walmart and health insurance for their employees

2006-03-08T06:32:00.000-06:00

Andrew Cassel has an interesting op/ed piece in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer on the issue of Walmart and health insurance for their workers. It turns out that Walmart's profits average out to $6,000 a year per employee, which is less than many families actually pay for health insurance. So, for Walmart to provide health insurance to more of it's workers may not be financially feasible without having to cut wages or lay people off.

But, Cassels main point is that when welfare reform was developed during the Clinton administration, the philosophy was that welfare reform should not discourage people from taking jobs. In other words, you wanted people on Medicaid and food stamps working rather than not working. So, criticising Walmart for having many employees on Medicaid doesn't look like a valid criticism in that context, and passing legislation to try to fix the "problem" makes no sense for that and many other reasons that I've discussed before.

Return with us now to those bygone days before wi-fi, the Sopranos, and camera-equipped cell phones.

Recall if you can the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton was trying, in his words, to "end welfare as we know it."

Welfare as we knew it was a decades-old disaster. Not only had it failed to end poverty in America, it had fostered social and political divisions that were at their most corrosive in cities such as Philadelphia.

Fixing welfare, in the view of Clinton and other reformers, meant reforming public assistance programs so they no longer discouraged poor people from taking jobs - even low-paying ones.

The idea was that work helps build skills, self-esteem and better lives. Thus, it was better for government not to abruptly cut off benefits such as Medicaid and food stamps when people took jobs, but rather offer them as supplements to entry-level wages.

Clinton labeled this strategy "making work pay." Many progressive-minded people hailed it because it extended help to people who formerly had fallen through the cracks while putting government on the side of mainstream values such as work and thrift.

***

Anyway, fast-forward to 2006. Legislators in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and elsewhere are in an uproar. They've suddenly discovered that some full-time workers are on the state's Medicaid rolls.

Because some of those people work at Wal-Mart, the goals and achievements of the '90s welfare reform have all gone down the memory hole.

"These programs were never intended to cover people who are gainfully employed," one of Gov. Rendell's cabinet members huffed to reporters.

Excuse me?

Let's be clear: Retailers of all sizes pay low wages - lower than steel mills, or advertising agencies, or newspapers, at any rate.

The reason is low margins. If Joe's Pizza offered health insurance and pensions, prices would rise, and customers would go to Al's Pizza across the street.

Read the whole thing.

Death by coffee

2006-03-08T06:16:00.000-06:00

Oh, well, gotta die of something. Might as well be a tall latte.

COFFEE drinkers who have more than three cups a day could significantly increase their chances of suffering a heart attack.

Research suggests that some people who carry a particular variation of a gene cannot process caffeine as quickly as other people. Such individuals could be 60 per cent more likely to have a heart attack if they drink large amounts of coffee.

It is not known how common the gene variation is in the British population. Some studies indicate that up to a third of Caucasians may carry it.

Canadian scientists have discovered that people with the slower metabolism gene variation, known as *1F, run a dramatically higher risk even if they drink only two cups a day.

Researchers found that heavy coffee drinkers under the age of 50 were four times as likely to have an attack compared with those who had one cup a day.

However, the study suggests conversely that people with a different variant of the same CYP1A2 gene, called *1A, could benefit from coffee. It found that for these individuals the drink might offer some protection against heart attacks, although the figures are less statistically significant. Drinking one cup a day appeared to halve the odds of a heart attack for these individuals, while drinking two or three cups cut the risk by about 40 per cent.

So how much more likely are to you to actually have a heart attack if you're in the 33% or so of the population that has this gene? Well, it looks like quite a bit.

The latest study, carried out by Dr El-Sohemy and colleagues, and involving more than 4,000 people in Costa Rica, suggests that individuals with the specific variant gene who have two to three cups of coffee a day increase their chances of suffering a heart attack by 36 per cent. For those who drink four cups or more, the risk is raised by 64 per cent.

The article doesn't say how common the gene is that causes you to benefit from coffee. I guess I'll have to hope I'm one of those people, or that I at least fall into the 2/3 of the population that doesn't have the bad gene.

I'll take your money, but I still want you all dead

2006-03-07T13:33:00.000-06:00

This Islamist piece of garbage, who used to pontificate about how evil Great Britain was as a nation, has moved back to London from Pakistan to live off the British social welfare system. (via Dissecting Leftism)

A FANATICAL Muslim who ranted against Britain has moved back here from Pakistan — to live on benefits.

Hate-filled Zeeshan Siddiqui, 26, who once called London an “organ of the devil”, is enjoying life in a suburb of the capital.

The Sun tracked down Siddiqui to a quiet, tree-lined road in Heston, West London, following his release from custody by Pakistani police who were probing suspected terror links.

In the past he has said he wants to be an Islamic martyr, called for all non-Muslims to be killed and declared his contempt for the UK. Yet he is happy to sponge off our taxpayers to the tune of £52.60 a week in Jobseekers Allowance.

Siddiqui slipped back into Britain in January after eight months in prison in Peshawar.

He was suspected of having links to the 7/7 London bombers and at school was friends with Britain’s first suicide bomber Asif Hanif, who died in Israel in 2003.

More Walmart and bloggers stuff

2006-03-07T08:11:00.000-06:00

I've said it before, and because of this piece today in the Old Gray Lady, I'll say it again. I am one of the bloggers whom Walmart from time to time communicates with by e-mail because I have been supportive of them in their fight against legislation passed in Maryland and being proposed in other places. I get no compensation from them, I write whatever I want to write, and I do not copy anything they write to me in any of my blog postings. If somebody takes snippets of material from a Walmart e-mail and uses them in a blog posting, I believe they should say where it comes from, and make sure that it's absolutely factually correct before doing so.

Blagojevich still stands by his racist appointee

2006-03-07T06:30:00.000-06:00

Illinois Governor Blagojevich still continues to support a member of the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay organization Nation of Islam for a position on his hate crimes commission. The guy just refuses to admit he made a mistake and fix it. Obviously it's absurd for somebody who hates whites, gays and Jews to sit on that panel.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich wouldn't discuss details Monday of how he appointed a Nation of Islam official to a state hate crimes commission or whether the two have talked about her views on race and tolerance.

Four members of the Governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes have resigned rather than serve with Claudette Marie Muhammad, chief of protocol for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Asked about the controversy, Blagojevich said Muhammad is not responsible for any racist remarks Farrakhan has made. "I do not believe in guilt by association," the Democratic governor said.

Here's the money quote right here:

Blagojevich said last week that he didn't realize he had appointed a Nation of Islam official until learning about it from news reports.

He didn't know? Obviously not a lot of thought went in to making his selections did it? But, let's assume that it really was an honest mistake, and the fact that this woman was a member of Nation of Islam was somwehow hidden from him. Now that you know, do something about it! Don't just defend your mistake like an idiot.

Israelis threaten Hamas leaders

2006-03-07T06:24:00.000-06:00

I just really like the language Israeli Defense Minister Mofaz uses here. Not immune? In other words, we're coming for you dirtbags if you screw with us.

Israel's defense minister warned Tuesday that Hamas leaders, including the incoming Palestinian prime minister, will not be immune from pinpointed Israeli killings if the Islamic terrorist group were to resume its attacks.

The minister, Shaul Mofaz, spoke a day after an Israeli airstrike against an ice cream truck killed two Islamic Jihad militants and three bystanders, including two children, in Gaza City.

Kirby Puckett

2006-03-07T06:20:00.000-06:00

RIP. Unfortunately, Puckett is a good example of what seems to happen to many former athletes after they're no longer playing. It's pretty sad to see it happen to somebody so young.

Puckett, whose weight gain in recent years concerned those close to him, was stricken early Sunday at his Arizona home. He died at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.

"He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term," commissioner Bud Selig said. "He played his entire career with the Twins and was an icon in Minnesota. But he was revered throughout the country and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon — and too quickly."

I guess this just makes it official

2006-03-06T17:33:00.000-06:00

Hmmm, I could've sworn Mahmoud Abbas was stripped of his powers a long time ago, since he appears to be a completely impotent figurehead. But, no matter. Hamas has officially taken complete control of the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas headed into a full-blown confrontation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, voting to strip him of powers he was hastily awarded by his Fatah Party in the last session of the outgoing parliament.

***

The Hamas-Fatah conflict has been simmering since Hamas swept Fatah out of office in January parliamentary elections, ending four decades of unchallenged rule by the party of the late Yasser Arafat.

Hamas has 74 seats in the new parliament and Fatah just 45, and the first order of business for Hamas was to cancel the powers the outgoing parliament gave to Abbas, the Fatah leader, authorizing him to cancel laws passed by the new parliament and appointing Fatah officials to key positions.

In the West Bank administrative capital of Ramallah, Fatah delegates walked out, accusing Hamas of twisting the rules to weaken Abbas' authority.

Civil war, what civil war?

2006-03-06T14:30:00.000-06:00

Vik Rubenfeld writes that the media's attempts to portray what is happening in Iraq as a civil war seem to be working, according to new poll results. However, it appears that in reality no such civil war exists. And, my fear is that, like Vietnam, we will be driven via political pressure in the US to leave Iraq before it's safe to do so. I just hope I'm just being overly pessimistic on that point, but if so many people can be successfully brainwashed by our mainstream media, just like they were during Vietnam, history could certainly repeat itself.

Tasers

2006-03-06T08:11:00.000-06:00

Kids, don't try this at home. What a freakin' bonehead.

I would certainly hope so

2006-03-06T06:53:00.000-06:00

The mother of Zaccarias Moussaoui says that her son is "in hell" waiting to find out out if he's going to be executed. Well, good for him. Maybe now he's getting a taste of what all those people murdered by him and his Al Qaeda comrades on 9/11 went through waiting to find out what was going to happen to them. There's nothing bad enough we can do to this guy to punish him sufficiently as far as I'm concerned.

The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who faces the death penalty for his role in the September 11 attacks, said he is in "hell" as she traveled to the United States to attend his sentencing trial.

Aicha el-Wafi arrived from France Saturday to attend the opening days of his trial in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where a jury will decide whether he will be executed in connection with the 2001 attacks.

She wept as she was greeted by two friends at a Washington airport but refused to speak to journalists.

Earlier in the week, she told AFP that even if Moussaoui was an Al-Qaeda member, he never committed any crime.

"I hope that the American people are not blind to the point of swallowing what the prosecutor says. He has admitted he is an Islamist. He has admitted he is with Al-Qaeda. But he has not committed any offense at all," she said.

Even if he had nothing to do with 9/11, which is not the case anyway, he is a member of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, and that is a crime in and of itself.

Interesting

2006-03-06T06:32:00.000-06:00

It only takes one can a day of soft drink consumption to add about fifteen pounds to the average teenager. That's pretty scary, and it's even scarier to think of what that would do to an older person who doesn't have the quick metabolism a teenager does.

TEENAGERS who consume a can of sugary drink a day are likely to be up to a stone (6.4kg) heavier after a year than those drinking unsweetened versions, research suggests.

A study by American scientists has pointed to the impact of sugar-sweetened drinks on weight, and the global epidemic of childhood obesity. Researchers who monitored the weight of 100 teenagers, half of whom were put on to unsweetened drinks, concluded that a single 330ml can a day of sugary drinks translated to more than 1lb of weight gain every month.

The full effect of sugary drink consumption is revealed in a study published today in the journal Pediatrics. The findings come as experts predict that childhood obesity rates will rise sharply in the next five years, with a profound impact on everything from public health care systems to the economy.

Analysis by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), also released this morning, suggests that by 2010 about 40 per cent of children in the European Union — more than 26 million — will be overweight if trends continue. About a quarter of young people are currently classified as overweight or obese.

Increased consumption of fizzy drinks and squashes — which contain more sugar than any other substance in most children’s diets — has caused particular concern among health experts.

In the Pediatrics study, researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston in the US followed 103 teenagers for six months. Half of the participants received low-calorie drinks, such as bottled waters and “diet” brands, and were instructed to avoid sweet drinks. The remaining teenagers acted as a control group and continued their usual eating and drinking patterns.

After six months, consumption of sugary drinks by the first group had dropped by 82 per cent, while intake in the control group remained unchanged. Other factors, such as physical activity levels and television viewing, did not change in either group.

Of course, different teenagers responded differently to the soft drinks. Kids with weight problems already were more likely to gain weight from the soda drinking.

Researchers found that the heavier the teenager at the start of the trial, the stronger the effect on weight. Among the heaviest third of participants, those receiving lowcalorie drinks had a marked decrease in body mass index (BMI), while the control group had a slight increase.

I think the take home point is to try to keep your kids from drinking as much soda as possible.

Oh, this is too funny

2006-03-06T06:24:00.000-06:00

Hamas has rejected the help of Al Qaeda, saying that Al Qaeda is too extreme an organization! This is the same Hamas who openly says they want to wipe Israel off of the map, and believes that women and children are legitimate targets.

Hamas officials shrugged off the support offered by Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, saying Sunday the Palestinian militant group has a different ideology than the terror network and won election through a moderate approach to Islam.

In a video aired Saturday by Al-Jazeera, Ayman Al-Zawahiri called for jihad, or holy war, to reclaim Palestinian lands and implied Al Qaeda's support for Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel despite international pressure since the militant Islamic group swept parliamentary elections in January.

A Hamas official in Gaza, speaking on condition of anonymity because the movement did not want to formally respond to Al-Zawahiri 's support, said: "Hamas believes that Islam is completely different to the ideology of Mr. Al-Zawahiri ."

"Our battle is against the Israeli occupation and our only concern is to restore our rights and serve our people. We have no links with any group or element outside Palestine," the official said.

Hamas is setting up a new Palestinian Cabinet after defeating Fatah, which had ruled Palestinian politics for four decades. Hamas does not accept the presence of a Jewish state in the Mideast and has sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel. The United States and European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

Oh, I see. Both Hamas and Al Qaeda beleive in murdering innocent civilians through terrorism, and both believe in spreading sharia law through violent jihad. But, because Hamas limits it's terrorism to a small area of the world, they consider themselves a moderate group. How warped is that?

The Oscars

2006-03-06T06:15:00.000-06:00

I never saw the movie Crash, which won Best Picture. But, I'm just happy that it didn't go to Brokeback Mountain, was just a long, tedious ordeal to sit through. As far as I'm concerned, a film can't be considered to be the best of the year if it was that boring to watch. The story line doesn't bother me, or I wouldn't have seen it in the first place.

"Crash" pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Academy Awards history, winning best picture Sunday over the front-runner "Brokeback Mountain."

"Crash," featuring a huge cast in crisscrossing story lines over a chaotic 36-hour period in Los Angeles, rode a late surge of praise that lifted it past the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain," a film that had won most other key Hollywood honors.

"We are humbled by the other nominees in this category. You have made this year one of the most breathtaking and stunning maverick years in American cinema," said "Crash" producer Cathy Schulman.

She was commenting on a year that saw the box office sinking, provocative independent films dominating big studio fare and a tiny-budgeted ensemble drama from outside Hollywood taking first prize.

Lead-acting
Oscars went to
Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in "Capote" and
Reese Witherspoon as country singer June Carter in "Walk the Line," while corporate thrillers earned supporting-performer Oscars for
George Clooney in "Syriana" and
Rachel Weisz in "The Constant Gardener."

"Brokeback Mountain" filmmaker
Ang Lee did win the best-director prize for the tale of two old sheepherding pals who carry on a love affair they conceal from their families for years.

Lee, whose martial-arts epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" won the foreign-language Oscar five years ago, became the first Asian filmmaker to win Hollywood's main filmmaking honor.

"I'm so proud of the movie," Lee said backstage, where he was asked if he was disappointed that his film about gay cowboys lost best picture and what might have kept it from winning. "Why they didn't go for it, I don't know. You're asking a question that I don't know the answer. ... Congratulations to the `Crash' filmmakers."

Front-runners usually prevail, but there have been some notable dark-horse winners at past Oscars. Underdogs that came away with best picture include "An American in Paris" (over "A Place in the Sun" and "A Streetcar Named Desire"); "The Greatest Show on Earth" (over "High Noon") and "Chariots of Fire" (over "Reds" and "On Golden Pond").

Simply amazing

2006-03-05T20:04:00.000-06:00

This guy is being accused of harassment and discrimination merely for advertising that he is an English speaking American. (via Tongue Tied)

"They claim it's offensive and I've been accused of discrimination and harassment, believe it or not, because of this," said Mike Gray, a heavy equipment operator with the Arapahoe County Road and Bridge Department for 16 years.

The problems began last spring. Gray, 50, owns a lawn service business on the side. He was routinely driving to work in his pickup truck towing a trailer that he uses to carry lawn mowing equipment for his business. On the side of his trailer, the married father of two affixed a sign that reads "Lawn Services Done With Pride!! By An English Speaking American."

The sign also gives Gray's phone number and the lettering is over a background of an American flag.

"There are a lot of people in the lawn service that are non-English speaking," Gray said. "Customers and different people were telling me that they have a hard time trying to communicate with them about the work they want done on their yards. I just want to let people know they at least can communicate with me when I do work on their property."

Gray also wore a hat to work that says "U.S. Border Patrol," which he says was a gift from his son.

Arapahoe County officials told Gray the sign and hat must go or else. In a Nov. 10, 2005, letter, his supervisor Monty Sedlak wrote the following:

"Some of your conduct ... is reprehensible and discriminatory to our non-English speaking and/or Hispanic workforce. You are in violation of ... guidelines which ensure a workplace free from harassment and sensitive to the diversity of employees."

"You are required to permanently remove your cap from the workplace. It is offensive and harassing. Your business sign, if on work premises, must be completely covered at all times. This behavior is inappropriate and any further incidents of this nature may result in further disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment."

Bloggers and Walmart

2006-03-05T19:43:00.000-06:00

Just for the record, I am one of the bloggers that Pejman writes about here. And, I share Pejman's philosophy regarding the stories that I recieve from Walmart public relations. In other words, I write whatever I wish to about the stories that are e-mailed to me, and ignore stories that I don't find interesting. And, I plan on continuing to do so.

Light blogging until Monday

2006-03-01T15:50:00.000-06:00

Out of town until then. Have a pleasant rest of the week.

Ooops

2006-03-01T13:20:00.000-06:00

This Islamic Jihad dirtbag accidently went and blew himself up before he got to kill any evil Jews. It would have been preferable for the Israelis to have knocked him off, but I suppose this is almost as good, and more entertaining to boot.

Islamic Jihad's top military commander in Gaza was killed Wednesday in a car blast that rocked a busy street in Gaza City, knocking out electricity and wounding two other people.

The Israeli military, which carries out pinpointed attacks against militants in the coastal strip, said it was not involved in the death of rocketmaker Khaled Dahdouh. And the Palestinian Interior Ministry said no missile parts were found in the incinerated car.

Of course, that won't stop the Islamic Jihad from blaming Israel and threatening retaliation anyway.

But Islamic Jihad accused Israel of killing Dahdouh in an airstrike and vowed revenge for his death.

I didn't think they needed an excuse to engage in anti-Israeli terrorism, but whatever.

Another excuse for me to not eat my vegetables

2006-03-01T09:14:00.000-06:00

Fruits and vegetables do not contain as many vitamins as they did in the past.

Fruits and veggies aren't what they used to be, new data suggests.

Of the 13 major nutrients found in fruits and vegetables, six have declined substantially, according to a study by Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin.

Using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Davis concludes that recently grown crops have shown decreases of up to 38 percent in protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin when compared with produce from past decades.

What accounts for this negative trend? Like any other competitive industry, farmers' attempts to drive up profits have led them to use new techniques to increase production, Davis said. The faster-grown fruits don't have as much time to develop the nutrients.

"Farmers get paid by the weight of a crop, not by amount of nutrients," Davis said. He called this the "dilution effect": As fruits and vegetables grown in the United States become larger and more plentiful, they provide fewer vitamins and minerals.

"It's a simple inverse relationship: The higher the yield, the lower the nutrients," he said.

Another bogus Bush poll, this time by CBS

2006-03-01T08:17:00.000-06:00

The latest CBS poll shows that George Bush's approval rating has fallen to 34%. Unfortunately, CBS polled 40% Democrats and only 27% Republicans.

The number of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents polled:

“Total Republicans” contacted: 272 unweighted and 289 weighted.

“Total Democrats” contacted: 409 unweighted and 381 weighted.

“Total Independents” contacted: 337 unweighted and 348 weighted.

That is 27% Republicans polled compared 40% Democrats polled.

I love when they put out these rigged polls. Do they they think nobody is going to notice?

States have lots of cash

2006-03-01T07:59:00.000-06:00

That weak Bush economy is causing problems again (cough cough) as state's continue to rake in tons of money in tax revenues. State tax revenue from July to September of last year grew a whopping 9.1% overall! Of course, it varies from state to state, but it's just more good reason to oppose tax increases at the state level. For example, here in Illinois we saw a 6.1% increase in tax revenue during that time period. So, there's no excuse for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to even think about reneging on his pledge not to raise taxes.

Well, they say patience is a virtue

2006-03-01T06:27:00.000-06:00

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says that Hamas is not impatient. They'll accept the slow step by step destruction of Israel rather than insisting that it occur quickly.

The Hamas terrorist organization is not impatient, and will accept a long-term elimination of the Jewish state, rather than seek its immediate demise, the new masters of the Palestinian Authority have graciously offered.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, PA Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh said what was taken by many to mean Hamas is ready to sign on to the two-state solution being imposed upon Israel by the international community:

"If Israel withdraws to the '67 borders, then we will establish a peace in stages."

In its mad dash to make Hamas appear anything but the dedicated killers and would-be annihilators of the Jewish state that they are, much of the international press jumped on Haniyeh's words as evidence the terror group is coming around to the idea of living at peace with Israel.

This despite the fact Haniyeh deflected every attempt by his interviewer to get him to say Hamas is ready, now, to recognize and accept the State of Israel as part of a final peace settlement.

The Jews, who last week were invited to live in Islamic "Palestine" as second-class citizens, are not the problem, said Haniyeh, but their current sovereignty over this narrow strip of land is unacceptable.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri later explained to reporters that the Post had apparently made an error in translation, noting that rather than "peace in stages" Haniyeh had said Hamas is prepared to seek a "solution in stages."

It's amazing that The Washington Post and other media outlets got this story so wrong, but appparently they're so gung ho to embrace Hamas that they screwed up royally.

Mental health care in the US

2006-03-01T06:16:00.000-06:00

According to this report, if you need psychiatric treatment, Illinois would not be a good state to be living in. But, overall, the nation at a whole is said to be pretty poor in terms of psychiatric care.

The United States gets a D grade in helping adults with serious mental illnesses, according to the first state-by- state report on the nation's mental healthcare system in more than 15 years.

"Grading the States: A Report on America's Health Care System for Serious Mental Illnesses," funded by the Stanley Foundation, was released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

***

Only five states received grades in the B range: Connecticut, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Eight states received Fs: Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

"Treatment works, if you can get it, and if states get it right," said NAMI medical director Ken Duckworth. "Unfortunately, too many states are willing to risk or tolerate premature deaths."

So what can be done to help solve this problem?

"Too many states are behind the curve. They are not keeping pace by moving toward a recovery-oriented health care system, based on proven, cost-effective practices. They are selling taxpayers short by settling for pieces of systems that are largely obsolete."

The NAMI report makes several recommendations: *Invest in proven, cost-effective practices (i.e, evidence-based practices) *Increase funding tied to performance and recovery *Improve data collection *Increase access to information *Involve consumers and families at all levels *Eliminate discrimination Besides being the only large, populous state to receive an F grade, Illinois ranked 46th in the nation in a "Consumer and Family Test Drive" of information accessibility through the state mental health agency's Web site and telephone system. In one instance, an Illinois agency employee told a consumer: "No, I don't want to help you."

"Getting help means getting access to information," Duckworth said. "When 40 states can't pass a pop quiz on providing basic information to the people whom they are supposed to serve, then the system is in trouble."

Sounds like there's a lot of work to be done.

It just keeps getting more and more twisted

2006-02-28T08:08:00.000-06:00

Thousands of Pakistani children aged from 8-12 years old called for the deaths of those responsible for the cartoons depicting Muhammed.

About 5,000 children chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet" rallied in Pakistan's largest city on Tuesday in the latest protest in the Islamic nation against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The children, ages 8 to 12, burned a coffin draped in U.S., Israeli and Danish flags at a traffic intersection in the port city of Karachi as police in riot gear looked on.

The rally was organized by Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic group. The children, some wearing school uniforms and headbands emblazoned with "God is great," were released from schools to take part.

Jamaat-e-Islami is part of a radical coalition of six Islamic parties that has rallied Muslims throughout Pakistan in recent weeks against the cartoons despite bans on protests in some cities.

What more needs to be said?

Most personal bankruptcies not due to medical expenses

2006-02-28T07:58:00.000-06:00

Two researchers from the Kellogg School of Management have put out a study debunking the claim that medical expenses are responsible for 46% of all personal bankruptcy filings. It turns out that medical expenses are a cause of about 17%, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were even the main cause.

A report that expensive illnesses lead to nearly half of all personal bankruptcies is being challenged by researchers who looked at the same data and concluded that such costs lead to fewer than one in five bankruptcies.

The study looked at 1,771 bankruptcy filers in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. It said illnesses and medical bills were cited as the cause, at least in part, of 46 percent of the bankruptcies.

That original study, by Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School and colleagues, was published on the Internet by Health Affairs last year.

The challenge, by David Dranove and Michael L. Millenson of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, appears in today's Internet edition of that journal.

A reanalysis, funded by a health insurance trade group, identified people who said illness or injury was the cause of bankruptcy and also said medical bills contributed to it.

That led Dranove and Millenson to conclude that ''medical expenditure bankruptcies" constituted 17 percent of all bankruptcies.

For that 17 percent, the researchers could not determine whether medical costs were the top cause of bankruptcy.

This is important because the original study from Harvard was being used as support for a nationalized healthcare system. And now it looks like that study was not to be trusted.

Looks like damned if you do, damned if you don't

2006-02-28T07:47:00.000-06:00

Black lawmakers in Illinois are warning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich that if he sticks with his pledge to not raise taxes he's at risk of losing black votes.

Black lawmakers urged Gov. Rod Blagojevich to take back his no-tax-increase pledge because of its impact on schools, warning Monday that the position could cost him votes.

"The governor cannot take the African-American vote for granted in the general election," said Sen. James Meeks, chairman of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. "There is no guarantee that that vote is going to be there, especially since those individuals who are African-American, their priority is educational funding."

Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Oberweis detailed his plan for ethics reform — a package similar to other GOP candidates' proposals.

Blagojevich says he will not raise income or sales taxes if elected to a second term, a repeat of the pledge that helped the Democrat win office the first time.

Members of the black caucus held a news conference — joined by officials from the Chicago schools and a teachers union — to oppose Blagojevich' no-increase pledge because it blocks any tax "swap" that would involve raising income taxes and lowering property taxes.

I find this to be silly for three main reasons. One, black voters in Illinois would be very unlikely to vote Republican under most circumstances, so their threat seems pretty empty to me. Two, blacks would have no reason to believe that the GOP candidate will raise taxes, or support tax swaps. And three, Blagojevich will lose a lot more votes if he breaks his promise to not raise taxes than he will lose if he doesn't raise taxes. Blago has so little credibility now that breaking his promise would be the death knell of his campaign.

Jihad by Internet

2006-02-28T06:21:00.000-06:00

The Washington Times editorial page has a good piece today about how Islamists are using the internet to wage global jihad, and what the United States can do about it.

[...]"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said despondently earlier this month. Whether the United States is "losing" this high-technology war is debatable, but clearly we suffer critical losses the moment a "Juba" video in English comes into existence and spreads around the world.

It's not just furtive recordings, videos, Web sites and e-mails; it's proactive attacks on our own media outlets, too. In the weeks after her Web site published the Danish Muhammad cartoons, syndicated columnist and popular conservative blogger Michelle Malkin suffered repeated illegal "denial of service" attacks which incapacitated the site for hours. The attacks, traced to computers in Turkey, were dispersed once the Turkish Web-hosting company was notified. From here it is up to U.S. and Turkish authorities to pursue the hackers. No doubt many of them will elude consequences, however.

Mrs. Malkin's experience is hardly unique: Hundreds of sites are hacked each year by technologically savvy Islamists and their sympathizers. In fact, at least one official Iranian government newspaper bragged recently of hacking "enemy" Danish and European Web sites in the wake of the Muhammad cartoon affair. Other militant Islamists have been credited with similar successes.

The United States is not paralyzed in the face of Internet jihad. We have tools to combat it, but they are the familiar ones: Tracing terrorist cells, unravelling technical clues and arresting the offenders. We should realize that there is no real technical fix for most of the Internet jihad -- although technical know-how is of the utmost importance -- and much depends on the cooperation of allies with whom the United States maintains extradition treaties. Arresting offenders sends the message that malefactors deserve: Do not collaborate with militant Islam, or else risk arrest, extradition and prosecution. This method is being tested today: Authorities in the United Kingdom are currently trying to extradite Babar Ahmad, a 32-year-old information-technology professional accused of running American Web sites that promote and support militant Islam. The particulars of this case are debated, but the implication is not.

Technical capability will matter much more in cases like Iran's alleged hacking successes. Government-sponsored attacks must be confronted by the U.S. government's best information-technology specialists in coordination with affected American companies and citizens. We are a wealthier and more technologically capable society than Iran's; we can win this war.

Waiting times for surgery

2006-02-27T14:17:00.000-06:00

Over at Cafe Hayek there's an interesting post regarding the waiting time for elective surgical procedures in the US versus other industrialized nations, many with socialized healthcare systems. And, it should come as no surprise that the waiting times in the United States are far shorter than in those countries. As an example, the percentage of people needing cardiac bypass surgery who had to wait at least 3 months before their surgery was about 47% in Canada, and almost 89% in Great Britain.

I don't know about you, but if I needed a bypass, I don't want to be waiting more than three months to get one. So, next time somebody starts talking about how we spend so much money for healthcare in the US versus these other countries but we're not getting anything for our money, smack them in the head and set them straight.

The port deal is a misnomer

2006-02-27T10:51:00.000-06:00

According to Richard Knee, the British company P&0 does not run any port, but only runs or co-manages a single cargo terminal at six ports in the US. The actual ports themselves are run by port or harbor administrations which are public entities. Therefore, the Dubai company that is taking over P&O will not be taking over the administration of the ports, but only the cargo terminals that P&O now operates.

The Sentinel on Friday carried a story by Bay City News Service's Jason Benner regarding the outcry over Dubai Ports World's proposed acquisition of P&O Ports.

Benner said the deal would mean that DPW would operate six major U.S. Atlantic ports.

It's not so.

P&O Ports does not run any U.S. port. It manages or co-manages a single cargo terminal at each of several U.S. ports. If the acquisition goes through, DPW would replace P&O in that role.

Note the difference: most U.S. ports, even the smaller ones, comprise multiple cargo-handling and/or passenger-processing terminals (some also accommodate other activities such as fishing, fish processing and recreational boating).

Oversight of all waterfront activities rests with port or harbor administrations, which are public entities. DPW's acquisition of P&O would not change that. And to my knowledge, at no U.S. port does a single company operate all the terminals.

The entire discourse on this matter has lacked a clear distinction -- or even a fuzzy one -- between a "port" and a "terminal."

The problem is that members of Congress have mischaracterized the DPW-P&O deal from the start, and most journalists and news outlets -- including the likes of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Times -- have simply parroted the fallacy instead of doing any research to learn whether the politicians' claims were even half true.

If this is indeed true, it obviously changes the entire discussion of whether this Dubai company poses a threat to our national security.

Ed Rendell

2006-02-27T07:54:00.000-06:00

Penn Patriot looks at Ed Rendells's tenure as Pennsylvania Governor and it's not a pretty picture. He then asks, instead of focusing on Lynn Swann's political inexperience, why not focus on Rendell's lousy track record in office? Makes sense to me. My perception of Rendell when I lived in Philly and he was mayor was that he was a corrupt machine politician, and nothing I've read about his term as governor has done anything to change that perception. Swann looks like a very capable intellegent man who would very likely do a better job than Rendell.

The Religion of Peace strikes again

2006-02-27T06:19:00.000-06:00

A nurse in Pakistan was gang raped as punishment for refusing to perform illegal abortions there.

The gang rape of a nurse who refused to perform illegal abortions has outraged Pakistan and intensified calls for the repeal of its rape laws.

Rubina Kousar, 26, was attacked by three men after they burst into her lodgings at a rural health centre at Mattrai in the western Punjab last Wednesday.

Police arrested Allah Nawaz, 24, his brother Malik Riaz, 34, who has been elected as a local council leader, and a friend, Mohamed Ashraf, 25, on suspicion of rape. They deny the charges.

The case has pitted landowners, who rule their fiefdoms with impunity, against those wanting to do away with brutal practices that go unpunished in rural backwaters.

"I was constantly put under pressure over the course of six months to carry out illegal abortions on two women but I refused," said Miss Kousar. "And so revenge was taken."

***

Pakistan's hudood law outlaws extramarital sex and forces a rape victim to field four witnesses to prove her case. The victim can be considered a guilty party.

President Pervez Musharraf is facing increasing pressure to repeal the law, introduced by the late military dictator Gen Zia-ul-Huq, even if it antagonises radical Islamists. All the same, human rights activists fear Miss Kousar will not get a fair hearing.

Bomb sniffing dog strikes out

2006-02-27T06:10:00.000-06:00

A bomb sniffing dog at a Chicago Metra station failed to detect a pound of explosives that was sitting less than six feet from it, and also failed to detect when the person carrying it walked past them multiple times. The dog and his handler also spent hours just standing around in one place instead of moving around within the train station as they were supposed to do.

A bomb-sniffing dog that protects the Chicago area's commuter rails failed to detect a pound of explosives concealed in luggage less than six feet from its nose -- and spent hours standing around, a CBS2/Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.

A dog and handler from Securitas Inc. did not react when an undercover tester walked past the team three times with the bag at Metra's Ogilvie Transportation Center earlier this month. The tester then placed the luggage in front of the dog for 30 seconds, but the team did not discover the explosives. The experiment was captured on a hidden video camera.

The camera also showed dog handlers sitting and talking for as much as two hours at a time during five separate visits to Metra stations between October and January. The handlers and dogs rarely moved from one spot.

Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said the dogs were never intended to detect bombs on passing commuters. Still, Metra officials were troubled by the video showing the dogs and handlers standing around, she said.

Metra expected the teams to work their entire shift searching Metra's downtown stations and train platforms for explosives when they were not checking out suspicious packages, Pardonnet said.

I hope the typical dog trained to detect explosives is a lot better than this one is or we're all in a lot of trouble.

French protest Halimi murder

2006-02-26T16:56:00.000-06:00

Are the French starting to understand the incredible danger of the Islamofascist element living within their country, or will all of this anger just fade away in a few weeks? We'll have to wait and see, but this is good to see.

Tens of thousands of people have marched through Paris to protest against racism and anti-Semitism after the kidnap and murder of a young Jew.

Ilan Halimi, 23, was found naked with horrific injuries, three weeks after he was kidnapped by an extortion gang.

Marchers on Sunday lit candles and released white balloons in his memory.

The suspected gang leader has been arrested in Ivory Coast. He allegedly said Halimi was picked because he was a Jew, and therefore presumed to be rich.

Among those at Sunday's rally were members of the government and the opposition, Jewish and anti-racism campaigners, and leaders of the Jewish and other religious communities.

Unfortunately, French Interior Minister Sarkozy either doesn't get it, or he's too afraid to speak the truth.

France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who was at Sunday's march, said earlier in the week that greed was the main motive.

"But they believed, and I quote, 'that Jews have money'," he said. "That's called anti-Semitism."

Bullshit. You don't torture somebody to death over the period of several days, and then dump him naked in the street because you're greedy and want money. You do it because you absolutely despise Jews and want them dead.

City Lights bookstore hypocrisy

2006-02-26T08:18:00.000-06:00

Cathy Seipp was shocked to finds that San Francisco's famous City Lights bookstore, a store that once suported free speech by selling books nobody else would sell, will not sell Oriana Fallaci's book because "they don't sell books by fascists". The hypocrisy is quite obvious, as there refusal to sell certain books that they don't agree with smacks of fascism itself, and by not carrying a book that discusses Islamofascism, they help perpetuate it. (via Austin Bay).

A FRIEND OF MINE took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, explaining to her that the place is important because years ago it sold books no other store would — even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive.

So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.

However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.

"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."

Now let's just savor the absurd details of this for a minute. City Lights has a long and proud history of supporting banned authors — owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indicted (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and a photo at the bookstore showed Ferlinghetti proudly posing next to a sign reading "banned books."

Yet his store won't carry, of all people, Fallaci, who is not only being sued in Italy for insulting religion because of her latest book but continues to fight the good fight against those who think that the appropriate response to offensive books and cartoons is violent riots. It's particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.

Strangest of all is the scenario of such a person disliking an author for defending Western civilization against radical Islam — when one of the first things those poor, persecuted Islamists would do, if they ever (Allah forbid) came to power in the United States, is crush suspected homosexuals like him beneath walls.

Yet those most oppressed by political Islam continue to defend it, even (perhaps especially) in the wake of the Danish cartoon furor. I've heard that in Europe this phenomenon is now called the Copenhagen syndrome, and some of its arguments really are amazing.

It's really quite frightening how many Westerners are more afraid of speaking out against Islamofascism than they are of the Islamofascists themselves.

Anti-Semitic movie a big hit with the Turks

2006-02-26T08:00:00.000-06:00

The intensely anti-Semitic and anti-American movie Valley of the Wolves has been a huge hit in Turkey. And, now it is provoking much hand-wringing in Germany, since it has been selling out to large cheering audiences of Turks there as well.

Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.

Bavaria's interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals.

Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programmes.

The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country's prime minister.

***

The production went on general release in Germany a fortnight ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening. At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the United States military commander in northern Iraq.

In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"

Afterwards, an 18-year-old member of the audience said: "The Americans always behave like this. They slaughtered the Red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam.

"I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day."

I'm sure it's just a coincidence

2006-02-26T07:46:00.000-06:00

A company whose owners donated heavily to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's election campaign has received a huge multimillion dollar contract to supply I-Passes to local Jewel-Osco stores despite not being the lowest bidder. For those who don't know what an I-Pass is, they are the electronic transponders you can use to go through toll plazas without stopping to pay the toll each time.

Originally hired in 2003 for a six-month job involving just 25,000 I-Pass transponders, IGOR the Watchdog Corp. has since helped place the wallet-sized devices in more than 1.1 million cars and trucks through sales at Jewel.

The tollway twice extended IGOR's contract without rebidding it and significantly upped its dollar value on five separate occasions. All this was perfectly legal and absolutely necessary, tollway officials say.

"The changes in the IGOR contract are directly tied to the unprecedented growth of the I-Pass program," said Joelle McGinnis, spokeswoman for the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. "Since retail sales and the addition of more I-Pass-only lanes were unprecedented efforts, the tollway had no way to gauge how much the demand for transponders would increase."

But the Sun-Times has learned that DuPage County prosecutors are scrutinizing the IGOR deal as part of an investigation into a tollway employee who recently was suspended for possible wrongdoing. The employee, who once did volunteer work for the Blagojevich campaign, oversaw IGOR's contract.

Critics of Blagojevich say the deck was stacked in IGOR's favor because its owners, Michael and Sherry Guthrie, donated $76,000 to Blagojevich's political fund and employ a former top Blagojevich staffer, John Wyma, as a lobbyist. They claim the bidding process was fast-tracked to favor IGOR.

***

The Guthries, who did not respond to several inquiries seeking comment, have been generous political donors through the years, mostly to Republicans. But the $76,000 they've given Blagojevich is nearly five times the $15,400 they donated to Ryan between 1994 and 2000.

The Guthries gave $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 24, 2003, and hired Wyma -- Blagojevich's chief of staff when the governor was in Congress -- as a lobbyist less than a month later. IGOR won the I-Pass contract over two other bidders on Oct. 30, 2003.

Dahlstrom Display of Broadview had underbid IGOR. It offered to warehouse, box and transport transponders to Jewel for 12 percent less per unit.

But Dahlstrom's bid was disqualified because it didn't meet technical criteria that weighed 60 percent of the evaluation, records show.

Yes, the "technical criteria" Dahlstrom didn't meet were that they didn't bribe the right people!

Okay

2006-02-25T13:46:00.000-06:00

It appears that, if you're a mouse, you should avoid drinking large amounts of tea.

Working with a team of graduate students, Professor Peter O'Brien of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy injected low and concentrated doses of polyphenols into mice. At low doses, "good" polyphenols protected the liver or isolated liver cells against oxygen radicals, while "bad" polyphenols caused liver toxicity at high concentrations.

"The low concentration is roughly equivalent to what people consume when they drink green or black tea," O'Brien says. "But the health benefits are not clear as only a small amount of the polyphenols in the teas seems to get absorbed across the intestine. We won't know how much is absorbed or metabolized without running large clinical trials involving humans."

Elmwood Park school funding reinstated

2006-02-25T08:28:00.000-06:00

In a follow-up to this story, the Illinois State Board of Education reinstated state funding to the Elmwood Park school district, after the school district promised to stop questioning prospective immigrant students about whether they were legally permitted to attend public school there. It would have been nice if the case were allowed to go to court to see if the heavy handed tactics of the Elmwood School Board were legal, but the school could not afford to be without the 3.5 million dollars that was being denied to them.

The Illinois State Board of Education reinstated the Elmwood Park school district Friday, just hours after the district's board caved in to demands that it stop barring some students based on their immigration status.

State education officials voted Thursday to cut off Elmwood Park's funding -- a move that threatened the district's budget and left its sports teams ineligible to compete. But Friday, the Elmwood Park school board voted to change its immigration policy.

"Unfortunately, the children are being held hostage because adults won't allow their legal dispute to be resolved by a judge," said Elmwood Park school board vice president Angela Stranges, referring to a lawsuit between the district and the state board.

John Murphy, a lawyer for the district, said the Elmwood Park board still believed its legal position was correct but that the district had no choice but to surrender.

"The board is very reluctant to cave in to what the state board has asked," Murphy said. ". . . But they need money to run the school."

I still maintain that the parents in this district need to vote out the responsible school board members for jeopardizing their children's education so that they could go on a damn power trip.

What's Blago's problem here?

2006-02-25T08:00:00.000-06:00

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich refuses to remove an advisor to Nation of Islam from his hate crimes commission despite the fact that Nation of Islam is an anti-Semitic, anti-white and anti-gay organization. Why can't Blagojevich just accept the fact that he made a mistake, fix it and move on? To me, this is just one more reason not to vote for this guy when November rolls around. Somebody who's stupid enough to appoint this person in the first place, and then not do anything about it when his mistake is brought to his attention, doesn't merit the governorship.

Claudette Marie Johnson, minister of protocol for the Nation of Islam, was appointed to the panel in August because she shares the commission's goals of eliminating hate crimes and discrimination, Blagojevich spokeswoman Cheryle Jackson said.

``In order for the commission to truly achieve its mission, it must be inclusive, not exclusive, and respectfully and constructively bring together people of different backgrounds and voices to solve our differences,'' Jackson said Thursday.

Johnson's place on the panel became an issue after she invited other members to attend a Farrakhan speech on Sunday at the Nation of Islam's Saviour's Day conference in Chicago.

``When we got word she was placed on the commission as a representative of the Nation of Islam, we were clearly concerned,'' said Lonnie Nasatir, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League and a member of the commission. ``This is a body aimed at eradicating hate. In Mr. Farrakhan's words over the years, he's actually espoused hate.''

Farrakhan's critics have called him anti-Semitic and anti-gay. In last year's Saviour's Day speech, he said: ``Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us.''

More about Nation of Islam here, here and here.

Al Qaeda behind failed refinery bombing

2006-02-25T07:51:00.000-06:00

Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for yesterday's attack on a Saudi oil facility. With all the money the Saudis spend promoting jihad all over the world you'd think Al Qaeda would leave them alone, but such is not the case. Apparently, they're pissed off that the Saudis sell oil on the open market so that infidels like me can put gas in our cars.

[...]According to the communique, "the mujahideen [from the brigade] managed to prepare two car bombs that were driven by martyrs inside the refinery. These refineries facilitate the looting and stealing of Muslim petroleum... These heroes are from the cream of Saudi Muslim male youth. Praise be to Allah, there are many more like them and they are all competing amongst themselves to become martyrs."

Weird

2006-02-24T15:36:00.000-06:00

Well, here's a headline you don't see every day.

Blah, blah, blah

2006-02-24T15:30:00.000-06:00

Let's see now. The mad mullahs in Iran say if the US attacks their nuclear facilities, they will attack Israel's nuclear facilities. Well, that makes good sense. Then they'll have two nuclear powers pissed off at them instead of just one. Why not attack Great Britain also while you're at it? Do they actually expect anyone to take this blather of theirs seriously?

If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility.

Dr. Abasi, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Tehran would respond to an American attack with strikes on the Dimona nuclear reactor and other strategic Israeli sites such as the port city of Haifa and the Zakhariya area.

Haifa is also home to a large concentration of chemical factories and oil refineries.

Zakhariya, located in the Jerusalem hills is - according to foreign reports - home to Israel's Jericho missile base. Both Israeli and international media have published commercial satellite images of the Zakhariya and Dimona sites.

Abasi, a senior lecturer at Tehran University, was quoted in the Roz internet news site, identified with reform circles in Iran.

Iranian affairs experts believe Abasi's statements are part of propaganda battle being wages by all sides - including Israel and Iran - in the lead up to next months United Nations Security Council debate on Iran's nuclear program.

At this stage, the possibility that sanctions will be leveled at Iran are extremely low.

Pretty funny

2006-02-24T07:48:00.000-06:00

Krauthammer points out the hypocrisy by the Democrats in opposing the port deal for reasons of national security, when those same Democrats oppose scrutinizing people of Middle Eastern appearance when they're going through airline security.

Congress is up in arms. The Democrats, in particular, are in full cry, gleeful to at last get to the right of George Bush on an issue of national security.

Gleeful, and shamelessly hypocritical. If a citizen of the UAE walked into an airport in full burnoose and flowing robes, speaking only Arabic, Democrats would be deeply offended, and might even sue, if the security people were to give him any more scrutiny than they would to my sweet 84-year-old mother.

Democrats loudly denounce any thought of racial profiling. But when that same Arab, attired in business suit and MBA, and with a good record running ports in 15 countries, buys P&O, Democrats howl at the very idea of allowing Arabs to run our ports. (Republicans are howling too, but they don't grandstand on the issue of racial profiling.)

On this, the Democrats are rank hypocrites. But even hypocrites can be right. There is a problem. And the problem is not just the obvious one that an Arab-run company, heavily staffed with Arab employees, is more likely to be infiltrated by terrorists who might want to smuggle an awful weapon into our ports. But that would probably require some cooperation from the operating company. And neither the company nor the government of the UAE, which has been pro-American and a reasonably good ally in the war on terror, has any such record.

Krauthammer says there is a problem with the deal, but not the one that the Dems have latched on to.

The greater and more immediate danger is that as soon as the Dubai company takes over operations, it will necessarily become privy to information about security provisions at crucial U.S. ports. That would mean a transfer of information about our security operations -- and perhaps even worse, about the holes in our security operations -- to a company in an Arab state in which there might be employees who, for reasons of corruption or ideology, would pass this invaluable knowledge on to al Qaeda-types.

That is the danger and it is a risk, probably an unnecessary one. It's not quite the end of the world that Democratic and Republican critics have portrayed it to be. After all, the UAE, which is run by a friendly regime, manages ports in other countries without any such incidents. Employees in other countries could leak or betray us just as easily. The issue, however, is that they are statistically more likely to be found in the UAE than, for example, in Britain.

It's a fairly close call. I can sympathize with the president's stubbornness in sticking to the deal. He is responsible for our foreign relations, and believes, not unreasonably, that it would harm our broader national interest to reject and humiliate a moderate Middle Eastern ally by pulling the contract just because a company is run by Arabs.

It still makes me nervous, and it certainly could have been handled better from a public relations standpoint.

These Elmwood Park school board members need to lose their jobs

2006-02-24T06:35:00.000-06:00

So let's see if I understand this. Every student at this school will suffer from a lack of state funding because two potential enrollees were asked if they were in the US legally, in accordance with federal law. And, as a result, a few school members decided to go on a power trip and strip all state funding from the school.

State Board of Education officials, led by an angry Mexican-American chairman, stripped Elmwood Park School District 401 of all state funding Thursday, saying officials there had illegally asked at least two potential students about their immigration status.

The Elmwood Park district stands to lose $3.5 million of its $30 million budget this year as a result of the state board's decision to "non-recognize'' the west suburban district. That could threaten teacher pay, the district's attorney said.

In addition, the district was suspended from the Illinois High School Association, meaning its varsity boys basketball team can't play in the Class AA boys basketball tournament on Monday and its cheerleaders can't compete in the March 4 sectional competition.

For state board Chairman Jesse Ruiz, Elmwood Park's treatment of two kids -- one from Ecuador seeking high school admission, and another from the Czech Republic seeking to attend middle school -- struck close to home.

"As the son of a Mexican American who was here illegally for eight years, you would have denied me an education,'' an angry Ruiz told Elmwood Park officials during the board's monthly meeting. "You are not supposed to discriminate against any children based on any immigration status.''

Immigration questions shouldn't even be asked during enrollment, he said.

Elmwood Park District 401 attorney Jack Murphy insisted the district was merely trying to follow federal immigration laws barring a person on a temporary B-2 visa from enrolling in a school.

The federal government has been cracking down on enforcement of that provision ever since some of the 9/11 terrorists got into the United States on B-2 visas and went on to illegally take classes here, said Murphy.

"I think what [state board members] have told us today is that you can't get your state money unless you violate federal laws. We think that's wrong,'' said Murphy, an attorney with the firm of Scariano, Himes & Petrarca.

The decison by the school board should be appealed, and the ffamilies of those attending this school should make sure that the school board members responsible for this get booted as quickly as possible.

Interesting

2006-02-24T06:28:00.000-06:00

According to a new study in the journal Blood, the International Olympic Committee is using a test for blood doping that is not accurate, and can lead to false positive results. In other words, the test will say that an athlete has been using banned substances when they really have not.

The study published in the major international scientific journal on blood science and medicine suggests International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) testing for Erythropoietin (Epo) is based on faked science.

***

In the Blood journal study research group led by Associate Professor Monique Beullens and Professor Mathieu Bollen (of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium) and their colleague Dr. Joris R Delanghe (of the Department of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital, Gent, Belgium) shows that widely-used by IOC and WADA Epo test can lead to the false-positive detection of rhEpo in post-exercise, protein-rich urine of the endurance sports athletes.

As a result of a disputed case of alleged rhEpo-abuse by an endurance athlete with post-exercise proteinuria, European scientists wondered whether the test for rhEpo can lead to false-positive results, perhaps as a result of cross-reactivity of the Epo-antibodies with unrelated to Epo other proteins of urine.

Straightforward experimental protocol of the reported study leaves little doubt that the major urinary protein that WADA test visualizes with the ani-Epo antibodies is not Epo.