#1
Hehehehe, more good laugh on that site, if you are one of the former LGF posters.
Kafkesque... "As Charles Johnson awake one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin. Yet, so deep was his self-esteem that the metamorphosis was barely noticed--caught just by the corner of the eye, and thus consciously unrecognized."
A-Pee article. Click the link to see the whole thing.
Voters in 2002 approved a bond measure for new police facilities, and construction began on the new headquarters in 2007. Heh heh. Now go out and deport some illegals and maybe you could start to afford these kinds of things again. Or maybe arrest some gang members so you won't need to any more.
Long-term mobile phone users could face a higher risk of developing cancer in later life, according to a decade-long study.
The report, to be published later this year, has reportedly found that heavy mobile use is linked to brain tumours.
The survey of 12,800 people in 13 countries has been overseen by the World Health Organisation.
Preliminary results of the inquiry, which is looking at whether mobile phone exposure is linked to three types of brain tumour and a tumour of the salivary gland, have been sent to a scientific journal. That's why I carry my mobile phone in my pocket. :-)
The findings are expected to put pressure on the British Government which has insisted that mobile phones are safe to issue stronger warnings to users. Somebody please tell Maria Shriver. Maybe this will get her to cut back even if Arnold can't.
#1
If the RF energy isn't enough to pierce the skin, how are the tumors being formed? The microwaves travel over your skin not through it. Literally is known as the "skin effect." This is just more of bad "science" being foisted on the world coupled with faux "journalism." Think "man-made global warming," just as true (not)!
#3
I think the energy gets diverted by conductors - like the steel roof of the grocery store (where my signal goes to zilch), so the slightly conductive layer of perspiration on the skin might also divert a bit of the energy around you rather than letting it pass through you. Not sure how significant it would be.
#4
...so what you may be suggesting is that energy unable to escape the steel cage of an automobile may result in an increase of that transmitted subcutaneously. ;)
#5
I have a theory. I did a study, and 100% of people who have or have had cancer have been around people who have farted or they themselves have farted. Therefore, there is a 100% correlation between human flatulence and cancer.
#6
My 2008 Beemer came with bluetooth. Push a button the steering wheel and it calls for you. Don't even have to take it out of its cradle. So, it begs the question, if Arnold and Maria are so wealthy and no contemporary why the hell don't they just buy a car or SUV that has bluetooth?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/26/2009 14:46 Comments ||
Top||
#7
No one really expected the kids to run around with a two watt uhf transmitter glued to their head.
The main effect is heating. It's like microwaving your brain. But the heating is trivial, and so the major studies discount it.
There may be other, unknown effects related to cell division. The studies are negative or inconclusive on that point.
But why not use a Bluetooth earset if you're a big mobile user - the power level is much lower.
Oh, you don't want to look like a nerd? Well, that's a marketing opportunity, isn't it?
So now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. For years, as the number of immigrants to Britain shot up apparently uncontrollably, the question was how exactly this had happened.
Was it through a fit of absent-mindedness or gross incompetence? Or was it not inadvertent at all, but deliberate?
The latter explanation seemed just too outrageous. After all, a deliberate policy of mass immigration would have amounted to nothing less than an attempt to change the very make-up of this country without telling the electorate.
There could not have been a more grave abuse of the entire democratic process. Now, however, we learn that this is exactly what did happen. The Labour government has been engaged upon a deliberate and secret policy of national cultural sabotage.
This astonishing revelation surfaced quite casually last weekend in a newspaper article by one Andrew Neather. He turns out to have been a speech writer for Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.
And it was he who wrote a landmark speech in September 2000 by the then immigration minister, Barbara Roche, that called for a loosening of immigration controls. But the true scope and purpose of this new policy was actively concealed.
In its 1997 election manifesto, Labour promised 'firm control over immigration' and in 2005 it promised a 'crackdown on abuse'. In 2001, its manifesto merely said that the immigration rules needed to reflect changes to the economy to meet skills shortages.
But all this concealed a monumental shift of policy. For Neather wrote that until 'at least February last year', when a new points-based system was introduced to limit foreign workers in response to increasing uproar, the purpose of the policy Roche ushered in was to open up the UK to mass immigration.
This has been achieved. Some 2.3million migrants have been added to the population since 2001. Since 1997, the number of work permits has quadrupled to 120,000 a year.
#2
"And the fact is that, despite his blithe assertions to the contrary, schools in areas of very high immigration find it desperately difficult to cope with so many children who don't even have basic English.
...
It also conveniently guaranteed an increasingly Labour-voting electorate since, as a recent survey by the Electoral Commission has revealed, some 90 per cent of black people and three-quarters of Asians vote Labour."
The Left loves nothing more than a divided (e.g. 'multicultural') electorate as it's so much easier for an unrepresentative element to hold power through divide and rule. And the Left also benefits from an ill-informed or mis-educated, constituency (see the many bloody red revolutions and insurgencies in second and third world countries). And the Left is also utterly unscrupulous in its diabolic ambition for power and control. Left wing politics exists only to reproduce itself at the expense of its host.
#4
I hate to see Britain going completely racist and fascist with the BNP but I also hate to see them going Muslim. I wonder if guys like Gordon Brown ever consider just how dangerous a game they are playing.
In the book I'm reading now about Richard Nixon, self proclaimed segregationist George Wallace was a factor in the 1968 election. That was due largely to white backlash from Lyndon Johnson's civil rights policies. Now, I know a lot of people think Nixon was bad, but he was certainly no George Wallace even if he did make deals with Wallace's co-confederate Strom Thurmond to get votes in the southern states. After the election, Wallace claimed a moral victory saying that Nixon had said the same things he did. Nixon confided to some of his aids that he basically did as Wallace claimed but that he said the things in a nicer way. Well, Nixon was just a whole lot smarter than Wallace.
My question is, will the Conservatives be smarter than the BNP or will Labor divide and conquer? If Britain's Conservatives are anything like today's American Republicans the outlook is not good as indicated by the performances of George Bush and John McCain who might just as well have been Democrats when it comes to immigration policy. Another white backlash is brewing but there doesn't seem to be any George Wallace in sight. Conservatives and Republicans just don't get it. They're still trying to play a gentleman's game when the fact is they're up against a bunch of godless communist bastards.
#2
Article is crap. Blames states problems on Republicans for keeping state budgets from passing. No blame for Democrats who want to spend and regulate California into oblivion.
"...This year, the Republicans, who have only 35 percent of the seats in the Assembly and 37.5 percent in the Senate, held up the budget bill for months until the state was forced in July to issue IOUs for state services. They objected to tax increases on cigarettes and a tax on oil extraction (which were later removed) and measures to improve tax enforcement on businesses (which were also removed). They demanded cuts in social services (which they got) and in transportation (which they didn't). The Democrats were able to block a measure to allow oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast--the scene of a disastrous oil spill in 1969--but, all in all, the budget shredded the state's safety net, including spending on health care for poor children, and took an ax to California's community colleges and state colleges, reducing enrollment at the latter by 300,000."
Clueless to the last.
Posted by: lord garth ||
10/26/2009 12:53 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON -- In the health care debate, the "public plan" is all things to all people. For supporters, it would discipline greedy private insurers and make health coverage affordable. For detractors, it's a way station on the path to a single-payer insurance system of government-run health care. In reality, the public plan is mostly an exercise in political avoidance: It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn't.
As originally conceived by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, the public plan would be a government-created, nonprofit insurance company providing Medicare-like coverage to the under-65 population. But unlike Medicare, benefits would be paid for mainly by premiums -- not taxes. Americans could buy coverage from the public plan or a private insurer.
Competition and choice would increase, say liberals. Facing the low-cost public plan, private insurers would hold down their own premiums, the argument goes. Health care costs for everyone would moderate. Government subsidies to provide universal coverage would be cheaper. By some estimates, Medicare's administrative costs are only 3 percent of spending compared with 13 percent or more for private insurers. A new public plan is widely presumed to enjoy an advantage in overhead.
Nonsense, retort critics. The public plan's low costs would be artificial. Its main advantage would be the congressionally mandated requirement that hospitals and doctors be reimbursed at rates at or near Medicare's. These are as much as 30 percent lower than rates paid by private insurers, says the health care consulting firm Lewin Group. With such savings, the public plan could charge much lower premiums and attract lots of customers. But health costs wouldn't subside; hospitals and doctors would offset the public plan's artificially low reimbursements by raising fees to private insurers, as already occurs with Medicare. Premiums would increase because private insurers must cover costs to survive.
As for administrative expenses, any advantage for the public plan is exaggerated, say critics. Part of the gap between private insurers and Medicare is statistical illusion: Because Medicare recipients have higher average health expenses ($10,003 in 2007) than the under-65 population ($3,946), its administrative costs are a smaller share of total spending. The public plan, with younger members, wouldn't enjoy this advantage.
Likewise, Medicare has low marketing costs because it's a monopoly. But a non-monopoly public plan would have to sell itself and would incur higher marketing costs. Private insurers' profits (included in administrative costs) also explain some of Medicare's cost advantage. But profits represent only 3 percent of the insurance industry's revenues. Moreover, accounting comparisons are misleading when they don't include the cost of Medicare's government-supplied investment capital. A public plan would also need investment capital. And suppose the public plan suffers losses. Congress would assuredly bail it out.
The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more "choice" and "competition") to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers -- and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there's a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.
Even Hacker concedes that without reimbursement rates close to Medicare's, the public plan would founder. If it had to "negotiate rates directly with providers" -- do what private insurers do -- the public plan could have "a very hard time" making inroads, he writes. Hacker opposes such weakened versions of the public plan.
By contrast, a favored public plan would probably doom today's private insurance. Although some congressional proposals limit enrollment eligibility in the public plan, pressures to liberalize would be overwhelming. Why should some under-65 Americans enjoy lower premiums and others not? In one study that assumed widespread eligibility, the Lewin Group estimated that 103 million people -- half the number with private insurance -- would switch to the public plan. Private insurance might become a specialty product.
Many would say: Whoopee! Get rid of the sinister insurers. Bring on a government single-payer system. But if that's the agenda, why not debate it directly? It's not insurers that cause high health costs; they're simply the middlemen. It's the fragmented delivery system and open-ended reimbursement. Would strict regulation of doctors, hospitals and patients under a single-payer system provide control? Or would genuine competition among health plans over price and quality work better?
That's the debate we need, but in truth, doctors, hospitals and patients don't want to be limited, whether by government or markets. Congress reflects public opinion. Fearing a real debate, we fake it.
#1
Private plans would still have to incur substantial costs of 'defensive medicine' - I'm not sure but I bet the public option plan would be protected from a lot of malpractice suits.
Took wife to emergency room about 10 months ago because she fell off stage at elementary school play.
3 hours later, 1 pain shot, 1 head MRI, and 2 x-rays of knee = $14,000! Fortunately, no actual need to "do" anything for her - just lay there in pain. Nothing they did was actually worth $14,000. We just had to pay big bucks so that they could "cost shift" to all the folks not paying at all. We could pay because we are responsible and had medical insurance.
I don't blame the hospital, and I don't blame the insurance company or the doctors - I blame congress that requires hospitals to treat folks that won't pay and then allows "cost shifting" so that the hospitals can stay in business.
This is the unspoken elephant in the room in the medical cost debate.
#4
Our experience is very similar, wife was in a car accident with no apparent injury to either party. Because the airbags deployed and our car was undrivable the CHP arrived on scene and called for an ambulance for my wife. SHe initially resisted any need for it but gave in after repeated urging. Ambulance transported to UC hospital emergency room, where we had a four hour wait, one nurse consult, one doctor consult of perhaps 5 minutes, two sets of xrays and, get this, tylenol and an ice pack provided. Cost, $15,488 for the emergency room and $1,754 for the ambulance transport. Included in the bill was $488 for the godd*m tylenol.
The entire emergency room waiting area was abuzz with conversationn in spanish and ukrainian, and I suspect there were two other parties actually paying the freight for the rest of the room.
Examining the spoor of terrorists closely, security agencies are increasingly worried about Islamabad being the epicentre of terrorism. Acting on the basis of this pointer, there was a dragnet taken across the numerous madrassas in the capital city, only to find that all was fine with them. It is not known if the mosques -- where sermons laced with politics are routinely given -- were also under observation. But an outfit named Ghazi Force is being mentioned, named after the deceased leader of Islamabad's Lal Masjid.
The nation is aware that terrorism in the country touched its first peak after the military operation against Islamabad's Lal Masjid in 2007. Even Al Qaeda in its message on Al Jazeera TV condemned the operation and swore vengeance. No sociological study has been carried out in Islamabad. The intelligence agencies lack the scientific know-how and the students in the various high-profile educational institutions are ideologically too indoctrinated to undertake a dispassionate project like that.
It would be wrong to designate certain cities or regions as "homes of terrorism". After the GHQ attack, we have discovered that the masterminds had come from Faisalabad, a city not too often mentioned in connection with terrorism. It would not be surprising if in the coming days female suicide-bombers come on the scene and are discovered to have emerged from a mushroom growth of female madrassas in Rawalpindi. What is needed is sound intelligence.
If intelligence is not forthcoming then anti-terrorism campaigns will seem like wild goose chases, now suspecting one city now another. And Islamabad, traditionally "in focus" more than other cities, should be the most scrutinised place in Pakistan, down to secret recordings of Friday sermons in the city's myriad mosques. *
Posted by: Fred ||
10/26/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
Compare wid PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > INDIAN HOME MINISTER CHIDAMBARAM: MAOISTS GETTING ARMS FROM BANGLADESH [ + Myanmar + possib NEPAL due to POROUS STATE BORDERS]
SAME > SAME = INTELLECTUALS MUST STOP ROMANTICIZING THE NAXALS [Maoists-Commies].
* COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG > BANLADESH PROSCRIBES HIZB-UT-TAHRIR.
In a TV discussion, ex-Jama'at-e Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad asserted that the terrorists who were killing innocent Pakistanis were not only not Muslims but that the killing was being done by three enemy states: the United States, India and Israel. Because Muslims never kill brother Muslims™
In another TV discussion, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah made the case that South Punjab was not the home of terrorism and that the territory of South Punjab was being exaggeratedly expanded by critics to include cities like Jhang.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad rounded off his scenario of a three-state attack on Pakistan by saying that the US wanted to destroy Pakistan's nuclear programme because it did not want an Islamic state to possess the atom bomb and join the club of nuclear powers. The discussion did not pinpoint the identity of those who killed innocent Pakistanis, so we will not know what he thought of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), especially when it routinely announces ownership of the lethal suicide attacks being carried out in the country.
The JI line on the TTP is that they are own people determined to fight the Americans and that the government should talk to them instead of despatching troops into their territory. One can say that it has tactfully placed itself at the head of all the elements in Pakistan who embrace anti-Americanism and reject "conditional" American aid to Pakistan in these days of economic crisis, manifested each day by protesting state employees who have not received their salaries for months.
But one must note the reluctance on the part of JI leaders like Qazi Hussain Ahmad to define the Taliban as terrorists after alleging that those who kill are not Pakistanis but those paid to do the dirty work by the US-Indian-Israel combine. But in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Jama'at chief Mr Ali Gilani is prepared to concede that "the Taliban are defaming Islam by killing innocent people and destabilising Pakistan".
His repartee to TTP chief Hakimullah's claim that he was committed to spreading Islam was: "The Taliban are portraying Islam in a poor light and are defaming it. I advise them to give up violence and bring Islamic revolution in the country by adopting peaceful means". The opinion in Pakistan too has swung around after the TTP's misdeeds in the Malakand-Swat region. The Pakistan Army has undertaken its operations against the terrorists only after gauging the mood of the people. There was simply no other alternative.
The ANP government in the NWFP, which replaced the MMA government of which the JI was a part, thinks differently. It sees the survival of the country only in confronting and defeating the terrorists. Despite its anti-American credentials, it doesn't think that those killing the innocent citizens are agents of the US-India-Israel combine. Additionally, it wants the Punjab government to assist in lessening the intensity of TTP violence by reining in its own Punjabi Taliban.
The Punjab government is however not convinced that the Punjabi Taliban are embedded in South Punjab alone: according to Rana Sanaullah, they are no more, no less than such elements found in all the regions of the country. It develops that the "official" delineation of what is South Punjab is different from the experts who write on terrorism in the province. Administratively, for instance, Jhang doesn't fall in South Punjab, but culturally and linguistically it does.
If you count Jhang in South Punjab then terrorism actually owes its birth there, with time spawning breakaway outfits that spread from South Punjab in all directions. Scholars who study the phenomenon include the following cities in the 13 districts of South Punjab: Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Bhakker, Dera Ghazi Khan, Jhang, Khanewal, Layyah, Lodhran, Multan, Muzaffargarh, Rahimyar Khan, Rajanpur, and Vehari. The Seraiki Movement in South Punjab actually includes many additional districts of Upper Punjab too.
It is also denied that DG Khan has an abnormal concentration of militant madrassas. Editor of The Nation, Ms Shireen Mazari, who hails from DG Khan wrote recently: "In DG Khan, taking both its tehsils, there are 185 registered madrassas, of which 90 are Deobandi (with a total of 324 teachers), 84 are Barelvi (with a total of 212 teachers), six are Ahl-e-Hadith (107 teachers) and five are Fiqh-e-Jafaria (10 teachers)". The unregistered madrassas are not in the count.
Punjab has done well to upgrade its police department. South Punjab is a challenge that it must tackle with a first-rate police cadre and a highly developed intelligence network. Let us not force the army to tackle what the province can take care of within its own jurisdiction. On the other hand, the JI must clear its mind about terrorism and not obfuscate the issue through populist politics. *
Posted by: Fred ||
10/26/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUMS > GENERAL KAYANI MAY DECLARE STATE OF EMERGENCY [PAK Army-imposed MARTIAL LAW = Mil Coup]???
#1
The US is the agricultural superpower. Foes will discover why that matters.
One bad harvest due to a long winter driven late planting and very early frost will hammer the world worse than the oil embargo of the mid-70s for a fundamental commodity shortage.
#2
Which is precisely why the left wants to remove agriculture from America - so we can be dependent on outside suppliers who can dictate terms to us. Because being dependent on foreign oil worked out so well.
#6
Which is precisely why the left wants to remove agriculture from America
The left wants to remove agriculture from America because independent farmers are the most Conservative (capital C intended) and patriotic among small business owners---who're more Conservative & patriotic than the rest of society.
Has something to do with living close to basics, IMO.
#7
During the Great Depression, even with the Dust Bowl, one of the biggest problems was too much food. Wheat was 25 cents a bushel and farmers burned corn for fuel. At the same time, because of deflation, nobody had any money to buy the overabundant food.
Importantly, this was before the green revolution, so farmers had little or no fertilizer, pesticide, or even irrigation other than by windmill.
Today the biggest barrier to going back to that form of agriculture is a lack of fresh water. But if we could get the water there, by whatever means, we could lose a third of all food to insects and still have an overabundance.
#8
McDonald's has been out of their apple pies for two weeks, and counting.
Posted by: Andy Whavilet2737 ||
10/26/2009 18:55 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Ya gotta destroy the Kulaks before ya can create utopia. Frankie Davis taught his boy well.
Posted by: ed ||
10/26/2009 19:17 Comments ||
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#10
Wheat was 25 cents a bushel and farmers burned corn for fuel.
Just a few years ago when corn was $2-3/bushel, it was cheaper to burn corn in the furnace than wood pellets.
Posted by: ed ||
10/26/2009 19:20 Comments ||
Top||
#11
ION HOW-DUBYA-KILLED-THE-US-FARMBELT, WAFF > ICELAND SAYS GOODBYE TO THE BIG MAC [all three local MCDONALD'S restaurants close].
Methinks the future NOT-THE-UNO-IN-NEW YORK CITY-AMERIKA OWG-NWO HEADQUARTERS in the Norde' Atlantique wants to make it clear it is indeed the OWG UNO in that it HATES AMERICA = AMERIKA???
#13
Phil_B, that was Bush's ancestors' fault. He refused to sign the climate change treaty, and guess what - the climate changed.
Now, Bush refused to sign Kyoto, so climate change is back again, and now Greenland will again support agriculture - at least until all the ice caps melt in a few years, and the sea level rises 500 feet or more.
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
10/26/2009 20:08 Comments ||
Top||
#14
and the sea level rises 500 feet or more.
Does that mean that Gore's pied-à-terre in the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, just a few feet from the waterfront, is going to be inundated?
Is there no depth so low that Bush won't go to taunt his opponents?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
WASHINGTON -- In the health care debate, the "public plan" is all things to all people. For supporters, it would discipline greedy private insurers and make health coverage affordable. For detractors, it's a way station on the path to a single-payer insurance system of government-run health care. In reality, the public plan is mostly an exercise in political avoidance: It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn't.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah made the case that South Punjab was not the home of terrorism and that the territory of South Punjab was being exaggeratedly expanded by critics to include cities like Jhang.
