Off Center Outlook Blog

Another outstanding example of why wi will not send my kids to public school (Lord willing).

A new health curriculum under consideration in Helena Public Schools is causing quite a controversy.
The document covers everything from nutrition to injury prevention, but the section titled “Human Sexuality” is drawing the most concern.

It lays out sex education topics for each grade, K through 12. In the first grade, children would be taught that human beings can love people of the same gender; in second grade, kids are taught not to make fun of people by calling them “gay” or “queer.”

By fifth grade, they are taught there are several types of intercourse, and by the sixth grade, the draft document states that students should, “Understand that sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration; using the penis, fingers, tongue or objects.”

Helena resident Noah Genger noted, “There are some things that are more controversial in nature, that are more personal, and also for most people religious views, and I think the school went a little too far in drafting when they crossed those lines.”

Another Helena resident, Carol Carpenter, said, “It is a health curriculum, it is not just a sex ed curriculum, and there are some wonderful points in it. The areas that some people have concerns with are areas that can be discussed in the home. I don’t think that it should be thrown out or totally voided because of a few language issues.”

The school board will hear public comment on the issue at their regularly-scheduled meeting on Tuesday, July 13th; all area residents are welcome to attend.

Click here to read the entire document (PDF). http://www.helena.k12.mt.us/images/documents/curriculum/HealthCurriculum/K12FinalHealth.pdf

What do you think – are the topics suitable for the grades indicated, or do you think they are inappropriate? Leave a comment below, or visit the KXLH Facebook page to let us know what you think.

http://www.krtv.com/news/helena-schools-draft-sex-ed-document-causing-controversy/

It is a long read, nothing really suprise you. But worth reading
Gibbs Evades Question of Whether Obama Agrees With His Medicare Director That Health-Care System Must Redistribute Wealth
Thursday, July 08, 2010
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) – White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has evaded answering the question of whether President Barack Obama agrees with Dr. Donald Berwick, his newly appointed administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, who has insisted that health-care systems must redistribute wealth.

“Excellent health care is by definition redistributional,” Berwick said in a speech delivered on July 1, 2008.

When asked directly at the July 7 White House press briefing whether Obama agreed with this, Gibbs would not answer the question. Instead, he parried it with jocular statements about the provenance of the quote.

On July 8, CNSNews.com sent Gibbs an email that included a link to a YouTube page on which is posted a video of the portion of Berwick’s July 1, 2008 speech in which Berwick made the comment. Gibbs was also provided with a transcript of the relevant segment of the video and a copy of the July 26, 2008 edition of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) which published a written adaptation of Berwick’s speech.

Berwick gave the July 1, 2008 speech to honor the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service, Britain’s government-run single-payer health care system.

“You could have had a monstrous insurance industry of claims and rules and paper-pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance,” said Berwick in the video recording of the speech that CNSNews.com provided to Gibbs. “You could have protected the wealthy and the well, instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker. And that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must—must–redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.”

Gibbs was again asked–in the July 8 email–whether President Obama agreed with Dr. Berwick that “excellent health care is by definition redistributional”?

Gibbs again did not answer.

On Wednesday, Obama made Berwick the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) through a recess appointment.

Obama had sent Berwick’s nomination in April to a Senate that has a 59-seat Democratic majority. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat whose committee had jurisdiction over Berwick’s nomination, had not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing on the nomination.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has control over scheduling floor votes on presidential nominations.

In a White House statement announcing the recess appointment, Obama charged that the confirmation of Berwick and two other nominees he was naming by recess appointment at the same time had been delayed in the Democrat-controlled Senate by unnamed persons for “political purposes.” “It’s unfortunate that at a time when our nation is facing enormous challenges, many in Congress have decided to delay critical nominations for political purposes,” he said.

Because Obama’s made this recess appointment while Congress was out for the July 4th holiday, the Democrat-controlled Finance Committee no longer needs to hold a confirmation hearing on Berwick before the November elections and Senate Majority Leader Reid does not need to schedule a vote on the nomination this year. But, under the express language of Article 2, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, Berwick’s recess appointment must “expire by the end of the next session”—meaning Berwick must leave office by the end of 2011 unless the Senate puts him through the constitutionally required confirmation process in the intervening time.

On July 1, 2008, Berwick gave his speech at Wembley stadium in England celebrating England’s single-payer health care system which was then in its 60th year. In the speech, Berwick praised Britain for choosing to have a government-run health care system and made his remarks that to be “just, equitable, civilized and humane” a health care system “must” redistribute wealth, and that “excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

The portion of Berwick’s speech that includes this statement was posted on YouTube by the Heartland Institute on May 12, and that same day nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin played the audio of the relevant portion of the speech on his program. Berwick’s statement that “excellent health care is by definition redistributional” has been available online in both video and audio form ever since then.

A few weeks after Berwick delivered the speech in 2008, a written adaptation of it was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in its July 26, 2008 edition. In the written version, Berwick repeated his praise of Britain’s government-run, single-payer health-care system as well as his assertion that a “just” health-care system must redistribute wealth. The language of the written version that Berwick published in BMJ, however, was somewhat streamlined from the spoken words he used at Wembley.

“You could have a giant insurance industry of claims, rules, and paper pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance,” wrote Berwick. “You could have protected the wealthy and the well instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker, and that any healthcare funding plan that is just must redistribute wealth. Britain, you chose well.”

On Wednesday, July 7, 2010, the day that the White House announced that President Obama was bypassing the Senate confirmation process and giving Berwick a recess appointment to run Medicare, CNSNews.com asked White House Spokesman Gibbs during the White House press briefing whether the president agreed with what Berwick said about redistribution at Wembley.

“Among the controversial comments that he’s made in the past that would have come out in a Senate confirmation hearing are that ‘excellent health care is’—‘excellent health care by definition is redistribution,” said CNSNews.com. “Some of the others were mentioned. Does the president actually agree with that comment?”

In response, Gibbs noted that two past Republican CMS directors supported Berwick’s nomination.

“Look, this is somebody who is uniquely and supremely qualified to run an agency that is important to our government, it’s important to seniors, it’s important to implementation of the new health care law,” said Gibbs. “And this is somebody supported not just by Democrats but by, as I said earlier, Tom Scully and Mark McClellan, who ran this agency–both of whom ran this agency for George Bush.

“But does the President agree with the previous statement?” asked CNSNews.com.

Gibbs then remarked that the question of whether Obama agreed with his Medicare director was a political game.

“I know that this is the exact type of political game that the American people have come to understand dominates Washington and doesn’t actually make their health care more affordable,” he said.

Gibbs then declined to say whether comments by Berwick about rationing and redistribution would be troublesome in an election year if they were aired during a Senate hearing.

“You just read comments,” said Gibbs. “Is there like a secret comment book that somehow you got that nobody else got, and you just read a couple of them to me–and somehow they wouldn’t have come out? Did he say things like, ‘rationing happens today; the question is who will do it’? Did he say that? Did he say that?”

Gibbs said that that comment was actually made by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, who was a fierce critic of the health-care law that President Obama signed in March.

“Actually, that was Paul Ryan. That was Paul Ryan,” said Gibbs.

In fact, in an interview published on Feb. 2, 2010, Ryan told Ezra Klein of The Washington Post: “Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?”

In June 2009, in an interview with Biotechnology Healthcare, Dr. Berwick made his own remark about rationing–in the context of government-funded health-care.

“We can make a sensible social decision and say, ‘Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit [new drug or medical intervention] is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds,’” said Berwick. “We make those decisions all the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care–the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.”

Under the health-care law signed by President Obama, American earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four in 2010) will receive federal subsidies to buy health insurance, but they will be required to buy a government-approved plan in a government-regulated exchange.

Senate Finance Chairman Baucus was critical of Obama’s use of a recess appointment to circumvent the Senate confirmmation process for Berwick. “I’m troubled that, rather than going through the standard nomination process, Dr. Berwick was recess appointed,” Baucus said in a statement.

“Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee–and answered,” Baucus said.

Here is the text of the email inquiry that CNSNews.com sent to Gibbs on July 8, 2010:

Robert:

At Wembley stadium on July 1, 2008, in a speech commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the National Health Service, Great Britain’s government-run single-payer health care system, Dr. Donald Berwick said the following:

“You could have had a monstrous insurance industry of claims and rules and paper-pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance.You could have protected the wealthy and the well, instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker. And that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must—must–redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.”

If you would like to watch Dr. Berwick make these comments with your own eyes, a video of this portion of his remarks has been posted on You Tube.

The July 26, 2008 edition of the British Medical Journal published a written adaptation of the speech, where Dr. Berwick expressed the same view in somewhat streamlined language. In the BMJ article, Dr. Berwick said:

“You could have a giant insurance industry of claims, rules, and paper pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance.You could have protected the wealthy and the well instead of recognising that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker, and that any healthcare funding plan that is just must redistribute wealth.Britain, you chose well.”

I have attached a PDF of this article for your reference. (The Berwick article starts on the third page of the PDF.)

Here is my question: Does President Barack Obama agree with Dr. Donald Berwick’s assertion that “[e]xcellent health care is by definition redistributional”?

We are publishing a story this afternoon at 2 p.m.

Thanks for your help.

Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/69149

Got this email, don’t have tv but i hope someone will copy and email me about this and see if it lives up to what the email says

VERY IMPORTANT–SUNDAY NIGHT

This Coming Sunday– Set Your DVR for the Fox News channel at 9:00 PM

eastern. Maybe this is why the White House has been discounting FOX. Sounds

like this could be history in the making – someone may go down – either
Obama

or Fox News. It may be that Fox has been holding this information back due

to the sensitivity of it and out of courtesy. But, Obama has taken on Fox

and it appears they are ready to spill the ugly beans of truth about the

background of this individual who has had an extremely radical past. This

Sunday, Fox News is going to air a very important documentary about Barack

Obama, Sunday night at 9 P M Eastern. The report will go back to Obama’s

earlier days, showing even then his close ties to radical Marxist
professors,

friends, spiritual advisers, etc. It will also reveal details about his ties

to Rev. Wright for 20+ years, i.e., how he was participating with this

man, and not for the reasons he stated. The report has uncovered more of

Obama’s radical past and we will see things that no one in the media is
willing

to put out there. It will be a segment to remember. Mark your calendar and

pass this on to everyone you know: Sunday night, 8 PM CT; 9 PM ET. Democrat

or Republican, this report will open your eyes to how YOUR country is

being sold down the road to Totalitarian Socialism. If you care about the

direction of our country, pass this notice on to everyone you know.

Black GOP candidate slams Obama for exploiting race
One of the GOP’s handful of black candidates for Congress condemned President Barack Obama for exploiting race for political gain.

Allen West, the Republican challenging Rep. Ron Klein (D) in Florida’s 22nd congressional district, sharply criticized the Obama administration for having allegedly declined prosecuting the New Black Panther Party on voter tampering charges for political reasons.

“For an Administration that promised a new era in race relations, Obama and the Democrats in Congress have demonstrated that race will continually be exploited for political gain,” West, who is one of two African-American Republicans running for Congress who survived their primaries, said in a statement.

West was picking up on a meme that’s made its way through conservative blogs in recent days, based on whistleblower claims made by a former Justice Department employee. Charges against the Black Panthers for their actions on Election Day 2008 weren’t pursued because of racial politics, the employee charged. The Justice Department says charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

West drew on his own history with race to condemn the Black Panthers, as well as other black Democrats who he said had “remained silent” when he’d been called racially-tinged names during the course of his campaign.

“The die has been cast in this election cycle — Democrats and their liberal progressive socialist allies will continue to play the race card when it is politically expedient,” West said. “I demand an investigation of the New Black Panther Party and the placement of it, along with any extremist group, onto the Terrorist Watch List if warranted. If that it not done prior to my taking the oath of office as a United States Congressman, it will happen soon thereafter.”

The words have more weight coming from this candidate, who’s seen as one of two black Republican candidates who have a good shot at making their way to Washington next year.

West is seen as a top challenger to Klein after having come closer than expected to the incumbent Democrat in 2008. Republican Tim Scott is seen as likely to win his race in South Carolina’s first congressional district this fall, too. Either man, if elected, would be the first African-American lawmaker in the GOP since former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who retired in 2003.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/107789-black-gop-candidate-slams-obama-for-exploiting-race

The heat will/could cause big problems

Record-High Heat Strains Power Grid
With utilities urging people to turn down their air conditioners amid record heat and near-record power demand Tuesday afternoon, Tony Johnson left work in Harlem armed with a MetroCard and a simple plan.

“I’m going to ride down to the South Ferry and back,” said the 33-year-old locksmith, toting along some watermelon and a newspaper. “Maybe more than once.”

And so it went on a day when electrical transformers burst into flames, underground cables went haywire and businesses got paid not to use power.

Temperatures hit 102 degrees in Central Park, breaking the daily record of 101 set in 1999, …
(read the rest at)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704862404575351513873781320.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_newyork

How to spot heat illnesses
WASHINGTON – The current heat wave has people looking for any way possible to stay cool.

What you don’t want to do is end of sick because of the heat.

Here are some tips to stay cool in the heat:

Wear lightweight, light-colored, loose-fitting clothing;
Wear a hat to shield yourself from the sun;
Use sunscreen;
Drink lots of water. Remember that caffeinated beverages can increase the rate of water loss in your body, increasing your risk of heat exhaustion or stroke;
Hang out in the air conditioning or shade;
Don’t leave children or pets in the car.
Too much time in the hot weather can make you sick. Here’s some advice from the American Red Cross:

Signs of Heat Exhaustion

Normal body temperature;
May have cool, moist, pale or flushed skin;
Heavy sweating;
Headache;
Nausea or vomiting;
Dizziness;
Exhaustion.
What to do about heat exhaustion:

Get the person out of the heat and into a cooler place.
Apply cool, wet cloths.
Give a half glass of cool water every 15 minutes.
Signs of Heat Stroke

Body temperature as high as 105 degrees;
Skin that’s red and hot;
Changes in consciousness;
Rapid, weak pulse;
Rapid, shallow breathing.
What to do about heat stroke:

Help is needed fast.
Move the person to a cooler place.
Quickly cool the body.
Watch for signals of breathing problems.

Front Page News

And Just as quick, for political reasons they reverse it. Not because it was stupid or wrong, but for pressure.

TSA Reverses “Controversial Opinion” Web Policy
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reversed itself today, announcing that it will no longer block TSA employees, using work computers, from accessing websites that contain a “controversial opinion.”

As CBS News first reported, the TSA on Friday informed its employees that five categories of websites would be off-limits because they were deemed “inappropriate for government access.”

Those categories were: “Chat/Messaging,” “Criminal activity,” “Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content,” “Gaming,” and any websites that contained a “Controversial Opinion.”

Blog: TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web

Blog: TSA Responds to Web Blocking Memo

Sources who spoke with CBS News were puzzled as to why the federal agency would block websites that contain controversial opinions and questioned whether the move would violate First Amendment rights and the freedom to access information.

At about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the TSA sent out another memo to its employees explaining that the category of “controversial opinion” was “an IT software catch-all phrase used to describe sites that may violate TSA’s acceptable use policy, such as sites that promote destructive behavior to one’s self or others.”

The memo went on to say that “after further review, TSA determined this category may contain some sites that do not violate TSA’s policy and therefore has concluded that the category is no longer being considered for implementation.” The TSA also emphasized that it encourages the “sharing [of] ideas and opinions.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009804-10391695.html

It is one of the first things that happens, they will clamp down on what they can.

Gates wants military interviews with press cleared
WASHINGTON – Military officials will need Pentagon clearance for interviews and other dealings with reporters, according to an order from

Defense Secretary Robert Gates not long after the top general in Afghanistan was fired for his comments in a magazine article.

The order, issued by

Gates on Friday in a brief memo to military and civilian personnel worldwide and effective immediately, tells officials to make sure they are not going out of bounds or unintentionally releasing information that the Pentagon wants to hold back.

The order, first reported by

The New York Times on its website Friday night, has been in the works since long before Gen. Stanley McChrystal stunned his bosses with criticism and complaints in a Rolling Stone article that his superiors did not know was coming.

“We were not happy with the content, and we were not happy that we didn’t know about it,” Assistant Defense Secretary Douglas Wilson said this week.

Nonetheless,

Wilson promised that no “Iron Curtain” would fall between the Pentagon and the news media.

The memo does not spell out exactly how the new directive will work but appears to require hundreds of thousands of officers to funnel interview requests through a small central office at the Pentagon.

“I am concerned that

the department has grown lax in how we engage with the media,” Gates wrote.

“We have far too many people talking to the media outside of channels, sometimes providing information which is simply incorrect, out of proper context, unauthorized, or uninformed by the perspective of those who are most knowledgeable,” about how the information may fit into larger

government operations or goals.

McChrystal

told the Army this past week that he will retire. In the Rolling Stone article, the four-star general and some of his aides were quoted criticizing Obama’s war effort; McChrystal complained that he was backed into “an unsellable position” during last fall’s long White House deliberations on whether to add more troops.

Leaks during that process infuriated Gates.

Gates’ memo requires top department officials to tell Wilson’s office before interviews “or any other means of media and

public engagement with possible national or international implications.”

Gates warned in the memo that the leaking of

classified information “is against the law, cannot be tolerated and will, when proven, lead to the prosecution of those found to be engaged in such activity.”

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said that Gates remains committed to open dealings with the media and that he has tried to impress on colleagues that “the press is not the enemy.”

Indeed, Gates answers questions frequently and can be more revealing and plainspoken than many Cabinet officials or his own subordinates at the Pentagon.

“It’s not designed in any way to limit our interaction or restrict it, or dampen it,” Morrell said of Gates’ order. “It is designed to get our department much more disciplined.”

___

Online:

Defense Department: http://www.defense.gov/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100703/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_gates_media_rules

TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a “controversial opinion,” according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.

The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.

It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed “inappropriate for government access.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009642-10391695.html

‘Almost All of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Workers are Dead’

Oil Worker life spans and dangerous times in a world of BP and greed.

These are the people we are talking about, above & below, photographed during the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska.
Photo courtesy: sustainabilityninja.com and other sources.

(SALEM, Ore.) – It is the last thing most of us expected to hear: nearly every single worker from the Exxon Valdez oil spill Disaster is now dead, according to a CNN News report. The video accompanies this article. We’re talking about a lot of people. I personally became an oil spill volunteer at the time here in Oregon, though I never got my hands very dirty, so to speak. Good thing as it turns out.

Exxon Valdez spill 20-years later

According to an article by the Institute for Southern Studies, relating to the current spill: “Already, a large number of workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico report that they are suffering from flu-like symptoms.” [1]

CNN is warning volunteers on the current Gulf Spill of this dire information. The fact that the workers from the 1989 Alaska spill have died, surely will give current workers something to think about.

CNN and numerous other groups including Salem-News.com, have revealed the fact that this is very unhealthy work. Exposure to contaminants is something humans are supposed to avoid, but in this case it is a draw card for work in a broken national economy.

The average life expectancy for an Exxon Valdez oil spill worker according to the CNN report, is 51 years.

That figure is a far cry from the average American lifespan of 78.2 years, which is a pathetic figure in its own right; as the U.S. is rated #38 for life expectancy in the world, behind nations like Israel, Singapore, Costa Rica, South Korea and Cuba[2].

Exxon Valdez workers will see 27.2 fewer years in this life than the average American.

This is their reward, for cleaning up the mess of this alcohol induced shipwreck; possibly the worst Driving Under the Influence case in world history.

Gloomy Prospects

A quote in a Business Insider article by Michael Snyder, reveals problems currently affecting Florida beach residents, who are not working on the spill, just surviving near it.

“My 2 friends and I have been sick with headaches and vomiting, also it feels like heartburn, just feeling lousy. We have not been to the Gulf but there is an inlet at the end of our street. We live on the West side of Pensacola FL. near the Bayou. At first I thought it was just me. My 2 friends are having the same symptoms, all at the same time. Right now I have a dull headache, and my stomach is queasy. I have been thinking maybe the chemicals from the oil cleanup or the oil itself is causing us to be ill. It has been raining all day off and on. I started feeling ill late last night. I was wondering if anyone else in Pensacola have the same symptoms.” [3]

The article surmises that the American Dream isn’t about making a high wage for a short time and then checking out before you get to know what your grandchildren look like. I certainly have to agree.

This is the CNN news clip that launched the news

The mess brought about by disrupting Mother Nature this way, leaves behind what is increasingly becoming a “toxic soup” of oil, dangerous methane, deadly benzene, hydrogen sulfide, toxic gases, and approximately two million gallons of highly toxic dispersants that include Corexit 9500.

The methane alone, according to some experts, could turn the current oil spill into a fiery explosion that would literally devastate the entire section of the globe[4].

A methane bubble identified beneath the ocean floor, near the spill point, could lead to a situation that would, according to Richard C Hoagland, celebrity of the science world; author and radio host, resemble an underwater Mount Saint Helens explosion[5].

In essence, the Deepwater Horizon site is on top of an underwater volcano with magma near the surface constantly rising and falling. Hoagland, whose theory is backed by experts like Dr. William Deagle, says if this worst case scenario takes place, it will generate a massive tidal wave that will travel at a speed of 400-600 miles an hour, right over the top of Florida, which has an elevation above sea level of approximately 100 feet[6].

According to the Business Insider, “A large number of workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico report that they are suffering from flu-like symptoms.”

A source in Pensacola cited by Snyder in his article, Citizens for Legitimate Government, states that, “400 people have sought medical care for upper or lower respiratory problems, headaches, nausea, and eye irritation after trips to Escambia County beaches.” [7]

Oil spill cleanup work may sound like a fast buck, but it seriously, could hardly be worth the health risk.

http://salem-news.com/articles/june302010/oil-lifespans.php

This does not surprise me at all. I in another blog, posted a story about the cost that the help that the first lady needed. Don’t miss that it is million with a M.

White House releases staff salary data
By Jordan Fabian – 07/02/10 10:58 AM ET

The White House on Friday released the salaries of its staff members ranging from its lowest-level employees to chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel, press secretary Roberts Gibbs, senior adviser David Axelrod and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett make the top salary amount of $172,200 per year. Three staffers have their salaries listed as $0.

In total, the White House pays its staff $38,796,307.

“Since 1995, the White House has been required to deliver a report to Congress listing the title and salary of every White House Office employee,” the White House blog says. “Consistent with President Obama’s commitment to transparency, this report is being publicly disclosed on our website as it is transmitted to Congress.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/106969-white-house-releases-staff-salary-data

No Bibles being allowed to be distributed on “Religious Freedom Day” what a bunch of idiots
Florida school district bans Bibles on Religious Freedom Day

Maitland-based Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit Thursday to overturn a ban on Bible distribution on public school campuses in Collier County. According to the Liberty Counsel, the Collier County School Board allowed World Changers to distribute free Bibles to students during off-school hours on Religious Freedom Day, but now the school officials claim that Bibles do not provide any educational benefit to the students and the distribution should stop.

The Collier County School District policy specifically allows the distribution of literature by nonprofit organizations, but only with the approval of the superintendent and the Community Request Committee, whose members are appointed by the superintendent. Approval was denied to World Changers, despite the fact that its distribution included a disclaimer of any school endorsement or sponsorship and that receiving a Bible was purely voluntary.

“How sad that on the eve of Independence Day, when we celebrate the religious and political freedom our forefathers won for us at the cost of much blood and great sacrifice, we are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools,” said Mathew D. Staver, Liberty Counsel founder.

Click here to read the lawsuit: :http://www.liberty.edu/media/9980/attachments/complaint_world_changers_070110.pdf

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features-the-religion-world/2010/07/01/florida-school-district-bans-bibles-on-religious-freedom-day/

“Is our government supid or what? 85% (of no oil in the water) is not better then 100% (in the water) got to love their thought.
Avertible catastrophe

Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company’s expense. “If there’s a country that’s experienced with building dikes and managing water, it’s the Netherlands,” says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with “Thanks but no thanks,” remarked Visser, despite BP’s desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer –the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment –unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, “We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water–the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that.” In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls “crazy.”

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer — but only partly. Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. “Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands,” he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history–until the BP Gulf spill.

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html#ixzz0sSzedeJs

http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html

Yesterday i brought up a trend of homeless in parks and on State land and such here is another facet that will be come a big deal soon also, imo. Surpised that the Governor did not make the owner give the house to the squatter
Squatter pulls assault rifle on homeowner
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (KABC) — An Inglewood homeowner got a dangerous surprise when he walked into his vacant property. A gun-toting squatter had moved into the home.
The incident occurred about 8:30 a.m. Monday on the 3000 block of 84th Street.
The property owner arrived to take pictures of the empty house in preparation of selling the place. When he entered the house, the suspect approached the owner and threatened him with an assault rifle.

The owner left and called police. An hours-long standoff ensued.

Police created an enormous barricade around the area, including some businesses.

Hours later the suspect surrendered. He was arrested and booked.

“Anytime you have an assault rifle or some sort of military weapon, you don’t want to mess around with any of that, so we want to make sure that the area was completely cordoned off and the businesses were closed and all the residents were safe until we could go in,” said Inglewood Police Capt. Eve Irvine. “Because even though the victim saw only one weapon, we didn’t know what was inside the location with the person. There could have been more or even more powerful weapons.”

The standoff began at about 8:30 a.m. Monday and ended about 3 p.m. Police cleared the scene and left by 4 p.m.

The suspect has been identified as Abdel Alim Mohammad. His age was unknown. He was booked into Inglewood City Jail on $50,000 bail.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7526222
I was always taught that you called people names when you had a weak argument. That appears to be the case here, for sure.

Did Kagan Compare the NRA with the KKK? [Robert VerBruggen]

It has become clear that Elena Kagan, Obama’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, is no friend of gun rights, to say the least. While clerking for Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall in 1987, she wrote the judge that she was “not sympathetic” to a Second Amendment–based challenge to the D.C. gun ban. While serving in the Clinton administration, she wrote a memo that “paved the way for an executive order banning dozens of semiautomatic weapons,” according to the L.A. Times.

And National Review has learned that in 1996, Kagan apparently tied the NRA to the KKK — yes, the KKK — while debating the Clinton administration’s position on a bill.

The bill in question was the Volunteer Protection Act, which, when it was passed and signed the following year, protected some non-profits’ volunteer workers from tort liability in certain cases. The administration worried that it would apply to volunteers from unlikable non-profits.

Two documents discovered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and obtained by National Review suggest that Kagan was involved in these discussions. One does not contain her name, but the handwriting appears to be hers. (You can see an example of Kagan’s handwriting here.) It has the name of administration colleague Fran Allegra at the top, and lists two “Bad guy orgs” that might be covered — the NRA and the KKK.

The second does have Kagan’s name on it; it is a memo from Allegra to Kagan. Allegra reports that he checked the IRS’s “Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170(c)” — the list of tax-exempt organizations, which, he says, are the only organizations the bill would cover — and that neither the NRA nor the KKK was on it. “If you have other names you want me to run down in the Cumulative List, I would be glad to check them out,” he adds, suggesting that Kagan requested the initial check of the NRA and the KKK.

Is Kagan so hostile to gun rights that she would compare the top gun-rights organization in the United States with a viciously racist hate group? It sure looks that way. We look forward to her explanation.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGFkY2E5Zjg1OTFmYjMwODY1ODhlNDVkNTQ0OTdhOTI

Biden Claims a GOP ‘Blitzkrieg’ (Updated) »
By Michael McAuliff

Vice President Biden is out with an alarmed e-mail cash appeal warning that the GOP will mount a “blitzkrieg” against Democrats in the fall.

Comparing GOP tactics to the fast-striking forces of Nazi Germany, Biden warns in a message sent by the DCCC today: “As things heat up, you can expect House Democrats will be hit with a GOP blitzkrieg of vicious Swift-Boat-style attack ads, Karl Rove-inspired knockout tactics, thinly veiled attempts at character assassination and tea party disruptions.”

And while the GOP is mounting a blitzkrieg, Democrats are the allies.

“Our Democratic allies in the House need your help, and the President and I hope we can count on you to come to their defense so we can hold onto our Democratic Majority and continue moving American forward in a new direction,” Biden writes in the appeal.

Subtle? Not so much.

Update: Republicans were not amused by the implications of the e-mail.

Kevin Smith, spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner, e-mailed a comment that seems sure to get under Democrats’ skins: “When will Democrats learn that invoking the Nazis’ crimes against humanity in a political debate is simply inappropriate?”

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2010/06/biden-claims-a-gop-blitzkrieg.html