The 'God Particle' and God

From Dennis Prager, at National Review:

They found the “God particle.”

That was the headline splashed all over America’s news media. It turns out that the name actually derives from substituting “God particle” for “goddamn particle,” the original name some scientists had given the elusive particle. But the media adopted the former nomenclature.

Why?

Because otherwise the bulk of humanity would not pay attention.

Physicists went nuts. And no one can blame them. For decades, they have searched for the particle that may explain why there is any mass in the universe. And 10 billion dollars was spent on the machine that probably proved its existence.

Without any disrespect to the enormous intellectual achievement of these scientists, let me state that I identify with the mass of humanity that doesn’t really care about the existence of the Higgs boson.

Those scientists and science writers who have likened this discovery to the discovery of DNA are wrong. If significance means relevance to the human condition, the discovery of DNA merited a ten out of ten and the Higgs boson might merit a two.

This does not mean that the search was either a waste of time or money. Both the time and money invested were necessary because satiating our curiosity about the natural world is one of the noblest ambitions of the human race.

But scientific discovery and meaning are not necessarily related. As one of the leading physicists of our time, Steven Weinberg, has written, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

And pointlessness is the point. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings us no closer to understanding why there is a universe, not to mention whether life has meaning. In fact, no scientific discovery ever made will ever explain why there is existence. Nor will it render good and evil anything more than subjective opinion, or explain why human beings have consciousness or anything else that truly matters.

The only thing that can explain existence and answer these other questions is God or some other similar metaphysical belief.

Continue reading.

Theo's Wednesday Hotties

In case you missed 'em, "Wednesday Wenches...", and "Bonus Babe..."

NewsBusted: 'June's Terrible Unemployment Numbers'

A really good clip, via Theo Spark:

The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Via Theo Spark:

Get Brooks' book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

Obama's War on Women

Via Theo Spark:

B-2 Stealth Bomber Takes Off at Royal International Air Tattoo 2012

This is the U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, via Theo Spark:

And here's this from Wikipedia:

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (also known as the Stealth Bomber) is an American strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses; it is able to deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons. The bomber has a crew of two and can drop up to eighty 500 lb (230 kg)-class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400 lb (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry large air to surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.

Rare Baseball Cards Could Bring Up to $3 Million at Auction

A great story, at the Los Angeles Times, "Found money: Treasure trove of baseball cards may be worth millions":

DEFIANCE, Ohio — Karl Kissner picked up a soot-covered cardboard box that had been under a wooden dollhouse in his grandfather's attic. Taking a look inside, he saw hundreds of baseball cards bundled with twine. They were smaller than the ones he was used to seeing.

But some of the names were familiar: Hall of Famers Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner.

Then he put the box on a dresser and went back to digging through the attic.

It wasn't until two weeks later that he learned that his family had come across what experts say is one of the biggest, most exciting finds in the history of sports card collecting, a discovery worth perhaps millions.

The cards are from an extremely rare series issued around 1910. Up to now, the few known to exist were in so-so condition at best, with faded images and worn edges. But the ones from the attic in the town of Defiance are nearly pristine, untouched for more than a century. The colors are vibrant, the borders crisp and white.

"It's like finding the Mona Lisa in the attic," Kissner said.

Sports card experts who authenticated the find say they may never again see something this impressive.

"Every future find will ultimately be compared to this," said Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator.

The best of the bunch — 37 cards — are expected to bring a total of $500,000 when they are sold at auction in August during the National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore. There are about 700 cards in all that could be worth up to $3 million, experts say. They include such legends as Christy Mathewson and Connie Mack.

More at the link.

In Defense of Brad Pitt's Mom

From Michelle Malkin:

Hollywood and the American left love diversity, except when it offends their “progressive” value system.

Witness the reaction to actor Brad Pitt’s mother, Jane, who publicly opposed President Obama’s re-election. Mrs. Pitt’s pro-life, anti-gay marriage statement to her local paper last week enflamed the Tolerance Mob. And her mere expression of dissident political views exposed the glittering hypocrisy of the left-wing “No H8″ campaign.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Sadly Obligatory Post on Brad Pitt's Mom Receiving Death Threats from 'Tolerant' Gay Rights Progressives."

Red Hot Jennifer Lopez Hits the Beach in Brazil

Remember, she's No. 1 on Forbe's hot Celebrity 100.

And she's looking good in her Brazil bikini.

At London's Daily Mail, "Red hot Jennifer Lopez shows off her trim figure in a sexy bikini as she hits the beach with boyfriend Casper and her twins."

Barack Obama Outsourcing Jobs

Here's the new project from the RNC, "Obamanomics Outsourced."

Also at Politico, "Mitt Romney: Barack Obama is ‘outsourcer in chief’."

Barack Obama's Tax Shelters

I can't ever recall as much class warfare in American politics. The Democrats always wage it, but this year the left is so utterly bankrupt that all they can do is hit Republicans as vicious, undeserving throwbacks to the (so-called) economic obscenities of the Gilded Age. 

Exhibit A this afternoon is the lead editorial at today's New York Times, "Mr. Romney's Financial Black Hole" via Memeorandum. Folks can read it all at the link. The editors really go off on Romney, attacking him for the alleged moral transgression of not releasing even more tax returns, and especially for his financial portfolio, which includes a number of offshore investments designed to reduce tax liability (a tax strategy that any good tax adviser would recommend). But for all the editorial's outrage and bluster (which zeros in on Romney's lingering ties to Bain), here's the key passage:

Firms like Bain park money in the Caymans because the islands have no taxes on capital gains, profits or income for foreigners. But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Checking that Memeorandum thread, we see the radical lefties are all up in knots about this, as usual. The problem, of course, is the rank hypocrisy of the New York Times and its progressive minions. If folks want to call out presidential candidates for their tax avoidance strategies, then they should at least be fair and balanced about it. While President Obama enjoys far less wealth than Romney, he's clearly not ashamed of employing the same kind of tax avoidance schemes as the largest of the large private equity firms. See, for example, the Washington Free Beacon from April, "Obama Family Tax Shelter: First Family Transfers Wealth, Avoids Taxes:

President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday.

The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes.

There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes. He has yet to propose a comprehensive plan to reform the byzantine tax code.

The Obama’s tax return indicates that the gifts, likely for their daughter’s college educations, began in 2007, when the maximum exemptible amount was $24,000 per couple. The maximum exemption has since increased to $26,000 per couple.

The Obamas paid a total federal tax rate of 20.5 percent on a gross adjusted income $789,674, which would typically fall within the top federal rate of 35 percent. According to an analysis of the president’s tax return, he may have paid a lower rate than his secretary despite making more than eight times as much money as she did.

His most recent tax proposal—the so-called “Buffett Rule”—would increase taxes on about 4,000 millionaires and raise about $4.7 billion in new revenue per year, enough to cover about 0.4 percent of the projected budget deficit in 2012. Though the rule would apparently not hit the president himself.

Supporters of the rule have acknowledged that the projected revenue from the “Buffett Rule,” which the Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote down, is “not even a meaningful small amount.”

The Obama’s untaxed gift to their daughters will leave American taxpayers to subsidize the college education of the children of the multi-millionaire Obamas.

Again, it's not the amount of money at issue, it's the purported ethical implications of Obama's tax strategies. Not only has the president and his wife taken advantage of tax loopholes to shelter income in the name of the daughters' education, they've taken enough tax deductions to end up paying an effective rate below what the president's own secretary paid. All the stupid talk about "the Buffet Rule" is bullshit designed to mask a radical left-wing program of sticking it to those with more --- especially pernicious since there's not enough income available from the highest income earners to pay for the dramatic expansion of spending required under this redistributionist regime.

And that's just the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg.

Here's Daniel Halper, at the Weekly Standard, "Dem. Chair Invested in Swiss Banks, Foreign Drug Companies, and the State Bank of India." And also from Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller, "Nancy Pelosi made between $1-5 million on Asian investments in 2011." Plus, at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Obama’s adviser and BFF Valerie Jarrett has a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000."

Check back on this. We'll see lots more Democrat tax shelters and off-shore banking hypocrisies as the days and weeks unfold. The trick is for Romney and the Republicans to hit back twice as hard against the left's despicable and completely opportunistic faux outrage.

Jonah Goldberg on Ideology

This is awesome:

And see Goldberg's, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

And check out the new book from Norman Berdichevsky, The Left is Seldom Right. I read the first chapter at the link. It's fascinating.

Mary Katharine Ham Joins Hot Air!

Hot Air just got a lot hotter!

See Allahpundit's announcement, "Welcome Hot Air’s new editor-at-large, Mary Katharine Ham."

And Mary Katharine has her first post, "Finally: Blogger works for site everyone always thought she worked for anyway":

Just a quick note to say hey and thank you for your generous welcome, everyone! I’ve been a fan of HotAir since its launch, and a fan of Ed’s and AP’s since almost the beginning of their blogging careers. It’s truly a privilege to work with them and the rest of the crew here.

Read it all at the link.

She's a very sweet and friendly woman, and an awesome conservative!

NRA Rallies Gun Owners to Go ALL IN for Freedom

Via Theo Spark:

RELATED: See Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Obama's Coming Gun Control: Through the UN."

National Gay Rights Organizations Silent After 'It Gets Better' Spokesman Dan Savage Attacks Conservatives With Hateful, Hypocritical Slurs

A great post at Gay Patriot, "Bloggers criticize Dan Savage for his “hateful statements” (GLAAD, HRC, NGLTF silent)."

Read it all at the link.

It turns out that Savage attacks gay conservatives as "cum dumps" on Twitter, the sick f-ker.

...if you know ANYTHING about the truth of who Dan Savage is, you likely already know that he’s among the biggest hypocrites to walk the Earth.

The quote's from Misfit Politics, and don't miss that post as well.

And here's another one of the "biggest hypocrites to walk the Earth."

Progressives freak douchebags destroying this country. Sheesh.

Obama Tax Hike on Incomes Over $200,000 to Hit Biggest Job Creators

At Heritage, "Obama’s Tax Hike on Job Creators."

Huge Glaciers in the Area Between Pakistan and China are NOT Melting — Flies in Face of Predictions of Climate Activists

The "climate activists" are idiots and liars, like, for example, Susie Madrak at the aptly-titled Crooks and Liars.

See London's Daily Mail, "Satellite study of Asian mountains show that glaciers are NOT melting - and some are actually gaining new ice":

Huge glaciers in the area between Pakistan and China are puzzling scientists - and disproving the doom-laden predictions of some climate experts.

The glaciers in the Karakoram Range between northern Pakistan and western China have actually grown, rather than shrinking.

Unlike most mountain glaciers, the Karakoram glaciers, which account for 3 percent of the total ice-covered area in the world, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, are not shrinking.

A team of French glaciologists has recently confirmed that these glaciers on average have remained stable or may have even grown slightly in recent years.

The new study used data from satellites to study the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan and western China.

The researchers found that the ice had actually increased in thickness by 0.11 (plus or minus 0.22) meters per year between 1999 and 2008.

Experts cautioned that the gain is so small that the glaciers might not actually be growing - but what is clear is that the glaciers are not shrinking, according to a report published in Nature Geoscience.

Continue reading.

CNN's Dana Bash Covers #MASenate Race — Elizabeth Warren 'Really Surprised' Anyone Would Make Native American Claims a 'Political Issue'

It's a fair and balanced report, at CNN, "Bipartisanship isn't dirty word in Massachusetts Senate race." Elizabeth Warren stays on message, er, false message, that is.

From Bash's report:

Question over Native American heritage

But Warren has stumbled over an issue that she admits tripped her up.

When the Boston Herald reported that Harvard University had touted Warren as a minority faculty member and that she was listed as part Native American in law school directories, she at first said she knew nothing about it.

But after weeks of questions from the media and accusations by her opponents that she claimed minority status to advance her career, Warren admitted that she had listed herself as part Cherokee in faculty directories at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in order to meet people with similar backgrounds.

"I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it, and so I stopped checking it off," Warren told reporters in May.

As a first-time politician, Warren admits she could have responded faster.

"I was really surprised that anyone wanted to make this a political issue. I was really surprised by that and very slow to respond to it," Warren said. "I'm like every other kid. I learned about my family from my parents."

Warren explained she heard stories from her parents about having to elope because her father's family did not accept her mother's because of her Native American roots.

"My mom and dad were very much in love. They grew up in a little town that had been Indian Territory just a few years earlier. When they wanted to get married, my father's parents said no because my mother was part Cherokee and part Delaware. And my parents fought it as long as they could and finally they eloped," Warren said.

"I lived with that, between two families," she said.

But Brown has not backed down, insisting that Warren's failure to explain herself from the beginning calls her integrity into question.

"When you run for high elected office you have to pass a test, and that test is one of honesty, trustworthiness and truthfulness, and she's failed that test," Brown said.

He continues to call on his opponent to release confidential documents to show whether or not she claimed her Native American roots on job applications.

A Republican source even gave CNN a copy of Warren's mother's death certificate, which listed her as white, not Native American.

Asked about that, Warren simply repeated that her parents "grew up in a very different time."

"They grew up in a little town that had been Indian Territory. My mother's family was part Cherokee and part Delaware. That's who they were," she said.

Harvard administrators said they did not know about Warren's ancestral claims when they hired her. And Warren bristled when asked if she considers herself a minority, saying simply that she is proud of her heritage.

"This is part of who I am. This is who I am," she said.

Warren said Brown is distracting from issues that really matter to people.

Asked whether he and other Republicans are engaging in divide and conquer politics, Brown responded that he is engaged in issues that touch people's lives "every day."
"With all due respect, I'm getting things done," said Brown.

At this point, it's going to be up to the voters to resolve the issue of Warren's Native American heritage. And that will be a political resolution, for or against the candidate. No amount of disconfirming evidence is going to shake this crazy woman from her fictitious belief about some long lost Cherokee heritage. It's family lore to her, even if her own actions as part of that family call into doubt everything she claims. For example, Warren's previous "high cheekbones" line has been called into question, at Legal Insurrection, "Serious doubt cast on Elizabeth Warren’s “Aunt Bea” “high cheekbones” story."

So no matter what evidence or non-evidence is presented --- like the reports CNN's Bash presented to the candidate --- Warren will continue to throw up smokescreens, whine about how surprising it is that her falsehoods have become a political liability, and decry the "right-wing extremists" who're attacking her "unfairly."

Legal Insurrection has more, "Challenge to Boston Phoenix: Defend Elizabeth Warren on Cherokee issue, or drop “right-wing smear machine” accusation." And see, "Elizabeth Warren has raised $24 million, but still is not Cherokee."

National League Wins All-Star Game, 8-0

At the Los Angeles Times, "National League defeats American League, 8-0, in All-Star Game":

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Pablo Sandoval and Melky Cabrera turned the All-Star game into a Giant blowout.

Flashing their bright orange spikes and booming bats, the San Francisco sluggers keyed a five-run blitz against Justin Verlander in the first inning that sent the National League to an 8-0 romp over the American League on Tuesday night.

Cabrera homered and won the MVP award, and Giants teammate Matt Cain started a strong pitching performance for the NL in its most-lopsided All-Star victory. Cain combined with Stephen Strasburg, R.A. Dickey, Aroldis Chapman and the rest of a lights-out staff on a six-hitter.

"San Francisco Giants show," Matt Kemp of the rival Dodgers said during the game.

Ryan Braun, an All-Star again after his drug suspension was overturned last winter, doubled, tripled and made a fine catch in the outfield to help give the NL its first three-game winning streak in two decades.

Chipper Jones singled in his final All-Star at-bat at age 40 as the NL, under retired manager Tony La Russa, once again claimed home-field advantage in the World Series.

Teen sensation Bryce Harper had a shaky All-Star debut. Fellow rookie Mike Trout, only 20, showed off his dynamic skills.

The game was pretty much decided a few moments after it started.

Yeah, that first inning was a blowout.

More at the New York Times, "N.L. All-Stars Crush A.L. to Earn Home-Field Advantage for World Series":

Melky Cabrera, who played for the host Royals last season before a trade to San Francisco, was named most valuable player. Cabrera singled off Verlander and scored the game’s first run, and smashed a two-run homer off Matt Harrison in the fourth inning.

Cabrera, who has played for four teams in the last four seasons, became the first Giant to win the All-Star M.V.P. award since another well-traveled outfielder, Bobby Bonds, did it at this ballpark in 1973.

“I didn’t come to win the M.V.P.,” Cabrera, sitting with his mother and grandmother at the postgame news conference, said through a translator. “That was just a surprise. It was a great gift the Lord gave me. But the same opportunity Kansas City gave me last year is the same opportunity San Francisco gave me this year, to play every day and show my talent. I’m just thankful for the fans who gave me an opportunity to be here.”

San Bernardino City Council Votes for Municipal Bankruptcy

The Los Angeles Times tweets: "San Bernardino council votes to file for bankruptcy."

And just now posted at the Times' website, "San Bernardino files for bankruptcy protection":

Facing a $45-million budget shortfall and the prospect of not being able to pay city workers, the San Bernardino City Council on Tuesday voted to file municipal bankruptcy, the third California city to do so in recent weeks.

The vote came shortly after the interim city manager recommended seeking bankruptcy protection, saying the city may not be able to make payroll over the next three months. "We have an immediate cash-flow issue," Andrea Miller told the mayor and seven-member City Council.

Here's the earlier report, "San Bernardino should file for bankruptcy, city manager says."

Two weeks ago it was Stockton: "City of Stockton Goes Bankrupt."

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council Threatens to Shut Down Ezra Levant

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Ezra Responds to Censor Threats."

There's video at the link.

I watched the whole thing. Ezra asks his viewers to write Canadian Premier Stephen Harper to repeal Section 5 of the Canadian Broadcasting Regulations. And here's Ezra's post from last month, after one of the earlier attempts to censor Sun TV, "Expose and dispose: My five-point plan to fight back at the broadcast standards council."

See also:

* "Canadian Broadcast Standard Council's letter to Sun News Network."

* "Sun News Network's response to the Canadian Broadcast Standard Council."

And rembember: this is left-wing progressive censorship of conservatives speech. It is a partisan issue. It's the defining issue of the current era, a global challenge for those standing up for freedom.

Taxes Take Center Stage on Campaign Trail

At U.S. News, "Obama, Romney Campaign in Swing States, Talk Taxes":

The twists and turns of the presidential campaign led President Barack Obama to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday to campaign for his proposal to extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts and Republican hopeful Mitt Romney to Grand Junction, Colo., to take questions from a town hall audience.

A new Washington Post/ABC News national poll showed the two men deadlocked at 47 percent support each, cementing the importance of swing states like Iowa and Colorado. Other new swing-state surveys showed Obama leading Romney 50 percent to 42 percent in Virginia and the two candidates virtually tied in North Carolina.

Romney, during his town hall on Tuesday, continually labeled Obama a "old-style liberal" in an attempt to stem some of the momentum the Democrat's campaign has sought to build based on news reports describing Romney as profiting from outsourcing jobs and criticism he's faced for declining to further disclose his personal finances.

"If there's an outsourcer in chief, it's the president of the United States, not the guy who's running to replace him," Romney said, referring to federal monies sent to renewable energy companies that manufacture components like solar panels in China.

Romney also took aim at the president's proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to all but those making more than $250,000 a year.

"You've got to be careful--when people in Washington say they are lowering taxes, hold onto your wallet," Romney said. "Because in fact he didn't lower taxes for anybody. For some people he announced your taxes are going to stay the same. And then for others, for job creators and small businesses, he announced a massive tax increase."

The former Massachusetts governor said in light of last week's weak job growth report, Obama's proposal is "the sort of thing only an extreme liberal could think of" ....

But Obama pressed his case at a campaign event in Iowa, claiming that his proposals seek to strengthen the middle class to grow the sluggish economy.

"All we ask is for our hard work to pay off; for our responsibility to be rewarded," Obama said. "We tried what they're selling and it didn't work."

The president, echoing a theme he's highlighted in other recent campaign stops, knocked Congress for creating a stalemate that's stalling the economy.

"What's holding us back from meeting this challenge is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views," he said. "This election is about breaking that stalemate."

I don't trust the Washington Post's polls, but Ed Morrissey took a stab at that latest one: "This just in: Bain attack still not working":

Two analyses from the flawed WaPo/ABC poll, as well as spending in swing states, deliver grim news to Team Obama this morning. Their main line of attack in which they hope to paint Mitt Romney as an uber-rich vampire capitalist clearly isn’t moving the needle among voters — and that’s true despite an overwhelming spending advantage Barack Obama has enjoyed in the early going. Unless they can come up with a better argument, Romney’s fundraising will shortly put them in a very big hole.

Read it all at the link (via Memeorandum).

MD Rabbi Alam, Obama Ally and Democrat Candidate for Missouri Secretary of State, Claims No Jews Died on 9/11

This guy's a mainstream Democrat, running for statewide office in Missouri, and boasts personal invitations to the Obama White House.

This is no anomaly. This is today's Democrat Party Jew-hating establishment.

At Atlas Shrugs, "Democrat Jew-hatred: Missouri Muslim Politician Claims 'No Jews Died During the Attacks of 9/11."

This is today's Democrat party. And so is this. What red-blooded, freedom-loving American would associate with the fifth column? Folks should be fleeing in droves ......

This guy is Obama's former satellite campaign manager. More Jew-hatred on Obama's Website: Hub for hate, terror and antisemitism.

Islamic Jew-hatred, it's in the quran.

And see the Washington Free Beacon, "Secretary of Truth":

A Democratic Party caucus chairman vying to become Missouri’s next secretary of state is a 9/11 Truther who has associated with a radical Muslim cleric and trafficked in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

MD Rabbi Alam is an Obama campaign ally and Missouri-based Democratic activist who chairs the National Democratic Party Asian American Caucus (NDPAAC), a Democratic National Committee-sponsored organization that liaises with Asian minorities.

Alam, who was born in Bangladesh, served as a “satellite campaign manager” for then-candidate Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 elections, and has since been invited to the White House.

Alam has speculated about Jewish involvement in the September 11th terrorist attacks and participated in an event with a Muslim cleric who has accused Israel of terrorism and alleged that the U.S. invented the HIV disease.

“Why [was] 9/11 was a official holidy [sic] for all jewish [sic] people worked in the the [sic] WTC?” Alam asked in an Internet discussion titled, “Was 9/11 a conspiracy??”

Alam went on to tout the 9/11 Truther film Loose Change 9/11, and challenged readers to “tell me how many of the Jewish people died on the 9/11 tragedy?”

Asked in an interview Monday about his provocative views, Alam stood by his controversial writings, admitting that he has been “waiting to discuss it with somebody.”

“My question was, ‘What’s the reason not a single Jew was killed on that day,’” Alam said, maintaining that his inquiries are based on facts, rather than a bias against Jewish people. “Was there a single Jew killed on that day?”

The State Department long ago debunked the insinuation that Jews, forewarned about the attacks, stayed home on September 11. Officials estimate that somewhere between 200 and 400 Jews died in the World Trade Center; five Israeli citizens also perished in the attacks.

Alam, however, still has many questions, and cites “articles and research” purportedly showing that Jews were not killed.

Alam spent the next 20 minutes of the interview explaining the impossibility that commercial airliners could have singlehandedly knocked down the Twin Towers.

“I have 100 percent doubts. It doesn’t add up,” he said. “My bottom line is the plane is not solely responsible for destroying the whole building.”

Alam’s longstanding ties to the president and Democratic Party make his radical views about the 9/11 attacks and Jewish people all the more startling, political insiders and campaign experts say.

“When people make the Jewish claim with respect to the 9/11 attacks, that is such a red flag for an anti-Semite,” said Debra Burlingame, a board member of the national security group Keep America Safe. “It’s a dirty little truth for the 9/11 Truthers.”

Check the guy's website.

And remember, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz boasts a top staffer who slurs Jews on Facebook as "Jew-bags." See: "In flap over Jewish slur, Debbie Wasserman Schultz stands by aide."

It's the party of hate.

RELATED: From Ben Shapiro, at FrontPage, "74 Anti-Israel Democrats."

Added: Blazing Cat Fur links. Thanks!

Florida Teenager Loses Right Arm in Alligator Attack

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Florida teen loses arm -- but not his wit -- to alligator."

Lots more at London's Daily Mail, "'You're not the only left-handed person in the family now': Brave teen jokes with his sister after having right arm bitten off by ALLIGATOR."

Great White Shark Encounters on Both Coasts of United States

Folks feel as though they're living through Peter Benchley's "Jaws." So far there have been no deaths.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on a great white shark attack on Saturday, "Shark attacks kayak near Pleasure Point." And this morning's Los Angeles Times reports on the Cape Cod great white sighting from Saturday as well, "Cape Cod shark: 'I just paddled,' kayaker says."

[Walter] Szulc, of Manchester, N.H., didn't realize he was being followed until the nearby paddle-border, Dana Richardson, began waving and yelling, "Shark!" That's when Szulc looked over his shoulder. "I saw the fin right away and I figured this is either it, or I'm going to paddle in," Szulc told reporters later.

Richardson had spotted it earlier about a mile south and said it trailed him as well. He was headed for Nauset Beach to alert lifeguards.

The fish got there first.

"I didn't want to just yell, 'Shark, shark,' and scare people," said Richardson, a Cape Cod resident and longtime surfer and paddle-boarder. "But when I saw the fin following the kayaker, I began yelling and waving my paddle."

The sighting came on the same day that a great white drew attention in Santa Cruz after chomping off the end of a kayak. The kayaker was thrown into the water and stunned, but not injured.

More at LAT, "Cape Cod shark scare: More people, more sharks, more run-ins," and at CSM, "Great white sharks: Close encounters on East and West coasts (+video).

Mr. Szulc is interview at CNN, "Brian Todd reports on the sightings of sharks in Cape Cod."

The Sadly Obligatory Post on Brad Pitt's Mom Receiving Death Threats from 'Tolerant' Gay Rights Progressives

Lonely Conservatives has the story, "Brad Pitt’s Mother Receives Death Threats After Writing Anti-Obama Op-Ed."

And also at the New York Post, "Brad Pitt’s mom faces death threats after anti-Obama letter":

Brad Pitt’s mom Jane Pitt has faced a barrage of death threats and other slurs after writing to her local paper bashing President Obama and his positions on gay marriage and abortion.

“Brad Pitt’s mom, die,” said one Twitter post, according to Web site Twitchy, while another tweet read, “[bleep] you, brad pitt's mom. the gay community made your kid a star, you whacko” and another says, “Brad Pitt’s mom wrote an anti-gay pro-Romney editorial. Kill the Bitch.”

The venomous tweets erupted after the “Moneyball” star’s mother wrote a letter to her local Missouri paper, the Springfield News-Leader, saying of the upcoming election, “Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for [Mitt] Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.”

The Twitchy entry is here, "No H8? Tolerance bullies hurl vile slurs at Brad Pitt’s pro-Romney Christian mom."

Really, this is the radical homosexual left in a nutshell. No rationalizing, no excuse-making, can lift this burden off the progressive left. It's just one hate-filled attack after another, hurled against anyone who deviates from the fake tolerance agenda of the homosexual values-destruction cult.

There's a roundup at Memeorandum, FWIW.

Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo Bring It Home for the Angels

From Bill Shaiken, at the Los Angeles Times, "Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo are bringing it home for Angels."

To say Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo saved the Angels' season reeks of hyperbole. We're going to go one better, though.

Trout and Trumbo revived a franchise sagging under the weight of bloated contracts, mercenary outfielders and October letdowns. If the Angels do get to their first World Series under the ownership of Arte Moreno, the day they called up Trout might be just as significant as the day they signed Albert Pujols.

Probably more so.

Until the Angels summoned Trout from the minor leagues, Pujols had no one to drive in. Until the Angels installed Trumbo in the lineup every day, Pujols had no reliable power threat behind him.

Trout did not make the team out of spring training, crowded out by veterans with guaranteed dollars. Pujols pushed Trumbo off of first base, and out of the everyday lineup.

Now Trout and Trumbo appear anchored in the Angels' outfield — now, and for the next decade.

"When guys perform like this, you let them do what they do and get out of the way," Angels General Manager Jerry Dipoto said.

And see ESPN's Buster Olney at this video clip, "Award Winning Angels."

RELATED: From Chris Erskine, "Time to celebrate the star of sports at the All-Star break — baseball."

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux Slobbers Over 'Former GOP Prodigy' Jonathan Krohn

I tweeted Johnathan Krohn during the segment:

Dude! @JonathanLKrohn, man at least try to have a compelling reason for spinelessly abandoning core values you were raised with. #DUH@CNN
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 9, 2012

And it's not just Suzanne Malveaux who's been slobbering over the kid. And that's the thing: he's just a child. One of the more absurd memes I read last week was how Krohn was challenging the notion that people get more conservative as they get older. I'm like, right, he's a freakin' a teenager! And besides, I've read the book. It's good. No one writes about something like that, conservatism, without having a deep-seated moral sense of what it's all about. What's so amazing is how transparently dishonest Krohn's transformation has been. He's been arguing that he essentially parroted conservative talking points when he was 13 years old. But anyone who's seen the CPAC clip recognized a true child prodigy who could really walk the walk. And Krohn loved the adulation. Now he's getting it from the other side, as you can see from his Twitter feed. He's mainlining the stuff. He's getting ready for college and he's probably been bullied by his progressive peers, because that's what they do. He frankly caved to the abuse. I won't be surprised if he ODs sometime in the future, or announces he's getting married to a longtime homosexual partner. There's frankly something wrong with the guy at this point and his second 15 minutes will be up shortly.

FWIW, see Krohn's piece at Salon: "I was a right-wing child star."

California Can't Afford ObamaCare's Medi-Cal Expansion

An awesome piece, from George Skelton, at the Los Angeles Times, "'Affordable' Care Act? Not so much for Sacramento":

In Washington, it's called the Affordable Care Act. In Sacramento, it could be become known as another budget buster.

Obamacare — as it's pugnaciously tagged by the political right — may not be affordable at all for California state government.

Soon after the federal healthcare act was passed by Congress in 2010, the Schwarzenegger administration in Sacramento calculated a state price tag of up to $2.65 billion annually.

The Brown administration has torn up that price tag, but doesn't have a new one. They're working on it, "trying to be much more precise," says Len Finocchio, associate director of the Department of Health Care Services.

Good luck on that. As Sacramento consistently demonstrates, being precise on government spending projections is virtually impossible.

But Finocchio acknowledges that the federal act will result in a heavier state financial load. "We almost certainly will be adding Medi-Cal enrollees, and that will be a cost," he notes.

The additional burden on the states is a negative aspect of the healthcare overhaul that seldom gets discussed, especially in Obama-rooting, liberal-dominated Sacramento.

That's California for you, also known as Cuba on the Pacific.

Read the whole thing. Skelton offers a dose of fiscal sobriety that's badly missing these days.

Texas Governor Rick Perry Won't Implement ObamaCare

Good for him.

States are going bankrupt over ObamaCare's unfunded mandates. Of course, the idiot radical progressives are attacking conservative governors on this as racist crackpots, which is all they've got as their socialist program goes down in flames.

Democrats Get All Jittery Over White House 'Taxmageddon' Strategy for 2013

You gotta love this, at the Wall Street Journal, "Democrats and the Tax Cliff":

President Obama has staked his re-election on the promise to raise taxes on anyone making more than $200,000 a year, but it's going to be fascinating to see if he can hold other Democrats through Election Day. June marked the third month in a row of lousy job creation, and the economy is growing slowly even as the January 2013 tax cliff grows closer by the day.

Already, as many as six Democratic Senators are hedging their bets as the economy looks worse. That list includes Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia. The first four are running for re-election this year, while the last two are leaving the Senate. They haven't all declared outright support for postponing the tax hikes, but they have expressed a willingness to negotiate a deal with Republicans that would avoid raising taxes on anyone next year.

RTWT.

Bull Goes on the Rampage at Bous a la Mers Festival in Denia, Spain

I'm getting a kick out of this stuff.

At London's Daily Mail, "Running at full speed with horns out to attack: Shocking moment a raging bull rammed a fearless reveller into the sea."

And lots more from Canada's National Post, "Picture Post: Will this Pamplona bull hit the running target?"

Rosie Jones Classic Photo Roundup

At Egotastic, "Rosie Jones Pictures for An Early Happy Birthday."

The Relentless War Against the Family in Britain

From Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "The real meaning of lifestyle choice":

The relentless war against the family in Britain continues in the highest court of the land. Baroness Hale, the veteran ‘lifestyle choice’ radical who, as a member of the UK Supreme Court, is the country’s top female judge, has called for cohabiting couples to be given more legal rights.

According to the Times (£) Lady Hale admires the situation in Scotland where the law is different, and in which the Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling by the Edinburgh Court of Session which ordered a man to pay his former cohabiting partner nearly £40,000 after their relationship broke down.

According to Lady Hale, Scottish law on this issue was both ‘practicable and fair.’ She said:

‘It does not impose upon unmarried couples the responsibilities of marriage but redresses the gains and losses flowing from their relationship.’

Family lawyers have backed her up, saying:

‘The current situation for people who live together in England and Wales more often than not creates injustice and hardship, and our current law fails to reflect the way people are choosing to live their lives.’

But the whole point is that cohabitation is the way they are choosing to live their lives. They could choose to get married. They choose not to, because they do not want to be married. They may want to preserve their independence; they may be averse to making a commitment to another person; they may think marriage is an outdated institution. Whatever the reason, it is their choice not to get married.

But marriage is an institution which inescapably confers obligations on those who enter into it. It is a solemn commitment – the most solemn commitment – one person can make to another.  It entails above all obligations between the spouses. The benefits that accrue to marriage are ineradicably bound up with those obligations.

The absence of legal protection in cohabitation follows from the fact that, unlike marriage, cohabitation is a loose partnership between individuals who remain ultimately free of each other; they can walk out of the relationship with no strings attached. This is the ‘lifestyle choice’ they make. If those benefits are bestowed on people who choose not to undertake their concomitant obligations, this is not only fundamentally unjust.  It vitiates the very nature of a contractual or covenantal agreement. If those who choose to duck the commitment of marriage can nevertheless obtain its benefits, this makes a mockery of and undermines the institution of marriage itself.

More at the link.

Marriage is just a politically convenient football for the left. If you're a swinger, who needs it? But if you're a radical homosexual extremist, marriage is the bee's knees. F-king progressive freak jackwagons.

Monday Malware Hype Fizzles as Few Lose Internet Access

This story was all the rage last week, about how hundreds of thousands of Internet users would be locked out of access because of a secret malicious infection from years ago, or something. It turns out, well, not so much. At the Wall Street Journal, "Malware Threat to Internet Corralled"

WASHINGTON—The malware threat to the Internet likely has been tamed.

Leading Internet-service providers said Sunday that they had moved to ensure that computers infected with malware left behind by a hacking spree that started in 2007 continue to access the Internet normally. On Monday, there were few signs that many Americans had lost their Web access.

Since November the Federal Bureau of Investigation has authorized the operation of servers to allow infected computers to run normally, but those servers went offline at midnight.

Comcast Corp. has reached out to customers with infected machines. Verizon Communications Inc. is connecting customers who lost connectivity to the Internet with technicians who can remove the malware. And AT&T Inc. said it has taken steps to make sure none of its customers lose their Internet connections.

Officials from the companies played down the threat, and some cybersecurity experts said computer antivirus programs and updated operating systems have cleaned most infected computers. The FBI had estimated that 64,000 computers were affected.

Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson, said Monday there had been too much hype around the malware threat, which never posed much of a problem.

Exactly.

Anderson Cooper Coming Out Shows How Homosexuality Has Gone Totally Mainstream, or Something

It was pretty much a collective duh when the news broke last week on Anderson Cooper being gay.

Howard Kurtz covered the news on Sunday, and Tim Graham responds at NewsBusters, "CNN Unanimously Approves of Anderson Cooper's Sexuality, Boasts He's Now 'Mainstream,' Not on the 'Wrong Side of History'." It turns out Eric Deggans, interviewed at the clip, bashed conservatives as "haters" who should be banned from the networks in hit job last year at PuffHo, "My Thoughts on MLK Day: When Will News Media Stop Enabling Anti-Gay Activists?"

Michaelangelo Signorile is interviewed at the clip as well (and boy does he look like the stereotypical homosexual). Signorile, as some may recall, notoriously slimed Robert Stacy McCain in a hit piece about ten years back. I'm not linking, but Saberpoint has a related entry that corrects the record: "Robert Stacy McCain: I Know Him Better Than Charles Johnson Does."

And remember, homosexuality is in fact a perversion from the norm, and the left's normalization campaign is in fact a destructive program that is destabilizing for society. Check the archives for more, and see, for example, "Conservatives Block Homosexual Marriage Law in Washington State."

VIDEO: Taliban Execute Woman in Parwan Province, Afghanistan

An original version is here.

And at the New York Times, "In Video of Execution, Reign of Taliban Recalled":

KABUL, Afghanistan — The scene that Afghan officials say was caught on video last month near Kabul was as horrific as it was once common in Afghanistan: a Taliban fighter executing a woman with repeated shots to the back of her head as his compatriots and scores of villagers watch, and then cheer.

The crime the woman was accused of: adultery.

The video, which has begun circulating in Kabul, recalls the Taliban’s five-year reign in Afghanistan, when public executions were advertised on the radio and people accused of crimes were shot in front of crowds that packed the capital’s stadium. Adultery was among the crimes punishable by death.

The execution captured on the video took place in the Shinwari district of Parwan Province, in central Afghanistan, less than a two-hour drive from Kabul. It occurred on or around June 23, said Col. Masjidi, a senior provincial police official. Colonel Masjidi, like many Afghans, uses a single name.

These were bogus charges of adultery against the woman.

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Obama's 'Peace' Partners, the Taliban, Publicly Execute Woman Near Kabul."

Obama to Push Extension of Middle-Class Tax Cuts

From Laura Meckler, at the Wall Street Journal (via Memeorandum):

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, an effort to shift the conversation from the sagging economy toward tax fairness.

Mr. Obama appeared in the East Room, surrounded by people who would benefit from the extension. It is another display of the power of incumbency, which lets a president command attention for his ideas in grand surroundings not available to his challenger.

President Obama is launching a push to extend tax cuts for the middle class, Sara Murray reports on Markets Hub. (Photo: Getty Images)

His campaign will amplify the message with a series of battleground-state events this week, and Mr. Obama will make the same case on a campaign trip to Iowa on Tuesday.

The president has long supported a permanent extension of the tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 and has called for cuts aiding wealthier families to expire.

But Monday's event marked the first time he specifically called for a one-year extension for the lower-earning group.

"Let's not hold the vast majority of all Americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy," Mr. Obama said.

Senate Democrats plan a vote in the next month on the proposal, which will amplify Mr. Obama's message, though it is not expected to pass. Indeed, no resolution on the issue is expected until after the November election.

And here's the headline at Wizbang, "Obama to Shift Focus From Dismal Jobs Outlook to Raising Taxes."

Well, it's just more class warfare, in any case. And if Team Romney gets its act together they'll be out with rapid reaction taking points hammering Obama on his ObamaCare tax boondoggle, and all the rest of the costs this administration has imposed on average Americans. See more at the Foundry, "Obama Finally Enters the Taxmageddon Debate—With a Tax Increase," and at the Weekly Standard, "Obama Tax Increase Would Hit Business Owners Hard."

Plus see all the coverage at Memeorandum.

Victoria Secret Model Alessandra Ambrosio Takes to the Beach in Malibu

She looks great --- and she just had a baby in May.

See London's Daily Mail, "Keep your eyes on the ball boys! Alessandra Ambrosio plays beach volleyball in a crop top and bikini bottoms," and "What a pair of angels! Bikini-clad Victoria's Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio frolics in the sea with her gorgeous daughter Anja."

Also at the Blemish, "Alessandra Ambrosio in a Bikini Two Months After Giving Birth."

Three Gored During Monday's Running of the Bulls in Pamplona

Some of the other outlets, like Telegraph UK, have edited the video.

But the Guardian has a raw cut, "Pamplona bull run: Britons and American gored - video."

PREVIOUSLY: "Man Dragged by a Bull at Pamplona 2012."

The Supreme Court Leaks Continue

Check Orin Kerr at Volokh, via Althouse, "Someone on the conservative side of the Supreme Court 'wants us to know that they’re pissed off, and they want us to know why'."

Jan Crawford at CBS News initially reported the leaks.

'Excuses'

The latest ad from Crossroads GPS:

According to National Journal, "American Crossroads has purchased more than $39.8 million in advertising across at least 10 states between Labor Day and Election Day."

Andy Murray's Gracious Speech Following Wimbledon Loss

I promised an update at my previous post: "Andy Murray Worn Down in Heatbreak Loss to Roger Federer at Wimbledon."

As noted, there was a rain delay during the third set. It takes almost an hour to close the stadium at Wimbledon so during that time ESPN anchor Mike Tirico introduced a news segment on Andy Murray's background, especially on the tragedy in his hometown of Dunblane, Scotland. In 1996 a shooter entered Dunblane Primary School and killed 16 young children and one teacher before turning a gun on himself. The kids were 5 and 6-year-olds. The Wikipedia entry for the shooting is here. The ESPN segment included news clips of emotionally distraught parents running down the street to the school. Dunblane's a small town of 8,000 or so residents. And the shooting was one of the worst in the history of Great Britain, so that background is a big part of the huge emotional support for Andy Murray.

The New York Times reports on Dunblane's support for Murray, "Scottish Town Rises And Falls With Andy Murray":

DUNBLANE, Scotland — Inside Dunblane Youth Centre, strangers hugged, fists were pumped and children cheered. Boys lay on chairs shaped like tennis balls. Girls with Scottish flags painted on their cheeks wove through the crowd chanting, “Let’s go, Andy!” The room was so crammed with people breathing stale, warm air that personal space seemed more an extravagance than a basic courtesy, but no one seemed to mind because up there, on the giant projection screen, was one of them.

The people of this village 30 miles northeast of Glasgow have congregated before, have packed its pubs and its social halls and its gathering spots, to watch their most famous son compete at Wimbledon. For three straight years, Andy Murray had reached the semifinals, and for three straight years, Murray had lost. They lauded his effort — “the Scots love a valiant loser,” said Gordon Sloan, of nearby Greenloaning — but yearned for glory.

“We’ve been teased a lot these past few years,” David Macaskill of Dundee said. “A lot of Scottish hearts broken.”

That chance for glory came Sunday, against the indomitable Roger Federer. An island that had produced a men’s Wimbledon finalist for the first time since 1938 wondered if Murray would actually win. A country prayed. A town hoped.

In the town center, two popular pubs, the Village Inn and the Dunblane Hotel, heaved with people 45 minutes before the 2 p.m. start. Crowds spilled onto Stirling Road, which was not a problem because few cars were out driving anyway. Those who could not spend their afternoon planted in front of a television still tracked the score. Outside the youth center, a coffee van blared the radio broadcast of the match. At Simply M&S, the supermarket next door, cashiers asked customers for updates.

Sitting at a table in the Dunblane Bowling Club, Doreen Rose tried convincing herself before the match that Murray could win, should win, would win. “He’s won 8 of 15 matches against Federer,” said Rose, of nearby Callendar. “But they’ve never played on grass. Oh, I don’t know. I’m so nervous, I can’t think.”

Murray captured the first two games of the first set (“Come on, Andy!”), then lost the next two (“Go get ’em, Andy!”). When Murray broke Federer to go ahead, 5-4, Malky McLachlan of Dunblane was standing against a wall. He was cradling his 16-month-old son, Magnus, who was sleeping through the commotion — and through what was Murray’s first set won in a Grand Slam final. “Maybe he’ll see more history when he wakes up,” McLachlan said.

Magnus woke up about a half-hour later, when Murray was toiling through an arduous second set. Federer broke Murray at 5-6, and Sheena Herley of Dunblane sensed a shift in the mood.

“It’s a wee bit subdued now,” Herley said.

More at the link.

Plus, some reactions to Murray's emotional speech. At Telegraph UK, "Wimbledon 2012: Tearful Andy Murray loses on court, but wins the nation’s heart," London's Daily Mail, "Murray lost to a master of the universe, the tennis equivalent of Pele or Ali - tearful Andy's hopes dashed as Federer wins 17th Slam," and the Guardian, "Andy Murray: the fans' tears."

And a critical reaction at USA Today, "ESPN dropped the ball on Murray's reaction." And the Chattanooga Times Free Press, "Roger Federer, Andy Murray both won."

Are We Anywhere Close to Containing the Costs of Healthcare?

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Crushing Cost of Care":

On Valentine's Day 2009, Scott Crawford, 41 years old, received the break that he thought would save his life. A surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed his ailing heart and put in a healthy one. The transplant was a success.

But complications put the former tire-warehouse worker in intensive care for almost a year. Surgeons removed his gall bladder, his left leg and part of a lung. And Mr. Crawford soon became one of the most expensive Americans on Medicare.

A sliver of the sickest patients account for the majority of Medicare spending - and young people can often have the highest costs. WSJ's Janet Adamy discusses the case of Scott Crawford, who became one of the most expensive Americans on Medicare.

As his condition turned grave, one of his doctors questioned whether to keep treating him. Nurses reported feeling "moral distress" over his unrelenting pain. Still, medical opinion was split, and Mr. Crawford's family, with the backing of his transplant surgeon, pushed forward.

A few days before Christmas 2009, Mr. Crawford died, leaving behind a young son.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare data, the government spent $2.1 million on his inpatient and outpatient care in 2009. That was the fifth costliest of all Medicare beneficiaries that year and the highest among those who died by that year's end. Medicare covered Mr. Crawford's costs through federal disability insurance.

A primary goal of the 2010 health-care overhaul that the Supreme Court upheld last week is to slow the growth of costs. Even so, the law does little to address a simple fact: A sliver of the sickest patients account for the majority of U.S. health-care spending. In 2009, the top 10% of Medicare beneficiaries who received hospital care accounted for 64% of the program's hospital spending, the Journal's analysis found.

Younger patients like Mr. Crawford were more expensive, representing just 18.5% of the beneficiaries who received hospital care but 23.7% of the total cost. Seniors vastly outnumbered them, however, and consumed 76% of the total hospital costs.

As for Medicare's long-term cost trajectory, it is relentlessly upward. The program's net expenditures totaled $486 billion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, or 13.5% of all federal expenditures. In March, the CBO projected that Medicare expenditures would grow an average of 5.7% per year through 2022 and equal 16.2% of all federal outlays.

Medicare patients rack up disproportionate costs in the final year of life. In 2009, 6.6% of the people who received hospital care died. Those 1.6 million people accounted for 22.3% of total hospital expenditures, the Journal's analysis shows.

But efforts by policy makers to tackle the question of end-of-life care have foundered recently. In the debate over President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, an initiative to help Medicare beneficiaries plan end-of-life care sank after opponents labeled it a "death panel."

"We're always going to have patients in the Medicare program that need a disproportionate number of resources," said Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator and director for Medicare. As for Mr. Crawford, "A lot of the costs were driven by complications that could have been avoided," he said, citing an early infection as an example.

Continue reading.

Some patients are going to cost more, despite all the treatment to prevent infections and so forth. And when you get a patient like Mr. Crawford, no one's going to recommend that we pull the plug, because that's not what we do. The problem is that overall healthcare costs are out of control and ObamaCare will not address the problem and is expected to make matters worse.

Newspaper Industry Is Running Out of Time to Adapt to Digital Future

Well, this piece is from NYT's David Carr, who notoriously slammed Kansans and Missourians and people with "low sloping foreheads."

So take it FWIW: "The Fissures Are Growing for Papers." (Via Mediagazer.)

Is Spanking Okay?

Here's an ABC News clip from the other day: "Parenting Techniques: To Spank or Not to Spank?"

I personally think it's okay. That said, I don't like spanking my kids all that much. I feel guilty, and that's because society has said it's not okay. It's to the point where I feel like Child Protective Services will be breathing down my neck. That's me though. Overall, I think it should be up to the parents. The recent viral video of the man beating his kid with a belt for not catching a baseball is child abuse. Parents who give their kids a good swift open-hand swat to the butt, after the kids have been behaving badly, are disciplining their children as they see fit. 

Theo's Sunday Hotties

All good.

See: "Sunday Totty...", and "Bedtime Totty..."

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

From Arthur Brooks, at the New York Times:

WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives? The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right?

Wrong. Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.

Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.

The story on religion is much the same. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness? You guessed it. Religious participants are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives as are secularists (43 percent to 23 percent). The differences don’t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.

Whether religion and marriage should make people happy is a question you have to answer for yourself. But consider this: Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids.

An explanation for the happiness gap more congenial to liberals is that conservatives are simply inattentive to the misery of others. If they recognized the injustice in the world, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. In the words of Jaime Napier and John Jost, New York University psychologists, in the journal Psychological Science, “Liberals may be less happy than conservatives because they are less ideologically prepared to rationalize (or explain away) the degree of inequality in society.” The academic parlance for this is “system justification.”

Continue reading.

And here's that Napier and Jost study: "Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?"

Brooks wrote a book dealing with some of this stuff: Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.

Ernest Borgnine: 1917-2012

I got a thrill watching Earnest Borgnine in "Red" in 2010. I think I was surprised to see him starring in a brief cameo, but it was great. And it turns out Borgnine was still making movies. He's seen at the clip discussing, "The Man Who Shook The Hand of Vicente Fernández."

The Huffington Post has an interview from a couple of weeks ago, "I Was Marty: An Interview With Ernest Borgnine."

And here's the obituary at the Los Angeles Times, "Ernest Borgnine dies at 95; won Oscar for 'Marty,' showed comic side in sitcom":

Ernest Borgnine, who delivered an Academy Award-winning performance as the lonely Bronx butcher looking for love in the 1955 drama "Marty" and displayed his comic side in the 1960s as the star of the popular TV sitcom "McHale's Navy," has died. He was 95.

Borgnine died Sunday of apparent kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his longtime publicist, Harry Flynn, told The Times. Borgnine went into the hospital "a couple of days ago" for a checkup, Flynn said.

Audiences first took notice of the stocky, gap-toothed Borgnine in the 1953 movie "From Here to Eternity," in which he played "Fatso" Judson, the sadistic stockade sergeant of the guard who viciously beats up Frank Sinatra's Pvt. Angelo Maggio in the adaptation of James Jones' acclaimed novel depicting Army life in Hawaii before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The role moved Borgnine into the top echelon of movie villains in films such as "Vera Cruz" and "Bad Day at Black Rock."

But then came the title role in "Marty," the 1955 film version of Paddy Chayefsky's original TV play about a sensitive Italian American bachelor butcher who longs for more than simply hanging out with his pals on Saturday night.

"Well, waddaya feel like doing tonight?" Marty's best friend, Angie, played by Joe Mantell, asks in the movie's often-quoted exchange.

"I don't know, Ang', wadda you feel like doing?" Marty replies.

Borgnine's sensitive portrayal of the self-described "fat ugly man" not only earned him an Oscar for best actor, but the movie also won Academy Awards for Chayefsky and director Delbert Mann, as well as the best picture Oscar...

More at the link.

Also at Blazing Cat Fur, "Ernest Borgnine has died."

City College of San Francisco, Nation's Largest Two-Year College, On Brink of Closure

This a huge story.

See the San Francisco Chronicle, "City College of San Francisco on brink of closure":

The poorly run City College of San Francisco has eight months to prove it should stay in business, yet must "make preparations for closure," evaluators ordered Tuesday.

The stunning verdict by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges could result in the closure of California's largest college and a fixture of higher education in one of the nation's wealthiest cities. It has 90,000 students.

Only accredited colleges can receive public funding under state law. But City College's failure to fix serious, long-standing problems of leadership and fiscal planning means that the accrediting commission could vote as early as next June to yank the school's all-important certification, said Barbara Beno, commission president.

More at the link.

My first thought was "no way!" This is a campus with almost 100,000 students, about a third full-time, which makes it one of the largest colleges in the United States. Indeed, the report at Inside Higher Ed says CCSF is too big to fail, "Something Has to Give: Accreditation crisis hits City College of San Francisco":

The shuttering of California’s largest college would be a five-alarm fiasco. With a total enrollment of about 90,000 students (33,000 full-time) and 12 campuses and sites around San Francisco, City College is probably too big to fail. Most of those students would have no other local option, and the rest of the state’s community colleges could hardly absorb them, anyhow, given that the system will turn away an estimated 200,000 students this year because of financial shortfalls.

As a result, City College’s closure is unlikely, observers say. But the college has its work cut out for it. The commission didn’t blink in 2005 when it shut down Compton Community College because of fiscal mismanagement. In that case, however, the much smaller college was consumed by El Camino Community College, becoming a campus center, where enrollment is actually up.

The commission’s fix-it list is long and the timeline is short. The college is also dealing with further budget cuts, which will get worse if voters don’t pass a tax hike this fall...

You can guess what happened. Gross financial mismanagement has placed the college's survival in doubt.

Here's the accreditation report from the ACCJC: "EVALUATION REPORT: City College of San Francisco." And two sections from the summary stand out:

All segments of the college staff expressed and demonstrated a genuine commitment to being a student-centered college. Despite the unified commitment to the college mission, there exists a veil of distrust among the governance groups that manifests itself as an 5 indirect resistance to board and administrative decision-making authority. The chancellor, Academic Senate leaders, vice chancellors, deans, faculty, department chairs, Board of Trustees, classified staff, and student leaders have designed and implemented an elaborate shared governance model. However, the team did not find evidence of clearly delineated roles and authority for decision making, thereby hindering timely communication, decisions and results. Based on this behavior, and coupled with the large number of classified and administrative staff vacancies and expenditures that do not match existing revenue, the team is concerned that the roles, responsibilities and decision-making authority of leadership and the governance structures are not clearly defined.

And:

The team was impressed by the documentation provided in the self study and in the voluminous, yet organized evidence provided in the team room. However, during the course of the team visit additional information was required to reconcile differences between evidence provided in the CCSF Self Evaluation Report and statements made in response to team inquiries. Furthermore, gaining access to some evidence related to technology, finances and human resources was not easy. Additionally, after the visit, the team chair received correspondence, which raised suspicion about the integrity of the institution. Furthermore, the college has not made progress to address a long-standing pattern of late financial audits and deficit spending, which harm the financial integrity of the institution. The college must take steps to restore trust and institutional integrity.

Sounds sketchy.

And continue reading at the report, especially Standard III on college resources. The college is radically understaffed, with personnel "overtaxed" in their efforts to perform the duties and services of the institution. The report notes that these human resources deficiencies do not inform the fiscal planning process effectively, which means that money is not being apportioned to serve the essential needs of the school. And scroll down further to Standard IV, especially the sections on "Findings and Evidence" and the "Conclusion." The college appears to have both high levels of internal institutional distrust --- with threats of retaliation made against those serving on key reporting committees --- and of corrupt decision-making processes --- and that's on the Academic Senate side of things, as well --- that have raised questions about the honesty and integrity of the entire self-evaluation and reporting requirements to the ACCJC.

The college has been running budget deficits for three years and has dipped into financial reserves to survive. This is not a new situation statewide, as budget cuts have hit community colleges hard since at least 2008. But checking back over at the story at Inside Higher Ed, the union president (no surprise) blames the budget crisis (not decision-making) for the school's problems:

So how did the situation at City College get this bad? The answer, it seems, is one of culture.

People take open access seriously in San Francisco. No college in the state has a deeper attachment to its mission of serving as many students as possible. And City College also prides itself on a decentralized decision-making process, which allows plenty of experimentation at the department level. But those traditions aren’t particularly helpful while a college absorbs a flurry of budget cuts.

City College “has a long history of delegation,” which “was a good thing for long time,” said Scott Lay, president and CEO of the Community College League of California. But “that doesn’t actually work with several years of budget austerity.”
The report failed to fully acknowledge the role of state funding cuts in causing problems at the college, said Alisa Messer, an English instructor at City College and president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, the college’s primary faculty union. And she defended City College for sticking to its mission.
“We’re trying not to close the door to our students,” she said, adding that “these are truly contradictory and impossible times.”

Messer also defended the college’s stripped-down approach to administration, which she said has been a deliberate attempt to serve as many students as possible in tight times by “trying to maintain people in the front lines.”

Notice the part about how the college takes "open access seriously." I can guarantee you the college's remediation rates are hitting close to 90 percent if not more, which is why they are moving to abolish placement testing for incoming students (sounds familiar). And being perhaps the most diverse community college in the state, it's a safe bet that the college's staffing and administration practices are equally exotic. It would be thought "racist" to say it (but here goes anyway), but community colleges sometimes get less-than-spectacular teachers and administrators. (That's a nice way of saying grossly unqualified.) The so-called culture of diversity at such colleges works to create an affirmative action system that combines with some old-fashioned patronage politics for badly inefficient institutional outcomes. And I'm talking in the general sense here. No doubt those on the inside at CCSF would be able to report on some abject levels of corruption that contributed to the college's fiscal train wreck.

Frankly, it would be a political bombshell if the college were to indeed close, and we'd be hearing cries of racism until the cows come home. That's why I doubt that CCSF will go belly up. It might get taken over and placed in some kind of receivership by the state, and then perhaps merged with another district on a temporary basis. But I seriously doubt a college of this magnitude would up and close its doors on the nearly 100,000 students it serves. See the San Francisco Chronicle for more, "City College vows to resist closure, takeover."

More on this later, for sure...

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.