Mornin', R.L.
You on the road yet...?
Did you happen to read the last newsbite from yesterday's newsbites? (What do you think?)
Remember when the business of America was business, folks? Not constant warfare. Not all-encompassing welfare programs?
It snowed. In the winter. In New York.
It's cold. In the winter. In New York.
HIGHWAYS WERE CLOSED...
Folks... we're not talking the storm of the century. We're not even talking a Nor'Easter...
HIGHWAYS WERE CLOSED...
GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO DECLARED A STATE-WIDE STATE OF EMERGENCY...
(*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)
Hey... RL... image it's not the airport we're headed to but the fast train out of Newark...
Imagine the truckers being told to "cease and desist" their trucking!
What the hell is happening to our country...?!?!
Amerika 2014 - we leave our homes only when "allowed?"
Amerika 2014 - it's "for our own protection?"
Think about it, folks... just think about it.
* Oops...! Almost forgot! Today's Newsbites theme song!
9 comments:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/census-dc-suburbs-dominate-wealthiest-list-falls-church-va-where-31
The small suburban independent city of Falls Church, Va. — which is treated as the equivalent of a county by the Census Bureau - had a higher median household income in 2012 than any county in the United States, according to data released in December by the Census Bureau.
In the Census Bureau’s ranking of the 30 counties with the highest median household incomes, the City of Falls Church rose from the No. 2 spot in 2011 to the No. 1 spot in 2012, overtaking Loudoun County, Va.
While treated as the equivalent of a county by the Census Bureau, the City of Falls Church had a population of only 13,229 in 2012, as estimated by the Census Bureau, and is merely 2.2 square miles in size.
It is also a place where, the Census Bureau estimates, 31.3% of the civilians who are 16 or older and who are employed work for the government.
The median household income in the City of Falls Church in 2012 was $121,250; in Loudoun County it was $118,934. Loudon had an estimated population of 336,898 in 2012.
Falls Church is less than nine miles by road from the District of Columbia line, according to Google Maps, while the Loudoun County line is about 25 miles by road from the D.C. line.
The only county among the Top 5 for median household income not located near Washington, D.C., was No. 3 Los Alamos County, N.M. — which is the smallest county in that state, and which is also home to the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
(*SMIRK*)
The median household income in Los Alamos County in 2012, according to the Census Bureau, was $112,115.
In Los Alamos County, the Census Bureau estimates, 28.2% of the civilians 16 or older who have a job work for government.
After No. 1 Falls Church City, No. 2 Loudoun County, Va., and No. 3 Los Alamos County, Howard County, Md., ranked No. 4 with a median household income of $108,234; and Fairfax County, Va., ranked No. 5 with a median household income of $106,690.
* NOTICING A TREND HERE, FOLKS...???
Other than Los Alamos, Falls Church City, and the three D.C. suburban counties of Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax, Hunterdon County, N.J. was the only county in the nation with a six-figure median household income in 2012. The median household income there was $103,301.
The other Washington, D.C.-area jurisdictions in the Top 30 included: No. 7 Arlington County, Va.; No. 9 Stafford County, Va.; No. 12 Montgomery County, Md.; No. 13 Prince William County, Va.; No. 18 Charles County, Md.; No. 23 Calvert County, Md.; No. 24 Anne Arundel County, Md.; No. 25 Fairfax City, Va.; and No. 29 St. Mary’s County, Md.
* AGAIN... NOTICE A TREND...???
Santa Clara County, Calif., home to Silicon Valley, ranked No. 17 with a median household income of $91,195.
* GEEZUS...
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey has estimated various economic characteristics for the nation as a whole and for individual communities over the five-year period from 2008 through 2012.
According to these estimates, in the United States as a whole, 14.9% of those who were employed worked for government. In the City of Falls Church, 31.3% worked for government.
In the United States as a whole, 6.3% were self-employed in their own not-incorporated business. In Falls Church, only 4.4% were self-employed in their own not-incorporated business.
In the United States as a whole, 76.1% of the people who commuted to work did so alone in a car, truck or van. In Falls Church, only 61.8% did that. In the nation as a whole, only 5% commuted to work via public transportation; in Falls Church, 16.9% did.
Also, according to the Census Bureau, more people worked at home in the City of Falls Church (7.2%) than in the country as a whole (4.3%).
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/24349599/marines-delay-female-fitness-plan-after-half-fail#ixzz2pHPCzD2K
More than half of female Marines in boot camp can't do three pull-ups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year...
(*SHAKING MY HEAD*)
...prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement...
(*RENEWED HEAD SHAKING*)
...part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs.
* MEANING MALE MARINES ONLY HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DO THREE PULL-UPS...?!?!
Although no new timetable has been set on the delayed physical requirement...
* NO... OF COURSE NOT...
(*SIGH*)
...Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos wants training officials to "continue to gather data...
* UH-HUH...
...and ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed," Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, said Thursday.
* WHY NOT JUST DO AWAY WITH ALL MEASURES OF SUCCESS? ALL STANDARDS! WOULDN'T THAT PROVIDE A 100% OPPORTUNITY TO "SUCCEED?"
Starting with the new year, all female Marines were supposed to be able to do at least three pull-ups on their annual physical fitness test and eight for a perfect score. The requirement was tested in 2013 on female recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., but only 45% of women met the minimum, Krebs said.
* SOUNDS TO ME LIKE WE SHOULD BE SEPARATING 55% OF FEMALE MARINES FROM THE CORPS!
The Marines had hoped to institute the pull-ups on the belief that pull-ups require the muscular strength necessary to perform common military tasks such as scaling a wall, climbing up a rope or lifting and carrying heavy munitions.
* HMM... PERHAPS IF WE ASSIGN EACH FEMALE MARINE A MALE MARINE...
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
Officials felt there wasn't a medical risk to putting the new standard into effect as planned across the service...
* AREN'T THE STANDARDS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT PERFORMING THE JOB? (GUESS WHAT FOLKS... BEING A MARINE IN AND OF ITSELF PRESENTS "A MEDICAL RISK.")
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
...but that the risk of losing recruits and hurting retention of women already in the service was unacceptably high, she said.
* THE RISK OF LOSING INFERIOR RECRUITS... OF HURTING THE RETENTION OF MARINES WHO CAN'T CUT IT... THIS IS WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!
Because the change is being put off, women will be able to choose which test of upper-body strength they will be graded on in their annual physical fitness test. Their choices:
-Pullups, with three the minimum. Three is also the minimum for male Marines, but they need 20 for a perfect rating.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* FOLKS... IMAGINE AN EMP TAKES OUT ALL OUR SHINY TOYS... OUR TECH... AND WE'RE FORCED TO ONCE AGAIN FIGHT AS WE DID IN KOREA... IN WORLD WAR TWO. WHO THINKS WE'D WIN?
-A flexed-arm hang. The minimum is for 15 seconds; women get a perfect score if they last for 70 seconds. Men don't do the hang in their test.
* FOLKS... AMOS SHOULD BE COURT MARTIALLED!
Officials said training for pull-ups can change a person's strength, while training for the flex-arm hang does little to adapt muscular strength needed for military tasks.
* GOD HELP US IF WE EVER HAVE TO FIGHT A REAL WAR AGAIN...
The decision to suspend the scheduled pull-up requirement "is a clear indication" that plans to move women into direct ground combat fighting teams will not work, and a critic of allowing women into infantry jobs.
"When officials claim that men and women are being trained the same, they are referring to bare minimums, not maximum qualifications that most men can meet but women cannot," wrote Elaine Donnelly, president of the conservative Center for Military Readiness, in an email to The Associated Press.
"Awarding gender-normed scores so that women can succeed lowers standards for all. Women will suffer more injuries and resentment they do not deserve, and men will be less prepared for the demands of direct ground combat."
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/02/us_customs_not_sorry_for_destroying_11_rare_flutes_of_renowned_musician#sthash.4UeLPJv3.h2cLu3G4.dpbs
U.S. customs officials last week destroyed 11 rare flutes by a respected Canadian musician who was returning home via New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. But the agency isn't apologizing for the incident - it says the flutes were an ecological threat.
Officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection identified the instruments owned by flute virtuoso Boujemaa Razgui as agricultural products that risked introducing "exotic plant pathogens" in to the United States, a customs official tells Foreign Policy. As a result, officials destroyed every single flute without contacting Razgui in an incident that makes your holiday airport delays trivial by comparison.
Razgui said there are around 15 people in the U.S. with such flutes, which means acquiring one ahead of his upcoming performances in February may be impossible. "I'm not sure what to do," Razgui told The Boston Globe.
"They said this is an agriculture item," Razgui continued. "I fly with them in and out all the time and this is the first time there has been a problem. This is my life ... This is horrible."
Razgui's mishap was first reported by the music blog Slipped Disc on Tuesday before jumping to the front page of the massive link-sharing site Reddit, which nearly melted the small blog's servers according to a follow-up post. Though neither the blog nor The Globe received a response from U.S. Customs on the issue, a New York-based CBP official tells us the agency followed standard protocol.
"CBP is responsible for detecting and preventing the entry into the country of plant pests and exotic foreign animal diseases that could harm America's agricultural resources," said an official, after being asked if the agency would issue an apology. "The fresh bamboo canes were seized and destroyed in accordance with established protocols to prevent the introduction of plant pathogens into the United States."
Razgui, who has worked with numerous U.S. ensembles and performs regularly with the Boston Camerata, said he hand-crafted each instrument with difficult-to-find reeds. "Nobody talked to me. They said I have to write a letter to the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.," he told The Globe.
The CBP official said Razgui's luggage was unclaimed and added that "fresh bamboo is prohibited from entering the United States to prevent the introduction of exotic plant pathogens."
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579278060483138096
As a former member of the Common Core Validation Committee and the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, I am one of the few mothers to have heard the full sales pitch for this latest educational reform, which has been adopted by 45 states.
I know the Common Core buzz words, from "deeper learning" and "critical thinking" to "fewer, clearer, and higher standards."
It all sounds impressive, but I'm worried that the students who study under these standards won't receive anywhere near the quality of education that children in the U.S. did even a few years ago.
President Obama correctly noted in September 2012 that "leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today — especially in science, technology, engineering and math." He has placed a priority on increasing the number of students and teachers who are proficient in these vital "STEM" fields. Yet the basic mission of Common Core, as Jason Zimba, its leading mathematics standards writer, explained at a videotaped board meeting in March 2010, is to provide students with enough mathematics to make them ready for a non-selective college — "not for STEM," as he put it.
(*DRUMMING MY FINGERS ON THE DESK*)
During that meeting, he didn't tell us why Common Core aimed so low in mathematics.
* THE MEETING IN 2010...
But in a September 2013 article published in the Hechinger Report, an education news website affiliated with Columbia University's Teachers College, Mr. Zimba admitted: "If you want to take calculus your freshman year in college, you will need to take more mathematics than is in the Common Core."
* NICE...
* OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE...
As Stanford mathematics professor James Milgram noted in "Lowering the Bar," a report the two of us co-wrote for the Pioneer Institute in September, the Common Core deliberately leaves out "major topics in trigonometry and precalculus."
* DELIBERATELY...
Contrast that with the status quo before the Common Core, when states like Massachusetts and California provided pre-calculus standards for high-school students.
(*NOD*)
The implications of this are dramatic. "It is extremely rare for students who begin their undergraduate years with coursework in pre-calculus or an even lower level of mathematical knowledge to achieve a bachelor's degree in a STEM area," Mr. Milgram added.
Common Core's deficiencies also plague its English standards, though its proponents have been selling the opposite line.
* NO... THE OBAMAITES WOULDN'T LIE...
(*SNORT*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Under the Common Core, complex literary study — literature close to or at a college reading level — is reduced to about 50% of reading instructional time in high school English class.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
The rest of the time is to be spent on "informational" texts, and more writing than reading is required at all grade levels.
* WELL... THEY DO NEED MORE WRITING EDUCATION AS WELL!
Excerpts will have to do when reading "The Great Gatsby" so students can spend more time on the Teapot Dome Scandal. Yes, that's a real suggestion for informational reading from the National Council of Teachers of English, the professional organization of English teachers that aims to support teachers under the Common Core.
* AND GOOD FOR THEM! AMERICANS NEED FAR MORE EDUCATION ON THE HISTORY OF AMERICA FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE END OF WORLD WAR TWO!
In its November 2013 Council Chronicle, a teacher argued that learning about this 1920s government oil scandal is the proper way to "contextualize" Fitzgerald's Jazz Age characters. But reducing the time students spend studying complex literature means fewer opportunities to learn how to read between the lines — the fundamental way teenagers learn how to analyze a text.
* LET'S TEACH THE FACTS... THE WHYS AS WELL AS THE WHENS... AND, YES, ALTERNATE THEORIES CONCERNING THE WHYS AS WELL.
Still, no major English or humanities organizations have endorsed the Common Core state standards for English language arts. Not so in mathematics. Despite the dramatic mismatch of the Common Core math standards with the White House goal of preparing more students for a STEM career, all the heads of major professional mathematics associations expressed "strong support for the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics" in a July 2013 letter solicited and posted by William McCallum, professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona and a Common Core math standards writer.
Why leaders of these organizations would endorse standards that will not prepare students for college majors in mathematics, science, engineering and mathematics-dependent fields is a puzzle. But no educational reform that leads to fewer engineers, scientists and doctors is worthy of the name.
* THAT I'D AGREE WITH!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/health/access-to-health-care-may-increase-er-visits-study-suggests.html?_r=0
Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits because people would go to primary care doctors instead. But a rigorous new experiment in Oregon has raised questions about that assumption, finding that newly insured people actually went to the emergency room a good deal more often.
* WELL OF COURSE! THESE PEOPLE AREN'T SOCIALIZED TO UTILIZE NORMAL MEDICAL CHANNELS. THINK ABOUT IT! THEY HAVEN'T BEEN "IN THE SYSTEM" SO THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO UTILIZE THE SYSTEM. THEY'RE STILL IN "REACTIVE" MODE, NOT PLANNING MODE... NOT PREVENTIVE MODE... NOT "ONE STEP AT A TIME" MODE.
The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts during their first 18 months with insurance.
The pattern was so strong that it held true across most demographic groups, times of day and types of visits, including those for conditions that were treatable in primary care settings.
The findings cast doubt on the hope that expanded insurance coverage will help rein in emergency room costs just as more than two million people are gaining coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And they go against one of the central arguments of the law’s supporters, that extending insurance to large numbers of Americans would reduce emergency room use, and eventually save money.
“I suspect that the finding will be surprising to many in the policy debate,” said Katherine Baicker, an economist at Harvard University’s School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study.
* I'M NOT SURPRISED.
(*SHRUG*)
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/americans-spent-745b-3-years-helping-other-countries-deal-climate
American taxpayers spent $7.45 billion to help developing countries cope with climate change in fiscal years 2010 through 2012 according to a federal government report submitted to the United Nations on a subject that Secretary of State John Kerry described as “a truly life-and-death challenge.”
That sum of $7.45 billion, which reached more than 120 countries through bilateral and multilateral channels, met President Obama’s “commitment to provide our fair share” of a collective pledge by developed nations to provide a total of nearly $30 billion in “fast start finance” (FSF), the report stated.
The pledge was made at a Dec. 2009 U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, and the FSF funding aims to support developing countries adapt to and cope with phenomena blamed on climate change, such as droughts and rising sea levels.
* DAMN CONGRESS AND DAMN OBAMA! $7.45 BILLION PISSED AWAY! (AND FOLKS... IT'S NOT LIKE WE SIMPLY PISSED AWAY MONEY FROM OUR SAVINGS... FROM OUR RAINY DAY ACCOUNT; NO... WE HAD MASSIVE DEFICITS DURING THESE YEARS! WE BORROWED THE MONEY - AT INTEREST - TO PISS IT AWAY!)
FSF programs funded by the U.S. cover a wide range, including helping Peru and Nepal to deal with glacier-related risks, working on making Mozambique’s coastal cities more resilient to “sea level rise and other climate change stresses,” and assisting Pakistan to address its power shortage, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and its reliance on fossil fuel.
The funding directed to the FSF channel in 2010-2012 is a drop in the bucket compared to what is to come. At that same 2009 conference in Copenhagen the U.S. and other developed nations in a longer-term commitment undertook to set up a $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund by 2020. The money is meant to come from public and private sources.
(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367491/new-yorks-fact-free-gun-ruling-john-r-lott-jr
New York’s new gun control law, the so-called SAFE Act, largely survived its first federal court challenge on this past Tuesday.
The more than 1,140 New Yorkers it’s made felons will remain so.
But even the testimony of the state’s own expert witness failed to show that the law will cut crime.
The judge in this case is William M. Skretny, chief federal judge for the Western District of New York. His decision upheld the state’s gun registration requirements and ban on assault weapons, but he rejected the seven-round limit for magazines, deeming it arbitrary.
The decision relied heavily on testimony by George Mason University criminology professor Chris Koper, who argued “that the criminal use of assault weapons declined after the federal assault weapons ban was enacted in 1994, independently of trends in gun crime.” Judge Skretny wrote in his opinion: “Because New York’s regulations are tighter than those in the federal ban, [Koper] believes, quite reasonably, that the effect will be greater.”
But Koper’s two studies on the 1994 federal assault weapons ban don’t support his claims.
* OOPS...
The first study, with Jeff Roth for the National Institute of Justice, found that “the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect [of the weapons ban].”
* OOPS...
Seven years later, in 2004, Koper and Roth conducted a follow-up study with fellow criminologist Dan Woods, covering a much longer period after the law. They concluded, “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”
* OOPS...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
To make the court ruling even stranger, given Koper’s argument about what effect the ban will have on New York, no evidence was considered on the effects of state law, even though this has been studied by other researchers such as myself. At that level, again, absolutely no benefit is found on crime.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
More embarrassing is the judge’s reliance on Koper’s claim that “a [large capacity magazine] is arguably the most functionally important feature of most [assault weapons], many of which have magazines holding 30 or more rounds.” Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles, implying that virtually all semi-automatic guns are so-called “assault weapons.”
* YEP...
But a magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. Even if someone didn’t have access to some simple machine tools, the proliferation of 3D printers make it so anyone can produce them.
Judge Skretny also failed to examine other aspects of the law. For example, he concludes that “SAFE Act’s requirement that ammunition sales be conducted ‘face-to-face’ does not unduly burden interstate commerce.” But in New York, going through a federally licensed firearms dealer to get a background check on ammunition purchases reportedly adds $85 in costs to the average purchase; there are also the time costs involved in having to drive to a physical store. And these costs fall hardest on the very people who most need guns for protection — poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas.
Or take his claim of public-safety benefits from registering guns. Not a single study is cited showing that registration reduces crime. Whether in Canada, Hawaii, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., police seem unable to point to a single violent crime where registration has helped their investigation. During a recent deposition, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier said she couldn’t “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.”
The judge’s reliance on the left-wing Mother Jones magazine to buttress claims about mass shootings is almost comical. Even liberal academic James Alan Fox described the data collected by the magazine as relying on “questionable motive-based selectivity” and criteria that are “not necessarily applied consistently.”
Hopefully an appeals court will be more careful with the evidence. Courts should prevent people from exercising “fundamental rights” only when there is clear evidence that restrictions actually benefit public safety.
* AND EVEN THEN ONLY ON A LIMITED EMERGENCY BASIS. (THAT'S WHY THEY'RE CALLED "FUNDAMENTAL" RIGHTS!)
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