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September 2016

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 04, 2016 7 Comments
According to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of local, state, and federal government workers in the U. S. exceeds the number of those working in the manufacturing sector by almost 10 million. CNS reports:
Government employees in the United States outnumber manufacturing employees by 9,932,000, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Federal, state and local government employed 22,213,000 people in August, while the manufacturing sector employed 12,281,000.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 04, 2016 10 Comments
There is another disturbing report related to the spread of the Zika virus; however, this one doesn't involve birth defects or neurological problems. Millions of honey bees were killed after areas of South Carolina were sprayed to kill the mosquitoes that transmit the pathogen.
"On Saturday, it was total energy, millions of bees foraging, pollinating, making honey for winter," beekeeper Juanita Stanley said. "Today, it stinks of death. Maggots and other insects are feeding on the honey and the baby bees who are still in the hives. It's heartbreaking." Stanley, co-owner of Flowertown Bee Farm and Supply in Summerville, South Carolina, said she lost 46 beehives -- more than 3 million bees -- in mere minutes after the spraying began Sunday morning. "Those that didn't die immediately were poisoned trying to drag out the dead," Stanley said. "Now, I'm going to have to destroy my hives, the honey, all my equipment. It's all contaminated."
Truly, the images of the bee-keepers assessing the loss of both their bees and their livelihoods are heartbreaking:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 04, 2016 14 Comments
Residents in the West Calumet Complex in East Chicago got quite a shock over a month ago, when Department of Health officials began testing for lead poisoning and arsenic contamination.
...In a letter from the EPA dated July 11, 2016, [Shantel Allen] was informed that some parts of her yard had lead levels up to 66 times above the lead limit and 55 times above the arsenic limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency. But what shocked her even more was that the letter said her "property was tested for lead and arsenic at the end of 2014." Which means the test was somewhere in a lab, on a shelf, on a desk or getting processed for more than a year and a half before she learned of the danger she and her children were in. "I was pregnant while in this complex -- exposed to lead, sleeping on a contaminated bed, laying on a contaminated couch -- nobody said anything. They kept this very well hidden from all of us," Allen said.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 04, 2016 9 Comments
Brexit has caused quite the kerfuffle among the countries of the European Union (EU), and amid the dire warnings of lasting DOOOM!, the Polish Finance Minister notes that Brexit shows that the EU is not the only option for the nations of Europe. CNBC reports:
The U.K.'s Brexit vote may have changed attitudes to the European Union across the continent, Polish Finance Minister Pawel Szalamacha told CNBC Friday, adding that the decision showed that the EU is "no longer the only choice for the nations of Europe." Szalamacha suggested that more countries could be prompted to leave the 28-nation bloc, such as those "with a strong sense of identity, some of the Nordic countries," or even some countries who may "feel that their destiny … is no longer within their hands." He added, "I don't think it's a sensible policy just to rely on the decisions of the major international players," not least because "some policy mistakes were committed."
Szalamacha goes on to say he supports decentralizing the EU's power base in Brussels so that countries can have more control over their own economies and markets.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 03, 2016 3 Comments
The academic boycott movement against Israel has achieved very little so far, though it has poisoned the campus atmosphere with its anti-academic freedom message. There is no university or college in that United State that I'm aware of even considering the academic boycott of Israel. The academic boycott resolutions at faculty organizations have had limited success, limited to the humanities and social sciences, and even there the only significant sized group to adopt the boycott was the American Studies Association in December 2013. The move to hijack faculty groups continues, and we can expect more boycott resolutions this annual meeting season in the fall and winter. The information spread against Israel by these faculty members is consistently false and misleading, and always one-sided. It is a critical part of the international effort to delegitimize and dehumanize Israeli Jews, and needs to be fought for that reason regardless of the relative lack of success. Lacking institutional success, the BDS war on campus has devolved into trench warfare at a very personal level.

Posted by New Neo on September 03, 2016 87 Comments
For a long time I've conceptualized Trump voters as falling into two camps: the enthusiastic and the reluctant. No doubt there are some who fall in between, too, but I think that mainly there are those two categories. The first group consists of people who supported Trump in the primaries, either as first or second choice. They believe he would be a good president, or at least that he was the very best or one of the very best of the lot of GOP candidates who originally threw their hats into the ring. The second group is composed of people who support Trump now only because he's running against a person they consider worse, Hillary Clinton. They don't always agree on why he would be better than she, but they agree that he probably would. Some of them even detest him otherwise and think that he would make a bad president, but are still willing to vote for him as the alternative to Hillary. Members of the first group sometimes appeal to members of the second group, urging them to make sure they vote for Trump. Their arguments can vary widely. Sometimes the argument is that Trump will be a good president and will do a number of good things for the country. Sometimes it's that Trump will do one or two good things, usually involving SCOTUS justice choices and/or immigration policy. And sometimes it's that even though we don't know what Trump might do, we know that Hillary would be awful and there's at least a chance that Trump would be better.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 03, 2016 15 Comments
In July, Germany passed a new law that "requires" the integration of the over one million refugees who've flooded into Germany in recent years.  The plan includes subsidized classes in how to act like a civilized human being, a requirement to learn German, and temporary lifting of the requirement that immigrants can only be offered jobs if there is no German or EU worker for the position. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Angela Merkel is still clinging to her integration pipe dream.  In an interview with Germany's BILD newspaper, Merkel explains that integration can include things like providing a simple explanation of how things are done in Germany. Business Insider reports:
BILD: What we did indeed manage is primary help for over one million people. The bigger challenge is yet to come: how do we integrate that many people from an entirely different culture, after having failed, to a large degree, in many aspects of this task over the past decades? Merkel: Fortunately, we have learned a lot from the past, primarily that language is the key to successful integration. The younger people are, the easier it is for integration to succeed. It is worth facing this effort. I would like to use the opportunity to thank everybody who is working towards the success of this integration. This is not only the state authorities, but primarily the countless associations, initiatives, and voluntary helpers.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 03, 2016 35 Comments
Having made a complete laughingstock of herself with her demands for "muscle" to help her remove student journalists filming her on campus, open air BLM protest rally, the world's most famous red-headed professor, Melissa Click, has landed a job at Gonzaga University. KREM2 reports:
A former University of Missouri professor who was fired after video surfaced of her yelling at a student during a protest has a new job at Gonzaga University. Gonzaga hired former MU professor Melissa Click for a one-year, non-tenure track position as a lecturer in Gonzaga's undergraduate Communication Studies Department.
The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Gonzaga University explained the decision to hire Click.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on September 03, 2016 17 Comments
Joy Reid has a history of shutting down guests on her MSNBC show who disagree with her. Last week, Reid abruptly ended a segment when a conservative Latino guest tried to raise Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's support of eugenics. Today, the ever PC-Reid instructed a Trump supporter not to speak of "illegals" when referring to illegal immigrants. African-American Trump supporter Paris Dennard was making the point that Trump is not opposed to immigration generally, but to illegal immigration, and that illegal immigrants take jobs from black Americans. Dennard twice spoke of "illegals." That led guest Juan Hernandez, a supporter of Libertarian Gary Johnson, to say he was "insulted." Reid agreed, adding "this is like being in a family home. And when you're in this home, we just ask that you please not use terminology that offends people. So y'all are guests in our house, please don't use that terminology."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 03, 2016 15 Comments
About a week ago, I noted that new Food and Drug Administration regulations were snuffing out e-cigarette firms. Now the FDA is going to save us from our hand soaps:
The Food and Drug Administration has issued a final rule that throws water on claims that antibacterial soaps and washes are more effective than regular soap. The new rule bans antibacterial soaps and body washes containing certain ingredients from being marketed, because the ingredients were not proved to be safe and effective for long-term daily use, the FDA said Friday.

Posted by edgeofthesandbox on September 03, 2016 1 Comment
The announcement of passing of Uzbekistan's veteran dictator Islam Karimov came as surprise to no one in the Russian-speaking world.  The rumors of his death, following a stroke that his younger daughter announced on her Instagram account, had been circulating for days when, in a situation similar to a true Soviet leader's demise:
The Uzbek government did not confirm the reports at first but played funeral music on state channels. [Put yourself in their shoes: How does one break the news like that to the population?] Later on Friday the government eventually released a statement saying the 78-year-old president had died.
Soviet leaders' state of health was never discussed in press, death announcements -- delayed. Western Kremlinologists and ordinary Russians alike had to crack their heads to figure out what was going on. The lack of transparency gives an edge to the strongmen: Recall the Vladimir Putin's pointed disappearance last March prompting speculations of the Russian president's death.  If Putin was only playing with our heads, Karimov was for real.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 03, 2016 19 Comments
Young America's Foundation recently visited the campus of George Washington University and asked students if they thought assault weapons should be banned. While students believed strongly that they should be banned, none of them seemed to be able to describe what an assault weapon actually is. From the YAF blog:
College Students Know Nothing About the Guns They Want Banned [VIDEO] Curious as to how fellow millennials would react when questioned about the proposed “assault weapons ban,” I took to the campus of The George Washington University to ask their opinions.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 02, 2016 13 Comments
Remember the whole Rolling Stone/University of Virginia/faux rape story?
An investigation conducted by the Charlottesville Police Department found no evidence of rape at the accused University of Virginia fraternity. Months ago, Rolling Stone broke Jackie’s story. Jackie claimed she’d been gang raped by members of Phi Kappa Psi in 2012. When the Rolling Stone article sparked national outrage, UVA’s administration acted swiftly and without facts, punishing Greek life on campus. Then the Washington Post began to dig deeper into the Rolling Stone shocker. And that’s when the story began to quickly unravel and was eventually debunked in entirety.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 02, 2016 26 Comments
A taco truck on every corner? So, heaven? Marco Gutierrez, founder of Latinos for Trump, made a nasty threat on MSNBC Thursday night. "My culture is a very dominant culture and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it you'll have taco trucks on every corner," said Gutierrez.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 02, 2016 21 Comments
Everyone can calm down now because the Commission on Presidential Debates have announced the moderators for the president and vice president debates. The commission chose NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt, CNN's Anderson Cooper, Fox News's Chris Wallace, and ABC's Martha Raddatz for the presidential debates. CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano will moderate the vice president debate on October 4.
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