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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 26, 2015 20 Comments
Despite the fact that poll numbers are tanking so badly for Hillary Clinton that there is a new movement to draft Joe Biden, it turns out she has some competition for biggest drop in favorability! New numbers from Gallop for Pope Francis show a significant drop in support for the pontiff. The favorability rating is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014.
...The drop in the pope's favorable rating is driven by a decline among Catholics and political conservatives, two groups that have been ardent supporters of the modern papacy. Seventy-one percent of Catholics say they have a favorable image of Francis, down from 89% last year. Pope Francis' drop in favorability is even starker among Americans who identify as conservative -- 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year. This decline may be attributable to the pope's denouncing of "the idolatry of money" and linking climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality -- all issues that are at odds with many conservatives' beliefs.
Why the plunge? As an independent conservative who is also Catholic, I must admit I am none too thrilled at the attacks on capitalism as a "structurally perverse" global economic system. I assert that these remarks that are too political and secular for a man who should be focused on more spiritual matters.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 23, 2015 35 Comments
A new study has recently been published that has really heated up Climate Change arguments. Valentina Zharkova, a professor of mathematics at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, used a new model of the sun's solar cycle and its periodic change in solar radiation emissions to predict a "mini Ice Age" may begin shortly.
The earth is 15 years from a "mini ice-age" that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted. Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun's activity which they claim produces "unprecedentedly accurate predictions". They said fluid movements within the sun, which are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge in such a way that temperatures will fall dramatically in the 2030s. Solar activity will fall by 60 per cent as two waves of fluid "effectively cancel each other out", according to Prof Valentina Zharkova.
Legal Insurrection covered this concept, termed "Maunder Minimums," is a previous post related to global warming.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 22, 2015 25 Comments
After enjoying gloriously warm and sunny weather during my northern European "apology tour", I was astonished return and find California's mega-drought seemingly ended with record rainfall.
San Diegans woke up Monday after record-breaking storms brought up to four inches of rain in one community and more than an inch in many others. “Amazing is the best way to put it,” NBC 7’s Meteorologist Jodi Kodesh said as she described the amount of rainfall San Diego County received in 48 hours. ...Saturday's rainfall broke records in at least 11 locations, including five places that had the most rain ever recorded on any day in July, according to the National Weather Service.
Now, our media is focusing on "El Niño" and predicting the Golden State will be hit with floods.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 07, 2015 6 Comments
During my family’s visit of Berlin, Germany yesterday, an American president was prominently featured as part of the tour we took. Our guide spoke glowingly of a speech that he heard, and one which still resonates with him to this day. As we passed the Bradenburg Gate, he quoted Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech by saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Our guide lived 3 blocks away from the infamous Berlin Wall, the remnants of which are covered in art and graffiti or which are boxed up as souvenirs of a seemingly distant era. While the entire speech is iconic, reviewing Reagan's words again, I was struck by this passage:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 05, 2015 41 Comments
After California became the epicenter of a measles outbreak earlier this year, the state's legislature proposed a tough, new bill making vaccinations for children attending public school mandatory (with few exceptions.) Governor Jerry Brown just signed that bill into law.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law one of the nation’s strictest childhood vaccination requirements, approving a bill that generated multiple protests and controversy as it moved through the Legislature. Senate Bill 277, authored by Sacramento pediatrician state Sen. Richard Pan and former Santa Monica-Malibu school board president state Sen. Ben Allen, eliminates parents’ ability to claim “personal belief” exemptions to schoolchildren’s vaccine requirements at both private and public schools in California. Only medical exemptions, approved by a doctor, will be allowed under the law. A licensed physician will have to write a letter explaining the child’s medical circumstances that make immunization unsafe for that child.
Opponents are so unhappy with the new rule that they began preparing a lawsuit before the ink had dried.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 28, 2015 19 Comments
Mark Twain once wrote that "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." In the age of the internet, that saying should be updated to "three times around the world", as is evidenced by the story behind the resignation of a British scientist. I recently reported that Dr. Tim Hunt, a Nobel-prizing winning physiologist, a British knight, and a leading advocate for science education that is usually promoted by women’s rights activists, made a lame joke about single-sex labs. His punishment in the wake of a vicious social justice campaign was his forced resignation from the University College London. New revelations about the speech and the context of the joke have surfaced. An account of a European Commission Official who took detailed minutes of the event adds key information absent from the original report:
According to the new account, Sir Tim started with: “It’s strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists,” which makes clear he mocking sexism, rather than indulging in it. St. Louis reported this as Hunt simply admitting: “he has a reputation as a male chauvinist.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 27, 2015 10 Comments
One one hand, it is comforting to know President Obama can target the enemy and use American resources to counter it. On the other hand, it is very disturbing when that enemy is . . . climate change. Obama is acting upon his delusion that the biggest global security threats involve weather patterns and he's now calling on American troops to respond.
A recent Government Accountability Office report examined the Defense Department’s role in the Arctic, which increasingly will include “monitoring the changing Arctic conditions,” such as ice levels. The administration contends that changing ice levels in the Arctic could require additional U.S. military presence in the region, justifying the need for the Pentagon to commit significant time and resources to monitoring the effects of climate change.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 25, 2015 40 Comments
As summer officially opens, battle lines are being drawn in the war against "cultural appropriation". This particular engagement pits Sioux Indians against a counter-cultural group that loves Native Americans a little too much.
The peace and love were interrupted by profanity Monday as Rainbow Family members confirmed their plan to congregate an estimated 5,000 people July 1 to July 7 somewhere in the Black Hills, but were immediately confronted by opponents of the gathering. ...The Rainbow Family of Living Light is a loose association of people who’ve been gathering since 1972 around the ideals of peace and healing. Some Native Americans have expressed concern that the gathering is not appropriate for the Black Hills, considered sacred Indian lands. Before the indoor meeting began, Native American activist James Swan, of the United Urban Warrior Society, parked a pickup west of the building, planted two flags and used a portable sound system to berate the Rainbow Family contingent that was gathered under a light rain on the west lawn of the visitor center.
I must admit, having your culture appropriated by The Rainbow Family of Living Light would be disturbing, as this video clearly shows:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 23, 2015 20 Comments
The federal government is regulating the American meal, again. This time, the target is trans-fat!
The Obama administration is ordering food companies to phase out the artery-clogging trans fats that can lead to heart disease, the country's leading cause of death. The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it would require food makers to stop using trans fats — found in processed foods like pie crusts, frostings and microwave popcorn — over the next three years.
It turns out California has banned trans fats since 2008, when our "conservative" Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill outlawing them. When I was at the local doughnut shop yesterday, with my husband (who requested the fat-laden extravaganza for his Father's Day Breakfast), I asked the proprietor about living with the trans fat ban. She explained that while she readily complied with the rules, at added expense passed onto the customer, some other shops continued using the banned ingredients. She noted that several were closed temporarily, until legal items arrived. These facilities were then regularly reinspected for compliance. Imagine this on a large scale. It is anticipated that the conversion will cost food manufacturers billions .

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 21, 2015 28 Comments
There are moments when I read the American press that my eyes roll so far back into my head, I can see my brains. Take, for example, the gleeful report in the Washington Post chortling over Pope Francis' eco-encyclical. The article happily derides the efforts of those who challenge its premises as a epic defeat:
...Yet the battle lost over climate change also suggests how hard it may be for critics to blunt the power of a man who has become something of a juggernaut in an institution where change tends to unfold over decades, even centuries. More than anything, to those who doubt the human impact of global warming, the position staked out by Francis in his papal document, known as an encyclical, means a major defeat. “This was their Waterloo,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, who has been tracking ­climate-change deniers for years. “They wanted the encyclical not to happen. And it happened.”
I find the term "climate-change denier" a classic example of intentional media mislabeling. Not one of my fellow climate-expert skeptics deny climate change occurs. We deny the accuracy of the models and assertions that humanity causes environmental impacts on a global scale.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 18, 2015 22 Comments
A leaked version of the climate change encyclical written by Pope Francis ignited a storm of controversy earlier this week.
The unexpected leak of Pope Francis’ much-anticipated environmental encyclical has meant the return of something that not long ago was fairly common around the Vatican but had become often dormant during the two-plus years of Francis’ mostly charmed papacy: intrigue. Who leaked it and why? Was this the work of frustrated conservatives in the Vatican, as some experts have speculated? Does it portend big fights at a pivotal October meeting in which church officials are expected to grapple with homosexuality and divorce? Or is it just a tempest in a teapot? “Somebody inside the Vatican leaked the document with the obvious intention of embarrassing the pope,” said Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican expert and editor of Global Pulse, an online Catholic magazine.
In the wake of this incident, the Vatican revoked the credentials of Sandro Magister, the Italian journalist who has been reporting on the behind-the-scenes development of the papal document.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 16, 2015 30 Comments
It seems like only yesterday we were reporting on Dr. Matt Taylor, the brilliant British scientist who was instrumental in landing a probe on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away, who became the target of social media wrath. His crime: Wearing a shirt that was deemed "anti-woman" by hyper-feminists. More recently, Dr. Tim Hunt, a Nobel-prizing winning physiologist, a British knight, and a leading advocate for science education that is usually promoted by women's rights activists, made a lame joke about single-sex labs.
‘Let me tell you about my trouble with girls” is an opening sentence that, when declared in public, rarely ends well — fair or not. And it certainly didn’t for Nobel Prize winning scientist Tim Hunt, who was talking about the challenges of women in labs recently at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea. He followed up that intro with: “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 15, 2015 23 Comments
In 1849, gold inspired a big rush to California and a whole lot of thievery. In 2015, water has become the new gold!
Police are warning for businesses and residents to start locking up their taps. California’s drought has gotten so bad, people are stealing water. Thieves busted the locks on the spigots at a popular Asian shopping center on Barber Lane in Milpitas, just to get their hands on what has become liquid gold. Palo Alto resident Jason Zhur said he’s shocked it has come this far. “But water’s becoming more expensive than gas,” he said. ...Many businesses here have surveillance cameras, but apparently they weren’t a deterrent. “I imagine it’s come to that point because water rates are going up, everything is going up, now,” said Zhur.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 10, 2015 5 Comments
American officials are scrambling to contact people exposed to an Indian woman who has been diagnosed with an extremely difficult-to-treat strain of tuberculosis.
A female patient with an extremely hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis is being treated at the National Institutes of Health [NIH] outside Washington, D.C., and federal and state officials are now tracking down hundreds of people who may have been in contact with her. The woman traveled to at least three states before she sought treatment from a U.S. doctor. While TB is not easily caught by casual contact, extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB is so dangerous that health officials will have to make a concerted effort to warn anyone who may be at risk. ... The patient, who isn't being identified in any way, may face months or even years of treatment. Ordinary TB is hard to treat and requires, at a minimum, weeks of antibiotics. XDR-TB resists the effects of almost all the known TB drugs. Sometimes patients have to have pockets of infection surgically removed. Only about a third to half of cases can even be cured.
This quest could prove extremely challenging. The NIH's latest patient traveled through one of the country's busiest airport hubs then onto three separate states.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 07, 2015 18 Comments
I have the pleasure of working with Dr. Roger Cohen, RWC Fellow American Physical Society, to publicize a better understanding of climate science and the flaws associated with the models that are being pushed to generated bad policy. The claim that there is "consensus" among scientists that there is significant, man-made environmental impact on a global scale is based largely on the suppression of dissenting voices, especially in the American media. Recently, Cohen and his colleague Dr. William Happer (Cyrus Fogg Professor of Physics, Emeritus Princeton University) wrote an open letter to the American Physical Society (APS) that gives the public a much needed window into the workings of a normally reputable organization's response to politicized science. For example, here is how the original APS statement supporting "global warming" came about:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 06, 2015 11 Comments
Aleister's grim update on Vermont's Obamacare struggles prompted me to double check the status of Covered California, the supposed poster child of successful state exchanges. As I suspected, the prognosis is not good.
Covered California has lost bragging rights for highest health-insurance exchange enrollment to Florida, new federal figures show. A total 1.36 million Californians were signed up for coverage, had picked a plan and paid premiums due by the end of March, federal health officials announced Tuesday. Almost 1.42 million Floridians had done so by the same date. Texas came in third, with enrollment over 966,400.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that the growth in Cover California enrollment was . . . less than robust. In fact, it was at 1 percent!

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 05, 2015 24 Comments
What is the line between political hyperbole and utter fantasy? Whatever it is, President Obama has completely crossed that particular Rubicon. I recently noted that his assertions that America has become more respected internationally under his watch were not quite based in reality. Now, it appears he has delusions regarding his faith:
Speaking to JPUpdates.com, top Obama confidant David Axelrod described a moment where the president expressed exasperation to him over being derided as anti-Israel by some. “You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,” the president claimed, according to Axelrod. “For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse, anti-Semitic, it hurts.”
Given President Obama's treatment of Bibi Netanyahu over the years, and the troubling deal with Iran that my colleague David Gerstman reviews, I must admit to being a bit perplexed.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 03, 2015 21 Comments
As the American press reports breathlessly on the #WarOnWomen in conjunction with Hillary Clinton's Presidential Run Version 2.0, two of Professor Jacobson's colleagues are battling to defend research showing that there may actually be a campus #WarOnMen. A favorite assertion of campus-level feminist activists is that women in the sciences have a more difficult time achieving jobs, recognition, and tenure than their male counterparts. Cornell University professors Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci decided to test that theory, and published a study of faculty hiring preferences showing that women were preferred over identically-qualified men. A look at the hard data reveals a shocking truth: Women are being offered science positions at colleges and universities at rates higher than their actual presence within the pool of applicants. For example, analysis of the numbers between 2002 and 2004 reveals that 20% of applicants in mathematics were women, but they received 32% of the job offers.
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