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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 November 14, 2015 24 Comments
Only a few short days ago, Secretary of State John Kerry reasserted the administration's position that climate change was an increasing national security risk.
Speaking at the Ted Constant Convocation Center at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Kerry said he's made addressing climate change a priority of U.S. foreign policy. "The reason I made climate change a priority," Kerry said, "is not simply because climate change is bad for the environment. It's because by fueling extreme weather events undermining our military readiness, exacerbating conflicts around the world, climate change is a threat to the security of the United States and, indeed, to the security and civility of countries everywhere."
Furthermore, the Secretary of the Army offered "developing effective energy solutions" as a key priority. In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, these attitudes must now be deemed completely ludicrous.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 10, 2015 2 Comments
Residents of the American Southwest were spooked by a US Navy missile test this weekend.
Panic and speculation spread Saturday night when a bright white light shot through the night skies in Southern California. Residents posted a flurry of videos on social media, together with theories of aliens or meteors. Others made panicked calls to law enforcement officials. But not to worry, U.S. military officials said. It was a planned missile test. The Navy Strategic Systems Programs held a scheduled missile test flight at sea from USS Kentucky, which is a ballistic missile submarine. The test was conducted off the coast of Southern California, the Pentagon said in a statement. It said the missile was not armed.
Residents of Arizona and Nevada also reported the streaking object in their skies.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 08, 2015 22 Comments
Citizens of the Centennial State are poised to make a historic vote that could impact the next 100 years:
Colorado voters could be asked to weigh in on a far-reaching, first-in-the-nation plan to scrap ObamaCare and replace it with a single-payer-style health care system. A single-payer system is one where a single agency administers health care fees and costs, while medical care itself is handled by the private sector. Vermont leaders backed off a similar plan a year ago, but activists in Colorado are pushing their own version in the form of a November 2016 ballot question. Supporters appear poised to get that question on the ballot. According to The Denver Post, supporters turned in more than 156,000 signatures for the measure, well over the 98,492 needed. As a last step, the signatures will still need to be verified.
The program would be called "ColoradoCare" and would cost billions to run.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 07, 2015 6 Comments
When the walloping of liberal policies and their enforcers extends to California, I suspect the effects will reverberate for quite some time. For those of you who enjoy the sweet taste of schadenfreude, there is more to savor. Many will recall the sad death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, who was shot by an illegal alien released by the sheriff's department under the city's "Sanctuary City" policies. Ross Mirkarmi is now the former sheriff, courtesy of San Francisco's voters:
The San Francisco sheriff who over the summer became embroiled in a national debate over "sanctuary city" policies on Tuesday lost his bid for re-election amid a host of local controversies. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff's official who had the endorsement of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the sheriff deputies association. As of early Wednesday morning, Hennessy had received 62 percent of the vote to just 31 percent for Mirkarimi.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 05, 2015 14 Comments
One chocolate enthusiast is waking up from her sugar coma to discover she is the country's latest social media villain. This Halloween, a San Diego resident and his friends set-up an experiment involving candy and a hidden camera.
On Halloween night, Nathan Brown and his roommates made an impromptu "social experiment" at their house in Serra Mesa.  They set up a table with three boxes of full-size candy bars for trick-or-treaters to come and take. They also wrote a note to the trick-or-treaters, "Help yourself, but please be considerate." "We thought we`ll leave some candy out...of course people are going to help themselves to a lot, but it'll be fun to see who takes what," Brown said. Brown and his roommates left home for about an hour.  They returned to empty boxes. So, they checked the security video to see which kids took the most.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 31, 2015 28 Comments
The World Health Organization (WHO) is feeling some heat after publishing a report indicating processed meats, such as bacon, should be classified as carcinogens. Instead of accepting this dread data as "truth", when asked if they were going to give up meat based on the news, Chicago Tribune readers quickly mocked the scare-mongering. Furthermore, over 70% of respondents to the Chicago Tribune poll had no plans to cut tasty pork products from their diets.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 30, 2015 5 Comments
Police recruiting numbers are plummeting, and an alert has been issued that is sure to convince potential academy cadets to consider alternative careers:
The FBI has issued an alert to law enforcement about a possible "Halloween Revolt" by a dangerous anarchist group, an official has confirmed to CBS News. Federal officials issued a bulletin to local police departments about the potential for attacks against their officers, CBS News has learned. As first reported by the New York Post, a group known as the National Liberation Militia may be planning to dress in costume, cause a disturbance, and then ambush police who come to help. The Post reports the group has recommended members wear typical holiday masks and bring weapons like bricks and firearms. NYPD officials told the Post there is no specific threat to New York City, and they are monitoring the situation.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 27, 2015 34 Comments
We recently reported that Obamacare Co-Ops have been dropping like dead, rotting flies. Now, in the wake of the continued failures of program implementation, a new challenge has been filed with the Supreme Court:
Foes of President Obama's health care law are taking another crack at upending the legislation, filing a new challenge with the Supreme Court after a separate long-shot case was rejected earlier this year. The petition filed Monday by the Pacific Legal Foundation, like the prior challenge, focuses on an obscure aspect of the law. The case contends ObamaCare violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 25, 2015 35 Comments
As an iconic American industry, we have been following McDonald's and its struggle to deal with minimum wage requirements and greedy unions. Now, after a series of bad quarterly reports, the corporate accountants are serving Happy Meals:
The struggling fast food giant announced Thursday that global same-store sales grew 4% in the third quarter of 2015, with the gains driven by growth in several international markets. The burger chain even ended a seven-quarter losing streak in the U.S., where same-store sales grew 0.9% compared to the same period last year. Overall, McDonald’s profit climbed to $1.3 billion for the quarter, up from $1.07 billion for the same quarter a year earlier. The Oak Brook, Ill., hamburger chain surpassed analysts’ expectations with earnings of $1.40 per share. Analysts had projected net income of $1.27 per share, according to Thomson Reuters, compared with $1.09 reported a year earlier. McDonald’s reported they spent $3.1 billion on share buybacks and dividends during the last quarter, a move that helped boost earnings per share

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 24, 2015 13 Comments
Hurricane Patricia, a Category 5 storm that is being heralded as "the strongest ever recorded", has just made landfall in Mexico.
Hurricane Patricia -- the strongest hurricane ever recorded -- made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast Friday evening, its 165 mph winds barreling into southwestern Mexico near Cuixmala, officials said. The monster storm touched down about 6:15 p.m., hours after weakening slightly with sustained winds decreasing to 190 mph and gusts to 235 mph, according to the U.S National Weather Service. ...Taking the brunt of the hurricane are small fishing villages about 130 miles south of Puerto Vallarta, which had braced for potentially catastrophic 200 mph sustained winds and torrential rains. Despite the slight weakening, damage from the Category 5 storm is expected to be devastating. Less than an hour after its arrival, Patricia churned inland over southwestern Mexico with maximum sustained wind speeds of 160 mph and was still "extremely dangerous," according to the American weather service.
The breathless reporting fails to note that Hurricane Patricia's winds actually clocked in at 165 miles-per-hour, which were on par with that of Typhoon Haiyan in the Pacific. Maybe 165 MPH just feels different on the other side of the world? As a reminder, the 2013 typhoon killed over 6000 people.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 23, 2015 27 Comments
A report detailing the cause of the Animas River environmental disaster, which resulted in the release of millions of gallons of heavy-metal containing wastewater into a scenic Colorado river, blames the EPA for the incident....contrary to an internal review conducted by the agency itself.
The Environmental Protection Agency botched the clean-up effort at the Gold King Mine by rushing to complete the job instead of taking precautions that would have prevented the disastrous toxic spill into the Animas River. A 132-page report released Thursday by the Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation found that the Aug. 5 accident was not “inevitable,” as the EPA’s own internal review had concluded, but could have been avoided if the agency had followed engineering practices used at other inactive mines. ...According to the report, the agency committed a pivotal error by failing to gauge the level of wastewater behind the collapsed rock and soil at the mine, which could have been done by using a drill rig to “bore into the mine from above and directly determine the level of the mine pool prior to excavating backfill at the portal.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 21, 2015 19 Comments
Chinese hackers and Islamic terrorists are real global threats, but some congressmen are targeting climate change deniers instead! Two representatives assert that ExxonMobil lied about climate change data in the same way cigarette companies hid the real hazards associated with smoking, and they are now threatening a federal investigation.
The two members of Congress wrote to Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, on Wednesday, saying they were concerned by the results of two separate investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that ExxonMobil scientists confirmed fossil fuels were causing climate change decades ago, but publicly embarked on a campaign of denial. “ExxonMobil’s apparent behavior is similar to cigarette companies that repeatedly denied harm from tobacco and spread uncertainty and misinformation to the public,” Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, both Democratic members of Congress from California, wrote. “We ask that the DoJ similarly investigate Exxon for organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information to investors and the public.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 18, 2015 13 Comments
After declaring "victory" in the war against the Ebola epidemic we were following earlier this year, scientists are now making some disturbing new discoveries about the hemorrhagic fever virus. Chief among those discoveries is that patients who were "cured" of the disease continue to experience debilitating symptoms.
Researchers following 49 survivors of a 2007 Ebola outbreak in Uganda found that — even two years after the illness — they had eye problems like inflammation and blurred vision as well as joint pain, difficulty sleeping, difficulty swallowing and even hearing loss, memory loss and confusion. A third study examining 105 survivors of the 2014-15 outbreak in Guinea found that about 90 percent had chronic joint pain and 98 percent had poor appetites or an aversion to food. They also reported difficulty with short-term memory, headaches, sleeplessness, insomnia, dizziness, abdominal pain, constipation, sexual dysfunction, and decreased libido and exercise tolerance.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 17, 2015 11 Comments
While most of us have been engrossed in the American election saga, our neighbor to the north is preparing for an Oct. 19th election that may be infused with some imported drama. As next week's election draws near, news is that conservative Stephen Harper is going to be replaced with the son a former leftist Prime Minister:
If current polling is to be believed – and recent election upsets in the UK and Israel have taught pundits to take polls with more than a pinch of salt – then Harper will not hold on to government. After languishing in third place for much of the campaign, the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau - son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau - seem set to return to power. The victory will be particularly sweet here in Ajax, where four-term Liberal MP Mark Holland was routed in 2011 by Chris Alexander, formerly Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan and now a immigration minister in the Conservative government.
True to form, President Obama cannot resist trying to exert some meaningful influence. Since he is apparently unable to do so in the Middle East, where it may actually help our nation, there are reports he is attempting to sway the Canadian vote.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 06, 2015 20 Comments
I have followed the progress of California's "assisted suicide" legislation since it began to wind its way through the legislature. Yesterday, the bill landed on Governor Jerry Brown's desk, and he signed the controversial measure with the type of pontificating we have come to expect from our state's chief executive:
Caught between conflicting moral arguments, Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student, on Monday signed a measure allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who want to hasten their deaths. Approving the bill, whose opponents included the Catholic Church, appeared to be a gut-wrenching decision for the 77-year-old governor, who as a young man studied to enter the priesthood. “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,” Brown added. “I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn’t deny that right to others."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 05, 2015 6 Comments
As our East Coast deals with the effects of Hurricane Joaquin and tens of thousands are evacuated in Southern China from the path of typhoon Mujigae, it appears that the relationship between the two nations is headed for equally turbulent weather. While Obama was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to complain about his nation's hacking of our cyber systems and carping about Russian escalation in Syria, reports indicate that China was preparing to increase its presence in the Middle East conflict:
Earlier this week, Chinese naval vessels have allegedly traveled through Egypt’s Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean Sea. According to a senior officer in the Syrian Arab Army, and confirmed by a Russian Senator (in the propaganda outlet Pravda), the naval vessels are headed for Syria’s Port of Tartus, and that “China has joined [Russia’s] military operation in Syria.” The reports indicate that the Chinese vessels will reach Tartus within six weeks. No explanation is given in these reports for the long time frame.
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