Read it.

During the four-day siege in Kenya’s Westgate shopping Mall al-Shabaab jihadists raped, tortured, beheaded, dismembered, castrated, gouged out eyes, amputated fingers and hung hostages on hooks from the roof. According to a forensic medical doctor, “They [the al-Shabaab attackers] removed eyes, ears, noses. Fingers are cut by pliers, noses ripped by pliers”… “Those are not allegations. Those are f****** truths,”… “They removed balls, eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drive knives inside a child’s body. Actually, if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers.” There were also reports that hostages were beheaded and their heads thrown out of the windows.

This inexplicable savage violence is typically attributed to psychological warfare, military tactics or individual acts of brutality but for Jihadists they are justifiable sacred acts against the enemies of Islam.

Read it.

It somehow is considered illegitimate and terroristic that we are willing to use lawful and constitutional legislative authority in the form of the House’s funding power to offset Democrats’ power in the Senate and Executive Branch.

Elections matter, and Republicans control the House. Those elections matter just as much as elections for the Presidency and Senate.

As Laurel pointed out earlier, Democratic rhetoric is so extreme from the highest political levels that it now amounts to schoolyard taunts.

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The horror! The horror!

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The government giveth, and the government taketh away. And that’s what you get when you depend on government to provide your stuff.

 Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday began repossessing iPads from students at at least two area schools following last week’s revelation that some students had bypassed security restrictions on Apple’s tablets, accordin gto the Los Angeles Times.

Can’t have students being uppity and getting off the reservation. People would talk.

Wonder how many of them have been sold on the street already?

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Jessica Rosenberg at RWTH Aachen University in Germany and colleagues used diffusion tensor imaging to scan the brains of 16 larks, 23 night owls and 20 intermediate chronotypes. They found a reduction in the integrity of night owls’ white matter – brain tissue largely comprised of fatty insulating material that speeds up the transmission of nerve signals – in areas associated with depression.

“We think this could be caused by the fact that late chronotypes suffer from this permanent jet lag,” says Rosenberg, although she cautions that further studies are needed to confirm cause and effect.

…

For example, research published last month suggests that night owls who cut their exposure to artificial light and boosted their exposure to sunlight found their body clocks shifted towards earlier waking and sleeping (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.039).

Monomakhos tells the tale.

Folks, we’re hosed. As you may know, I’m a healthcare professional who happens to work for a major corporation. The other day I got an interesting postcard from my employer telling me that as of Oct 1, my family will be dropped from their health plan. In other words, I won’t “have the healthcare plan I wanted, or the doctor I already have” as Glorious Leader promised us. But don’t worry! The postcard said that I’ll have “more choices at more affordable rates”!

You’ll pardon me while I withhold judgment until open enrollment is over. After all, my wife and I are in our mid-fifties, I’m a Type II diabetic with a history of cholesterol problems and a slightly elevated blood pressure. Case in point: my wife recently had a complaint and had to negotiate with our doctor on how to deal with it. Not see him mind you, negotiate with him. As in, if I see you for this complaint, I’ll have to code it in a certain way and you’ll have to wait next year for your “annual.” As in, I can see you now but you can’t ask any more questions about other complaints because I’m duty bound to code them in and I won’t get reimbursed for treating you for any additional complaints because I already coded you in for the complaint you made an appointment for. You’ll need another appointment for that Ma’am. (And how exactly is this going to decrease costs?) So she negotiated to have her annual a little bit ahead of time since during a general physical additional medical concerns can be addressed –at least for now. It was an interesting ballet, negotiate about what was going to be discussed at an appointment.

OK, at this point, Socialist-Liberal Do-Gooder will interject: “What are you complaining about, she got treated, no?” Well yes, after several days of going back-and-forth between us and our doctor and finding a way to get the treatment she needed. That’s because I’m in healthcare and I was able to advise her what to do. And even then I had to think about it. (Sorry, I won’t open a sidebar on Monomakhos advising people about how to navigate this thicket. Not for free anyway.) I’m sorry, but do you not see how laborious this process is? Do you think our family physician has the time and energy to negotiate this kind of diagnostic strategy with each and every one of his patients? Quick answer: no, never in a million years.

That’s why medical care will go to hell. There is simply no way that “X” number of doctors can see the “Y” amount of patients in “Z” amount of time while embracing the additional (Z+n) burdens necessary to make sure that the bills are paid. Nor should we forget the amount of bills that never get paid, which go down the ever-expanding black hole of uncollectables. Eventually Z+n is going to result in fewer doctors which will result in fewer patients getting treated. After a decade of this, costs might actually decrease but that would be thanks to the rise in morbidity and mortality.

Read it.

The Little Sisters’ ministry of caring for the elderly poor does not fall within the Obama administration’s narrow exemption for “religious employers.” On January 1, 2014, the Sisters will face IRS fines unless they violate their faith by hiring an insurer to provide their employees with contraceptives and abortifacients.

“These women just want to take care of the elderly poor without being forced to violate the faith that animates their work,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “The money they collect should be used to care for the poor like it always has – and not to pay the IRS.”

Sounds reasonable to me. But of course when is the government ever reasonable?

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And why not? They’ve already redefined ‘reduced increase in spending’ to mean ‘cut’, ‘racism’ to mean ‘anything a black person, especially a black Congressperson, doesn’t like’, and ‘obeying the Constitution’ as ‘extremism’.

The federal government wants to reduce the number of Americans diagnosed each year with cancer. But not by better preventive care or healthier living. Instead, the government wants to redefinethe term “cancer” so that fewer conditions qualify as a true cancer.

This is just a practice round. As my Division CPO used to say, ‘And if you believe that one, I’ll tell you another one.’

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In Fresno County, California, some hundreds of workers have walked away from their jobs at Gerawan Farming in protest at the United Farm Workers, a union that the workers have been forced to join by the state of California. The union has attempted to seize some three percent of each worker’s paycheck based on a union vote two decades ago. The union has been completely inactive at Gerawan Farming since it was established. Workers at Gerawan make $10 per hour and receive health benefits. That is significantly higher than industry standard, and the union simply wants employee cash based on negotiations that never involved the union. “They’re not asking us if we want it or not, they’re forcing us to have a union and we don’t want that,” said Silvia Lopez, one of the employees. “We have a right to vote to choose.”

Damn, there’s that pesky democracy thing again!

Look for … the union label….

Read it.

Why take a chance? That’s all I’m sayin’….

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Golden Rice has been genetically enhanced to produce vitamin A as way to prevent millions of deaths and cases of blindness annually in poor countries where the grain is the chief food staple. Back in August, some Filipino “farmers” rampaged through the fields where the non-profit International Rice Research institute was growing out the Golden Rice variety. The “farmers” were actually anti-biotech activists who have worked with Greenpeace in the past to block other biotech crop varieties.

Frankly, the scientific community has been too passive for way too long in confronting anti-biotech groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Union of Concerned Scientists for their campaigns of lies against the safety of biotech crops. But the Golden Rice outrage has finally aroused researchers. Last week, Science magazine published a strong editorial, “Standing Up for GMOs,” condemning activists for their anti-scientific attacks on crop biotechnology.

For self-styled ‘progressives’, Greenpeace and its fellow eco-nazis are some of the more regressive forces on the planet.

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While Vanderbilt’s health care operations have produced positive operating results in each of the last five fiscal years, the report says, “future changes in the health care market and regulations could adversely affect future financial results of operations.”

Cincinnati Public, circa 1870. Credit to Steve Silberman.

Read it.

For a government shutdown if it happens.

The U.S. Senate is dysfunctional because of Harry Reid.

No budget.

No votes on most House legislation.

No nothing except his way or the highway.

We’re seeing it again in the Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling battles.  Because Reid has shut down and shut out Republican voices, the only way to raise budget issues is using Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling deadlines — a necessity in Harry Reid’s Senate not the choice Republicans wanted.

The poisoning of our politics by Reid did not start with the latest battles, it has been his methodology for years.

Read it.

It’s a nice theory, but crippling IT glitches, political roadblocks, and sneaky insurance options may throw a wrench in the President’s plans.

Assuming that the President actually has a plan, which appears questionable.

Prepare yourself to be shocked: a massive government IT project is experiencing glitches. Technical problems will prevent both small businesses and the fine citizens of Washington D.C. from signup on the Tuesday launch.

Government workers aren’t in the business of providing services to the public. They’re in the business of hiring and paying government workers.

Part of the problem is that the insurance exchanges are being run by the States themselves, unlike the airline industry which releases prices to the public, so that comparison websites can develop their own systems. I reached out to the HHS last week to understand why the government decided to handle this completely on their own and have yet to receive a response.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Perhaps more strange, the White House is turned into a mini version of Tiger Beat magazine to attract young invincibles. “Thanks for spreading the word. #ROAR,” Prezi O-B tweeted his BFF, Katy Perry, thanking her for spreading the word about the new healthcare exchange.

Nothing strange about it. The President has treated his administration as if it were a high-school football game from day one. It’s all he knows. I keep expecting him to dust off all of those old Jerry Ford ‘WIN: Whip Inflation Now’ buttons any minute now.

While Obamacare mandates coverage, it doesn’t mean that youngins will sign up in a timely manner or choose not to pay the fine ($95 or 1% of their income, whichever is bigger). Currently, 26.5% of 18-34-year-olds are uninsured. In order to bring down costs overall, Obamacare is betting on healthy young citizens to subsidize the costs of their elders.

Yeah, good luck with that. Young people make a lot of politically correct noise, but when it comes to spending their actual money, they’re just as selfish as grown-ups.

There’s also politics. Several Repubican-run states have flat-out refused to cooperate with Obamacare implementation and help inform consumers, all while the House of Representatives has voted (unsuccessfully) 40 times to repeal or defund the measure.

Yeah, isn’t that whole democracy thing incredibly tedious? It keeps getting in the way of our Cool Progressive Programs, the ones that cost a mint and deliver shit.

…ultimately it all depends on your faith in a government-regulated free market and the ability of semi-educated consumers to make the smart choice.

And if that doesn’t scare you, you haven’t been paying attention. (Hint: If it’s ‘government-regulated’, it’s not a free market. Funny how many supposedly smart people can’t see that fundamental fact.)