North Carolina School Board Votes to Keep Controversial Book in High School Curriculum

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: James SarmientoA North Carolina school board will keep in its high school curriculum a book that tackles abortion, torture, rape and prostitution.

The Watauga County school board voted 3-2 on Thursday to keep Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” in the curriculum after the mother of a sophomore at Watauga High read the book assigned to her son and asked teachers to ban it, Fox 8 reported, citing the Winston-Salem Journal.

The vote follows a five-month controversy over the novel, a New York Times bestseller, which is recommended by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction as part of the Common Core curriculum.

“Parents need and deserve an opt-out if they don’t want their children to read this particular book,” said board member Brenda Reese, who added she has read the book twice since the challenge first came up in October. “But I don’t feel like we should pull this book from the class.”

Read more this story HERE.

Movement to End Solitary Confinement Gains Force

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NBCIn the small, dark world of solitary confinement, an inmate’s basic needs can go neglected for months — and many are starting to wonder for what purpose.

For Jan Green, 52, who spent eight months sleeping on a thin mat on the floor of a New Mexico jail cell about 7 feet wide and 7 feet long, being in isolation meant no access to basic necessities like sanitary napkins. It meant no exercise, no human contact, no medicine, and barely any running water.

“I had a metal toilet and sink, and couldn’t get the water to work properly, so I rarely could wash my hands or get a drink of water or brush my teeth,” said Green, who landed behind bars on domestic violence charges — charges that were ultimately dismissed.

Green was in solitary confinement at the Valencia County Detention Center in Los Lunas, N.M., where she says a nurse failed to report her psychiatric problems and corrections officers refused to give her any time out of her single-window cement block, day after day. (Standard treatment for solitary inmates includes one to two hours each day outside of their cells.)

Last month, Green, who has been out of jail since February 2012, settled a lawsuit with Valencia County for $1.6 million. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder before her arrest, she said her time in solitary pushed her into a state of psychosis that still haunts her from time to time, despite receiving treatment after getting out.

Read more this story HERE.

Kunming Knife Attack: Xinjiang Separatists Blamed for ‘Chinese 9/11’

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has called for “all-out efforts” to bring to justice the black-clad assailants who killed 29 people with knives and machetes in a bloody terrorist attack in the south-western city of Kunming on Saturday night.

Officials blamed Xinjiang separatists for the frenzied violence at a crowded train station. Witnesses described fleeing in fear as the assailants hacked at people apparently at random. Graphic photographs of the aftermath showed bodies lying in pools of blood.

One of the 130 survivors injured in the incident described fleeing in terror as a man lashed out with a long knife, nicking his scalp. “I was terrified … they attacked us like crazy swordsmen, and mostly they went for the head and the shoulders, those parts of the body to kill,” 20-year-old student Wu Yuheng told Reuters as he lay on a bed in a corridor of the Kunming Number One People’s hospital.

Xi urged security officials to “severely punish in accordance with the law the violent terrorists and resolutely crack down on those who have been swollen with arrogance,” state news agency Xinhua said. He added: “Understand the serious and complex nature of combating terrorism … Go all out to maintain social stability.”

It is the first time people from the north-western region have been accused of such a major and organised attack outside its borders, despite rising unrest there in recent years. Many of its Uighur ethnic group, who are Muslim and Turkic-speaking, chafe at Chinese policies and a smaller number want an independent state.

Read more this story HERE.

Dyslexia isn’t a Disease, it’s An Excuse for Bad Teachers

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AlamyI doubt there has ever been a society so easily fooled by pseudo-science and quackery as ours is. Millions of healthy people take happy pills that do them obvious harm, and are increasingly correlated with inexplicable suicide and worse.

Legions of healthy children are drugged into numbness because they fidget during boring lessons, and countless people are persuaded that they or their children suffer from a supposed disease called ‘dyslexia’, even though there is no evidence at all that it exists.

A few weeks ago I rejoiced at the first major cracks in this great towering dam of lies. Dr Richard Saul brought out his courageous and overdue book, ADHD Does Not Exist.

I also urge everyone to read James Davies’s book Cracked, on the inflated claims of psychiatry since it sold its soul to the pill-makers.

Now comes The Dyslexia Debate, published yesterday, a rigorous study of this alleged ailment by two distinguished academics – Professor Julian Elliott of Durham University, and Professor Elena Grigorenko of Yale University.

Read more this story HERE.

Meet the New Paleo Diet: The Benefits of Eating Bugs

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Francois LenoirYou’ve probably heard of the Stone Age diet craze known as the Paleolithic Diet, made popular most recently by Dr. Loren Cordain’s best-seller The Paleo Diet. The premise is simple: If our early human ancestors couldn’t have eaten it, we shouldn’t, either. It’s the one time, it seems, that being like a caveman is a good thing.

The theory goes (and archaeological evidence corroborates) that early hunter-gatherers, while they may not have lived as long, still had some major health advantages on most of us modern humans. They were much taller, averaging 6-foot-5 to our 5-foot-11; had stronger, heavier bones; had more robust immune systems; and were leaner, tougher, and hardier than we are today. Higher levels of physical activity also played a vital role in cave people’s vitality, and so did their high levels of wild food consumption: wild game meat, gathered greens and fruits, and healthy fats such as nuts.

Cordain suggests that prior to the agricultural revolution, early humans ate this Paleo Diet for 2.5 million years. The 10,000 years since the popularization of farming — or just 333 human generations — he says, is clearly a drop in the chronological bucket when compared with the millennia leading up to it. Thus, he maintains, the hunter-gatherer diet our ancestors lived on is far more deeply and indelibly imprinted into our DNA than our habits of the last few thousand years. I’m inclined to agree with him. In fact, I’m going to see his 2.5 million years and raise him a few millennia, and show you what we were really designed to eat. The real Paleo Diet would have included bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

“From the time mammals first appeared until 50 million years ago — a total of 150 million years, three quarters of the entire time mammals have existed — our ancestors were primarily insectivorous,” write S. Boyd Eaton and Dorothy A. Nelson in their paper “Calcium in Evolutionary Perspective.” “Given the slow and conservative nature of genetic evolution, this long-standing adaptation for insect consumption must have made a significant impact on our genetic heritage. Consequently, the nutritional properties of insects have relevance for understanding the forces that have shaped the nutritional requirements of present-day humans.”

Read more this story HERE.

Almost Half a Billion Worth of Bitcoins Vanish

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APMt. Gox, once the dominant exchange for bitcoin trading, on Friday said more than $470 million of the virtual currency vanished from its digital coffers, kicking into high gear a search for the missing money by victims and cybersleuths.

Acting alone and in groups, the people stepped up their efforts after Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and confirmed rumors it had lost almost 750,000 of its customers’ bitcoins, as well as roughly 100,000 of its own.

Mt. Gox Chief Executive Mark Karpelès said technical issues had opened the way for fraudulent withdrawals, though he didn’t provide details.

“There was some weakness in the system, and the bitcoins have disappeared. I apologize for causing trouble,” Mr. Karpelès said at a packed news conference at a Tokyo courthouse after the bankruptcy filing.

The disappearance underscores the risks of currencies that exist only online and aren’t backed by a central bank. Mt. Gox wasn’t overseen by national regulators, so there is no entity to step in and back investors’ deposits.

Read more this story HERE.

The Next Shoe To Drop: Obamacare Will Increase The Cost Of Employer-Sponsored Insurance

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownhallYesterday, the Obama Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a six-page report predicting that Obamacare could cause premiums to increase for nearly two-thirds of small-to- medium-sized businesses. “This results in roughly 11 million individuals whose premiums are estimated to be higher as a result of the ACA and about 6 million individuals who are estimated to have lower premiums,” CMS writes. But CMS’ projections almost certainly understate the problem, one that will begin to affect millions of workers in the second half of 2014.

CMS: 11 million will see increased premiums

The CMS premium report was a requirement imposed by Congress on the administration under the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011. That law mandated that CMS “provide an estimate of the number individuals and families who will experience a premium increase and the number who will see a decrease” as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

But CMS only looked at one cost-increasing Obamacare provision: community rating. And they only looked at it for individuals employed by businesses with fewer than 100 employees: what’s called the “small group market.”

Here’s the background. Under Obamacare, all regulated insurance plans are required to charge people the same premium, regardless of health status. Insurers can charge different rates based on age (but only within a narrow range); tobacco use (smokers can be charged 50 percent more than non-smokers); geographic area (insurers can charge people different rates based on regional demographic variation); and whether the plan is for a single individual or a family.

Read more this story HERE.

Republicans Strike Back at Harry Reid for Calling ObamaCare Victims Liars (+video)

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Human Events In response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bizarre declaration that all ObamaCare horror stories are false, and all the people lodging complaints are liars, the National Republican Senatorial Committee put together a devastating video that hits Reid with the weapon every ObamaCare-defending Democrat fears most: the truth. Short, simple, and damn near nuclear:

The media loves to give Reid a pass for these nasty little smear jobs, but this time he’s run afoul of the very same personalization Democrats are normally good at exploiting for their advantage. There are too many ObamaCare horror stories, too many ordinary Americans with names and faces; the magnitude of deception and failure built into this bill is too large to be ignored. If there was any winning play for the Democrats in 2014, slandering all of these people as liars was not it. They won’t be intimidated into silence, either.

The fate of the nation really shouldn’t be decided by individual anecdotes; gigantic programs which effect millions of lives should not be judged in a contest between a dozen people who really like them, and a dozen people who hate them. But such individual anecdotes have enormous currency in politics today, and no one has spent that currency more freely than the Obama Democrats, who have reduced the use of human props at press conferences to near-parody. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t think it was working, so of course they’re uncomfortable when the same tactic is turned back against them.

Read more this story HERE.

Ukraine, China, Iran – America Isn’t Leading From Behind, It’s Being Left Behind

/2 Comments/in , /by

By K.T. McFarland.

Russia, flush with new-found wealth from oil exports, expands its military reach and political influence abroad. A war-weary America slashes defense spending and retreats from the world. The president embarks on a massive government-subsidized program to develop alternative energy to replace fossil fuels.

Pundits cluck about America in retreat, and point to the rise of an Asian economic superpower. That’s the world circa 1976, but it sounds like quotes ripped from today’s headlines.

History has a way of repeating itself, or to quote the great Yogi Bera, it’s déjà vu all over again. The Obama administration is looking a lot like the Carter administration. Only worse.

President Obama may think the Cold War is over, as dated as yesteryear’s fashions. But President Putin thinks it’s game on, and Russia is winning. And there is ample evidence to support his claim.

I can’t wait for the pictures from the next Obama-Putin meet-up. It will be in June in Sochi, where President Obama would NOT go for the Olympics, but has to go for the G-8 summit.

Read more this story HERE.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: CNNUkraine Forces on High Alert After Putin Gets Permission to Use Military

By Fox News.

Ukraine’s acting president announced that he has put the country’s armed forces on high alert after the Russian parliament unanimously voted to grant President Vladimir Putin permission to mobilize the country’s military in Ukraine.

Oleksandr Turchynov said Saturday he had also ordered increased security at nuclear power plants, airports and other strategic infrastructure, because of the threat of “potential aggression.”

The Russian parliament unanimously voted Saturday to grant President Vladimir Putin permission to mobilize the country’s military in Ukraine and asked that the country’s ambassador in Washington be recalled after earlier statements by President Obama.

Putin said that the mobilization is needed to protect ethnic Russians and the personnel of a Russian military base in Ukraine’s strategic region of Crimea. But the request came a day after Obama warned Moscow that “there will be costs” if it intervenes militarily in Ukraine.

“I’m submitting a request for using the armed forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine pending the normalization of the socio-political situation in that country,” Putin said before the vote.

Read more this story HERE.

‘What the Heck Are You Talking About?’: See How Obama Responds to Heckler at DNC Event

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: YouTube President Barack Obama was heckled over his “plan for nuclear war with Russia” during a speech at the Democratic National Committee on Friday. He responded to the bizarre question in about the only way he could.

After slamming Republicans for getting “all stirred up” over his plan to unilaterally act to “help middle class families,” Obama was interrupted.

“Mr. Obama, tell us about your plan for nuclear war with Russia!” an unidentified man can be heard yelling during the president’s speech.

Read more this story HERE.