Why the Post-Antibiotic World is the Real-Life Version of the Zombie Apocalypse

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Photo Credit: Joe Raedle/GettyRight now, humanity is engaged in an epic battle against fast-adapting and merciless predators. No, zombies are not beating down doors to tear chunks of flesh out of the living. Rather, humanity is being hunted by deadly pathogenic bacteria that have gained resistance to antibiotics.

And thanks to the peculiar incentives that drive the pharmaceutical industry, it looks like the cavalry may be a long time in coming.

To understand the current state of the antibiotics market, we have to go back millennia. Humans have co-existed with bacteria throughout our history. They live in our bodies from birth to death. It’s estimated that up to three percent of a typical human’s body mass is made up of symbiotic bacteria, which assist us with bodily functions like digesting food.

Most bacteria in the human body are kept in check by the body’s immune system. But bacteria are constantly evolving to survive and reproduce. Either the immune system successfully adapts to new threats, or the body risks being overrun. Sometimes the immune system will fail to respond to a novel bacterial threat, allowing the bacteria to kill the host.

Before antibiotics were widely available, any accident, injury, or medical procedure that allowed pathogenic bacteria into the body was potentially deadly. One in nine skin infections was fatal. One in three cases of pneumonia led to death. Invasive surgeries including caesarean sections left the patient open to killer infections. Insect bites, burns, and blood transfusions frequently became a source of infection.

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Family Says They Did Tip Gay Server, Didn’t Leave Note (+video)

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Photo Credit: NBC New York After a gay server at a New Jersey restaurant said a customer denied her a tip and wrote her a hateful note on the receipt, a local family contacted NBC 4 New York and said their receipt shows they paid a tip and didn’t write any such note.

Dayna Morales, a former Marine and a server at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, posted a photo on Facebook earlier this month, showing the bill with a line through the space for a tip. The photo of the receipt showed someone had written, “I’m sorry but I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle.”

Morales indicated in her Facebook post, and in subsequent media interviews — including with NBC 4 New York — that the customer wrote that line.

But a family contacted NBC 4 New York claiming their receipt from the restaurant shows they did leave a tip, and provided what they said was a credit card statement as proof.

The husband and wife, who asked to remain anonymous, showed NBC 4 New York a receipt that appeared to be printed at the same minute, on the same date, for the same $93.55 total, except with an $18 tip.

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TSA Spent $900 Million on Behavior Detection Officers Who Detected 0 Terrorists

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Photo Credit: APThe Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spent approximately $900 million over the last 5 years for behavior detection officers to identify high-risk passengers but, so far, according to the General Accountability Office (GAO), only 0.59% of the passengers flagged were arrested and among those not one was charged with terrorism – zero.

In 2003, the TSA started testing its Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program, which was then fully deployed in 2007. About 3,000 behavior detection officers (BDO) “had been deployed to 176 of the more than 450 TSA-regulated airports in the United States” by fiscal year 2012 (Oct. 1, 2011 – Sept. 30, 2012), according to the GAO.

Those BDO officers are trained to “identify passenger behaviors indicative of stress, fear, or deception and refer passengers” and their baggage for additional screening, reported the GAO in its Nov. 8, 2013 report, Aviation Security: TSA Should Limit Future Funding for Behavior Detection Activities.

Since 2007, the TSA has spent approximately $900 million on the SPOT program, said the GAO.

During the SPOT screening, the TSA’s behavior detection officers are supposed to look for and identify “high-risk passengers based on behavioral indicators that indicate mal-intent,” said the GAO. The BDOs can refer the passengers to a law enforcement officer (LEO) for further investigation. From there, if warranted, a passenger (or passengers) can be arrested.

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Chef Mario Batali Donates $5,000 to Pay for Women’s Abortions

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Photo Credit: LifeNews The abortion lobby recently took to Twitter to raise money for organizations funding abortions for women who may find obtaining one more difficult after numerously abortion clinics failed to meet the health standards of HB2 in Texas.

The Chew chef Mario Batali tweeted his support for the fundraising efforts and offered to match donations of up to $5,000 in one 30-minute period.

The chef, who owns restaurants all over the world and has frequently starred on TV cooking programs for years, said:

Mario Batali ✔ @Mariobatali
Hello Americans i am happy to match your donations for the next 30 minutes up to 5 grand in support of @TXWomenForever C’mon !!!!!
6:07 PM – 18 Nov 2013

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Retired Generals Establish Commission to Look Into Obama Administration’s Actions

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Photo Credit: WND After one of them called for the “forced resignations” of President Obama and congressional leaders in response to multiple grievances, including the alleged political purge of hundreds of senior military officers, two retired U.S. generals are creating a citizens’ commission to scrutinize Obama administration actions on national security and economic issues.

“America’s Provisional Leadership Council” will look at major concerns, as outlined by Army Gen. Paul E. Vallely and Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Jones, in an eight-point paper titled “The Americans Project.”

Vallely told WND he sees The Americans Project as a “citizens’ commission” of prominent Americans to provide advice to legislative and executive branches of government.

America’s leaders, he said, will be “held to high standards of performance to solve the nation’s problems of governing. We will scrutinize and provide guidance to federally elected officials on behalf of the citizens.”

The Americans Project, Vallely added, is a “movement, not a new party necessarily. We want candidates to run as Americans first before being a Democrat, Republican or Independent.”

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Bachmann: Israel ‘May Have to Save World’ From Armageddon

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Photo Credit: WND It was a warning on the perils of appeasement reminiscent of Churchill.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., cut straight to the heart of the matter when WND asked her what the nuclear deal with Iran will mean.

“The major nations of the world have chosen to fail to thwart Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. It is a blunder of such great proportion, history will record it’s folly,” she ruefully predicted.

The congresswoman had an equally dire assessment when asked: Did the deal mean Israel would now have no option but to launch a preemptive strike on Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons?

Israel may have ‘to save the world’

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Obama’s Overhaul of Spy Programs So Far Cloaked in More Secrecy

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Photo Credit: TISH WELLS — McClatchyPresident Barack Obama has faced withering criticism around the globe for his secret spying programs. How has he responded? With more secrecy.

Obama has been gradually tweaking his vast government surveillance policies. But he is not disclosing those changes to the public. Has he stopped spying on friendly world leaders? He won’t say. Has he stopped eavesdropping on the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund? He won’t say.

Even the report by the group Obama created to review and recommend changes to his surveillance programs has been kept secret.

Critics note that this comes after he famously promised the most open administration in history.

“They seem to have reverted to a much more traditional model of secrecy except when it’s politically advantageous,” said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, and is an expert on – and prominent critic of – government secrecy. “That’s normal but not consistent with their pledge.”

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Video: Sharks Swim Just Feet Away from Surfers

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Photo Credit: Jay Dohner/YouTubeIt’s not exactly beach season in Southern California.

But even with small surf to feast on surfers are enjoying glassy waves on recent sunny mornings. And ocean temps relatively warm for this time of year.

The folks in the water off El Porto in Manhattan Beach have company:

Sharks.

A local paddle boarder, Jay Dohner, grabbed his GoPro camera after seeing the creatures swimming off El Porto.

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Gallup Poll: 69 Percent Of Americans Satisfied With Personal Health Care Plan

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A majority of Americans are happy with their current healthcare plan.

A new Gallup poll finds that 69 percent of Americans rate their personal coverage as excellent or good, but only 32 percent say the same about health care coverage in the country.

“Americans’ ratings of their own healthcare coverage have remained remarkably steady over the past decade — and always much higher than their ratings of the nation’s coverage,” the poll states.

Fifty-nine percent of those polled said they are generally satisfied with what they pay for their own health care coverage, while only 24 percent are satisfied with the cost of health insurance more generally across the U.S.

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America Is One Step Closer to a One-Party Tyranny

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Photo Credit: ctj71081November 21, 2013, may be another date that will live in infamy. Instead of conventional bombs and aerial torpedoes exploding at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the “nuclear option” went off in the U.S. Senate at Washington, D.C.

By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to change the institution’s regulations related to the filibuster, thereby emasculating a political minority’s ability to thwart, or at least delay, majoritarian dictatorship. A Senate minority can no longer thwart the president’s nominations of judges to lesser federal courts or of executive department officials.

Although the filibuster can still be used in cases of nominations for the Supreme Court and of substantive legislation, the Senate’s historic power of “advise and consent” has been narrowed to just “consent” in many, perhaps most, cases. The Senate, once said to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, has been reduced to the president’s rubber stamp. Furthermore, if the Senate’s rules — originally written by Thomas Jefferson — can be changed at the majority leader’s whim, what is to prevent them being altered again, even to the point of eliminating the filibuster, which used to be called “the soul of the Senate”?

If Harry Reid’s assault on representative government, which was probably an attempt to distract public opinion from ObamaCare, remains in place, American politics will be forever changed…for the worse.

To comprehend the severity of the damage Reid and his minions have done, we need to explore the nature of representative government.

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