In recent days, Columbia University’s School of Journalism announced its 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners, and the list contained many of the usual suspects.
The New York Times picked up a couple more awards for a political corruption story, Ebola coverage and international reportage; The Wall Street Journal won for an investigative hit piece against healthcare providers who manipulate Medicare; the Los Angeles Times won for reporting how the state’s extreme drought has affected the “human condition”; a smaller South Carolina paper won a prize for reporting violence against women; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch picked up a Pulitzer for photography during the Ferguson riots; some guy won the Poetry Pulitzer for revealing the “scope of African-American experience” through poems that drew from “slave narratives.”
And so forth. In other words, these mainstream papers “went after” stories where reporters and editors had already decided the outcome, and as usual, Columbia University rewarded their pre-conceived orthodoxy as members of the journalistic “cool kids club.”
Why does this matter? Because it helps explain how a man like Dr. Oz could be so savagely attacked by a media so willing to pile on this suddenly not-so-cool kid without bothering to actually investigate the charges being made against him and, more importantly, by whom: When you’re out of “the club,” the cool kids have already decided you must be guilty as charged because that sounds about right.
As noted by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), a non-profit organization advocating for more openness in the food industry, recent hit pieces against Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of a popular daytime television program that often focuses on bogus conventional health treatments and alternative medicine choices, were perpetrated willingly by a mainstream media too trusting of “establishment” medical sources, most likely because Dr. Oz doesn’t toe the cool club line. (Read more from “Why Does Washington Post, USA Today, NPR and the AP Get Its ‘Science’ Talking Points From a Convicted Felon Who Went to Prison for Medicaid Fraud?” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-25 03:46:442015-04-25 03:46:44Why Does Washington Post, USA Today, NPR and the AP Get Its ‘Science’ Talking Points From a Convicted Felon Who Went to Prison for Medicaid Fraud?
By Alex Swoyer. Former Hewlett Packard CEO and potential GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is often critical about Hillary Clinton’s track record as secretary of state.
Thursday morning, Fiorina took to Facebook to criticize Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, for the new revelations regarding the Clinton Foundation’s donations exposed in Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash.
“It’s the Clinton way: raking in millions from foreign governments behind closed doors while making promises about transparency that they never intended to keep. Now they’re scrambling to refile their taxes and account for her decisions as Secretary of State,” Carly stated. “The American people will have a choice. Are we going to demand trust and transparency from our leaders? Have we had enough of a ruling political class that doles out favors to the wealthy and well connected few?” (Read more from “Carly Fiorina: ‘Clinton Cash’ Revelations Simply the ‘Clinton Way'” HERE)
Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
By Jo Becker and Mike McIntire. The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. (Read more from “Russian Uranium Deal” HERE)
Kent had lost hope that his wife would survive after he found her sick on the bathroom floor and doctors said the medication she needed to keep her organs functioning would likely result in her sacrificing her arms and legs.
Kent and his son, Ryan, watched helplessly for weeks as Teri’s tongue swelled and the tip of her nose, hands and feet turned black . . .
“We came to the conclusion as a family that the next day we were going to remove her from life support,” Ryan says . . .
That’s when she opened her eyes . . .
OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Ashton explains that Teri had group A strep, which led to sepsis, which is caused when bacteria gets into the bloodstream and spreads throughout the body. Medication can lower the blood pressure to help prevent the infection from reaching and shutting down the vital organs, but if the arms and legs don’t receive enough blood, the tissue can die and the limbs have to be amputated. (Read more from “Miracle: Woman Wakes up Just Hours Before Family Was to End Life Support” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-24 03:53:212015-04-24 03:53:21Miracle: Woman Wakes up Just Hours Before Family Was to End Life Support
A Catholic priest from Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently encouraged his flock to arm themselves against worldly dangers via concealed carry because, “We’re not in Mayberry anymore, Toto.”
The Rev. Edward Fride announced during a sermon at Christ the King church last month that the parish would be sponsoring classes to help parishioners earn concealed carry permits in response to an uptick in crime in the area.
Fride sent a letter to parishioners using “a bad mix of two entertainment references” to explain why the church is encouraging concealed carry after some churchgoers questioned the religious merit of holding the classes.
From the letter:
Mayberry was a fictitious, idyllic rural American city in which the public safety needs were met by a kind-hearted sheriff and a clueless but well-intentioned deputy. The only “threat” to public safety was a bumbling, genial ne’er-do-well who was so accustomed to staying in jail that he had his own cell, which was never locked. The show, The Andy Griffith Show, was so popular that it had two spin offs, Mayberry RFD and Gomer Pyle, USMC. It was popular because it showed a kind of life that everybody wished were true, no threats, everything is fine, everybody’s perfectly safe, etc. There is no crisis that cannot be solved by hugs and Aunt Bea’s cooking. The “Toto” reference is to a famous line from The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy, who comes from a rural Kansas version of Mayberry, but suddenly finds herself in a dangerous environment of witches, deadly flying monkeys, (I still have nightmares about those wretched and heinous beasts!) and real threats to her life. She begins to comprehend this and says to her cute dog: “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!” It is very common for Christians to simply assume that they live in Mayberry, trusting that because they know the Lord Jesus, everything will always be fine and nothing bad can happen to them and their families. Those who have followed the Lord Jesus for more than 20 minutes, however, have often experienced first-hand that the reality of living in a fallen universe can be very different. How to balance faith, reality, prudence, and trust is one of those critical questions that we struggle with all our lives. Pretending we are in Mayberry, while we are clearly not, can have very negative consequences for ourselves and those we love, especially those we have a responsibility to protect. If we are not in Mayberry, is there a real threat?
(Read more from “Michigan Priest Urges Parishioners to Arm Themselves Against a Dangerous Society” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-23 01:28:432015-04-23 01:28:43Michigan Priest Urges Parishioners to Arm Themselves Against an Increasingly Dangerous Society
Michigan business owner who sparked controversy by posting opinions on Facebook about refusing to serve certain groups, including gay customers, has been the target of vandalism.
Last week, Dieseltec owner Brian Klawiter made headlines when he posted that he would refuse to provide service to openly gay customers.
“I would not hesitate to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons. Homosexuality is wrong, period. If you want to argue this fact with me then I will put your vehicle together with all bolts and no nuts and you can see how that works,” he wrote on Facebook on April 14.
Overnight Tuesday, graffiti was sprayed on the Grandville, Mich., building reading, “I (heart) nuts.”
Klawiter posted other photos on his business Facebook page showing a red pick-up truck with the words “bash back” sprayed on the windshield and a garage door. Other photos showed a rock thrown through a window. (Read more from “Business Refusing Homosexuals Targeted by Vandals” HERE)
In the farm-to-fork-crazed city of Portland, Ore., campus gardens supply public school cafeterias and food service workers seek out chicken free of antibiotics.
But the school system’s nutritional director finds there’s one advocate for healthy food whose demands she just can’t meet — Michelle Obama.
“We have tried every noodle that is out there,” said Gitta Grether-Sweeney, the Portland nutritional director who says she is exasperated by the federal school lunch rules the first lady champions. “Whole-wheat noodles just don’t work in lasagna. We are having to go lawless to use regular pasta.”
The locally sourced macaroni and cheese the schools had been serving turned to mush when it was made with whole-grain macaroni to meet the new rules, Grether-Sweeney said.
That once-popular meal is now off the menu. So too are wraps, which she says won’t hold together with the brittle wheat tortillas she now must use. Many fewer meals are getting sold at school, she said. (Read more from “‘Lunch Lady’ Lobby Joins GOP to Fight Obama’s School Lunch Rules” HERE)
I don’t believe that your sexual preferences are a choice for a vast and enormous majority of the people. The bottom line is I believe that sexual preference is something people are born with.” ~ Sen. Marco Rubio, April 19, 2015
Marco Rubio has become the latest GOP presidential candidate to stumble badly over the issue of homosexuality. Sen. Rand Paul hurt himself by saying that gay “marriage” is okay, as long as it’s a matter of private contract, a view which will satisfy no one.
Dr. Ben Carson hurt himself by asserting that people do change their sexual orientation (correctly using prison as an example) and then retreating under fire and promising never to talk about homosexuality again.
Sen. Rubio is now the victim of a self-inflicted wound, by saying something that is politically correct but scientifically, medically and genetically wrong. Our public policy on homosexuality should be based on the best in scientific research, and Sen. Rubio’s position isn’t.
As I have written before, it’s time to send the “born that way” myth to the graveyard of misbegotten ideas, buried in the plot next to the myth that the sun revolves around the earth.
Psychiatrists William Byne and Bruce Parsons wrote in Archives of General Psychiatry (March 1993) that, “Critical review shows the evidence favoring a biologic theory to be lacking. In fact, the current trend may be to underrate the explanatory power of extant psychosocial models.” In other words, nurture plays a greater role in sexual preference than homosexual activists want you to believe.
As Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council points out, rigorous studies of identical twins have now made it impossible to argue seriously for the theory of genetic determination. If homosexuality were fixed at birth, as the misguided thinking of homosexual activists goes, then if one twin is homosexual, the other should be as well. The “concordance rate” should be 100%.
But it’s not. One early proponent of the “born that way” thesis, Michael Bailey, conducted a study on a large sample of Australian twins and discovered to his chagrin that the concordance rate was just 11%.
Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner, researchers from Columbia and Yale respectively, looked at data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and found concordance rates of just 6.7% for male and 5.3% for female identical twins.
They determined that social environment was of far greater significance, and their research led them to reject “genetic influence independent of social context” as an explanation for homosexuality. They concluded, “..[O]ur results support the hypothesis that less gendered socialization in early childhood and preadolescence shapes subsequent same-sex romantic preferences.” In other words, post-birth experiences shape sexual orientation, not genes.
Bearman’s and Bruckner’s research is born out by no less than eight major studies of identical twins in the U.S., Scandinavia and Australia over the last two decades. They all arrive at the same conclusion: gays aren’t born that way.
As Sprigg observes, “If it was not clear in the 1990’s, it certainly is now — no one is ‘born gay.’”
Strikingly, honest homosexuals agree. In an astonishing column published in the winger-left publication, “The Atlantic,” openly “queer woman” (her words) Lindsay Miller says flatly, “In direct opposition to both the mainstream gay movement and Lady Gaga, I would like to state for the record that I was not born this way.”
Tellingly, she argues that saying people are “born this way” is a form of condescension, and she resents it mightily. “I get frustrated with the veiled condescension of straight people who believe that queers ‘can’t help it,’ and thus should be treated with tolerance and pity.”
Ms. Miller concludes her piece by saying, “The life I have now is not something I ended up with because I had no other options. Make no mistake — it’s a life I chose.”
The implications, of course, of this simple truth are far-reaching. If homosexual behavior is a choice, then our public policy can freely be shaped by an honest look at whether this behavioral choice is healthy and should be encouraged or unhealthy and dangerous and consequently discouraged.
The elevated health risks associated with homosexuality are by now so well established that not even homosexuals pretend otherwise. The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association warns that active homosexuals are at elevated risks of HIV/AIDS, substance and alcohol abuse, depression and anxiety, hepatitis, a whole range of STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, pubic lice, Human Papilloma Virus, and anal papilloma, and prostate, testicular and colon cancer.
Bottom line: this is not behavior that any rational society should condone, endorse, subsidize, reward, promote or sanction in domestic policy or in the marketplace. It’s a choice, and a bad one at that. It’s long past time for our culture – and our presidential candidates – to say a simple and direct “No” to homosexuality and the homosexual agenda.
Social conservatives need and deserve a candidate who will base his social policy agenda on genetics, science, biology, the best in health research, and on biblical morality. Sen. Rubio has failed that test. (See “No, Senator Rubio, Homosexuals Aren’t Born That Way”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-22 03:55:142015-04-22 03:55:14No, Senator Rubio, Homosexuals Aren’t Born That Way
Monday, Madge shared and then deleted an image of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Instagram, captioned with a famous 1989 quote from the leader, who passed away in 2013: “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”
The “Material Girl” then added her own comment, referencing her new album Rebel Heart, which read: “Thank you Margaret Thatcher,” with the tags #unapologetic, #rebelheart and a love heart . . .
Photo Credit: Twitter
Apparently unbeknownst to Madonna, Thatcher is not viewed as a fan of homosexual culture, and the post did not go over well with her large gay fan following.
Due to Section 28 legislation, which essentially banned schools from “promoting homosexuality” under Thatcher’s watch in 1988 as a means to combat the AIDS virus, the Iron Lady is still viewed as a figure of oppression in the country by many gays.
Section 28 was abolished in 2003, but is still a frequent topic of debate, something the singer had apparently not picked up on while living in the U.K., or while she was acquiring a British accent more than a decade ago. (Read more from “See the Social Media Post Madonna Had to Delete After Gay Outrage” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-22 03:54:592015-04-22 03:54:59See the Social Media Post Madonna Had to Delete After Gay Outrage
An Indiana public school district segregated elementary field trips last week when administrators included only African-Americans on the college introduction tour.
According to ABC 57, South Bend Community Schools Corporation has planned a series of field trips to three local colleges for black third-graders in seven school districts. The excursions began last week with a trip to Ivy Tech Community College.
Dr. G. David Moss, the director for the African-American student-parent services with the South Bend Community Schools Corporation, told ABC 57 that he wanted the third-grade students to begin to think of themselves attending college.
“I was hired to look at the issues facing African-American kids in the South Bend Community Schools Corporation and my job specifically says that I need to develop programs and develop strategies to help these kids and their families become more successful academically,” Moss said.
However, many families, including those with children who can attend the field trips, said the field trips were exclusionary and discriminatory in nature. (Read more from “Indiana School District Bused Only Black Third-Graders to Tour Local Colleges” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-22 03:49:262015-04-22 03:49:26Indiana School District Bused Only Black Third-Graders to Tour Local Colleges
A friend sends along an email attachment—a handwritten letter by his 8-year-old son, Peter. It’s addressed to First Lady Michelle Obama. “It all started because he saw something about school lunches [and] how ketchup is bad for you, and that Michelle Obama wants to limit the amount of ketchup” in schools, my friend explained. When the boy’s mother reminded him he attends a private school, making the ketchup rationing a nonissue, “He said something about wanting to ‘give a voice to the voiceless.’”
But ketchup is actually the least of the boy’s concerns, as he then continues onto foreign policy, the crisis in the Middle East, and the need for boots on the ground. (“He also disipionted [sic] millons of Americans by not bombing Syria.”) In addition, Peter recommends that the president urge the United Nations to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.
On the lighter side, the departure of Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau seems to be noted, as Peter points out, “I also think your husband needs to work on his speeches.”
Photo Credit: The Weekly Standard
(Read more from “See the Brutal Letter a ‘Concerned’ 8-Year-Old Wrote to Michelle Obama” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-22 03:48:122015-04-22 03:48:12See the Brutal Letter a ‘Concerned’ 8-Year-Old Wrote to Michelle Obama
In recent days, Columbia University’s School of Journalism announced its 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners, and the list contained many of the usual suspects.
