Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Doug,

So how long can we go on with this charade?

One can add a prominent individual to the list of anti-Semites:

Barack Hussain Obama

If it isn't obvious by now.....

Typical Bloomberg News item.  Don't worry Democrats ; Bush approval rating even lower than Brock's.   

Barack Obama
Obama Beats Bush

Jonathan Bernstein
Mar 19, 2014 9:31 AM ET
By Jonathan Bernstein


In February, I asked whether Barack Obama's approval ratings had pulled ahead of those of George W. Bush at a similar juncture in his presidency, ending a long period where they were basically tied. We now have evidence they have.

Today, Gallup has Obama at 41 percent approval, which is probably a bit lower than his true Gallup score from the last few weeks. HuffPollster’s polling average estimates the president's approval at 43.7 percent and slowly rising. A month ago, the trend was less clear, and results varied depending on whether one looked at regular polls or those that were more sensitive to recent changes. Now the two methods are showing essentially the same thing: Obama bottomed out in November or December and has been improving gradually since.

(Yes, that means the New York Times was wrong to refer to Obama’s “sinking approval ratings.” I wouldn’t quibble with low and stable ratings. But sinking? Not in the last several months).
At a similar point in Bush's second term, in 2006, a March 13-16 Gallup reading gave him a 37 percent approval rating. He remained at that level or below until a late-summer rally, which pushed him above 40 percent for the final time of his presidency. So Obama’s lead over Bush, which I estimated at around 3 points last month, is up to around 5 points now, and the two men are headed in opposite directions.

This is not to say Obama is doing well. Unless his recent improvement gathers steam, he’s going to be a drag on Democrats in November, though he won't be as big a drag as Bush was for his party in the 2006 midterms. And even if Obama rebounds, it probably wouldn't be enough to help the Democrats hang on to some tough Senate seats. Ronald Reagan was very popular until the 1986 election, when Democrats took a number of Senate races, in large part by unseating Republican incumbents who had benefited from having Reagan at the top of the ticket in 1980.

But at least for now, Obama isn't as unpopular as Bush was in 2006. This suggests a good year for Republicans (especially in the Senate), but not a landslide.

Raped all women 8 to 80.  Then became more discriminant. With torches searching at night while frenzied with vodka looking for the prettiest.. In gangs in packs.   After much vodka. Vodka the Wermackt did not destroy in hopes the Russians would be stuporous to fight.  Instead the fire water guzzling made them fight even harder with no stops with great desire and rage sexual appetite.   Rape the girls ifn front of mothers fathers sons daughters husbands they when they would then often shoot afterwards.  Some women would offer herself to a single Russian hoping he would protect her from to protect her from gangs.   When the women would begin starving the "rape" would morph into more like prostitution to "pay for food, or cigarettes.  
Thinking they could save themselves old women would throw the younger girls to the "wolves" thinking they would be spared.  Any Russian women were in the area and watched events unfold just laughed.  German "whores" must have deserved it. 

 Maybe ten percent killed themselves out of shame.   When German soldiers came home they were shamed and left.   Women who did survive were to suffer this the rest of their lives.  They wouldn't speak of it.  The shame.  The pain that is relived when one remembers and recounts.  Watching loved ones being violated.  Watching the few loved ones who bravely tried to fight back get shot dead.  

The criminals many would not care one iota.  Some would boast.  Some would get smashed drunk and go on hunts in wolve packs pulling prey right off the streets in front of crowds.  Pull them from their hiding places in the ruble, in the alley way , in the lofts.  After all, Russians who suffered even worse deserved revenge on what was done to them and their people.  To desecrate your enemy is to enjoy the spoils of war.  

We all have mothers.  Most have sisters, aunts, daughters, women we admire, our teachers, our caretakers, our nurses, children of our friends wives our friends, other mothers.   The horror .  The horror .

It should never happen again.  But we all know it will.  Civilization is only one step away from coming apart at the seems and it is again every man and woman for themselves.

*****Various waves and situations of rapes in Germany at end of WW2:

Suppressed History, Buried Crimes »

German Woman Breaks Silence about Red Army Rapes

March 10, 2010 by Ironlight

An 80-year-old German woman has broken an old taboo of silence over the rapes she endured at the hands of Soviet soldiers in the second world war with a searing book about the crimes of the Red Army as it marched towards Berlin.

By Allan Hall in Berlin
 Published: 2:05PM GMT 28 Feb 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

“Why Did I Have To Be A Girl” by Gabriele Koepp is the first book published about the rapes under a victim’s real name. Mrs Koepp was one of an estimated two million German girls and women raped by Soviet soldiers, encouraged by their leader Josef Stalin to regard the crime as a spoil of war after Hitler’s invasion had left 26 million Russians dead.

“Frau. Komm,” was a phrase that women dreaded hearing from Red Army soldiers. In the weeks after the city fell the rape epidemic was so bad that even the Catholic church countenanced abortion for some victims.

Even today, Mrs Koepp has trouble sleeping. “I was hardly more than a child. Writing this has not been easy, but I had no choice: who else would do it?”

Mrs Koepp told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine at the weekend that it was on the evening of January 25 1945, when she was 15, that her mother told her to pack quickly as she had to flee.

They lived in Schneidemuehl, in the former German region of Pomerania which is now a Polish town called Pila. She and her sister left the next day aboard a cattle train that was supposed to head towards Berlin. But it went in a different direction and the engine was soon blown up by Russian artillery. “The freight car door was locked,” she said. “I managed to climb up and crawl out of a high window. My sister was left behind: I have never seen her again.”

Her ordeal of multiple rape in a nearby village went on for two weeks until she was taken in at a farm and hid from the Soviets.

She was reunited with her mother 15 months later in Hamburg but says her mother was cold to her when she tried to talk of her pain and shame. British historian Antony Beevor chronicled the mass rapes in his 2002 book about the Soviet onslaught on Germany. Mrs Koepp’s book will be translated into English at the end of the summer.
————————————————
AT THE MERCY OF MONSTERS
 Tuesday March 2,2010
 By Paul Callan

http://www.express.co.uk

GABRIELE Koepp was just 15 with blue eyes and blonde hair woven into plaits – a pretty schoolgirl whose face shone with innocence. But on the morning of January 26, 1945, she crouched trembling with terror under a table in a farmhouse.

Outside she could hear the Russian soldiers, their voices slurred with drink, shouting for women. “Frau komm, frau komm,” (“come here woman, come here woman”) they bellowed in heavily Russian-accented German. It was a cry that thousands of women would learn to dread.

Suddenly some of the soldiers stumbled into the kitchen and a handful of old women refugees, fearful they would be attacked, dragged Gabriele out, thrusting her towards the Russians. She was immediately raped by every soldier. It was not the first time. The day before she had been caught by two Russians, hurled to the ground and violated.

So it went on for two weeks until she was taken to another farm and hidden from the sex-crazed soldiers. Now aged 80 Gabriele still remembers those terrible days and in particular how she was betrayed by the old women. “I despised those women, I still do,” she said. “I have no tears but I feel hatred rising up inside me.”

It is a boiling hatred that has lasted 65 years since the Allies, including fierce Soviet forces, smashed their way across Europe… But as they advanced the Russians unleashed an orgy of sickening self-gratification as soldiers of the Red Army embarked on a lengthy campaign of rape, looting, murder and depravity.

Now Gabriele Koepp has written a book of searing honesty called Why Did I Have To Be A Girl, about the rapes carried out by the Red Army as it advanced towards Berlin. The book is unprecedented, being the first time a German woman has broken the lengthy taboo by writing about being one of the estimated two million victims of rampaging Soviet soldiers.

What sickened many at the time was that the soldiers were actively encouraged to rape German women by Russian dictator Josef Stalin. When one of his commanders protested Stalin exploded: “Can’t you understand it if a soldier, who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death, has fun with some woman or takes a trifle?” To Stalin German women were merely the “spoils of war”.

Gabriele was such a “spoil” for those 14 days when she was relentlessly and repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers, so much so that she cannot even to this day, say the very word. “My life has been some 29,200 days,” she said. “But really it was destroyed in those 14 days of the … I cannot say the word. I was innocent when it happened.

“There is a debate going on in Germany at the moment about the so-called expellees from land that once belonged to Germany, the loss of the homeland, etc, but that is [comparatively] nothing to me. I live with what happened to me all the time. There are days I cannot eat because of it, even now all these years later.

“Writing of what happened hasn’t made anything easier for me but I had to do it. Who else would?” Gabriele studiously avoids detail and writes in the book of “the place of the terror”, the “gates of hell” and calls the rapists “brutes and scoundrels”. She avoids the word “rape” and adds with some fear in her eyes: “I cannot even say that word.”

The book is a searing scrutiny of the agony that to this very day the Russian establishment continues to deny. Gabriele was one of an estimated two million German girls and women, some as young as six and as old as 80, who were raped by Soviet soldiers… Their justification was that Hitler’s invasion of Russia had left 26 million dead and revenge would be sweet. Much of the rape and murder by the Russians took place as they approached Berlin.

Berliners had prayed that the Western Allies would reach their city before the Russians, but General Eisenhower, the overall commander- in-chief, had decided the Russians should reach Berlin first on account of their own huge losses.

But as early as 1944 terrible reports were seeping through to Berlin from the moment the thrusting Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia.

By the time the Soviet troops entered Berlin there was terror on the streets. The rapes usually started in the evenings after the soldiers had drunk large amounts of vodka. That familiar cry of “frau komm” soon echoed around the rubble-strewn streets.

Any woman found, whatever her age, was savagely thrown to the ground and brutally attacked. Filthy drunken soldiers hunted in packs, some women were raped by as many as 20 men.

One of the worst mistakes of the defeated German authorities had been their failure to destroy Berlin’s considerable stocks of alcohol as the Red Army drew nearer. Erroneously, they thought a drunken enemy could not fight. But the Russians fought even harder, as well as having their desires inflamed.

Nor did the Soviet women soldiers do anything to stop their male comrades. One Berlin woman was being raped in succession by three men when three others arrived, one of them a woman. When the German woman appealed to her to intervene she merely laughed out loud. There were tragic attempts to resist the soldiers. A 13-year-old boy started flailing at a soldier who was raping his mother in front of him. When the Russian finished he turned to the boy and shot him…

AS night closed in the screams of women being attacked could be heard all over the city. It is estimated that up to 10,000 of the women who were raped died, mostly from suicide. Some could never talk about it and for the young such as Gabriele, it would prove a lifelong horror.

For many men returning home learning that their wives had been raped was traumatic… Many marriages broke up…

Eventually communist leaders became deeply embarrassed by the reports of Soviet behaviour and made complaints to the Kremlin which admitted nothing and even claimed it was all Western propaganda designed to “damage the high reputation of the Red Army”.

The Red Army war memorial in Berlin is dominated by a huge figure of a Russian soldier. There is an expression of heroic triumph on his sculptured face. In one hand he holds a child, while the other wields a sword that smashes a swastika.

But to German women of the wartime generation, including Gabriele Koepp, there is another name for that memorial: “The tomb of the unknown rapist.”
 ——————————————————
History Of “The Victors” Which You Will Never Hear
 They raped every German female from eight to 80′

Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the fall of Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the victorious Red Army.

Wednesday May 1, 2002
 The Guardian

“Red Army soldiers don’t believe in ‘individual liaisons’ with German women,” wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. “Nine, ten, twelve men at a time – they rape the women on a collective basis.”

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.

Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports. One stated that “many Germans declare that all German women in East Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers”. Numerous examples of gang rape were given – “girls under 18 and old women included”.

Marshal Rokossovsky issued order No 006 in an attempt to direct “the feelings of hatred at fighting the enemy on the battlefield.” It appears to have had little effect. There were also a few arbitrary attempts to exert authority. The commander of one rifle division is said to have “personally shot a lieutenant who was lining up a group of his men before a German woman spreadeagled on the ground”. But either officers were involved themselves, or the lack of discipline made it too dangerous to restore order over drunken soldiers armed with submachine guns.

Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht’s invasion, had given the idea that any cruelty would be allowed. Even many young women soldiers and medical staff in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. “Our soldiers’ behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is absolutely correct!” said a 21-year-old from Agranenko’s reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped. But some women were deeply shaken by what they witnessed in Germany. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent. “The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty,” she recounted later. “It was an army of rapists.”

Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims were mutilated obscenely.

The subject of the Red Army’s mass rapes in Germany has been so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to acknowledge what really happened. The handful prepared to speak openly, however, are totally unrepentant. “They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed,” said the leader of one tank company. He even went on to boast that “two million of our children were born” in Germany.

The capacity of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either happy with their fate, or at least accepted that it was their turn to suffer after the Wehrmacht had invaded Russia, is striking. “Our fellows were so sex-starved,” a Soviet major told a British journalist at the time, “that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy or even eighty – much to these grandmothers’ surprise, if not downright delight.”

One can only scratch at the surface of the psychological contradictions. When gang-raped women in Königsberg begged their attackers afterwards to put them out of their misery, the Red Army men appear to have felt insulted. “Russian soldiers do not shoot women,” they replied. “Only German soldiers do that.” The Red Army had managed to convince itself that because it had assumed the moral mission to liberate [what is your definition of liberation?!] Europe from fascism it could behave entirely as it liked, both personally and politically.

Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers’ treatment of women in East Prussia. The victims not only bore the brunt of revenge for Wehrmacht crimes, they also represented an atavistic target as old as war itself. Rape is the act of a conqueror, the feminist historian Susan Brownmiller observed, aimed at the “bodies of the defeated enemy’s women” to emphasise his victory. Yet after the initial fury of January 1945 dissipated, the sadism became less marked. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin three months later, its soldiers tended to regard German women more as a casual right of conquest. The sense of domination certainly continued, but this was perhaps partly an indirect product of the humiliations which they themselves had suffered at the hands of their commanders and the Soviet authorities as a whole.

A number of other forces or influences were at work. Sexual freedom had been a subject for lively debate within Communist party circles during the 1920s, but during the following decade, Stalin ensured that Soviet society depicted itself as virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with genuine puritanism: it was because love and sex did not fit in with dogma designed to “deindividualise” the individual. Human urges and emotions had to be suppressed. Freud’s work was banned, divorce and adultery were matters for strong party disapproval. Criminal sanctions against homosexuality were reintroduced. The new doctrine extended even to the complete suppression of sex education. In graphic art, the clothed outline of a woman’s breasts was regarded as dangerously erotic. They had to be disguised under boiler suits. The regime clearly wanted any form of desire to be converted into love for the party and above all for Comrade Stalin.

Most ill-educated Red Army soldiers suffered from sexual ignorance and utterly unenlightened attitudes towards women. So the Soviet state’s attempts to suppress the libido of its people created what one Russian writer described as a sort of “barracks eroticism” which was far more primitive and violent than “the most sordid foreign pornography”. All this was combined with the dehumanising influence of modern propaganda and the atavistic, warring impulses of men marked by fear and suffering.

The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for labour. “Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them,” he noted. “One girl said to me in tears: ‘He was an old man, older than my father’.”

The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union. On March 29, 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin’s associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. “On the night of 24 February,” General Tsygankov recorded in the first of many examples, “a group of 35 provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women’s dormitory in the village of Grutenberg and raped them.”

In Berlin, many women were simply not prepared for the shock of Russian revenge, despite the warnings they had heard from Goebbels. Many reassured themselves that, although the danger must be great out in the countryside, mass rapes could hardly take place in the city in front of everybody.

In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Kunigunde, the mother superior of Haus Dahlem, a maternity clinic and orphanage. The officers and their men behaved impeccably. In fact, the officers even warned Sister Kunigunde about the second-line troops following on behind. Their prediction proved entirely accurate. Nuns, young girls, old women, pregnant women and mothers who had just given birth were all raped without pity.

Yet within a couple of days, a pattern emerged of soldiers flashing torches in the faces of women huddled in the bunkers to choose their victims. This process of selection, as opposed to the indiscriminate violence shown earlier, indicates a definite change. By this stage Soviet soldiers started to treat German women more as sexual spoils of war than as substitutes for the Wehrmacht on which to vent their rage.

Rape has often been defined by writers on the subject as an act of violence which has little to do with sex. But that is a definition from the victim’s perspective. To understand the crime, one needs to see things from the perpetrator’s point of view, especially in the later stages when unaggravated rape had succeeded the extreme onslaught of January and February.

Many women found themselves forced to “concede” to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, was dragged from a cupboard in her apartment just off the Kurfürstendamm. A very young soldier from central Asia hauled her out. He was so excited at the prospect of a beautiful young blonde that he ejaculated prematurely. By sign language, she offered herself to him as a girlfriend if he would protect her from other Russian soldiers, but he went off to boast to his comrades and another soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, a Jewish friend of Magda’s, was also raped. When other Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and had been persecuted, they received the retort: “Frau ist Frau” (or, “a woman is a woman”).

Women soon learned to disappear during the “hunting hours” of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before. Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughter. Older Berliners still remember the screams every night. It was impossible not to hear them because all the windows had been blown in.

Estimates of rape victims from the city’s two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least two million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.

If anyone attempted to defend a woman against a Soviet attacker it was either a father trying to defend a daughter or a young son trying to protect his mother. “The 13-year old Dieter Sahl,” neighbours wrote in a letter shortly after the event, “threw himself with flailing fists at a Russian who was raping his mother in front of him. He did not succeed in anything except getting himself shot.”

After the second stage of women offering themselves to one soldier to save themselves from others, came the post-battle need to survive starvation. Susan Brownmiller noted “the murky line that divides wartime rape from wartime prostitution”. Soon after the surrender in Berlin, Ursula von Kardorff found all sorts of women prostituting themselves for food or the alternative currency of cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German film-maker who researched the subject in great detail, wrote of “the grey area of direct force, blackmail, calculation and real affection”.

The fourth stage was a strange form of cohabitation in which Red Army officers settled in with German “occupation wives”. The Soviet authorities were appalled and enraged when a number of Red Army officers, intent on staying with their German lovers, deserted when it was time to return to the Motherland.

Even if the feminist definition of rape purely as an act of violence proves to be simplistic, there is no justification for male complacency. If anything, the events of 1945 reveal how thin the veneer of civilisation can be when there is little fear of retribution. It also suggests a much darker side to male sexuality than we might care to admit

"The Economist’s crony-capitalism index also isolates business sectors like casinos, oil and gas, and real estate as crony sectors while ignoring things like high-tech, healthcare, and entertainment."

Wow.  What a huge and preposterous "oversight".   High tech, and entertainment are the biggest backers of the liberals.  Health care seems to be a monster unto itself.

Overall the Economist is to some degree calling out the Bamster some, and recently have started to actually say something good about the right, but overall they are still progressives at heart.   I would still label them maybe just a tad to the right of MSM - but only a tad.

  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/google-wants-e-mail-scanning-information-blocked.html

I think Clint Eastwood would look good in another Dirty Harry movie with this tiny gun:

http://www.vincelewis.net/60magnum.html

"your posts are greatly appreciated"

Agreed.

In typical Obama and the Progressive movement fashion we give up more and more to the "world community".   As Newt asks?  *Who are the stakeholders?*
We all are if you ask me.   I guess we are going to have an international tax now?  So Americans can continue funding for the rest of the new world order?

*****U.S. to relinquish remaining control over the Internet

 Joe Raedle/Getty Images -  Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade.

By Craig Timberg,   
 
U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move that pleased international critics but alarmed some business leaders and others who rely on the smooth functioning of the Web.

Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.

Move comes after revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.

The change would end the long-running contract between the Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit group. That contract is set to expire next year but could be extended if the transition plan is not complete.

“We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan,” Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in a statement.

The announcement received a passionate response, with some groups quickly embracing the change and others blasting it.

In a statement, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) called the move “consistent with other efforts the U.S. and our allies are making to promote a free and open Internet, and to preserve and advance the current multi-stakeholder model of global Internet governance.”

But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) tweeted: “What is the global internet community that Obama wants to turn the internet over to? This risks foreign dictatorships defining the internet.”

The practical consequences of the decision were harder to immediately discern, especially with the details of the transition not yet clear. Politically, the move could alleviate rising global concerns that the United States essentially controls the Web and takes advantage of its oversight position to help spy on the rest of the world.

U.S. officials set several conditions and an indeterminate timeline for the transition from federal government authority, saying a new oversight system must be developed and win the trust of crucial stakeholders around the world. An international meeting to discuss the future of Internet is scheduled to start on March 23 in Singapore.

The move’s critics called the decision hasty and politically tinged, and voiced significant doubts about the fitness of ICANN to operate without U.S. oversight and beyond the bounds of U.S. law.



“This is a purely political bone that the U.S. is throwing,” said Garth Bruen, a security fellow at the Digital Citizens Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group that combats online crime. “ICANN has made a lot of mistakes, and ICANN has not really been a good steward.”

Business groups and some others have long complained that ICANN’s decision-making was dominated by the interests of the industry that sells domain names and whose fees provide the vast majority of ICANN’s revenue. The U.S. government contract was a modest check against such abuses, critics said.

“It’s inconceivable that ICANN can be accountable to the whole world. That’s the equivalent of being accountable to no one,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a trade group representing major Internet commerce businesses.

U.S. officials said their decision had nothing to do with the NSA spying revelations and the worldwide controversy they sparked, saying there had been plans since ICANN’s creation in 1998 to eventually migrate it to international control.

“The timing is now right to start this transition both because ICANN as an organization has matured, and international support continues to grow for the multistakeholder model of Internet governance,” Strickling said in a statement.

Although ICANN is based in Southern California, governments worldwide have a say in the group’s decisions through an oversight body. ICANN in 2009 made an “Affirmation of Commitments” to the Commerce Department that covers several key issues.

Fadi Chehade, president of ICANN, disputed many of the complaints about the transition plan and promised an open, inclusive process to find a new international oversight structure for the group.

“Nothing will be done in any way to jeopardize the security and stability of the Internet,” he said.

The United States has long maintained authority over elements of the Internet, which grew from a Defense Department program that started in the 1960s. The relationship between the United States and ICANN has drawn wider international criticism in recent years, in part because big American companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft play such a central role in the Internet’s worldwide functioning. The NSA revelations exacerbated those concerns.

“This is a step in the right direction to resolve important international disputes about how the Internet is governed,” said Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, a group that promotes open access to the Internet.

Verizon, one of the world’s biggest Internet providers, issued a statement saying, “A successful transition in the stewardship of these important functions to the global multi-stakeholder community would be a timely and positive step in the evolution of Internet governance.”

ICANN’s most important function is to oversee the assigning of Internet domains — such as dot-com, dot-edu and dot-gov — and ensure that the various companies and universities involved in directing digital traffic do so safely.

Concern about ICANN’s stewardship has spiked in recent years amid a massive and controversial expansion that is adding hundreds of new domains, such as dot-book, dot-gay and dot-sucks, to the Internet’s infrastructure. More than 1,000 new domains are slated to be made available, pumping far more fee revenue into ICANN.




Major corporations have complained, however, that con artists already swarm the Internet with phony Web sites designed to look like the authentic offerings of respected brands.

“To set ICANN so-called free is a very major step that should done with careful oversight,” said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers. “We would be very concerned about that step.”

 





Follow The Post’s new tech blog, The Switch, where

Just don't let the Clintons steal your ideas and pretend they've been saying it all along:

http://news.yahoo.com/in-the-age-of-reality-politics--rubio-finds-his-voice-102128536.html

I cannot reply to the Putin thread.  No "reply" link comes up. 

We know why.  I guess if we make them legal they will be able to start their OWN businesses and drive this American employer out of business.  Sorry but this twisted logic doesn't sit well with me.

****Immigration
Why I Hire Undocumented Workers
12, 2014 12:23 PM ET
By Francis Wilkinson


Using data from the U.S. Census, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that there were eight million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. labor force in 2010. The Migration Policy Institute estimated the number a bit lower -- 6.4 million -- in 2011, with retail trade employing 920,000, construction 910,000, agriculture 540,000 and manufacturing 520,000. Even using the lower Institute number, that means there is more than one undocumented worker for every one of the six million employers in the U.S.

Who is employing them all?

Well, a guy I've known for years is one. He owns an east-coast landscaping and plant business with around 100 employees, at least half of whom are undocumented Mexican immigrants.

About a dozen years ago, one of his biggest competitors started using undocumented Mexican laborers. At the time, the landscaper’s firm suffered high turnover and low productivity, and finding employees to do the actual landscaping -- his company's bread and butter -- was difficult.

“We’ve never had anyone come in here looking for work,” he told me, on condition that I withhold his name. He found many of the Americans he has hired over the years to be unreliable and unwilling to work hard. Sometimes they quit; other times he has fired them.

Gradually, he started hiring Mexican laborers. All of them were able to provide Social Security numbers, though he understood they were bogus. “We have to have paperwork on these guys,” he said. “We just don’t have to have it be legitimate.”

The Mexican laborers live together in a poor neighborhood in a small city, drive to work together and take as many hours as the boss offers – seven days a week when possible. He pays them the same wages he pays Americans -- one top earner makes $25 per hour, well above the median U.S. wage. Because they're undocumented and most don't have their families with them, the men don't make much of a dent in the U.S. consumer economy. Instead, they send their savings home to their families in Mexico.

There are, of course, complications. The landscaper said he has paid thousands of dollars to coyotes and illegal services to secure passage back to the U.S. for workers who returned to Mexico to visit family. If his employees are stopped at the U.S. border and don't make it back to work, which is happening more frequently, he isn't charged. “I lost a key man," he said, "a skilled stone mason who couldn’t get back in the country.” If his employees do make it back to work, he said, they inevitably reimburse him for the coyote fees.

As the business grew, the landscaper's Mexican workforce also became his recruiting service. “The Mexicans are self-policing,” he said. “If a guy is not working hard, they get rid of him. I don’t even have to say anything. The only people I have to fire are Americans.”

(Francis Wilkinson is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board. Follow him on Twitter.)*****

A long time ago I had a patient who had a daughter who was raped by a Navy-man.   He threatened her not to "mess with the Navy".  She was not military.   He stated he sent letters all over demanding justice.   He said he was taken seriously.  The last time I spoke to him he said his daughter decided she couldn't go through with all the continuing psychological trauma to pursue justice and decided it was simply less stressful to just move on.  He was very disappointed and felt like he failed to protect his daughter.  I couldn't convince him otherwise.

Apparently there were at least some in the Navy who were willing to cover for this guy.  But I don't know details beyond this.

I don't know if rape is more frequent among military personnel than the general population or if it is harder to obtain justice when it occurs.

I don't think it wrong for the civilian justice system to at least review what is going on though I would prefer they fix any problems within the military system then let the politicians make political fodder for this.

This was discussed today on Dick Morris radio (actually a really good show - he is really interesting).   But I thought Libya took responsibility for Lockerbee and admitted it?

 

******Ex-Iranian intel officer says Iran, not Libya, behind Lockerbie attack   

Ex-Iranian intel officer says Iran, not Libya, behind Lockerbie attack

March. 11, 2014 at 4:17 PM   |   1 Comment

EDINBURGH, Scotland, March 11 (UPI) -- The 1988 Lockerbie jetliner bombing was payback for the U.S. Navy's downing of an Iranian airliner six months earlier, an ex-Iranian intelligence officer says.
Abolghassem Mesbahi says Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 290 people died, to avenge the accidental shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes and left 270 people dead, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

The London newspaper said previously unreleased evidence that was to have been used in an appeal hearing for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing, supports Mesbahi's contention. The Lockerbie bombing was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command, the newspaper said the evidence suggests.

The Telegraph said documents obtained by the Arab television network al-Jazeera for a documentary called "Lockerbie: What Really Happened?" names key individuals allegedly involved in the attack.

The Telegraph said the new evidence puts the conviction of al-Megrahi in question and supports allegations the truth about Lockerbie was covered up by Britain and the United States to avoid angering Syria, a key player in the Middle East

Al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the Lockerbie attack, dropped his appeal after being released from prison in 2009 because he was suffering from cancer, though he maintained his innocence until his death in 2012.

Al-Megrahi's conviction was based on the prosecution's theory that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie attack in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, in which Gadhafi's daughter was killed.

But Mesbahi contends it was Iran, not Libya, that sought revenge.

"Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible," Mesbahi, who had reported directly to Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and now lives under a witness protection program in Germany, told al-Jazeera. "The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

"The target of the Iranian decision-makers was to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly the same, minimum 290 people dead."

The newspaper reported the U.S. State Department said it wanted all those responsible for the Lockerbie attack brought to justice, while Britain's Foreign Office said the case remains open because investigators believe al-Megrahi didn't act alone.

The Iranian government had no comment on the documentary's findings, but has previously denied any involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/03/11/Ex-Iranian-intel-officer-says-Iran-not-Libya-behind-Lockerbie-attack/UPI-51221394569068/#ixzz2vheOEkoK*******

But at least it has the politically correct warrior-broad in it:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/300_rise_of_an_empire/

Arthur Berman continues to maintain:

Wells do not have long drilling life and drilling companies have to keep searching and drilling more just to maintain.   Capital expenditures are so enormous for these hard to get liquids that companies are spending more than they make to get the stuff.  Prices have to be high to make it profitable and most supplies estimates are exaggerations and not realistic.   Similar issues with oil in sands:

*****Shale, the Last Oil and Gas Train: Interview With Arthur Berman

By Oilprice.com 
March 6, 2014   

This article was written by Oilprice.com -- the leading provider of energy news in the world. Also see our previous interview with Arthur Berman.

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There's another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it's all that's left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it's just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective.   

In a second exclusive interview with James Stafford of Oilprice.com, energy expert Arthur Berman discusses:

•    Why US gas supply growth rests solely on Marcellus
•    When Bakken and Eagle Ford will peak
•    The eyebrow-raising predictions for the Permian Basin
•    Why outrageous claims should have oil lawyers running for cover
•    Why everyone's making such a big deal about shale
•    The only way to make the shale gas boom sustainable
•    Why some analysts need their math examined
•    Why it's not just about how much gas we produce
•    Why investors are starting to ask questions
•    Why new industries, not technologies will make the next boom
•    Why we'll never hit the oil and gas 'wall'
•    Why companies could use a little supply and-demand discipline
•    Why 'fire ice' makes sense (in Japan)
•    Why the US crude export debate will be 'silly'

Arthur is a geological consultant with thirty-four years of experience in petroleum exploration and production. He is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. He frequently gives keynote addresses for investment conferences and is interviewed about energy topics on television, radio, and national print and web publications including CNBC, CNN, Platt's Energy Week, BNN, Bloomberg, Platt's, Financial Times, and New York Times. You can find out more about Arthur by visiting his website: http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com

Oilprice.com: Almost on a daily basis we have figures thrown at us to demonstrate how the shale boom is only getting started. Mostly recently, there are statements to the effect that Texas shale formations will produce up to one-third of the global oil supply over the next 10 years. Is there another story behind these figures?

Arthur Berman: First, we have to distinguish between shale gas and liquids plays. On the gas side, all shale gas plays except the Marcellus are in decline or flat. The growth of US supply rests solely on the Marcellus and it is unlikely that its growth can continue at present rates. On the oil side, the Bakken has a considerable commercial area that is perhaps only one-third developed so we see Bakken production continuing for several years before peaking. The Eagle Ford also has significant commercial area but is showing signs that production may be flattening. Nevertheless, we see 5 or so more years of continuing Eagle Ford production activity before peaking. The EIA has is about right for the liquids plays--slower increases until later in the decade, and then decline.

The idea that Texas shales will produce one-third of global oil supply is preposterous. The Eagle Ford and the Bakken comprise 80% of all the US liquids growth. The Permian basin has notable oil reserves left but mostly from very small accumulations and low-rate wells. EOG (NYSE: EOG  ) CEO Bill Thomas said the same thing about 10 days ago on EOG's earnings call. There have been some truly outrageous claims made by some executives about the Permian basin in recent months that I suspect have their general counsels looking for a defibrillator.

Recently, the CEO of a major oil company told The Houston Chronicle that the shale revolution is only in the "first inning of a nine-inning game". I guess he must have lost track of the score while waiting in line for hot dogs because production growth in U.S. shale gas plays excluding the Marcellus is approaching zero; growth in the Bakken and Eagle Ford has fallen from 33% in mid-2011 to 7% in late 2013.

Oil companies have to make a big deal about shale plays because that is all that is left in the world. Let's face it: these are truly awful reservoir rocks and that is why we waited until all more attractive opportunities were exhausted before developing them. It is completely unreasonable to expect better performance from bad reservoirs than from better reservoirs.

The majors have shown that they cannot replace reserves. They talk about return on capital employed (ROCE) these days instead of reserve replacement and production growth because there is nothing to talk about there. Shale plays are part of the ROCE story--shale wells can be drilled and brought on production fairly quickly and this masks or smoothes out the non-productive capital languishing in big projects around the world like Kashagan and Gorgon, which are going sideways while eating up billions of dollars.

None of this is meant to be negative. I'm all for shale plays but let's be honest about things, after all!  Production from shale is not a revolution; it's a retirement party.

OP: Is the shale "boom" sustainable?

Arthur Berman: The shale gas boom is not sustainable except at higher gas prices in the US. There is lots of gas--just not that much that is commercial at current prices. Analysts that say there are trillions of cubic feet of commercial gas at $4 need their cost assumptions audited. If they are not counting overhead (G&A) and many operating costs, then of course things look good. If Walmart were evaluated solely on the difference between wholesale and retail prices, they would look fantastic. But they need stores, employees, gas and electricity, advertising and distribution. So do gas producers. I don't know where these guys get their reserves either, but that needs to be audited as well.

There was a report recently that said large areas of the Barnett Shale are commercial at $4 gas prices and that the play will continue to produce lots of gas for decades. Some people get so intrigued with how much gas has been produced and could be in the future, that they don't seem to understand that this is a business. A business must be commercial to be successful over the long term, although many public companies in the US seem to challenge that concept.

Investors have tolerated a lot of cheerleading about shale gas over the years, but I don't think this is going to last. Investors are starting to ask questions, such as: Where are the earnings and the free cash flow. Shale companies are spending a lot more than they are earning, and that has not changed. They are claiming all sorts of efficiency gains on the drilling side that has distracted inquiring investors for awhile. I was looking through some investor presentations from 2007 and 2008 and the same companies were making the same efficiency claims then as they are now. The problem is that these impressive gains never show up in the balance sheets, so I guess they must not be very important after all.

The reason that the shale gas boom is not sustainable at current prices is that shale gas is not the whole story. Conventional gas accounts for almost 60% of US gas and it is declining at about 20% per year and no one is drilling more wells in these plays. The unconventional gas plays decline at more than 30% each year. Taken together, the US needs to replace 19 billion cubic feet per day each year to maintain production at flat levels. That's almost four Barnett shale plays at full production each year! So you can see how hard it will be to sustain gas production. Then there are all the efforts to use it up faster--natural gas vehicles, exports to Mexico, LNG exports, closing coal and nuclear plants--so it only gets harder.

This winter, things have begun to unravel. Comparative gas storage inventories are near their 2003 low. Sure, weather is the main factor but that's always the case. The simple truth is that supply has not been able to adequately meet winter demand this year, period. Say what you will about why but it's a fact that is inconsistent with the fairy tales we continue to hear about cheap, abundant gas forever.

I sat across the table from industry experts just a year ago or so who were adamant that natural gas prices would never get above $4 again. Prices have been above $4 for almost three months. Maybe "never" has a different meaning for those people that doesn't include when they are wrong.

OP: Do you foresee any new technology on the shelf in the next 10-20 years that would shape another boom, whether it be fossil fuels or renewables?

Arthur Berman: I get asked about new technology that could make things different all the time. I'm a technology enthusiast but I see the big breakthroughs in new industries, not old extractive businesses like oil and gas. Technology has made many things possible in my lifetime including shale and deep-water production, but it hasn't made these things cheaper.

That's my whole point about shale plays--they're expensive and need high oil and gas prices to work. We've got the high prices for oil and the oil plays are fine; we don't have high prices for the gas plays and they aren't working. There are some areas of the Marcellus that actually work at $4 gas price and that's great, but it really takes $6 gas prices before things open up even there.

OP: In Europe, where do you see the most potential for shale gas exploitation, with Ukraine engulfed in political chaos, companies withdrawing from Poland, and a flurry of shale activity in the UK?

Arthur Berman: Shale plays will eventually spread to Europe but it will take a longer time than it did in North America. The biggest reason is the lack of private mineral ownership in most of Europe so there is no incentive for local people to get on board. In fact, there are only the negative factors of industrial development for them to look forward to with no pay check. It's also a lot more expensive to drill and produce gas in Europe.

There are a few promising shale plays on the international horizon: the Bazherov in Russia, the Vaca Muerte in Argentina and the Duvernay in Canada look best to me because they are liquid-prone and in countries where acceptable fiscal terms and necessary infrastructure are feasible.  At the same time, we have learned that not all plays work even though they look good on paper, and that the potentially commercial areas are always quite small compared to the total resource.  Also, we know that these plays do not last forever and that once the drilling treadmill starts, it never ends. Because of high decline rates, new wells must constantly be drilled to maintain production.  Shale plays will last years, not decades.

Recent developments in Poland demonstrate some of the problems with international shale plays. Everyone got excited a few years ago because resource estimates were enormous.  Later, these estimates were cut but many companies moved forward and wells have been drilled. Most international companies have abandoned the project including ExxonMobil, ENI, Marathon and Talisman.  Some players exited because they don't think that the geology is right but the government has created many regulatory obstacles that have caused a lack of confidence in the fiscal environment in Poland.

The UK could really use the gas from the Bowland Shale and, while it's not a huge play, there is enough there to make a difference. I expect there will be plenty of opposition because people in the UK are very sensitive about the environment and there is just no way to hide the fact that shale development has a big footprint despite pad drilling and industry efforts to make it less invasive.

Let me say a few things about resource estimates while we are on the subject.  The public and politicians do not understand the difference between resources and reserves.  The only think that they have in common is that they both begin with "res."  Reserves are a tiny subset of resources that can be produced commercially.  Both are always wrong but resource estimates can be hugely misleading because they are guesses and have nothing to do with economics. 

Someone recently sent me a new report by the CSIS that said U.S. shale gas resource estimates are too conservative and are much larger than previously believed.  I wrote him back that I think that resource estimates for U.S. shale gas plays are irrelevant because now we have robust production data to work with.  Most of those enormous resources are in plays that we already know are not going to be economic.  Resource estimates have become part of the shale gas cheerleading squad's standard tricks to drum up enthusiasm for plays that clearly don't work except at higher gas prices.  It's really unfortunate when supposedly objective policy organizations and research groups get in on the hype in order to attract funding for their work.

OP: The ban on most US crude exports in place since the Arab oil embargo of 1973 is now being challenged by lobbyists, with media opining that this could be the biggest energy debate of the year in the US. How do you foresee this debate shaping up by the end of this year?

Arthur Berman: The debate over oil and gas exports will be silly.

I do not favor regulation of either oil or gas exports from the US. On the other hand, I think that a little discipline by the E&P companies might be in order so they don't have to beg the American people to bail them out of the over-production mess that they have created knowingly for themselves. Any business that over-produces whatever it makes has to live with lower prices. Why should oil and gas producers get a pass from the free-market laws of supply and demand?

I expect that by the time all the construction is completed to allow gas export, the domestic price will be high enough not to bother. It amazes me that the geniuses behind gas export assume that the business conditions that resulted in a price benefit overseas will remain static until they finish building export facilities, and that the competition will simply stand by when the awesome Americans bring gas to their markets. Just last week, Ken Medlock described how some schemes to send gas to Asia may find that there will be a lot of price competition in the future because a lot of gas has been discovered elsewhere in the world.

The US acts like we are some kind of natural gas superstar because of shale gas. Has anyone looked at how the US stacks up next to Russia, Iran and Qatar for natural gas reserves?

Whatever outcome results from the debate over petroleum exports, it will result in higher prices for American consumers. There are experts who argue that it won't increase prices much and that the economic benefits will outweigh higher costs. That may be but I doubt that anyone knows for sure. Everyone agrees that oil and gas will cost more if we allow exports.

OP: Is the US indeed close to hitting the "crude wall"—the point at which production could slow due to infrastructure and regulatory restraints?

Arthur Berman: No matter how much or little regulation there is, people will always argue that it is still either too much or too little. We have one of the most unfriendly administrations toward oil and gas ever and yet production has boomed. I already said that I oppose most regulation so you know where I stand. That said, once a bureaucracy is started, it seldom gets smaller or weaker. I don't see any walls out there, just uncomfortable price increases because of unnecessary regulations.

We use and need too much oil and gas to hit a wall. I see most of the focus on health care regulation for now. If there is no success at modifying the most objectionable parts of the Affordable Care Act, I don't suppose there is much hope for fewer oil and gas regulations. The petroleum business isn't exactly the darling of the people.

OP: What is the realistic future of methane hydrates, or "fire ice", particularly with regard to Japanese efforts at extraction?

Arthur Berman: Japan is desperate for energy especially since they cut back their nuclear program so maybe hydrates make some sense at least as a science project for them. Their pilot is in thousands of feet of water about 30 miles offshore so it's going to be very expensive no matter how successful it is.

OP: Globally, where should we look for the next potential "shale boom" from a geological perspective as well as a commercial viability perspective?

Arthur Berman: Not all shale is equal or appropriate for oil and gas development. Once we remove all the shale that is not at or somewhat above peak oil generation today, most of it goes away. Some shale plays that meet these and other criteria didn't work so we have a lot to learn. But shale development is both inevitable and necessary. It will take a longer time than many believe outside of North America.

OP: We've spoken about Japan's nuclear energy crossroads before, and now we see that issue climaxing, with the country's nuclear future taking center-stage in an election period. Do you still believe it is too early for Japan to pull the plug on nuclear energy entirely?

Arthur Berman: Japan and Germany have made certain decisions about nuclear energy that I find remarkable but I don't live there and, obviously, don't think like them.

More generally, environmental enthusiasts simply don't see the obstacles to short-term conversion of a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewable energy. I don't see that there is a rational basis for dialogue in this arena. I'm all in favor of renewable energy but I don't see going from a few percent of our primary energy consumption to even 20% in less than a few decades no matter how much we may want to.

OP: What have we learned over the past year about Japan's alternatives to nuclear energy?

Arthur Berman: We have learned that it takes a lot of coal to replace nuclear energy when countries like Japan and Germany made bold decisions to close nuclear capacity. We also learned that energy got very expensive in a hurry. I say that we learned. I mean that the past year confirmed what many of us anticipated.

OP: Back in the US, we have closely followed the blowback from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed new carbon emissions standards for power plants, which would make it impossible for new coal-fired plants to be built without the implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technology, or "clean-coal" tech. Is this a feasible strategy in your opinion?

Arthur Berman: I'm not an expert on clean coal technology either but I am confident that almost anything is possible if cost doesn't matter. This is as true about carbon capture from coal as it is about shale gas production. Energy is an incredibly complex topic and decisions are being made by bureaucrats and politicians with little background in energy or the energy business. I don't see any possibility of a good outcome under these circumstances.

OP: Is CCS far enough along to serve as a sound basis for a national climate change policy?

Arthur Berman: Climate-change activism is a train that has left the station. If you've missed it, too bad. If you're on board, good luck.

The good news is that the US does not have an energy policy and is equally unlikely to get a climate change policy for all of the same reasons. I fear putting climate change policy in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians more than I fear climate change (which I fear).*****

I don't know how I could in good conscious support support this guy.  He did to an extant stand up to teachers unions which is a first in the "union thug" state of NJ.  It is unbelievable how powerful they are here.

But  I don't see another single thing that he did that was helpful.   He certainly is no conservative. 

I don't believe he did not know about the GW bridge.  People who know him and his minions know the underlings wouldn't even "go to the bathroom" without his knowledge and permission.  So for him not to have known about the bridge is not believable to me.  He may have been lied to about there being a electronic paper trail (emails) and that was what he was so able to be furious about.   So he could come out and claim he was "lied to".


To me it is all the scandal is the same as Lois Lerner/IRS and her taking the 5th.  These people are caught red handed and their choice is either to be honest and rat out their superiors and thus live the life of being crucified for eternity by the thugs in the party or let the lawyers get them the minimum they can and get a payoff later on when no one is looking or can do anything about it.   What does one choose?   The smaller stick with the carrot or the big stick and suffer forever far more aggresiously (sp?).

Is this the best the Republicans can do?   Way too early, but I hope not.

***Nevada law bars casinos from allowing obviously drunk patrons to gamble and from serving them comped drinks.***

I have little sympathy for this guy yet the casino employees seemed to have no problem doing what is according to this illegal.

Or so he claims.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Let evidence lead the healthcare reform fight
HIMSS keynote speaker calls on physicians, health IT, policymakers to face challenges of access, delivery, and technology

Publish date: FEB 28, 2014
Print


By: Daniel R. Verdon
  
“There are many provisions embedded in this act that most Americans, if asked, would support,” Clinton contends. And there are just as many challenges facing the system.

“What happens when us Baby Boomers double the number of Medicare beneficiaries from 40 million to 80 million people?" Clinton asks. "How do we prepare for that dramatic increase? How could we improve coordination and communication among all healthcare providers responsible for a patients’ well-being? Will advances in technology combined with comparative effectiveness research continue providing patients and providers with more and better information about what works and what doesn’t in ways that will reduce cost and improve outcomes? How might we replace, once and for all, our fee-for-service model (with a system) that provides provider-led, community-wide care?”

The case for electronic health records

The challenges facing healthcare are also calling for its modernization through technology, Clinton says.

The need for digitizing medical records was clearly evident following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which decimated parts of New Orleans and other areas on the Gulf Coast.

Millions of pages of medical records were lost during that storm.

“I saw firsthand when I went to meet with survivors and refugees from Katrina. People were just totally bewildered. Elderly people didn’t know what medicine they were taking. They couldn’t explain what that little blue pill was they took 3 times a day. We know how important this is. When you are in the middle of a medical emergency, accessing information can literally make the difference between life and death,” Clinton says.

Squeezing healthcare costs

Technology will ultimately lower healthcare costs to Americans, Clinton says. And this country has made some progress. “Healthcare costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years, just around 4%. That has significant implications for our economy going forward.”

“There is a lot of misinformation and a lot of anxiety (about healthcare reform),” she says. “(People) are worried about what they might lose. We need to clear the smoke, and figure out what is working and what isn’t. It would be a great tragedy, in my opinion, to take away what has now been provided to the millions of people who now have Medicaid or a health insurance plan for the first time.”

Clinton was one of four keynote presenters at HIMSS 2014, which drew more than 37,000 healthcare IT professionals. Other presentations were delivered by Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna; Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

I don't care about sexual orientation but do we have to glorify sodomy?   Do we really need a history courses about the greatest butt @#$$%%% or cock@#$%^ in history?

Mandating this?

What the hell is going on?

God almighty - enough.

I guess this is what Rush was referring to when he noted ZEEK said something to the effect that the plan of Obamacare was to put insurance companies out of business.  Some providers have had integrated systems.  I know I worked for one 25 years ago.  It was called managed care.  The ACO concept is just a variation.  The providers take the "full risk" not the third party insurance company or "middle man" as ZEEK calls them.  Guidelines are just that.  They are guidelines.  If anyone thinks insurance companies are rough just wait till the providers have big stakes on restricting services. 

But I digress.  Rush is not accurate if this is what he was talking about.  This just means replacing insurance companies with ACOs and hospital systems.  Some will be run by doctor groups.  Most and the largest and the most powerful will simply be run by large business hospital or other conglomerate chains. 

****Obamacare Architect: ‘Be Prepared to Kiss Your Insurance Company Good-Bye Forever’
 
Mar. 3, 2014 7:29pm   Jason Howerton   

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of the law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

“The good news is you won’t have insurance companies to kick around much longer. The system is changing,” Emanuel writes in an op-ed on New Republic. “As a result, insurance companies as they are now will be going away. Indeed, they are already evolving. For the next few years insurance companies will both continue to provide services to employers and, increasingly, compete against each other in the health insurance exchanges.”

Due to Obamacare, “new actors will force insurance companies to evolve or become extinct,” he continues. Instead, new groups called “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) must start competing directly in the health care exchanges for exclusive contracts with employers.

In this March 11, 2009 photo, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, special advisor for health care at the Office of Management and Budget, speaks at the American Medical Association's annual conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, Ezekiel J. Emanuel values intelligence, but don't accuse him of Harvard-itis. He'll tell you an Ivy League degree doesn't prove anyone's worth. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In this March 11, 2009 photo, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, special advisor for health care at the Office of Management and Budget, speaks at the American Medical Association’s annual conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, Ezekiel J. Emanuel values intelligence, but don’t accuse him of Harvard-itis. He’ll tell you an Ivy League degree doesn’t prove anyone’s worth. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The ACOs will have “standardized, guideline-driven care plans for most major conditions and procedures to increase efficiency,” says Emanuel, the brother of Obama’s former chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“They will have figured out how to harness their electronic medical records to better identify patients who will become sick and how to intervene early as well as how to care for the well-identified chronically ill so as to reduce costs,” he notes.

The key skill these ACOs and hospital systems lack—the skill insurance companies specialize in—is the actuarial capacity to predict and manage financial risk. But over the next decade this is something they will develop—or purchase. After all, actuarial science is not rocket science, even if it involves a lot of mathematical equations. And with that skill, ACOs and hospital systems will become integrated delivery systems like Kaiser or Group Health of Puget Sound. Then they will cut out the insurance company middle man—and keep the insurance company profits for themselves. Therefore, increasingly these ACOs and hospital systems will transform themselves into integrated delivery systems, entering insurance exchanges and negotiating with employers, in direct competition with insurance companies.
 As the ACOs become more established, Emanuel claims contracts between the health systems and employers will become more common, thus “cutting out the insurance companies.”

Once the health systems “make the jump to offering coverage in the exchanges, the health insurance companies will only have a few options if they want to survive, according to Emanuel.

“First, they can refuse to change, in which case they will eventually go out of business,” he writes. “Second, they can shift their business to focus on offering services they have expertise in, particularly analytics, actuarial modeling, risk management, and other management services.”

Finally, the “third evolutionary path is that health insurance companies may transform themselves into integrated delivery systems.”

“So be prepared to kiss your insurance company good-bye forever,” Emanuel concludes.

Read the entire article here.

–
Programming note: Is this the end of health insurance as we know it? Glenn Beck and his producers debated the impact of this story in Tuesday’s morning editorial meeting. Watch it tonight at 5pm ET on TheBlaze TV.

I'm thinking he must be selling while talking up the US market when near the end of the article it is pointed out he is a net seller:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-berkshire-results-20140301,0,7548264.story

I've reported how it is easy for crooks to pick up the wireless remote entry code.  If they are nearby enough they can catch the code as you are going to your vehicle.  Then they simply can open your trunk or door.  This may be even more sophisticated.  Perhaps they now don't even have to wait for you to go to your car.  I've asked some dealerships about their codes.  If they are multiple or changing.  Most don't even have a clue and then when they call their engineers to find out the answer is the codes are single and some only have a small library of codes.  Hey legal eagles - here is a chance for a class action suite - maybe that will wake up the auto makers to security issues while they continue to pack autos with wireless crap. 

****Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious ‘Black Box’

February 27, 2014 11:09 AM
Thieves Break Into Cars Using Mysterious Black Box


By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) — A mysterious device is being used by criminals to easily break into locked cars across the country, including here in Chicago.

It has police stumped, CNN is reporting.

In Chicago, surveillance video shows a thief pointing a small box-like device at a car door.

Within seconds, the car unlocks, the alarm is disabled and the thief simply opens the passenger door and easily takes the valuables.

The device is believed to be some sort of electronic hacking mechanism that overrides the car’s computer system.

Thieves across the country have been using it.

Police have no idea what it is, or exactly how it works, CNN reports.

However, according to CNN, authorities in Texas have apparently seized one of the devices and are in the process of testing it.****

Doug, thanks.  Maybe I misread the article of have misunderstood Parker and

I have not made political persuasion a study but I always saw her as leftist:

http://www.conservativehq.com/node/14524

It doesn't matter.  If anyone thinks the Clinton mob will ever release to the public any records with incriminating evidence they need their head examined.

When finally released we will find essentially nothing and their crowd will be laughing and yawning.