Bloodthirsty Liberal

It just means more Jews have been dispossessed of their lands—big surprise:

A population of Native American Indians from the US state of Colorado has been found to have a genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews. The finding suggests the presence of common roots that date back to the days of Christopher Columbus.

According to RT news, the so-called “Ashkenazi mutation” is a deleterious modification in BRCA1 gene which increases risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Researchers from the Sheba (Tel Hashomer) Medical Center in Israel found it in the DNA of descendants of those Indians who moved from Mexico to Colorado some 200 years ago.

The same mutation was earlier tracked in Hispanic Americans whose ancestors also arrived in the United States from Mexico and South America.

I’m worried about Elizabeth Warren. Should she be tested? Her recipe for gefilte fish in Pow Wow Chow should have been a clue.

Try walking a mile in their leg braces:

Following are excerpts from a TV report on polio in Pakistan, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on March 14, 2012.

Reporter: This girl is one of the victims of polio in Pakistan. For more than a decade, vaccination teams were forbidden from entering various regions, especially tribal areas, because some believe that the vaccination serum is non-Islamic, and leads to infertility in the long run. Today, however, things have changed somewhat.

Muhammad Habib, Head of the Committee of the Ulema of North Waziristan: Some people said the vaccinations are harmful, but this is wrong. These people rely on myths rather than on logic. Every disease has a treatment. The ulema and the doctors have refuted the claims made against the vaccinations.

Reporter: The struggle to catch up with the rest of the world in fighting polio is ongoing. 60% of all cases of polio recorded in the world last year were in Pakistan. 198 cases were recorded in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Vaccination centers have been set up in city hospitals and clinics, and vaccination teams were dispatched to rural areas. This is no easy task, considering Pakistan’s vastness, and the prevalence of poverty and ignorance.

Wasim Khawaja, specialist in preventive medicine: There should be organized campaigns for raising health awareness. Health awareness is essential so that people are not deceived. Unfortunately, some health teams are unable to reach remote areas, due to terrorism and due to people’s objections.

Reporter : Polio has become a thing of the past in most countries of the world, but it is still widespread in Pakistan. The Pakistani government is striving to eliminate it, despite the obstacles and the lack of means.

The scandal of the US using vaccination to obtain DNA from Bin Laden’s children to confirm his presence in the house where he was assassinated last May dealt a blow to the efforts to eradicate tuberculosis. In addition, it reinforced the position of those who claim that political goals and anti-Pakistani conspiracies are behind the vaccination campaigns.

That last part can’t be right. We couldn’t have used DNA to determine his presence; we might have used it to confirm his death.

Anyway, long-time readers will remember my… frustration a few years ago when a Muslim tribal leader in Nigeria forbade polio vaccines along similar “non-Islamic” grounds. International health authorities eventually persuaded him to allow the vaccinations, but not before the disease had established a toe-hold that spread across Africa and Muslim countries. And bin Laden was alive and in the pink (figuratively speaking) when that episode occurred, so don’t even start with the American complicity angle. Their paranoia, their problem.

It would be one thing if only Muslim tribal elders were susceptible to polio, but alas that’s not the case. For all we know, they got their vaccines when they were Muslim tribal youngers.

To our America readers: want to feel proud?

Medical device manufacturing is one of the nation’s most dynamic and vibrant industries. The United States is the global leader in medical technology innovation, and it is one of the few major industries with a net trade surplus. This industry is responsible for more than 400,000 American jobs—and is indirectly responsible for almost two million more that supply and support this highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care. They include everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

As the old joke goes: coffee break’s over; everyone back on their heads.

Yet instead of protecting this paragon of American ingenuity and innovation, the Obama administration and Congress have viewed the industry as a cash cow from which they could milk profits to help pay for the president’s health law. So they added to the Affordable Care Act a 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that will take effect at the beginning of 2013.

This tax is especially pernicious because it is assessed on sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’ve manufactured medical devices and had sales of $1 million, after all your costs and expenses—everything from materials and labor to research and development—your profit was $100,000. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost 25% of your profits.

Many medical device companies have to ramp up sales before they become profitable. Due to the long, draconian and sometimes unpredictable regulatory process that must be negotiated before a product can be sold, it can take from $70 million to $100 million in total sales before these businesses make their first cent of profits. Nevertheless, they would have to pay the excise tax on their revenue.

The nation’s medical device industry is vulnerable. It is not comprised of behemoths: 80% of its companies have 50 or fewer employees, the very businesses we are relying on to turn the U.S. economy around. The new excise tax comes when regulatory delays and uncertainty are increasing, and as many device firms are shutting down or moving abroad to take advantage of the more favorable tax and regulatory climate in Europe. The tax will force companies to lay off employees, cut back on research and development, or diminish capital investment.

Another symbolic news story (see below): government can encourage private industry (often best by leaving it the hell alone), or it can prey on it. I’ll give you one guess.

I’m reminded of an episode of The Sopranos.

At the brokerage, Christopher is apologizing for the Monkey Boys’ behavior. Then he calls them into the office for a stern dressing-down…. They explain the concept of “pump-and-dump,” and how they’re pawning all the stock off on old ladies. It’s up to eighty, though, and they want to sell. Christopher teaches a little Racketeering 101, laying down the primary rule: “When you’re bleeding a guy, you don’t bleed him dry right away. You wait, so you can bleed him next week, and the week after.”… Christopher goes on to tell them, “If any more Porsches disappear, make it two towns over, and I want a taste.”

And we all know what happens when Christopher doesn’t get his “taste”.

Your government at work.

Check out this brief ad:

There’s a slightly longer version running on radio (which is where I heard it). Here’s what I want to know: isn’t this dolt costing us money? As much money as a lazy couch-potato working on a case of type-2 diabetes?

Why do we demonize addicts of Sprite and Doritos, but not manic exercisers whose accumulated injuries drive up the cost of health care? I exercise, I like it, it’s a tonic. But when something I’m doing leads to injury, I stop doing it, or lessen the intensity. This guy seems to think his maladies are noble. I say he’s a walking, jogging cost center.

Scientists want to know the secret of his health and longevity

Is President Shimon Peres the eighth wonder of the world?

Does he have a special gene that enables him to work at a pace that would tire out men half his age?

That is the question that the Galilee Genetics Analysis Laboratories is looking to answer.

When Peres visited GGA, in Katzrin, in the course of a tour of the Golan Heights on Monday, he was pleasantly surprised when his hosts suggested they conduct a DNA test on him to learn if there really is such thing as a ‘Shimon Peres gene’ and to study its properties.
…
Even his political opponents marvel at the president’s mental and physical stamina as he traipses around the world and across the country, delivering speeches and off-the-cuff remarks, holding media conferences, keeping up with Facebook and Google, delving into brain research, keeping up with local and world news – all this and more a few months shy of his 88th birthday.

And it turns out that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically inclined to longevity.

They’re trying to figure out how it works and if it can somehow be used to help other groups.

- Aggie

We told you months ago about the UN’s successful introduction of the cholera bug into Haiti (they suck at peace, but they’re ragin’ with contagion).

What I didn’t know was this:

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera — a super bug — into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.

The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 — two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.

“What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible,” said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. “These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease.”

More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in BOSTON, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases.

Wash your hands, Aggie. A lot. The UN has been after Israel for years. Now, it’s our turn.

Hey, Mchlle…yum-mm-mmph…wnna fry?

Congress is fighting to keep pizza and french fries on school lunch lines, picking apart an Obama administration proposal to make school lunches healthier.

A spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards proposed by the Agriculture Department earlier this year, forcing USDA to pull back an attempt to limit potatoes on the lunch line, delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains.

The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department’s proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that.

The changes had been requested by food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers. Some conservatives in Congress have called the push for healthier foods an overreach, saying the government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.

In a bill summary released Monday, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would “prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and … provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals.”

Reagan always told us ketchup was a vegetable.

Look, I don’t want my kids loading up only on pizza and fries, but I’d rather they ooze fry fat and pepperoni grease from their clogged pores than see the government stick its nose in.

And why is the government feeding them anyway—and looking to add school dinners? The parents are too poor? We already give them food stamps, so why not throw in a few more for Wonder Bread, Oscar Mayer, and French’s mustard? I made lunches for my kids every morning for over a decade. I didn’t see Michelle Obama in a housecoat and slippers next to me, spreading the peanut butter and polishing an apple.

It doesn’t take a village to raise a child. It takes a parent who gives a damn. Get the government out of the kitchen.

Just because they’re defecating down on Wall Street doesn’t mean Gazans want their own poop washing up at their front door:

Gaza City municipal teams worked for 24 hours to stem the flow of a sewage flooding homes in the city’s eastern sector, Palestinian Authority (PA) based Ma’an News reported.

Faulty sewage lines burst and poured into homes on Friday. Perhaps symbolically, the deluge took place as the city prepared to welcome a flood of murderous terrorists being released by Israel.

Ma’an quoted a (presumably official) press release that laid the blame at Israel’s door, but did not say who had issued it.

I call BS (pardon the pun). The Arabs of the Gaza Strip have proved themselves expert tunnelers. If they can get rocket launchers and mortars in, they can get their [bleep] out.

And if all this sounds familiar:

In early 2007, between six and nine people were reported dead in Gaza in sewage flooding. Israel offered assistance in the rescue efforts. A few weeks earlier, Israel charged that terrorists were digging up sewage pipes and turning them into rockets to fire into Israel.

Wanna get away?

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is good news?

Obese people now outnumber the hungry globally, but hardship for the undernourished is increasing amid a growing food crisis, the International Federation of the Red Cross warned Thursday.

The Geneva-based humanitarian group focused on nutrition in its annual World Disasters Report, released in New Delhi, seeking to highlight the disparity between rich and poor, as well problems caused by a recent spike in prices.

In statistics used to underline the unequal access to food, the IFRC stressed there were 1.5 billion people suffering obesity worldwide last year, while 925 million were undernourished.

“If the free interplay of market forces has produced an outcome where 15 percent of humanity are hungry while 20 percent are overweight, something has gone wrong somewhere,” secretary general Bekele Geleta said in a statement.

I think I see the problem: what free interplay of market forces?

Show me 925 million undernourished, and I’ll show you the citizens of basket case, corrupt, and very likely Marxist countries. Guar-an-teed. Show me 1.5 billion Fat Alberts, and I’ll show you the beneficiaries of either enlightened capitalism—or a hell of a lot of oil.

But doesn’t this story put the lie to all those nervous nellies who say we’re running out of food? If 20% are too tubby and 15% are too thin (I thought there was no such thing), then it sounds to me like we have a 5% surplus. Just invite the 925 million undernourished over for leftovers (I saw some nice pomegranate salads on one of the Israeli news sites), and send them home with 925 million Tupperware containers of yummies.

Come on, people, don’t make this so hard.

PS: I was discussing American obesity with someone the other day, who thought it was a disgrace. I said big deal: we eat too much because we can. Seriously, what would be the evolutionary advantage of a small appetite—when you don’t know when your next bite of mastodon is coming from? So, until we breed ourselves into a species of Keira Knightleys and Adrien Brodys, don’t stand between us and a plate of Mrs. Fields’ cookies if you know what’s good for you.

PPS: When the other person complained that their obesity cost us money (through increased health costs), I countered with the undeniable fact that other people’s stupidity (loosely defined) costs society dearly every minute of every day. Our whole country is suffering under the imbecility of those 4% of the people who voted for imbecile we have in the White House over the imbecile we could have had.

The gray hair, the forgetfulness—early onset Alzheimer’s is no joke:

Actually…he’ll be turning 50 in three weeks. His birthday is August 4, two days after the debt ceiling deadline. Senior moment?

And that’s only days after getting Malia’s age wrong.

Seriously, it starts to make sense. That nonsense about 80% of people wanting higher taxes? Just a senior moment. Fifty-seven states and breathalyzers. What if his entire administrative agenda is a projection of his dementia, aided and abetted by the likes of Tim Geithner and Eric Holder?

I read The Reagan Diaries, paying careful attention to the later years. I detected no vagueness, no tapering off of his faculties. But if this guy is supposed to be so brilliant, while coming across so consistently as a dolt, what is the explanation? And will his wife stand by him as steadfastly as Reagan’s did?

Who knows, and I have my doubts, respectively.