Did You Know....

[Warph]

....that according to a new Rasmussen poll of likely voters, 56 percent of those surveyed favor legalizing marijuana and regulating it like alcohol. That might turn into something of a problem for the current president of the United States, who according to a new biography was a serious stoner in his high school days.

The Choom Gang



Indeed, if the biography, Barack Obama: The Story by Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post writer David Maraniss, is accurate, calling Obama a serious stoner is an understatement. Smoking pot seems to have been at the center of his high school social life.

Obama's circle of high school buddies dubbed themselves The Choom Gang, "Choom" being a Hawaiian slang term for smoking marijuana.  One Choom Gang member had a Volkswagen microbus that they called the Choom Wagon, which functioned as a purple haze-filled clubhouse. At Obama's instigation, the gang would smoke in the van with the windows rolled up so they wouldn't waste any pot. And when the joint was finished "they tilted their heads back and sucked the last bit of smoke from the ceiling."  According to Maraniss, Obama insisted that the Choom chums practice "TA," or "total absorption," meaning that they didn't exhale their tokes prematurely. If they did they were penalized by missing a turn the next time the joint came around.

In the section of Obama's high school yearbook where students could thank those who helped them along the way, Obama thanked "Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray [the older guy who hung around with the gang and sold them pot] for all the good times."

In other words, the Choom Gang was Obama's own little 4/20 club.

Now then. The fact that Obama smoked pot is not new information. He acknowledged it in his 1995 book Dreams of My Father, in which he wrote that he had smoked "weed" and done "maybe a little blow."

So why should anyone care now? Well for openers, since Obama took office 40 months ago, approximately 2 million Americans have been arrested, and in many cases jailed, on his watch for doing the same thing Obama did — buying, possessing and using marijuana.

Americans busted for pot tend to be disproportionately young and disproportionately black — like Obama voters in the 2008 election.

I've never seen a poll of the political preferences of pot-smoking voters in 2008, but I'd be willing to bet you, uh, $420, that Obama won that demographic in a landslide. But whenever voters raise the subject of marijuana legalization with Obama, the First Choomster consistently spits in their faces, refusing even to entertain questions on marijuana reform, let alone show any interest or sympathy for the cause.

Which is contemptible. Just how contemptible was neatly summarized by radio talk show host Penn Jillette in an on-air rant a couple weeks ago that's worth quoting at length:

"... Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana — under the laws that he condones — would his life have been better? If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he used, and 'maybe a little blow' ... if he had been busted under his laws, he would have done hard time. And if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his 'weed' and 'a little blow,' he would not be president of the United States of America. He would not have gone to his fancy-ass college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job. He would have been in freaking prison, and it's not a damn joke. People who smoke marijuana must be set free. It is insane to lock people up."

The reason politicians like Obama have been able to skate on the marijuana issue is that pot smokers have rarely judged candidates on the basis of their stands on marijuana legalization. However, that may be changing. Most recently, a candidate for Oregon attorney general got blown out when he promised to gut the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law if elected. Two years ago, another anti-marijuana showboat lost a race for California attorney general.

Obama isn't going to lose very many votes to Mitt Romney over pot. But Romney isn't the only candidate running against Obama. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who has advocated marijuana legalization for years, has secured the Libertarian Party nomination for president, and will appear on the ballot in all 50 states.

A recent poll showed Johnson getting 7 percent of the vote.

If the election turns out to be as close as many observers think it's going to be, the shift of a few percentage points of the vote from Obama to Johnson in one or two battleground states might be enough to decide the outcome — much like Ralph Nader winning more than 70,000 votes in Florida in 2000, most of which would have otherwise gone to Gore, put Bush in the White House.

Obama's brazen hypocrisy on marijuana, together with his consistently cavalier treatment of those favoring legalization, is the sort of thing that could move the needle enough to cost him the election.

[Warph]

                    "The Amateur"

         

...that Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an "amateur" — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims,

"The country needs you!" the former president told Hillary Clinton, urging her to run this year, according to accounts of the conversation included in Edward Klein's new biography of Obama.

The title of Klein's explosive, unauthorized bio of Obama, "The Amateur" (Regnery Publishing), was taken directly from Bill Clinton's bombshell criticism of the president, the author said.

"Barack Obama," Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, "is an amateur."

         

The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama's re-election.

But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president's home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.

"The economy's a mess, it's dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does," Bill said.

Bill Clinton insisted he had "no relationship" with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.

Obama, Bill Clinton said, "doesn't know how to be president" and is "incompetent."

         

But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.

"Why risk everything now?" a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.

"Because," Bill replied, his voice rising, "the country needs you!"

"The country needs us!" added Bill.

          Unwashed Hippies:
         

He later even joked about the prospect of having two Clinton presidential libraries — about the only time that Hillary cracked a smile.

         

"I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote," Hillary argued.

She said she had the option of running again in 2016.

         

But Bill wouldn't let go.

"I know you're young enough!" Bill said, his voice booming. "That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that I'm not young enough."

"I'm the highest-ranking member in Obama's Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?" she responded.

"Loyalty is a joke,'' Bill shot back. "Loyalty doesn't exist in politics."

Bill's verbal battle with Hillary over the presidency, if anything, intensified when daughter Chelsea showed up with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

"You deserve to be president," Chelsea said.

Bill was clearly pleased that Chelsea was on his side and vowed to have allies commission polls on a Hillary-Obama matchup.

"What are you trying to do — force my hand?" Hillary said.



"I want everyone to know how strong you poll," Bill said.

Hillary said, "Go ahead and knock yourself out."



Phillipe Reines, a spokesman for the secretary of state, noted that Hillary Clinton challenged the veracity of an earlier book Klein wrote about her, "Truth About Hillary."

White House spokesman Eric Schultz accused Klein of making up facts to sell books.

"Nobody in their right mind would believe the nonsense in this one, especially since both Secretary Clinton and President Clinton have been loyal and supportive of the president at every turn." (What a crock of shit, Schultz!)





Klein, a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek, defended the book and his earlier one as factually sound.

Meanwhile, today's daily presidential Rasmussen Poll shows Mitt Romney ahead of the president with 50 percent to Obama's 43 percent. It is the highest level of support the presumptive Republican nominee has received in his matchup with Obama as well as his largest lead.

[Warph]

...that this article may be long, but it is worth it because if we won't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  Praise God for those who are willing to teach us from their experiences.  This is a story by Kitty Werthmann, a woman from Austria who believes America is truly the greatest country in the world, and does not want us to lose our freedoms the way other people lost theirs.

           

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World.
Don't Let Freedom Slip Away

             

By: Kitty Werthmann
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=57737

What I am about to tell you is something you've probably never heard or will ever read in history books.

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I've never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates. Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn't want to work; there simply weren't any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna , Linz , and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn't have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group — Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

                         

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn't support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education - Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized.. I attended a very good public school.. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler's picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn't pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it.. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn't do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun - no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn't exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn't work, you didn't get a ration card, and if you didn't have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn't have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.

Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children.. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn't meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

"Mercy Killing" Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps - Gun Laws:

                 
Next came gun registration.. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn't come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria . Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism.

Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria . Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn't destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses. Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn't, paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is my eye witness account."


"It's true..those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity. America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don't Let Freedom Slip Away, After America , There is No Place to Go."

[Warph]

                                       



...that if you consider it rude to reduce human suffering to cold statistics, you don't have to. Turn away now.

On the other hand, if you believe that numbers matter, then you'll probably want to know the correct numbers. On these pages, I have collected a variety of body counts for all the major atrocities of the 20th Century and set them out for you to examine. I have tried to keep commentary to a minimum, although I would have to be a robot to avoid passing occasional judgement on the accuracy of some of these estimates.

To be honest, though, I'm sometimes embarrassed by where I have been forced to find my statistics, but beggars can't be choosers. Very few historians have the cold, calculating, body-count mentality that I do. They prefer describing the quality of suffering rather than the quantity of it. Often, the only place to find numbers is in a newspaper article, almanac, chronicle or encyclopedia which needs to summarize major events into a few short sentences or into one scary number, and occasionally I get the feeling that some writers use numbers as pure rhetorical flourishes. To them, "over a million" does not mean ">106"; it's just synonymous with "a lot."
... Matthew White, author


This chart contains best estimate for national death tolls during the Second World War.  (Click the links for sources and details.)

National Death Tolls for the Second World War Chart:  http://necrometrics.com/ww2stats.htm


Other links:
http://www.bookofhorriblethings.com/ax01.html
http://www.bookofhorriblethings.com/ax02.html
http://necrometrics.com/index.htm

[Warph]

   


....that it figures.  Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, have been so successful at reducing the cost of health care, the ObumaCare people are out to get them.  The HSA concept: Rather than buy a health insurance policy that has a low or no deductible, you purchase one that has a high deductible.  Since the insurance company doesn't have to pay anything until you exceed your high deductible, it's happy to give you a much lower premium. You save on the premium.... and by shopping around, since most of your initial health care costs are on your own dime.

Rather than use a name-brand medication, you choose the much cheaper generic.  You ask doctors and other providers what particular services and treatments cost.  Of course, they hardly ever know.

When I blew out my Achilles tendon playing pickleball five years ago, I asked the doctor what the surgery to reattach it would cost.  I asked the nurse what the crutches she gave me cost.  I asked what the MRI to get a good look at my leg cost.  Each person I asked looked puzzled and said the same thing: "I don't know.  Nobody ever asked that before."

That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with our health insurance and health care systems: Consumers are completely divorced from costs. Massive inflation has been the result.

To help put consumers back in control, HSAs became law in 2003.  They offer all kinds of flexibility to individuals and families.  Say your employer is paying $10,000 a year for your family's "Cadillac" health insurance that covers almost everything.  Well, why not give that $10,000 credit directly to you, so you can buy a policy with a $5,000 deductible that costs, say, $5,000 a year?  You take the $5,000 you save on your premium and invest it in an HSA tax-free.

If you have medical needs, you can use your HSA money to pay for them until your deductible is met and your insurer takes over.  And by shopping around, you help drive down the cost of health care for everyone.  If you are lucky and stay healthy, you can grow a tidy little HSA nest egg.  When you turn 65, you can use that money for anything you want.

But ObumaCare, says Forbes, is going to make HSAs more costly.  This is because HSAs are driven by consumers, whereas ObumaCare is driven by command-and-control bureaucrats.  See, the ObumaCare people have published guidelines that require all health insurance plans to have an actuarial value of 60 percent... which means at least 60 percent of any care is paid for by the insurer and no more than 40 percent is paid for directly by the insured.

HSAs don't meet the 60-percent threshold.  This is because ObumaCare counts only the $5,000 paid for your family's insurance policy, not the $5,000 your family sinks into its HSA.   Under ObumaCare's confused bureaucratic standards, that means 50 percent of care your family receives is paid for by your insurer, 50 percent by you.  The only way for your HSA to meet the 60-percent threshold, then, is for you to purchase a more expensive policy, significantly limit the amount you put into your HSA or abandon it altogether.

Which is precisely what the ObumaCare folks want.  Bastards!

Your ability to choose goes down, your costs go up... as happens every time government's powers expand and individual freedoms are taken away.

[Warph]

Media is Mad Because Mitt Told the Truth?
By Wayne Allyn Root
7/31/2012

   

....that Americans constantly complain because politicians lie? Barack Obama lies so much, his nose should be longer than Pinnochio. He says "the private sector is doing fine." He says to business owners, "You didn't build that." He tells the middle class that "none of the tax increases are aimed at you." And he tells rich people who pay almost all of the taxes, "You're not paying your fair share." It's all lies and distortions.

Yet Mitt Romney tells the truth and he gets panned by the national media? All he said a few days ago is that Israel is a remarkable country...the Israeli people are remarkable people...and then compared the GDP of the average Israeli (about $32,000) to the average Palestinian (about $2000). Now this may be politically incorrect, but it's certainly the truth. Forget the Palestinians. Israel is remarkable compared to any country, and the Jewish people are remarkable compared to any other tribe. Is Mitt wrong? Let's look at the facts.

First, a disclosure. I am a member of the Jewish tribe. My grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Germany. I'm bursting with pride at the remarkable success of my tribe. And with America in decline...and the U.S. economy in shambles...the Jewish people are a role model we should be studying and emulating.

Jews are the most successful group to ever step foot on U.S. soil. They make up outsized proportions of every important and respected group in this country- attorneys, doctors, accountants, architects, bankers, stockbrokers, CEO's, small business owners, the media, and of course the movers and shakers in the glamorous entertainment world.

But, don't take my word for it. Ask one of the most liberal and intellectual colleges in America- Columbia University, a bastion of socialism and Marxism. I attended Columbia with many of the most famous symbols of liberalism in America today- including my classmate President Obama. Yet it was at Columbia that I took the course, "Ethnicity in America." Here I learned the most successful group in U.S. history is...drumroll please...the Jewish people.

But the biggest miracle of all is the success of the state of Israel. Mitt Romney is simply the first politician to ever state the truth out loud.

Israel is one of the smallest nations on earth. Yet it has the highest venture capital investment (per capita) in the world. 30-times higher than the entire Europe.

In pure dollars, Israel places third in the world for venture capital- behind only the USA and China.

Israel has more high-tech startups (per capita) than any nation in the world.

Israel has more bio-tech startups (per capita) than any nation in the world.

Israel leads the world (per capita) in business startups. In pure numbers, Israel has the most business startups of any country in the world, other than the United States.

Israel is second in the world in the number of companies listed on NASDAQ. More than Europe, India, China and Japan combined.

Israel has the 3rd highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world.

Israel leads the world in patents for medical equipment.

Israel's citizens have the highest ratio of computers in the world.

Israel's citizens have the highest ratio of university degrees in the world.

Israel has the highest number of Nobel Prizes (per capita) in the world.

With only 7 million citizens, the Israeli economy is bigger than all her Arab neighbors combined.

Israel is the Hong Kong of the Middle East with a booming economy, even in the middle of a global economic collapse.

Mitt was right. So how can this remarkable success of the Jewish people, one of the tiniest tribes to ever walk the face of the earth, be explained?

Many experts attribute it to a stress on education. Certainly that is partially true. I am a S.O.B. (son of a butcher) who attended Columbia University. My daughter currently attends Harvard, and only days ago was accepted at Oxford. But it's much more than that.

Other experts cite the closeness of Jewish families. Also true. I've been married for 21 years, with 4 children ranging in age from 20 to 4. This is an all-time Las Vegas record.

But the main reason for the out-sized success of the Jewish tribe is our belief in the power of the individual and our willingness to take financial risk. When your entire history is being persecuted, enslaved, tortured, and murdered by governments and tyrants, you learn pretty quickly to do things on your own, to never depend on others to help you.

Jews invented "If it's to be, it's up to me." We became our own bosses, our own doctors, our own bankers. We learned to never trust or depend on government. We learned to never ask for a job- we created our own. We learned to believe in ourselves, and not worry about acceptance or permission from others.

With that kind of a history of persecution, you become pretty darn comfortable with risk. Taking financial risks seems insignificant compared to risking your life to escape corrupt governments, murderous tyrants, and violent mobs. Compared to my grandparents emigrating from Russia and Germany to a strange land called America, without a penny in their pockets, my making an investment in a business startup pales by comparison.

That's the secret to the amazing success of Israel and Jews around the world. Instead of being politically incorrect and denying the truth, others should be emulating the successful habits and traits of the Jewish people.

Stress education, stay loyal to your family, be your own boss, build your own business, and take risks with your money. And never depend on government for anything. Follow this model, and you too can build a fantastic life.

Mitt Romney told the truth. Instead of getting mad at a politician for being politically incorrect and telling the truth, we should be celebrating him.

[Diane Amberg]

Not that American Jews had much choice. They took care of themselves and opened their own businesses and borrowed money from other family members because they wouldn't be hired by any of the big industries up and down the east coast, or there was a "quota." Even banks wouldn't loan to them or demanded a much higher interest rate.They couldn't join the local country clubs or many of the professional clubs or societies.Thank goodness that is almost gone now.The "Bringing Over Societies" would sponsor individuals or families so when they immigrated here, a place to live and a job was already arranged. not always of course but it was generally true.

[Warph]

                                            

                                                  Abuses of Diplomatic Immunity


....that Diplomatic Immunity may be intended to keep diplomats from running afoul of local authorities while serving abroad, but some workers take it as a license to act like jerks. While the Vienna Conventions on International Relations of 1961 outline a series of safeguards that protect diplomats from being unfairly punished should tempers flare between their country and their host nations, more than a few diplomats have taken advantage of their privileges in an irritating way. Here are just a few annoying little liberties diplomats have taken.



1. Park Wherever You Want




The most common manifestation of this inconsiderate behavior involves diplomats' parking. Just ask New Yorkers; diplomats at the United Nations apparently view Manhattan as their private parking lot. Back in 1996, diplomats racked up 143,508 parking summons, which would have cost them $15.8 million if not for diplomatic immunity. Russia alone was responsible for 32,000 of those fines.


2. Or Clear a Spot for Yourself

A few hundred thousand unpaid tickets look like downright responsible behavior when compared to former Afghan diplomat Shah Mohammad Dost's antics behind the wheel. In 1987, Dost was accused of intentionally running a woman over in order to get a parking spot during a trip to an air conditioner store in Queens. According to the victim, her boyfriend was backing into the spot when Dost rolled up and demanded they cede the space to him because he was an Afghan diplomat. When they refused, Dost threw his Lincoln into gear and ran the woman over, sending her to the hospital.


3. Become a Doggie Diplomat

Here's a case where diplomatic immunity didn't work out quite as well as a diplomat had hoped. In 1975, a U.N. delegate from Barbados claimed that diplomatic immunity extended to his pooch, who had bitten several people. The delegate warned police officers of "possible international consequences" if they tried to contain the aggressive German shepherd. Nice try, but Fido's not exactly negotiating trade treaties.

A Mexican diplomat got the same rude awakening in 1984. Military attaché Enrique Flores was keeping a pack of 10 basset hounds at his Virginia home in violation of local zoning laws. Even though the laws stated Flores could only have four hounds at once, he appealed to the State Department for diplomatic immunity. The State Department turned him down. Guess they're cat people


4. Lose Your Immunity in the Divorce

In 1989, Mozambique's representative to the United Nations wanted to divorce his American wife, so he waived his diplomatic immunity in order to take the matter to court. Unfortunately for the diplomat, Antonio Fernandez, he didn't fare well in the case; he ended up losing the couple's $5 million estate in the decision. Whoops.

Fernandez didn't suffer from any shortage of gall, though. After losing the decision he attempted to invoke his diplomatic immunity privileges to keep from paying his ex-wife. Fernandez took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but in the end his former love got the couple's Greenwich, Connecticut, estate.


5. Light Up on a Plane

Just two weeks ago, a Qatari diplomat ran into trouble on a Washington-to-Denver flight when he decided to have a smoke in the plane's lavatory. To make things worse, Mohammed Al-Madadi also made a joke that some passengers and flight personnel perceived to be a terrorist threat. Air marshals sounded various alarms, and in the end two F-16 fighter jets escorted the flight to its final destination. While diplomatic immunity kept Al-Madadi from being charged with any crimes, the Qatari government sent him home to help smooth things over.


6. Stop Cutting Your Lawn

In 2008, the residents of New Rochelle, New York, found themselves with a common problem: one house in the community had become a real eyesore. It had sat vacant for years as weeds had overgrown the yard, the paint had gone bad, and the property found itself in an ugly state of decay. New Rochelle had a problem, though: the dilapidated house had a sort of diplomatic immunity that enabled it to be that run-down. Somalia owned the house, which it occasionally used to house United Nations diplomats. Since the vacant house was exempt from taxes, the town couldn't use liens or other penalties to force the Somalians to do a little landscaping. The lesson here: if you want to stop mowing your lawn, join the Foreign Service.


7. Stop Paying Your Rent

A word of advice to landlords out there: if diplomats want to rent one of your properties, you might want to get a hefty security deposit. Just ask some of Manhattan's biggest landlords. A 1996 New York Times story illustrated the difficulty of renting to diplomats; landlords really don't have any legal mechanism through which they can collect delinquent rent or evict diplomatic tenants. At the time the article was written, one West African country was over $20,000 behind in its rent checks for a pair of luxury apartments in midtown Manhattan.

If you or I pulled a stunt like that, we'd be out on the streets. Fortunately for diplomats, though, they also enjoy a special kind of immunity known as "inviolability," which states that the private residences of diplomats can't be entered by the host country's agents without the visiting country's consent. In short, the only way you can evict foreign diplomats is if their own country gives you the thumbs-up first.


8. Slaughter a Sheep

Nobody ever said all diplomats were gentlemen. In 1984, six Iranian diplomats caused a stink in London by taking a sheep from a house and cutting its throat in the street. The ritual public slaughter of an animal is generally frowned upon, but since the men had diplomatic immunity the British authorities were powerless to charge them with violating animal cruelty laws.

[Warph]

               


                    Constitutional Amendments That Just Missed the Cut



...that since 1789, Congress has approved 33 constitutional amendments. Twenty-seven of those amendments were eventually ratified and became part of the Constitution. Six failed after being sent to the states. Here's the scoop on those six that didn't make the grade.


1. House Size



"Article the First" may sound a bit Yoda-esque, but it was actually the first provision in the original proposal for the Bill of Rights. The amendment, which the first Congress approved in September 1789, basically provided a way to regulate the expansion of the House of Representatives as the country grew. Among other provisions, the amendment stated that after the House grew beyond 200 members, there would be no more than one Representative for every 50,000 citizens.

Eleven states ratified the amendment between 1789 and 1792, but it never got the three-quarters majority of state support needed for ratification. Although the amendment is still technically eligible for ratification, it seems unnecessary now. Given the current U.S. population, if we went with the maximum ratio of one Representative for every 50,000 people, the House would balloon to over 5,000 Congressmen, which would make finding airtime for campaign commercials nearly impossible.


2. Gifts From Abroad

The Titles of Nobility amendment got the thumbs-up from the 11th Congress in 1810 but failed to gain the requisite traction with the states. The amendment was pretty straightforward; it stated that any U.S. citizen who accepted a title of nobility or honor from a foreign power would cease to be an American citizen and would no longer be eligible to hold an American office. Accepting a gift from a foreign power without Congress' permission would also cost the recipient his citizenship.

Congress overwhelmingly approved this amendment, which seemed aimed at divorcing the U.S. from the allure of the European aristocracy, and twelve states ratified the amendment. However, five states weren't so keen on it, so the amendment never became part of the Constitution. Because there was no clause in the amendment that set a deadline for ratification, it's still technically fair game to add to the Constitution if three-quarters of the states ratify it.


3. "Persons Held to Labor or Service"

The Corwin Amendment made it through Congress in 1861, so you can probably guess what hot-button issue it tackled. The amendment, which was proposed by Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin, read, "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

While the language never mentions slavery directly, it's pretty clear who the "persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State" are. When Congress approved the amendment in March 1861, it was basically the legislature's last-gasp attempt at avoiding the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln even contacted states' governors in an attempt to get their support for the amendment.

Obviously, it didn't work. The Civil War broke out just a month after Congress approved the amendment, and in the end only three states ratified the measure. Like the Title of Nobility amendment, though, it's technically still fair game for ratification.


4. Child Labor

The Child Labor Amendment got Congressional approval in 1924. Proposed by Ohio Representative Israel Moore Foster, the amendment sought to curb some of the era's horrifying child labor practices by giving Congress the exclusive power to "limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age."

As the time, there seemed to be a real need for better child labor regulation. The workforce of 10-to-16-year-olds had ballooned to over two million kids, and many of them weren't doing light work like mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. Twenty-eight states ratified the amendment during the 1920s and 1930s, but it never got the necessary three-quarters vote.

You might have noticed, though, that your 12-year-old didn't traipse off to a shift at the steel mill this morning. Thank FDR. In 1938 he signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which nixed labor by children under 16 or hazardous work by those under 18. In 1941 the Supreme Court upheld these provisions, which effectively meant that the Child Labor Amendment wasn't necessary anymore. Like the others, it's still technically pending ratification, though.


5. Equality Now



The Equal Rights Amendment is another pretty straightforward measure. Its key section read, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." The idea for a similar amendment had been kicking around for decades, but it didn't gain real traction until the early 1970s, when NOW ramped up its picketing efforts and the national Women's Strike for Equality in August 1970 drew greater attention to the need for women's rights.

The debate around the amendment was particularly thorny. Some critics worried that the amendment would make women eligible for the draft and to serve in combat duty, while many working class women's groups were concerned that the amendment would nullify any of the protective labor laws that had been helping women in industrial fields.

Congress approved the amendment in 1972, but unlike the previous failed amendments, this one had a time limit for its ratification. The original deadline for ratification was in 1979, and even after Congress pushed back the cutoff date to June 1982, only 35 of the required 38 states ratified the amendment. The amendment isn't totally dead, though; a Congressman has reintroduced it every year since the original 1982 deadline, most recently New York Representative Carolyn B. Maloney last July.


6. D.C. Statehood



The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment would have made all those D.C. "Taxation without Representation" license plates a thing of the past. In 1978 the 96th Congress approved an amendment that would have repealed the 23rd Amendment – which gives D.C. its Electoral College votes – and instead given the citizens of the District full congressional representation and the same ability to vote in national elections.

To an impartial observer, giving D.C.'s 600,000 citizens congressional representation may sound like a fair idea. The states weren't so crazy about the notion, though. Some argued that a single city shouldn't be given two seats in the Senate, while others claimed that giving D.C. representation was tantamount to presenting the Democratic Party with a gift of two free Senate seats. Proponents counter that the District's population is actually larger than Wyoming's, and nobody's trying to swipe the Cowboy State's senators.

When the amendment expired in 1985, only 16 states had ratified it, leaving it well short of the 38 ratifications it needed. Congress frequently hears suggestions for new D.C. voting amendments, though, including ones that would give the District a seat in the House while withholding Senate representation.

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If you're a huge fan of one of these amendments that floundered, don't despair; these things can take some time. The 27th Amendment, which states that changes to congressional pay can't take effect until the next term starts, got congressional approval in 1789 along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. It was over 202 years later when the states finally ratified it in 1992.

[Warph]

                     


....that England's King James I gave us Jamestown and the King James Bible. But historians have long suspected he also gave his descendant King George III an inherited case of madness.

Best known from the 1994 movie, The Madness of King George, the bouts of insanity afflicting George III, the bad guy in the American Revolution, have long been blamed on his predecessor, James. James was a bit odd, and porphyria, an inherited affliction of the nervous system and skin linked to unusual behavior in some cases, has long been suspected as the culprit.

But historians and porphyria experts who have looked through the medical letters surrounding King James have run the monarch's symptoms through diagnostic software and suggest another syndrome better explains the oddness of King James I.

"He certainly was an unusual chap," says archaeologist-physician Timothy Peters of the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham. He's the lead author on the History of Psychiatry journal report that takes a closer look at the "recurrent disputes" surrounding the afflictions, possibly inherited, of an "interesting but enigmatic king."

James I ascended the Scottish throne in 1567 and the English one in 1603, the age of Shakespeare, Galileo and Sir Walter Raleigh. Interesting times, and King James survived the execution of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, the murder or execution of at least three of the aristocrats appointed to raise him as a child, and a thwarted plot to blow him up along with Parliament, still celebrated with fireworks in England. He inveighed against tobacco ("this vile custom"), wrote poetry and in 1606 chartered England's first permanent North American colony, Jamestown.

What finally ended his reign was a stroke in 1625. "It is generally agreed that the last five years of his life were accompanied by intellectual deterioration," says the History of Psychiatrystudy. Born prematurely, James rarely impressed his contemporaries as a physical specimen, who saw him as feeble, "clumsy in riding and hunting," according to one historian, suffering from itchy skin, gout and abdominal pain. English psychiatrist Ida Macalpine,concluded in 1968 that all those symptoms added up to a mild case of porphyria — a rare family of inherited afflictions that affects about 200,000 people in the U.S. today caused by a buildup of compounds called "porphyrins" in the bloodstream.

Macalpine's diagnosis of James I, and a similar one she made for Mary, Queen of Scots, along with her determination of a severe case affecting King George III, inspired the 1994 movie. She also swayed popular thinking about "Porphyria — A Royal Malady," as she titled one of her books.

The only problem is that royal diagnosis seems a bit odd itself. "To our surprise, the more we look the less we see any signs of porphyria," says Peters, who regularly treated porphyria patients in his career as a physician. Looking at James I, the "very outstanding medical notes" of the royal physician written in 1623 detail a series of kidney problems, and his autopsy ("they suspected he was poisoned," Peters says) reports kidney stones in his shriveled left kidney, the site of recurrent abdominal pain that had been key to the porphyria diagnosis.

Kidney stones aren't a porphyria symptom. Popping James I's symptoms into a diagnostic computer program called SimulConsult, Peters and his colleagues report no mention of porphyria. Instead, it yields a diagnosis of an even rarer disorder called mild Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, inherited from a maternal genetic defect.

The diagnosis seems reasonable, says physician Hyder Jinnah of the Emory University School of Medicine, an expert on the rare disorder, who was not part of the study. "Problems related to gout and kidney stones may emerge later in life, because they take time to develop," he says by e-mail, in mild cases of the syndrome.

More likely, mild Lesch-Nyhan syndrome along with more mundane problems of a man who was separated from his mother at 11 months and drank too much besides, could better explain the odd behavior of James I in his declining years. (His problems were nothing like George III's, who at some points ran around his palace naked attempting outrages against the ladies of the court, according to a physician's notes.)

If true, and only genetic testing of some sort of remains would confirm mild Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a genetic ailment passed down by maternal genes would rule James I out as the source, six generations removed, of the celebrated madness of his distant descendant, King George III. "Most people in medicine now accept that porphyria wasn't likely the culprit for King George's troubles," Peters says. "But it has become a popular view, where King James' diagnosis just further argues against it."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2012-08-18/king-james-madness-medical-mystery/57122438/1