This and That...

[Warph]

Obuma To Give Nation's Highest Civilian Award To harpO

(Yawn...)

WASHINGTON — The White House announced that President Barack Obama will award the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to 16 recipients including television star and businesswoman Oprah Winfrey, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and former President Bill Clinton.

"The Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to men and women who have dedicated their own lives to enriching ours," Mr. Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "This year's honorees have been blessed with extraordinary talent, but what sets them apart is their gift for sharing that talent with the world."

Mr. Obama will award the medals later this year. In total, 16 people will receive the award, the White House said.

[Warph]

U.S. Reports A Breakthrough In Malaria Vaccine

(This pretty amazing.  Malaria has killed hundreds of thousands of people.  Wiping it out would mean only aids and cancer stand in our way as a species.  Oh and by the way, most of this research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.  You know, greedy, evil, wicked white capitalist people?)

Via CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/malaria-vaccine/?on.cnn=1

(CNN) — U.S. researchers say they've successfully tested a vaccine for malaria on a small group of volunteers and hope to conduct large-scale tests soon.

The vaccine involves multiple, intravenous injections of a weakened form of the disease, scientists from the National Institutes of Health, the Navy, Army and other organizations reported Thursday. Though the results were promising, more extensive field testing will be required, the researchers wrote.

The mosquito-borne tropical disease kills about 1 million people a year and sickens more than 200 million. Dr. William Schaffner, head of the preventive medicine department at Vanderbilt University's medical school, called the results "a scientific advance" — but it may be eight to 10 years before the vaccine can be scientifically proven, approved and distributed.

[Bullwinkle]

       Yeah. Maybe we should investigate these people, how dare they spend all that money to help just anyone.

      Greedy, no, they're spending their money to help others.

      Evil, I don't see no horns.

       Wicked, Dorothy killed the witch a long time ago.

      White, that is our burden.

       Capitalist. Well that is our burden as well.

[Warph]

Mr. Maddow's Neighborhood – Megyn Kelly To 9:00 pm Slot

(According to Drudge Report, Megyn Kelly will move
to 9:00 pm opposite MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. One
and a half ladies enter.  Which will win?)

Drudge: Megyn Kelly Set to Replace Sean Hannity on Fox Prime-Time

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/megyn-kelly-replacing-sean/2013/08/08/id/519448?promo_code=12630-1&utm_source=12630Weasel_zippers&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1

Fox News rising star Megyn Kelly is going to take over the prime-time slot currently helmed by talk superstar Sean Hannity, a huge shift in the conservative news channel's programming, according to the Drudge Report.

"It's all about Megyn," an inside source at Fox told Drudge. "She is the new face of cable news. She has it all!"

It would be the first major prime-time change in the leading cable news channel's lineup in a decade.

So far, no other major news organization is reporting the item. Matt Drudge cited anonymous "top sources" in his report Thursday afternoon, adding that the announcement would be made later in August.

Fox issued a statement shortly after the Drudge Report story appeared:

"We will neither confirm nor deny any programming schedule changes. As previously stated, the network has signed long-term deals with Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Shepard Smith, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren."

But it's clear changes are coming. The big question is, where does Hannity go? He is signed to a long-term contract that will reportedly keep him on the network through the 2016 election, the Huffington Post reported. Fox prime-time's other stars, Bill O'Reilly and Greta Van Susteren, are also locked in to years-long contracts.

Ailes, in an interview with Neil Cavuto this afternoon, said "all of our stars will be back," and called the Drudge story a rumor.

"Hannity is a brand that many of our viewers love and want to see, and as you know, is one of the nicest guys in the building," Ailes said. Ailes added that he was having conversations with Shepard Smith about  "a new way to deliver news," raising questions about Smith's 7 p.m. time slot.

Kelly would attract a slightly younger, more female audience to Fox, Tobe Berkovitz, an associate professor of advertising at Boston University, tells Newsmax.

"She probably would appeal to the Sean Hannity audience, but would probably broaden that appeal out to other demographics — women, perhaps viewers who are a little younger — but what it would do is not drive a lot of people away from the slot because it is still Fox," he said.

"What this current story tells you is that Fox has a really strong bench," Berkovitz added. "Fox has a lot of in-house, strong talent — and they're trying to maximize how they're going to try to stay on top for the next several years, especially through the 2016 presidential election."

He also ruled out Fox putting Kelly and Hannity together.

"You have to be very careful. People with strong personalities, you could be risking a blow-up — and you're causing damage to two big names," Berkovitz tells Newsmax. "You want to be careful in trying to team them up."

Recently, Van Susteren responded to rumors that she would be bumped by Kelly by saying she had a contract for a daily, prime-time show, the Huffington Post reported.

CNN's Piers Morgan responded quickly to the news that Kelly would become his new competition this fall. She is currently on maternity leave after giving birth in July to her third child, but is expected to start her new show once her leave is finished.

Here is Morgan's tweet, giving a link to the Drudge Report's announcement:

  Piers Morgan        ✔ @piersmorgan 
Bring it on @megynkelly >
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashmk.htm
9:13 AM - 8 Aug 2013


Eric Bolling, a Fox News colleague, also congratulated Kelly, ttweeting "ALERT!.. some bad news for Rachel!", referring to MSNBC's 9 p.m. anchor Rachel Maddow.

The other Fox prime time stars, Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, Shepard Smith and Bret Baier are also signed into contracts that stretch out over several years.

Van Susteren has been denying all summer that she's about to leave her prime-time show, "On the Record," which runs at 10 p.m. EST.

The rumors started after media reports said she had initiated talks with CNN earlier this spring in hopes of returning to the network where she'd been a legal analyst from 1994 to 2002, and were further spurred when Fox announced Kelly was leaving daytime to join the prime-time lineup.

Fox hasn't changed its prime-time lineup in a decade except for after the 2008 election, when Hannity's liberal foil, Alan Colmes, left the "Hannity and Colmes" show. The last major change occurred when Van Susteren left CNN and took over the 10 p.m. slot held by Paula Zahn in January 2002.

The news comes just after Cumulus Media said it plans to cut ties with both Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, their two most highly-rated conservative radio hosts, after talks broke down with Premiere Networks, the division of Clear Channel that distributes their shows.

[Warph]

TV Ratings

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/category/ratings

[Warph]

Battle Of The Rinos

Christie Rises, Rubio Falls

Via Politico:
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio lost favor with many New Hampshire voters in recent months while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie saw a surge in support, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Rubio dropped 9 percentage points since April and fell from first to fifth among likely GOP contenders for the 2016 election, according to a Granite State Poll, sponsored by WMUR-TV, and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Rubio was the choice of 12 percent of voters in February and 15 percent in April, but just 6 percent in July.

[Warph]

Border Agents: Mexican Drug Cartels Operating In U.S.,
With Help From U.S. Politicians

(Not to mention with Fast and Furious guns, courtesy of the Obama administration and Eric Holder)

Via Breitbart:

In an open letter to the public in late July, several retired Border Patrol agents wrote on behalf of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers to warn that Mexican drug cartels are actively operating inside the United States spending millions every year to try to build their networks here. They argued that American politicians are protecting their activities as well.

"Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted representatives in place as a means to guarantee continued success," the Border Patrol agents wrote.

"We must never lose sight of the fact that the United States is the market place for the bulk of transnational criminal businesses engaged in human trafficking and the smuggling, distribution and sale of illegal drugs. Organized crime on this scale we are speaking about cannot exist without political protection."

[Warph]

15-Ton Ball Of Fat Removed From London Sewer

(Michael Moore Was in London recently... Hmmm, I wonder...)

LONDON (AFP) –  A 15-ton ball of congealed fat -- dubbed Britain's biggest ever "fatberg" -- was removed from a London sewer after a 10-day operation following complaints from local residents that their toilets would not flush.

The monstrous lump of festering food fat mixed with wet wipes -- the size of a bus -- formed in drains under a major road in Kingston, southwest London, utility firm Thames Water said Tuesday.

Had it not been removed, the deposit could have led to sewage flooding homes, streets and businesses in the leafy London suburb, Thames Water said.

"While we've removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we've never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before," Gordon Hailwood, waste contracts supervisor for the company, said in a statement.

"Given we've got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest 'fatberg' we've encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest such berg in British history."

"The sewer was almost completely clogged with over 15 tonnes of fat. If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston."

"It was so big it damaged the sewer and repairs will take up to six weeks."

CCTV images from the sewer showed that the mound of fat had reduced the 27 by 19-inch drain to five per cent of its normal capacity.

CountyClean Environmental Services, the waste management company that removed the deposit, said it would go to good use.

"We recycle everything that we remove -- the water is extracted and the remaining fats and oils are turned into products like soap, biodiesel and fuel," a CountyClean spokesman told AFP.

"We have a very specialized piece of equipment -- called a Kroll recycler -- that we can use from the road and allows us to remove the fat without any workmen having to descend into the sewers."

Thames Water warned homes and businesses needed to change their ways when it came to the disposal of fat and wet wipes, urging people to "Bin it -- don't block it."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/06/15-ton-fatberg-removed-from-london-sewer/?intcmp=obinsite#ixzz2bRzauG76

[Ross]

This is painful and shameful!
It makes me very angry!
What is wrong with people?

Arizona's foster-care crisis deepens

Report: Number of kids in system rose 40% in 3 years

By Mary K. ReinhartThe Republic | azcentral.comThu Aug 8, 2013 11:58 PM


Arizona is caring for a record number of foster children as child-welfare workers juggle an ever-growing number of abuse and neglect reports, according to a new state report.

The biannual report shows that the state's Child Protective Services now has 14,314 children in foster care, an increase of 40 percent since March 2010, and continues to be buried under an avalanche of reports, most of them alleging that children are being neglected.

A separate monthly report shows an even higher 14,608 children in care as of June 30, including 95 babies and small children living in group homes and crisis shelters. In March 2010, there were 10,207 Arizona foster children.

Gov. Jan Brewer and state lawmakers have focused increased scrutiny on CPS and gave its parent agency, the Department of Economic Security, more than $60 million in new funding to keep pace with growth.

But the data released Thursday during a meeting with child-welfare advocates and non-profit agency administrators predate most of that funding.

The one bright spot heralded in the previous report in January — a net gain in family foster homes for the first time in three years — evaporated as foster parents closed their homes faster than new ones could open during the six-month period ending March 31. While 722 new families became licensed, 740 foster homes closed their doors.

State officials and child-welfare experts said the trends in the wrong direction are evidence that the underlying problems are bigger than any one state agency and require a community effort.

Several said the agency's struggles point to a larger crisis of poverty, made worse by state budget cuts during the recession that eviscerated programs, such as child-care subsides, that help struggling families.

"There are huge struggles for so many families throughout our communities, and it simply is impossible for CPS and DES to be the main responder," said Dana Wolfe Naimark, CEO of the Children's Action Alliance, a non-profit group that advocates for children and families.

Marsha Porter, director of the Phoenix Crisis Nursery and a former CPS administrator, echoed those concerns, saying: "We're just seeing more and more Arizona families in trouble. They're losing every benefit that they had at the state level."

CPS officials agreed there is only so much the agency can do. But they stressed two key initiatives: a triage-type response system intended to ease caseloads and help families before they're in crisis by sending low-level reports to community agencies; and a federal waiver to allow more flexible spending of federal money now spent on foster care.

"There's no single state agency or program that can achieve all the outcomes we want for our children and families," CPS Administrator Deb Harper said.

To address the agency's crisis, state lawmakers this year appropriated nearly $70 million in new funding for CPS to hire 200 more workers, pay for additional group-home and shelter beds, accommodate growth in child-care services for foster kids and provide intensive family services aimed at keeping families together. Some of those new workers were hired during the reporting period.

State officials Thursday touted plans to help families before they're in crisis by diverting less-serious reports to non-profit agencies and seeking a federal waiver that other states have used to reduce foster-care numbers by spending money before, rather than after, kids come into the system.

More than 120 new caseworkers have increased the percentage of children and foster homes that receive required monthly visits as well as the number of children who are leaving foster care to be reunified with family or are adopted.

A backlog of cases, in which there have been no action for at least two months, remains at more than 11,000, CPS officials said. In 2011, the DES created a team of seasoned caseworkers and supervisors to whittle down a backlog that reached nearly 13,000 cases.

Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, co-chairwoman of a retooled CPS oversight committee, said after Thursday's meeting that she is encouraged that the agency is pursuing new initiatives to keep kids out of foster care, but she wants to keep close watch on the numbers and look for ways to retain caseworkers.

"It looks like they're headed in a positive direction," Brophy McGee said. "But I think we need to remain anchored in the data, no matter how discouraging it may be."

A new state law requires the agency to create the triage system for less-serious reports, similar to one the state shelved 10 years ago called Family Builders. Lawmakers did not provide any funding for the new law.

The statewide child-abuse hotline fielded a record 22,161 reports from October through March, two-thirds of them alleging neglect, according to the report required under state law.

Michael Wisehart, acting deputy assistant director for the DES, said the pace is unsustainable.

"The rate of growth doesn't seem like it can be sustained, and yet it isn't slowing," Wisehart said.

The record growth has put a tremendous strain on CPS workers, whose caseloads are nearly twice state and national standards. Wisehart said that turnover among CPS workers is about 28 percent but that roughly 250 workers now in training should ease caseloads and help retain staff.

Also in the report:

Four children with open CPS cases died as a result of abuse or neglect, compared with three during the previous six-month period. Nine additional children died who were wards of the state, six of them in Maricopa County.

1,603 hotline calls deemed worthy of a report were not investigated, but rather triaged to ensure that children were safe.

Most of those reports, according to a random sample, contained no specific allegations, while others claimed past or current abuse.

CPS workers brought fewer children into foster care compared with the previous six-month period. There were 5,101 children removed from their homes from October to March, compared with 5,716 from March to September 2012.

85 percent of foster kids received the required monthly visits from their caseworkers, an increase from 74 percent during the previous reporting period.

More children are staying longer in crisis shelters, which are intended to be short-term options until children can be returned home or placed with relatives or foster families.

The average shelter stay for babies and children under 3 years old is now more than four months.

The number of babies and small children in shelters and group homes has nearly doubled over the past year, with 99 in "congregate care" settings, compared with 55 a year ago.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130808arizona-cps-foster-care-crisis-deepens.html?nclick_check=1

[Warph]

What the article didn't go into was that the majority of these children are Hispanic.  In one CPS case last year, a mother left her four ['stair-step, ages 1 to 5, no relatives'] children in El Mirage, AZ and went back to Mexico to never return.  The father is in prison for 15 years on an 'assault to kill' and the State is stuck with the children.  So very Sad!