A different viewpoint on technology

Domestic violence among gays and lesbian couples

It's not easy to find reliable statistics on domestic abuse and battering within the gay community (it's quite a bit higher than among heterosexual couples), in part because they've been afraid to report it, or societal factors are blamed, and more recently there is the not so subtle threat of homophobia if anyone researches it. But this paper has some good resources.

https://www.rit.edu/cla/criminaljustice/sites/rit.edu.cla.criminaljustice/files/docs/WorkingPapers/2009/2009-16.pdf

http://thehairpin.com/2012/08/run-anyway

HIV, Ebola, and spending

This is government speak to absolve individuals who spread this disease of all responsibility.

"Creating an AIDS-free generation will require shared responsibility, including that of partner governments, multilateral organizations, the private sector, civil society, and faith-based organizations, among others."

Yet when a nurse who gave her best to help a dying Ebola patient comes down with the disease, SHE violated protocol.

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced Tuesday they are donating $25 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control foundation to fight the Ebola crisis. Wow. That's spitting into the wind. Why not give it to a church or charity who actually do something like building hospitals and training local medical staff, or to pharmaceutical R & D companies developing a vaccine or cure? WHO estimates that between 40% and 70% of African health facilities are the property of or managed by Catholic churches. I'm sure they could use some help now that treating Ebola is interfering with other health concerns like malaria, TB and AIDS. Or, since so many Liberian doctors and nurses have died from Ebola, perhaps he could fund their replacements. $25 million for CDC is chump change.

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Think we spend too much on other countries' health problems? When asked, many Americans guess 28% of our budget goes to foreign aid, but it's actually less than 1%. G.W. Bush really pushed the envelop increasing U.S. global health funding from $1.7 billion to $8.2 billion; Obama? Not so much. It's at $8.7 billion. But let's say it's roughly $9 billion. Sounds like a lot on my pension, but that's out of $4 TRILLION, or less than 1%. The largest amounts go to Africa, and most is for HIV ($4.9 billion); very little for "neglected tropical diseases" like Ebola. Also, since the Democrats came into power, some foreign aid is dependent on those countries accepting our anti-family, birth control programs. So don't believe all the hate ads you're seeing from the Democrats that stingy Republicans are to blame for Ebola. The CDC share of the health budget actually went up. (Statistics from Kaiser Family Foundation, published in JAMA, April 23/30, 2014; editorial comments are my own)

http://kff.org/infographic/visualizing-health-policy-a-snapshot-of-us-global-health-funding/

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/facebook-founder-mark-zuckerberg-kicks-25-million-ebola-n225381

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2007/np05/en/

No reduction in emergency room visits under Obamacare

Don’t expect use of emergency departments to drop after Obamacare is fully implemented.  A recent study of the Massachusetts system show that ER visits increased after insurance reforms.

“Insured white patients younger than 65 years accounted for 62.7% of emergency visits before reforms went into effect and 64.2% afterward. In the same age group, insured black patients accounted for 12% of emergency visits before the reforms and 13.9% afterward. The largest increase was among Medicaid patients younger than 65 years, who accounted for 23.6% of emergency department patients before the reforms went into effect compared with 29.7% afterward.”

http://newsatjama.jama.com/2014/03/20/emergency-visits-up-in-massachusetts-after-reforms-enacted/

Whatever happened to Born Again Redneck?

He had a great blog—can’t find anything after 2012.  Conservative, libertarian gay man who commented on politics and home décor.  I think his real name is Patrick Joubert Conlon.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman chose not to remain quarantined

Wendy Davis knows no shame

The woman who made her pitch for fame and a place in the Democratic party on aborted babies and pink athletic shoes, is now going after her disabled candidate. James Taranto account:

The Washington Post calls it “one of the nastiest campaign ads you will ever see.” (Hope springs eternal.) It’s for Wendy Davis, the state senator who is the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas and is heavily disfavored for an office her party hasn’t won since 1990. As Politico describes the ad, it “directly references gubernatorial rival Greg Abbott’s partial paralysis—including the image of an empty wheelchair—to charge the Republican with hypocrisy”:

“A tree fell on Greg Abbott. He sued and got millions,” a narrator says over the image of a wheelchair. “Since then, he’s spent his career working against other victims.” . . .

The spot cites three cases Abbott worked on as a state Supreme Court justice or attorney general. In one case, Abbott’s office argued a woman with an amputated leg wasn’t disabled because she had a prosthetic limb. In another, he said a door-to-door sales company wasn’t responsible when one of their employees raped a woman. (The Texas Supreme Court ruled in the woman’s favor.) In the third, he helped a hospital defend themselves [sic] against a lawsuit after a doctor botched surgeries.

“Greg Abbott,” the narrator says. “He’s not for you.”

The ad’s—and Politico’s—account of the cases is tendentious. In that third case, for instance, Law360.com reported at the time (in March) that the plaintiffs were “challenging the constitutionality of a revised state law that requires claimants to prove that the defendant had a specific intent to cause injury or harm.” Abbott, as attorney general, sought to intervene to defend the state on that question of law.

At any rate, the “hypocrisy” charge is ludicrous. Is the Davis campaign’s position that if a lawyer has ever been the plaintiff in a personal-injury action, he is obliged to side with plaintiffs in every subsequent case, regardless of the facts or the law? (As a corollary, are one-time defendants obliged to side with all future defendants? Is a plaintiff who gets countersued guilty of hypocrisy either way?)

But distortion and illogic are not exactly uncommon in political ads. What makes this one unusual is the harsh way in which it seeks to exploit Abbott’s physical infirmity. The criticism has Davis on the defensive; the Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas reports that she reiterated the attack on Abbott this morning at a press conference “featuring speakers in wheelchairs.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/10/13/abbott-if-wendy-davis-wants-to-attack-a-guy-in-a-wheelchair-thats-her-prerogative/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/14/blowback-continues-after-texas-candidate-wendy-davis-ad-uses-wheelchair-to/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/wendy-davis-wheelchair-ad_n_5978342.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2791760/wendy-davis-doubles-controversial-wheelchair-ad-attacks-paralyzed-foe-governor-s-race.html

Ebola vs. Malaria, which kills more?

While you're thinking about Ebola, "Over one million people die from malaria each year, mostly children under five years of age, with 90 per cent of malaria cases occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 300-600 million people suffer from malaria each year."

Malaria has been pretty much wiped out in North America, but each year about 2,000 come here with it--didn't take the right precautions. DDT was discovered to be effective in 1939; the U.S. virtually eliminated the disease (about 15,000 a year) by 1951.

Ask the progressives and environmentalists why DDT isn't used today in Africa. Is it any wonder they are suspicious of western values and motives?

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1259

http://www.smh.com.au/world/malaria-death-rate-slashed-with-use-of-controversial-ddt-20131010-2vb7c.html

Life tips

• Life tips for my friends and readers who are 45-ish.
• Put away about 15% in your retirement account, above what your employer or government is contributing.
• Take good care of your relationships--they are like gold.
• Ignore all the food fads and scares; eat all the colors, eat less and move more. Just like mom said.
• Everything in moderation; especially alcohol and coffee and just pitch the cigarettes. They've never been found to benefit anything in your body.
• Don't be a pot head even if it is legal--you need every brain cell you have working at full capacity.
• Take care of your ears--turn down the music--and your teeth. Don't become a deaf senior citizen with ugly teeth--it's not pleasant. Take out the ear buds and see a dentist twice a year.
• Go to church. There are thousands of denominations as a result of squabbles that happened years ago. One should meet your needs. The world is actually more religious now than ever before--don't lose out on the benefits.
• Enjoy the many pleasures of owning a pet, but they are not family--don't kid yourself.
• Think about the benefits and responsibilities of being a citizen of the United States. It's not perfect, but it's the only one ever created with idea that the state/monarch/king/president doesn't own the people.

Monday Memories—my teachers in the 1940s and 1950s

They did a lot with much less.

Week-ends don’t matter much to retirees, but thought this was cute.

Church of the Brethren in Nigeria is being persecuted—for over a decade by Boko Haram

Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria (EYN)  is the name of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria. Their members are being killed, kidnapped, raped, and the churches are being burned by Boko Haram, a radical Islamic terrorist group similar to ISIS, but bumped from the news lately. The original kidnapped girls were from a Brethren community.  Other Christians like Catholics, 7th Day Adventists, Mormons and also Muslims are also being slaughtered. (Nigeria is about evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.)  CoB in the U.S. is tiny--probably about 120,000 members, but the gospel was so successfully spread in Nigeria that the EYN has about a million members. I've looked through several articles from the Church of the Brethren headquarters in the U.S. and the word Muslim and Islamic doesn't appear in the disaster stories, unless it's about Muslims being killed or interfaith work with the Muslim communities. Boko Haram is referred to as "insurgents." Other Christian sources use terms like Islamic or Muslim.

“The Boko Haram insurgents came to the villages in large numbers and, using rocket-propelled launchers, explosive devices, and bombs, invaded our communities in Madagali,” he said. “They killed, maimed people and destroyed houses before hoisting  their flags in different locations in the villages.”

“Boko Haram attacks that killed at least 150 members of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria, or EYN) in the past 10 months (2013) have caused 8,000 Christians to flee, EYN leaders said.”

“Militants from the Islamic extremist group destroyed 15 places of worship belonging to EYN, which is the dominant denomination in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in northeastern Nigeria with 180,000 members.”

“The Rev. Filibus Gwama, (EYN) Borno state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, believes the adoption of sharia is a strategy to checkmate Christianity in Nigeria.” (news report from 2001 about Sharia)

 http://www.brethren.org/news/2014/aid-efforts-continue-in-nigeria-mmb-members-to-do-advocacy.html

http://www.crossmap.com/news/how-can-i-celebrate-my-birthday-with-a-homeless-scattered-family-12600

http://christiannews.net/2014/09/09/bible-college-churches-shut-down-as-boko-haram-claims-territory-in-nigeria/

http://morningstarnews.org/2013/11/boko-haram-violence-cripples-christianity-in-areas-of-nigerias-borno-state/

http://www.worthynews.com/605-persecution-forces-nigerians-christians-to-flee-to-cameroon

Drank the Kool-Aid

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-presidents-speech-at-un.html

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-obama-doesnt-know-didnt-know.html

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/06/while-iraq-goes-up-in-flames-obama.html

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/04/un-african-and-un-presidential.html

Abby Johnson

Greta Van Susteren wants to know—are the airstrikes working?

Here is what I know that has happened since we started the airstrikes:

• 1/ ISIS is taking over Kobani — a Syrian town near border of Turkey - and this is huge!
• 2/ ISIS has also taken over control of the crossing between Kobani and Turkey meaning the civilians of Kobani can not escape and no supplies can get in to help them - and this is terrible!
• 3/ Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, is, in the words of the Pentagon ‘in flux’ [which I believe to be code for falling to ISIS]
• 4/ ISIS is 8 miles outside Baghdad [two weeks ago it was about 50 miles -- so this is big ISIS progress]
• 5/ ISIS is armed with ‘shoulder to air missiles’ and knows how to use them [in the last few days have taken down two Iraqi helicopters] - that means the skies are not safe.

In short — ISIS is GAINING ground and control.

So tell me…what are the SIGNS that the AIRSTRIKES ARE WORKING?

I would love to know the good signs. I want us to kill ISIS. They are vicious.

http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/2014/10/11/just-asking-and-if-you-dont-have-an-answer-we-are-in-big-trouble/

                                

Second hand Rose

I think I heard a poll that 61% of Republicans (or maybe young Republicans) accept gay marriage.  This is a sea change since 2008, in fact, right up to the 2012 election Obama claimed that a real marriage couldn't be anything other than one man and one woman. Government officials and judges have changed the law, but the people haven't voted. It really started in the 1970s with the feminist movement.  What better way to say men don't matter? Children are for aborting if it's not convenient. The terrible AIDS plague helped it along by creating a huge block of sympathy because it affected primarily gays, regardless of the misinformation we were given. But mainly, the population just stopped caring about marriage.

I remember watching Phil Donahue when he was still a local show in the early 1970s from Dayton interviewing couples who claimed marriage just wasn't important.  It's like a couple of generations handed homosexuals their tattered hand-me-downs they didn't want any more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miEMfRcZbwc

Where are the race baiters, Jesse and Al, when you need them?

Many more young black men will be affected by HIV than will ever face a problem with Ferguson police or Ebola. Where are Jesse and Al? "In 2010, there were an estimated 10,600 new HIV infections among African American gay and bisexual men. By comparison, in the same year, there were an estimated 11,200 new HIV infections among white gay and bisexual men and 6,700 new HIV infections among Hispanic/Latinoc gay and bisexual men. Young African American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 are especially affected by HIV." CDC

Allen West on Obama’s priorities

I have a racist troll (obviously if you don’t like a black man you must be racist, right?), so here’s some more.

The Commander in Chief will "drop by" the Pentagon today on his way to a series of 6-7 fundraising events across the country for the rest of this week. I have to bring out an interesting comparison. Obama's massive air strikes have yielded five such actions in Kobani against ISIS over the last two days but Obama has done more and will do more fundraisers over this week -- where is his emphasis? His BFF Turkish leader Recip Tayyip Erdogan sits back and watches what will be a slaughter of Syrian Kurds refusing any assistance to thwart ISIS -- and BHO is at fundraisers. An Air Force family was targeted online by Islamists. Fundraisers. Is there a crisis of leadership in America? We would have to have leadership in order to have a crisis -- there is an ABSENCE of leadership.

Voter ID battles

The lies Democrats are telling about voter ID and suppression and oppression of blacks are intended for one thing--create hate, anxiety and victimhood so blacks won't leave the Democrat controlled plantation.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/10/185049-democrats-losing-war-voter-id-placeholder-title/

Why it’s important for liberals to have a few conservative friends. . .