Tom Faranda's Folly

If you are new to this weblog and looking for information on my lymphoma...

Scroll down, and a bit below my picture you'll see "Categories". The only category is "My lymphoma and related medical stuff". If you click on that, only the lymphoma-related and a few other health-related postings will appear! My other ramblings, family stories, and mediocre jokes will be gone.

Then go to this January 8th posting, Tom Faranda's Folly: Four months of journaling  that gives links to 13 earlier posts. These posts will give you a good picture of my chemo treatment prior to the Sloan Kettering admission with the stem cell transplant. The 13 posts take a total of about 20 minutes to read. Of course, feel free to read the many other posts in the first four months, if you are so inclined.

Then start working chronologically forward from January 8th.

His commanding officer pays tribute to murdered British soldier Lee Rigby

Rigby has a 2 year old child.

 

Woman who confronted the London attackers

As the British PM said - "The most appalling crime."

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, Scout Leader, Reasoned With London Attackers

 

Great story: Woman finds her dog lost during tornado while doing TV interview.

Great!

 

Boruch Spiegel, Warsaw Ghetto fighter in 1943

The Warsaw uprising. Years & years ago I read Leon Uris's novel, Mila 18. great novel - here it is on amazon, with reviews.

Boruch Spiegel, Fighter in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Dies at 93

Boruch Spiegel, one of the last surviving fighters of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, in which a vastly outgunned band of 750 young Jews held off German soldiers for more than a month with crude arms and Molotov cocktails, died on May 9 in Montreal. He was 93.

******

“We didn’t have enough weapons, we didn’t have enough bullets,” Mr. Spiegel once told an interviewer. “It was like fighting a well-equipped army with firecrackers.”

Very nice feature in the NY Times.

Adopt a child and you're in the IRS crosshairs

69% of families claiming the adoption tax credit in 2011 (2012 tax filing season) were audited.

So Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption – a process that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many middle-class families — and the IRS responded by implementing an audit campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent.

And here's more from NRO (National Review Online) -

Earlier this week, in a feeble attempt at humor on Facebook, I posted: “If you haven’t been audited by the IRS during the Obama administration, can you even call yourself a conservative?” Given the scale of the abuses, I should probably just shorten it and say, “Only RINOs don’t get audited.” My wife and I got audited in 2011, with the IRS examining every inch of our adoption the previous year. The process was painful, but we got through it, and our refund may have been adjusted by a few dollars (the amount of the adjustment was so small, I don’t actually remember). In other words, the audit was a gigantic waste of time — for the IRS and for our family. A Facebook commenter, however, pointed me to a report that made me rethink the experience.

In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent.

 

Taking the Fifth Amendment never looks good

UPDATE: They're bringing her back! By making an opening statement she waived her rights (they say). That's hardball.

"I have not done anything wrong."

Lois Lerner, who previously claimed under oath that the IRS was not targeting conservative groups. She was the Director of that group.

 

Pigs fly; NY Times supports a FOX News reporter

The other recent scandals - IRS - Benghazi - are - according to NYT - simply trumped up by the evil Republicans.

But - when it's anything to do with freedom of the press ...

Another Chilling Leak Investigation

With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.

******

The Rosen case follows other signs that the administration has gone overboard in its zeal to find and muzzle insiders. The Associated Press revealed last week that the government had secretly seized two months’ worth of records for telephones used by the agency’s staff, partly to determine the source of a leak about a report involving a foiled terrorist plot in Yemen. At least two other major leak investigations are continuing. Six current and former administration officials have been indicted under the old Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the press and public. In 2010, a federal judge in Maryland sentenced a leaker to 20 months in jail while admitting that he was “in the dark as to the kind of documents” involved in the leak or what impact they had on national security.

Not a lion hunter; that's Tim with his javelin

At the Westchester County Championships, where he came 5th, with a best throw of 142', the best among county sophomores. He's now ranked #5 in the state among high school sophomores and #19 overall.

The big varsity Catholic HS intersectionals are this Sunday, and Tim would dearly love to go over 150', which would qualify him for the Eastern States Nationals. Here's his PR from two weekends ago - 145'7".

The meet Sunday is at Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island, where Tim has always done well. He likes the turf/rubberized runway, which is faster then the grass run-up.

Oh, we don't own the javelin (they're not cheap), Stepinac does. Here he's getting ready for his run-up and throw. 

 

Senator blames tornado on Republicans

Because they don't believe in global warming. Guess he missed this - Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

Anyway,

Democratic Senator uses Okla. tornado for anti-GOP rant over global warming

While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Obama problems/controversy/scandal hurting MSNBC's ratings

Too bad.

Obama Scandals Bring MSNBC 7-Year Low While Fox News Rises

Last week’s total day results were down 17% in viewers and 22% among the demo from the comparable May 14 to May 18 week of last year. In primetime, the numbers were even worse for MSNBC as a steady decline from the beginning of the year continued. The network had 570,000 total viewers and 159,000 in the demo from 8 PM to 11 PM from May 13 to May 17, 2013. That’s the lowest rated week of the year so far for MSNBC in terms of viewers and the third lowest of 2013 in the demo. The week of May 6 to May 12 was worst in the demo with 148,000 viewers when the network had 604,000 viewers on average. These latest results come as the news network’s recently launched and struggling All In With Chris Hayes hit a new viewership of 396,000 and its second lowest demo audience of just 88,000 on May 14. It also comes on the heels of MSNBC falling in April ratings from its second place ranking of the year before.

I saw a few minutes of Chris Hayes while I was in the gym last week. here's how you spell his name: b-o-r-i-n-g.

What happened to global warming?

Ahhh, it's come to a standstill.

Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming 'not as likely'

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

How DO they know?

Anonymous IRS official: "Everything comes from the top"

I read the Washington Post article that this one is based on yesterday. "The fish rots from the head down."

Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official: “Everything comes from the top.”

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

CBS' Bob Schieffer vs. White House spin doctor

On Face the Nation, Schieffer actually makes sense - "Why are you here?" Love it!

 

Bob Woodward states the obvious: on Benghazi the Obama Administration didn't tell the truth

on Meet the Press this morning, and linked on Drudge -

 

Letterman: 10 signs you're watching a bad sci fi movie

moderately amusing! ...

 

CNN: Wonderful (& emotional) 5 minute video on Boston

It's hard not to get a lump in your throat while watching and listening.

IRS to pro-life group: "Please detail the content of your members' prayers"

Stunning. And the NY Times editorial this morning said the IRS just didn't understand the guidelines.

 

Friday morning funnies: One minute of Piers Morgan talking to Jay Carney

Good WSJ feature: IRS political targeting nothing new

A number of Administrations have used the tax service to do their dirty work.

FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton ... hit the link for the article - excerpts below:

A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting

Many Republicans are enraged over revelations in recent days that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups with a campaign of audits and harassment. But of all the troubles now dogging the Obama administration—including the Benghazi fiasco and the Justice Department's snooping on the Associated Press—the IRS episode, however alarming, is also the least surprising. As David Burnham noted in "A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power" (1990), "In almost every administration since the IRS's inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes."

President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to the New Deal, including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Roosevelt also dropped the IRS hammer on political rivals such as the populist firebrand Huey Long and radio agitator Father Coughlin, and prominent Republicans such as former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Perhaps Roosevelt's most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944. He spiked an IRS audit of illegal campaign contributions made by a government contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson, whose career might have been derailed if Texans had learned of the scandal.

President John F. Kennedy raised the political exploitation of the IRS to an art form. Shortly after capturing the presidency, JFK denounced "the discordant voices of extremism" and derided people who distrust their leaders—President Obama didn't invent that particular rhetorical line. Shortly thereafter, JFK signaled at a news conference that he expected the IRS to be vigilant in policing the tax-exempt status of questionable (read: conservative) organizations.

Within a few days of Kennedy's remarks, the IRS launched the Ideological Organizations Audit Project. It targeted right-leaning groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education. Kennedy also used the IRS to strong-arm companies into complying with "voluntary" price controls. Steel executives who defied the administration were singled out for audits.

******

After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff to mastermind what a memo called "all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations." More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling (a left-wing critic of the Vietnam War) and the far-right John Birch Society.

After listing a couple of Clinton manipulations here's this -

One potential bombshell of the Clinton era that went relatively unrecognized was an Associated Press report in 1999 that "officials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s," including "personal demands for audits from members of Congress." Audit requests from congressmen were marked "expedite" or "hot politically" and IRS officials were obliged to respond within 15 days. Permitting congressmen to secretly and effortlessly sic G-men on whomever they pleased epitomized official Washington's contempt for average Americans and fair play. But because the abuse was bipartisan, there was little enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for an investigation.

The depressing conclusion:

With the current IRS scandal, we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg. Thorough congressional investigations would no doubt help reveal the extent of the operation, and the criminal investigation announced by the Justice Department on Tuesday may prove fruitful as well. Regardless of what these inquiries uncover, though, we can be almost certain that IRS audits will remain irresistible political weapons.

IRS wanted to know what books were included in Tea Party book clubs

This is so bizarre - you'd think we were in Cuba or China.

This is from The Politico - a left wing website!

The IRS wants YOU — to share everything

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls.

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts.

And it asked what books people were reading.

A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows the agency wanted to know everything — in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking. The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.

******

The report shows that top IRS officials put a stop to some of the questions in early 2012, including the ones that asked tea party groups who their donors were, what issues were important to them and whether their top officers ever planned to run for office. And they told the investigators they planned to destroy the donor lists that had already been sent in.

Remember, IRS will be responsible for healthcare law implementation

HA! And who's going to be running the department?

From ABC News -

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

USA Today: IRS approved liberal groups, stonewalled conservatives.

In yesterday's paper.

IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo

In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to "drive the progressive change." According to its website, its mission includes "support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people's interests and make tough choices." It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.

• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. "It would be fair to say we're on the progressive end of the spectrum," said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after "a pretty simple, straightforward process."

• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama's signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. "We're busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now," the group's voice mail said.

There's more. Hit the link - quite incredible.

To whom do IRS employees make political donations?

Well, no surprise here. Actually maybe there is a surprise - I would have thought the disparity might have been even more. Well, they certainly didn't like McCain. Of course he may have been a real reformer - although we'll never know. 

This could explain a few things.

IRS Employees Disproportionately Donate to Obama

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains an online database of political contributions, individuals listing their employer as “IRS” or “Internal Revenue Service” donated a total of $48,827 to Obama in 2012 and gave just $20,361 to Romney. That disparity is mild compared with that of 2008, when IRS employees donated $59,959 to Obama, and just $1,950 to his challenger John McCain.

Slightly over 100 IRS employees donated to Obama in 2012, while only 25 contributed to Romney, according to the database, and most contributed less than $1,000. At least one of the IRS employees who donated to Obama in 2012 — Kim Kitchens — appears to have worked in the agency’s Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements office in Cincinnati, Ohio, as of October 2012, according to IRS documents.

 

Rugby: London 7's - 2nd day and final

The annual World Sevens Series ends, with New Zealand the champioin for the 11th time in the 14 year history.

The table at the end of the video shows how the USA made out; and Kenya finished in fifth place, ahead of many of the major countries.

 

Catholic author Anne Hendershot says IRS came after her

I've never heard of her. Her story rings true, and IS scary.

And the IRS will be managing a large part of Obamacare ...

According to Hendershott, the IRS audited her in 2010 and demanded to know who was paying her and “what their politics were.”

It all started with a phone call she received at her home in May of that year — a call during which Hendershott was told she would be audited. A letter that followed on May 19, 2010 solidified the IRS’s request to meet her in person two months later in July. While IRS investigations are certainly not uncommon occurrences, the professor believes that the situation surrounding hers was more-than-curious.

“The IRS calls my house and says … ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going to be auditing your business’ and I said ‘My businesses?’ and he said, ‘You know the expenses you take off for writing,” the academic recalls.

Hendershott was surprised she was being audited on business grounds considering she does not operate an entrepreneurial endeavor in the traditional sense. In addition to her academic work, she told TheBlaze that she occasionally freelances for Catholic outlets and for the Wall Street Journal. But can this really be considered “business” activity?

“I don’t make a lot of money from writing. In fact most years I don’t show a profit,” she told TheBlaze.

Hendershott said some of the outlets and organizations she has written for haven’t paid her a cent.

But the circumstances surrounding the irregular nature of the experience don’t end there. Hendershott noted it was particularly surprising that she, alone, was audited. Her husband, who brings in the vast majority of the family’s income, was not included in the IRS’s inquiry — even though the Hendershotts always files jointly.

So when the agent explained that she would need to come alone and in person to discuss her “business” activity in July of 2010, the professor was perplexed.

“[The IRS agent] didn’t even let me decide when it would be good for me … He didn’t want my husband to come,” she said of the meeting, which was held at an IRS office in New Haven, Connecticut.

The process was a grueling one, including many questions that Hendershott felt were political in nature. Numerous records were requested before the in-person meeting, as well as during and after.

“Every question had to do with bank deposits we made. Every single question,” she said. “What is this money? And I didn’t know a lot of it. We had to go to our bank and get deposits back. We had to get records showing where the money came from.”

While asking about the deposits, the agent wanted to know if the monies came from groups and, if so, what the organizations’ politics were.

The mention of groups, Hendershott notes, is particularly interesting, as she had been writing for numerous Catholic outlets and organizations at the time. In addition to Catholic World Report and the Catholic Advocate, she also penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal. Many of these writings were critical of President Barack Obama and his policies.

And she was intimidated into not writing anymore!

“I haven’t written for them since the audit, because I was so scared,” she said (records show her last article for the organization was on July 10, 2010 — the same month the IRS audit unfolded).

So far, she has only shared her story with friends and those close to her, but in light of the recent IRS scandal, she has decided to speak out.

IRS targeted Billy Graham's organization

Why not? They're conservative Christians. Put 'em on that enemies list!

Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, said that the IRS notified the organizations in September that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association urging of voters to back “candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel” during last year’s presidential race was the reason why IRS agents visited the North Carolina offices of both Graham groups, the letter accuses.

“While these audits not only wasted taxpayer money, they wasted money contributed by donors for ministry purposes as we had to spend precious resources servicing the IRS agents in our offices,” Graham wrote in the letter, which was shared with POLITICO. “I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.”

Graham said that “in light” of the IRS admission that it targeted tea party groups for added scrutiny, “I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence – or justifiable.”

Philly abortionist Gosnell agrees to two life sentences

To avoid the death penalty.

A Philadelphia abortion provider found guilty of first-degree murder has agreed give up his right to appeal in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence, Philadelphia's district attorney's office announced Tuesday.

The next step in the case was to have been the penalty phase, when jurors would have weighed whether to give Gosnell a death sentence.

The arrangement erases a need for that phase.

"Like any deal, there's a give and take on each side. The Commonwealth (of Pennsylvania) took away the death penalty and Dr. Gosnell gave up his right to appeal," said defense attorney Jack McMahon.

"A big factor for Dr. Gosnell was his family. They've been conspicuously absent, and that's been intentional because of the media focus and whatnot. He has some younger children in high school ... and bringing them all forward for a penalty phase is something that troubled him."

According to a statement from the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, Gosnell "agreed to waive all of his appellate rights in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty." He was "immediately sentenced" for the deaths of two babies.

Rugby: London 7's, 1st day; last tournament of the IRB World Series

Played in, uhh, London! Note Kenya vs. Wales & U.S. vs. South Africa.

 

Angelina Jolie on her double mastectomy: "My Medical Choice"

An op ed this morning in the NY Times. Well worth reading in it's entirety. 

My Medical Choice

MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.

Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.

Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.

Jolie then goes into some detail about the procedures, and finishes with this -

I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery. My own regimen will be posted in due course on the Web site of the Pink Lotus Breast Center. I hope that this will be helpful to other women.

Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.

I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

CNN on IRS harrassment

Jake Tapper is a pretty good interviewer. The moral of the story - don't have the name "Patriot" on your letterhead. I helped establish a 501c4 organization 20 years ago and it was relatively easy. Took only a couple of months to get approval. And you are allowed to advocate for issues and take political positions.

 

CNN: a former patient of Gosnell speaks; as does the son of one of his general practice patients

Two differing views.

 

Joyce Brothers

One of my first television memories was seeing her on some show with the name Ask Dr. Brothers (or something like that).

I think she used to play herself in a few movies. I didn't know she was a big game show winner in the 50's!

USA Today - Popular psychologist Joyce Brothers dead at age 85

It was 1955. Her husband, Milton Brothers, was still in medical school and Brothers had just given up her teaching positions at Hunter College and Columbia University to be home with her newborn, firmly believing a child's development depended on it.

But the young family found itself struggling on her husband's residency income. So Brothers came up with the idea of entering a television quiz show as a contestant.

The $64,000 Question quizzed contestants in their chosen area of expertise. She memorized 20 volumes of a boxing encyclopedia — and, with that as her subject, became the only woman and the second person to ever win the show's top prize.

Brothers tried her luck again on the superseding $64,000 Challenge, answering each question correctly and earning the dubious distinction as one of the biggest winners in the history of television quiz shows. She later denied any knowledge of cheating, and during a 1959 hearing in the quiz show scandal, a producer exonerated her of involvement.

Her wikipedia entry -

Joyce Brothers

By August 1958, she was given her own television show on a New York station, but her topic was not sports; she began doing an advice show about relationships, during which she answered questions from the audience.^[9] She later claimed to have been the first television psychologist, explaining to The Washington Post, "I invented media psychology. I was the first. The founding mother."^[10] Sponsors were nervous about whether a television psychologist could succeed, she recalled, but viewers expressed their gratitude for her show, telling her she was giving them information they couldn't get elsewhere.^{[citation needed]} She went on to do syndicated advice shows on both television and radio, during a broadcasting career that has lasted more than four decades. Her shows went through a number of name changes over the years, from The Dr. Joyce Brothers Show to Consult Dr. Brothers to Tell Me, Dr. Brothers to Ask Dr. Brothers to Living Easy with Dr. Joyce Brothers.^[11] In 1964 she interviewed and posed for publicity photographs with the Beatles on their first visit to the United States.^[12]

Philly abortionist Gosnell guilty of first degree murder

Guilty on three counts.

Philly abortion doc guilty in 3 babies' deaths

A Philadelphia doctor accused of performing illegal, late-term abortions in a filthy clinic has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive but acquitted in the death of a fourth baby.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of a patient.

Prosecutors say the 72-year-old Gosnell delivered babies alive and had their spines severed with scissors to kill them. They say the baby whose death he was cleared in let out a soft whimper before Gosnell cut its neck.

The Pope takes part in Rome's pro-life Rally/March

It's here.

Pope Francis takes part in Rome's March for Life

 

How to PO New Yorkers - all in 36 seconds

My brother Jim sent me this. 3 and a half million hits in two days ...

 

Tom Brokaw states the obvious about the Benghazi disinformation

From my friend Bernadette: Blonde Men Jokes

A friend told the Blonde man: "Christmas is on a Friday this year."
The Blonde man then said, "Let's hope it's not the 13th."
------------------------------------

Two Blonde men find three grenades, and they decide to take them to a police station.
One asked: "What if one explodes before we get there?"
The other says: "We'll lie and say we only found two."
------------------------------------

------------------------------------

A Blonde man goes to the vet with his goldfish.
"I think it's got epilepsy," he tells the vet.
The vet takes a look and says, "It seems calm enough to me."
The Blonde man says, "Wait, I haven't taken it out of the bowl yet."
------------------------------------

A Blonde man's dog goes missing and he is frantic. His wife says "Why don't you put an ad in the paper?"

He does, but two weeks later the dog is still missing.

"What did you put in the paper?" his wife asks.

"Here boy!" he replies.
------------------------------------

A Blonde man is in jail. The guard looks in his cell and sees him hanging by his feet.
"Just WHAT are you doing?" he asks.
"Hanging myself," the Blonde replies.
"The rope should be around your neck" says the guard.
"I tried that," he replies, "but then I couldn't breathe."

_________________________________


An Italian tourist asks a Blonde man: "Why do scuba divers always fall backwards off their boats?" To which the Blonde man replies: "If they fell forward, they'd still be in the boat."

Pope Francis canonized hundreds yesterday

The 800 martyrs of Otranto, plus two women religious; one from Mexico, and the first Saint from Columbia.

Pope Francis on Sunday gave the Catholic church new saints, including hundreds of 15th-century martyrs who were beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam, as he led his first canonization ceremony Sunday in a packed St. Peter's Square.

The "Martyrs of Otranto" were 813 Italians who were slain in the southern Italian city in 1480 for defying demands by Turkish invaders who overran the citadel to renounce Christianity.

******

The first pontiff from South America also gave Colombia its first saint: a nun who toiled as a teacher and spiritual guide to indigenous people in the 20th century.

With Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos among the VIPS, the Argentine pope held out Laura of St. Catherine of Siena Montoya y Upegui as a potential source of inspiration to the country's peace process, attempted after decades-long conflict between rebels and government forces.

Francis prayed that "Colombia's beloved children continue to work for peace and just development of the country."

He also canonized another Latin American woman. Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, a Mexican who dedicated herself to nursing the sick, helped Catholics avoid persecution during a government crackdown of the faith in the 1920s.

 

Tim new javelin PR; 145-7 to win sophomore intersectionals

UPDATE: Tim's statewide ranking (they don't do the event much upstate) - According to this, Tim is ranked #4 in sophomore class. Cool.

Good for Tim, who hadn't been throwing as well as he'd hoped recently. He really did well. First throw was 138', second 142', and then 145' 7". He broke his previous PR, from way back last May of 135'10". The last few meets Tim was very disappointed with his throws, But at Icahn Stadium (on Randall's Island, where Usain Bolt set the world's record in the 100m several years ago), against all the Catholic High Schools in NY metropolitan area, and Long Island, he came good.

Two brief videos, taken at my camera's maximum 8x power - the 142' throw (the slightly better vid of the two)

 

and the 145-7

CBS News anchor Scott Pelley: "We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again."

In a speech at Quinnipiac University.

"Our house is on fire," said Pelley. "These have been a bad few months for journalism," he added. "We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again."

The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. "Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It's a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that's what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here."

And Pelley said the republic relies on the quality of the news business. "Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism," said Pelley. "America is strong because its journalism is strong. That's how democracies work. They're only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses. And that is where we come in."

Scary story: The NFL and player's orthopedic medical issues long after leaving the game

From the Washington Post. I remember the main player featured in this article, Reggie Williams. He retired as a player in 1989, but most of his problems came up starting in 2005.

Do no harm: Who should bear the costs of retired NFL players’ medical bills?

After 24 knee operations, the National Football League’s former Man of the Year leans heavily on a crutch. When Reggie Williams pulls up his pants leg, what’s underneath looks like the trimmings from a butcher shop. His right leg is so ravaged that it’s three inches shorter than his left. Worse, it’s uninsured.

Once, Williams was the NFL’s high ideal. From 1976 to 1989 he was a spring-legged linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals who set franchise records and played in two Super Bowls. Off the field, he was a civic-minded Dartmouth graduate who won humanitarian awards and served as a city councilman while he was still playing. He was so loyal to the game that he was a pallbearer at legendary team founder Paul Brown’s funeral. He would even be invited to apply for the job of NFL commissioner.

But now, Williams and his battered legs amount to a bill no one wants to pay. Since 2005 Williams, 58, has suffered a cascade of health problems he says stem from his 14-year football career, including multiple knee replacements and a bone infection, which he estimates have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

WSJ: "Let Benghazi's Chips Fall"

Strong editorial agreeing that a "Bipratiasan Select Committee" should be appointed in Congress to investigate is "an excellent idea."

The House should appoint a Select Committee.

There have been two fulcrum events in the accounting of what happened in Benghazi. The first was U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's September 16 declarations on TV that Benghazi was part of the Islamic world's violent, spontaneous reaction to the incendiary California YouTube video.

That assertion, soon revised to acknowledge that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, set in motion a tug of war between some Congressional Republicans and the Obama Administration, with a press corps mostly uninterested in pursuing the story.

The second fulcrum event is the testimony this week by Gregory Hicks, the Tripoli embassy's No. 2 at the time of the assault. The Hicks testimony left no doubt that Benghazi was an attack by organized terrorists. In the course of that long night, Mr. Hicks or his aides discussed what was happening with the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. A lot of public officials were in the loop, and in real time.

The distance and discrepancy between what Mr. Hicks was telling these officials across the U.S. government that night and what Ambassador Rice told the American people five days later is vast. That distance needs to be explained, and the loop closed for the sake of public accountability.

There are strong reasons for doing so, starting with the murdered U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens. Across this country's history, the murder of an American ambassador, the nation's representative, has been taken as not merely a tragedy but an attack on U.S. interests that demands an official accounting to the American people.

There's more if you hit the link.

Unsurprisingly, the NY Times doesn't agree.  The Republicans’ Benghazi Obsession But then they have an agenda, don't they? Be interesting to see what Thomas Friedman thinks ...

Bengladesh woman speaks after 17 days trapped in factory wreckage.

So far there are how many deaths? Over a thousand?

 

A classic of government waste: military camouflage uniforms

From the Washington Post. A couple of years ago I was at West Point - Joe had gone there for paintball. I was tlaking to one of hte cadets and they were saying how their camouflage uniform were being relaced with one "digital" pattern that worked everywhere.

I guess not ...

With 10 patterns, U.S. military branches out on camouflage front

Today, there is one camouflage pattern just for Marines in the desert. There is another just for Navy personnel in the desert. The Army has its own “universal” camouflage pattern, which is designed to work anywhere. It also has another one just for Afghanistan, where the first one doesn’t work.

Even the Air Force has its own unique camouflage, used in a new Airman Battle Uniform. But it has flaws. So in Afghanistan, airmen are told not to wear it in battle.

In just 11 years, two kinds of camouflage have turned into 10. And a simple aspect of the U.S. government has emerged as a complicated and expensive case study in federal duplication.

Duplication is one of Washington’s most expensive traditions: Multiple agencies do the same job at the same time, and taxpayers pay billions for the government to repeat itself.

The habit remains stubbornly hard to break, even in an era of austerity. There are, for instance, at least 209 federal programs to improve science and math skills. There are 16 programs that teach personal finance.

At the Pentagon, the story of the multiplying uniforms has provided a step-by-step illustration of how duplication blooms in government — and why it’s usually not good.

Read the whole article - very interesting.

 

The Cable News Race

The day/night of the Benghazi hearings- O'Reilly got almost as many viewers as all the MSNBC shows combined

WED., MAY 8, 2013

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,383,000
FOXNEWS THE FIVE 2,937,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,638,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,628,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,363,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,240,000
CNNHN GRACE 1,576,000
CMDY DAILY SHOW 1,450,000
CNN COOPER 1,391,000
CNN BLITZER 1,382,000
CMDY COLBERT 1,250,000
CNN PIERS 1,085,000
CNN BURNETT 944,000
CNNHN DR DREW 940,000
MSNBC MADDOW 877,000
MNSBC O'DONNELL 826,000
MSNBC MATTHEW 703,000
MSNBC SHARPTON 624,000
MSNBC HAYES 573,000

 

ABC on 12 versions of White House Benghazi talking points

Great... Some of the media starts paying attention!

 

2nd in command in Benghazi - some of his testimony yesterday

From CNN - Diplomat Greg Hicks. And here's more - really pretty damning. The Libyans uncooperative because of Mrs. Clinton's assertion about the attack being caused by the video, after the Libyan leader said it was a terrorist attack.