15 May 2007
R-Rating Mandated for Films with Smoking
5/11/2007
Depictions of smoking in movies will now be a factor when deciding a film's rating, possibly making a PG-13 movie R-rated, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday. The policy affects only new movies.
Along with violence, depictions of sex, adult language and other content considerations, ratings organizations will examine new releases to determine if they glamorize smoking or if it is pervasive through the films, even among adults...
..A number of groups have called for almost all movies that depict smoking automatically to receive an R rating, a plan movie studios oppose...
...The new policy for the movies allows for mitigating circumstances in which smoking may not affect a rating, the trade group said. For instance, the rating on historical films - such as 2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck," set in 1953, when indoor smoking seemingly was required by law - would not be affected...(is this a convoluted p0olicy or what?)
Rape Isn't Rape If Sex Obtained By Fraud
5/10/2007
As Rush said, "Here's a story the Kennedy’s are going to love."
...A Hampden County, Massachusetts man who allegedly tricked his brother's girlfriend into having sex with him by impersonating his sibling in the middle of the night cannot be convicted of rape[.]
..It's "a controversial ruling that affirms the court's long-held view that sex obtained through fraud is no crime...
...The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that a judge should have dismissed the rape charge against Alvin Suliveres, of Westfield, because Massachusetts law has for two centuries defined rape as sexual intercourse by force and against one's will and that it is not rape when consent is obtained through fraud...
Newsbusters.org ^ | 5/15/07 | Warner Todd Huston
Dick Kreck of the Denver Post seems to think there is a good "point" to a suggestion that Christians should be suspected bombers because Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh was supposedly a Christian. In a column about local radio talk show host "Gunny Bob" of KOA, Kreck comments that a radio station detractor has "got a point" when he satirically said that, since McVeigh and Nichols were Christians, all Christians should be placed under surveillance because of the actions of the two bombers. The detractor was responding to talker "Gunny Bob's" idea that all Muslims in the USA
Apparently talker Bob is a fiery one against Muslims in this era of the war on terror and his loose talk has stirred Colorado Media Matters, a local branch of the leftist Media Matters organization, to begin targeting the Clear Channel radio host for his opinions.
The reply that Kreck is talking about was posted on the CMM website.
The reaction has been heated. One CMM blogger wrote, "Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were Christians and they plotted the Oklahoma City
To which, columnist Kreck says: "He's got a point."
Um, no Mr. Kreck the leftist poster at CMM does NOT "got a point".
Neither McVeigh nor Nichols ever claimed that their bombing was done at the behest of their religion. The Oklahoma
On the other hand, the only reason that most Islmofascists use to justify their hate and murder is their religion. They aren't mad at any mere government, they want world domination for their extreme interpretation of their religion. And there have been thousands upon thousands who have perpetrated such bombings and polls show that millions upon millions of the bomber's fellow believers agree with those violent actions.
Here is where the left refuses to even try to understand the dangerous world in which we live. Their habit of placing all religions into a state of moral equivalence prevents them from seeing the differences between them and causes them to assume that all religions and the actions taken by adherents of them are all the same...
That fact is religion was not the driving force for McVeigh as can be seen in a TIME Magazine article:
McVeigh: I was raised Catholic...Through my military years, I sort of lost touch with the religion. I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs.
Canadian Drugs, Eh?
5/11/2007
Listen to Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe discuss importing drugs from Canada Portland , Maine
Interesting that, since Portland was one of those cities that gained notoriety a few years back for defying federal law and setting up a Canada import program that it promised would save its thousands of city employees and their dependents a bundle on drugs. Three years in, it has attracted all of 350 participants.
That was also the flame-out fate of a statewide plan by Gov. John Baldacci to empower the Penobscot Indian Nation to build a distribution center to import price-controlled Canadian drugs for some 325,000 uninsured and underinsured Mainers. The tribe in February unceremoniously closed the program (which never got its hands on Canadian drugs, but morphed into a domestic mail-order business), having attracted just 3,000 Medicaid recipients…
Rest of article at
US Health Care Saves More Lives Than Socialized Medicine
5/11/2007
A new study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden shows that the American health care system outperforms the socialized systems in Europe in getting new medicines to cancer patients. The difference saves lives, and the existing Western European systems force people to die at higher rates from the same cancers, although the Telegraph buries that lede (via QandO):
The researchers studied Australia , Canada , New Zealand , Japan , South Africa and the US
They found that the proportions of female cancer patients surviving five years beyond diagnosis in France , Spain , Germany , Italy UK
Among men the proportions still alive at five years in the same countries were 53 per cent, 50 per cent, 53 per cent and 48 per cent. Again in the UK
The Telegraph rightly focuses on the British system and its deficiencies. However, when one looks further into the article, the point about the American system finally surfaces:
Dr Nils Wilking, a clinical oncologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm
"To some extent this is determined by economic factors, but much of the variation between countries remains unexplained. In the US
The proportion of colorectal cancer patients with access to the drug Avastin was 10 times higher in the US than it was in Europe, with the UK
It's funny how the supposedly equalized treatment of people under Western socialized-medicine models holds people back from new therapies and new medicines, while the American model of market-based medicine (with significant regulation) outperforms in this regard by a factor of 10. That response allows patients to start treating their cancers earlier, but what this report misses is that the American model also allows for earlier detection, thanks to the long waits for procedures like CAT scans and the like in Britain and other socialized systems.
And yet, the Democrats this year have already begun discussing how they will bring the American system closer to nationalization...
New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
.. shows that the pre-industrial level is some 50 ppm higher than the level used by computer models that produce all future climate predictions. Completely at odds with the smoothly increasing levels found in the ice core records, Beck concludes, "Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated, exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942, the latter showing more than 400 ppm."
In a paper submitted to US Senate Committee hearings, Polish Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, a veteran mountaineer who has excavated ice from 17 glaciers on six continents, stated bluntly, "The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic [human] causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false."
Debunking the "Man-Made" Gorebal Warming Mantra Resource
ONLINE VIDEO REBUTTING AL GOREBAL-WARMING'S INCONVENIENT TRUTH: "THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE"
Parents Outraged After Elementary School Teachers Stage Fake Gunman Attack
...Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who was present, said the scenario was intended as a learning experience and only lasted five minutes.
"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.
During the last night of the school trip to Fall Creek Falls , a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville
The students were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, said 11-year-old Shay Naylor...
...A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door and pretended to be suspicious subject...
"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
Scales Elementary Principal Catherine Stephens said. "My hope is that we can learn from this, and in the end, it will have a positive result of growth for all of us."
If they were truly interested in preparing the kids for an attack, they would have encouraged them to throw books, chairs, furniture, etc, if the gunman got inside. Telling the kids to whimper quietly under a table is emotional blackmail; forcing them to wait powerlessly while death approaches is outrageous.
Government is 'criminalising middle England
14/05/2007
ENGLAND- Rank and file police leaders have criticised the Government for imposing a target-driven culture on officers which has led to "ludicrous" decisions, such as arresting a child for throwing cream buns at a bus.
The Police Federation of England and Wales said judging officers on the number of arrests, cautions and fines they achieved was causing them to "criminalise middle England", by taking action on minor behaviour which would have been dealt with by discretion and common sense a decade ago.
On the eve of its annual conference in Blackpool , the chairman of the Federation, Jan Berry, released a dossier of absurd cases.
These include:
- A
- A child in Kent who removed a slice of cucumber from a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and threw it at another youngster was arrested because the other child’s parents claimed it was an assault
- A woman in the
- The child in
- A 70-year-old
- Two
more at
Changes on Neptune Link Sun and Gorebal Warming
Geophysical Research Letters
May 14, 2007
Skeptics of manmade global warming have found further support in research linking solar output with the planet Neptune ’s brightness and temperatures on Earth.
The findings appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The authors of the article, H.B. Hammel and G.W. Lockwood from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory in Arizona , note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Observatory since 1950.
Those measurements indicate that Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980. And infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that Neptune has been warming steadily as well.
The researchers plotted on a graph the changes in visible light from Neptune over the past half-century, changes in temperatures on Earth during that period, and changes in total solar irradiance.
The results: The correlation between solar irradiance and Neptune ’s brightness was nearly perfect; so was the correlation between changes on Earth and solar output, according to a report on the research appearing on World Climate Report, a climate change blog.
“When the sun is more energetic and putting out more energy, the Earth tends to warm up, and when the sun cools down, so does the Earth,” World Climate Report notes. “The Hammel and Lockwood article reveals that the same is true out at Neptune — when the sun’s energy increases, Neptune seems to warm up and get brighter . . .
Getting Cooler - David Warren
Opposing Filters, Ill.
Blocking access to the Internet, libraries across Illinois
"We know what filters do, and we don't really see how we can even provide service knowing what filters do," Jane Schulten, an administrative librarian at the Crete Public Library told Cybercast News Service...(Yeah, they filter)
Calling them "little dictators," Smith said library boards should be held accountable by the taxpayers who fund them. "An overwhelming percentage of parents and law enforcement officials support this common-sense legislation."
"This is a denial of service to the taxpayer public for an extremist agenda that the public does not support," said Smith, arguing that filters are 95 percent effective. "I am shocked at the depths they are willing to go to maintain unfettered access to obscene and illegal material, including child pornography and bestiality."
Liberal Columnist Slams Al Gorebal-warming, the U.N. and “Greenhouse Fearmongers”
Would you expect a former writer for the Village Voice and The Nation to be harshly critical of soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his band of not-so merry manmade gorebal warming alarmists?
Neither would I.
Yet there it was in the leftwing newsletter CounterPunch, written by editor Alexander Cockburn.
Planned Parenthood Threatens To Sue Undercover Activist
May 15, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles
...Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California President Kathy Kneer criticized the undercover investigation as "manipulative," but admitted that the PPLA employee had violated the organization's policy to follow all applicable laws...
..On Monday, PPLA sent a cease-and-desist letter to Rose, warning her that "surreptitious" recordings of PPLA employees without consent violates California
..David French, an attorney with the Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, accused Planned Parenthood of "engaging in a campaign...to bully an 18-year old to distract attention from the fact that their employees were engaging in unlawful behavior."
...In 2002, an activist group called Life Dynamics ran a campaign in which a woman posing as a 13-year old impregnated by a 22-year old and called clinics operated by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. The group has compiled tapes of workers encouraging girls to lie about their age to avoid being reported as a victim.
The group claims to have collected "over 800 tape recordings that show how Planned Parenthood and NAF workers secure business from victims of statutory rape by undermining parental authority, encouraging children to lie and promising minors that their employees will ignore mandatory reporting laws."
..Life Dynamics founder Mark Crutcher told Cybercast News Service Monday that telling girls to lie about their age is standard practice for abortion clinics because "there's lots of money in this."
He said the fact that Planned Parenthood threatened to sue Rose is a sign that the organization is interested in continuing the practice rather than reforming...
(of course Planned Parenthood wouldn't object if undercover investigations and taper ecording occurred that showed people were being lied to to keep them out of abortion clinics)
American College of Pediatricians
May 14, 2007
- The American College
Research using non-embryo sources of stem cells, including amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, placenta and adult blood, fat and various organs, have yielded impressive results, the organization suggests.
"Adult stem cells are now routinely used in certain forms of cancer therapy. Over the last decade, these cells have been used to successfully treat spinal cord injuries, heart failure, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and dozens of other conditions in human trials."
The group noted further that "This has not been the case with any embryonic stem cell trial. Instead, there have been catastrophic results with these cells producing the wrong tissue, forming tumors and triggering immune rejection."
...Concluding the ACP said, "Every dollar spent on the failed and unnecessary process of embryonic stem cell research steals resources away from the established utility and potential of adult stem cell research. This is fiscally irresponsible and medically unconscionable."
David Bennett <><
posted by David Bennett | 9:53 AM
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