Clinton: "It is time we get back to where we were before the Republicans came in and messed it up again."Yo, Hillionaire. How far are you going back? Obviously, you're taking in a bigger scope than the last seven years.
A mob of black students at one of Canada’s liberal arts colleges has been caught on camera intimidating white administrators, including an Associate Vice-President, yelling, “You will give us the respect that we ask of you,” and presenting a list of segregationist demands.
Brenda Whiteside, Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs at the University of Guelph, was trapped in her office by a gang of protesters who whooped and clicked their fingers as two of their number accused the college of being “rooted in anti-black racism.”
The footage, which appeared briefly on LiveLeak.com before being taken down, has not previously been published. It shows a large group of black students surrounding two white college administrators while their leaders jab their fingers and shout at Whiteside, demanding more black support and academic staff.
The University of Guelph’s Assistant Vice President for Human Rights and Equity, Jane Ngobia, is a black woman.
The Guelph video shows how odd the language of campus protest has become. “How many racialised [sic] students do we have?” asks one protester. “White students can go in and talk to a white counsellor. What about us?” The first adds: “Are you even around racialised people?”
Also disturbing are the plainly segregationist demands the students make. They appear to tell administrators they cannot be represented or “validated” by white staff and that only black staff can cater to their needs. “We’re not being acknowledged. And that’s fundamentally problematic,” says a boy who identifies himself as a campus athlete.
The athlete says he has, “Never left my campus and not thought [racial abuse] is gonna happen. And for me to just implicitly feel that’s comfortable is problematic.” The word “problematic” is echoed around the protesting students as a sort of mantra.
Another student agrees that she is “scared to go out.” The University of Guelph is one of Canada’s most liberal educational institutions.Well, U of G, there's your problem right there: having an Assistant Vice President for Human Rights and Equity. It just indulges these goose-steppers' belief that they have some kind of legitimate gripe. You should have foreseen that it would come back to bite you.
Of course, for any meaningful addressing of this. we will have to wait until, hopefully, post-America is fundamentally un-transformed into the United States of America, with a president who understands the primacy of an alliance with Israel, rather than a dictator who hates Israel and thinks it is somehow visionary to appease Iran.“Paramilitary forces from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control,” the Associated Press reports.…thousands of members of the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday’s exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain….Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard’s aerospace division, said his force deployed Shahed-129, or Witness-129, drones during the war games. The drone, unveiled in 2013, has a range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles), a 24-hour nonstop flight capability and can carry eight bombs or missiles.AP then informs us that it’s not really anything to worry about:Even so, the exercise appeared to be largely for show. Iranian commanders have not said how they would be able to deploy large numbers of forces against Israel, located 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away, or overcome Israel’s powerful and technologically advanced military.Actually, there are ways that they can do that. One is to use the immense windfall they stand to reap from last July’s nuclear deal, in the form of lifted sanctions and boosted trade and oil sales, to build up their capabilities. Another is to create a land bridge westward to the Mediterranean, something they’re striving to do at all times.And another is to rely on the Western preoccupation with the Islamic State, and increasing tendency to treat Iran as a strategic ally and stabilizing force, to keep pursuing their plans relatively untrammeled.Ehud Yaari, a veteran Israeli Middle East analyst, takes Iran’s aims seriously enough that he devoted a long analysis to them called “How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel.” “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” Yaari notes, “has been committed for the past 36 years to a doctrine aimed at wiping Israel off the map. Statements to this effect still pour out of Tehran almost daily.”For one thing,Iran is relying on its rapidly growing arsenal of long-range missiles…. [T]he leaders have long emphasized to Iranian military commanders the need to develop missiles that can reach Israel in particular. This began with [Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s order for missiles with a 1,000-kilometer range that, if launched from Iran’s western border, could hit Israel. Still later, Khamenei instructed his commanders to acquire missiles with a 2,000-kilometer range, allowing for a successful hit on Israel from most of Iran’s territory. And later still Khamenei personally ordered that the accuracy of the missiles should be dramatically improved.What about Iranian forces reaching Israel itself, as in the Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Aqsa drill? Yaari acknowledges that, apart from its missile arsenal, at present Iran’s air force, navy, and ground forces have only limited capabilities. But “all this may change if Iran decides to allocate resources, derived from [the] nuclear deal, to a major effort to project military power beyond its borders.”
For how determined they are, consult their latest video taunting and threatening the West."Every time a woman escapes we learn more about how they are using Yazidi women," he said.Domle said the women, especially those who end up in ISIS strongholds in Syria, tend to be traded or sold three or four times as fighters move to different locations and leave the women behind."Some are sold for weapons, or for just $10, or 10 cigarettes," Domle said.
And consider the complete failure of previous pow-wows of this sort, going back to Kyoto.A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal measures the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit.Governments have publicly outlined their post-2020 climate commitments in the build-up to the December’s meeting. These promises are known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).Dr. Lomborg’s research reveals:
- The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
- Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.
- US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.
- EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100.
- China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
- The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.
It is indeed very late in the day.If we are honest we must face a very dark and sobering fact: The outcome of this war is far from certain. We are proud of being a nation of can-do optimists, but we are also a nation in denial about a culture in a tailspin.
- The real enemy is not “over there” in Syria and Iraq, or in Paris or London. The enemy is already here in our homeland, and I am not speaking of terrorist cells, Syrian refugees, or radical imams. I am speaking of the accelerating rot in our own culture.
Our secular culture is adrift in a sea of relativism, escapism, and self-indulgent inanities, with our media and entertainment elites leading the parade.
- “Where were you, Daddy, when we were waging the war on terror?” Oh, well, I was watching reality TV. On TV, the good guys always defeat the bad guys. And I can always change the channel.
In this besotted condition, we are ill equipped to fight an enemy full of passion, idealism and self-confidence. Islamist suicide bombers believe they are dying for a higher purpose, the greater glory of Allah. What, exactly, are our ideals? The freedom to enjoy pornography and polygamy and 24-hour pizza delivery?
This move seems to be turning into a trend rather than a blip. The last CBS poll from Fridayalready had Cruz moving into a very solid second place behind Trump (30 to 21) and the Q-Poll numbers only solidify and continue the same arc.Recent events in Paris and Syria seem to be driving the election cycle for now and that may explain a lot of what we’re seeing. First, it’s worth noting that while Trump is down a bit from two weeks ago, it’s not by much. Almost all of Cruz’s surge seems to have come at the expense of Ben Carson. Looking at national opinion polls regarding America’s view of Barack Obama’s dismal handling of ISIS and national concerns over Syrian refugees, should we really be surprised at who is doing well in Iowa? Trump and Cruz have been two of the strongest advocates for American strength in this crisis who have managed to do so without shooting themselves in the foot constantly. (Sorry, Dr. Carson.)I’ve been waiting quite a while to see a big move by Cruz. His performances at each and every debate have been extremely solid and he’s looked (at least to me) like one of the most consistently presidential figures on the stage. Still, that didn’t seem to resonate with the public as all the attention remained focused on the Trump vs Carson battle. It may have taken a true moment of clear and present danger to the nation for the candidates to get a chance to strut their stuff and lay out their vision for protecting the nation. Cruz seems to have finally caught the attention of at least the Iowa voters in that regard.
Cruz is a lying POS.Pro-amnesty.pro-TPP-pro H1B visas.Typical lying politico who talks a great game but is still owned by the donor cronies.Will most definitely stay home next November if he is the nominee because any RINO is a threat to this country’s survival just as uch as a progressive socialist pig.Trump 2016 or nobody!Yes, indeed, now there's someone who knows how to take the full measure of his fellow human being.
The University of Ottawa in Canada has abruptly canceled the free yoga classes it has offered to students since 2008 over concerns that they amounted to “cultural appropriation” and were connected to “cultural genocide.” Jennifer Scharf, the practitioner who had offered the classes, told the Independent that she had suddenly received a message telling her that they’d be suspended because “there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint.” The decision to cancel the classes was made by the Ottawa Student Federation, the university’s independent student body. According to the Ottawa Sun, staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities sent out an e-mail claiming that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students . . . there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.”
According to the centre, many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy . . . we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga.”
A group of fifteen Princeton students occupied the office of the university president last week with a list of “demands.” Their word, not mine. They wanted racial/cultural indoctrination—sorry, re-education—courses for all college staff and faculty. They wanted “a cultural space on campus dedicated specifically to Black students.” (A commenter at the Daily Princetonianwondered if this space would come with its own water fountain.) But most of all, they wanted Woodrow Wilson expunged from the school.[snip]
Care to guess how long this group of fifteen students had to protest before the school’s current president agreed to do his best to disappear Wilson? Twenty hours.
Here’s what Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber acceded to: He agreed to push to get rid of the Wilson mural and to have the school’s trustees take up the question of scrubbing Wilson’s name from the public policy school and the residential college.
Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”
Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pentagon official said the email warnings were "not well received" by the analysts.
Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.
The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.
Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product -- during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept "kicking the can down the road." The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference.Post-America - nice and softened up for the incineration of its cities.
Tax dollars for which you busted your tail end are funding this insanity.The Environmental Protection Agency has given $30,000 to a Unitarian church that preaches about “white privilege” and says that America is “structurally racist.”The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, Florida, received an “environmental justice grant” for education and training about sea level rise and climate change, the agency announcedWednesday.The grant is to provide “Replicable and Scalable Community Climate Resilience Building in Two Communities in Palm Beach County, Florida.”“EPA’s environmental justice grants help communities across the country understand and address exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks at the local level,” said Matthew Tejada, the director of the Office of Environmental Justice.“Addressing the impacts of climate change is a priority for EPA and the projects supported by this year’s grants will help communities prepare for and build resilience to localized climate impacts.”The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton is a “liberal religious community” that currently offers classes on “Being White,” and holds town meetings on Black Lives Matter. The church supports same-sex marriage and has a climate-change working group.“I’d lived through the voter’s rights violence and marches of the late 1960s, but at that time I was wrapped in a cocoon of white privilege so I was not much affected by all of what went on,” wrote Carolyn Brown, a member of the church’s “Healing Justice” program, in its latest monthly newsletter.“Blacks in our society lead diminished lives due to structural racism, an insidious disease that started eons ay, gives privilege to those of us who are ‘white.’ It’s just the way it is, the standard we have come to accept as normal. Sadly, many blacks have come to accept that standard as well.”Brown said the church’s leader, the Rev. Ms. Harris Riordan, recently led the congregation on a “privilege walk.”“In the first 2nd Hour Class On Being White led by Rev. Harris we did a privilege walk … and learned visually where we stand in terms of privilege,” she said. “Most of us fit squarely in the middle group: Neither Highly Privileged (the million-billionaires of society) nor among the impoverished locked out of society folk.”“Clearly fitting into the privileged majority,” Brown said.Riordan recently preached a sermon called “On Being White,” where she said she wants to become a “White Ally” to combat the “systemic, structural racism” of America.“It has been and still is a system holding white supremacy in place,” she said.“Sometimes when I have soul work to do, my body wants in,” Harris said. “I need to do something, to make something. I didn’t fold paper into a 1000 cranes, this time it was needle and thread. I am making a badge, that when it is done, I will wear on my robe.”
A few years back, Obama’s transportation secretary told me that America would be transformed by an explosion of people cycling to work and to school. “Like China?” I wondered, not facetiously. Well, in 1980, 0.05 percent of Americans biked to work. Today, 0.06 percent of people do, according to Pew—though, for some unfathomable reason, there has been an explosion of intrusive and impractical bike lanes across the country.
So it’s not surprising that the only way to pretend to make a difference is by government coercion. You have to laugh when Pew tells us that one of “the most dramatic shifts in recent years has been the rapid decline of the once-ubiquitous incandescent light bulb.” Well, gee, how do you think that happened? Since the regulatory phase-out of standard incandescent bulbs began in 2012, the residential light-bulb market has cratered only because the state believes it should dictate what innocuous household items Americans can buy and use in their own homes.Expect more such tyranny when the overlords get home from this month's Paris confab.
The other big, inspiring advance in environmentalism has been recycling, which is probably useless, but still compelled by many municipalities.
On Thursday evening, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro crashed the fascist safe space known as University of Missouri and delivered an incendiary set of remarks titled, "The Truth is a Microaggression."Calling the concept of white privilege "bullshit" and pointing out to students that "facts don't care about your feelings," Shapiro connected the race hoaxes taking place on campus at Mizzou and around the country to past frauds-used-to-incite-violence from "St. Michael of the Gentle Giantedness" to "St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie." According to Shapiro, the spirit of the KKK is, in fact, alive at Mizzou - alive in the spirit of Concerned Student 1950 and the other "Pantywaist Fascists" on campus who demand an end to any dissent and the creation of racially segregated "safe spaces." Such spaces, quipped Shapiro, "are both separate, and equal!"
And contrast it to Senator Dianne Feinstein's response to a question on Face the nation this morning about a recent assertion by Secretary Global-Test that the current post-American approach to the ISIS threat is sufficient. She says it is most definitely not sufficient and that "we don't have years."Trying to reassure a nation on edge, President Barack Obama said Sunday the Islamic State group "cannot strike a mortal blow" against the U.S., and he warned that overreacting to the Paris attacks would play into extremists' hands. "We will destroy this terrorist organization," he vowed.Ending a trip to Asia, Obama implored Americans not to let the specter of terror cause them to compromise their values or change the way they live."We do not succumb to fear," he said. "The most powerful tool we have to fight ISIL is to say that we're not afraid, to not elevate them, to somehow buy into their fantasy that they're doing something important," Obama said, using an acronym for the terrorist organization.Since IS militants killed 130 in France nine days ago, Obama's strategy has come under repeated questioning. He dismissed the group's global prowess of IS and said, "They're a bunch of killers with good social media."Rejecting the notion of an existential threat, Obama said IS "can't beat us on the battlefield, so they try to terrorize us into being afraid."
The everything-is-offensive brand of campus activism has struck a new low: Students at the University of Minnesota killed a proposed moment of silence for 9/11 victims due to concerns—insulting, childish concerns—that Muslim students would be offended.Has it truly come to this? Is feelings-protection now such an overriding goal that completely unreasonable fears win out, even if they have no basis in reality? Can we not even have a single moment to recognize legitimate victims of terrorism without worrying that someone will feel marginalized on campus?Theo Menon, a Minnesota Student Association representative and member of the College Republicans, realized that the university wasn’t doing anything to memorialize 9/11; on Oct. 6, he introduced an MSA proposal to do just that. The very short resolution asked the university to institute a “moment of recognition” during the mornings of all future September 11ths.
The resolution proved weirdly controversial. According to The Minnesota Republic:
At-large MSA representative and Director of Diversity and Inclusion David Algadi voiced severe criticism of the resolution. He also made sure to emphasize 9/11’s status as a national tragedy in his response.
“The passing of this resolution might make a space that is unsafe for students on campus even more unsafe,” said Algadi. “Islamophobia and racism fueled through that are alive and well.”
To be clear, the resolution did not refer to Islam. It did not impugn Muslim students, or other Muslims. It did not require anyone to contemplate the fact that the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were Muslims. It said nothing about whether Islam itself is to blame for global terrorism. It merely stated that 9/11 has had a lasting effect on many students, and ought to be reflected upon for a single moment, once a year.
According to Social Justice Internet, it’s totally fine to enjoy foods from other cultures — as long as you don’t call the food “authentic,” act like it’s out of the ordinary, or forget to get upset about Islamophobia every time you eat hummus. Yep. According to “The Feminist Guide to Being a Foodie Without Being Culturally Appropriative,” it’s pretty damned hard for you to eat anything but a cheeseburger without its author, Rachel Kuo, thinking you’re being offensive. Have you ever gone to another country and tried an “authentic” version of that country’s cuisine? If you said yes, you’re already a racist. According to Kuo, the word “authentic” should never be used when discussing another culture’s food because “seeking ‘authenticity’ fetishizes the sustenance of another culture.” “The idea of the “authentic” food experience is separated from reality,” Kuo writes. “It also freezes a culture in a particular place in time.”And at the University of Missouri, the College Republicans circulated a petition to keep the campus statue of Thomas Jefferson, the removal of which the jackboots of that student body had petitioned for.
Tweets about her being an Uncle Tom and having Stockholm Syndrome.When the race activists on campus saw that one of the College Republicans, Jasmine Wells, happened to be a woman of color, they began to deluge her with hate via social media.The intolerant leftists did the very thing they claim to be fighting against.
They attacked Jasmine with racist taunts simply because they disagree with her and she is conservative.
Are the people who cooked this up in reaction mode, heading off at the pass the inevitable storming of corporate culture by mobs now destroying the post-American university, or have those ate up with this Kool-Aid already been hired into the corporate world?In an email to employees, Intel CIO manager Andy Robbins said:We are on track with our diversity hiring this year, and making good progress against our progression and retention goals. These are very encouraging results and we need to build on them by creating a fully inclusive work environment where each one of us can be at our best.To build on this ‘success’, Robbins called on all employees to sign up to diversity classes:Some of you might already be familiar with the MicroInequities™ training offering that was first rolled out about ten years ago at Intel. This training will help inform, educate and inspire all of us to role model behaviors that make us all feel a strong sense of connection and belonging within the IT organization.My ask of you is to take this training before the end of 2016 and join your peers in creating our best possible work environment. Classes are available now and will be supplemented with IT Intact training classes in 2016. In addition to MicroInequities™, Global Leadership and Learning (GLL) will be launching a new program called GROW that provides complimentary skills. Expect to see more information about GROW in early December.Readers will no doubt want to know what “MicroInequities™” training is. A seminar document describes them as “hidden barriers to success; the subtle, usually subconscious messages we all send that devalue, discourage and ultimately impair performance in the workplace.”The document also claims that “we send between 2,000 and 4,000 positive and negative micromessages each day” and that they “have a powerful influence on driving the behavior of all those with whom we interact.”
President Obama's terrible Iran deal -- opposed by a bipartisan majority in Congress and the electorate -- is off to quite a start. Over the last two-plus months, the regime has imposed a sham conviction upon a Washington Post journalist, detained another American citizen, released five top-level Al Qaeda prisoners, and test fired a long-range ballistic missile in violation of international law -- including the new agreement. Fortunately for Tehran, the Obama administration long ago severed nuclear pact talks from any Western concerns about Iran's human rights abuses and material support for terrorism, with Sec. Kerry even asserting that breaches of the deal's arms embargo- and missile program-related clauses would not constitute an actionable contravention of the overall agreement.But more to the point, it's growing rather than reducing its uranium stockpile:
The machines they've temporarily taken offline were already inactive, and their equipment is being temporarily disabled and mothballed, not permanently dismantled.Which one of our Islamic enemies will do us in first?
UnitedHealth Group, the largest insurance company in the U.S., on Thursday slashed its earnings outlook, citing new problems related to Obamacare, and told investors it may exit the program's exchanges."In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated," Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, said in a press release.The release added that, "UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017."
As we know, in a truly free-market scenario, the only kind of health insurance that anyone would need would be for catastrophic care. The individual consumer would budget for anything else. Competition would keep medications, therapies, routine office visits, maintenance-type procedures - and the insurance itself - affordable.as The New York Times reported this weekend, even the words “affordable” and “care” have turned out to be untrue as well. The sharp rise in premiums has garnered the most headlines in the first three open-enrollment seasons of Obamacare, but equally if not more pernicious has been the increase in deductibles. As Eric Pianin explained for The Fiscal Times on Monday, deductibles have increased an average of 11 percent on Bronze level plans for 2016, intended to be the most affordable of all options, and now average over $5700. For Silver level, deductibles rose 6 percent and now average over $3100.Consumers have to pay both the premium and then thousands of dollars for care out of their own pocket before insurance takes effect.When the media focused on skyrocketing premiums (rightly so, considering the large serial increases for health insurance on the individual exchanges since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act) its advocates defended the system by pointing out that many on the exchanges qualified for subsidies to absorb the costs. For instance, Obama himself promised, “Most Americans will find an option that costs less than $75 a month,” and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell claimed that 80 percent of Americans would pay no more than $100 in premiums after the subsidies.Those claims may be true, but those subsidies don’t just fall out of the trees; they come from higher taxes on providers and manufacturers, and eventually out of the pockets of consumers, as do all business taxes. However, that defense doesn’t work on deductibles, which insurance companies were forced to raise when the state and federal governments tried to squeeze premium increases for the exploding demand down to a dull roar.
Consumers used to have an option for that kind of health insurance – catastrophic coverage, used to indemnify against unforeseen major health events. Those policies featured low premiums and left routine care for consumers to negotiate directly with providers on a cash basis. Combined with health-savings accounts (HSAs), those plans offered a rational approach to balancing health and economic requirements, especially for younger consumers who rarely need more than one or two clinic visits a year, which would cost far less than either comprehensive-coverage premiums or deductibles even in the pre-ACA era.Instead of “affordable care” promised by President Obama and Democrats, consumers have instead discovered they have effectively been forced to pay for catastrophic health insurance at comprehensive-plan prices. They have become victims of a bait-and-switch scheme that the government would vigorously prosecute – if it wasn’t masterminding the scheme itself. The consumers interviewed by Robert Pear in The New York Times figured out that they’ve been had.
“Basically I was paying for insurance I could not afford to use,” said one Texas man who decided to drop his coverage. Another 60-year-old New Jersey man told Pear, “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it,” thanks to a $3,000 deductible on top of his premiums. One woman told Pear that she’d be better off saving the money from her premiums as a form of self-insurance against catastrophe – since Obamacare no longer allows for low-premium catastrophic coverage in most cases.
I went to the eHealthInsurance commercial website and was able to get an account set up there. (Bear with me, we're getting to the punchline.) I looked for the least expensive, not to say cheapest, plan I could get. Here's a screen capture of the associated terms:The actual premium: $468.33. But look at the terms: a $5000 deductible. Co-pay of 30 percent, but office visits are subject to that deductible, so you don't get the 70 percent discount until you've used up that five grand.Of course, under the ACA, I get some things for "free" -- preventive care, like basic checkups (but not the lab work); and I get free GYN care and pediatric dentistry, so if I ever need to see a gynecologist for family planning, or have any pediatric dentistry needs as a 60-year-old single guy, I'm set.
Look further in the terms, and it turns out that drugs are covered, but subject to the deductible. Diabetic care supplies are covered, but only subject to the deductible.
Bottom line: this plan, for $468 a month, pays for an annual checkup but no labs, vaccinations on the approved list, which includes a flu shot but not the shingles or pneumonia vaccinations I could use now, and pretty much nothing else until I've gone out of pocket $5000. The maximum out of pocket is then $6500, so were I to get hit by a truck or have a heart attack, then hospitalization would be covered.
In other words, it's a catastrophic care plan.
Founded in 1946 in a quiet town about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, Claremont McKenna College set out to make sense of a world shattered by depression, war and totalitarianism. The first classes consisted almost entirely of demobilized GIs from World War II, who found familiar the Quonset hut classrooms then in use. The school focused its curriculum on politics and economics, with a healthy skepticism about the latest New Deal-style nostrums and a high regard for the lessons of America’s constitutional experience.
Claremont McKenna never set out to be a true-blue conservative school. But it insisted that students hear conservative as well as liberal arguments, and its faculty eventually included some of the best students of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan and Leo Strauss. Their visibility, and the college’s promise to provide a genuine diversity, a diversity of reasonable ideas, meant that the college soon acquired a conservative reputation.
As the faculty expanded, however, it grew more hostile to the college’s original mission. The past two presidents encouraged the place to keep up with the spirit of the times. Now the examples of the University of Missouri and Yale have proved inspirational. Mizzou taught administrators that if they want to keep their jobs, they need to grovel early and often. Yale showed undergraduates that no matter how prestigious the college, the same rules applied, and that unloading F-bombs on professors, an act of incivility that once would have merited expulsion, is a trump card.
Unlike the hypothetical Halloween costumes that prompted the imbroglio at Yale, the dress-up that fanned the troubles at CMC actually happened. Two young women donned sombreros, ponchos and fake mustaches. A photo went up on someone’s Facebook page. Add this to a simmering controversy: After an aggrieved Mexican-American student complained that she felt out of place on campus, the dean of students wrote a poorly worded email pledging that the college was “working on how we can better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold.”
On Nov. 10, Hiram Chodosh, CMC’s president, electrified the campus with an email saying he felt “very upset” about the Halloween-costume calamity. Remarkably, he called for a “sit-in in my office” to discuss things—perhaps the first time, as noted by historian Steven Hayward, that an administration ever called a sit-in to denounce itself. About 40 students showed up (of more than 1,200 in the student body). At 1:54 a.m. they emailed around a “Call to Action” with a list of demands and complaints of the students’ “feeling a strong pressure to assimilate and an inability to fully express their racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, and religious identity.”
That afternoon, President Chodosh replied with his own memo, announcing steps to satisfy the protesters, including two additional administrative positions on “diversity and inclusion”; a safe space to support new programming on the “campus climate”; “pro-active measures” to increase diversity in faculty hiring; and a “day of dialogue” in the spring, in preparation for which the administration “will provide in-depth facilitator training to faculty and staff in how to manage difficult conversations.” If not a complete embrace of the students’ demands, it came close.
Whatever the wisdom of his concessions, there was no disputing their efficiency. In 24 hours he agreed to measures that his administration had been discussing with the same students, it emerged, for seven months. Within 48 hours, the dean of students had resigned and a rump session of the faculty had issued its own statement calling for “diversity training for faculty.”I'm familiar with the argument that one can go online to get degrees in fields such as industrial design, information technology, and an array of health-care specialties.
Officials familiar with the bureau’s preparations, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said Director James Comey has put a brave public face on the bureau’s fight against ISIS that masks significant tensions behind the scenes with the Obama administration.Now, peruse your short-term memory files for that presser the Most Equal Comrade gave in Turkey a couple of days ago - his petulant attitude, his refusal to change a thing he's doing with regard to either ISIS in Syria or the Syrian refuge's he's bringing to post-America.
Bureau officials are deeply worried they don’t have enough resources to track a growing number of radicalized Americans inspired by the Islamic State, with more possibly entering as President Obama opens the borders to thousands of Syrian refugees.
Those fears are also shared in Congress, where support is building for a measure by House Speaker Paul Ryan to temporarily halt any new refugees from entering the country.
Rep. Blake Farenthold, Texas Republican and a member of both of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees, told a Washington Times radio show Tuesday that the U.S. government does not have the resources to screen a new wave of Syrian refugees for terror ties as the administration has promised.
“They’re basically lying to you saying, ‘oh we’ve got this vetting process to make sure that their safe.’ But you had the FBI director testify before Congress, under oath saying that if they have no information on someone they have nothing to vet them against,” Mr. Farenthold said on the “Capitol Hill Show” with Tim Constantine.
Students studying at the Dartmouth University library were interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who reportedly shouted, harassed and hurled profanities at white students.The Dartmouth Review student newspaper slammed the protesters for their “tactics, tone and words” used to stigmatize their own classmates.
The paper describes the so-called protest that ended up in the library:
Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong. Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. Not content to merely demonstrate there for the night, the band descended from their high-water mark to march into Baker-Berry Library.“F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” “F*** you and your comfort!” “F*** you, you racist s***!”[…]Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression”: “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators self-consciously overstepped every boundary, opening the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way.Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down. “Stand the f*** up!” “You filthy racist white piece of s***!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white b****!” in her face.
n a post on The Tab website, Charlie Lundquist claimed one protester made a girl cry and then shouted at her, “f*** your white tears!”The full flowering of the FHer vision.
