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GET OVER IT! WE ARE NOT ALL CREATED EQUAL Print E-mail
Written by Capt. Katie Petronio, USMC   
Wednesday, 30 January 2013

The Marine Corps Times recently published a handful of articles in regard to opening Infantry Officer Course (IOC) to females and the possibility of integrating women into the infantry community. In mid-April the Commandant has directed the ‘integration' of the first wave of female officers into IOC this summer following completion of The Basic School (TBS).

Before the Marine Corps moves forward with this concept, should we not ask the hard questions and gain opinions of combat-experienced Marines (male and female alike) as to the purpose, the impact, and the gains from such a move?

As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation's force-in-readiness or improve our national security.

This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Surprise: none of the current  committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change.

Here's what they and the DoD need to know: should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females.
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THE BREXIT AND THE TEXIT Print E-mail
Written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard   
Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Last year, Europe's fear was the Grexit - Greece's leaving the EU.  Now, the fear du jour is the Brexit - Britain's departure.

Yet British Prime Minister David Cameron's pledge for an 'in-or-out' referendum on UK membership in the European Union will be overtaken by internal events long before we reach 2017. The vote may never be necessary.

The eurozone's North-South misalignment has not been resolved. The Club Med bloc is still sliding into deeper depression. The financial crisis - never more than a symptom - has graduated into a more intractable economic, social, and therefore political crisis.

Take a moment to read Eurozone crisis: it ain't over yet by Professor Paulo Manasse from Bologna University, posted on VOX EU.

Look at the German-Italian gap below. The two economies have diverged 14% of GDP since 2006 and the split is certain to keep growing this year, next year, and the year after that:
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IT’S TIME TO STAND UP TO THE FASCIST BULLIES OF THE LEFT Print E-mail
Written by James Delingpole   
Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Who are the most unpleasant people on the internet? Obviously with so much competition, it is, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, like arguing the toss between lice and fleas. Disability rights activists would be a strong contender.  Thanks to them, money which could go to the genuinely needy is instead being hijacked by scroungers and fakes.

Yet this doesn't just apply to disability rights, of course. It applies to almost everything in the political domain. Pick any issue - the environment, education, healthcare, the economy - and time and again you'll find the agenda has been successfully hijacked by a handful of zealots who are not remotely representative of the broader public interest.

Why? Because politicians will do almost anything for a quiet life and find it much easier to buy off noisy troublemakers by capitulating to their demands, however unreasonable, than to take a principled stand.

Also, of course, it's much, much easier for a lobby group to make a powerful, emotive case for more government spending on its favorite deserving cause than it is for the government to explain why it can't afford it.

I don't know about you lot, but I've had just about enough of this apathy, ignorance, purblind denialism and culpable dishonesty.
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IN PRAISE OF THINK TANKS Print E-mail
Written by Richard Rahn   
Tuesday, 29 January 2013

A "think tank" is an organization where scholars and specialists seek to find solutions to problems and then promote their findings. Some think tanks deal with many public policy issues, and others concentrate on one or a few, such as medical care, defense, foreign policy or economic policy.

Both the number and size of think tanks has grown exponentially in the past several decades. One reason is the growth of governments, which has created a need for organizations to feed government policymakers with ideas and information -- and, more importantly, to fulfill the need for independent research to critique the many bad ideas emanating from policymakers, politicians and the media.

For instance, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Peter Wallison, a former general counsel of the U.S. Treasury, has just written a book explaining, with all the supporting evidence, how a politically inspired, false narrative about the financial crisis led to the destructive Dodd-Frank Act and what corrective action is needed.

It's: Bad History, Worse Policy: How a False Narrative About the Financial Crisis Led to the Dodd-Frank Act.
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HOW POLITICAL AND PERSONAL SERENITY IS POSSIBLE Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Joel Wade   
Friday, 01 February 2013

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

This is the famous Serenity Prayer. There are things you can control, and things you can't. If you're spending time on things you can't control, and not much time on things you can, you will become depressed and miserable. 

It's almost guaranteed. This is a recipe for helplessness, and depression is a symptom of a sense of helplessness. This is one reason why we feel so miserable when we look at the political situation. The same applies to our personal lives.

Identifying what you can and cannot control makes you much more effective, much more happy and satisfied - and successful. So let's start identifying.
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INSTANT KARMA Print E-mail
Written by To The Point News   
Friday, 01 February 2013

This news article was recently published by the Brush News-Tribune, the community newspaper of Brush, a small town in northeast Colorado.

instant_karma.png

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/25/13 Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler   
Friday, 25 January 2013

Ia orana!  That's Hello! in Tahitian (ee-ah-rana). 

Captain James Cook (1728-1779) made his first voyage to Tahiti in April 1769.  Whenever introduced to a chief, he would doff his hat, sweep it before him with a slight bow, and greet him by saying, "Your Honor."  Tahitians have been greeting each other by saying how they pronounced "your honor" ever since.

Most all of us dream at one time or another of living in a Polynesian paradise of perfect balmy weather, palm trees wafting in the breeze over soft sandy beaches, turquoise lagoons laden with fish, dramatic mountains covered with fruit-laden tropical forests - something like this, maybe...

raivavae.png

I took this on a motu or sand islet on the reef surrounding the island of Raivavae in the Austral Islands of French Polynesia.  This is remote or real Polynesia, not the tourist version.  No hotels, no restaurants, no air conditioning, no swimming pools (infinity or otherwise), no Internet, intermittent electricity, and what few modern conveniences exist from a cold Hinano beer to a liter of gas are exceedingly expensive.

Which is why there are so few tourists in this "unspoiled" idyllic island, and almost no one comes here to retire.  The islanders who live here are wonderfully friendly, Raivavae is breathtakingly beautiful, you'll never forget a visit here - but it won't take long before you want to get back to America.

The current on-going tragedy, of course, is that the America we'd want to get back to seems no longer to exist.  Reading every morning's news these days is like reading - and living in - a horror story.  When will it end?  Will we ever get our country back from the fascist thugs in Washington who have stolen it?

Two events this week suggest we may.
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IS TEXAS AMERICA’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE? Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler   
Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Papeete, Tahiti.  Yesterday (1/21), at the very moment Zero was being sworn in to his stolen second term and delivering a speech so bad even WaPo's premier liberal columnist panned it as "flat, partisan, and pedestrian," I was on a shark dive off a remote French Polynesian island.

We were 70 feet down and surrounded by a half dozen ten-foot long lemon sharks sporting impressive arrays of knife-sharp teeth.  But they were after the multitude of schools of brightly colored tropical reef fish all around us, searching for those whose abnormal swimming (sensed by electroreceptors in their head) meant easy prey.

I wanted no part of the irretrievably disgusting spectacle in Washington and was happy to be as far away and as oblivious to it as possible.  When you're diving, you are totally in the moment.  You are in a completely different universe of incomparable beauty, and while you are in it, the world of dry land and all that is happening there, does not exist.  Especially if very large sharks are swimming very close to you.

It was only when I got here today and learned of the spectacle in DC that it occurred to me Americans are surrounded by fascist sharks like Zero and his thugs.  Many of them will be easy prey.  How do we make sure we are not? 
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HILLARY ANSWERS ON BENGHAZI? Print E-mail
Written by Jack Kelly   
Thursday, 24 January 2013

"We have four dead Americans!" Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted at Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.  "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Ms. Clinton had a point, of sorts, about "at this point."  More than four months have elapsed since 9/11/2012, when Chris Stevens, our ambassador to Libya; Foreign Service Office Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed during a seven hour assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and its annex.  Wednesday (1/23) was the first time the secretary of state appeared before Congress to answer questions about what happened.

The State Department knew "in near real time" there had been no protest; knew within hours an al-Qaida affiliate claimed credit.  So why for more than a week afterward did she and other senior officials claim a video ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad was responsible, Sen. Johnson was asking when Ms. Clinton interrupted him.

Other lawmakers wanted to know why the consulate was guarded by unarmed Libyan security guards rather than by U.S. Marines, as is customary for diplomatic installations.  Why were Ambassador Stevens' pleas for more security ignored?

Ms. Clinton responded...
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DANCING AROUND THE DEBT Print E-mail
Written by Jack Kelly   
Thursday, 24 January 2013

It would be fiscally irresponsible to raise the ceiling on the national debt from $8.1 trillion to $8.9 trillion, the junior senator from Illinois said when President George W. Bush wanted to do that in 2006.

Raising the debt limit "is a sign of leadership failure," he said.  "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren."

The national debt has doubled since 2006, but Barack Obama says now it would be fiscally irresponsible NOT to raise it.  For hypocrisy, this can't be topped.  But the president isn't the only hypocrite.  Nothing has generated as much posturing and grandstanding as the all too frequent votes to raise the debt ceiling.
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THE EARTH GETTING GREENER EXPOSES CLIMATE ALARMISM AS A TOTAL FRAUD Print E-mail
Written by Matt Ridley   
Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, overdevelopment and ecosystem destruction.

This possibility was first suspected in 1985 by Charles Keeling, the scientist whose meticulous record of the content of the air atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii first alerted the world to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Mr. Keeling's famous curve showed not only a year-by-year increase in carbon dioxide levels but a season-by-season oscillation in the concentration.

The latest and most detailed satellite data, which is yet to be published but was summarized in an online lecture last July by Ranga Myneni of Boston University, confirms that the greening of the Earth has now been going on for 30 years. Between 1982 and 2011, 20.5% of the world's vegetated area got greener, while just 3% grew browner; the rest showed no change.

What explains this trend? Man-made nitrogen fertilizer causes crops to grow faster, but it is having little effect on forests. There are essentially two possibilities: climate and carbon dioxide itself. Warmer, wetter weather should cause more vegetation to grow. But even without warming, an increase in carbon dioxide should itself accelerate growth rates of plants.

CO2 is a scarce resource that plants have trouble scavenging from the air, and plants grow faster with higher levels of CO2 to inhale.
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JUDGEMENT DAY ON OBAMA’S SPENDING Print E-mail
Written by Richard Rahn   
Wednesday, 23 January 2013

The current debate about the debt vote is minor league compared to what will happen when the government literally cannot spend more than it is taking in. That time may be nearer than you think.

It is true that the U.S. government can always "print" money to pay its bills, but at some point, printing more money becomes self-defeating because the resulting increase in the government bond interest rate and required interest payment will spiral out of control. At that point, the government will be forced to operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, as any individual or business is forced to do when they can no longer get credit. Several California cities are now in this situation.

The U.S. government now receives about $200 billion a month in revenue and spends about $320 billion a month. Any responsible business or individual faced with a situation where receipts are only 60 percent of expenditures would make changes before their credit was cut off or, at the very minimum, have a plan for which bills to pay first -- but not the U.S. government.

It appears that President Obama is once again going to produce a budget that assumes very high levels of deficit spending can go on forever. It also appears that Senate Democrats will continue to not bother to pass a budget.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the ultimate spoiled child, accusing the taxpayers of engaging in child abuse by not giving him an unlimited allowance.
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WHAT IS THE REPUTATION YOU’D LIKE TO EARN WITH YOURSELF? Print E-mail
Written by Dr. Joel Wade   
Tuesday, 22 January 2013

When you get to know people, you are, in part, building a reputation with each other. "What kind of person is he?" "How does she handle a difficult situation?" "What kind of attitude does he bring to his work?" "How does she respond to confrontation or adversity?"

Over time, we learn whether a given person is honest, whether they can be relied upon, how playful they are, to what degree their actions reflect what they say. We get a sense of their style, their likes, and their dislikes.

Here is a piece that is often missing: We watch ourselves just like we watch others, and we develop a reputation with ourselves accordingly.
 
This is the essence of earned self-esteem.  Here's how to increase yours.
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"THE BITCH IS BACK" Print E-mail
Written by To The Point News   
Friday, 25 January 2013

Whoopi Goldberg had high praise yesterday (1/24) for Hillary's testimony to Congress the day before, exclaiming, "The bitch is back!"  Indeed, she certainly is...

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HALF-FULL REPORT 01/18/13 Print E-mail
Written by Jack Kelly   
Friday, 18 January 2013

This was an exceptionally busy week of spinning, posturing, grandstanding, lying, smearing and demagoguery as President Barack Obama sought to thwart Republican efforts to restrain the growth of federal spending; to impose new curbs on guns, and to win confirmation of his "in your face" Cabinet.

It began with a news conference Monday (1/14) so remarkable for mendacity, hypocrisy and churlishness even Dana Milbank of the Washington Post and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times noticed.

"The next time Mr. Obama holds a press conference, somebody should ask him to identify by name those who want to repeal Social Security, steal food from orphans and cancel science funding," said the Wall Street Journal.

Fat chance of that. "The deeply unethical relationship between the White House and the Washington press corps ensures that nary a statement of Obama's will be subjected to questioning or scrutiny, much less the mockery that attends just about anything a Republican says," said Michael Walsh.

* * *
The president used children as props for his news conference Wednesday (1/16) calling for new gun control measures. Here's more on the infantile spectacle. But, said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, it is "repugnant and cowardly" for the NRA to note his daughters have armed protection.

* * *
Nothing has generated as much posturing, grandstanding, and hypocrisy as Congress' now all too frequent votes to lift the ceiling on the national debt

* * *
Little illustrates Zero's "my way, or the highway" attitude better than his choices for his Cabinet. Jack Lew, slated to replace Turbo Tax Tim Geithner, may be the worst.

* * *
The French have intervened in Mali, where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM) has established a larger base than al-Qaeda had in Afghanistan.

With the French intervention, "the stage is set for another bitter, chaotic al-Qaida defeat," said my friend Austin Bay.  The harshness of Islamist rule will backfire, as it did in Iraq and Algeria, he thinks. But Walter Russell Mead wonders if another Dien Bien Phu looms.  Or another Afghanistan, frets the London Daily Mail.

* * *
"The shortest distance in modern politics is the one between a Republican willing to denounce his party for extremism and the set of a cable or Sunday morning talk show," says Artur Davis,
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