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L i k e U s ! ! !

HOPE FOR IRAN


Shiraz, Iran.  "Where are you from?" the Iranian man asked me.

With a big smile, I happily answered, "America."  He responded with a smile of his own.  "Ah, America... America Number One!"

He hooked his two index fingers together.  "American people, Iranian people, good... friends."  He unhooked his fingers and waved his hand in a gesture of contempt.  "Governments, no good."  We both belly-laughed.

I and my friends with me repeatedly had the same experience, whether in Tehran, Sari, Mashad, Yazd, Isfahan, Shiraz or Tabriz.  We lost count of the people - men and women - who approached us to ask where we were from, and upon being told we were Americans, without exception they would react with surprise, then a beaming smile and say "Welcome."

We never once received a negative reaction or a frown.  Collectively we've had encounters with hundreds of people over the past twelve days with people all over Iran who spoke some English, some well, some just a few words, and the one thing they wanted us to know was the abyss of difference between them - the people of Iran - and their government.

The mullahs who ran their government and preached hate for America did not speak for them.  One lady covered in a black hejab tightly grasped the hand of one of the women among us to plead, "Please tell your friends in America that we Iranians are not their enemy."

As one shopkeeper in Isfahan's bazaar told us, "What I want is for more Americans to come to Iran, and for all the mullahs to leave." Here's how to do it -- and yes, there are my pictures.

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THE LAW THAT CAN PUT OBAMA IN JAIL


On May 12, the Washington Times revealed the latest impeachable outrage by President Barack Hussein Obama. In 2013, ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) released 36,000 criminal illegal aliens from custody, putting them back on American streets instead of deporting them.

The 36,000 illegals had more than 87,000 criminal convictions between them, many for murder, assault, drunk driving and the like. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) calls this "the worst jailbreak in American history," and obviously impeachable as it was "sanctioned by the president."

Yet it is merely the latest in what would have been in pre-Obama America an unimaginably long list of impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors" by the current Oval Office occupant.  They are the focus of Andy McCarthy's book, to be released next month, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment.

The case can be made, of course, but there is a much faster and easier way to eject Zero from office.  It is the law that can put him in jail.

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SLEEP FOR YOUR LIFE


Try to live a less stressful life, and you will sleep better.  Be willing to lose some sleep once in awhile; it's not a life-threatening problem, and if your mind keeps racing it is probably telling you to slow down.  --- Ernest Callenbach, from Living Cheaply with Style

Last week I lost a friend and a teammate. We played together in college, and more recently at the Masters level this summer. He had been having severe problems sleeping well for nearly a year, and it was hurting him badly. Finally he came to the point where he couldn't take it anymore, and he took his own life.

He was a good man, a monster of a water polo player, and a well-loved husband and father. I don't know what kind of help he had for this. I didn't have any idea what he was going through until after it was too late. Unfortunately he didn't feel that he had any options left.

I'm writing this week's column in his honor, and in the hopes that maybe what I say here might save somebody else the kind of torment he went through - and the kind of grief and agony his family will be going through for a long, long time to come.

There are some nutritional things that I'm sure somebody could suggest here in the forum (or see the note by Jack below), but that is not my expertise. If you're not sleeping well, here are some things that you can do behaviorally that can help:

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SHAME, STAGNATION, AND RELAPSE


Emotions like anger, fear, and grief serve a function. Shame, too, serves a function. When we do something that violates our own values, we feel shame. Shame is a particularly excruciating emotion, and it lets us know that whatever it is that we did that we’re ashamed of is something that we never, ever want to do again.

But once the event that causes us to feel a particular emotion has passed, and we have changed our behavior to cope with the situation effectively, it’s important to let that feeling dissipate. Shame is no different.

To actively, purposefully swim around in negative feelings is more than an indulgence, or a bad habit; it can actually be dangerous. With shame, this has been shown to lead to a greater likelihood of repeating the shameful behavior itself.

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AN INCIDENT OF WHICH YOU SHOULD BE AWARE


Mr. Kevin W. Toomy
President and Chief Operating Officer
Ruth's Chris Steak House

Re:  An incident of which you should be aware.
 
Dear Mr. Toomy,

As you are reading this, so are tens of thousands of people on the Internet.

This past Monday evening, May 10th, with my wife at a dinner business meeting I decided to treat myself to a steak at Ruth's Chris - which I consider the best steak in America this side of Peter Luger's in Brooklyn.

I arrived at the Ruth's Chris in Tyson's Corner, Virginia (8521 Leesburg Pike), a little after nine.  My server was a very nice and competent lady named Shannon.  As it was late, the place was fairly empty:  two fellows in a booth across from me, a quartet at a table to my left, another group to my right, and a third group that I could hear but not see.

Shannon took my order and soon afterwards, both the group on my right and left departed.  Only the group that I couldn't see (plus the two fellows in the booth) were left and now that the other folks had gone, I noticed how loud they were.  Really loud.  As I listened, the language they were speaking was unmistakable.  It was Arabic.

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HOW EVIL IS IRAN? HOW EVIL IS IT TO IGNORE THE EVIL?


By now, most people know that the Iranian regime treats its dissidents with unrestrained barbarity.  Even the leading dead tree media have reported anecdotally on the torture of prisoners and the bashing, beating, axing and stabbing of protestors in the streets of the major cities. 

The rape of prisoners, for example, is a longstanding practice in the Islamic Republic, of women, men, and boys.

The rape of virgin women is justified by a deranged appeal to sharia law, according to which virgins will go to heaven.  Ergo, according to the warped logic of the torturers, it is necessary to ensure that women guilty of capital offenses not be virgins, so that they will go elsewhere in the afterlife.

The Western world, in the face of these outrages, maintains near-total silence.  Well, except when they choose to pretend that things are not what they clearly are.  Such as our Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton.

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EVERNOTE


Have you heard of this little applet called Evernote? It is a great little utility that can store your places of interest, images and information  on any platform or device. It also makes it accessible plus searchable at anytime from anywhere.

For instance, you find yourself at an airport parking lot and you will be gone for several weeks.  Just take your cell phone and snap an image of your parking spot with row etc.   Perhaps you are at an unusual event and want to record information about the gathering - just record it and send it to Evernote.  Business cards, wine labels, to do lists and many other possibilities are at your fingertips.

The slickest thing about Evernote is that it searches text within images  So if you have three dozen business cards imaged on the site, you can search through them for your targeted info.  Did I mention that it's free?

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WARS ON THE WAY


While attention is fixated on Iraq and Afghanistan, the possibility of a number of other wars clearly emerged in the past few days, three in particular.

Starting January 30, a total of five undersea telecom cables have been mysteriously cut in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East area.  This is no accident, comrades.  Someone has been slicing them.  Someone with submarines to do the slicing.  Who could that be?  And what would be their target?

That's a prelude to war in the Middle East.  How about a war in Europe?  One being promoted by Condi Rice and our State Department in support of Moslem narco-terrorists taking over a Christian country?

That would be a region of Serbia called Kosovo.

Close to home is a third war on the horizon, between Venezuela and Colombia.

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AOL AND GOOGLE: MORE PRIVACY PROBLEMS


So, it finally comes out: There's a method to the madness of Google's super-generosity in supplying users with mega-gigabytes of free storage space for e-mail, photos, and even uploads and downloads.

Why preserve users' search data not as an aggregate but as information derived from user accounts?

The latest Internet scandal caught major search engine AOL committing a serious (from users' point of view) gaffe when it inadvertently released information from about 19 million search requests made by more than 658,000 AOL subscribers during the three months ended in May.


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Chapter Six: DOÑA MARINA

“My third set of masters,” Malinali thought to herself. These people, these “Spaniards” were different from any others she had known or even imagined. They seemed to her to almost be not of this earth. Perhaps they were from the stars, she thought.

“Are you afraid of them, Little Miss Dry Grass?” she asked herself, summoning her courage, her sense of humor, and the memory of her father all at once. Yes, a part of her was afraid, of course. Who wouldn’t be? Then she heard her father’s counsel: “What reason do you have to be afraid? Have these strangers shown themselves to be cruel and unmerciful, or kind and forgiving? They are impossibly fierce in battle, yet impossibly generous in victory. Use your intelligence, learn how to gain the respect of these Spaniards. Never forget, Malinali, you are a still a Queen! Never show any fear!”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the words of the stranger who spoke Mayan. He addressed them all assembled on the floor of this great floating home.


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Replies from Dr. Jack

John King writes:

I loved Michael Crichton's article, as I do all your articles, on the environment. Would it be possible to obtain some references for some of his statements, e.g. DDT is not carcinogenic, etc?

Thanks. Keep up the good work.

John --

The definitive research studying a possible connection between DDT exposure and women’s breast cancer was conducted by Harvard University in the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study of 121,700 women in 11 states. After extensive analysis, the researchers found that women with high levels of DDT and its metabolite DDE were not at higher risk than women with the lowest levels. The findings were reported in the October 30, 1997 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine...

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LIONS OF LIBERTY


People are more free and prosperous as a result of the work of Gary Becker, John Blundell, Leonard Liggio, Gordon Tullock and Henry Manne, all of whom passed away during the last eight months.

Henry Manne, dean emeritus of the George Mason University Law School, and one of the founders of the field of law and economics, died this past Saturday (1/17), at age 86.

Most lawyers know little about economics, and as a result, many judges make unnecessarily harmful decisions. Dr. Manne, who was both a lawyer and an economist, had been influenced by the work of Ronald Coase and Aaron Director (who had been professors of his at the University of Chicago Law School) and by economists Milton Friedman, Armen Alchian and others.

Henry Manne's impact will remain for generations, not only from his own writings, but from the influence he had on his students and others that he mentored (including yours truly), and the fact that courses in law and economics are now taught in many law schools.

In May 2014, one of the true economic giants, Gary Becker, at age 83 left us.

Becker had made important contributions to our understanding of the motivations for discrimination, crime and drug addiction. He was always a pleasure to be with because of his many original insights into human behavior.  Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, his mentor Milton Friedman (Nobel Laureate in 1976), said that Gary Becker was the best student he ever had.

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“J’ACCUSE!” TO THE UNITED NATIONS


[On November 24, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor gave this extraordinary heroic speech to the UN General Assembly. It was given in response to the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Protocol calls for such speeches be addressed to the President of the General Assembly, a ceremonial position currently held by Uganda Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa.]

Mr. President,

I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside.

The fact of the matter is that when members of the international community speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fog descends to cloud all logic and moral clarity. The result isn't realpolitik, it's surrealpolitik.

The world's unrelenting focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an injustice to tens of millions of victims of tyranny and terrorism in the Middle East. As we speak, Yazidis, Bahai, Kurds, Christians and Muslims are being executed and expelled by radical extremists at a rate of 1,000 people per month.

How many resolutions did you pass last week to address this crisis? And how many special sessions did you call for? The answer is zero. What does this say about international concern for human life? Not much, but it speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the international community.

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THE DAWN OF AMERICA 3.0


It's time for...

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Yes, that's Paul McCartney playing guitar for Jagger and Bowie.  The performance was in 1986, but we can dance and sing our version today.

Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat?
America's here and the time is right for dancing in the street.

As Churchill quipped, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

We saw America 3.0 dawning this morning with the astounding election returns of GOP victories across the country.  This is not a simple rejection of Zero.  It is far deeper than that.  It is the rejection of the Dem vision for America, the maintenance and expansion of the obsolete America 2.0 industrial big government state.

Yesterday, the GOP received a massive mandate to begin dismantling the 2.0 legacy state - which means primarily defunding and eliminating entire federal agencies such as Education and the EPA, and returning most federal programs to the states via the 10th Amendment.

They have to be smart about this of course, and act with a great deal of finesse.  Yet this is long range.  What about right now?

The most immediate concern is the lame duck session that starts next Wednesday (11/12).  There are two basic threats.  Here's how to counter them. 

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THERE IS NO PRESIDENTS DAY- IT’S WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY


This Saturday, February 22, is the 282nd anniversary of the birth of America's founder, the equal in nobility, heroism, and virtue of any human being who ever lived -- George Washington.

What it is not, nor is any day such as last Monday (2/17), is the phony holiday called "Presidents Day."  Let's be quite clear on this.  There is no such holiday.  It exists only in the minds of furniture dealers, car salesmen, and Hate-America leftists.

It wasn't until 1870 that there were any national holidays at all, recognized by the federal government and granting federal workers a day off, although four were recognized by most states:  the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  In 1870, Congress declared them national.

In 1879, Congress added Washington's birthday to the national list, which had been unofficially celebrated by most Americans for many decades. 

Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day after the custom of decorating Civil War soldiers' graves with flowers), was traditionally celebrated on May 30, but had no formal designation until 1968 with a law called the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.  It was the Democrat Congress and President who damaged the memory of George Washington with this act of anti-patriotism.  Here it is:

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