Unless this is a hoax, Inventor John Kanzius has come up with remarkable solution to our global energy demands. It's won't end our dependance on oil, but it may put an end to our reliance on foreign oil. If true, it answers many problems. It's effect could be as revolutionary of electricity or fire itself.
DANGER: CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS MIGHT CONVERT YOU!
Jack Kemp (not the politician) writes of Jimmy Carter’s belief that it’s “a terrible error for Jews to become allied with Christian Zionists who actually desire (their) conversion or burning in hell:”
As if Jews need Carter to tell them with whom to associate. Since Carter thinks other evangelicals want Jews to convert or burn in hell, does this reflect his beliefs?I’ve heard of this concept before (using Jews to return Jesus before converting them), but view it as pointless as blaming Jews for Christ’s murder.
The current method of financing health care not only fails to provide incentives for safe care, it rewards unsafe care.
Dr. Moon was soon putting up numbers in the cardiac catheterization lab that in their own worlds Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds could hardly dream of. He was doing four and five times as many catheterizations as his peers elsewhere… He never hesitated to tell anyone who would listen that he was one of the ten best Cardiologists in the country.Some even suggest that the uninsured are lucky because they are less likely to become victims of unnecessary or unindicated procedures. In the case of Tenet Health Systems, Melissa Davis wrote:
Dr. Realyvasquez came in, obviously excited, and said to her, “Can you believe it? We did a triple bypass on a twenty-eight year old.”
… The possibility that his case was not anomalous – that Moon and Realyvasquez were systematically doing angiograms and bypass operations on healthy people with no indications that they needed these procedures – never even entered his mind.
The "highly placed, highly esteemed" experts -- hailing from the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania -- began reviewing past heart-bypass surgeries at two Tenet facilities after one of hospitals, Redding Medical Center, came under heavy fire last year. The physicians ultimately concluded that 83% of the procedures at Redding were unwarranted. But they also determined that 59% of the bypasses at neighboring Doctors Medical Center in Modesto -- a hospital overshadowed by Redding so far -- were unnecessary as well.Although the United States spends twice as much per capita ($2 trillion) on health care than other industrialized nations, the World Health Organization ranks US health care quality 37th, between Costa Rica and Slovenia. If we reduce unnecessary and unindicated procedures by half (not 59% or 83%), Americans could save as much as $1 trillion in healthcare costs annually.
Several years ago, a woman from a wellness organization visited our station to advise cops of the health risks of smoking, high fat diets, and alcohol.
She meant well, but she was really fat. Unless you dumb yourself down with cartoons or college professors, it’s hard to sit still while Rosie O’Donnell lectures you about diet, exercise and morality.
I bring this up because of two essays that were recently sent to the LA Times (AKA “dog trainer”) for publication. Both were related to law enforcement. One was written by an LAPD insider, the other by a university professor. You’ll never guess which one they printed.
(Here’s a hint – an essay by Joel Stein is on the same page)
In her essay, Celeste Fremon describes the "out-of-control May Day cops" and Villaraigosa’s choice to replace former commanders with Sergio Diaz. Commander Sergio's probably a nice guy (I never met him), but you can bet that when Tony Villaraigosa's East Coast Chief picks someone that LA lefties like, you can expect more disasters, lawsuits, and crime for LA residents.
But if you want a real taste of what LA lefties have turned the LAPD into, you should read the essay that the LA Dog Catcher did not publish:
When the Last Hero Leaves L.A., Will Anybody Notice?
By Robert C. J. Parry
Despite the tenor of news reports surrounding last week’s violence in MacArthur Park, many officers in the Los Angeles Police Department are valorous and dedicated. In fact, this morning, 17 current police officers will receive the LAPD Medal of Valor. Notably, three of them now serve in other communities.
In fact, according to the L.A. Police Protective League, fully 60% of LAPD officers have been with the department less than five years. At that rate, almost the entire department could have been replaced twice since the 1992 riots. Notably, officers who leave the LAPD in their first five years have to repay the City for their academy training.
If you want to understand why the LAPD can’t retain officers, don’t look to the Los Angeles Times. The story below was first told to five of their top staff writers. Each deemed it interesting, but none reported it. In fact, this very column was presented to their OpEd section, and was rejected because a vaguely similar piece ran last year, addressing a less compelling set of facts. Apparently, only limited space is allotted to critical local issues in Los Angeles’s newspaper of record.
So, instead of looking to the Times, look to two other certified heroes: officers Troy Zeeman and Bryan Gregson. Last November, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presented them with California Medals of Valor, for engaging a suspected killer in a running gunfight through a South L.A. apartment building.
The LAPD, by contrast, ruled them tactically deficient, worthy only of retraining.
If that’s confusing to you, it wasn’t to Zeeman and Gregson. They’d both spent a decade in the LAPD hall of mirrors.
But to get the details, you’d have to drive to Newport Beach. That’s where both cops moved months after the shooting.
The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners’ (BOPC) official account of the 2005 shooting (available at LAPD Online) provides no reason to consider them anything but courageous. On February 17 of that year, while on patrol in the violent Harbor Gateway area, they spotted gang member Frank Garcia. They knew the 22-year-old Garcia was suspected of having killed a woman with a stray bullet in a late 2003 drive-by shooting. In November of 2004 they arrested him following an extensive search with helicopters and K-9s. He was released when no citizens would testify, Zeeman explained.
Three months later, two hours into a Thursday afternoon shift, they spotted Garcia and other gangsters outside apartments at 227th Street and Harvard Boulevard. He drew their attention by suspiciously hiding behind bushes. They pulled over, he ran — trespassing through the apartments — and the chase was on.
Since Garcia had a head-start, Gregson ran to the back of the complex while Zeeman chased Garcia into an alcove. Suddenly Garcia shouted, “you’re dead,” and fired a shot around a corner. Miraculously, it missed. Zeeman fired back, and chased Garcia west toward Gregson, who shot and captured the gang member.
As LAPD’s official reviewers of lethal force incidents, the members of the BOPC (most of whom have never carried a gun) nit-picked Zeeman and Gregson’s actions — literally step by step.
They complained the officers didn’t “make a plan” — as if Garcia had stood awaiting permission to run. They opined as to what should have been broadcast mid-stride over their radios –- berating Gregson for saying 228th Street instead of 227th –- and said that they “would have preferred” that Zeeman had ended the pursuit when Gregson separated. They even complained that Zeeman wasn’t broadcasting while shooting. “I dropped my radio when I ducked,” he explained.
Despite their penchant for second-guessing the officers, the members of the BOPC did not say what they themselves would have done. But “cower in fear” was not an option for Zeeman and Gregson.
Both cops were ordered to undergo formal re-training at the police academy. They complied — and left for Newport Beach within weeks.
Ignoring the nitpicking, Gov. Schwarzenegger presented their medals well after the BOPC’s ruling. The shameless LAPD touted their achievement in press releases and other announcements that often failed to mention that neither man continued to hold an LAPD badge.
Ironically, the same LAPD brass who attended the ceremony declined to give them department awards because of the BOPC’s ruling.
Monday morning quarterbacking is only half of the story. Not discussed in reports or press releases were the things that truly drove them to leave the streets of South L.A. to gangsters like Frank Garcia.
The sergeant who arrived at the scene had questioned them about the incident and separated them per the consent decree standard. But, he never inquired as to their welfare –- an inquiry that the consent decree doesn’t require. Locked in rooms at Harbor Station, they were treated as suspects in a grueling 14-hour interrogation. Had the location been Guantanamo Bay, civil libertarians would fume.
Zeeman describes being treated this way as “accepted,” much like he accepted that he would risk his life every day as a cop. What was not accepted was the second-guessing and stress from the politically-driven BOPC.
“I was confident that Gregson and I did what the public would expect — take a violent gang member off the street, even if it meant putting our lives and family in danger,” Zeeman said.
"But," he added, "I doubted the LAPD, the city officials and the public would deem (it) good.” Instead, I felt they would not take into consideration the dangers and the decision to put our lives on the line.
While their supervisors offered support, Zeeman says, they too were driven by the requirements of the federal consent decree that governs almost everything LAPD cops do. It created a constant feeling that doing good, aggressive, honest police work is the slowest way to climb the LAPD ladder.
“Being proactive is a liability for the City,” said Zeeman. “The LAPD, the city officials and the public don’t want ‘good’ cops to do their jobs.”
Being proactive, he said, “is career suicide.”
At the time of the shooting, Zeeman was on the LAPD’s High Risk Management List, a watch list of potentially problem officers. “If you do good, aggressive police work, you get on the list,” he says. Though he had one previous shooting and had engaged in 10 years of violent altercations with resisting suspects, he’d never had any citizen complaint sustained for any reason.
Still, he’d been on the list for most of his career. As the department became driven more by politics and the consent decree than by common sense, disciplinary procedures became more onerous — and simultaneously more meaningless. The department now investigates every single complaint, regardless of plausibility. In one incident, repeated by many cops, an officer was questioned for allegedly “stealing a woman’s ovaries.” A 28-year-old officer was investigated for “raping a woman every day for 55 years.”
It would be a joke, except for this: when a complaint is filed, an officer’s career goes on hold.
“Most complaints take a year for the department to investigate,” Zeeman says. “While it’s open, you can’t promote or transfer.” So, gangsters’ lies and psychotics’ delusions limit career prospects for certified heroes like Troy Zeeman.
But the part of the system that finally made Zeeman move on was the most humiliating. Although the department never sustained any complaints against him, it also failed to clear some of them. “My complaints were mostly for using ‘discourteous language,’ and most were ruled ‘unresolved,’ meaning the department couldn’t decide between believing me or a felon.”
It was one insult too many from a city whose gangsters had twice tried to kill him. So, both cops abandoned their half-vested pensions and found a community that embraces a partnership with its cops: Newport Beach.
In L.A., the complaints and second-guessing create a paranoid ambiance that causes officers to prioritize political perceptions over capturing criminals — and even their own safety. “I know a lot of cops who don’t carry batons,” said a South L.A. gang investigator who refused to be identified in print, fearing LAPD retribution. “They’d rather watch a crook run away than risk a fight,” he explained. “Gangsters ask me why I don’t carry one and I say ‘I’m not gonna end up on YouTube. If you want to fight me, we’ll do it with fists.’”
Though he attended the Police Commission’s re-training as ordered, Zeeman said most cops don’t take the Commission very seriously. He said: “their motivation for any decision is ‘job security.’” Yet that “security” comes from a mayor who is driven purely by political winds.
So, in their quest to hunt down even the slightest defect in LAPD officers, the members of the Commission have marginalized its influence.
As Zeeman prepared to leave LAPD, his commanding officer pleaded with him to stay, saying she wished she could pay him better. But nothing could possibly convince him to stay. “No amount of money … would have kept me working in that environment,” he said.
To the media, the LAPD story is about “secretive” personnel hearings and the virtues of the consent decree. One reporter who ignored this story said to me: “cops leave the LAPD all the time, what’s the big deal?” Apparently, a story about certified heroes fleeing the police department does not fit the agenda of the newspaper of record in America’s second largest city.
Like many reporters, that gentleman regularly seeks analysis from police critics like civil rights attorney Connie Rice. Quoted by the Times in 10 stories in as many months, despite having never worked the street, she is deemed credible because she issued “Rampart Reconsidered,” a report criticizing the department’s “warrior culture.”
On page 47 of that report, which was issued days after Officer Kristina Ripatti was shot and paralyzed, Rice blamed this “warrior culture” on “the myth and lore of urban policing.” Notably, not one interview since has questioned whether Rice considers Ripatti’s experience to be “lore,” merely a “myth” — or perhaps a case history from which officers should learn.
While The Times seeks critics to parse police actions, it ignores those critics’ ethical lapses. BOPC President John Mack publicly condemned the LAPD shooting of Devin Brown weeks before he was appointed to the Police Commission. But, in a glaring conflict of interest, he later voted on the BOPC’s ruling about the incident. Yet The Times ignored this obvious conflict of interest — and even quoted his statements on the case without caveat.
So, five valorous cops — Zeeman, Gregson, and three who will be decorated today — move to other agencies. Yet the political and media focus simply magnifies the factors that drive cops like these out of the Los Angeles Police Department. The results are not hard to gauge.
Weeks after Zeeman and Gregson were decorated, 14-year-old Cheryl Green was murdered — a mere 20 blocks from the site of the Frank Garcia chase. In reaction, Mayor Villaraigosa launched a highly publicized gang crackdown with full media fanfare. Mayor Villaraigosa may have political savvy, but his city is missing something far more important: two courageous and experienced cops who know Cheryl Green’s neighborhood better than the mayor ever will — and who know gangs better than the newly-hired 60% of the department.
There is an ironic post-script to this story. Three blocks from the scene of the Garcia shooting, two other LAPD officers shot a gang member during a running gun battle in an apartment complex.
One must wonder if they will receive medals from the LAPD, or new badges from Newport Beach.
But, if you want to know, the last place to look is the L.A. Times.
Here's a great sampling of the environmentally aware...
Brooks parroted this hit piece about Bill O’Reilly, inspired by what appears to be a $5 million donation to the University of Indiana from George Soros.
According to “the researchers,” O’Reilly is bad because he uses words like Republicans, political right, political left, media, foreigners, illegal aliens, criminals, terrorists, academics, celebrities, Christians, and non-Christians. This is what the University of Indiana describes as name-calling.
You can view Bill’s classic response here:
Brooks’ crippled bias shows us the kind of writers the LA Dog Trainer values, otherwise she would have been canned like hundreds of her peers long ago.
Like Rosie O'Donnell, Brooks parrots rooterspeak to hurt O’Reilly personally because she has no lucent argument.
(Written by Joseph Puder. Reprint courtesy of the Philadelphia Bulletin.)
Andrew Whitehead, a former serviceman with the U.S. Navy has a Web site named Anti-CAIR on which Whitehead accuses CAIR of partially funding terrorist organizations. CAIR routinely tries to intimidate the likes of Whitehead in the hope of stifling any criticisms and/or allegations made against it.
On March 31, 2004, CAIR filed a lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead in the Virginia Beach Circuit Court demanding $1 million in damages from Whitehead for what it called "libelous defamation." The lawsuit, scheduled to begin in the summer of 2006 was dismissed in April of that year.
Two weeks ago on April 12, the Philadelphia/South Jersey chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) under the leadership of Regional Director Scott Figelstein, hosted a program with Reed Rubinstein, Esq. of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Greenberg Taurig. The RJC serves as a liaison between the Jewish community and Republican decision makers.
Reed Rubinstein, with the backing of his law firm, provided pro-bono counsel for Andrew Whitehead in the CAIR v. Whitehead lawsuit. Rubinstein is credited with defeating the defamation suit "by an Islamic extremist group against the U.S. Navy enlisted man."
On Jan. 6, 2004, CAIR attorney Jeremiah A. Denton III of Virginia Beach, Va., sent Whitehead a personal and confidential letter in which he cited the alleged defamatory paragraphs on Whitehead's Anti-CAIR Web site. He concluded his letter with, "Notwithstanding my recommendation, in lieu of a lawsuit CAIR has asked me to give you the opportunity to voluntarily cease and desist the publication of defamatory statements about CAIR on your Web site and elsewhere. If you persist in the publication of defamatory remarks about CAIR, or if you elect to publish this personal and confidential letter to any person, a suit will be filed forthwith."
The "false and defamatory" statements irking CAIR officials made by Whitehead were:
This is a must-see BBC report on the Islamist group Al Muhajiroun and their Al Qaeda-linked leader Omar Bakri Mohammed. "All true Muslims support Jihad..."
