Former NCAA Basketball Star Dies in a Bus Crash

by: PatriceJohnson, Your Black World
R.I.P. Lorenzo Charles…

This past Monday, 47-year-old Lorenzo Charles died in a tour bus accident in Raleigh, NC. According to the associated press, Charles was driving an Elite Coach bus on Interstate 40 when the accident occurred. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Charles was responsible for one of the most stunning comeback wins in NCAA championship history.  In 1983, his team was a significant underdog to powerhouse Houston, and Charles hit the game-winning dunk after a teammate shot an air ball.
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Raw Video: Greek Protesters Clash With Police - The Associated Press

CBO’s Fuzzy Math

By Bill Wilson
On July 22, the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) issued its latest long-term projections on the growth of the national debt. Astonishingly, as bad as the numbers issued by the CBO were, the debt crisis the nation faces is even worse than we are being told.
The CBO analysis does not take into account the full $14.344 trillion national debt, nor does it reflect the $430 billion in gross interest payments we are paying every year.

Instead it only considers the $9.7 trillion ‘debt held by the public’. That was cited by the CBO. What was not was the $4.6 trillion of debt owed to the Medicare and Social Security trust funds. Interest is owed to those programs similarly is not included.

These are real liabilities that the American people are expected to honor, and do honor under CBO’s analysis. But because they are not revealed until 2024 and 2036, when the trust funds are fully exhausted, even the dire scenarios that are presented to the American people are actually rosy.

Why would the CBO leave this out of their analysis? Ostensibly, economists would counter that it’s just money owed to ourselves, and not a share of debt held publicly. That, those obligations might be repudiated. So they shouldn’t be counted until they come due.

In reality, it’s just an accounting gimmick that hides that allows the government to understate the dire fiscal condition the Treasury really is in. When the Medicare and Social Security trust funds are exhausted in 2024 and 2036, respectively, the Treasury will be forced to borrow more money publicly anyway to honor the obligations to those programs.
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Consumer Confidence Drops And Senator Hatch On Unions In The Week Ahead

Video by Frank McCaffrey

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Hugo Chavez And His Dictatorship Are In Critical Condition

By Adam Bitely

From all available reports, Hugo Chavez is in critical condition in a hospital in Cuba. The Venezuelan communist dictator was taken to Cuba several weeks ago for an emergency surgery regarding pelvic swelling, which has led many to speculate that he is dealing with prostate cancer.

In the irony of ironies, Hugo Chavez was faced with the decision to have to leave his own nation, and the health care system that was supposed to be an example for other nations, to receive care from another questionable health care system in Cuba.

Chavez, a believer that the state should control all industry, including medical services, could not receive the adequate treatment for his life threatening condition in his own nation. This could be because he does not trust any of the doctors in Venezuela with his life threatening condition, or, that there are no doctors left in his nation that are capable of undertaking such surgeries with good outcomes.

To receive adequate care, Chavez had to head to fellow communist nation Cuba, where such surgery could be administered. However, even in Cuba, it appears that he is receiving sub-par health care. This should be a “teachable” moment for all those who believe in centralized health care.

In Venezuela, the right to health care is guaranteed in their constitution. All citizens are given access to a “free” health care system, as Venezuelan Analysis reports. However, this system is terribly run, and hospitals are often overcrowded with people not receiving adequate care. In fact, Cuba sends doctors to Venezuela to help with the shortage that was created out of centralizing the medical system. Even more, the Cuban doctors that are sent to Venezuela defect in large numbers — including somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 doctors alone in 2006!
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Diabetes Researchers Report New Steps Towards the First Artificial Pancreas

News Link  •  Health and Physical Fitness

06-27-2011  •  Rebecca Boyle via PopSci.com 

Private companies and hospital researchers are increasingly making strides toward developing an artificial pancreas, supplanting insulin injections and pinpricks for patients with diabetes. Such a system would mimic the functions of a healthy pancreas, delivering insulin and monitoring blood sugar according to a computer’s careful calculations.

Endocrinologists have been presenting new concepts at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego, and last week, U.S. regulators released new draft guidelines for a new generation of devices.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing an artificial pancreas that accounts for slight, low-intensity physical activities that can impact blood sugar levels. The researchers are developing a closed-loop system that includes a glucose monitor, automatic insulin pump, activity monitors that attach to the body and a central computer that uses an insulin-delivery algorithm to determine how much of the hormone to dispense.

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Another Absurd TSA Tale: 95 Year Old Woman Forced to Take Off Diaper for Search

By Allan Lengel

And now comes another story of the absurd involving the Transportation Security Administration, the folks who protect our airports.

The News Herald reports that a woman filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother, who is suffering from leukemia and in a wheelchair, was detained and searched and made to take off her adult diaper during a search at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.

Jean Weber of Destin, Fla. filed a complaint on behalf of her mother, who was headed to Michigan to be with family members in the final stages of leukemia, the paper reported.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday, according to the paper. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz declined to comment, citing privacy issues, according to the paper.

Mobster “Whitey” Bulger Traveled to Boston, Las Vegas and Mexico While on the Lam

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

More is coming out about the adventures of mobster James “Whitey’’ Bulger, who was captured last week after 16 years on the lam.

The Boston Globe reports that during those 16 years he returned to Boston in disguise and “armed to the teeth’’ several times “to take care of some unfinished business.’’  The paper cited government documents filed Monday.

The paper reported that Bulger, who is charged with 19 murders,  refused to say who he came to see or when, but  former associates said he returned at least twice during the first year on the lam.
Bulger also told FBI agents he also visited  Las Vegas and Mexico, and  stashed money with people he had trusted, according to the Globe.

Prosecutors are arguing that Bulger’s lifestyle indicates that he can afford to pay for his defense, the Globe reported. When authorities busted him they found more than $800,000 stashed in his apartment.

How Should Government Treat Energy Producers?

by Ron Paul

As the economy continues in its downward spiral and talks in Congress about reducing spending have only amounted to political theater, the subject of how the tax code treats energy has become a topic of controversy.  Specifically, should we subsidize, enforce mandates, or give tax credits and deductions to industries like ethanol and natural gas?  Having a thriving energy market domestically is a good thing and something the government should not hinder.  Not only would decreasing our dependence on foreign oil simplify our foreign policy, but it would greatly enhance our anemic economy at home.

Of course, the government should neither inhibit nor subsidize any particular type of energy. While many people agree with that statement, there is much confusion over the difference between government subsidies and tax credits or deductions.  The difference is night and day, yet so many times they are all lumped together as evil government handouts.  A subsidy IS a government handout.  It amounts to the government taking money from the people and giving it to a favored interest.  It is the worst sort of market manipulation and it is something I can never support.  This kind of government mischief is anathema to the Constitution and the principles of freedom and the free market.

By contrast, with tax credits and deductions, industries, business, and individuals simply get to keep more of the money they have earned.  Ideally, the tax code should not be used for social engineering, but, until we have true tax reform, I will always support tax credits and deductions that keep more dollars in the private sector where they are spent, saved, or invested.  This means I will support tax credits and deductions for energy producers, farmers, homeschoolers, family child care expenditures, expenses of evacuees from disaster areas, and even adoption expenses.  I've almost never met a tax cut, deduction, or credit I didn't like.  Any measure that keeps money in the private sector to spend, save or invest, rather than allowing the government to waste or misallocate is a win for the economy.

Inequities in the tax code dealing with tax credits should be solved by giving all participants equal treatment.  Removing

I oppose ethanol mandates because I do not think anyone should be forced to use or buy ethanol.  Ethanol mandates often serve as corporate welfare for big agriculture ethanol producers.  The marketplace should decide whether or not to use ethanol, and producers of ethanol have to discover if they can produce it at a price that makes good business sense.  No industry should be allowed to use legislation to create a "market" for its products.  The real reason ethanol mandates continue to surface in federal legislation is that agribusiness continues to have one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

Furthermore, while I do not support providing federal grants to any industry, I do support the tax credits contained in the NAT Gas Act, HR 1380.  These credits reduce taxes for the production or purchase of vehicles that run on American-made natural gas. These credits are not subsidies.  Of course, we should repeal federal barriers to energy production and reduce taxes on all forms of energy. Therefore, I have also introduced the Affordable Gas Price Act HR 1102 which would remove governmental barriers to offshore drilling, encourage private investment in new refineries and suspend taxes on gasoline when the price at the pump reaches a certain threshold.   Lowering taxes to encourage the domestic production of energy and getting government out of the way of the American energy market is not a government giveaway; it is the way it should be in a free country.
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French banks agree to defer Greek loans

News Link  •  Economy - International


06-27-2011  •  http://english.aljazeera.net/ 

  French banks have reached an outline agreement to roll over holdings of maturing Greek bonds as part of a wider European plan to avoid sovereign default.


Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said in Paris on Monday that the banks would be offered 30-year Greek bonds with a coupon equivalent to the euro zone's lending rate to Greece, plus a premium based on the financially troubled nation's future economic growth rate.


"We concluded that by stretching out the loans over 30 years, putting [interest rates] at the level of European loans, plus a premium indexed to future Greek growth, that would be a system that each country could find attractive," Sarkozy said.

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First The Airports

News Link  •  Police State


06-27-2011  •  Simple Justice 

We have to protect ourselves from these terrorists, because everything changed after 9/11.  This rationale is right up there with do it for the children.  It resonates.  It plays in Peoria.  It may not be sufficient for the handful of people on the internet who read blawgs by criminal defense lawyers, libertarians or the Tin Foil Hat Society, but it remains the mantra of many regular folk who would prefer not to be an uninvited guest to someone else's martyrdom party.

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The Drug War's Einsatzgruppen - by Will Grigg

News Link  •  Drug War


06-27-2011  •  Pro Liberate 

The invaders who murdered Hampton, Virginia resident William Cooper swiped about $900 in cash. They seized his gun collection. They took the Lexus from his driveway. By some oversight they neglected to extract the gold fillings from his teeth.

While they made off with a decent haul, the robbers were doubtless disappointed that they couldn't locate the large stash of illicit prescription drugs they had expected to find. They had the luxury of tossing the home at leisure without worrying about being interrupted by the police -- on account of the fact that they were the police. 

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Experiment Creates Advertisements to Sell Food to Monkeys

News Link  •  Science, Medicine and Technology



06-27-2011  •  Julie Beck via PopSci.com 

It was only a matter of time before monkeys, like their hairless primate counterparts, became the target of advertising. Laurie Santos, a primatologist at Yale University who was included in PopSci’s Brilliant Ten in 2007, is partnering with advertising executives Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner to create an ad campaign aimed at brown capuchin monkeys. The team hopes to determine if the presence of advertising will change a monkey’s preference between two similar foods.

Santos’ monkeys have already demonstrated that they understand the concept of money, and behave similarly to humans when making economic decisions. The monkeys will have a choice between two brands of the same food (perhaps two different colors of Jell-o), one of which will be advertised by a billboard outside their enclosure.
But there will be no fancy slogans or slick pop culture references here, which would be lost on the monkeys anyway. This experiment gets down to what advertising is really all about: sex and power. One version of the billboard shows a female monkey’s exposed genitals next to the brand logo, and the other shows the alpha male capuchin next to the logo.
 

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Jury convicts ex-Ill. Gov. Blagojevich at retrial

News Link  •  Criminal Justice System


06-27-2011  •  AP 

A jury convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Monday of nearly all the corruption charges against him, including that he tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.

Blagojevich had faced 20 charges, including the Senate seat allegation and that he schemed to shake down executives for campaign donations. He was convicted on all charges regarding the Senate seat.

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News Link  •  WAR

US gets ready to turn Syria into another Middle Eastern vassal

06-27-2011  •  . 

After more than a year of strained relations, Turkey has decided to restore military and intelligence collaboration in the eastern Mediterranean with Israel as Ankara heads for a military showdown with Syria, 

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