August 7, 2015

Guess How Much Of Uncle Sam's Money Goes To Foreign Aid. Guess Again

How much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid?

What's your best guess? 10 percent? 20 percent? 1 percent?

If you're like most Americans, you probably guessed wrong.

In December, the Kaiser Family Foundation polled 1,505 people. Only 1 in 20 knew the right answer: less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent estimated that 26 percent went toward assisting other countries.

What's more, our ignorance colors the way we think about foreign spending. Fifty-six percent of the poll respondents thought the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid. Once they were told that the U.S. spends less than 1 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, only 28 percent still thought the nation was overspending.

This is nothing new. The Kaiser Family Foundation has conducted this poll since 2009, and every year the response is the same. But maybe it's not our fault. Maybe the problem is that foreign aid is incredibly complicated. Even coming up with a definition of "foreign aid" is tough. So we spoke to five specialists to soak up some foreign aid smarts.


http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/10/383875581/guess-how-much-of-uncle-sams-money-goes-to-foreign-aid-guess-again

August 4, 2015

I would like to take this time to congratulate the media, republicans and the anti-Clinton crowd...

A collective effort may have possible knocked down Hillary Clinton.

With all the ongoing attacks and extra scrutiny only reserved for the Clintons from the media and repulbicans, Clinton's favorability takes a major hits.

The Democratic presidential candidate is viewed unfavorably by 48 percent of likely voters, compared with 37 percent who view her favorably.

Her ratings are down significantly from the last NBC/WSJ poll in June, when 44 percent viewed Clinton favorably versus 40 percent who viewed her unfavorably.
These numbers will certainly add to the consternation already permeating Democratic circles following a recent Quinnipiac University poll which showed Clinton’s favorability drowning in key swing states.

NBC News points out that Clinton’s fav/unfav ratio, while worse than Barack Obama’s throughout his presidency, is identical to her husband Bill Clinton’s score heading into the Democratic nomination in ’92.

Pollster Bill McInturff compared Clinton’s campaign to a battleship able to withstand several torpedo strikes, “but there has been a torpedo that has hit something, and there are some leaks.”

Despite her low favorability numbers, Clinton remains the clear frontrunner among the current field of Democratic presidential candidates.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/250148-poll-clintons-favorability-takes-a-major-hit

July 30, 2015

Kentucky man shoots down drone hovering over his backyard

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© William H. Merideth The way William Merideth sees it, it’s pretty clear-cut: a drone flying over his backyard was a well-defined invasion of privacy, analogous to a physical trespassing.

Not knowing who owned it, the Kentucky man took out his shotgun and fired three blasts of Number 8 birdshot to take the drone out.

"It was just right there," he told Ars. "It was hovering, I would never have shot it if it was flying. When he came down with a video camera right over my back deck, that's not going to work. I know they're neat little vehicles, but one of those uses shouldn’t be flying into people's yards and videotaping."

Minutes later, a car full of four men that he didn’t recognize rolled up, "looking for a fight."

"Are you the son of a b***h that shot my drone?" one said, according to Merideth.

His terse reply to the men, while wearing a 10mm Glock holstered on his hip: "If you cross that sidewalk onto my property, there’s going to be another shooting."

The men backed down, retreated to their car, and waited for the police to arrive.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/kentucky-man-shoots-down-drone-hovering-over-his-backyard/ar-AAdGg2x?ocid=iehp

July 27, 2015

Which post should I comment on? - cross posting

When I open DU and see 3 - 4 and even 5 posts with the same title, I am confused. Which post should I post in? Do I reply in all of them? And if I do, does the reply need to be verbatim from the other cross thread?

July 24, 2015

Breakfast with Chuck Schumer - from Jon Stewart

Stewart highlight MSNBC's breakfast interview with Chuck Schumer hoping to get his take on the Iran Nuclear deal.

July 22, 2015

Muslims Raised Over $100,000 To Help Rebuild Black Churches In The South

Three Muslim organizations have raised over $100,000 to rebuild black churches in the South.

In the days following the shooting of nine people inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, a string of church fires at black worship centers in the South raised alarm on social media.

Authorities have not indicated that the fires are connected to Charleston, but the blazes made headlines in the wake of what many believe to have been the worst incident of racist terrorism in years. The Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, the Arab-American Association of New York and Ummah Wide wanted to make sure these churches were restored as soon as possible.

The organizations joined forces to launch the “Respond With Love” campaign on July 2, stating on their fundraising page that "ALL houses of worship are sanctuaries, a place where all should feel safe."

The fundraiser started off with a goal of $10,000, but they hit that target within hours, Linda Sarsour, executive director of AAANY, said to HuffPost in an email. They increased the target amount a few more times, and the support kept flooding in.

The campaign closed on July 18, just after the end of the holy month of Ramadan, with a final total of $100,470.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslims-raise-over-100000-to-help-rebuild-black-churches-in-the-south_55ad4be7e4b0d2ded39fac57?section=good+news&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000023

July 17, 2015

Why Texans Fear Invasion

Some of you may recall that a few months ago, the federal government announced that it would be holding military training exercises in seven states in the Southwest, including Texas. They would, literally, bring in heavy artillery like aircraft — along with Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and other Special Operations forces.

This opinion piece tries to explain why Texans are freaking out over this.



to some people around here, the government’s plan to train service members to work in “complex environments” looked like something else: a plot to take over the state. “This is in preparation for the financial collapse and maybe even Obama not leaving office,” the Texas-based conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Alex Jones declared. That was followed by about one zillion Internet cranks predicting the declaration of martial law — you probably got word about the shuttered Walmarts being converted to makeshift detention centers. Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to calm the populace by ordering the state guard to keep an eye on the feds came next, an action that did nothing to confirm the pre-election rumor that he was much smarter than his predecessor, Rick Perry.

I don’t disagree with the observers who say that anti-Obama sentiment provided much of the fuel for this fire. But the local (over)reaction also has its roots in Texas’ DNA. Put another way, it wasn’t so nutty to get bent out of shape about a hostile invasion by a supposed tyrannical government around 185 years ago. Consider that much of Texas, then part of Mexico, was settled by prickly Scots-Irish types who’d had their own issues back home. Some of these folks were big movers in the events leading up to the Texas Revolution.

See the list of events at link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/why-texans-fear-invasion.html?emc=edit_th_20150717&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0

In the end:
Those in the mental health professions might suggest a pattern here. They would also suggest that, over time, patterns can be broken, so that they don’t lead to destructive events, like the deadly 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., or just plain silly ones, like believing a military exercise is cover for an invasion.

Many Texans have taken that advice: We’re moving slowly into maturity. But you know, there are always a few who take longer to get there.

Full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/why-texans-fear-invasion.html?emc=edit_th_20150717&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0

July 7, 2015

Guns Don't Deter Crime, Study Finds

"The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been that if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or there had been either an off-duty policeman or an on-duty policeman, somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter," presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in a Fox News interview on June 19.

A new study, however, throws cold water on the idea that a well-armed populace deters criminals or prevents murders. Instead, higher ownership of guns in a state is linked to more firearm robberies, more firearm assaults and more homicide in general. [5 Milestones in Gun Control History]

"We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

More guns, more gun crime

Numerous studies have found that gun ownership correlates with gun homicide, and homicide by gun is the most common type of homicide in the United States. In 2013, for example, there were 16,121 total homicides in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and 11,208 of those were carried out with a firearm. (Gun suicides outpace gun homicides by far; in 2013, the CDC recorded 21,175 suicides by firearm, about half of all suicides that year. Contrary to popular belief, suicide is typically an impulsive act, psychiatrists say. Ninety percent of people who attempt suicide once will not go on to complete a suicide later, but a suicide attempt using a gun is far more lethal than other methods.)

http://news.yahoo.com/guns-dont-deter-crime-study-finds-180710261.html#

July 5, 2015

Obama is invading a Texas county

The Americans are coming! Some in a Texas county fear an Obama-led U.S. military invasion.
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BASTROP, Texas — The office of the Bastrop County Republican Party is in an old lumber mill on Main Street, with peeling brown paint and a sign out front that captures the party’s feelings about the Obama administration: “WISE UP AMERICA!”

Inside, county Chairman Albert Ellison pulled out a yellow legal pad on which he had written page after page of reasons why many Texans distrust President Obama, including the fact that, “in the minds of some, he was raised by communists and mentored by terrorists.”

So it should come as no surprise, Ellison said, that as the U.S. military prepares to launch one of the largest training exercises in history later this month, many Bastrop residents might suspect a secret Obama plot to spy on them, confiscate their guns and ultimately establish martial law in one of America’s proudly free conservative states.

They are not “nuts and wackos. They are concerned citizens, and they are patriots,” Ellison said of his suspicious neighbors. “Obama has really painted a portrait in the minds of many conservatives that he is capable of this sort of thing.

.http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-americans-are-coming-texans-fear-obama-led-us-military-invasion/2015/07/04/58047fee-2001-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html?tid=sm_fb

June 29, 2015

Is this what outsourcing our space program means - Rockets that blow up?

SpaceX Rocket Supplying Space Station Explodes After Florida Launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - An unmanned SpaceX rocket exploded about two minutes after liftoff from Florida on Sunday, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station in the latest in a string of mishaps in supplying the orbiting outpost.

The 208-foot-tall (63-meter) Falcon 9 rocket had flown 18 times previously since its 2010 debut, all successfully. Those missions included six station cargo runs for NASA under a 15-flight contract worth more than $2 billion.

However SpaceX, a company founded and owned by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has twice previously tried and failed in an experiment to land the rocket on a platform in the ocean.

Sunday's accident soon after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was the second successive botched mission to resupply the space station. A Russian Progress cargo ship failed to reach the outpost in April following a problem with its Soyuz launcher.


http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/06/28/us/28reuters-space-spacex-launch.html?emc=edit_th_20150629&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0


And they want to put humans on these things in another year?