Sex, Love & Money
-Tell me, what is sex?
- Sex is when you dress up, go to a bar flirt with a guy, he buys you drinks.
You go to bed and he leaves some money on your table.
- And what is good sex?
- Good sex is when you dress up, go to a bar flirt with a guy, he buys you drinks.
You go to bed, you actually enjoy it, and he leaves lots of money on your table.
- And what is love?
- Love? That's a Jewish invention to avoid leaving money on the table.
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JUST THE FACTS MA'AM!
A study by Mark Gius, an Democrat economist at Quinnipiac University, shows states with restrictive concealed weapons laws had higher gun-related murder rates, and that assault weapons bans had no real impact on murder rates at the state level.
"These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level," Gius wrote in his summary.
Results that will not be well received by gun control advocates.
The study, published in "Applied Economics Letters," set out to "determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state murder rates."
Gius further summarized:
Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level.
"Specifically, the study shows that less restrictive concealed carry laws save lives, while gun control can endanger them," AWR Hawkins wrote in a review for Breitbart News.
In response to critics, who claim that study's abstract is insufficient to draw accurate conclusions, Hawkins pointed out that Breitbart News obtained the entire study, adding that "the more we read the more support we found for Gius' claims."
Hawkins is a military historian who holds a Ph.D. from Texas Tech University
http://tinyurl.com/jvp4kb6
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Shevat 5, 5774, 1/6/2014
US-Brokered Deal 'Just the First Stage' in Israel's Demise
Senior member of Mahmoud Abbas' party reiterates his organization's stance: destroy Israel 'in stages'.
By Ari Soffer
As US-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) continue, amid pressure for further territorial concessions by Israel, a senior Palestinian Authority official has told Syrian TV that any agreement will simply be the "first stage" in eradicating Israel altogether.
Abbas Zaki posted a clip of the interview - which was promptly translated and circulated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) - onto his Facebook page.
In response to concern expressed by the interviewer that any US-imposed deal would be "deficient", insofar as it would "only" require Israel to cede Judea and Samaria, a smiling Zaki urges calm.
"You can relax. We find ourselves united for the first time. Even the most extreme among us, Hamas, or the fighting forces, want a state within the '67 borders [sic]. Afterward, we [will] have something to say, because the inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. [Rather] in stages," he responded.
Zaki is a senior member of the central committee of Fatah - the Arab nationalist party which dominates the PA, and is headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The strategy to eradicate the Jewish state "in stages" via a combination of terrorism and diplomacy, as opposed to in a single military conquest, has been voiced by many PA officials in the past, who note that Israel cannot be destroyed in one fell swoop.
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed a string of such statements by senior officials in the past, casting serious doubt over the viability of the Obama administration's recent attempt to impose a solution to the conflict.
Earlier this year, in a speech attended by Mahmoud Abbas, the PA's Religious Affairs Minister explained that any treaties with Israel should be viewed as another "Treaty of Hudaybiyyah" - a reference to a "temporary" deal signed by Islam's founder Muhammed, which was promptly broken as soon as the Muslim armies were strong enough to achieve victory.
In another interview in 2011, Zaki was even more explicit:
"While the agreement is on the borders of June 4, the President [Mahmoud Abbas] understands, we understand, and everyone knows that it is impossible to realize the inspiring idea, or the great goal in one stroke," he explained to Al Jazeera.
However, he continued, an agreement which would see the destruction and ethnic-cleansing of Jewish
communities in Judea and Samaria would itself prove strategically fatal for the Jewish state in the long-run.
"If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, if Israel uproots the settlements, 650,000 settlers, if Israel removes the (security) fence - what will be with Israel? Israel will come to an end.
"If I say that I want to remove it from existence, this will be great, great, [but] it is hard. This is not a [stated] policy. You can't say it to the world. You can say it to yourself."
If you do, on what grounds?
composed of 6/10th of 1% of the Mideast
IS TOO MUCH LAND FOR THE JEWS
and 99.4% is too little land for the Arabs?
CNN'S MEA CULPA FOR MSNBC
What the wingnut liberals on Reliable Sources said about MSNBC:
Demonizing the Republicans
Implying I guess that the two Pulitzer Prize winners on FOX, Charles Krauthammer and George Will are functional idiots?
Inside every liberal is a tyrant clamoring to get out.
I'm a 54 year old consulting engineer (working in CA) and make between $60,000 and $125,000 per year, depending on how hard I work and whether or not there are work projects out there for me.
My girlfriend is 61 and makes about $18,000 per year, working as a part-time mail clerk.
For me, making $60,000 a year, under ObamaCare, the cheapest, lowest grade policy I can buy, which also happens to impose a $5,000 deductible, costs $482 per month.
For my girlfriend, the same exact policy, same deductible, costs $1 per month. That's right, $1 per month. I'm not making this up.
Don't believe me? Just go to www.coveredca.gov , the ObamaCare website for California and enter the parameters I've mentioned above and see for yourself. By the way, my zip code is 93940. You'll need to enter that.
So OK, clearly ObamaCare is a scheme that involves putting the cost burden of healthcare onto the middle and upper-income wage earners. But there's a lot more to it. Stick with me.
And before I make my next points, I'd like you to think about something:
I live in Monterey County, in Central California. We have a large land mass but just 426,000 residents - about the population of Colorado Springs or the city of Omaha.
But we do have a large Hispanic population, including a large number of illegal aliens, and to serve this group we have Natividad Medical Center, a massive, Federally subsidized county medical complex that takes up an area about one-third the size of the Chrysler Corporation automobile assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois (see Google Earth View). Natividad has state-of-the-art operating rooms, Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fully equipped, 24 hour emergency room, and much more. If you have no insurance, if you've been in a drive-by shooting or have overdosed on crack cocaine, this is where you go. And it's essentially free, because almost everyone who ends up in the ER is uninsured.
Last year, 2,735 babies were born at Natividad. 32% of these were born to out-of-wedlock teenage mothers, 93% of which were Hispanic. Less than 20% could demonstrate proof of citizenship, and 71% listed their native language as Spanish. Of these 876 births, only 40 were covered under [any kind of] private health insurance. The taxpayers paid for the other 836. And in case you were wondering about the entire population - all 2,735 births - less than 24% involved insured coverage or even partial payment on behalf of the patient to the hospital in exchange for services. Keep this in mind as we move forward.
Now consider this:
If I want to upgrade my policy to a low-deductible premium policy, such as what I had with my last employer, my cost is $886 per month. But my girlfriend can upgrade her policy to the very same level, for just $4 per month. That's right, $4 per month. $48 per year for a zero-deductible, premium healthcare policy - the kind of thing you get when you work at IBM (except of course, IBM employees pay an average of $170 per month out of pocket for their coverage).
I mean, it's bad enough that I will be forced to subsidize the ObamaCare scheme in the first place. But even if I agreed with the basic scheme, which of course I do not, I would never agree to subsidize premium policies. If I have to pay $482 a month for a budget policy, I sure as hell do not want the guy I'm subsidizing to get a better policy, for less that 1% of what I have to fork out each month for a low-end policy.
Are you with me on this? Are you starting to get an idea what ObamaCare is really about?
ObamaCare is not about dealing with inequities in the healthcare system. That's just the cover story. The real story is that it is a massive, political power grab. Do you think anyone who can insure himself with a premium policy for $4 a month will vote for anyone but the political party that provides him such a deal? ObamaCare is about enabling, subsidizing, and expanding the Left's political power base, at taxpayer expense. Why would I vote for anyone but a Democrat if I can have babies for $4 a month? For that matter, why would I go to college or strive for a better job or income if it means I have to pay real money for healthcare coverage? Heck, why study engineering when I can be a schlub for $20K per year and buy a new F-150 with all the money I'm saving?
And think about those $4-a-month babies - think in terms of propagation models. Think of just how many babies will be born to irresponsible, under-educated mothers. Will we get a new crop of brain surgeons and particle physicists from the dollar baby club, or will we need more cops, criminal courts and prisons? One thing you can be certain of: At $4 a month, they'll multiply, and multiply, and multiply. And not one of them will vote Republican.
ObamaCare: *It's all about political power AND BUYING VOTES.
Detroit police chief James Craig says more citizens should be armed
Detroit's police chief has a solution to help drive down crime in one of the nation's most dangerous cities: arm more citizens.James Craig made the comments at a police press conference Thursday, when he announced a 7 percent drop in violent crime in 2013, The Detroit News reported. Although urban police typically favor gun control, Craig said his views evolved after working in Los Angeles and Maine, where concealed weapons permits are more easily obtained.Most of New York's new gun-control laws have been upheld — on a totally dubious basis.
New York's new gun-control law, the so-called SAFE Act, largely survived its first federal-court challenge on this past Tuesday. The more than 1,140 New Yorkers it's made felons will remain so. But even the testimony of the state's own expert witness failed to show that the law will cut crime.
The judge in this case is William M. Skretny, chief federal judge for the Western District of New York. His decision upheld the state's gun-registration requirements and ban on assault weapons, but he rejected the seven-round limit for magazines, deeming it arbitrary.
The decision relied heavily on testimony by George Mason University criminology professor Chris Koper, who argued "that the criminal use of assault weapons declined after the federal assault-weapons ban was enacted in 1994, independently of trends in gun crime." Judge Skretny wrote in his opinion: "Because New York's regulations are tighter than those in the federal ban, [Koper] believes, quite reasonably, that the affect [sic] will be greater."But Koper's two studies on the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban don't support his claims. The first study, with Jeff Roth for the National Institute of Justice, found that "the evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect [of the weapons ban]."
Seven years later, in 2004, Koper and Roth conducted a follow-up study with fellow criminologist Dan Woods, covering a much longer period after the law. They concluded, "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence."
To make the court ruling even stranger, given Koper's argument about what effect the ban will have on New York, no evidence was considered on the effects of state law, even though this has been studied by other researchers such as myself. At that level, again, absolutely no benefit is found on crime.
More embarrassing is the judge's reliance on Koper's claim that "a [large capacity-magazine] is arguably the most functionally important feature of most [assault weapons], many of which have magazines holding 30 or more rounds." Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles, implying that virtually all semi-automatic guns are so-called "assault weapons." But a magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. Even if someone didn't have access to some simple machine tools, the proliferation of 3D printers make it so anyone can produce them.
Judge Skretny also failed to examine other aspects of the law. For example, he concludes that "SAFE Act's requirement that ammunition sales be conducted 'face-to-face' does not unduly burden interstate commerce." But in New York, going through a federally licensed firearms dealer to get a background check on ammunition purchases reportedly adds $85 in costs to the average purchase; there are also the time costs involved in having to drive to a physical store. And these costs fall hardest on the very people who most need guns for protection — poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.
Or take his claim of public-safety benefits from registering guns. Not a single study is cited showing that registration reduces crime. Whether in Canada, Hawaii, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., police seem unable to point to a single violent crime where registration has helped their investigation. During a recent deposition, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier said she couldn't "recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime."
The judge's reliance on the left-wing Mother Jones magazine to buttress claims about mass shootings is almost comical. Even liberal academic James Alan Fox described the data collected by the magazine as relying on "questionable motive-based selectivity" and criteria that are "not necessarily applied consistently."
Hopefully an appeals court will be more careful with the evidence. Courts should prevent people from exercising "fundamental rights" only when there is clear evidence that restrictions actually benefit public safety.
— John Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
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"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton
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