[Political Calculations] Nicholas Eberstadt recently raised an interesting question regarding the role of Medicaid, the United States' welfare program that provides free health insurance for Americans with low incomes, when he commented on how it may very well have directly contributed to the nation's rising problem with opioid addiction.
It occurred to us that we have the ability to determine whether Medicaid is contributing to the nation's growing opioid epidemic by taking advantage of a natural experiment made possible by the Affordable Care Act. More popularly known as "Obamacare", the primary means by which the ACA has expanded health insurance coverage in the U.S. has been through the expansion of eligibility in the U.S.' Medicaid welfare program, where the threshold for eligibility was raised from 100% of the federal poverty limit to 138% of the federal poverty limit in states that agreed to expand their Medicaid programs.
But, not all states agreed to expand their Medicaid program when the Affordable Care Act went into effect on 1 January 2014. From that time through 2015, 28 states and the District of Columbia had chosen to participate in the Affordable Care Act's expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, while 22 others opted to not do so during those years.
[TheSparkMagazine] It's been revealed that women remain underrepresented amongst the leadership of the Afghan terrorist group the Taliban. An internal review carried out by the Taliban, and leaked to the media, shows that at present women hold 'roughly 0%' of senior leadership roles within the organisation, and that this is consistent across all departments.
The leaked review has rekindled debate about whether there is institutionalised sexism within the Taliban, with some campaigners accusing the group of discrimination. Following the leak the Afghan Feminist Council released a statement saying that the group is 'deeply concerned' about the situation, and suggesting that the Taliban might suffer 'reputational damage' if they don't do more to improve gender diversity within their top ranks.
Following the revelations Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada held a press conference to address the allegations. After accusing the assembled journalists of spreading 'fake news' and 'treating me so unfairly' Hibatullah denied that the Taliban are in any way sexist. Hibatullah argued that there is 'absolutely no discrimination' within the Taliban noting that anyone with an 'enormous bushy beard' can hold a leadership position 'regardless of gender'.
The sexism row is just the latest controversy to hit the Taliban, and follows claims that the group is transphobic and ableist. As a result student unions at several British universities are reportedly considering banning Taliban speakers from holding meetings on campus, on the grounds that the groups lack of diversity could cause students 'significant emotional distress'.
Check out their About at the link.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
03/08/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
#2
If you're wounded today on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains...
Wait! Womanless Wednesday! Hang onto your brains
And go to your Gawd a day older.
Do they understand that in Islam, women are just breeding stock and house labor?
Truly, these people do not I repeat DO NOT understand who they are dealing with. They need to do their homework on the Taliban and how they treated women in Afghanistan then and now. Holy crap.
I was told it was better to keep my mouth shut and risk appearing like an idiot than to open my mouth and leave no doubt.
Whoever wrote this opened their mouth and leave no doubt they are operating in an alternate reality or are absolutely completely ignorant of Moslem practices.
[Right Scoop] Daniel Horowitz says that leaving Obamacare in place would actually be better than the Middle-Upper class entitlement that the House replacement bill will put in place.
#2
The narrow window is the Senate. The current legislation needs 51 votes. A complete gut job would mean reconciliation. That would require a 60 vote threshold. Can anyone name one Democrat senator willing to vote for full repeal? Now, how about seven?
#6
This reconciliation bill removes the taxes on employer sponsored plans. Those taxes were assessed to 175 million WORKING Americans in the form of higher premiums and deductibles to benefit nine million non-working Americans.
Posted by: regular joe ||
03/08/2017 15:48 Comments ||
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[DAWN] IN 2015, when parliament passed the 21st Amendment that allowed constitutionally protected military courts to try terrorism suspects, many reluctant politicians offered their mea culpas. Indeed, how can one forget the spectacle of a weeping Senator Raza Rabbani after he cast his vote? He said he had voted against his conscience. Ironically, two years later, the politicians are once again deliberating the revival of these military courts.
It is yet another testimony of the lack of faith in the country’s criminal justice system and the sheer ineptness of our rulers to reform it. Two years was a long enough period for restructuring the anti-terrorism courts so that they could adequately deal with terrorism cases and deliver quick justice as envisioned in the National Action Plan. Instead, our civilian rulers have once again chosen to outsource the responsibility to the military.
But can military justice salvage the situation? It certainly cannot. The extension in the term of the military courts is likely to further delay the much-needed criminal justice system reforms, particularly the plan to upgrade the anti-terrorism courts. In fact, the very term ’military court’ is a misnomer; it is basically military field court martial whose jurisdiction has been extended to civilians. The opaqueness of the process has already raised questions about the fairness of the trials.
While the 21st Amendment provided constitutional cover to speedy trials under the Pakistain Army Act, it also carried a sunset clause of two years. What brought the political parties to a consensus on the controversial legislation despite some serious reservations was the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. school massacre that necessitated tougher action against the terrorists.
It was supposed to be a stopgap arrangement, as the existing anti-terrorism courts were not fully geared to deal with cases involving Death Eater combatants captured during military operations in the tribal areas or those participating in terrorist activities on the mainland. Their number was said to be in the thousands and many of them had been in the custody of the security forces for years without being produced before any court of law.
A flawed system of investigation and lack of evidence that is difficult to obtain in cases of terrorism allowed many hardened turbans to get away without conviction. The threat to the security of the judges and Sherlocks and their families was also the reason for the extremely low conviction rate in militancy-related cases. All these factors helped win the case for the establishment of military courts.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/08/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Wash Times] That headline is not hyperbole. It is sadly -- and horrifyingly -- true.
Now, it’s not Donald Trump. We’ve had less skilled politicians as chief executive, and we just lived through eight years with a guy whose only real job outside of sucking off the government teat was "community organizer," whatever that is. No, a billionaire reality star is not the horror.
And it’s not the coming automation boom, which will put millions of people out of work and further consolidate wealth in the hands of the richest. It’s not even the looming stock market crash that will occur when the bubble bursts (the thing about bubbles is they always burst, sooner or later).
No, the terror is from within. The horror comes from our own government, and especially the intelligence community, where officials seem to have gone rogue and where anything -- and everything -- is now in play.
The frightening reality is that a president laid seeds to destroy his successor -- who, as it turns out, he targeted with the secret spy organizations at his beck and call. During the last days of his term, Barack Obama set out to sabotage Mr. Trump by spreading intelligence information throughout the federal government, as well as to foreign governments. In a governmentwide effort, Mr. Obama and his cronies "scrambled to spread" damaging information about Mr. Trump and his associates meeting with the Russians, The New York Times reported.
"As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not," The Times wrote.
#2
Nothing heard lately from former Klingon boss John Brennan.
The Wikileaks 'Vault 7' release is quite interesting. Reportedly, the Klingon Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5,000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, Trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware.' Could there have been one or two (Eric Snowden lites) within the 5,000 who failed to appreciate the goodness of their efforts ?
The existence (sanctioned or unsanctioned) of a 'fake hacking' effort should not be entirely dismissed. Disinformation, it's what they do, those deep within the swamp.
#3
The existence (sanctioned or unsanctioned) of a 'fake hacking' effort should not be entirely dismissed. Disinformation, it's what they do, those deep within the swamp.
Do I have to wear a tin foil hat if I speculate that the hacking of the DNC email server was really done by the CIA? Is it too much to suggest that they commandeered a Russian server and hacked the DNC with their Russian bot? Am I completely over the rainbow if I suggest the plan all along was to associate Trump with Putin and thereby delegitimize his presidency?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/08/2017 13:56 Comments ||
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#4
Apparently some of the hacking tools were designed to spoof other hackers. A tool would, for example, make it look like the Russians (or the Chinese, or the Ruritanians) did the hacking.
As one security expert put it in a post over at Instapundit: "attribution be difficult."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/08/2017 14:16 Comments ||
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#5
I suspect a lot of liberals have a gut feeling Obama really did wiretap Trump (after all they would have) and are putting the pieces together and realizing their entire world really is collapsing around their ears.
Some, much needed, perspective
There is one thing in which liberal activists are right: everyone is racist. There is one thing in which they’re wrong: everyone is racist.
Racism is not confined to white people -- and the idea that it equals prejudice plus power is an interesting (and stupid, as usual) Marxist distortion we’ll deal with later -- it’s a characteristic of being human.
Why? Oh, like most other things because it was evolutionarily sound. I.e. those who had it survived and had more kids.
The thing is it’s not so much "racism" as in discriminating against another race. It’s "Fear of the stranger."
...In pre-human times, with many bands and tribelets living close enough for kids to stray, the name for a kid who thought that his family or strangers were equivalent was -- at least if we go by how our closest relatives, the chimps, treat young from other bands -- "dinner."
...The fear of the stranger that goes under "racism" in our society is the fear of people like us and yet not like us.
And it’s not racism in the sense that the media and liberals (who be cray) portray it. If you believe racism as they portray it, then you believe paler people are born with an instinctive fear of African features and dark skin.
...So if the fear isn’t of dark skin or African features, what is it a fear of? "People who are not like my family/tribe/village to whom I’m accustomed" is a better way to describe it.
When I was a little girl, living in Portugal, I saw all kind of distinctions when I first entered elementary school. Some of my classmates were much darker than I, some were blond. Some were tall, some were short. Being sort of medium, I never had that trigger fear of the "stranger" or at least not towards appearance.
It took going back after 30 years here to realize as a child I’d seen differences that weren’t there.
...It took my going back after 30 years here and getting stuck watching some sort of multi-school gymnastics competition to have the stunning realization of "Heavens, all these kids look like cousins."
This is because the human brain in a highly homogeneous population will find the most minor differences to attach "stranger danger" to.
...If kids are raised together in a great variety of skin colors and hair colors, they don’t even notice them. My kids who attended an urban school, rarely remembered to tell me the race of their friends. Which really wasn’t an issue, except when the friends did the same and their parents did have an issue with friendships between races.
Because again, it is fear of the stranger. Take an American kid who was raised with all skin colors, though, and introduce someone who dresses funny and the fear of the stranger activates. Which is why we’re now using (and fostering) "racism" for things that have bloody nothing to do with race.
...The justification for this is the delightful Marxist illusion that racism = prejudice + power. Have I mentioned I thought Marx -- who at any rate is not the originator of this illusion. That’s his followers trying to make his crazy cakes theory work -- and his followers are all some form of Aspergers, and unable to see things outside what they’re classified as?
...Even if racism REALLY were a thing of power and prejudice, it would apply to every "race" of human, ever. But it’s not. Racism is a fear of the stranger.
And our industrial-education-entertainment complex has the ability to cut out entire groups of people, point them out as different and thereby CREATE racism against them, which then requires intervention to make them "non discriminated against."
#1
It's not so much racism per se as prejudice. And everyone's prejudiced to one degree or another.
For instance, if you've ever helped your twit of a brother in law get a job, just because your sister asked you to, that's basic human prejudice.
Everyone's capable of doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/08/2017 19:03 Comments ||
Top||
A long post, a rarity, by Dr Helen
Do you remember the Guardian Angels in NYC who started helping protect people around NYC on subways and other places when no one else would?
...If you lived in NYC before Giuliani was mayor like I did, you will understand why it was so important to have a group who at least gave the appearance of being in charge. In the years of Koch and Dinkins, the city was a mess; the city simultaneously cracked down on law abiding citizens and rarely helped against the criminal element present.
This troubling dynamic is much like what is happening around the country today. Universities across the country are allowing violent mobs of leftists to attack libertarian and Republican speakers (or anyone else who is in their way) while protecting or ignoring their violence.
...It may be that those on the Right need a large group of Guardian Angels to be present when they speak, or are in settings where there is a likelihood of violence. It may be that this show of solidarity is all that is needed, hopefully the Guardian Angels won't be needed at all. But what do we do when no one else is willing to protect the people who stand for us or for those of us who want to speak out but are shut down or worse?
#5
If you belong to the perfesser's Musk cult, splainin is irrelevant...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/08/2017 12:16 Comments ||
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#6
DoJ can treat universities and colleges the same way they treated police forces and civil rights violations. It is a civil rights violation. Make presidents and administrators sign consent orders that make people accountable.
This is what I find most disturbing about the recent 'troubles'. College students have always been down for some crazy. Ask Pol Pol, Mao or The Weathermen.
The traditional social agreement in the West is the cops provide order (as well as collect revenue) and we don't go about armed to the teeth. Lately the cops seem to be standing down and ignoring riots. Whether this is by direct order (lots of riots in Blue cities) or indifference is hard to tell. But the result is the same - people will be responsible for their own security. And they will ask themselves, if the cops don't care about me, do we care about them?
#9
Cops don't want civil lawsuits and overactive SJW DA's indicting them for something, SteveS.
I understand their hesitancy to act and don't really blame them, but they should be doing what they were sworn to do.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/08/2017 13:35 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Would be interesting if the Bikers for Trump showed up at a pro-Trump rally. Watch the blackshirt beta-male thugs who enjoy beating up on old people keep their distance for fear of a real beat-down.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Political Calculations] Nicholas Eberstadt recently raised an interesting question regarding the role of Medicaid, the United States' welfare program that provides free health insurance for Americans with low incomes, when he commented on how it may very well have directly contributed to the nation's rising problem with opioid addiction.
