University yoga class suspended due to 'cultural appropriation' dispute

By Rachael Pells | The Independent | November 22, 2015

Yoga has become the latest victim of political correctness on university campuses after a free class was cancelled because of complaints that the lessons were an unacceptable “cultural appropriation” of a non-Western practice.

Jennifer Scharf, a yoga practitioner who has offered free weekly sessions to students at the University of Ottawa in Canada since 2008, said she was shocked to receive an abrupt message telling her the classes were to be suspended.

“I’d been in touch to prepare for the new semester’s classes when, out of nowhere, I received an email telling me there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint,” she told The Independent.

The decision to cancel the classes was made by the Ottawa Student Federation, the university’s independent student body.

According to the Ottawa Sun, staff from the Centre for Students with Disabilities, where the classes were held for students of all abilities, wrote in an email: “While yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students...there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice. Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced”, and which cultures those practices “are being taken from”.

The email went on to say that because many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and Western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”

Ms Scharf said she suggested a compromiseby changing the name of the classes to suggest “mindful stretching”, but was rejected. “I think it’s easy to worry too much about accommodating everyone,” she said. “By saving one person’s feelings, we’re ruined the experience for so many others.”

The 10 Investment Commandments

By Wade Sloan  |  Investing Caffeine  |  November 21, 2015

Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the powerful spiritual words of the Ten Commandments from God on two stone tablets and then went on to share the all-important, moral imperatives with his people. If Moses was alive today and was a professional investor, I’m sure he would have downloaded the “10 Investment Commandments” from Charles Ellis’s Winning the Loser’s Game on his e-reader, and then share the knowledge with all investors. I’m the furthest thing from Moses, but in his absence, I will be happy to share Ellis’s valuable and useful 10 Investment Commandments for individual investors:

1)      “Save. Invest your savings in your future happiness and security and education for your kids.”

2)      “Don’t speculate. If you must ‘play the market’ to satisfy an emotional itch, recognize that you are gambling on your ability to beat the pros so limit the amounts you play with to the same amounts you would gamble with the pros at Las Vegas.”

3)      “Don’t do anything in investing primarily for tax reasons.”

4)      “Don’t think of your home as an investment. Think of it as a place to live with your family-period.”

5)      “Never do commodities….Dealing in commodities is really only price speculation. It’s not investing because there’s no economic productivity or value added.”

6)      “Don’t be confused about stockbrokers and mutual fund salespeople. They are usually very nice people, but their job is not to make money for you. Their job is to make money from you.”

7)      “Don’t invest in new or ‘interesting’ investments. They are all too often designed to be sold to investors, not to be owned by investors.”

8)      “Don’t invest in bonds just because you’ve heard that bonds are conservative or for safety of either income or capital. Bond prices can fluctuate nearly as much as stock prices do, and bonds are a poor defense against the major risk of long-term investing – inflation.”

9)      “Write out your long-term goals, your long-term investing program, and your estate plan – and stay with them.”

10)   “Distrust your feelings. When you feel euphoric, you’re probably in for a bruising.”

We all commit sins, some more than others, and investors are no different. A simple periodic review of Charles Ellis’s “10 Investing Commandments” will spiritually align your portfolios and prevent the number of investment sins you make.

One picture to sum up Obama's idiotic ISIS policy

By Russ Vaughn  |  American Thinker  |  November 17, 2015

Recently the Obama administration was crowing loudly about its success in vaporizing a single, notoriously vicious jihadist with a well-placed Hellfire missile.  Mohammed Emwazi was a British citizen who not only joined the jihadist movement, but became one of its leading public executioners, quickly dubbed by the media Jihadi John.  John had no qualms about publicly incriminating himself in widely distributed videos showing him sawing off the heads of helpless kneeling victims.  His flair for such bloody publicity placed him at the very top of the high-value targets list and resulted in his mission as a fervent executioner for ISIS being abruptly truncated last week, according to U.S. authorities.  Since John earned his own execution by drone missile last week, the Obama administration has been basking in the warm glow of his fiery demise, citing the event as evidence that its strategy for combatting ISIS is effective.

And therein lies the problem.  In its article relating John's demise, the U.K.'s Daily Mail includes a photograph that pretty much sums up the slapdash aspects of Obama's strategy of going after newsworthy targets rather than those that are truly significant in terms of reducing the jihadis' ability to wage war.  View for a moment this aerial photo from the Mail's article.

Note that the location of the drone strike on Jihadi John appears to be but a few city blocks from a large building marked "ISIS Main HQ."  Does the question not immediately arise in your mind why we would target a specific human enemy and yet leave perhaps hundreds of them alive and well to continue to conduct their war against us?

Will you please explain this strategy, Mr. Commander-in Chief?

'Safe spaces' on college campuses run at odds with First Amendment, say law experts

By FoxNews.com  |  November 14, 2015

So-called "safe spaces" -- where students can shield themselves from uncomfortable or dissenting viewpoints -- might be all the rage on college campuses, but they would not have been too popular with the founding fathers, say Constitutional law experts.

"I think the problem is they're trying to use this word 'safe' – which conveys the image of a violent attack – and turning it into safe from ideas and statements we find offensive," said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. "There is no right to be safe from that."

"That is directly contrary to what universities are all about," Volokh told FoxNews.com Friday.

"They want complete control over their personal lives, over their sex lives, over the use of drugs, but they want mommy and daddy dean to please give them a safe place, to protect them from ideas that maybe are insensitive, maybe will make them think."
- attorney Alan Dershowitz

The controversy over such zones comes after a string of recent, racially-charged incidents at universities nationwide that -- while different -- share a common denominator: the promotion of a "PC culture" where real or perceived threatening thoughts or ideas should not be tolerated.

Such a heated debate played out on the campus of Yale University last week -- one over culturally sensitive Halloween costumes that was recorded in a video that has since gone viral.

On Oct. 30, Erika Christakis, Yale faculty member and associate "master" of Silliman College -- a residential community within the university -- sent an e-mail to students in which she questioned an earlier missive by the university that urged students to "take the time to consider their [Halloween] costumes and the impact it may have" -- including feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing "war paint" or changing the color of one's skin tone.

"Dear Sillimanders," Christakis' e-mail began. "I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do."

"But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students," Christaki said.

Referring to her husband, Silliman College "master" and Yale professor, Christakis added, "Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society."

College is not for coddling

By Ruth Marcus  |  The Washington Post  |  November 10, 2015

Trigger warning: I’m about to commit a microaggression. Maybe a macro one. Here goes: Yale students worked up over an e-mail about Halloween costumes, grow up. Learn some manners. Develop some sense of judgment and proportion.

The Yalies are all spun up over Halloween costumes — specifically, an administrator’s suggestion that an official e-mail cautioning against offensive outfits was unwise and, indeed, infantilizing. The e-mail, from Silliman College Associate Master Erika Christakis, was caveated and respectful.

Still, she wondered, “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious? . . . And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power?”

Her husband Nicholas, the Silliman College master, suggested an alternative approach, Christakis wrote. “If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

This mild questioning backfired, spectacularly. Irony alert: Christakis was arguing to empower the students to decide how to dress themselves. In response, these supposedly adult students behaved like, well, infants, demanding an apology from both Christakises.

How to Fight - and Beat - ISIS

By Richard Fontaine | Time.com | November 16, 2015

President Obama could intensify the efforts without sending a major ground force

In bringing terror to one of the world’s most beloved cities, ISIS did far more than wreak devastation on Parisians out for a Friday evening. The coordinated attacks ensured that Nov. 13 will assume a place in the pantheon of dates that are shorthand for barbarism. The violence left millions in France and beyond fearful, traumatized and grasping for a response. And it demonstrated the group’s willingness to attack civilians and targets no matter how innocent or how “soft.”

The attacks also ended any debate about ISIS’ international ambitions. Just weeks ago, experts were divided about the group’s desires, with some arguing that its focus was mostly local, and that its efforts to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria took precedence over attacks abroad. No longer. ISIS is now suspected of having, in short succession, brought down a commercial Russian airliner, launched major attacks in the heart of Beirut and sown violence and mayhem across Paris. Perhaps the group wishes to impose a cost for interventions in Syria by France, Russia, and Lebanese Hezbollah. Possibly ISIS sees these countries and others as inevitable obstacles to the state-building project it envisions for the wider Middle East. Or maybe a program of catastrophic international terrorist attacks was part of the plan all along.

It’s hard to know precisely what motivates ISIS, but it would be folly to think that that the U.S. will remain immune from its designs. America remains a harder target than Europe but by no means an impossible one. Even before the latest spate of international attacks, FBI Director James Comey reported that ISIS-related investigations are ongoing in all 50 states.

Paris certainly represented a wakeup call—but to what? Already, one hears the rising of a martial spirit that faded in the years since 9/11. President Francois Hollande said that France will act by “all the means necessary,” and in a way that “will be merciless toward the barbarians.” His Prime Minister added that France must intensify its military operations in Syria in order to “annihilate” ISIS. Over the weekend France carried out airstrikes against ISIS positions in Raqqa. Expect escalation on all sides.

The imperative is neither to yield to panic and fear nor merely to continue a failing international effort to combat ISIS. The Obama administration’s initial response seems worryingly to suggest the latter. Its oft-stated desire to avoid a large-scale American combat role on the ground in Syria and Iraq has moved from mantra to organizing principle. Yet well short of invading either country, there are ways that the U.S. and its international partners can and should intensify the fight against ISIS.

In Iraq, this would start by providing arms directly to Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni tribal fighters willing to take on ISIS, and pushing Baghdad vigorously to establish a national guard that would subsume local units. American advisors embedded with the Iraqi security forces would make their combat efforts more effective, and deploying forward air controllers to spot targets on the ground would make airstrikes more accurate. A U.S.-led international effort to push Iraq’s leaders toward more inclusive governance would reduce the political alienation among Sunnis that feeds ISIS’ support.

In Syria, a stepped-up American effort would increase support to Kurdish forces in the north and moderate rebel groups in other parts of the country. The Pentagon’s spectacular failure to train anti-ISIS opposition forces would be far more effective if it removed the restriction on those fighters taking on the Assad regime. Deploying additional special operations forces beyond the 50 announced by President Obama could increase the pace of airstrikes and help coordinate efforts against ISIS on the ground. The diplomacy aimed at pushing Bashar al-Assad to negotiate with opposition groups is likely to come to naught so long as he believes his regime can prevail on the battlefield; strengthening those groups that seek his removal could help bring an acceptable end to the civil war into sight.

Paris and the fall of Rome

By Niall Ferguson | The Boston Globe | November 16, 2015

I am not going to repeat what you have already read or heard. I am not going to say that what happened in Paris on Friday night was unprecedented horror, for it was not. I am not going to say that the world stands with France, for it is a hollow phrase. Nor am I going to applaud President Hollande’s pledge of “pitiless” vengeance, for I do not believe it. I am, instead, going to tell you that this is exactly how civilizations fall.

Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths’ sack of Rome in August 410 AD:

“In the hour of savage license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed . . . a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and . . . the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies . . . Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless . . .”

Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?

True, Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’’ represented Rome’s demise as a slow burn over a millennium. But a new generation of historians, such as Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather, has raised the possibility that the process of Roman decline was in fact sudden — and bloody —rather than smooth: a “violent seizure . . . by barbarian invaders” that destroyed a complex civilization within the span of a single generation.

Uncannily similar processes are destroying the European Union today, though few of us want to recognize them for what they are.

Let us be clear about what is happening. Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe has allowed its defenses to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time, it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith.

The distant shock to this weakened edifice has been the Syrian civil war, though it has been a catalyst as much as a direct cause for the great Völkerwanderung of 2015. As before, they have come from all over the imperial periphery — from North Africa, from the Levant, from South Asia — but this time they have come in their millions.

To be sure, most have come hoping only for a better life. Things in their own countries have become just good enough economically for them to afford to leave and just bad enough politically for them to risk leaving. But they cannot stream northward and westward without some of that political malaise coming along with them. As Gibbon saw, convinced monotheists pose a grave threat to a secular empire.

It is conventional to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Europe are not violent, and that is doubtless true. But it is also true that the majority of Muslims in Europe hold views that are not easily reconciled with the principles of our modern liberal democracies, including those novel notions we have about equality between the sexes and tolerance not merely of religious diversity but of nearly all sexual proclivities. And it is thus remarkably easy for a violent minority to acquire their weapons and prepare their assaults on civilization within these avowedly peace-loving communities.

Obama Press Conference Recap

By Paul Dixon  |  30minuteVIEW.blogspot.com  |  November 16, 2015

President Obama held a press conference at the conclusion of the G20 summit in Turkey.  The majority of the questions were on the Paris attacks and national security.  The President outlined in detail his strategy dealing with ISIS, but seems totally puzzled by the fact that so many people conclude that the strategy is not working.  In my opinion, the current strategy does not address the real issue involved.  The President stated that it is very difficult dealing with an enemy that is willing to die for the cause they believe in.  There lies the real issue.  Our enemy, that has declared war on us and has repeatedly stated how they are going to carry out their mission, is totally committed.  We are not.

After several reporters inquired about our strategy, whether we have underestimated ISIS, and calling for a more aggressive approach, President Obama was irritated and perplexed that the responses he provided to these questions were not accepted as adequate.  He has continually stated that ISIS is contained.  He means in terms of geographic ground that they control.  He fails to acknowledge that while they may be contained geographically, they continue to grow in terms of their ability to create terror and attack their enemy.

So, the question that remains unanswered is this - Why do we not take this seriously and do everything in our power to, not contain, but stop ISIS?????

Regarding the Syrian refugees, he stated that we have an obligation to help by allowing refugees to come to our country.  Not doing so is a betrayal of our values.  He referred to the refugees as women and children fleeing the civil war in Syria.  To a degree, that is true.  But, the President did not acknowledge that a majority of the refugees are male and of fighting age; he did not acknowledge that at least one of the Paris attackers arrived in Europe last month as a refugee; and, he did not acknowledge that accepting refugees contains any degree of danger.  Instead, he stated that the refugees would be subject to "rigorous screening."

I believe that there is no real data to review regarding the refugees.  Therefore, the rigorous screening may be irrelevant.  FBI Director Robert Comey recently appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.  He stated that if we have no information on someone, there will be no record on them and so it will be challenging. We can only rely on the information we have.

After years of dealing with ISIS, our efforts appear to be failing.  While I believe we have thwarted several terror attempts, I also believe that we have not adequately committed to defeating our enemy.

I encourage you to read the summaries and news reports of this press conference.

Veterans Affairs pays $142 million in bonuses amid scandals

By Donovan Slack and Bill Theobald | USA Today | November 11, 2015

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs doled out more than $142 million in bonuses to executives and employees for performance in 2014 even as scandals over veterans' health care and other issues racked the agency.

Among the recipients were claims processors in a Philadelphia benefits office that investigators dubbed the worst in the country last year. They received $300 to $900 each. Managers in Tomah, Wis., got $1,000 to $4,000, even though they oversaw the over-prescription of opiates to veterans – one of whom died.

The VA also rewarded executives who managed construction of a facility in Denver, a disastrous project years overdue and more than $1 billion over budget. They took home $4,000 to $8,000 each. And in St. Cloud, Minn., where an internal investigation report last year outlined mismanagement that led to mass resignations of health care providers, the chief of staff cited by investigators received a performance bonus of almost $4,000.

As one of his final acts last year before resigning, then-VA secretary Eric Shinseki announced he was suspending bonuses in the wake of revelations that VA employees falsified wait lists to meet wait-time targets — ostensibly as part of efforts to secure the extra pay. But he only curtailed them for a sliver of VA executives -- those in senior levels of the Veterans Health Administration, which oversees health care.

The agency has continued to pay performance-based bonuses to nearly half of agency employees, including in health administration, according to data provided to USA TODAY by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In all, some 156,000 executives, managers and employees received them for 2014 performance.

VA spokesman James Hutton said the vast majority of agency employees are committed to serving veterans.

13 valuable investing insights from history's most impressive military leaders

By Elena Holodny | Business Insider | November 11, 2015

You can learn a thing or two from the lasting wisdom of the world's greatest generals.

Duty, honor, integrity, and, believe it or not, investment strategies.

We've put together a list of 13 brilliant insights from military leaders that are just as relevant to investors as they are to soldiers.

After all, there's nothing more important than character and brains.

Be wary of the day-to-day noise, and focus on the long term and big picture.

Wikimedia

President Harry S. Truman promoting Gen. Omar Bradley to five-star rank on September 22, 1950.

Gen. Omar Bradley

"It is time that we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship."

There's a lot of noise when it comes to the markets — whether the daily chatter of Finance Twitter, the talking heads on business television, or the high-frequency sell-side research notes. But that doesn't mean you have to listen to all the hysteria. And as Benjamin Graham noted, "It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts."

Source: The Intelligent Investor, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

Don't forget to reallocate your portfolio with time.

Wikimedia

Napoleon.

Napoleon

"One must change one's tactics every 10 years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority."

As you get older, it's important to change up your portfolio. For example, manyrecommend that as people get closer to retirement, they should gradually shift into bonds.

Source: Words from the Wise

Take the time to do your homework.

Wikimedia

Major Gen. George S. Patton and Rear Adm. H. Kent Hewitt aboard of USS Augusta in North Africa in 1942.

Gen. George S. Patton 

"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash."

"We're all just guessing, but some of us have fancier math," Josh Brown once tweeted. As Peter Lynch noted, however, "investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards."

Source: Executive Economics: Ten Tools for Business Decision Makers, One Up On Wall Street

Appeals court rules against Obama immigration plan

By Kevin McGill, Associated Press | San Diego Union-Tribune | November 9, 2015

President Barack Obama's plan to protect from deportation an estimated 5 million people living in the United States illegally suffered another setback Monday in a ruling from a New Orleans-based federal appeals court.

In a 2-1 decision, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas-based federal judge's injunction blocking the administration's immigration initiative.

Republicans had criticized the plan as an illegal executive overreach when Obama announced it last November. Twenty-six states challenged the plan in court.

The administration argued that the executive branch was within its rights in deciding to defer deportation of selected groups of immigrants, including children who were brought to the U.S. illegally.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the ruling.

"President Obama should abandon his lawless executive amnesty program and start enforcing the law today," Abbott said in a news release.

The ruling further dims prospects of implementation of the executive action before Obama leaves office in 2017. Appeals over the injunction could take months and, depending on how the case unfolds, it could go back to the Texas federal court for more proceedings.

Judge deals a blow to NSA phone surveillance program

By Charlie Savage | New York Times | November 9, 2015

A federal judge on Monday partly blocked the National Security Agency’s program that systematically collects Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk just weeks before the agency was scheduled to shut it down and replace it. The judge said the program was most likely unconstitutional.

In a separate case challenging the program, a federal appeals court in New York on Oct. 30 had declined to weigh in on the constitutional issues, saying it would be imprudent to interfere with an orderly transition to a replacement system after Nov. 29.

But on Monday, in a 43-page ruling, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the constitutional issues were too important to leave unanswered in the history of the disputed program, which traces back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and came to light in 2013 in leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor.

“With the government’s authority to operate the bulk telephony metadata program quickly coming to an end, this case is perhaps the last chapter in the judiciary’s evaluation of this particular program’s compatibility with the Constitution,” he wrote. “It will not, however, be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our Constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry.”

Under the program, the NSA has been collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk from telephone companies. It uses the data to analyze social links between people to hunt for hidden associates of terrorism suspects.

Leon specifically ordered the NSA to stop collecting phone records for one customer of Verizon: a lawyer in California and his law firm. But he did so, he wrote, knowing that the Justice Department had said that blocking the collection of just one person’s records might require shutting down the entire program because it would be technically difficult to screen him out.

Dozens of feds on paid leave for over a year, senator wants end to costly practice

By Jennifer G. Hickey  |  FoxNews.com  |  November 4, 2015

Federal employees facing internal probes and other disciplinary action have been permitted to remain on paid leave for months on end -- sometimes for periods of over a year -- and now lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to know why. 

The alleged abuse of administrative leave policy has been most egregious at the Department of Veterans Affairs where two of the officials whose actions touched off the VA scandal last year have been on paid leave for the last 18 months. They're not alone -- of the nearly 6,000 VA employees put on administrative leave between 2011 and 2013, 46 individuals have been paid not to work for more than a year. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is pressing for answers. 

"Every agency uses this leave differently, some agencies use it too extensively, and the taxpayers get short-changed," he said in a statement to FoxNews.com. 

Part of the problem is a lack of legal guidance on what's actually allowed. Grassley blamed a "statutory and regulatory vacuum on the right use of paid leave." 

But for Grassley and others, the way it's being used at the VA and other agencies clearly doesn't pass the smell test. 

In fiscal 2014, the VA outspent all other agencies surveyed with respect to employees on administrative leave for a month or more. And Grassley says the agency has not provided congressional investigators with a full accounting of the reasons why. 

In an Oct. 23 letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald, Grassley complained its explanations were "incomplete and confusing" and cited one example of an employee who had logged over a year of administrative leave though his absence was technically authorized as three days of "New Employee Orientation." 

Matt Bevin is the next governor of Kentucky. He has President Obama to thank.

By Chris Cillizza  The Washington Post  |  November 5, 2015

Matt Bevin, the Republican nominee in the Kentucky governor's race, wasn't a very good candidate.  By all accounts, he was standoffish and ill at ease on the campaign trail, and inconsistent — to put it nicely — when it came to policy.  The Republican Governors Association, frustrated with Bevin and his campaign, pulled its advertising from the state.  Polling done in the runup to today's vote showed Bevin trailing state Attorney General Jack Conway (D).

And yet, Bevin won going away on Tuesday night. How? Two words: Barack Obama.

Obama is deeply unpopular in Kentucky. He won under 38 percent of the vote in the Bluegrass State in 2012 after taking 41 percent in 2008. In the 2012 Democratic primary, "uncommitted" took 42 percent of the vote against the unchallenged Obama. One Republican close to the Kentucky gubernatorial race said that polling done in the final days put Obama's unpopularity at 70 percent.
So, when the RGA returned to Kentucky for the final two weeks with $1 million worth of ads, you can guess who was prominently featured.

Yup! President Obama. And, in particular, his famous/infamous comments about his policies being on the ballot during an October 2014 economic speech at Northwestern.  Here are the key 28 words from Obama: "I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them."

Republicans clubbed Democrats in swing and GOP-leaning states with Obama's comments in the 2014 midterms. So, why not repeat the same blueprint a year later?

"Our families can't afford four more years of the liberal policies of President Obama and career politicians like Jack Conway," the ad's narrator says as ominous pictures of the two men are shown on the screen. "Can you really trust Obama and Conway to make things better?"

Ouch. And damn effective.

6-year-old suspended over imaginary bow and arrow

By Fox 43 Newsroom  |  fox43.com  |  November 4, 2015

A first grader is given suspension for pretending to shoot an imaginary bow and arrow at recess.
The boy’s father Matthew Miele told WCPO that his son was given a three day punishment at his Catholic school because they have a zero tolerance policy towards threatening gestures.

“I have no tolerance for any real, pretend or imitated violence,” said a letter from the principal of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Miele says his son was pretending to be a power ranger at recess when a teacher noticed the act and alerted the principal.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the way he was playing,” said Miele, “The punishment is so severe in this it’s hard as a parent to try to make this a teachable moment for our kid so we can move forward in a healthy manner.”

“I can’t stop him from pretending to be a super hero,” The boy’s mother told WLWT. “I can’t stop him from playing ninja turtles. I can’t stop him from doing these things and I don’t think it would be healthy to do so.”

Miele said his son didn’t have any malicious intent, and he wants the school to drop the issue.

Miele and his wife plan to keep their son at the school, but they may sent him somewhere else for the next year.

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How Investing Just $50 a Month can Kick-start Your Retirement

By David Weliver  |  moneyunder30.com

What effect could just $50 a month have on your life savings? More than you think. Here’s how to start or build upon your investing plan by making regular monthly investments (with as little as 50 bucks).

The story of the tortoise and the hare is particularly applicable as an investment metaphor. Instead of trying to time the market and buying stocks that could either make you a fortune or lose you everything, a far more lucrative option is just to set a steady course and automatically buy a set amount every month.

Although Wall Street seems like a place you can only enter with an absurd amount of money, you can actually do it for as little as $50 a month.

You might have heard of this strategy before – it’s called dollar cost averaging.

The idea is that you buy an investment — say, a mutual fund — for $50 a month, every month no matter what. Whether the fund is up or down is irrelevant because you buy on schedule. This way you don’t worry about market timing, and you let the law of averages propel you to investment gains.

How dollar cost averaging works

As the mutual fund increases in value, your $50 purchases fewer shares. And when the fund loses value, you end up with more shares for the same amount. For example:

• September buy $50 of XYZ Fund at $25 per share. Total = 2 shares at $50
• October buy $50 of XYZ Fund at $30 per share. Total = 3.67 shares at $110
• November buy $50 of XYZ Fund at $15 per share. Total = 7 shares at $105
• December buy $50 of XYZ Fund at $25 per share. Total = 9 shares at $225

You can see the beginning and ending value of the XYZ Fund is the same at $25 a share, but because we bought a steady amount every month no matter what the fund’s value was, we ended up actually gaining $25 in the process.

You might say, “That’s great and all, but what’s $50 a month really going to do in the end?” The answer: A lot.

Obama issues executive order that keeps notice of criminal record off federal job applications

By FoxNews.com  |  November 2, 2015

President Obama on Monday announced a new executive order that prevents federal agencies from making job-applicants reveal they have a criminal record as part of his overall criminal justice reform effort.

The so-called “drop the box” initiative would allow prospective employees not to check a box on some federal applications that acknowledges a criminal record.

“It is relevant to find out if somebody has a criminal record,” Obama said at an event in Newark, N.J. 

“I’m not suggesting ignore it. I’m suggesting that when it comes to applications, give folks a chance to get through the door.”

The president said 19 states and major U.S. companies such as Koch Industries, Target and Walmart have already removed the question from applications, and he urged Congress to pass legislation to expand the effort.

“My hope is this becomes a basic principle across our society,” said Obama, whose Democratic two-term presidency ends in just 14 months.

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed such legislation into law last year.

Criminal justice reform has gotten bipartisan support on Capitol Hill from Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate.

New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker is among congressional Democrats supporting such reform.
The president in his announcement also called for more programs to help former inmates reenter society.

He said roughly 70 million Americans have some sort of criminal record and that making sure they can find jobs, housing and education is good for the economy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

New York City EMT suspended without pay for leaving ambulance to aid choking girl

By Matthew Diebel  |  USA Today  |  October 29, 2015

A New York City EMT who tried to save the life of a 7-year-old girl who choked on her lunch says he has been suspended without pay for making an unauthorized stop, according to local media.

Qwasie Reid and a partner were transporting a nursing home patient last Wednesday, local news channel NY1 reported, when they were flagged down in Brooklyn by a man who told them that a student was choking.

Reid told the station he believed a choking girl took priority over the transport, and, against his partner's urging, administered aid to the 7-year-old, who he said had already turned blue. No one at the school was assisting the girl, he said.

Reid told local TV station WABC that he cleared out the girl's mouth, put an oxygen mask on her, used a defibrillator and started CPR.

"She was blue in the face and lips. No response. Unconscious unresponsive," Reid told the station. He told local news website dnainfo.com that that the fire department arrived three to four minutes after he began CPR.

"I don't regret it," he added. "I'd do it again. If I know there's a child choking, I'm going to do my best to help her. I made a vow to save a life. If I had to jump out of the ambulance again, I'd do anything. I pray to God she feels better," Reid told WABC.

"As an EMT, I don’t care about your money," Reid told dnainfo.com. "There was a child choking. I’m worried about them firing me, but I did a good deed. I just feel like I’m being penalized for something and I haven’t done anything wrong."

Increase Your IQ: 5 Things You Should Be Doing Every Day

By Geil Browning  |  Inc.com  |  June 16, 2015

Young children develop, learn, and change daily. Adopt a 4-year-old learning style to build your intelligence at any age.

If you want to witness the magic of the human brain in action, play the matching game with a 4-year-old–you know, the classic game where the tiles are arranged face down and players take turns flipping them over to find pairs. You’ll see what I mean as you watch that wonderful little brain doing its thing. It’s amazing, and when you realize you’ve been outdueled in a brain game by a child, it’s just a bit humbling.

Obviously, young children develop, learn, and change very quickly. They show drastic improvement in academic, physical, and social skills all the time. One day they can’t, and literally the next day they can. Does it make you a little bit jealous? Imagine what you could accomplish with that amazing ability.

Well, there is hope for us adults. We’ve known for quite a while that IQ can be increased, that you’re not just stuck with what you’re born with. Andrea Kuszewski explains that fluid intelligence, which refers to the capacity to learn new things, retains that information, uses it to solve new problems, and can be strengthened over time. She suggests that if one implements five elements into life every day, or at least as much as possible, cognitive capacity can be increased. Those elements are to seek novelty, challenge yourself, think creatively, do things the hard way, and network.

So, is it any wonder that children learn at the rate they do? Every sight, sound, word, taste — everything — is new and novel to a child. And, when you’re a kid, everything is challenging. Kids make use of creativity to solve problems from the time they are born. They discover the easy way via the hard way. And finally, they are constantly networking by simply meeting new people all the time.

So, kids are engaging in brain strengthening activities all the time, almost by default. For us adults, it likely takes a more concerted effort. It’s so easy to stay within our comfort zones, stick with our routines, and never change anything up. Doing that may be practical, productive and convenient…it’s just not making us any smarter.

Muslim truck drivers refuse to deliver beer, win $240,000 lawsuit

By Molly Jackson  |  Yahoo News  |  October 27, 2015

An Illinois jury awarded $240,000 in damages and back pay to two former truck drivers who claimed religious discrimination when they were fired in 2009 after refusing to make beer deliveries.

A jury was convened to determine damages after US District Court Judge James E. Shadid ruled in favor of Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale when Star Transport admitted liability in March. The men, both of whom are Somali-American Muslims, were represented by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). 

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers must make accommodations for workers' religious beliefs unless doing so would impose "undue hardship" on the business. 

As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh explained to The Washington Post, the trucking company admitted that drivers often switched their assignments, meaning it would have been reasonable to accommodate the men's request, rather than firing them. 

The jury delivered its verdict in 45 minutes, on Oct. 20. However, the case appears to have picked up national attention when Fox News' Megyn Kelly invited the channel's legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on air Monday, where the two criticized the government-appointed agency for cherry picking cases to serve a political agenda.

"It’s unfortunate when the government interferes in a private dispute over religious views and takes sides, and chooses one religion over another," Judge Napolitano said, responding to Ms. Kelly's accusation that the government had not provided Christians who object to workplace demands with the same protections as the Muslim truck drivers. 

Kelly specifically cited the cases of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide, and private bakers' disputed rights to refuse serving gay couples. 

Critics who told Ms. Davis "If you can't do the job, don't take the job," or resign, ought to be saying the same thing to workers of other faiths, Kelly said.

According to Professor Volokh, the US Civil Rights Act "rejects" the idea that employees should just resign when their beliefs come into conflict with their responsibilities, and has often been used to protect Christians: a 2012 settlement, for example, when the EEOC represented a Jehovah's Witness fired for refusing to raise the American flag, which violated his religious views.  

However, as both liberal and conservative analysts have pointed out, under the Civil Rights Act, elected public officials are exempt from some of the law's protections, although Kentucky law restores some of those rights to elected officials like Davis. 

County clerks are asked to “certify that [couples have] met the state requirements for marriage. So her religious opposition to same-sex marriage is absolutely irrelevant in this context," Columbia law professor Katherine Franke argued on National Public Radio, contrasting Davis' personal views of marriage with the legal definition. "Couples in Kentucky are being asked to pay the price of her religious observance.”

Davis was released from jail after 5 days, and permitted to return to work, where her deputies continued to issue marriage licenses whose language had been slightly altered, but, as her lawyers argue in the ongoing case, still legal. 

But religious discrimination lawsuits, from workers of all faiths, seem unlikely to fizzle from public view any time soon.

Esquire writer Dave Holmes suggests that such lawsuits present an enticing political strategy, though for quite a different reason than what the Fox commentators allege.

When gay couples "are withheld the right to marry, they lose something real," he wrote last month. On the other hand, the way rights cases have been framed in the past, gay marriage opponents merely lose "a concept," a distinction Holmes says helped Americans accept the legalization of gay marriage. 

But once the issues are framed as workplace discrimination, he argues, something very real is at stake, that everyone can understand and appreciate regardless of creed or culture: a job. 

Amish man sues US government over photo ID requirement to purchase firearms

By Alejandro Rios  |  LancasterOnline  |  October 26, 2015

An Amish man from Northumberland County is suing the U.S. government over the identification requirement to purchase a firearm, arguing his religious beliefs prevent him from being photographed.

Andrew Hertzler, who the lawsuit says is an active and practicing member of the Amish faith community in Lancaster County, tried to purchase a firearm at a Pennsylvania firearms dealer in June using a state-issued nonphoto ID. The sale was denied.

Hertzler said he wants to purchase a firearm for self-defense purposes.

The lawsuit points to the biblical passage Exodus 20:4, which states: “You shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

The lawsuit argues Hertzler could purchase firearms without photo identification by applying for a federal firearms license, which would allow him to sell, make, transfer and/or import firearms. However, it states he has “no intent to engage in the business of selling firearms.”

Hertzler reached out to U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, who contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In a letter to Hertzler, Toomey said the ATF responded by saying federal laws require photo identification when purchasing a firearm, and there are no exceptions to this requirement.

Hertzler wants the court to declare the photo ID requirement — Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)(1)(C) — violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Second Amendment. He also wants the court to prohibit the requirement from being enforced against those who claim a religious exemption.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch; Acting Director of the ATF Thomas E. Brandon; Assistant Director, ATF Public and Government Affairs Christopher C. Shaefer; and FBI Director James B. Comey are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The suit was filed Friday in U.S. Middle District Court.

Should the U.S. government make an exception based on a person's religious beliefs to the law requiring someone to have a photo ID to purchase a firearm? Take our poll, and leave your comments below.

Free speech is flunking out on college campuses

By Catherine Rampell  |  The Washington Post  |  October 22, 2015

Women, sexual assault victims, people of color, transgender students. College campuses have created “safe spaces” for all sorts of marginalized groups. But in the process, one member of the campus community has lost precious real estate.

Free speech.

There have of course been complaints about censorship and political correctness on the nation’s campuses for a while now. High-profile speakers — Christine Lagarde, Condoleezza Rice — have been disinvited from or otherwise pushed out of commencement addresses, thanks to students who didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Comedians have sworn off performing at colleges because they say students can’t take a joke.

Even President Obama has decried illiberal tendencies in liberal arts settings, fretting that college students are “coddled and protected from different points of view.”

These threats to free speech peaked this week at Wesleyan University, a top-flight school in Middletown, Conn., where the student government voted to cut funding for the 150-year-old campus newspaper after it published a conservative op-ed.

In September, sophomore Bryan Stascavage — a 30-year-old Iraq veteran and self-described “moderate conservative” — wrote an opinion column for the Wesleyan Argus, the student newspaper. In it, he criticized the Black Lives Matter movement — not the movement’s mission or motivations, but its tactics and messaging, particularly those of its more anti-cop fringe elements.

The essay was provocative, but it contained neither name-calling nor racial stereotypes (the usual hallmarks of collegiate column calumny). It was no more radical than the conservative commentary you might see on mainstream op-ed pages such as this one.

That didn’t stop all hell from breaking loose.

'Bureaucracy run amok': School dumps federal lunch program, is deemed 'processing plant'

By FoxNews.com  |  October 21, 2015

Nathan Greenberg believes he runs a school district, but government bureaucrats look at his Londonderry, N.H., operation and see …. a food processing plant?

That’s the strange dilemma the 5,000-student district finds itself in after deciding at the end of the last school year to pull the high school out of the unpopular National School Lunch Program. While the district’s elementary and middle schools remain in the program, which sets portion and nutrition guidelines for students, provides low cost staples and subsidizes meals of low-income pupils, it proved immensely unpopular at the high school.

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage,” said Greenberg. “We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”

“We saw the [federally-mandated] food going right into the garbage. We had some of the healthiest trash cans in the state of New Hampshire.”
- Nathan Greenberg, superintendent of schools

Before the current school year began in the town of 24,000 neighboring Manchester, the district decided to pull the older students out of the program. Doing so gave officials flexibility in what meals they offered and how they were prepared. The high school now has a new snack room, a coffee bar and a frozen-yogurt machine, and a salad bar is set to open next month. Participation in the school lunch program rose from 29 percent to 33 percent, according to officials.

Greenberg’s goal was not to provide a less healthy menu, but to provide more choices and ensure the food was actually consumed.

“We knew full well that in doing so, we would have to pick up the tab for the [high school] kids who got free and reduced-price lunches,” Greenberg said. “We were okay with that.

“We were able to offer nutritious lunches with greater variety,” he continued. “We have seen greater participation and enthusiasm, as well as significantly less waste.”

But the problem arose when U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, and the state agency that shares oversight of the program, realized that nearly all of the district’s food is taken in, stored and prepared at the facility at the high school. That means food destined for the one middle and four elementary schools, which is subsidized by taxpayers, could be co-mingled with food that is not. It also means the high school – but not the other schools in the district – would forgo foods the USDA provides at low prices, including cheese, diced chicken and peaches.

Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America

By Danny Vinik  |  Politico  |  

The government tried using behavioral science to shape people’s behavior. Here’s what happened.

For the past year, the Obama administration has been running an experiment: Is it possible to make policy more effective by using psychology on citizens?

The nickname is “nudging”—the idea that policymakers can change people’s behavior just by presenting choices or information differently. The classic example is requiring people to opt out of being an organ donor, instead of opting in, when they sign up for a driver’s license. Without any change in rules, the small tweak has boosted the number of registered organ donors in many states.

Nudging has gained a lot of high-profile advocates, including behavioral-law guru Cass Sunstein and former budget czar Peter Orszag. Not everyone likes the idea—“the behaviorists are saying that you, consumer, are stupid,” said Bill Shughart, a professor of public choice at Utah State University—but President Obama was intrigued enough that he actually hired Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard who co-wrote the best-known book about the topic, “Nudge.”

The president officially adopted the idea last year when he launched the White House’s Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency effort to bring behavioral science research into the policymaking process. Now the team has published its first annual report on this experiment.

How did it go? Mostly, the efforts appear to have worked, though it’s hard to know how much impact they’ll have. In part this is because the SBST’s efforts are small—just 15 proof-of-concept projects in its first year—and limited by agencies and laws in how bold they could be. Nevertheless, the findings produce a few key insights:

1. Young people clearly respond to texts

One problem the team tried to address is an education issue called “summer melt”—the fact that each year, 20 to 30 percent of high school graduates who’ve been accepted to college just don’t matriculate for their freshman year. Most of them are poor, the kind of students who would really benefit from a college degree. The Department of Education and the SBST partnered with a nonprofit organization to send text messages to selected students, reminding them to complete certain required tasks before showing up on campus, like filling out forms. The results: about 9 percent more poor students matriculated.

2. You can make federal vendors more honest with a simple reminder

On certain transactions, federal vendors are required to pay a fee on quarterly sales, which they self-report through an online form. To improve honest reporting, the General Services Administration—the agency that manages the function of different agencies—added a small prompt to the top of the form asking vendors to promise they were submitting accurate information. Lying on the prompt has no legal repercussions, but it still led to a $1.59 million increase in fees in one quarter, suggesting that the respondents were more fully reporting their sales.

Good News: Obama's Global Warming Campaign To Cost $45 Billion A Year In Regulatory Costs

By Matt Vespa | Townhall.com | October 30, 2015

When the United Nation’s conference on global warming begins in Paris come December, American Action Forum has a friendly reminder: we already regulate greenhouse gases and the Obama administration’s regulatory cost in fighting so-called climate change could cost us $45 billion annually:

…[R]egulators have already imposed $26 billion in annual costs to limit GHGs and 

have proposed an additional $1.7 billion. However, to meet President Obama’s 

climate goals the nation will have to spend up to $45 billion more each year by 2025.

What are the benefits of these investments? According to the Environmental 

Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, previous actions will avert a combined 

0.0573 degrees Celsius of warming. Meeting the president’s 2025 goals 

could add reductions up to 0.125 degree Celsius. In other words, full 

achievement of the president’s climate goals will cost more than $73 billion in 

annual burdens to alleviate less than two-tenths of one degree of warming.

Of course, the president’s Clean Power Plan is factored into all of this, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Already we have studies showing that it will disproportionately impact fixed-income seniors, and most of rural America. Moreover, everyone knows it will increase energy costs. Secretary of State John Kerry is working to make sure the U.S. leaves Paris with something that isn’t a treaty since there’s a slim chance of getting it through a Republican Congress. The administration’s Clean Power Plan already has over half the states opposing it. Both Democratic and Republican attorneys general have joined a lawsuit against the president’s agenda. As of now, states have until September 6, 2016 to submit their blueprints that balances their energy needs with CPP’s goals. Those who fail to submit one will have a federal plan imposed until a state-centered strategy is drafted. Like Obamacare, we have another serious policy fight ahead, one that isn’t being discussed much on the 2016 campaign trail.

The Slow-Motion Implosion of ObamaCare

By Andy Puzder | The Wall Street Journal | November 1, 2015

I see firsthand in my company why not enough people are signing up and premiums are rising.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced recently that she expects 10 million people to be enrolled in health-care coverage through ObamaCare’s exchanges by the end of next year. What she didn’t mention was that in March of last year the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in 2016—more than double the new estimate.

The administration says the difference can be explained away: For instance, fewer companies dropped coverage than expected, thus fewer employees are migrating from employer-sponsored plans to the exchanges. “We haven’t seen much of a shift at all,”Richard Frank, a health and human services assistant secretary, told USA Today.

But the question isn’t where Americans are getting health insurance. It is whether ObamaCare will provide more Americans with affordable insurance for decades to come.

Supporters credit ObamaCare with helping nine million uninsured Americans find coverage in 2014. But a new paper from the Heritage Foundation, however, suggests that nearly all of the increase came from adding nearly nine million people to the Medicaid rolls.

In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.

But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.

Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

Jeanean Thomas  |  Twitter  |  October 10, 2015

Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

ISIS is attacking the U.S. energy grid (and failing)

By Jose Pagliery | CNN Money | October 16, 2015

The Islamic State is trying to hack American electrical power companies -- but they are terrible at it.
U.S. law enforcement officials revealed the hack attempts on Wednesday at a conference of American energy firms who were meeting about national security concerns.

Investigators would not reveal any details to CNNMoney -- or cite evidence of specific incidents."ISIL is beginning to perpetrate cyberattacks," Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told company executives.

But they did say the attacks by the Islamic State have been unsuccessful. Terrorists are not currently using the most sophisticated hacking tools to break into computer systems and turn off or blow up machines.

"Strong intent. Thankfully, low capability," said John Riggi, a section chief at the FBI's cyber division. "But the concern is that they'll buy that capability."

Indeed, hacking software is up for sale in black markets online. That's often how mafias acquire the cyberweapons they use to break into companies and steal giant databases of information they later sell to fraudsters.

The FBI now worries that the Islamic State or its supporters will buy malicious software that can sneak into computers and destroy electronics. An attack on power companies could disrupt the flow of energy to U.S. homes and businesses.

And it's not just Islamic extremists. There's an equal threat from domestic terrorists and hate groups, according to Mark Lemery. He's the "critical infrastructure protection coordinator" who helps coordinate defenses against attacks in Utah. But again, the worries are tempered.

"They'd love to do damage, but they just don't have the capability," Lemery said. "Terrorists have not gotten to the point where they're causing physical damage."

Officials made clear that the greater concern is attacks from other countries. Riggi said malware found last year on industrial control systems at energy companies -- including pumps and engines -- were traced to the Russian government.

Besides, the likelihood of a hack taking out the entire U.S. energy grid -- or even a section of it -- is extremely low. The grid isn't as uniform and connected as people might believe. Currently, it's a chaotic patchwork of "grids," each with different types of machines and software that don't smoothly coordinate or communicate.

That jumble actually works to the nation's advantage, energy company executives said. It would take a large, expensive team of highly technical spies to understand the layout of computers and machines at an energy company. Then it takes stellar hackers to sneak in. And even if they do manage to flip a switch -- which companies maintain has never happened here in the United States -- the attack might only take out electricity fed to a tiny portion of land, maybe a section of a city. An entirely different type of attack would be needed to carry that over to the next power plant.

Experts attending GridSecCon, held by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, seemed cautious but hopeful.

When energy industry representatives asked Riggi how the FBI knows who's hacking -- whether it's a government or independent hacking group -- he said American spies that are monitoring computer networks are quick to share information with law enforcement.

"We've had pretty good success actually," Riggi said. "Since the FBI is an intelligence agency, we rely on the help of CIA and NSA. We compare information with the NSA."

Principal holds up student election results because winners not diverse enough

By Todd Starnes  |  FoxNews.com  |  October 20, 2015

There’s a big election controversy at a California middle school after the principal discovered that not enough black or Latino students were elected to office.

Principal Lena Van Haren’s decision to withhold the results of the student government elections angered parents and students at Everett Middle School in San Francisco.

“It’s not okay for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important.”

According to the newspaper, there were no “English learners” among the winners. I’m assuming that’s what they’re calling kids who don’t speak a lick of English these days.

Black and Latino students were underrepresented as well.

There were no allegations of voter intimidation or voter fraud. There were no reports of hanging chads. And there were no incidents involving ballot boxes that malfunctioned. So what was the problem?

The problem, it appears, is that the principal didn’t like who got the most votes. In other words – too many white kids got elected.

Cancer patients died waiting for care at troubled veterans’ hospital, probe finds

By Lisa Rein | The Washington Post | October 20, 2015

Some patients with bladder and prostate cancer died waiting for care, and medical treatment for almost 1,500 others was delayed because of short-staffing and mismanagement of urology care at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, a new investigation has found.

Senior officials at the medical center, the center of a national scandal last year over fudged wait times, did little to respond to a severe staffing shortage as recently as April 2015, investigators for the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general found.

Their solution? They canceled appointments for 3,200 urology patients, some of them for crucial follow-up tests, and never rescheduled them. And many veterans had no idea they couldn’t see a doctor until they showed up for their appointment.

“The Urology Service was not able to manage the volume of patients in need of either diagnostic evaluation, treatment, or routine follow-up related to multiple urological conditions,” the report by John Daigh, Jr., assistant inspector general for health-care inspections, said. The delays placed patients at “unnecessary risk for adverse outcomes.”

Seven patients died after delayed treatment and lapses in the quality of medical care they received in Phoenix, investigators wrote.

Seven problems that deserve investors’ attention

By Henry K. Hebeler  |  MarketWatch  |  August 4, 2015

Charles Krauthammer has written an excellent book titled "Things that matter." I agree with most of his points except the one on the “F word.” That said, perhaps he or someone should follow up with an equally popular book called "Things that shouldmatter." Here are suggestions for the table of contents:

The national debt. It's well over $18 trillion, and that's only the current value and growing exponentially. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated the present value of our unfunded obligations — such as commitments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, CHIP, government pensions, etc. — total somewhere between $47 trillion and $205 trillion. These are patiently waiting their turn to show up in the national debt.

State debts. States, like the Federal Government, have built in their own laws and commitments for the future which they cannot fund. Never mind that this will be a problem for future elected officials. State and local commitments for pensions are way out of line. It takes an eternal optimist to buy the bonds of Illinois or Chicago. States, unlike the federal government can't print money to make the payments.

Funding the interest on debt. Debt interest is now about one-seventh of the total U.S. budget and will grow as the national debt and/or interest rate grows. Federal Reserve funds are far too little if Russia or China would elect to cash in their U.S. debt holdings. The Federal Reserve and banks have reserves to cope with a modest run on the banks, but a wholesale call for cash on the national debt would be a serious security issue.

Personal debt. The average household has over $15,000 in credit card debt and a $150,000 mortgage. Graduating college kids have accumulated over $1 trillion student debts, and even bankruptcy won't erase these. Borrowing on employer savings bonds has increased to the point where more money is being withdrawn than deposited. Over a quarter of 401(k)s have loans against them. And the government is encouraging even more debt by maintaining virtually zero interest rates on its bonds, making it easier to get reverse mortgages, and encouraging people to spend more, not save. Meanwhile, industry and commerce cheers for even more spending.