News Clips
1) ‘Freethinkers’ Launch ‘Progressive’ National Atheist Political Party... Atheists/Politics/Socialism
2) The neurotech industry engaged in $2 trill race to fix your brain.... Medical/Science/Interest
3) Who Exactly Voted FOR the NDAA... Republican/Democrat/Obama/Taking Freedom Away/Police State
4) ‘Big Atomic Bomb Will Come Out’: Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About Nuclear Strike Against U.S... Iran/Venezuela/Nuclear Attack on USA
5) New Sex Ed Standards Call for Homosexuality to Be Explained to 5th Graders... Homosexuality Promotion/Public Schools
6) Leader of Christian Community in Israel Murdered by Man Dressed as Santa Claus... Murder/Interest
7) These Are the Pictures of The White House‘s ’Alice in Wonderland’ Party... Obama/Double Standard/Living Excessively
1) ‘Freethinkers’ Launch ‘Progressive’ National Atheist Political Party... Atheists/Politics/Socialism
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/freethinkers-launch-progressive-national-atheist-political-party/
January 4, 2012
Move over Republicans and Democrats - there’s a new political party in town. And according to its founder, this new party, launched and comprised of atheists, is seeking to speak to a more unheard audience.
Back in October, The Blaze explored whether non-believers were beginning to wage a global campaign that would enable them to gain sociopolitical power. Here, in America, there’s now new evidence that atheists are seeking to do just that.
Enter the National Atheist Party, a 527 political party (a non-profit that cannot specifically support candidates - only issues) that is believed to be the first of its kind in American history. Troy Boyle, a 45-year-old corporate legal representative, teamed up with one of his friends to launch the initiative centered upon the core belief that God doesn’t exist.
According to RNS, Boyle got the idea to launch a political party after watching an interview with well-known atheist Richard Dawkins. During the media appearance, the famed non-believer apparently wondered why atheists don’t organize more fervently to more profoundly influence politics.
Boyle was moved by this question. After researching and realizing that atheism and politics don’t really have much of a core relationship here in America, he decided to launch the NAP. Currently, the party has 7,500 members with chapters in all 50 states.
Below, watch a recent plea for funds:
At first, the duo named the political institution the Freethought Party. When that didn’t take, they changed its name to a clearer title that has led to a boom in its popularity. As of today, the group has more than 8,500 fans following its Facebook page.
According to Boyle, the party stands for no government favoritism when it comes to religion.
“We are convened with the idea that the Founding Fathers had it right,” he explains. “The separation of church and state, the establishment of the U.S. as a secular nation - those two concepts are our watchwords. We don’t want government to impose a religion, and we don’t want government to impose no religion. We want government to be silent with regards to religion.”
Boyle discusses the party’s view on religion, below:
When it comes to the party’s platform, it follows a trend that can mainly be described as “liberal.” Currently, the group’s web site touts support for the Occupy movement, among other sentiments. RNS has more about the party’s beliefs:
The party’s platform was decided on by a vote - again via Facebook - and includes hot-button issues such as gay marriage (for it), gun control (tighten it), abortion (a woman’s decision), immigration (reform it), energy (green it) and the economy (legalize recreational drugs to create revenue and jobs).
A portion of the party’s charter reads:
“The National Atheist Party is a progressive, secular, political movement and response to the lack of representation for all free thinking people who are legal, law abiding citizens and residents of the United States. We demand emancipation from the corporate sponsored religious dogma that has infiltrated our government and has unjustly influenced political decisions and policy making. We are for the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE and therefore incorporate the right to use the power of the PEOPLE to restore equality in our Democratic Republic in reasonable, rational and non-violent means…”
While the NAP faces an uphill battle, to say the least, Boyle says that donations are streaming in and that membership continues to grow (the group even appears to be hiring for some staff positions). That being said, growing in support is very different from being able to wage successful political campaigns. But accompanying his optimism comes a realistic understanding of the schema in both American religion and politics.
“We know we are a minority and we know that is not likely to change in the near future,” he explained. “We simply want the right to exist. And if that doesn’t turn into a majority landslide of popular support, whoever thought it was going to? But an election on an issue or on a candidate can be swayed by a small group of people…In two or 10 or 20 years, who knows how many of us there will be and when we vote on an issue it will matter.”
You can read more about the NAP on the group’s official web site.
2) The neurotech industry engaged in $2 trill race to fix your brain.... Medical/Science/Interest
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/05/12/Analysis-of-Neurotech-Industry
May 12 2008
"I believe this will be the century of the brain."-Don Debethizy, C.E.O. of Targacept
Deep in Big Tobacco country, I’m talking to a former chief scientist for R.J. Reynolds about new wonder drugs for the brain that are inspired by, of all things, nicotine. We’re huddled in a futuristic steel-and-glass building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that looks like an alien starship next to the abandoned storefronts and empty brick cigarette factories of this faded town. I’m skeptical. Now C.E.O. of a company called Targacept, the ex-Reynolds man, Don deBethizy, is describing a class of drugs called nicotinics, which he says can restore the memory of Alzheimer’s patients, control pain, and improve attention spans. What’s more, they may boost cognition and memory in healthy people.
It seems far out even for the neurotechnology industry, a rapidly growing cluster of companies-small upstarts as well as pharmaceutical giants-that want to alter your gray matter and make billions of dollars in the process. These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, a Foxborough, Massachusetts, company, implanted electrodes into the brain of a quadriplegic that allowed him to operate machines with his thoughts. (View an interactive feature showing brain researchers’ latest efforts.)
DeBethizy’s jump-out-of-his-seat gusto makes me want to believe him.Yet I can’t shake the image of the Nick Naylor character in Thank You for Smoking, the film based on Christopher Buckley’s satirical novel about a spinmeister and apologist for the tobacco industry. Targacept’s birth was a by-product of deBethizy’s attempts at Reynolds to create a “safe” cigarette and find positive uses for nicotine. Neuroscientists and investors I spoke to vouch for deBethizy and insist that Targacept is among the hottest companies in the brain business and a leader among several outfits developing nicotinics. So here I am in this dog-eared burg to learn more about an industry that may not only hold the key to treating some of the most serious maladies of our time but also challenge society’s-and regulators’-opinions of whether drugs should be used to enhance healthy brains as well as treat illness.
Targacept is one of about 500 braintech companies going after the estimated $2 trillion that it costs globally when brains atrophy, degenerate, experience depression, cause convulsions, register pain, trigger anxiety, or simply fail to work as well as we would like. The size of the market is huge, according to data from the World Health Organization and others, which report that more than 1 billion people suffer from brain-related ailments each year. That number has grown rapidly during the past generation, as neurodisorders like depression have gone from being underdiagnosed to perhaps overdiagnosed, and Western populations, along with their brains, have aged. It’s hard to believe, but even in our Prozac nation, possibly tens of millions of people who might need brain meds aren’t getting them. In some parts of the developing world, the figure could be as high as 90 percent. (View a pop-up graphic that shows the revenue breakdown of drug treatments and disease.)
Neurotech’s returns are already enormous. In 2006, the industry brought in more than $120 billion-about $101 billion from drugs and the rest from neurodevices ($4.5 billion) and neurodiagnostics ($15 billion)-up 10 percent from the previous year, reports NeuroInsights, a market research and investment advisory firm. But industry analysts insist that this figure hardly begins to suggest the potential. For Alzheimer’s, a disease currently without an effective treatment for about 4.5 million sufferers in the U.S., 40 companies-including behemoths like Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth, as well as Targacept and a gaggle of similar upstarts-are testing 48 new drugs in human trials in a quest for the Prozac of dementia. The push has brought many small to midsize biotech firms together in partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies to pursue everything from pain-control compounds derived from chili peppers to an antistroke medicine developed from vampire-bat saliva. There is so much activity in neurotech that last fall it got its own index, NERV, on the Nasdaq, tracking the performance of 30 leading brain companies based in the United States. Analysts estimate that the sector should continue to grow by about 10 percent a year, which would produce a brain-industrial complex worth more than $300 billion in the next 10 years.
For now, though, brain businesses are still more likely to lose money than to make it. The failure rate is startling even for the pharmaceutical industry, which is accustomed to tremendous risk. Ninety-two percent of drugs that enter human clinical testing for the central nervous system-basically brain drugs-flop, compared with 89 percent for drugs across all categories, according to a study in Nature Reviews, a science journal. At the same time, the total cost of bringing one C.N.S. drug to market is nearly twice the average for all drugs-$1.6 billion as opposed to $800 million. The risk, along with the generally volatile economic climate, has helped send NERV tumbling more than 18 percent since its inception last September.
Still, investors see the immense size of potential markets and have swallowed hard, pumping billions of dollars into neurotech, hoping for that giant payback. (Hit the jackpot with a new anxiety-disorder med that’s better than the current batch and has fewer side effects, and you have a potential market of 40 million Americans and 400 million people worldwide.) “People invest because a success is usually a huge success,” says Ellen Baron, a venture capitalist with Oxford Bioscience Partners in Boston, which has invested in Targacept and other early-stage neuro companies. The top 20 C.N.S. drugs each earn more than a billion dollars per year, she notes. “This new science will produce breakthroughs, and everyone feels the potential to create a truly paradigm-shifting treatment,” Baron says. “But when? Nobody knows.”
Neurotechnology as its own industry sector is the brainchild, so to speak, of Zack Lynch, a former software marketing executive who lectures widely on future business trends. He believes that we are at the beginning of a brain wave that will dominate at least the next century or two. Lynch came up with several cute names for the advances he anticipates, such as cogniceuticals, for drugs that focus on improving decisionmaking, learning, attention span, and memory processes; emoticeuticals, which influence feelings, moods, motivation, and awareness; and sensoceuticals, which can restore and extend the capacity of senses for people who have impaired vision, smell, taste, and hearing. In 2005, he and his wife, Casey, a former biotech executive, founded NeuroInsights. Later, they started the Neurotechnology Industry Organization, a policy and lobbying group that has 70 companies as members.
After several months of negotiation with a top Nasdaq official, the couple convinced the exchange to launch the NERV index in September. Its leaders include Biogen Idec, a neuro-titan with a current market cap of $19.4 billion that’s developing treatments for (among other things) multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s, and Shire, which makes the amphetamine Adderall and has a market cap of $10.6 billion. At the even more volatile bottom are companies with market caps of $250 million or so. Only companies with more than 50 percent of their revenues coming from neuro products are allowed on the index, so big pharmaceutical concerns like GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, despite having blockbuster brain drugs, don’t make the cut.
J&J, Glaxo, and Lilly, however, lead the list of the top five companies in neurotech revenues, a group that collectively earned $30.1 billion in 2006, 25 percent of all neuro sales. Pfizer is next, with $6 billion in sales in 2006, though that is down from $8.1 billion in 2004, before its patents for big sellers like Zoloft (for depression) and Neurontin (for epilepsy) expired. Wyeth rounds out the group, with almost $3.8 billion in sales.
I meet the Lynches one afternoon at a coffee shop in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, a block or two from the NeuroInsights world headquarters in the basement of their home. Both in their mid-thirties, the two met in a calculus class at U.C.L.A. when they were freshmen. Zack first recognized the link among companies with neural products while giving his PowerPoint presentations about the future of technology at meetings and conferences.
The Lynches tend to talk as one brain, left and right, and they agree that turning neuroscience into cash and cures requires patience. “But I think a time is coming-or may be here-when our understanding of the brain will get to the point where we can more successfully make targeted drugs,” says Casey, a petite woman with dark hair and a practical, left-brained demeanor that balances her husband’s more right-brained, pie-in-the-sky fervor. “This will profoundly change medicine, and possibly who we are,” Zack says.
The couple’s new push is to get more federal dollars channeled toward the industry. Zack has been traveling back and forth to Washington, sometimes taking along neurotech C.E.O.’s, to promote a $1 billion “national neurotechnology initiative” that Representative Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently announced he will introduce in Congress. The legislation asks the federal government to spend $200 million a year for five years on neurotech, including $30 million for the Food and Drug Administration to train more experts, $80 million for the National Institutes of Health to coordinate the neuroresearch efforts that are now run by 16 different institutes, and $75 million to increase small-business grants for neurotech companies.
Treatments for the mind are hardly new. Before modern times, remedies included the exorcism of evil spirits, bleedings to rid the body of bad humors, and opium smoking to alleviate “melancholy.” In the mid-20th century, physicians tried crude and often destructive “cures,” now discredited, such as lobotomy-removing sections of the brain believed to be causing neuroses.
In the 1950s and ’60s, psychiatry was revolutionized by the invention of antidepressants and tranquilizers. The progression of new drugs continued into the ’70s and ’80s, especially with the development of the blockbuster class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which includes Prozac. Approved by the F.D.A. in 1987, Prozac, as well as other S.S.R.I.’s-like Zoloft and Paxil-prolongs the action of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, which has beneficial effects on such problems as depression, attention-deficit disorder, and anxiety. Critics of S.S.R.I.’s argue that they don’t work for many patients, that they are being overprescribed, and that they can cause side effects such as loss of libido and (according to controversial findings) suicidal thoughts in teenagers.
But since the late ’80s, few new classes of drugs to treat brain maladies have made it to market, and many diseases remain either undertreated or, like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, not treated effectively. The industry now faces the challenge of parlaying two decades’ worth of breakthrough research on the basic workings of the brain into new and better treatments-a process that is often thwarted by the complexity of the brain. “We target a drug that is supposed to do one thing, and we find out it does five more things we didn’t expect,” says Sam Barondes, director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and the author of Mood Genes.
Much of the industry’s financial success in recent years has come from drugs that differ only slightly from longtime neuro-blockbusters, some of which are losing their patent protection. Patents expiring in 2008 include Risperdal, a schizophrenia drug from J&J’s Janssen unit, annual sales of which are approaching $4.2 billion. “The new products are coming, but the big numbers are still in the Prozac category,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.
Some of the most interesting advances are being made not in drugs but in devices and other treatments. Late last year, StemCells Inc., a Palo Alto, California, company, announced that it had successfully transplanted stem cells into a human brain and that the patient had recently completed a one-year follow-up exam. Five other patients have also been injected with HuCNS-SC, as the company calls its human stem-cell product. All of the patients suffer from Batten disease, a genetic malady that leaves children’s brain cells without a critical enzyme and eventually causes seizures, loss of motor skills and mental capacity, blindness, and finally death. In previous studies with mice, the stem cells took hold and produced the missing enzyme. “These trials are just the beginning for stem-cell therapies in the brain and elsewhere,” says Antoun Nabhan, a former venture capitalist for Sagamore Bioventures who has invested in and sits on the board of Cellerant Therapeutics, one of StemCells’ competitors. But stem-cell treatments for more-common brain diseases are at least five years away, Nabhan says.
Earnings for neurodevices are only 4 percent of what neuromeds bring in, but for a few diseases, the impact has been miraculous. Take cochlear implants. Located in the inner ear, the cochlea translates sound waves into electrical signals that are channeled to the brain to be processed into the opening swell of a Mozart concerto or raindrops beating on a window. People with damaged or congenitally malformed cochleas were condemned either to near silence or to the use of imperfect hearing aids until the 1970s, when the first cochlear devices were surgically implanted. These had an electrical apparatus that fed signals into the audio nerve through electrodes. The latest versions of the devices use tiny computers to process even complex sounds like music into signals that the brain can recognize. More than 100,000 people have had the cochlear devices implanted worldwide (out of the millions affected), and many go from being deaf or near-deaf to being able to hear most sounds and function as if they had no hearing deficit. The device, which costs $20,000 or more, has annual sales totaling $550 million, and sales are growing 15 percent a year. Leading makers include Advanced Bionics, Cochlear, and Med-El.
One truly out-there device is Cyberkinetics’ BrainGate, which was implanted into the brain of Matt Nagle, a quadriplegic patient, in an F.D.A.-approved trial. The device enabled him to control a computer cursor with only his thoughts. The BrainGate, which was connected to the computer by a wire, uses tiny electrodes to read electrical impulses from the brain’s motor cortex. In 2005, I visited Nagle-a former high-school football star who was paralyzed as a result of injuries he suffered during a brawl on a beach in Weymouth, Massachusetts-and I watched as he gave the mental command to move his arm up and down. The machine translated these thoughts into up and down cursor motions. As Nagle got better at controlling the device, he became able to write emails and operate controls for lights and a television. He could even control a prosthetic arm. But the BrainGate was cumbersome, difficult to calibrate between brain and machine, and sometimes left Nagle feeling frustrated. The company is now recruiting patients for additional trials.
All the uncertainty of the industry hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of Targacept’s Don deBethizy, who toils with his team of scientists just up the street from the R.J. Reynolds headquarters, a 1929 skyscraper considered an Art Deco marvel in its day, with gilt tobacco leaves on the lobby’s ceiling. Targacept broke off from R.J.R. Nabisco in August 2000, just 36 hours before the unit was to be eliminated during the messy merger process that started when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired the tobacco giant in 1989. At the last minute, drug giant Aventis stepped in with a $70 million partnering deal to save Targacept and its leading Alzheimer’s compound, which was then in Phase 1 human trials. (This drug was later killed after the unit was unable to successfully breach the blood-brain barrier, a common problem for would-be neuromeds.) After becoming an independent company, Targacept raised $123 million in three rounds of private capital investment and $72 million from stock offerings. Milestone deals with AstraZeneca to develop cognitive-disorder meds and with GlaxoSmithKline to develop treatments for pain, obesity, smoking cessation, addiction, and Parkinson’s make up the remainder of Targacept’s financing.
As deBethizy explains, nicotinic receptors control or influence memory, attention span, mood, sensitivity to pain, inflammation, movement, and cell survival. “These receptors act like volume switches,” says Merouane Bencherif, Targacept’s vice president for Preclinical Research. Nicotinic drugs work by increasing neurotransmitter activity, Bencherif says, meaning more is around to zap the receptors to improve memory and mood. Turning down neurotransmitter activity reduces pain or inflammation.
Currently, Targacept has four compounds in human trials. Their connection with nicotine? “There isn’t really a connection anymore,” says deBethizy. The compounds are chemically unrelated to nicotine, but their action in activating the receptors mimics what nicotine does.
One of Targacept’s leading compounds is designed to improve cognitive activity in patients with Alzheimer’s disease; another is for schizophrenia. Both are in human trials. So far, the drugs have worked well for those with the diseases, but the Alzheimer’s compound has also had an effect on healthy control subjects, whose scores on cognitive and memory exams improved significantly. The company also tested the compound on people who went to a memory clinic with mild age-associated memory impairment-the natural loss of memory that comes with normal aging. The mini-trial was a success: “People on 50 milligrams consistently said they remembered things better,” deBethizy says.
Several other companies are developing meds that could treat brain-function slowdown in the elderly and might also enhance brain function in younger people. These firms include Memory Pharmaceuticals, Cortex Pharmaceuticals, and Lilly. “We are working on glutamate receptor medicines for memory and cognition,” says Steve Paul, president of Lilly Research Laboratories. “This is a big future growth area for us.”
But the drugs’ success with healthy people raises a number of regulatory and ethical questions. The F.D.A. evaluates drugs based on how effectively they treat disease, not on whether they enhance healthy brains. Benedetto Vitiello, a psychiatrist and researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health who has also sat on neuropharma advisory panels for the F.D.A., acknowledges that many people face cognitive loss as part of normal aging. But the condition is often subtle and hard to quantify, he says. This may be one reason that the F.D.A. has been reluctant to list age-related cognitive loss as an official approved designation for new drugs, deBethizy suggests. He expects the F.D.A. to one day recognize it as an approved disease, “but right now,” he says, “no one wants to spend the resources on a drug that may not be approved.”
Yet mind-meds that can enhance mental functions are already used by healthy people. Through what’s known as off-label use, legal prescriptions are written for conditions the drugs weren’t approved to treat. Physicians are allowed to prescribe any drug for any illness they see fit, but companies are barred from promoting drugs for unapproved uses.
A more recent drug being widely used off-label is Cephalon’s Provigil. This high-tech medicine is approved for narcolepsy and a sleeping disorder that develops when people work odd shifts. Provigil, however, is widely prescribed for other conditions, ranging from depression and A.D.D. to jet lag. In late 2007, Cephalon agreed to pay a $425 million settlement to the government after the firm’s sales force was accused of marketing Provigil and two other drugs to physicians to use for unapproved maladies. “It would behoove the federal government to get ahead of the enhancement issue now,” says Zack Lynch. “Provigil is just the beginning.”
A larger debate is percolating over what would happen if a pill could turn most people into brainiacs. “I don’t believe in cognitive enhancement for people who are well,” says memory expert and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, a professor at Columbia University. “These should be pharma products for sick people.” N.I.H. neuroscientist Jordan Grafman agrees: “If you manipulate the brain, it can change who we are.”
Others say enhancers can’t be stopped. “The record is clear. Wherever there have been new agents that enhance our functioning, mental or physical, even when they’re risky like steroids, there are people who will use them,” says U.C.L.A. bioethicist Gregory Stock, author of Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future and a strident advocate for enhancement. “Why shouldn’t people use them if they don’t hurt us?”
Back in the less surreal world of their favorite San Francisco coffee shop, Zack and Casey Lynch tell me that their organization delisted four companies a mere three months after the neurotech index joined Nasdaq, highlighting the fact that those who would make money from our brains face a brutal reality. “It’s a tough industry,” Zack says with a sigh, as Casey crosses out the delisted companies and writes down the new ones on the chart they had given me. “But the future is clear,” he says, quickly recovering his zeal, reminding me of Don deBethizy and the other neuro-cheerleaders. “This is going to work. The effects are going to be profound.”
3) Who Exactly Voted FOR the NDAA... Republican/Democrat/Obama/Taking Freedom Away/Police State
http://weirdloadreboot.com/blog/2011/12/16/who-exactly-voted-for-the-ndaa/
December 16, 2011
With the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 on everybody's mind, at least everyone who gives a wet slap about civil liberties, it is imperative to slow down and take a long, hard look at who voted for this legislative turd. there are feet to be held to flames and with a matter as grave as this the typical American political attention span (which resembles that of a squirrel on methamphetamines) needs to be helped out by posting the saints and the sinners.
Let us start in the Senate. A short list of the guilty includes- in no particular order:
Jeff Sessions (R), Lisa Murkowski(R), Barbara Boxer(D), Dian Fienstein(D), Mark Udall(D), Joe Liberman(whatever he is today), Marco Rubio(R), Richard Lugar(R), Mitch McConnell(R), Olympia Snowe(R), Scott Brown(R), John Kerry(D), Claire McCaskil(D), Harry Reid(D), Lindsey Graham(R), Jim Webb(D), Mark Warner(D), John McCain(R), Carl Levin(D)…
How did the delegation from my home state of North Carolina do? As expected Richard Burr(R) did exactly the wrong thing and voted FOR. Also as expected Kay Hagen(D) continued to prove that she is the biggest mistake North Carolina Democrats have made in recent memory and voted FOR. That's right. Seems that Hagen can't find her way onto the right side of any issue from tax policy to stripping her fellow North Carolinians of their civil liberties.
In total the tally in the Senate was 86 FOR, 13 AGAINST, and one WUSSYING OUT.
On to the house where things were equally grim. In Congress the guilty include:
Nancy Pelosi(D), John Boehner(R), Eric Cantor(weasal), Darrell Issa(R), John Carney(D), Debbie Wasserman Shultz(D), Paul Braun(R), Joe Walsh(R), Mike Pence(R), Andre' Carson(D), Michele Bachmann(R), Tom Cole(R), Tim Scott(R), Virginia Foxx(R), Heath Shuler(D)…
How did North Carolina do in the House… again… BADLY. Only two NC members of Congress voted AGAINST. That would be Mel Watt(D) who is my Congressman… sigh of relief. Also voting no was David Price(D). Otherwise it was a slam dunk FOR NDAA with the North Carolina delegation.
The final count in the House was 322 FOR, 96 AGAINST, and 13 WUSSING OUT. The state that came down best for civil liberties was Massachusetts with Niki Tsongas(D) being the only FOR.
It is VITAL that we keep our eyes on the ball here, friends & neighbors. You can see the full voting results for the Senate HERE, and for the House HERE. If your Senator or Rep is on the YES list give them a call, drop an email, or show up at their local offices. Let them know that you know.
NDAA Bill: How Did Your Congress Member Vote?
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/268602/20111216/ndaa-did-congress-member-vote.htm
Want to know how your representative in Congress voted on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)?
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the act, which it called HR540 on Wednesday evening by a vote of 283 to 136, with 14 members not voting.
The House released the official vote tally on its website and it shows that 190 Republicans voted for the bill and 43 voted against it, while 93 Democratic representatives voted for and 93 voted against it.
Below is the breakdown by last name:
Ayes:
Ackerman
Adams
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Altmire
Amodei
Andrews
Austria
Baca
Bachus
Barletta
Barrow
Bartlett
Barton (TX)
Bass (NH)
Benishek
Berg
Berkley
Berman
Biggert
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Bishop (UT)
Black
Blackburn
Bonner
Bono Mack
Boren
Boswell
Boustany
Brady (PA)
Brady (TX)
Brooks
Broun (GA)
Brown (FL)
Buchanan
Buerkle
Butterfield
Calvert
Camp
Canseco
Cantor
Capito
Capps
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Carter
Cassidy
Castor (FL)
Chabot
Chandler
Cicilline
Cole
Conaway
Connolly (VA)
Cooper
Costa
Courtney
Cravaack
Crawford
Crenshaw
Critz
Crowley
Cuellar
Culberson
Davis (CA)
Davis (KY)
Denham
Dent
Deutch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dold
Donnelly (IN)
Dreier
Duffy
Ellmers
Emerson
Engel
Farenthold
Fincher
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Fleming
Flores
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
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Garamendi
Gardner
Gerlach
Gibbs
Gibson
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Gonzalez
Granger
Graves (MO)
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Griffin (AR)
Grimm
Guinta
Guthrie
Hall
Hanabusa
Hanna
Harper
Hartzler
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Heck
Hensarling
Herger
Herrera Beutler
Higgins
Himes
Hirono
Hochul
Holden
Hoyer
Hultgren
Hunter
Inslee
Israel
Issa
Jackson Lee (TX)
Jenkins
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jordan
Keating
Kelly
Kildee
Kind
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kinzinger (IL)
Kissell
Kline
Lamborn
Lance
Landry
Langevin
Lankford
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Latham
Latta
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Loebsack
Long
Lowey
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lungren, Daniel E.
Manzullo
Marchant
Marino
Matheson
McCarthy (CA)
McCarthy (NY)
McCaul
McCotter
McHenry
McIntyre
McKeon
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
McNerney
Meehan
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller, Gary
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Noem
Nugent
Nunes
Nunnelee
Olson
Owens
Palazzo
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Paulsen
Pearce
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peterson
Petri
Platts
Poe (TX)
Pompeo
Price (GA)
Quayle
Rahall
Reed
Rehberg
Reichert
Renacci
Reyes
Richardson
Rigell
Rivera
Roby
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross (AR)
Ross (FL)
Rothman (NJ)
Runyan
Ruppersberger
Ryan (WI)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Scalise
Schiff
Schilling
Schmidt
Schock
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (SC)
Scott, Austin
Scott, David
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Sewell
Sherman
Shimkus
Shuler
Shuster
Sires
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Southerland
Stearns
Stivers
Sullivan
Sutton
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tsongas
Turner (NY)
Turner (OH)
Upton
Visclosky
Walden
Walz (MN)
Wasserman Schultz
Waxman
Webster
West
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Wilson (FL)
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Womack
Yoder
Young (AK)
Young (IN)
Noes:
Amash
Baldwin
Bass (CA)
Becerra
Blumenauer
Braley (IA)
Bucshon
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Campbell
Capuano
Carson (IN)
Chaffetz
Chu
Clarke (MI)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Coffman (CO)
Cohen
Conyers
Costello
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLauro
DesJarlais
Doyle
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Edwards
Ellison
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Flake
Forbes
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garrett
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gowdy
Graves (GA)
Griffith (VA)
Grijalva
Hahn
Harris
Hastings (FL)
Heinrich
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Huelskamp
Huizenga (MI)
Hurt
Jackson (IL)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (IL)
Jones
Kaptur
Kucinich
Labrador
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
Luján
Lummis
Mack
Maloney
Markey
Matsui
McClintock
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Moore
Moran
Mulvaney
Murphy (CT)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Olver
Pallone
Payne
Pence
Peters
Pingree (ME)
Polis
Posey
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rangel
Ribble
Richmond
Roe (TN)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schweikert
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Simpson
Slaughter
Speier
Stark
Stutzman
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Tipton
Tonko
Towns
Van Hollen
Velázquez
Walberg
Walsh (IL)
Waters
Watt
Welch
Woodall
Woolsey
Yarmuth
Not voting:
Bachmann
Coble
Diaz-Balart
Filner
Giffords
Gutierrez
Johnson, E. B.
LaTourette
Lynch
Myrick
Paul
Pitts
Sanchez, Loretta
Young (FL)
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 112th Congress - 1st Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Vote Summary
Question: On Passage of the Bill (S. 1867 As Amended )
Vote Number: 218 Vote Date: December 1, 2011, 08:02 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Bill Passed
Measure Number: S. 1867 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 )
Measure Title: An original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.
Vote Counts: YEAs 93
NAYs 7
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Alphabetical by Senator Name
Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Ayotte (R-NH), Yea
Barrasso (R-WY), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Begich (D-AK), Yea
Bennet (D-CO), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Blumenthal (D-CT), Yea
Blunt (R-MO), Yea
Boozman (R-AR), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brown (R-MA), Yea
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Coats (R-IN), Yea
Coburn (R-OK), Nay
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Coons (D-DE), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Yea
DeMint (R-SC), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Franken (D-MN), Yea
Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Hagan (D-NC), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Heller (R-NV), Yea
Hoeven (R-ND), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Johanns (R-NE), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Johnson (R-WI), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Kirk (R-IL), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Lee (R-UT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Manchin (D-WV), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Merkley (D-OR), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Moran (R-KS), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Paul (R-KY), Nay
Portman (R-OH), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Risch (R-ID), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Rubio (R-FL), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Yea
Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Toomey (R-PA), Yea
Udall (D-CO), Yea
Udall (D-NM), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Warner (D-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Grouped By Vote Position
YEAs ---93
Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Blumenthal (D-CT)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Brown (R-MA)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Coons (D-DE)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Durbin (D-IL)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagan (D-NC)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kirk (R-IL)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Manchin (D-WV)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Portman (R-OH)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Rubio (R-FL)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Vitter (R-LA)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)
NAYs ---7
Coburn (R-OK)
Harkin (D-IA)
Lee (R-UT)
Merkley (D-OR)
Paul (R-KY)
Sanders (I-VT)
Wyden (D-OR)
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Grouped by Home State
Alabama: Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Alaska: Begich (D-AK), Yea Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Arizona: Kyl (R-AZ), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea
Arkansas: Boozman (R-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR), Yea
California: Boxer (D-CA), Yea Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Colorado: Bennet (D-CO), Yea Udall (D-CO), Yea
Connecticut: Blumenthal (D-CT), Yea Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Delaware: Carper (D-DE), Yea Coons (D-DE), Yea
Florida: Nelson (D-FL), Yea Rubio (R-FL), Yea
Georgia: Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Hawaii: Akaka (D-HI), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Idaho: Crapo (R-ID), Yea Risch (R-ID), Yea
Illinois: Durbin (D-IL), Yea Kirk (R-IL), Yea
Indiana: Coats (R-IN), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Iowa: Grassley (R-IA), Yea Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Kansas: Moran (R-KS), Yea Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Kentucky: McConnell (R-KY), Yea Paul (R-KY), Nay
Louisiana: Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Maine: Collins (R-ME), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Maryland: Cardin (D-MD), Yea Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Massachusetts: Brown (R-MA), Yea Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Michigan: Levin (D-MI), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Minnesota: Franken (D-MN), Yea Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Mississippi: Cochran (R-MS), Yea Wicker (R-MS), Yea
Missouri: Blunt (R-MO), Yea McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
Montana: Baucus (D-MT), Yea Tester (D-MT), Yea
Nebraska: Johanns (R-NE), Yea Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Nevada: Heller (R-NV), Yea Reid (D-NV), Yea
New Hampshire: Ayotte (R-NH), Yea Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
New Jersey: Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
New Mexico: Bingaman (D-NM), Yea Udall (D-NM), Yea
New York: Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea Schumer (D-NY), Yea
North Carolina: Burr (R-NC), Yea Hagan (D-NC), Yea
North Dakota: Conrad (D-ND), Yea Hoeven (R-ND), Yea
Ohio: Brown (D-OH), Yea Portman (R-OH), Yea
Oklahoma: Coburn (R-OK), Nay Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Oregon: Merkley (D-OR), Nay Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Pennsylvania: Casey (D-PA), Yea Toomey (R-PA), Yea
Rhode Island: Reed (D-RI), Yea Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
South Carolina: DeMint (R-SC), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea
South Dakota: Johnson (D-SD), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea
Tennessee: Alexander (R-TN), Yea Corker (R-TN), Yea
Texas: Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Utah: Hatch (R-UT), Yea Lee (R-UT), Nay
Vermont: Leahy (D-VT), Yea Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Virginia: Warner (D-VA), Yea Webb (D-VA), Yea
Washington: Cantwell (D-WA), Yea Murray (D-WA), Yea
West Virginia: Manchin (D-WV), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Wisconsin: Johnson (R-WI), Yea Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Wyoming: Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Enzi (R-WY), Yea
4) ‘Big Atomic Bomb Will Come Out’: Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About Nuclear Strike Against U.S... Iran/Venezuela/Nuclear Attack on USA
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/big-atomic-bomb-will-come-out-ahmadinejad-and-chavez-joke-about-nuclear-strike-against-u-s/
January 9, 2012
President Hugo Chavez defended his close ally Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday and warned of “U.S. warmongering threats” amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The two leaders met in Caracas on the first leg of a four-nation tour that will also take Ahmadinejad to Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Their conversation reportedly often focused on anti-U.S. rhetoric, which according to the Daily Mail included Mr Chavez saying that:
“he was hiding a bomb under a grassy knoll before the steps of the presidential palace, saying: ‘That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out. The imperialist spokesmen say Ahmadinejad and I are going into the basement now to set our sights on Washington and launch cannons and missiles… It’s laughable.”
The leaders were apparently serious, however, when discussing the threat they believe the U.S. poses.
“We are very worried,” Chavez said of the pressures being put on Iran by the United States and its allies, which he accused of being a threat to peace.
“They present us as aggressors,” Chavez said as he received Ahmadinejad at the presidential palace.
“Iran hasn’t invaded anyone,” he added. “Who has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs … including atomic bombs?”
Ahmadinejad’s visit comes after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.
Both leaders joked that their relationship shouldn’t cause any concern.
Ahmadinejad said if they were together building anything like a bomb, “the fuel of that bomb is love.”
Chavez played on the same theme in his remarks: “We’s going to work a lot for some bombs, for some missiles, to keep the war going. Our war is against poverty, hunger and underdevelopment.”
The Venezuelan leader said in his televised speech that Iranians assistance has helped the South American country build 14,000 homes as well as factories that produce food, tractors and vehicles.
“We will always be together,” Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter. Smiling as he put his hand on Chavez’s arm, the Iranian leader called the Venezuelan president “the champion of fighting against imperialism.”
Government officials signed two agreements promoting industrial cooperation and worker training.
Chavez accused the U.S. and its allies of wrongly demonizing Iran.
Iran finds itself under increasing pressure in the standoff over its nuclear program, and in response to the latest U.S. sanctions has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important transit route for oil tanker shipments.
Diplomats on Monday confirmed a report that Iran has begun uranium enrichment at an underground bunker, a development that increases fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Two diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential and based on an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Chavez’s long-running confrontation with Washington also looks set to grow more antagonistic after the U.S. State Department announced, just hours before Ahmadinejad’s arrival, that it was expelling Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera, due to allegations that she discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government.
The expulsion followed an FBI investigation into accusations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed the possible cyber-attack while she was previously assigned as a diplomat in Mexico. The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved.
Chavez called the U.S. action “unjustified, arbitrary” and said his government will consider its response. He called it “an attack against our nation.”
The diplomat had already returned to Venezuela in December because “we knew that was going to occur,” Chavez said.
Beyond voicing criticism of the U.S. on his tour, Ahmadinejad is also likely to look for ways to use his Latin American alliances to diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst with consulting firm IHS Global Insight in London.
However, Moya-Ocampos predicted that “Venezuela is going to be very careful not to push its relationship with Iran beyond the U.S. tolerance limits,” so as not to risk being hit with more U.S. sanctions. Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA for delivering at least two cargoes of oil products to Iran.
The U.S. government has also repeatedly accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism, and growing Iranian diplomatic ties with some Latin American countries have generated worries in Washington.
In Quito, Ecuador, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters that Ecuador’s government “has no reason to stop having relations with Iran” and said his country recognizes Iran’s “right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
Argentina, which has good relations with Venezuela, also has warrants out for the arrests of Iran’s defense minister and other officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, urged Ahmadinejad‘s hosts to tell Iran that they support Argentina’s demands for the extradition of those implicated in the attack. The organization also condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel, saying in a statement on Monday that “honoring that trafficker of hatred with impunity involves his hosts as accomplices.”
5) New Sex Ed Standards Call for Homosexuality to Be Explained to 5th Graders... Homosexuality Promotion/Public Schools
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/new-sex-ed-standards-call-for-homosexuality-to-be-explained-to-5th-graders/
January 9, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) - Young elementary school students should use the proper names for body parts and, by the end of fifth grade, know that sexual orientation is “the romantic attraction of an individual to someone of the same gender or a different gender,” according to new sexual education guidelines released Monday by a coalition of health and education groups.
The non-binding recommendations to states and school districts seek to encourage age-appropriate discussions about sex, bullying and healthy relationships - starting with a foundation even before second grade.
By presenting minimum standards that schools can use to formulate school curriculums for each age level, the groups hope that schools can build a sequential foundation that in the long term will better help teens as they grow into adults.
Experts say schools across America are inconsistent in how they address such sensitive topics
Despite awareness of bullying, for example, Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, one of the groups involved with creating the standards, said some schools don’t address it - or at least not in relation to sexual orientation or gender identity, which is where she said a lot of the bullying occurs.
“They should tackle it head on,” Hauser said.
Consequences to parents deciding not to vaccinate?
The percentage of students not having all vaccinations required for attendance is on the rise in some states. (Photo: South Mountain Villager)
Other organizations involved with the release include the American Association of Health Education, the American School Health Association, the National Education Association - Health Information Network, the Society of State Leaders of Health and Physical Education, and the Future of Sex Education Initiative. The latest suggestions were already drawing less enthusiastic reactions from some.
By the end of second grade, the guidelines say students should use the correct body part names for the male and female anatomy, and also understand that all living things reproduce and that all people have the right to not be touched if they don’t want to be. They also say young elementary school kids should be able to identity different kinds of family structures and explain why bullying and teasing are wrong.
Beyond lessons about puberty by the end of fifth grade, the guidelines say students should be able to define sexual harassment and abuse.
When they leave middle school, they should be able to differentiate between gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, according to the guidelines. And the say they should be able to explain why a rape victim is not at fault, know about bullying and dating violence and describe the signs and impacts of sexually transmitted diseases.
It calls for high school graduates to evaluate the effectiveness of abstinence, condoms and other “safer sex methods” and know how emergency contraception works.
It’s unclear how much influence the recommendations will have among educators.
Cora Collette Breuner, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on adolescence who was not involved in the creation of the standards, praised the approach of encouraging discussions at an early age.
“The data points that trying to cover this stuff when kids have already formulated their own opinions and biases by the time they’re in middle and high school, it’s too late,” Breuner said.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Education Abstinence Association, said she does not agree with the topics and goals of the standards. Like the anti-smoking campaign of the last few decades that has had success, abstinence should be the focus of such programs, she said.
“This should be a program about health, rather than agendas that have nothing to do with optimal sexual health decision-making,” Huber said. “Controversial topics are best reserved for conversations between parent and child, not in the classroom.”
Federal funding for abstinence-centered education funded by a Republican Congress in the late 1990s and later under President George W. Bush has largely gone by the wayside under the Obama administration, which has had a shift in focus to teen pregnancy prevention programs.
6) Leader of Christian Community in Israel Murdered by Man Dressed as Santa Claus... Murder/Interest
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/leader-of-christian-community-in-israel-murdered-by-man-dressed-as-santa-claus/
January 8, 2012
Israeli police say a man dressed as Santa Claus fatally stabbed Gabriel Cadis, the head of Jaffa’s Orthodox Church Association, in the back during a procession to mark Orthodox Christmas in the city of Jaffa.
The Associated Press reports that Cadis was stabbed Friday night and died hours later at a hospital. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said six members of an Arab Christian family were in custody Saturday as police investigate. Witnesses at the scene told police that the attacker was wearing the red-and-white Santa suit.
Israeli media reported that Cadis had a long-standing dispute with other Arab Christians in Jaffa. Haaretz reports that police are investigating whether the stabbing was connected to elections within the church association.
A funeral procession was held for Cadis in Jaffa on Saturday afternoon where The Jerusalem Post reports more than a thousand mourners joined on Yefet Street, including leaders from Christian and Muslim communities. According to The Post the procession was led by a large contingent of scouts who periodically stopped to play taps, ahead of a minivan carrying Cadis in an open-face casket.
Jaffa residents speaking with Haaretz described Cadis’ death as “an earthquake”.
Jewish News One on the shocking crime:
7) These Are the Pictures of The White House‘s ’Alice in Wonderland’ Party... Obama/Double Standard/Living Excessively
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/these-are-the-pictures-of-the-white-houses-alice-in-wonderland-party/
January 10, 2012
A lot has been said over the last two days about the White House’s now-infamous “Alice in Wonderland” Halloween party from 2009. It was an extravagant affair featuring actor Johnny Depp and filmmaker Tim Burton in costume. Conservatives have panned the president for having such a party during economic turmoil, and generally keeping it hush-hush. Liberals (and even some conservatives) have defended the president, either saying the party was mentioned to some degree, or that the president‘s Halloween plans shouldn’t be national news.
No matter what side you take, it’s still conceivable that you would want to see pictures from the event, right? We thought so.
Intrepid blogger Zombie tracked down some of the photos from the night and posted them here. We’ve included some of them below (Depp is dressed as the Mad Hatter, Burton is the one with the eye patch, and the dog, well, that’s the Obama family canine named “Bo”):
You can see more of the pictures that Zombie tracked down, including more of the decorations and some from what seems to be an exclusive after-party, here.
By the way, the White House’s official statement defends the party as no secret:
One of the anecdotes that has received wide attention [from a new book] has been a supposedly secret Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween party in 2009. This was an event for local school children from the Washington DC area and for hundreds of military families, and certainly nothing that the White House was ashamed of.
While acknowledging that the press was allowed to attend, which in itself would seem to cast doubt on any alleged secrecy, the author contends that there was “no media coverage beyond the standard, limited pool report noting the president’s presence.” We would invite all readers to read that extremely detailed and colorful pool report, or the stories that emerged from the party, and decide for themselves. In addition, the event was previewed in the official White House Daily Guidance and discussed by then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on camera from the podium - before he dressed up as Darth Vader at the party of course.
But it should be noted that neither the “detailed” pool report nor Gibbs’s briefing make specific mention to the Alice part of the party. Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed that issue in his daily briefing (via Mediaite):
“There was a story about Johnny Depp being there?” Compton asked.
“There wasn’t a publicity event for the outside, Carney replied. “It was a military event for their children and their families inside the White House where the press came, photographs were taken. It was contemporaneously known who was here. If that’s - if we’re trying to hide something by bringing in the press, we’re not very good at it.”
“For the record, there’s not one statement from this White House -” Compton stated.
“But, again, the purpose wasn’t for - we do a lot of these things July 4th, other events here, including other events that are geared towards military families and their kids where the purpose isn’t to publicize them externally for you guys but to have a nice event for them here, which is different from trying to hide anything.”
Tommy Christopher, a member of the White House press corps, notes the event was listed as “Pool spray at the top,” which means “there’s a photo op at the beginning of the event, and then the press leaves.”
“This attack might make some sense if this event had been for administration staff, or donors, but the focus was on military families,” he concluded. “Why would the White House think the American people, Tea Party or not, would begrudge them anything?”
2) The neurotech industry engaged in $2 trill race to fix your brain.... Medical/Science/Interest
3) Who Exactly Voted FOR the NDAA... Republican/Democrat/Obama/Taking Freedom Away/Police State
4) ‘Big Atomic Bomb Will Come Out’: Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About Nuclear Strike Against U.S... Iran/Venezuela/Nuclear Attack on USA
5) New Sex Ed Standards Call for Homosexuality to Be Explained to 5th Graders... Homosexuality Promotion/Public Schools
6) Leader of Christian Community in Israel Murdered by Man Dressed as Santa Claus... Murder/Interest
7) These Are the Pictures of The White House‘s ’Alice in Wonderland’ Party... Obama/Double Standard/Living Excessively
1) ‘Freethinkers’ Launch ‘Progressive’ National Atheist Political Party... Atheists/Politics/Socialism
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/freethinkers-launch-progressive-national-atheist-political-party/
January 4, 2012
Move over Republicans and Democrats - there’s a new political party in town. And according to its founder, this new party, launched and comprised of atheists, is seeking to speak to a more unheard audience.
Back in October, The Blaze explored whether non-believers were beginning to wage a global campaign that would enable them to gain sociopolitical power. Here, in America, there’s now new evidence that atheists are seeking to do just that.
Enter the National Atheist Party, a 527 political party (a non-profit that cannot specifically support candidates - only issues) that is believed to be the first of its kind in American history. Troy Boyle, a 45-year-old corporate legal representative, teamed up with one of his friends to launch the initiative centered upon the core belief that God doesn’t exist.
According to RNS, Boyle got the idea to launch a political party after watching an interview with well-known atheist Richard Dawkins. During the media appearance, the famed non-believer apparently wondered why atheists don’t organize more fervently to more profoundly influence politics.
Boyle was moved by this question. After researching and realizing that atheism and politics don’t really have much of a core relationship here in America, he decided to launch the NAP. Currently, the party has 7,500 members with chapters in all 50 states.
Below, watch a recent plea for funds:
At first, the duo named the political institution the Freethought Party. When that didn’t take, they changed its name to a clearer title that has led to a boom in its popularity. As of today, the group has more than 8,500 fans following its Facebook page.
According to Boyle, the party stands for no government favoritism when it comes to religion.
“We are convened with the idea that the Founding Fathers had it right,” he explains. “The separation of church and state, the establishment of the U.S. as a secular nation - those two concepts are our watchwords. We don’t want government to impose a religion, and we don’t want government to impose no religion. We want government to be silent with regards to religion.”
Boyle discusses the party’s view on religion, below:
When it comes to the party’s platform, it follows a trend that can mainly be described as “liberal.” Currently, the group’s web site touts support for the Occupy movement, among other sentiments. RNS has more about the party’s beliefs:
The party’s platform was decided on by a vote - again via Facebook - and includes hot-button issues such as gay marriage (for it), gun control (tighten it), abortion (a woman’s decision), immigration (reform it), energy (green it) and the economy (legalize recreational drugs to create revenue and jobs).
A portion of the party’s charter reads:
“The National Atheist Party is a progressive, secular, political movement and response to the lack of representation for all free thinking people who are legal, law abiding citizens and residents of the United States. We demand emancipation from the corporate sponsored religious dogma that has infiltrated our government and has unjustly influenced political decisions and policy making. We are for the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE and therefore incorporate the right to use the power of the PEOPLE to restore equality in our Democratic Republic in reasonable, rational and non-violent means…”
While the NAP faces an uphill battle, to say the least, Boyle says that donations are streaming in and that membership continues to grow (the group even appears to be hiring for some staff positions). That being said, growing in support is very different from being able to wage successful political campaigns. But accompanying his optimism comes a realistic understanding of the schema in both American religion and politics.
“We know we are a minority and we know that is not likely to change in the near future,” he explained. “We simply want the right to exist. And if that doesn’t turn into a majority landslide of popular support, whoever thought it was going to? But an election on an issue or on a candidate can be swayed by a small group of people…In two or 10 or 20 years, who knows how many of us there will be and when we vote on an issue it will matter.”
You can read more about the NAP on the group’s official web site.
2) The neurotech industry engaged in $2 trill race to fix your brain.... Medical/Science/Interest
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/05/12/Analysis-of-Neurotech-Industry
May 12 2008
"I believe this will be the century of the brain."-Don Debethizy, C.E.O. of Targacept
Deep in Big Tobacco country, I’m talking to a former chief scientist for R.J. Reynolds about new wonder drugs for the brain that are inspired by, of all things, nicotine. We’re huddled in a futuristic steel-and-glass building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that looks like an alien starship next to the abandoned storefronts and empty brick cigarette factories of this faded town. I’m skeptical. Now C.E.O. of a company called Targacept, the ex-Reynolds man, Don deBethizy, is describing a class of drugs called nicotinics, which he says can restore the memory of Alzheimer’s patients, control pain, and improve attention spans. What’s more, they may boost cognition and memory in healthy people.
It seems far out even for the neurotechnology industry, a rapidly growing cluster of companies-small upstarts as well as pharmaceutical giants-that want to alter your gray matter and make billions of dollars in the process. These firms are trying to adapt groundbreaking research into the basic workings of the brain to new drugs for ailments ranging from insomnia to multiple sclerosis. Some companies are trying to regrow portions of the brain using stem cells. Others have developed implants to insert into a person’s head to control seizures and restore hearing. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, a Foxborough, Massachusetts, company, implanted electrodes into the brain of a quadriplegic that allowed him to operate machines with his thoughts. (View an interactive feature showing brain researchers’ latest efforts.)
DeBethizy’s jump-out-of-his-seat gusto makes me want to believe him.Yet I can’t shake the image of the Nick Naylor character in Thank You for Smoking, the film based on Christopher Buckley’s satirical novel about a spinmeister and apologist for the tobacco industry. Targacept’s birth was a by-product of deBethizy’s attempts at Reynolds to create a “safe” cigarette and find positive uses for nicotine. Neuroscientists and investors I spoke to vouch for deBethizy and insist that Targacept is among the hottest companies in the brain business and a leader among several outfits developing nicotinics. So here I am in this dog-eared burg to learn more about an industry that may not only hold the key to treating some of the most serious maladies of our time but also challenge society’s-and regulators’-opinions of whether drugs should be used to enhance healthy brains as well as treat illness.
Targacept is one of about 500 braintech companies going after the estimated $2 trillion that it costs globally when brains atrophy, degenerate, experience depression, cause convulsions, register pain, trigger anxiety, or simply fail to work as well as we would like. The size of the market is huge, according to data from the World Health Organization and others, which report that more than 1 billion people suffer from brain-related ailments each year. That number has grown rapidly during the past generation, as neurodisorders like depression have gone from being underdiagnosed to perhaps overdiagnosed, and Western populations, along with their brains, have aged. It’s hard to believe, but even in our Prozac nation, possibly tens of millions of people who might need brain meds aren’t getting them. In some parts of the developing world, the figure could be as high as 90 percent. (View a pop-up graphic that shows the revenue breakdown of drug treatments and disease.)
Neurotech’s returns are already enormous. In 2006, the industry brought in more than $120 billion-about $101 billion from drugs and the rest from neurodevices ($4.5 billion) and neurodiagnostics ($15 billion)-up 10 percent from the previous year, reports NeuroInsights, a market research and investment advisory firm. But industry analysts insist that this figure hardly begins to suggest the potential. For Alzheimer’s, a disease currently without an effective treatment for about 4.5 million sufferers in the U.S., 40 companies-including behemoths like Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth, as well as Targacept and a gaggle of similar upstarts-are testing 48 new drugs in human trials in a quest for the Prozac of dementia. The push has brought many small to midsize biotech firms together in partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies to pursue everything from pain-control compounds derived from chili peppers to an antistroke medicine developed from vampire-bat saliva. There is so much activity in neurotech that last fall it got its own index, NERV, on the Nasdaq, tracking the performance of 30 leading brain companies based in the United States. Analysts estimate that the sector should continue to grow by about 10 percent a year, which would produce a brain-industrial complex worth more than $300 billion in the next 10 years.
For now, though, brain businesses are still more likely to lose money than to make it. The failure rate is startling even for the pharmaceutical industry, which is accustomed to tremendous risk. Ninety-two percent of drugs that enter human clinical testing for the central nervous system-basically brain drugs-flop, compared with 89 percent for drugs across all categories, according to a study in Nature Reviews, a science journal. At the same time, the total cost of bringing one C.N.S. drug to market is nearly twice the average for all drugs-$1.6 billion as opposed to $800 million. The risk, along with the generally volatile economic climate, has helped send NERV tumbling more than 18 percent since its inception last September.
Still, investors see the immense size of potential markets and have swallowed hard, pumping billions of dollars into neurotech, hoping for that giant payback. (Hit the jackpot with a new anxiety-disorder med that’s better than the current batch and has fewer side effects, and you have a potential market of 40 million Americans and 400 million people worldwide.) “People invest because a success is usually a huge success,” says Ellen Baron, a venture capitalist with Oxford Bioscience Partners in Boston, which has invested in Targacept and other early-stage neuro companies. The top 20 C.N.S. drugs each earn more than a billion dollars per year, she notes. “This new science will produce breakthroughs, and everyone feels the potential to create a truly paradigm-shifting treatment,” Baron says. “But when? Nobody knows.”
Neurotechnology as its own industry sector is the brainchild, so to speak, of Zack Lynch, a former software marketing executive who lectures widely on future business trends. He believes that we are at the beginning of a brain wave that will dominate at least the next century or two. Lynch came up with several cute names for the advances he anticipates, such as cogniceuticals, for drugs that focus on improving decisionmaking, learning, attention span, and memory processes; emoticeuticals, which influence feelings, moods, motivation, and awareness; and sensoceuticals, which can restore and extend the capacity of senses for people who have impaired vision, smell, taste, and hearing. In 2005, he and his wife, Casey, a former biotech executive, founded NeuroInsights. Later, they started the Neurotechnology Industry Organization, a policy and lobbying group that has 70 companies as members.
After several months of negotiation with a top Nasdaq official, the couple convinced the exchange to launch the NERV index in September. Its leaders include Biogen Idec, a neuro-titan with a current market cap of $19.4 billion that’s developing treatments for (among other things) multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s, and Shire, which makes the amphetamine Adderall and has a market cap of $10.6 billion. At the even more volatile bottom are companies with market caps of $250 million or so. Only companies with more than 50 percent of their revenues coming from neuro products are allowed on the index, so big pharmaceutical concerns like GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, despite having blockbuster brain drugs, don’t make the cut.
J&J, Glaxo, and Lilly, however, lead the list of the top five companies in neurotech revenues, a group that collectively earned $30.1 billion in 2006, 25 percent of all neuro sales. Pfizer is next, with $6 billion in sales in 2006, though that is down from $8.1 billion in 2004, before its patents for big sellers like Zoloft (for depression) and Neurontin (for epilepsy) expired. Wyeth rounds out the group, with almost $3.8 billion in sales.
I meet the Lynches one afternoon at a coffee shop in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, a block or two from the NeuroInsights world headquarters in the basement of their home. Both in their mid-thirties, the two met in a calculus class at U.C.L.A. when they were freshmen. Zack first recognized the link among companies with neural products while giving his PowerPoint presentations about the future of technology at meetings and conferences.
The Lynches tend to talk as one brain, left and right, and they agree that turning neuroscience into cash and cures requires patience. “But I think a time is coming-or may be here-when our understanding of the brain will get to the point where we can more successfully make targeted drugs,” says Casey, a petite woman with dark hair and a practical, left-brained demeanor that balances her husband’s more right-brained, pie-in-the-sky fervor. “This will profoundly change medicine, and possibly who we are,” Zack says.
The couple’s new push is to get more federal dollars channeled toward the industry. Zack has been traveling back and forth to Washington, sometimes taking along neurotech C.E.O.’s, to promote a $1 billion “national neurotechnology initiative” that Representative Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently announced he will introduce in Congress. The legislation asks the federal government to spend $200 million a year for five years on neurotech, including $30 million for the Food and Drug Administration to train more experts, $80 million for the National Institutes of Health to coordinate the neuroresearch efforts that are now run by 16 different institutes, and $75 million to increase small-business grants for neurotech companies.
Treatments for the mind are hardly new. Before modern times, remedies included the exorcism of evil spirits, bleedings to rid the body of bad humors, and opium smoking to alleviate “melancholy.” In the mid-20th century, physicians tried crude and often destructive “cures,” now discredited, such as lobotomy-removing sections of the brain believed to be causing neuroses.
In the 1950s and ’60s, psychiatry was revolutionized by the invention of antidepressants and tranquilizers. The progression of new drugs continued into the ’70s and ’80s, especially with the development of the blockbuster class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which includes Prozac. Approved by the F.D.A. in 1987, Prozac, as well as other S.S.R.I.’s-like Zoloft and Paxil-prolongs the action of serotonin, a neurotransmitter, which has beneficial effects on such problems as depression, attention-deficit disorder, and anxiety. Critics of S.S.R.I.’s argue that they don’t work for many patients, that they are being overprescribed, and that they can cause side effects such as loss of libido and (according to controversial findings) suicidal thoughts in teenagers.
But since the late ’80s, few new classes of drugs to treat brain maladies have made it to market, and many diseases remain either undertreated or, like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, not treated effectively. The industry now faces the challenge of parlaying two decades’ worth of breakthrough research on the basic workings of the brain into new and better treatments-a process that is often thwarted by the complexity of the brain. “We target a drug that is supposed to do one thing, and we find out it does five more things we didn’t expect,” says Sam Barondes, director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco and the author of Mood Genes.
Much of the industry’s financial success in recent years has come from drugs that differ only slightly from longtime neuro-blockbusters, some of which are losing their patent protection. Patents expiring in 2008 include Risperdal, a schizophrenia drug from J&J’s Janssen unit, annual sales of which are approaching $4.2 billion. “The new products are coming, but the big numbers are still in the Prozac category,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.
Some of the most interesting advances are being made not in drugs but in devices and other treatments. Late last year, StemCells Inc., a Palo Alto, California, company, announced that it had successfully transplanted stem cells into a human brain and that the patient had recently completed a one-year follow-up exam. Five other patients have also been injected with HuCNS-SC, as the company calls its human stem-cell product. All of the patients suffer from Batten disease, a genetic malady that leaves children’s brain cells without a critical enzyme and eventually causes seizures, loss of motor skills and mental capacity, blindness, and finally death. In previous studies with mice, the stem cells took hold and produced the missing enzyme. “These trials are just the beginning for stem-cell therapies in the brain and elsewhere,” says Antoun Nabhan, a former venture capitalist for Sagamore Bioventures who has invested in and sits on the board of Cellerant Therapeutics, one of StemCells’ competitors. But stem-cell treatments for more-common brain diseases are at least five years away, Nabhan says.
Earnings for neurodevices are only 4 percent of what neuromeds bring in, but for a few diseases, the impact has been miraculous. Take cochlear implants. Located in the inner ear, the cochlea translates sound waves into electrical signals that are channeled to the brain to be processed into the opening swell of a Mozart concerto or raindrops beating on a window. People with damaged or congenitally malformed cochleas were condemned either to near silence or to the use of imperfect hearing aids until the 1970s, when the first cochlear devices were surgically implanted. These had an electrical apparatus that fed signals into the audio nerve through electrodes. The latest versions of the devices use tiny computers to process even complex sounds like music into signals that the brain can recognize. More than 100,000 people have had the cochlear devices implanted worldwide (out of the millions affected), and many go from being deaf or near-deaf to being able to hear most sounds and function as if they had no hearing deficit. The device, which costs $20,000 or more, has annual sales totaling $550 million, and sales are growing 15 percent a year. Leading makers include Advanced Bionics, Cochlear, and Med-El.
One truly out-there device is Cyberkinetics’ BrainGate, which was implanted into the brain of Matt Nagle, a quadriplegic patient, in an F.D.A.-approved trial. The device enabled him to control a computer cursor with only his thoughts. The BrainGate, which was connected to the computer by a wire, uses tiny electrodes to read electrical impulses from the brain’s motor cortex. In 2005, I visited Nagle-a former high-school football star who was paralyzed as a result of injuries he suffered during a brawl on a beach in Weymouth, Massachusetts-and I watched as he gave the mental command to move his arm up and down. The machine translated these thoughts into up and down cursor motions. As Nagle got better at controlling the device, he became able to write emails and operate controls for lights and a television. He could even control a prosthetic arm. But the BrainGate was cumbersome, difficult to calibrate between brain and machine, and sometimes left Nagle feeling frustrated. The company is now recruiting patients for additional trials.
All the uncertainty of the industry hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of Targacept’s Don deBethizy, who toils with his team of scientists just up the street from the R.J. Reynolds headquarters, a 1929 skyscraper considered an Art Deco marvel in its day, with gilt tobacco leaves on the lobby’s ceiling. Targacept broke off from R.J.R. Nabisco in August 2000, just 36 hours before the unit was to be eliminated during the messy merger process that started when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired the tobacco giant in 1989. At the last minute, drug giant Aventis stepped in with a $70 million partnering deal to save Targacept and its leading Alzheimer’s compound, which was then in Phase 1 human trials. (This drug was later killed after the unit was unable to successfully breach the blood-brain barrier, a common problem for would-be neuromeds.) After becoming an independent company, Targacept raised $123 million in three rounds of private capital investment and $72 million from stock offerings. Milestone deals with AstraZeneca to develop cognitive-disorder meds and with GlaxoSmithKline to develop treatments for pain, obesity, smoking cessation, addiction, and Parkinson’s make up the remainder of Targacept’s financing.
As deBethizy explains, nicotinic receptors control or influence memory, attention span, mood, sensitivity to pain, inflammation, movement, and cell survival. “These receptors act like volume switches,” says Merouane Bencherif, Targacept’s vice president for Preclinical Research. Nicotinic drugs work by increasing neurotransmitter activity, Bencherif says, meaning more is around to zap the receptors to improve memory and mood. Turning down neurotransmitter activity reduces pain or inflammation.
Currently, Targacept has four compounds in human trials. Their connection with nicotine? “There isn’t really a connection anymore,” says deBethizy. The compounds are chemically unrelated to nicotine, but their action in activating the receptors mimics what nicotine does.
One of Targacept’s leading compounds is designed to improve cognitive activity in patients with Alzheimer’s disease; another is for schizophrenia. Both are in human trials. So far, the drugs have worked well for those with the diseases, but the Alzheimer’s compound has also had an effect on healthy control subjects, whose scores on cognitive and memory exams improved significantly. The company also tested the compound on people who went to a memory clinic with mild age-associated memory impairment-the natural loss of memory that comes with normal aging. The mini-trial was a success: “People on 50 milligrams consistently said they remembered things better,” deBethizy says.
Several other companies are developing meds that could treat brain-function slowdown in the elderly and might also enhance brain function in younger people. These firms include Memory Pharmaceuticals, Cortex Pharmaceuticals, and Lilly. “We are working on glutamate receptor medicines for memory and cognition,” says Steve Paul, president of Lilly Research Laboratories. “This is a big future growth area for us.”
But the drugs’ success with healthy people raises a number of regulatory and ethical questions. The F.D.A. evaluates drugs based on how effectively they treat disease, not on whether they enhance healthy brains. Benedetto Vitiello, a psychiatrist and researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health who has also sat on neuropharma advisory panels for the F.D.A., acknowledges that many people face cognitive loss as part of normal aging. But the condition is often subtle and hard to quantify, he says. This may be one reason that the F.D.A. has been reluctant to list age-related cognitive loss as an official approved designation for new drugs, deBethizy suggests. He expects the F.D.A. to one day recognize it as an approved disease, “but right now,” he says, “no one wants to spend the resources on a drug that may not be approved.”
Yet mind-meds that can enhance mental functions are already used by healthy people. Through what’s known as off-label use, legal prescriptions are written for conditions the drugs weren’t approved to treat. Physicians are allowed to prescribe any drug for any illness they see fit, but companies are barred from promoting drugs for unapproved uses.
A more recent drug being widely used off-label is Cephalon’s Provigil. This high-tech medicine is approved for narcolepsy and a sleeping disorder that develops when people work odd shifts. Provigil, however, is widely prescribed for other conditions, ranging from depression and A.D.D. to jet lag. In late 2007, Cephalon agreed to pay a $425 million settlement to the government after the firm’s sales force was accused of marketing Provigil and two other drugs to physicians to use for unapproved maladies. “It would behoove the federal government to get ahead of the enhancement issue now,” says Zack Lynch. “Provigil is just the beginning.”
A larger debate is percolating over what would happen if a pill could turn most people into brainiacs. “I don’t believe in cognitive enhancement for people who are well,” says memory expert and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, a professor at Columbia University. “These should be pharma products for sick people.” N.I.H. neuroscientist Jordan Grafman agrees: “If you manipulate the brain, it can change who we are.”
Others say enhancers can’t be stopped. “The record is clear. Wherever there have been new agents that enhance our functioning, mental or physical, even when they’re risky like steroids, there are people who will use them,” says U.C.L.A. bioethicist Gregory Stock, author of Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future and a strident advocate for enhancement. “Why shouldn’t people use them if they don’t hurt us?”
Back in the less surreal world of their favorite San Francisco coffee shop, Zack and Casey Lynch tell me that their organization delisted four companies a mere three months after the neurotech index joined Nasdaq, highlighting the fact that those who would make money from our brains face a brutal reality. “It’s a tough industry,” Zack says with a sigh, as Casey crosses out the delisted companies and writes down the new ones on the chart they had given me. “But the future is clear,” he says, quickly recovering his zeal, reminding me of Don deBethizy and the other neuro-cheerleaders. “This is going to work. The effects are going to be profound.”
3) Who Exactly Voted FOR the NDAA... Republican/Democrat/Obama/Taking Freedom Away/Police State
http://weirdloadreboot.com/blog/2011/12/16/who-exactly-voted-for-the-ndaa/
December 16, 2011
With the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 on everybody's mind, at least everyone who gives a wet slap about civil liberties, it is imperative to slow down and take a long, hard look at who voted for this legislative turd. there are feet to be held to flames and with a matter as grave as this the typical American political attention span (which resembles that of a squirrel on methamphetamines) needs to be helped out by posting the saints and the sinners.
Let us start in the Senate. A short list of the guilty includes- in no particular order:
Jeff Sessions (R), Lisa Murkowski(R), Barbara Boxer(D), Dian Fienstein(D), Mark Udall(D), Joe Liberman(whatever he is today), Marco Rubio(R), Richard Lugar(R), Mitch McConnell(R), Olympia Snowe(R), Scott Brown(R), John Kerry(D), Claire McCaskil(D), Harry Reid(D), Lindsey Graham(R), Jim Webb(D), Mark Warner(D), John McCain(R), Carl Levin(D)…
How did the delegation from my home state of North Carolina do? As expected Richard Burr(R) did exactly the wrong thing and voted FOR. Also as expected Kay Hagen(D) continued to prove that she is the biggest mistake North Carolina Democrats have made in recent memory and voted FOR. That's right. Seems that Hagen can't find her way onto the right side of any issue from tax policy to stripping her fellow North Carolinians of their civil liberties.
In total the tally in the Senate was 86 FOR, 13 AGAINST, and one WUSSYING OUT.
On to the house where things were equally grim. In Congress the guilty include:
Nancy Pelosi(D), John Boehner(R), Eric Cantor(weasal), Darrell Issa(R), John Carney(D), Debbie Wasserman Shultz(D), Paul Braun(R), Joe Walsh(R), Mike Pence(R), Andre' Carson(D), Michele Bachmann(R), Tom Cole(R), Tim Scott(R), Virginia Foxx(R), Heath Shuler(D)…
How did North Carolina do in the House… again… BADLY. Only two NC members of Congress voted AGAINST. That would be Mel Watt(D) who is my Congressman… sigh of relief. Also voting no was David Price(D). Otherwise it was a slam dunk FOR NDAA with the North Carolina delegation.
The final count in the House was 322 FOR, 96 AGAINST, and 13 WUSSING OUT. The state that came down best for civil liberties was Massachusetts with Niki Tsongas(D) being the only FOR.
It is VITAL that we keep our eyes on the ball here, friends & neighbors. You can see the full voting results for the Senate HERE, and for the House HERE. If your Senator or Rep is on the YES list give them a call, drop an email, or show up at their local offices. Let them know that you know.
NDAA Bill: How Did Your Congress Member Vote?
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/268602/20111216/ndaa-did-congress-member-vote.htm
Want to know how your representative in Congress voted on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)?
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the act, which it called HR540 on Wednesday evening by a vote of 283 to 136, with 14 members not voting.
The House released the official vote tally on its website and it shows that 190 Republicans voted for the bill and 43 voted against it, while 93 Democratic representatives voted for and 93 voted against it.
Below is the breakdown by last name:
Ayes:
Ackerman
Adams
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Altmire
Amodei
Andrews
Austria
Baca
Bachus
Barletta
Barrow
Bartlett
Barton (TX)
Bass (NH)
Benishek
Berg
Berkley
Berman
Biggert
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Bishop (UT)
Black
Blackburn
Bonner
Bono Mack
Boren
Boswell
Boustany
Brady (PA)
Brady (TX)
Brooks
Broun (GA)
Brown (FL)
Buchanan
Buerkle
Butterfield
Calvert
Camp
Canseco
Cantor
Capito
Capps
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Carter
Cassidy
Castor (FL)
Chabot
Chandler
Cicilline
Cole
Conaway
Connolly (VA)
Cooper
Costa
Courtney
Cravaack
Crawford
Crenshaw
Critz
Crowley
Cuellar
Culberson
Davis (CA)
Davis (KY)
Denham
Dent
Deutch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Dold
Donnelly (IN)
Dreier
Duffy
Ellmers
Emerson
Engel
Farenthold
Fincher
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Fleming
Flores
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
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Garamendi
Gardner
Gerlach
Gibbs
Gibson
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Gonzalez
Granger
Graves (MO)
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Griffin (AR)
Grimm
Guinta
Guthrie
Hall
Hanabusa
Hanna
Harper
Hartzler
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Heck
Hensarling
Herger
Herrera Beutler
Higgins
Himes
Hirono
Hochul
Holden
Hoyer
Hultgren
Hunter
Inslee
Israel
Issa
Jackson Lee (TX)
Jenkins
Johnson (OH)
Johnson, Sam
Jordan
Keating
Kelly
Kildee
Kind
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kinzinger (IL)
Kissell
Kline
Lamborn
Lance
Landry
Langevin
Lankford
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Latham
Latta
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Loebsack
Long
Lowey
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lungren, Daniel E.
Manzullo
Marchant
Marino
Matheson
McCarthy (CA)
McCarthy (NY)
McCaul
McCotter
McHenry
McIntyre
McKeon
McKinley
McMorris Rodgers
McNerney
Meehan
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller, Gary
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Noem
Nugent
Nunes
Nunnelee
Olson
Owens
Palazzo
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Paulsen
Pearce
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peterson
Petri
Platts
Poe (TX)
Pompeo
Price (GA)
Quayle
Rahall
Reed
Rehberg
Reichert
Renacci
Reyes
Richardson
Rigell
Rivera
Roby
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross (AR)
Ross (FL)
Rothman (NJ)
Runyan
Ruppersberger
Ryan (WI)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Scalise
Schiff
Schilling
Schmidt
Schock
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (SC)
Scott, Austin
Scott, David
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Sewell
Sherman
Shimkus
Shuler
Shuster
Sires
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Southerland
Stearns
Stivers
Sullivan
Sutton
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Tsongas
Turner (NY)
Turner (OH)
Upton
Visclosky
Walden
Walz (MN)
Wasserman Schultz
Waxman
Webster
West
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Wilson (FL)
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Womack
Yoder
Young (AK)
Young (IN)
Noes:
Amash
Baldwin
Bass (CA)
Becerra
Blumenauer
Braley (IA)
Bucshon
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Campbell
Capuano
Carson (IN)
Chaffetz
Chu
Clarke (MI)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Coffman (CO)
Cohen
Conyers
Costello
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLauro
DesJarlais
Doyle
Duncan (SC)
Duncan (TN)
Edwards
Ellison
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Flake
Forbes
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garrett
Goodlatte
Gosar
Gowdy
Graves (GA)
Griffith (VA)
Grijalva
Hahn
Harris
Hastings (FL)
Heinrich
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Holt
Honda
Huelskamp
Huizenga (MI)
Hurt
Jackson (IL)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (IL)
Jones
Kaptur
Kucinich
Labrador
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
Luján
Lummis
Mack
Maloney
Markey
Matsui
McClintock
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Moore
Moran
Mulvaney
Murphy (CT)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Olver
Pallone
Payne
Pence
Peters
Pingree (ME)
Polis
Posey
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rangel
Ribble
Richmond
Roe (TN)
Rohrabacher
Rokita
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schweikert
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Simpson
Slaughter
Speier
Stark
Stutzman
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Tipton
Tonko
Towns
Van Hollen
Velázquez
Walberg
Walsh (IL)
Waters
Watt
Welch
Woodall
Woolsey
Yarmuth
Not voting:
Bachmann
Coble
Diaz-Balart
Filner
Giffords
Gutierrez
Johnson, E. B.
LaTourette
Lynch
Myrick
Paul
Pitts
Sanchez, Loretta
Young (FL)
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 112th Congress - 1st Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Vote Summary
Question: On Passage of the Bill (S. 1867 As Amended )
Vote Number: 218 Vote Date: December 1, 2011, 08:02 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Bill Passed
Measure Number: S. 1867 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 )
Measure Title: An original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2012 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.
Vote Counts: YEAs 93
NAYs 7
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Alphabetical by Senator Name
Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Ayotte (R-NH), Yea
Barrasso (R-WY), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Begich (D-AK), Yea
Bennet (D-CO), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Blumenthal (D-CT), Yea
Blunt (R-MO), Yea
Boozman (R-AR), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brown (R-MA), Yea
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Coats (R-IN), Yea
Coburn (R-OK), Nay
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Coons (D-DE), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Yea
DeMint (R-SC), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Franken (D-MN), Yea
Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Hagan (D-NC), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Heller (R-NV), Yea
Hoeven (R-ND), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Johanns (R-NE), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Johnson (R-WI), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Kirk (R-IL), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Lee (R-UT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Manchin (D-WV), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Merkley (D-OR), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Moran (R-KS), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Paul (R-KY), Nay
Portman (R-OH), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Risch (R-ID), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Rubio (R-FL), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Yea
Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Toomey (R-PA), Yea
Udall (D-CO), Yea
Udall (D-NM), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Warner (D-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Grouped By Vote Position
YEAs ---93
Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Blumenthal (D-CT)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Brown (R-MA)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Coons (D-DE)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Durbin (D-IL)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagan (D-NC)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kirk (R-IL)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Manchin (D-WV)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Portman (R-OH)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Rubio (R-FL)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Vitter (R-LA)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)
NAYs ---7
Coburn (R-OK)
Harkin (D-IA)
Lee (R-UT)
Merkley (D-OR)
Paul (R-KY)
Sanders (I-VT)
Wyden (D-OR)
Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Grouped by Home State
Alabama: Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Alaska: Begich (D-AK), Yea Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Arizona: Kyl (R-AZ), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea
Arkansas: Boozman (R-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR), Yea
California: Boxer (D-CA), Yea Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Colorado: Bennet (D-CO), Yea Udall (D-CO), Yea
Connecticut: Blumenthal (D-CT), Yea Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Delaware: Carper (D-DE), Yea Coons (D-DE), Yea
Florida: Nelson (D-FL), Yea Rubio (R-FL), Yea
Georgia: Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Hawaii: Akaka (D-HI), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Idaho: Crapo (R-ID), Yea Risch (R-ID), Yea
Illinois: Durbin (D-IL), Yea Kirk (R-IL), Yea
Indiana: Coats (R-IN), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Iowa: Grassley (R-IA), Yea Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Kansas: Moran (R-KS), Yea Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Kentucky: McConnell (R-KY), Yea Paul (R-KY), Nay
Louisiana: Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Maine: Collins (R-ME), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Maryland: Cardin (D-MD), Yea Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Massachusetts: Brown (R-MA), Yea Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Michigan: Levin (D-MI), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Minnesota: Franken (D-MN), Yea Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Mississippi: Cochran (R-MS), Yea Wicker (R-MS), Yea
Missouri: Blunt (R-MO), Yea McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
Montana: Baucus (D-MT), Yea Tester (D-MT), Yea
Nebraska: Johanns (R-NE), Yea Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Nevada: Heller (R-NV), Yea Reid (D-NV), Yea
New Hampshire: Ayotte (R-NH), Yea Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
New Jersey: Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
New Mexico: Bingaman (D-NM), Yea Udall (D-NM), Yea
New York: Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea Schumer (D-NY), Yea
North Carolina: Burr (R-NC), Yea Hagan (D-NC), Yea
North Dakota: Conrad (D-ND), Yea Hoeven (R-ND), Yea
Ohio: Brown (D-OH), Yea Portman (R-OH), Yea
Oklahoma: Coburn (R-OK), Nay Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Oregon: Merkley (D-OR), Nay Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Pennsylvania: Casey (D-PA), Yea Toomey (R-PA), Yea
Rhode Island: Reed (D-RI), Yea Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
South Carolina: DeMint (R-SC), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea
South Dakota: Johnson (D-SD), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea
Tennessee: Alexander (R-TN), Yea Corker (R-TN), Yea
Texas: Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Utah: Hatch (R-UT), Yea Lee (R-UT), Nay
Vermont: Leahy (D-VT), Yea Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Virginia: Warner (D-VA), Yea Webb (D-VA), Yea
Washington: Cantwell (D-WA), Yea Murray (D-WA), Yea
West Virginia: Manchin (D-WV), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Wisconsin: Johnson (R-WI), Yea Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Wyoming: Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Enzi (R-WY), Yea
4) ‘Big Atomic Bomb Will Come Out’: Ahmadinejad and Chavez Joke About Nuclear Strike Against U.S... Iran/Venezuela/Nuclear Attack on USA
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/big-atomic-bomb-will-come-out-ahmadinejad-and-chavez-joke-about-nuclear-strike-against-u-s/
January 9, 2012
President Hugo Chavez defended his close ally Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday and warned of “U.S. warmongering threats” amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
The two leaders met in Caracas on the first leg of a four-nation tour that will also take Ahmadinejad to Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Their conversation reportedly often focused on anti-U.S. rhetoric, which according to the Daily Mail included Mr Chavez saying that:
“he was hiding a bomb under a grassy knoll before the steps of the presidential palace, saying: ‘That hill will open up and a big atomic bomb will come out. The imperialist spokesmen say Ahmadinejad and I are going into the basement now to set our sights on Washington and launch cannons and missiles… It’s laughable.”
The leaders were apparently serious, however, when discussing the threat they believe the U.S. poses.
“We are very worried,” Chavez said of the pressures being put on Iran by the United States and its allies, which he accused of being a threat to peace.
“They present us as aggressors,” Chavez said as he received Ahmadinejad at the presidential palace.
“Iran hasn’t invaded anyone,” he added. “Who has dropped thousands and thousands of bombs … including atomic bombs?”
Ahmadinejad’s visit comes after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes.
Both leaders joked that their relationship shouldn’t cause any concern.
Ahmadinejad said if they were together building anything like a bomb, “the fuel of that bomb is love.”
Chavez played on the same theme in his remarks: “We’s going to work a lot for some bombs, for some missiles, to keep the war going. Our war is against poverty, hunger and underdevelopment.”
The Venezuelan leader said in his televised speech that Iranians assistance has helped the South American country build 14,000 homes as well as factories that produce food, tractors and vehicles.
“We will always be together,” Ahmadinejad said through an interpreter. Smiling as he put his hand on Chavez’s arm, the Iranian leader called the Venezuelan president “the champion of fighting against imperialism.”
Government officials signed two agreements promoting industrial cooperation and worker training.
Chavez accused the U.S. and its allies of wrongly demonizing Iran.
Iran finds itself under increasing pressure in the standoff over its nuclear program, and in response to the latest U.S. sanctions has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important transit route for oil tanker shipments.
Diplomats on Monday confirmed a report that Iran has begun uranium enrichment at an underground bunker, a development that increases fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Two diplomats spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential and based on an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Chavez’s long-running confrontation with Washington also looks set to grow more antagonistic after the U.S. State Department announced, just hours before Ahmadinejad’s arrival, that it was expelling Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, Livia Acosta Noguera, due to allegations that she discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government.
The expulsion followed an FBI investigation into accusations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed the possible cyber-attack while she was previously assigned as a diplomat in Mexico. The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved.
Chavez called the U.S. action “unjustified, arbitrary” and said his government will consider its response. He called it “an attack against our nation.”
The diplomat had already returned to Venezuela in December because “we knew that was going to occur,” Chavez said.
Beyond voicing criticism of the U.S. on his tour, Ahmadinejad is also likely to look for ways to use his Latin American alliances to diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst with consulting firm IHS Global Insight in London.
However, Moya-Ocampos predicted that “Venezuela is going to be very careful not to push its relationship with Iran beyond the U.S. tolerance limits,” so as not to risk being hit with more U.S. sanctions. Last year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA for delivering at least two cargoes of oil products to Iran.
The U.S. government has also repeatedly accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism, and growing Iranian diplomatic ties with some Latin American countries have generated worries in Washington.
In Quito, Ecuador, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters that Ecuador’s government “has no reason to stop having relations with Iran” and said his country recognizes Iran’s “right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
Argentina, which has good relations with Venezuela, also has warrants out for the arrests of Iran’s defense minister and other officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, urged Ahmadinejad‘s hosts to tell Iran that they support Argentina’s demands for the extradition of those implicated in the attack. The organization also condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening Israel, saying in a statement on Monday that “honoring that trafficker of hatred with impunity involves his hosts as accomplices.”
5) New Sex Ed Standards Call for Homosexuality to Be Explained to 5th Graders... Homosexuality Promotion/Public Schools
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/new-sex-ed-standards-call-for-homosexuality-to-be-explained-to-5th-graders/
January 9, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) - Young elementary school students should use the proper names for body parts and, by the end of fifth grade, know that sexual orientation is “the romantic attraction of an individual to someone of the same gender or a different gender,” according to new sexual education guidelines released Monday by a coalition of health and education groups.
The non-binding recommendations to states and school districts seek to encourage age-appropriate discussions about sex, bullying and healthy relationships - starting with a foundation even before second grade.
By presenting minimum standards that schools can use to formulate school curriculums for each age level, the groups hope that schools can build a sequential foundation that in the long term will better help teens as they grow into adults.
Experts say schools across America are inconsistent in how they address such sensitive topics
Despite awareness of bullying, for example, Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, one of the groups involved with creating the standards, said some schools don’t address it - or at least not in relation to sexual orientation or gender identity, which is where she said a lot of the bullying occurs.
“They should tackle it head on,” Hauser said.
Consequences to parents deciding not to vaccinate?
The percentage of students not having all vaccinations required for attendance is on the rise in some states. (Photo: South Mountain Villager)
Other organizations involved with the release include the American Association of Health Education, the American School Health Association, the National Education Association - Health Information Network, the Society of State Leaders of Health and Physical Education, and the Future of Sex Education Initiative. The latest suggestions were already drawing less enthusiastic reactions from some.
By the end of second grade, the guidelines say students should use the correct body part names for the male and female anatomy, and also understand that all living things reproduce and that all people have the right to not be touched if they don’t want to be. They also say young elementary school kids should be able to identity different kinds of family structures and explain why bullying and teasing are wrong.
Beyond lessons about puberty by the end of fifth grade, the guidelines say students should be able to define sexual harassment and abuse.
When they leave middle school, they should be able to differentiate between gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, according to the guidelines. And the say they should be able to explain why a rape victim is not at fault, know about bullying and dating violence and describe the signs and impacts of sexually transmitted diseases.
It calls for high school graduates to evaluate the effectiveness of abstinence, condoms and other “safer sex methods” and know how emergency contraception works.
It’s unclear how much influence the recommendations will have among educators.
Cora Collette Breuner, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on adolescence who was not involved in the creation of the standards, praised the approach of encouraging discussions at an early age.
“The data points that trying to cover this stuff when kids have already formulated their own opinions and biases by the time they’re in middle and high school, it’s too late,” Breuner said.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Education Abstinence Association, said she does not agree with the topics and goals of the standards. Like the anti-smoking campaign of the last few decades that has had success, abstinence should be the focus of such programs, she said.
“This should be a program about health, rather than agendas that have nothing to do with optimal sexual health decision-making,” Huber said. “Controversial topics are best reserved for conversations between parent and child, not in the classroom.”
Federal funding for abstinence-centered education funded by a Republican Congress in the late 1990s and later under President George W. Bush has largely gone by the wayside under the Obama administration, which has had a shift in focus to teen pregnancy prevention programs.
6) Leader of Christian Community in Israel Murdered by Man Dressed as Santa Claus... Murder/Interest
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/leader-of-christian-community-in-israel-murdered-by-man-dressed-as-santa-claus/
January 8, 2012
Israeli police say a man dressed as Santa Claus fatally stabbed Gabriel Cadis, the head of Jaffa’s Orthodox Church Association, in the back during a procession to mark Orthodox Christmas in the city of Jaffa.
The Associated Press reports that Cadis was stabbed Friday night and died hours later at a hospital. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said six members of an Arab Christian family were in custody Saturday as police investigate. Witnesses at the scene told police that the attacker was wearing the red-and-white Santa suit.
Israeli media reported that Cadis had a long-standing dispute with other Arab Christians in Jaffa. Haaretz reports that police are investigating whether the stabbing was connected to elections within the church association.
A funeral procession was held for Cadis in Jaffa on Saturday afternoon where The Jerusalem Post reports more than a thousand mourners joined on Yefet Street, including leaders from Christian and Muslim communities. According to The Post the procession was led by a large contingent of scouts who periodically stopped to play taps, ahead of a minivan carrying Cadis in an open-face casket.
Jaffa residents speaking with Haaretz described Cadis’ death as “an earthquake”.
Jewish News One on the shocking crime:
7) These Are the Pictures of The White House‘s ’Alice in Wonderland’ Party... Obama/Double Standard/Living Excessively
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/these-are-the-pictures-of-the-white-houses-alice-in-wonderland-party/
January 10, 2012
A lot has been said over the last two days about the White House’s now-infamous “Alice in Wonderland” Halloween party from 2009. It was an extravagant affair featuring actor Johnny Depp and filmmaker Tim Burton in costume. Conservatives have panned the president for having such a party during economic turmoil, and generally keeping it hush-hush. Liberals (and even some conservatives) have defended the president, either saying the party was mentioned to some degree, or that the president‘s Halloween plans shouldn’t be national news.
No matter what side you take, it’s still conceivable that you would want to see pictures from the event, right? We thought so.
Intrepid blogger Zombie tracked down some of the photos from the night and posted them here. We’ve included some of them below (Depp is dressed as the Mad Hatter, Burton is the one with the eye patch, and the dog, well, that’s the Obama family canine named “Bo”):
You can see more of the pictures that Zombie tracked down, including more of the decorations and some from what seems to be an exclusive after-party, here.
By the way, the White House’s official statement defends the party as no secret:
One of the anecdotes that has received wide attention [from a new book] has been a supposedly secret Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween party in 2009. This was an event for local school children from the Washington DC area and for hundreds of military families, and certainly nothing that the White House was ashamed of.
While acknowledging that the press was allowed to attend, which in itself would seem to cast doubt on any alleged secrecy, the author contends that there was “no media coverage beyond the standard, limited pool report noting the president’s presence.” We would invite all readers to read that extremely detailed and colorful pool report, or the stories that emerged from the party, and decide for themselves. In addition, the event was previewed in the official White House Daily Guidance and discussed by then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on camera from the podium - before he dressed up as Darth Vader at the party of course.
But it should be noted that neither the “detailed” pool report nor Gibbs’s briefing make specific mention to the Alice part of the party. Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed that issue in his daily briefing (via Mediaite):
“There was a story about Johnny Depp being there?” Compton asked.
“There wasn’t a publicity event for the outside, Carney replied. “It was a military event for their children and their families inside the White House where the press came, photographs were taken. It was contemporaneously known who was here. If that’s - if we’re trying to hide something by bringing in the press, we’re not very good at it.”
“For the record, there’s not one statement from this White House -” Compton stated.
“But, again, the purpose wasn’t for - we do a lot of these things July 4th, other events here, including other events that are geared towards military families and their kids where the purpose isn’t to publicize them externally for you guys but to have a nice event for them here, which is different from trying to hide anything.”
Tommy Christopher, a member of the White House press corps, notes the event was listed as “Pool spray at the top,” which means “there’s a photo op at the beginning of the event, and then the press leaves.”
“This attack might make some sense if this event had been for administration staff, or donors, but the focus was on military families,” he concluded. “Why would the White House think the American people, Tea Party or not, would begrudge them anything?”