Despite the versatility of a scrambler-style bike, there are very few factory-built scramblers on the market but soon there will be another. This week at the Intermoto expo in Cologne, Ducati unveils its new 803-cc Scrambler in 4 different trims, ranging from the 70s-inspired Classic edition to the dirt-craving Urban Enduro edition. Starting at $8595, the new Scrambler is the lowest priced bike in the Ducati lineup.
For purchase information, Click HereIt was almost 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. The sky was a deep turquoise-blue, practically cloudless, and the golden-red leaves on the trees rustled in the gentle autumn wind.
I’d just pulled into Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort for their Freefall Festival, a three-day event celebrating mountain biking, craft beer, and good music. In addition to representing the magazine at the festival, I would also be joining forces with Snowshoe employee Melissa Dobbins to host a 5-mile hike for one of the Live Outside and Play meet-ups.
For those of you that were unaware, I have been hosting a meet-up at least once a month since I hit the road in May. These meet-ups are designed to be free and open to the public with the aim of introducing new people to the magazine, the project, our sponsors, and the local businesses I work with to host the event.
In the past five months my meet-ups have included an 8-mile trail run in Damascus, Va., a 5-mile sunset/night hike outside of Brevard, N.C., a SUP float in Folly Beach, S.C., a yoga session in Fayetteville, W.Va., a SylvanSport Go demo in Floyd, Va., an ENO slackline competition in Ocoee, Tenn., and most recently this 5-mile hike up to Snowshoe’s Cheat Ridge fire tower.
I’m always a little nervous before these meet-ups, mainly because I fear the worst: no one shows.
Per one of last week‘s blogs, you’re well aware that my time on the road has been speckled with flaky friends. That’s totally fine – occasionally, I’m the flaky friend. But the point of these meet-ups is to meet new faces. I can’t do that if no one shows. Granted, this is the first year the magazine has started hosting events like this, so I haven’t been expecting large turnouts. In my eyes, a successful meet-up can be as few as two people.
Which, is precisely the number of folks that showed up on Saturday morning.
On the lift down to the lake depot though, I couldn’t care less who or how many people showed up. The fall foliage was in full-swing and the day was proving to be a perfect combination of cool and sunny. It’d be a perfect morning for a fire tower hike, even if it was just Melissa and I.
A friendly couple who owns a vacation house over the valley were the only folks who came at first. While I was relieved that they had heard about the hike via social media and had actually followed through with it, a part of me was still bummed. Really? Only two people out of the 155,000+ online fans we had between Snowshoe and Blue Ridge Outdoors? What gives?
As I was walking down to the beach though, a man in a bucket hat came up to me asking where the geocaching trail was. I quickly steered him away from partaking in the short trail, telling him that he should join us, instead, for a 3-hour hike up the ridge. He and his wife agreed and before long, the 7 of us began our trek up the mountain.
It was awesome to simply go for a walk in the woods. Sometimes (maybe due to my total dislike of hiking) I get caught up in adrenaline sports like kayaking and mountain biking and climbing. I live for that rush, for feeling borderline entirely out of control. But hiking is very methodical, very grounding. I should do more of it. Still, there were times during our hike when I looked on in envy as riders came flying down the trails we were slowly trudging up. By the time I was standing atop the fire tower, soaking in the 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains, it didn’t matter how I got there. All I cared about was that I was there.
Waves of red, gold, and green greeted our eyes. We could see the runs of Snowshoe, the lake, a puff of gray smoke in the distance from the Cass Scenic Railroad. It finally felt like fall, and I was glad that I could share that beautiful day with people who were as amped to go outside and play as I was.
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To cap off the day, we headed back down the mountain to watch an awesome live performance by G. Love and Special Sauce and Slightly Stoopid. Thanks to Melissa and the folks over at Snowshoe for hosting us this weekend and to all of the other locals and businesses that have helped me to put on these meet-ups in the past!
If you haven’t already, stay connected with the project by following the Live Outside and Play Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds. That way, you’ll know when and where the next meet-up is happening.
The post Meet-Up, Hike Out appeared first on Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine.
File this one under ‘billionaire toys that will simultaneously make you envious and give you a rage headache:’ the J’ade by CRN is the world’s first mega-yacht featuring a floating garage, which doubles as an ‘indoor’ swimming pool when not in use.
The hydraulic-operated bay of this ‘flooded garage’ makes it easy to store and access smaller watercraft (in this case, an 8-meter Riva ISEO speedboat) without the need for a tender lift, drying out in just three minutes. The doors can also be closed with water in the bay to create a protected ocean pool, potentially making open-sea night swims feel a lot less scary.
The 60-meter J’ade has room for 13 crew members and 10 guests, with an appropriately luxurious marble and rosewood interior, four decks, an outdoor diving table for up to 14 people, an audio/video entertainment system and a marble bar in the main salon with an aquarium backdrop. There’s also a hot tub on the spacious upper deck.
“Ready for delivery to the billionaire owner,” this insane super yacht doesn’t have a public price tag, but it’s safe to say that only the wealth hoarders of the world can even afford to get a close-up look.
Huscarl, Battle of Hastings, 1066
Mounted Knight, Siege of Jerusalem, 1244
For Soldiers’ Inventories, photographer Thom Atkinson collects and arranges the various gear and personal keepsakes borne by soldiers fighting throughout nearly one thousand years of British warfare, beginning in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings and continuing until the current conflict in Afghanistan.
The project emerged from two others that focus more broadly on the intersections of war and legend within the British subconscious, arising naturally from Atkinson’s ongoing research. Working from a list of famous battles that helped to shape the country, the artist reached out to re-enactments group specializing in particular conflicts throughout history. With their help, he drew from historical sources as well as iconic wartime imagery, including a photograph of Royal Marines bearing the Union Flag during the Falklands War, to construct detailed portraits of each soldier. After compiling objects from re-enactment groups as well as contemporary officers, as is the case with the image representing the possessions of a soldier in Afghanistan, Atkinson meticulously organized them into a fluid if complex chronological narrative.
Although arranged with an unfaltering and objective eye for balance and form, the items when taken together tell a story that is decidedly human. As axes make way for machine guns, the abstract notion of war becomes tangible and concretized. Throughout, there persists the basic need for shelter, warmth, food, and drink, and the fight for survival unites men and women living hundreds of years apart. Says, Atkinson, “It sounds silly, but one of my favorite things is that every picture has a spoon. Things like this make 1,000 years ago seem very recent. Objects can be powerful, magical things.”
Fighting Archer, Battle of Agincourt, 1415
Yorkist Man at Arms, Battle of Bosworth, 1485
Trained Band Caliverman, Tilbury, 1588
New Model Army Musketeer, Battle of Naseby, 1645
Private Sentinel, Battle of Malplaquet, 1709
Private Soldier, Battle of Waterloo, 1815
Private Soldier, Rifle Brigade, Battle of the Alma, 1854
Sergeant, Battle of the Somme, 1916
Lance Corporal, Parachute Brigade, Battle of Arnhem, 1944
Royal Marine Commando, Falklands Conflict, 1982
Close Support Sapper, Royal Engineers, Helmand Province, 2014
All images © Thom Atkinson
via Creative Review
The post From the Battle of Hastings to Present Day Afghanistan, A Photographer Documents Possessions Held by Soldiers Throughout the Ages appeared first on Feature Shoot.
While yesterday's CDC press conference was factual, it was clearly very much designed to avoid panic as time and again the US public was reassured that Ebola in America was 'contained', 'hard to contract', and would 'stop here'. However, as Bloomberg reports, the man with Ebola in Dallas was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics after seeking treatment for an unknown illness, officials said. We know CDC has stated the need for the US to be prepared but the fact that after the patient sought medical care on Sept. 26 and was sent home with antibiotics, he returned in an ambulance to Texas Health Presbyterian two days later and was admitted, suggests US healthcare workers are not prepared for the possibilities that Ebola is here in America (as this is the 13th possible case in the US).
A man with Ebola in Dallas was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics after seeking treatment for an unknown illness, officials said.
...
The man is being kept in isolation in an intensive care unit. He had no symptoms when he left Liberia and began to show signs of the disease on Sept. 24, the CDC said. He sought care on Sept. 26, was hospitalized two days later at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and is critically ill, said CDC Director Thomas Frieden.
Do not worry though...
“There is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here,” Frieden said at a press conference in Atlanta.
The man was traveling to the U.S. to visit family and was staying with them. He was exposed to only a “handful” of people during the time when he had symptoms, including family members and possibly some community members, according to Frieden, who said there was little risk to anyone on his flight.
“Ebola doesn’t spread before someone gets sick, and he didn’t get sick until four days until after he got off the airplane,” Frieden said. “So we don’t believe there was any risk to anyone on the flight at that time.”
...
“It’s not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the U.S.,” Frieden said on a July 31 conference call with reporters. “That is not in the cards.”
...
“There shouldn’t be any new infections from this point on,” Osterholm said. “We are going to shut this down.”
Finally...
Another suspected Ebola case is being evaluated at a National Institutes of Health facility, U.S. officials said, the 13th such possible infection in the U.S. All others have tested negative.
* * *
Contained?
Starting October 1st, Hong Kong celebrates two days of government holidays which will no doubt be the peak of the recent ‘Umbrella Revolution’. What started as a protest last Wednesday by university students in Hong Kong has now filled the streets and hearts of many living in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is an island, a city, a country, and is also a part of China. The country includes Hong Kong, the mega city across the harbor of Kowloon and the surrounding ‘New Territories’. The entire region is referred to as Hong Kong Special Administration Region (SAR) by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and houses 7 million people. The Kwun Tong District has 54,530 persons per square kilometer, is one of the most densely populated places on earth. In spite of its tight quarters, Hong Kong houses one of the healthiest populations on earth with a life expectancy for the average citizen of greater than 80 years.
Hong Kong has been named the top Financial Center in the world two years in a row by the World Economic Forum. Hong Kong was also tops in the world in the Index for Economic Freedom sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation. This index is a measurement of a nation's commitment to free enterprise on a scale of 0 to 100 by evaluating 10 categories, including fiscal soundness, government size and property rights. Hong Kong also consistently rates among the top countries in the world by the PWC/World Bank’s Tax survey due to its low tax rate and ease of tax administration.
With all going so well in Hong Kong, why the protests? The reason is that the people in Hong Kong like their freedoms and want to keep them in place. When Britain handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997 a de facto constitution was put in place called the Basic Law. The law stated that Hong Kong would be able to select its CEO, the top spot in the Hong Kong government, through an open election, but Beijing now wants to select candidates for the CEO position. The people in Hong Kong are protesting this decision and calling for universal suffrage.
The protests have been renamed the ‘umbrella revolution’ after the protestors used umbrellas to protect themselves from pepper spray and tear gas in recent clashes with police. With the holidays coming the next few days, the protests are expected to grow. Some recent tweets show that China has put a unique twist on the ‘umbrella revolution’ by reporting that the people are in the streets in Hong Kong to celebrate the National Day of China. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For information on solutions for the US from Hong Kong and other Asia Pacific countries and for information about how to order your own copy of new book Falling Eagle – Rising Tigers, see www.joehoft.com.
Whatever else is going on at the Secret Service, they've got the Obama Administration scandal playbook down pat, which is really depressing.
1. Lie about what happened - They not only misled the public about how far Omar Gonzalez penetrated the White House, they apparently were less than forthcoming with Congress. According to CBS News, "a congressional official told the Associated Press that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers who were briefed a week after the incident by the Administration were never told how far Gonzalez made it into the building." At today's hearings, House Oversight chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) referred to the initial statement from the Secret Service as an "early false report."
That's putting it mildly. We went from an unarmed man who jumped the White House fence and got stopped at the front door to a man with a knife in his pocket penetrating the White House all the way to the Green Room, on a path that took him right past the stairs leading up to the First Family's residence. (By a stroke of luck, they had left the White House just a few minutes before the intrusion.)
2. Dribble out the truth - Even after that "early false report" started to fall apart, the Secret Service kept as much of the truth under lock and key as possible. We only know that Gonzalez was able to overpower one of the Secret Service agents in his path because a whistleblower told Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) about it. And only after the hearings were well under way did we learn the amazing detail, not provided willingly by Secret Service director Julia Pierson voluntarily through testimony, that Gonzalez was stopped by an off-duty Secret Service agent from the Obama daughters' security detail. If not for the lucky coincidence of that agent running into Gonzalez, there's no telling how long he would have run amok.
3. Congratulate themselves on a job well done - After the incident was first reporter, the Secret Service issued a statement congratulating itself for using "tremendous restraint" in taking Gonzalez down without injuring him. Rep. Chaffetz hammered Pierson about that during today's hearings. "Tremendous restraint is not what we're looking for," Chaffetz pointed out. "It sends a very mixed message. The message should be overwhelming force."
Chaffetz added there's no way to tell what an intruder is carrying under his clothing, so all potential White House intruders "need to know that they are perhaps going to be killed - that's the message we should be sending every single time."
4. Meaningless declarations about taking responsibility - Pierson changed the magic words, "I take full responsibility - what happened is unacceptable and it will never happen again." That means nothing unless followed by, "... and that is why I am resigning my position, effective immediately." But nobody in Washington ever does that during the Age of Obama, do they? Maybe next we'll hear the Incompetence Defense: Pierson will say there's no way she could keep tabs on everyone working beneath her, so she shouldn't be fired. I'll award bonus style points if she uses Attorney General Eric Holder's excuse about not reading his mail.
5. Blame failures on insufficient funding - oh, yes, Pierson went there. She said the Secret Service is "close to 550 employees below our optimal level." Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton naturally jumped in and blamed this on... the sequestration spending reductions from the Budget Control Act of 2011. No matter how much money we allow our lavishly funded, deficit-fueled mega-government to spend... no matter how many swanky parties the GSA throws, how many "Star Trek" training videos the IRS creates, no matter how high on the hog the Ruling Class lives, or how many of its attendants swarm through the palatial headquarters of billion-dollar agencies full of waste, redundancy, and graft, nobody ever has enough money to handle the core functions of their jobs.
The only things left from this farce would be blaming Gonzalez' actions on a YouTube video, blaming the degradation of Secret Service performance on George Bush, or sending out some flacks to declare the whole thing an "old story" that only Fox News cares about.
Filed under: Classics, Sedan, Videos, Mercedes-Benz, Celebrities, Luxury
Continue reading Jay Leno's Mercedes 600 is dictator chic
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Permalink | Email this | CommentsThis has been an odd season. With the cooler weather, produce has been available later than I remember seeing it.
I just got some fresh peaches that were great. So I bought some more. Then I realized I couldn’t eat them all. What to do, what to do?
The answer was actually quite easy… Can them!
Canning fruit is really simple, as a lot of fruit doesn’t need anything to keep if canned properly. The acidity is low enough to keep the fruit safely. But I couldn’t just can plain old peaches, could I? If you’ve been around here much, you know that I can’t!
I ended up halving the peaches after blanching them. To blanch, all that’s needed is about 90 seconds in boiling water, then a fast dunk in ice water. This allows the peaches to peel easily. Then the peaches went on a medium-heat grill for about 30 seconds before turning 90 degrees for another 30 seconds to get a good cross hatch pattern. Then they got flipped, grilled for another 30 seconds, turned and grilled another 30 seconds. The idea is to add some grill flavor without really cooking.
While the peaches were grilling, I also boiled some water… and bourbon, and a bit of bourbon-barrel-aged vanilla! About half and had, in fact. And I was boiling jars for about 10 minutes to sterilize them. Once the peaches came off the grill, they went into the jars, as tightly packed as possible, leaving 1/2″ at the top, then the water/bourbon mix was poured over them, letting the air have time to bubble out, until the peaches were covered. The lids went on, and the jars went back into the boiling water (with at least 1″ of water over the jars, and boiled for another 10 minutes.
The peaches just had to cool and sit for a while. I opened some up after a few days, and they have a nice, bourbon taste without being overpowered. The peaches cook a bit, but not thoroughly, and go well with just about anything!
Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse blog,
Reports of individuals snapping up near-record numbers of gold and silver coins are coming in from around the world:
U.S. Mint American Eagle gold coin sales set to rise sharply in Sept
(Reuters) – The U.S. Mint has sold nearly 50,000 ounces of American Eagle gold coins so far in September, almost double its total in August, as a sharp pullback in gold prices and geopolitical tensions boosted interest for physical products from retail investors.
With only six business days left until the end of September, sales of American Eagle bullion gold coins made for investors were 46,000 ounces, up 84 percent from August sales of 25,000 ounces, the latest U.S. Mint data showed on Monday.
Record highs in U.S. equities also prompted some retail investors to buy precious metal products to diversify their portfolios, said David Beahm, vice president at New Orleans coin dealer Blanchard & Co.
German Bullion Dealers Report Major Increase in Sales
(Gold Reporter) Bullion dealers from all regions report that gold sales in the German bullion trade market surge since last week. Suppressed prices for gold and silver are obviously considered buying rates by German investors. The German precious metals trade reports a surge in sales.
“For about a week we record considerably increased turnover again, which is now on previous year’s level, so it doubled compared to the recent months.”, Rene Lehman from the internet dealer Münzland in Dresden told Goldreporter.
“We can confirm that customer demand has considerably increased in the recent days.“, said Dominik Kochmann, CEO of ESG Edelmetalle in Rheinstetten.
Daniel Marburger, Director of Coininvest GmbH in Frankfurt/Main also stated that “In the past seven working days we have seen an extreme surge in demand.”
Christian Brenner, Chief Executive of Philoro Edelmetalle GmbH: “Already in August we noticed an increase on orders compared to the previous months, but September… September beats it all. From a German viewpoint it’s the strongest month of 2014.”
Perth Mint Gold and Silver Bullion Sales Surge in August
(Coin News) Australian sales of bullion gold and silver surged in August after falling to a three-month low in July, new figures from the Perth Mint of Australia show.
August sales of Perth Mint gold coins and gold bars at 36,369 ounces rallied 44.9% from July and jumped 19.5% from the same time last year. Gold sales were the highest since June. Sales of Perth Mint silver coins and silver bars at 818,856 ounces in August advanced 41.7% from the prior month and grew 18.5% from August 2013. They were the strongest since January. In July, gold and silver bullion sales retreated from the previous month and from year-ago levels.
Individual buyers aren’t the dominant players in precious metals but they do make a difference. And their renewed enthusiasm is matched by some recent national trends:
China imports more gold for holiday; Indian demand set to climb
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Top bullion consumer China has been importing more gold in September than in the previous month due to demand from retailers stocking up for the upcoming National Day holiday, market sources said.
Demand in India – the second biggest buyer of the metal – is also set to pick up as the festival and wedding season kicked off this week.
With gold trading close to a key psychological level of $1,200 an ounce, markets are keenly watching physical demand in Asia – the top consuming region – to see if it could lend support to prices.
“The physical volumes have been high this month compared to August. I would say imports could be at least 30 percent higher than last month,” said a trader with one of the 15 importing banks in China.
Russia Boosts Gold Reserves by $400M to Highest Since ’93
(Bloomberg) Russia added about 9.4 metric tons of gold valued at $400 million to reserves in July as it expanded holdings for a fourth consecutive month to the highest in at least two decades.
The country’s stockpile, the fifth-biggest, increased to 35.5 million ounces (1,104 tons) last month from 35.2 million ounces at the end of June, data posted on the central bank’s website showed. The amount of gold now held is the most since at least 1993, according to International Monetary Fund data.
Central banks may add as much as 500 tons to reserves this year, the World Gold Council said on Aug. 14. Nations increased holdings by 409 tons last year and 544 tons in 2012.
There’s no guarantee that this buying, encouraging as it seems, is anything more than a blip. But in the aggregate it does seem like a lot of buyers, old and new, are finding current prices to be attractive.
That’s how bottoms form and new bull markets begin.
The day that many of us hoped would never arrive is here. Ebola has come to America. Air travel between the United States and the countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone should have been totally shut down except for absolutely essential personnel but it wasn't. And now our nation may end up paying a great price as a result. On Tuesday, the CDC announced that there is a confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas, Texas. We know that this individual is a male and that he traveled by air from Liberia to Texas on September 19th. At that time, he was not exhibiting any symptoms. It is being reported that he started developing symptoms on September 24th and that he sought out treatment two days later. Incredibly, he was turned away and sent home. Then on September 28th he went to a hospital again and this time he was admitted for treatment. That means that he could have potentially been spreading Ebola to others for at least four full days before finally getting treated at a hospital. Now he is in intensive care at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The CDC says that "there is no doubt that we will stop it here" and is promising that "it will not spread widely in this country". The CDC better be right on both counts.
At this point, the CDC is admitting that it is not known if others have been infected by this individual. The CDC also says that it is tracking down everyone that he has been in contact with. But over four days in a major U.S. city, you can be "in contact" with a whole lot of people. And what about all of the people that those people were in contact with?
If I was in charge of this crisis, I would admit that we don't know the full scope of the problem yet but that we are dealing with it the best that we can.
Instead, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking an entirely different approach. Dr. Thomas Frieden insists that we have absolutely nothing to worry about...
"I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola, so that it does not spread widely in this country. It is certainly possible that someone who has had contact with this patient could develop Ebola. But there is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here."
Frieden better be right about that.
Other "experts" are being even more dogmatic...
"There is no cause for concern," says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "The Ebola virus is not easily transmitted from person to person, and we have an outstanding infrastructure in place both to contain the virus and trace contacts. There will not be an Ebola epidemic in the United States."
I have no idea how they can say these things when the outbreak over in Africa is completely and totally out of control. Despite extreme precautions, hundreds of health workers have gotten the virus, and so far global health officials have not even been able to slow down the exponential growth of the Ebola pandemic in West Africa.
And our health officials should not be so dogmatic about how this virus spreads either.
In a previous article, I discussed a study that was conducted back in 2012 that demonstrated that Ebola could be transmitted through the air between pigs and monkeys that did not have physical contact with one another...
When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.
The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species.
Within a few days, the inoculated piglets showed clinical signs of infection indicative of Ebola infection. In pigs, Ebola generally causes respiratory illness and increased temperature. Nine days after infection, all piglets appeared to have recovered from the disease.
Within eight days of exposure, two of the four monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection. Four days later, the remaining two monkeys were sick too. It is possible that the first two monkeys infected the other two, but transmission between non-human primates has never before been observed in a lab setting.
There is much that we don't understand about this disease.
I can understand the need to keep the public calm, but why don't these officials just tell us the truth?
At the same time that they are telling us that there is no chance that there will be an Ebola epidemic in the United States, they are also sending out guidelines to funeral homes on how to deal with dead Ebola victims...
CBS46 News has confirmed the Centers for Disease Control has issued guidelines to U.S. funeral homes on how to handle the remains of Ebola patients. If the outbreak of the potentially deadly virus is in West Africa, why are funeral homes in America being given guidelines?
The three-page list of recommendations include instructing funeral workers to wear protective equipment when dealing with the remains since Ebola can be transmitted in postmortem care. It also instructs to avoid autopsies and embalming.
Why are they doing this if there is "no chance" that the disease will spread widely?
Hopefully they isolated this Ebola patient in Dallas in time.
Hopefully he did not infect anyone else.
But we need to be honest about the situation that we are potentially facing. So far, there have been more than 6,000 cases of Ebola in Africa and more than 3,000 of those have died. Unfortunately, even WHO officials admit that those official numbers "great underestimate" the scope of this outbreak. The number of official cases has been doubling approximately every three weeks, and the CDC says that under a "worst case scenario" we could be looking at 1.4 million cases by the end of January 2015.
Right now all of the treatment facilities in Liberia and Sierra Leone are completely full and more than 80 percent of Ebola patients have been turned away and sent home without being treated. It is an absolute nightmare, and now it has come to America.
And as the virus continues to spread, it is inevitable that more carriers of the disease will get on airplanes headed for America.
Unfortunately for us, according to a recent Defense One article the screening done at airports actually does very little to stop the spread of Ebola...
The bad news is that thermal screenings of the international flying population at airports are not likely to yield much by way of improved safety.
Here’s why: fever can be a sign of a lot of different illnesses, not just Ebola. And thermal scanning proved to be a poor method of catching bird flu carriers in 2009 as well. So presenting with an elevated temperature at an airport checkpoint does not indicate clearly enough that the fevered person is carrying the deadly virus. More importantly, the incubation period for Ebola is two days. As many as 20 days can pass before symptoms show up. That means that an individual could be carrying the virus for two weeks or longer and not even know it, much less have it show up via thermal scan. So what good are these scanners?
When I first started writing about Ebola, a few people accused me of "spreading fear".
Well, now that Ebola has arrived in the United States, perhaps they will take a second look at some of my recent articles...
-"The Pure Hell At The Heart Of The Ebola Pandemic In Africa Could Soon Be Coming To America"
-"Computer Models Tell Us That This Ebola Pandemic Could Soon Kill Millions"
-"16 Apocalyptic Quotes From Global Health Officials About This Horrific Ebola Epidemic"
-"Ebola Among Health Workers: More Than 240 Sick, More Than 120 Dead"
-"It Is Becoming Clear – We Are NOT Prepared For An Ebola Pandemic"
Let us pray that this is just one isolated case and that there will not be a major outbreak in this nation.
Because if cases do start popping up around the country, fear will spread like wildfire and we could potentially be facing the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen.
One of the individuals that successfully survived this disease was Dr. Kent Brantly. I think that the following quote from him really does a great job of summarizing what we are potentially facing...
"Many have used the analogy of a fire burning out of control to describe this unprecedented Ebola outbreak," Brantly said. "Indeed it is a fire—it is a fire straight from the pit of hell. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that the vast moat of the Atlantic Ocean will protect us from the flames of this fire. Instead, we must mobilize the resources ... to keep entire nations from being reduced to ashes."
A virus like this could change everything if it starts circulating widely.
Like I have said so many times before, let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
An Austrian man has been fined nearly £700 ($1135) for yodelling whilst his Muslim neighbours were praying. The family accused him of trying to “mock” the calls to prayer, but he insists that he was merely “in a good mood”. He paid the fine to avoid expensive court proceedings.
Police were called by neighbours to the house of Helmut Griese, 63, over the summer just as he was mowing his lawn and yodelling. His neighbours complained that they had been disrupted in their prayers. The police issued Mr Griese with a summons, and ordered him to appear in court in Graz accused of “disparagement of religious symbols”, a statute intended to prevent neo-Nazis from desecrating Jewish graves, sites and symbols. He also faced charges of hindering religious practice.
In court, his Muslim neighbours attested that he was a “grumpy old man,” who had intended to taunt their religion with his open-air Alpine yodelling, alleging that he always began yodelling just as they were kneeling to pray. They also accused him of trying to “mock and imitate” the call of the Muezzin, who calls religious Muslims to prayer in mosques five times a day.
Rather than face a protracted and potentially expensive court case, Mr Greise pled guilty, and the court fined him the sum. However, speaking afterward to Austrian newspaper Kornen, he said “it was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood.”
The Department of Agriculture, the agency that administers the food stamp program, has announced that it will spend $31.5 million on a new program that will promote a healthy diet for recipients of the assistance.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a division of the Department of Agriculture, is developing the program to urge recipients of the SNAP food stamp program to choose more fruits and fresh foods.
"Too many struggling families do not have adequate access to nutritious food," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Monday. "Helping families purchase more fresh produce is clearly good for families' health, helps contribute to lower health costs for the country, and increases local food sales for family farmers."
The number of food stamp recipients has seen a gargantuan increase since Obama became president in 2008. Late in 2012 the number of those on the SNAP program had exceeded the populations of 24 states and the District of Columbia.
By 2014, enrollment in the program jumped to over 45 million Americans.
Even with historic levels of Americans now dependent on welfare and the middle class poorer today than it was in 1984, Obama continues to claim that his economic policies have made things better. Some claim that Hillary Clinton is going to base her campaign on capitalizing on Obama's purported success on the economy and "finishing" the recovery he supposedly started.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
AUSTIN, Texas -- As tens of thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) have surged across Texas' border with Mexico and amid concerns about ongoing violence from drug and human trafficking by cartels, immigration is all but guaranteed to be an important topic for the 2014 midterm elections. Many liberal groups and media commentators have assumed that immigration is a losing topic for conservatives, especially among Hispanic voters, but recent polling data flips that assumption on its head.
As Breitbart Texas has previously reported, the growth in Texas' Hispanic population has not substantially changed the state's voting patterns. Hispanic Texans tend to be more conservative than Hispanics in other states, as shown by Wendy Davis' poor performance in the Rio Grande Valley during the Democratic gubernatorial primary election earlier this year, attributed to a disconnect between her abortion advocacy and the pro-life Catholic beliefs of many Hispanic South Texans. Moreover, polls show a trend for subsequent generations of Hispanic Americans to identify as more conservative than first generation immigrants.
On the specific issue of immigration, however, several recent polls have shown that Hispanics across the board favor tougher immigration policies than the media often portrays. According to a press release from the LIBRE Initiative:
"Although it is not always recognized, polls show that Latinos - like other Americans - strongly support improved enforcement of Immigration laws and enhanced border security. According to a survey by Pew, nearly 70 percent of Latinos supported increased enforcement of Immigration laws even before the increased attention to border issues this year. A survey by FWD.us puts the number even higher - with 78 percent supportive of stronger border security, and comparable levels of support for a visa tracking system and e-verify. Most recently, Pew's survey on Immigration this month shows enforcement remains a top goal - with 15 percent of Hispanics rating better border security as the top priority on Immigration, and an additional 42 percent regarding both it and a path to citizenship as equal priorities."
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas, Rachel Campos-Duffy, The LIBRE Initiative's National Spokesperson and wife of Republican Congressman Sean Duffy, remarked that Hispanics "care about border security and reforming [an immigration] system that hasn't been reformed in forty-five years -- the status quo isn't acceptable for any Americans, especially as conservatives."
"The idea that we're for open borders is not true," Campos-Duffy continued, saying that the problem was that "people with agendas about immigration want to perpetuate the myth that this is all we care about." In fact, as she explained, polling consistently shows that the most important issues to Hispanics are education, the economy and jobs, and health care, similar to other Americans. "The idea of making Hispanic Americans seem like 'others' is a tactic of both extremes of the political spectrum," she said. "We are Americans. We care about the same things all Americans care about -- especially the safety and security of our homeland. Wanting our immigration system reformed and [also] a safe homeland are not incompatible goals. Sensible people in both parties want these things."
Campos-Duffy placed a significant amount of blame for the animosity and unproductive nature of the immigration debate with the White House, commenting that President Barack Obama's determination to go it alone on this issue is serving only to "poison the water and stop consensus from forming" among the many people who agree the system is broken. "This debate [about immigration] needs to happen in the People's House, in Congress, not in the White House," she said, adding that Obama's threats to unilaterally enact reform by executive action "will only drive people away" from any "common sense" solutions. "Perhaps that is his goal," she pondered, adding that Obama's divisive rhetoric and broken promises of positive immigration reform were likely factors in the president's plummeting support among Hispanic voters, with his approval rating falling by 23 points since January.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter at @rumpfshaker.
DALLAS, Texas -- No more pickles, no more popcorn is what the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported as among snacks now considered contraband in the Lubbock Independent School District (ISD) for K-12 campus fundraisers held during school hours. Favorite kid munchies have been replaced by 45 approved federally authorized goodies. The changes were approved by Lubbock's Board of Trustees and all comply with USDA policies.
Actually, the district didn't have a choice. Lubbock ISD, like every school district in the state and the country that signed onto the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program for the 2014-15 school year, must comply to participate in this federal program that's part of the USDA's Community Eligibility Provision Program and the Healthy Hunger-Free Act of 2010, which set "limits on calories, fats, sugar and sodium" encouraging the "consumption of dairy, whole grains, protein, fruits and vegetables" and apply to "any school that participates in the National School Lunch Program," according to Smart Snacks in School.
The National Food Lunch Program, championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, has been harshly criticized for its minute and tasteless meal portions and that's resulted $4 million in trashed food and mandatory snacks each day.
In March 2014, the USDA issued a letter announcing enforcement guidelines effective as of July 1, 2014 that made it clear that the "USDA's Office of the General Counsel has confirmed that USDA is prohibited by Federal law from waiving these regulations and is also prohibited from authorizing State agencies to do so." So kids, say goodbye to favorite fundraiser sweet treats, replaced by government stamped smart snacks.
Lubbock ISD's school superintendent Berhl Robertson ,Jr. verified that these federal regulations have to be incorporated in to local policies, according to the Avalanche-Journal. This affects all a la carte cafeteria sales, schools stores, snack bars, vending machines, and fundraisers.
Examples of new USDA smart snacks are fruits and vegetables (dried, freeze-dried, canned, fresh); whole-grain based chips; select whole-grain based snack bars; whole-grain crackers; and nuts and seeds. Beverages must be water, milk and almond milk substitute, 100% fruit juice, fruit juice diluted with water or carbonation, and flavored waters without added sweeteners. Smart Snacks in Schools lists criteria and examples of acceptable products that restrict caloric, sodium, sugar and fat content.
The Alliance Product Calculator for Smart Snacks is an online interactive tool to plug in snack data to check if it fits within USDA guidelines. In many states, there are loopholes, according to a Pew Charitable Trust Q&A. The standards apply to all foods sold before, during, or up to 30 minutes after the school day.
Most afterschool food fundraisers, especially during the elementary school years are PTA or similar Parent-Teacher organization driven and happen immediately when school lets out in the afternoon to capture the largest audience before buses and parents take children home. At the 30 minute mark, it's pretty desolate on campus.
On the other hand, Pew says that these rules do not apply to evening or weekend activities such as football games or band concerts. Schools or districts could choose to apply the standards to all after-school activities, but that is not required by USDA.
They also explain that the rule covers "foods and beverages that are usually available to students: those in vending machines, snack bars, and school stores or sold a la carte. If parents, teachers, and students want some occasional departures from the standards, state and local leaders have the option of allowing that.
Also according to Pew, many schools make just as much money, if not more, with nonfood fundraisers. Examples of these kinds of fundraisers are gift wrapping paper sales or school spirit wear.
These rules apply to 100,000-plus US public schools that accept assistance from the National School Lunch Program.
According to the Texas Department of Agriculture, Big Education feeds more than 3 million Texas K-12 students and residential child care institutions. Currently, there are approximately 5.1 million students enrolled in Texas public schools.
Interestingly, the School Nutrition Association lists smart snacks state agency fundraising exemptions per state. Texas shows that it has no fundraiser exemption policy for its National School Lunch Program Participating campuses. Thus, zero fundraisers are listed as eligible to opt-out of the federal regulations in Texas.
Some states, like Georgia, are pushing back. In July, the Georgia State Board of Education (SBOE) chair Helen Rice and State School Superintendent John Barge issued a statement that read: "Tough economic times have translated into fewer resources, and these fundraisers allow our schools to raise a considerable amount of money for very worthwhile education programs."
The two also jointly stated, "While we are concerned about the obesity epidemic, limiting food and beverage fundraisers at schools and school-related events is not the solution to solving it."
Back in Lubbock ISD, school board president Dan Pope said he thought Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson were probably spinning in their graves at the federal government's actions, the Avalance-Journal noted.
The 35 district schools affected by the new smart snack policies are Alderson, Hardwick, Roberts, Bayless, Harwell, Rush, Bean, Stewart, Hodges, Bowie, Wester, Jackson, Brown, McWhorter, Wheelock, Centennial, Maedgen, Williams, Wolffarth, Dupre, Overton, Joan Y. Ervin, Parsons, Wright, Guadalupe and Ramirez Charter elementary schools; Atkins, Cavazos, Mackenzie, O.L. Slaton and Smylie Wilson middle schools; Estacado High School; Matthews Alternative High School; Priority Intervention Academy; and Dunbar College Preparatory Academy.
Other Texas school districts that participate in the National School Lunch Program include Allen, Birdsville, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Dallas, Denton, Duncanville, Grand Prairie, Lewisville, Mesquite, Northwest, and Richardson. This year, Carroll ISD opted out.
Follow Merrill Hope on Twitter @OutOfTheBoxMom.
The latest poll from Gallup Politics looks
at
how Americans view the proper role of govenment. Though it
might come as a surprise to anyone watching U.S. politics, about an
equal number claim to prefer a government that provides "only the
most basic" functions as favor a government that "takes active
steps in every area it can to try and improve the lives of its
citizens."
For the poll, conducted earlier this month, respondents were asked to rate themselves on a 5-point scale with "1" corresponding to the limited-government perspective and "5" signalling support for an activist government. About 35 percent rated themselves as "1" or "2", meaning they would prefer government play a minimal role in the lives of citizens. Slightly less (32 percent) chose "4" or "5", indicating a preference to turn over control of their lives to the state. The remaining third of respondents favored a middle ground. This is the fourth time Gallup has asked this particular polling question (starting in 2010) and all four polls have featured a relatively even split.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats were more likely to favor ample government than Republicans—though there was plenty of partisan crossover. About 17 percent of Republican respondents slotted themselves in the pro-big government camp, and 10 percent of Democrats said they support a more limited government. Meanwhile about a quarter of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats rated themselves in the middle of the government-scope scale.
Gallup also asked respondents whether they thought government was currently doing too much or not enough. More than half (54 percent) said it's "trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses" while 41 percent said the government needs to "do more to solve our country's problems."
Of limited-government fans from question one, 86 percent think the government is currently too hands-on, with those neutral on question one also tending to lean this way. However, when it comes to big-government supporters, a terrifying 74 percent thinks government isn't active enough in our lives right now and should be doing more.
A speed camera on Ocean Avenue near a highway off-ramp and Lincoln High School in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn gave out 1,551 tickets one day earlier this year, according to the New York Post.
The information comes from a Department of Transportation report that was just released. The big pay day came on July 7, when school wasn't even in session. Each ticket is $50, so the city snagged a cool $77,550. It's one of 10 speed cameras on Ocean Parkway.
From the Post:
The area's city councilman, Chaim Deutsch, praised it for making roadways safer.
"If anyone is speeding . . . they deserve a summons," he told the blog Sheepshead Bites.
But Councilman Mark Treyger has blasted the camera's location as a speed trap.
Speed-camera violations are issued to anyone going more than 10 mph over the posted speed limit, which in this case is 30 mph. …
"So someone slowing from 50 to 40 mph or from 45 to 35 would not receive a violation," a DOT spokesperson said.
The city is currently adding 120 new speed cameras near public schools, expected to be in place by the end of 2015.
The agency said earlier this month that its 20 existing cameras issued 183,000 tickets since January, netting about $9.2 million.
The local Sheepshead Bites blog
quotes one resident who believes, "This camera seems to be
conveniently placed so close to the exit ramp that you are almost
guaranteed to set off this speed trap."
Various analyses have poked holes in the idea that video surveillance makes the roads safer.
A British study on speed cameras last year determined that "the number of collisions appears to have risen enough to make the cameras worthy of investigation in case they have contributed to the increases."
Likewise, many reports have indicated that red light cameras in the U.S. increase accidents.
I’ve used the Wagner Deck Mate for years. Its smart design really speeds up staining the planks in a deck. It has an aluminum handle, gravity-feed reservoir, control valve knob, and swiveling paint pad head. The long handle lets you stain the deck while standing up (and off your knees!)
Fill the reservoir with up to a ½ gallon of stain or sealant, and then twist the yellow knob to control the flow of stain down into the paint pad. As you glide the pad along the decking it both applies stain and back brushes for even and full coverage in one step.
A really clever feature is the center brush: a brush-within-a-brush that protrudes down and rides along inside the space between the decking slats. The stiff bristles both keep the paint pad in position as you go and get stain down along the side edges of the decking. Genius!
To clean, just place the Deck Mate in the sink and run water thru it.
-- Bob Knetzger
Wagner DeckMate
$20
Available from Amazon
There aren't many silver linings to the dark cloud of ISIS, but one of them is newfound Western appreciation for the Kurds, a remarkable people who got shoved off the stage of history during the 2000s, because American liberals were desperate to make the invasion of Iraq look like a total mistake. Sympathetic people victimized by Saddam Hussein complicated that narrative.
But now the Kurds are critical to Obama's nebulous non-war plans to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the non-Islamic Islamic State, and the severe threat to the Kurdish capital of Irbil is one of the things that brought the Golfer-in-Chief off the links (along with the near-genocide of the Yazidis) so all the cool kids are paying attention to them. The Kurds stand out as the only group that seems willing and able to go toe-to-toe with ISIS, and their fighting spirit is matched by a sincere desire among Iraqi Kurds to improve their autonomous (and maybe soon, fully independent) government.
The battlefield performance of the Kurdish peshmerga is even more impressive when you consider just how badly outgunned they were against ISIS... a heroic detail I suspect American media has been under-reporting because it complicates the Obama narrative a bit too much. "Why the heck were our stalwart allies fighting with rusty Soviet equipment and running short on ammo?" is one of the questions you're not supposed to ask when you're pretending our super-genius President was led astray by inept U.S. intelligence agencies.
The UK Daily Mail has an incredible pictorial essay of the improvised fighting vehicles thrown together by the peshmerga to to battle with ISIS. They're all great, but this one's my favorite:
Out: bending swords into plowshares. In: converting tractors into tanks.
OK, one more, but then fair use obliges me to send you to the Daily Mail for the rest:
Tell me you don't hear the "A-Team" theme playing in your head when you look at these things.
As for what the peshmerga is up against, the Daily Mail explains:
In order to resist ISIS' high-tech firepower, the Kurdish forces have converted tractors and other farm equipment into heavily-armoured vehicles fitted aging Soviet-era guns.
Previously troops from the People's Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria had little more than rifles and flak jackets - making them incredibly vulnerable in the face of heavily-armed ISIS terrorists.
Much of the weaponry and military equipment currently in the hands of the jihadists was gathered after thousands of members of the U.S. trained and expensively equipped Iraqi army melted away in the face of a lightning advance by just a few hundred ISIS militants in June.
As the soldiers fled the scene, they left behind millions of pounds worth of top-of-the-range and barely used equipment - all of which was quickly swept up by ISIS.
Since then the Kurdish peshmerga forces have carried out the defence of much of northern Syria and Iraq, despite the fact many of the militants only know how to operate clunky, decades-old Soviet-era weapons and are hugely under-resourced in terms of ammunition and protective equipment.
Thanks, Obama! Please, tell us some more about how you personally killed bin Laden, leaving al-Qaeda decimated and on the run, so "the tides of war receded" and left no reason for an American military presence in Iraq.
