Capdiamont’s Weblog

YouTube – Pumpkin Chemistry – Halloween Special.

Happy Halloween!

BBC NEWS | Americas | US probes Obama ‘death’ web poll.

The US Secret Service is investigating a poll posted on social networking site Facebook, asking people if they think President Obama “should be killed”.

AP IMPACT: Bad bridges passed up for stimulus cash – Yahoo! News.

WASHINGTON – Tens of thousands of unsafe or decaying bridges carrying 100 million drivers a day must wait for repairs because states are spending stimulus money on spans that are already in good shape or on easier projects like repaving roads, an Associated Press analysis shows.

That is the problem with wanting to stimulate “shovel ready” projects. You need money to design repairs and replacements to these bridges. It takes time.

Small Newspapers May Be Able To Prolong Death Longer Than Large Counterparts.

More bad news for large newspapers. According to the latest stats from the Inland Press Association, larger newspapers with higher circulations are suffering more than their smaller siblings. Newspaper veteran Alan Mutter reports that the bigger the newspapers are, the more their profits decreased over the past five years. Since 2004, operating profits on average fell just over 100% at newspapers with circulation higher than 80,000. That’s right. Taken all together, their losses wiped out their profits.

The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear (OneNewsNow.com).

The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading healthcare sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there’s one healthcare policy nightmare you won’t hear the Obamas hyping. It’s a tale of poor minority patient-dumping in Chicago — with first lady Michelle Obama’s fingerprints all over it.

Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois have raised red flags about the outsourcing program run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has nonprofit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care.

Yet, in fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor — 1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.

Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: “Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds.”

Don’t expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an “Urban Health Initiative,” Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve healthcare for thousands of South Side residents.”

In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming “RAAAAAAAAACISM!” at the top of their lungs.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive – Telegraph.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Wiggins to take 5 percent Senate pay cut, give up state car | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA.

Wiggins said she will voluntarily reduce her annual pay of $116,208 by 5 percent, and her annual per diem expenses by another 20 percent.

On average, senators receive about $35,000 a year toward their daily expenses.

“It is the right thing to do at a time when the people of California are being asked, or forced, to make financial sacrifices during very difficult economic times,” she said in a written statement.

Matt Towery : Change People Are Starting To No Longer Believe In – Townhall.com.

Sure enough, bit by bit, much of the president’s agenda is starting to come apart like a cheap trailer in a tornado.

PETA wishes Obama hadn’t swatted that fly

WASHINGTON – The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he’s bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

WSJ: Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth

Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.

CNSNews.com – Major Papers Expunge Obama’s Comment: ‘I’ll Be Honest, There Are Countries Where a Single-Payer System Works Pretty Well’.

President Barack Obama told the American Medical Association yesterday that he believes single-payer health care systems have worked “pretty well” in some countries, but no major U.S. newspaper available in the Nexis database reported the president’s comment in their news stories about the speech.

However, three of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers—the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times—did publish quotes from the president’s speech that artfully took language from both immediately before and after the president’s statement that single-payer systems work.

“I’ll be honest,” Obama said in his speech to the AMA, ”there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well.”