Free Republic

Los Angelenos will have lots of time on the roads this afternoon to contemplate the midterm elections when President Obama flies in for one of those “Hollywood fundraisers” news outlets love to sniff at — especially this one, at the home of Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth’s Brentwood neighborhood was festooned with Obama Drone non-fan posters in anticipation of the president’s visit — tickets to which raised $1K to $32K per head for the Democratic National Committee, depending on whether the ticket holder wanted to actually get dinner as well as a photo with Obama. Press already is reporting that Obama plans...

As the 800-pound gorilla of retailers, Wal-Mart made national headlines when it announced on Tuesday that it was cutting the health benefits for its 30,000 employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week. A company blog post put the move down to rising healthcare costs, but the 30-hour cut-off gives a clue as to the real cause - President Barack Obama's healthcare reform. Under the Affordable Care Act, large companies are required, starting this January, to provide subsidised healthcare for every employee who works 30-hours a week or more. As the Atlantic's David A Graham notes, many of the...

Three more health workers in Spain have been admitted to hospital for monitoring for Ebola, including two doctors who had contact with a nurse infected with the disease. The third new patient is a nurse who had contact with one of the two Spanish missionaries who died from Ebola after being repatriated from west Africa for treatment. "He is showing symptoms and a test has been carried out but we have not received the result yet," said a spokesman for the Madrid hospital. Meanwhile, two people who had previously been under observation in hospital have been cleared of the disease...

Indian and Pakistani troops traded gunfire over their border in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing at least four civilians and worsening tensions between the longtime rivals, officials on both sides have said. The small-arms and mortar exchanges – which Indian officials called the worst violation of a 2003 ceasefire – also left 18 civilians wounded in India and another three in Pakistan.

3. Personal protective equipment and procedures The following PPE should be available for use by personnel providing direct care to the patient or with potential exposure to the patient’s body fluids, such as during cleaning: Fit-tested, disposable respirators (at least as protective as fit-tested NIOSH-certified disposable N95 filtering face piece respirators), for use during aerosol-generating procedures if needed.

For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college? The idea might seem impractical, since college costs more than high school and higher education isn’t for everybody in the first place. Yet it’s also obvious that a high school education alone isn’t nearly as valuable as it used to be, which is why some researchers and policymakers are now studying ways to make college as accessible as high school for those who want it. College is free in Scandinavian countries and highly subsidized in much...

On the far right, reactions to America's march toward civil marriage equality for same-sex couples are often – there's no gentle way to say this – far out. U.S. Senator and GOP presidential wannabe Ted Cruz this week accused the Supreme Court of 'judicial activism' for...choosing not to act. Peter LaBarbera, who has turned his apparent inability to stop worrying about homosexuality into a career, commanded his followers in AFTAH – Americans for Truth About (guess) – to commit “civil disobedience on a massive scale.” But as same-sex marriage bans tumble from coast to coast, no histrionics can top those...

Brazil opposition presidential candidate Marina Silva is weighing an endorsement of rival Aécio Neves in a bid to defeat the incumbent, President Dilma Rousseff in a runoff election this month, said a person close to her. Ms. Silva, the Brazilian Socialist Party candidate who finished third in Sunday’s first round of voting, is willing to endorse Mr. Neves provided he agrees to some conditions, including supporting a move to end re-election for Brazilian presidents, the person said.

Apr 10, 2013 (CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) takes a hit of about $270 million in the Obama administration's proposed fiscal year 2014 budget, including significant cuts to biodefense and emergency preparedness programs, officials revealed today. CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, speaking at a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press conference, said the "overall program budget would come down by about $270 million" under the budget proposal, compared with spending in fiscal year 2012.

Stephen Collins, who played minister and family man the Rev. Eric Camden on TV's 7th Heaven, confessed to his now ex-wife that he molested an underage girl and exposed himself to two others, prompting police on both coasts to examine his admission and Hollywood to distance itself from the actor. While no charges have been filed against Collins, and he has yet to comment, fallout from the startling revelation has reached Hollywood. Within hours of the news breaking, he was fired from the Mark Wahlberg stoner sequel Ted 2, a source told The Insider. Collins also resigned this morning from...

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_HIV_AfricanAmericans.pdfThe estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women was 20 times that of white women

A new poll shows Democratic challenger Travis Childers gaining on Sen. Thad Cochran less than a month before the Nov. 4 general election. The New York Times/CBS/YouGov poll taken Sept. 20 through Oct. 1 shows Cochran leading 41 percent to 30 percent. A similar poll taken Aug. 18 through Sept. 2 had Cochran with a 40 percent to 25 percent advantage. According to the New York Times The Upshot: The YouGov online surveys are being used to supplement, not replace, the Times’s traditional telephone polls. The Times/CBS News poll uses a different methodology for its political and social surveys; they...

If your image of a computer programmer is a young man, there's a good reason: It's true. Recently, many big tech companies revealed how few of their female employees worked in programming and technical jobs. Google had some of the highest rates: 17 percent of its technical staff is female. The Innovators How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson Hardcover, 528 pages Digital Culture Nonfiction Science & Health Business & Economy Biography & Memoir * * * * * It wasn't always this way. Decades ago, it was women who pioneered computer...

Anger was growing in Spain today over how a nurse became infected with Ebola as it was claimed the protective suits given to health officials were not good enough. Four suspected Ebola patients are now in hospital in Madrid after the nurse was confirmed as the first person to catch the virus outside of West Africa. The escalation in Spain's Ebola outbreak comes as officials revealed 30 people were being monitored for symptoms, including the woman's husband. It has also since emerged that a week before she tested positive for Ebola she had contacted health workers to complain of a...

The Reverend Jesse Jackson will travel to Dallas today in support of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan and his family, he announced on Twitter Monday. Jackson, the civil rights leader who worked with Martin Luther King Jr., said he wants to “bring comfort” to Duncan’s family, and ensure that Duncan is properly being cared for. He said Duncan’s family asked him to come to Dallas.

The deadly Ebola virus could spread across the world infecting people from the U.S. to China within three weeks, scientists have warned. There is a 50 per cent chance a traveller carrying the disease could touch down in the UK by October 24, a team of U.S. researchers have predicted. Using Ebola spread patterns and airline traffic data they have calculated the odds of the virus spreading across the world. They estimate there is a 75 per cent chance Ebola will reach French shores by October 24. And Belgium has a 40 per cent chance of seeing the disease arrive...

The classic slogan for Firestone tires was "where the rubber meets the road." When it comes to Ebola, the rubber met the road at the Firestone rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia. Harbel is a company town not far from the capital city of Monrovia. It was named in 1926 after the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Harvey and his wife, Idabelle. Today, Firestone workers and their families make up a community of 80,000 people across the plantation. Firestone detected its first Ebola case on March 30, when an employee's wife arrived from northern Liberia...

The federal government is spending nearly a half a million dollars to find out why obese teenage girls have a hard time getting dates. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $466,642 grant last week for the study, which will examine whether social skills have an impact on why obese girls have fewer dating experiences than their less obese counterparts. “Mounting evidence demonstrates that weight influences intimate (i.e., dating and sexual) relationship formation and sexual negotiations among adolescent girls,” the grant’s abstract states. “Obese girls consistently report having fewer dating and sexual experiences, but more sexual risk behaviors (i.e.,...

About these ads The Last Refuge Rag Tag Bunch of Conservative Misfits – Contact Info: TheLastRefuge@reagan.com Skip to content HomeAbout UsTwittering in the Treehouse ← Bumper Sticker Of The Day… Anarchy and Left-Wing Activists Planning To Swarm Ferguson October 10th – 13th Posted on October 6, 2014 by sundance Grand Central Moonbats Traveling To Ferguson Pete is riding his bike to meet up with Justin in Ferguson. Every hard core left-wing, communist, socialist and racist group is coordinating to advance upon Ferguson Missouri this weekend. However, the problem the professional agitators might run into is if they are met by the real...

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a ribeye, extra rare, and the chef or the waiter or somebody messed it up. I sent it back to the kitchen. A lesbian couple near Uniontown, Ohio, ordered a baby, extra white, and their order got messed up — the sperm bank mistakenly gave them the product of a black man, with the result that their daughter, Payton, is half black. And that’s the problem with treating children as consumer products: You cannot send them back to the kitchen. Good thing fertility doctors don’t work for tips. Naturally, there is a lawsuit...