Stephan: Healthcare and Defense expenditures are beggaring the United States. These two economic areas suck all the money out of the budget.
F-35
Most Americans missed the news of two pairs of Russian Tupolev Tu-95 bombers that attempted to breach American airspace on the West Coast on the Fourth of July. The first incident occurred near Alaska, and the second the central Californian coast; the bombers were intercepted and escorted out of American airspace by F-22 and F-15 fighter planes.
Commenting on the incident, Retired Air Force Lt. General Thomas McInerny told The Washington Free Beacon: “it’s becoming obvious that Putin is testing Obama and his national security team.” The relevant question, though, to ask isn’t why Putin is attempting a banal revival of Cold War tensions — games of chicken between Russia and the West are no new thing, and Putin himself is far from inscrutable — but why the F-15 and F-22 planes played roles in the response.
Granted, the F-15 Eagle is considered one of the best fighter planes in history. In the time that it’s been flying, it has racked up 100 […]
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Vivek Wadhwa, Fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University - The Washington Post
Stephan: Here is another view of the Jobless Trend that I have reported on several times before in SR. I think this is a serious issue.
Vivek Wadhwa
There are more net jobs in the world today than ever before, after hundreds of years of technological innovation and hundreds of years of people predicting the death of work. The logic on this topic is crystal clear. Because of that, the contrary view is necessarily religious in nature, and, as we all know, there’s no point in arguing about religion.”
These are the words of tech mogul Marc Andreessen, in an e-mail exchange with me on the effect of advancing technologies on employment. Andreessen steadfastly believes that the same exponential curve that is enabling creation of an era of abundance will create new jobs faster and more broadly than before, and calls my assertions that we are heading into a jobless future a luddite fallacy.
I wish he were right, but he isn’t. And it isn’t a religious debate; it’s a matter of public policy and preparedness. With the technology advances that are presently on the horizon, not only low-skilled jobs are at risk; so are the jobs of knowledge workers. Too […]
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Stephan: This probing essay deals with disassociation, hate, and the failure to treat others honorably.
One of the most amazing court cases you probably have never heard of had come down to this. Standing Bear, the reluctant chief of the Ponca tribe, rose on May 2, 1879, to address a packed audience in a Nebraska courtroom. At issue was the existence of a mind that many were unable to see.
Standing Bear’s journey to this courtroom had been excruciating. The U.S. government had decided several years earlier to force the 752 Ponca Native Americans off their lands along the fertile Niobrara River and move them to the desolate Indian Territory, in what is now northern Oklahoma. Standing Bear surrendered everything he owned, assembled his tribe, and began marching a six-hundred-mile “trail of tears.” If the walk didn’t kill them (as it did Standing Bear’s daughter), then the parched Indian Territory would. Left with meager provisions and fields of parched rock to farm, nearly a third of the Poncas died within the first year. This included Standing Bear’s son. As his son lay dying, Standing Bear promised to return his son’s bones to […]
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James England , - Concealed Nation
Stephan: This is what America's gun psychosis has come to. I got this from a right wing gun publication. Pistol packing clergy, just the thing. The writer thinks this is a fine idea, he doesn't even see the madness.
Pistol packing preachers
FRANKLINTON, LOUISIANA — In what is either a sign of the best of times or the worst of them, a group of pastors and priests from across Louisiana have gathered together to complete the range requirements to get their concealed carry permits. WWL-4 covered the story.
“Churches left their doors open all the time so people could go in and pray if they needed to,” said Fr. Mark Templet with St. Peter the Aleut in Abita Springs. “Now, you don’t know what kind of people might be coming through the door and what they might do.”
The group – all comprised of religious leaders and their wives – completed a weekend long seminar in how to properly conceal and use a concealed carry firearm for the defense of themselves and potentially their attendees.
It belays a harsh reality unto which religious leaders are faced with in light of the Charleston massacre. And many understand that their actions may not be entirely understood or sympathized with by the community […]
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