Nanny State: Despite menu nannies, Americans still fat!

By Eric Boehm / August 10, 2015 /

American businesses have been required to spend billions of dollars over the past few years to comply with federal regulations requiring calorie information on all menus.

Despite all that effort, Americans are still fat and getting fatter.

California, in 2008, became the first state to pass mandatory menu labeling laws. Like many nanny state ideas that begin on our left coast, other states began to follow the example. In 2010, as part of the Affordable Care Act, Congress made calorie labeling mandatory for all chain restaurants with at least 20 locations, though businesses were given until 2014 to comply with the new mandate.

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR 4,000 CALORIES TODAY? most people don’t really understand what a calorie actually is. For the record, it’s equal to 4.1814 joules – or the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius.

Health advocates and others who pushed for that provision’s inclusion in the ACA said it would help Americans to better understand what they are eating (and why we keep getting fatter).

But what if most Americans don’t care?

As FiveThirtyEight pointed out more than a year ago, people who dopay attention to calorie information tend to eat fewer calories.

Washington State University Bans "Oppressive, Hateful Language"

Close Minded Professors Demanding That Their Students Keep An Open Mind.

Doubleplusungood "oppressive and hateful language" not allowed.

Professors at Washington State University are continuing higher education's fine Orwellian tradition of enforcing politically correct thought—or as one professor puts it, "keeping an open mind"—by threatening to punish students who write words they deem particularly "oppressive," including "illegal alien," "male," and "female," or not "deferring" to minority students.

Campus Reform's Peter Hasson reports that one WSU professor, Selena Lester Breikss, warns students in the syllabus for her "Women & Popular Culture" course that students could receive a filing grade for including anything she considers "oppressive and hateful language." The potential punishment Breikss outlines includes "removal from the class without attendance or participation points, failure of the assignment, and— in extreme cases— failure for the semester."

"Students will come to recognize how white privilege functions in everyday social structures and institutions," explains Breikss.

Like her colleague, Professor Rebecca Fowler warns students of her "Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies" class that if they will lose a point any time they use the word "illegal" to describe an immigrant; "undocumented," she makes clear, is the acceptable term. in their assigned writing.

Fowler also highlights the destructive nature of "white privilege" in her course, saying students will be taught to "recognize how white privilege functions in everyday social structures and institutions."

In an email to Campus Reform, Fowler explained "illegal alien" had "permeated dominant discourses" to such a degree that "our society has come to associate ALL unauthorized border crossings with those immigrants originating from countries south of our border." After noting that Asians also make up a "considerable portion of undocumented immigrants" in the country, Fowler decried the "socio-legal production of migrant illegality" which she says "systematically dehumanize[s] and exploit[s] these brown bodies for their labor."

Professor John Streamas likewise stresses the evils of white privilege, instructing students in his "Introduction to Multicultural Literature" that the only way students might expect to "do well" in the class is "by respecting shy and quiet classmates and by deferring to the experiences of people of color."

Hasson notes that Streamas was recently at the center of controversy when he called a student a "white shitbag" and called WSU "White Supremacist University."

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Ari Cohn noted to Campus Reform the blatant self-contradiction of many of the professors' language censorship, citing one particular thought-control WSU syllabus which urges students to "Keep an open mind."

Source: Truth Revolt.

Calif. Democrat: Obama 'Didn't Deserve' Nobel Prize in 2009, But 'Deserves' It Now for Iran Deal

By Craig Millward

(CNSNews.com) - 

Speaking to fellow supporters of the Iran nuclear deal outside his Long Beach, Calif. office last week, Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) said President Obama "didn't deserve" the Nobel Peace Prize when he was first elected, but he "deserves it" now for the Iran nuclear deal.

"This is a very complex world we live in. I'm just so grateful that we're moving towards diplomacy and peaceful resolution of conflict, and the ability to have the most effective non-proliferation nuclear treaty with inspections," Lowenthal told 200 activists on what they billed as a "No War With Iran Day of Action."

"On the other hand, nobody in any of these deals goes home feeling like you won everything. These are very complicated -- you have to give up things."

"And you know, while everyone would have liked to have had a deal that lasted for ever and ever and ever and ever, we knew two years ago that was not on the table. We knew that we would have to kind of figure out, how we can just be sure that they do not get a nuclear weapon.

"This is -- I mean, there is no other better way to do it. We've never had inspections like this in any non-proliferation treaty. We've never had the amount of at-bat sanctions -- we've never had any of that, never before and I just -- I really believe this, and I'll just kind of end it here: President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was first elected, which he didn't deserve. Now he's not going to win it, but he deserves it for this."

President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize at the very beginning of his presidency "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."



Follow Craig Millward Bio | ArchiveSource: CNS News

WaPo Writer: Black Votes Should Count For More Than White Votes

A writer over at The Washington Post has a bold new proposal he believes can heal the American racial divide: empower blacks by making their votes count more than those of other races.

“Racial reconciliation is impossible without some kind of broad-based, systemic reparations,” writes Theodore R. Johnson, a former White House fellow and current Ph.D candidate in law and policy at Northeastern University. “But if a pecuniary answer can’t fix the structural disadvantage — and it can’t — what can?”

The answer, Johnson argues, is simple: weighted voting, where black votes count for more than white ones. Specifically, Johnson suggests giving each black person five-thirds of a vote, to reverse the old three-fifths compromise written into the U.S. Constitution.

As Johnson gleefully notes, counting black votes more than others would significantly alter many elections in the U.S. In the 2012 election, several Southern states with high black populations, such as Mississippi and Georgia, would have swung over to Barack Obama’s column, and their recent Senate races would have been decided in Democrats’ favor as well.


Johnson justifies his argument by saying it’s the only way to solve the “structural disadvantages” faced by blacks.

“A five-thirds compromise would imbue African Americans with a larger political voice that could be used to fight the structural discrimination expressed in housing, education, criminal justice and employment,” he says. “Allowing black votes to count for 167 percent of everyone else’s would mean that 30 million African American votes would count as 50 million, substituting super-votes for the implausible idea of cash payments.” With black voters so massively empowered, politicians will have no choice to but to put black priorities first if they hope to remain in office.

Johnson pays lip service to the important democratic principle of “one man, one vote,” but then dismisses it on grounds that the term is “unclear,” by pointing to a Supreme Court case that has nothing to do with the topic of explicitly giving one racial group super-votes.

Having taken care of his justification of the policy itself, Johnson goes into detail about how it should be constructed. He says it only needs to last for a set period of time (he proposes 24 years), and he also proposes taking inspiration from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for handling the thorny topic of who counts as black and who doesn’t.

To conclude, Johnson forthrightly says that only reverse racism will be sufficient to achieve the goal of racial justice.

“Of course, weighted-vote reparations are only slightly more politically feasible than a multi-trillion-dollar payout,” he says. “But we have to consider novel approaches to racial reconciliation … if we are serious about ridding the nation of barriers to opportunity and overcoming the racial discrimination woven into America’s fabric. If racism is the culprit, then dismantling it requires the same tools that constructed it.”

Source:Daily Caller

Top Activist and Author: It’s ‘Clear’ That Climate Change Is Making Racism Worse

by Katherine Timpf 
According to Naomi Klein, this is “clear.” According to social activist and best-selling author Naomi Klein, climate change isn’t just destroying our planet — it’s making racism worse, too.

 “You see that in Australia where the treatment of migrants is a profound moral crisis,” she said, according to a piece published in The Guardian. 

“It’s clear that as sea levels rise that this mean streak and open racism is going to become more extreme – climate change is an accelerant to all those other issues,” she continued. 

Yes — “clear.” The idea that racism rises with the sea is just so “clear” that no further evidence or explanation is needed. Climate change is making people more mean, and that is just a fact. 

If you’re dying to know more, you’re in luck: Klein has written plenty of books about climate change, including This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which MSNBC host Rachel Maddow praised as “the only book of the last few years in American publishing that I would describe as a mandatory must-read.” 

That’s a compelling endorsement, but I still don’t think I’ll read it — after all, the fact that Klein is totally right is already so “clear.” 

more on the subject here

—Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.    

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

The Rationale for rape is  beyond comment:

Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State
codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq
and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool.

Written by RUKMINI CALLIMACHI;

QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity...“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.

for much more go here

HILLARY ON SNAPCHAT: I LOVE HOW MESSAGES ‘DISAPPEAR ALL BY THEMSELVES’

Clinton makes light of FBI criminal investigation into whether highly classified information was dealt with improperly

by THE HILL | ELLIOT SMILOWITZ |

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may be facing a lot of trouble for her private email server, but she’s not letting the scandal take away her sense of humor.

Clinton joked at the annual Iowa Democratic Wing Ding on Friday that social media service Snapchat, known for messages that disappear instantly, is perfect for her.

“By the way, you may have seen that I have recently launched a Snapchat account,” she said. “I love it — those messages disappear all by themselves.”

Despite her joke, Democrats are worried that the furor surrounding her private email server will be prolonged and intensified after her sudden move to hand it over to the FBI this week.