Hitler had fillings made from gold torn from mouths of Jews - Telegraph

Hitler had fillings made from gold torn from mouths of Jews - Telegraph:

"The theory is based on a newly discovered document that shows Hitler's dentist had about 11lbs of dental gold from the concentration camps at his disposal for the treatment of senior Nazis. Co-author Henrik Eberle, a historian who has written several successful books on the Nazi leader, said dentist Hugo Blaschke had put 10 fillings in Hitler's mouth in 1944."

Hospitals Find Way to Make Care Cheaper -- Make It Better - WSJ.com

Hospitals Find Way to Make Care Cheaper -- Make It Better - WSJ.com:

"Be it cereal or cars, buyers usually have an idea of how good the products are and how much they cost before they buy them.
That's not how U.S. health care works. Patients rarely know which hospitals offer top-quality lung or aortic surgery, and which are more likely to harm them. Hospitals don't compete on price and rarely publish measurements of their quality, if they measure it at all.
Except in Pennsylvania. For two decades, a state agency has published 'medical outcomes' -- death and complication rates -- from more than 50 types of treatments and surgery at hospitals. The state has found that publishing results can prompt hospitals to improve, and that good medical treatment is often less expensive than bad care."

Glut of Natural Gas? Cheaper Electric Generation and Home Heating ... Less Pollution.

America's glut of natural gas weighs on prices and the prospects for drillers. But surely all that extra supply helps big customers like independent power producers?

Reality is more nuanced. Electricity prices are set by the last generating plant to be switched on. In most U.S. markets, that generator burns natural gas. That makes the revenue of all merchant generators highly susceptible to gas prices. For those that actually burn gas, falling prices also reduce input costs, offering protection for margins. For those burning coal, margins are squeezed.

The overhang of newly developed gas resources at home, as well as expanding capacity to ship liquefied natural gas to the U.S. from overseas, could keep gas prices trading in a range of $4 to $7 per million British thermal units well into the next decade.

In one sense, that is good for all independent power producers. They were set up to expand as more states deregulated electricity markets. Stable prices could help open the door to further deregulation.

Then again, future growth opportunities are of questionable value in a sector struggling already with average net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, of 4.1 times. And a new reality of moderate, calm gas prices carries significant risks to profitability.

The biggest risk is for coal-fired generators. Consider an unhedged plant burning coal in a market where an older gas-fired plant sets the electricity price. Assume gas costs $8 per million BTUs and coal $50 a ton. The gas-fired plant has to burn 10 million BTUs of gas to make one megawatt hour of electricity, giving total fuel costs of $80 per megawatt hour. If you add in some operating expenses and a return, then the price of electricity set by the marginal generator is about $90 per megawatt hour.

The coal plant's costs, meanwhile, come to about $33, leaving a gross margin of more than $55 per megawatt hour.

Now plug in a gas price of $5. Even if coal costs fall to $40 per ton, the coal plant's margin is cut almost in half. Then add in an eventual cost for carbon emissions. At $20 per ton, it lifts the electricity price overall. But because burning coal emits almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas, the coal plant's implied margin is now about $20 per megawatt hour.

There is an added complication. Industrial demand for electricity, 29% of the market, was down 12.5% from a year earlier in July, according to the Department of Energy. Andy DeVries of CreditSights points out that removing that amount of demand obviates the need to run older gas-fired plants, leaving more efficient power plants to set the market price instead. Based on the simple model described above, a power plant burning only seven million BTUs of $5 gas sets an electricity price of about $41 per megawatt hour. That cuts the coal-fired producer's margin to about $13. Factor in a carbon cost, and they make a loss.

Gas-fired generators don't do so well either in such a weak market. But they do at least enjoy a hedge in the form of lower fuel and carbon costs. Of the independent power producers, Calpine stands out with efficient gas-fired plants accounting for more than four-fifths of its portfolio. Against that, its net debt to Ebitda is 5.3 times. Mirant, in contrast, carries less than one times Ebitda in net debt. But it has the oldest fleet of plants of any independent producer and relies heavily on coal.

The independent producers are relatively new and their stocks tend to trade together. In their short lives, they have faced crises involving Enron and California, and several bankruptcies. With further dislocations stemming from the natural-gas market and climate-change proposals looming, investors need to be far more selective.

Write to Liam Denning at liam.denning@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C10

Fire insurance marks - When do we expect taxes for government services?

Fire insurance marks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Fire insurance marks were lead or copper plaques embossed with the sign of the insurance company, and placed on the front of the insured building as a guide to the insurance company's fire brigade. They are common in the older areas of Britain's and America's cities and larger towns. They were used on the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the days before municipal fire services were formed[1]. The UK marks are called 'Fire insurance plaques' the first to use the mark was the Sun Fire Office before 1700.[2]

American Fire Marks
Fire Insurance has over 200 years of history in America. Famous fires include the Chicago fire of 1871 and the San Francisco earthquake and resulting fire of 1906. The early fire marks of Benjamin Franklin's time can still be seen on some Philadelphia buildings as well as in other older American cities. Subscribers paid fire fighting companies in advance for fire protection and in exchange would receive a fire mark to attach to their building. The payments for the fire marks supported the fire fighting companies. If the protected building were to suffer a fire, only their fire fighting company would attend the call to extinguish the fire. Even if competitor fire companies were closer to the fire they would not do anything to prevent further damage or extinguish the fire. This brought the fire mark system into disrepute. Municipal and rural fire departments support by local taxation became the more popular solution."

Street Magic!

Watch this Japanese illusionist/street magician at work.
Apparently he's a young guy who disguises himself as an elderly man.

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2006/11/Japanese-Street-Magician-185215.html

Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation: My sister might not have read between the lines of this piece.

Back on Uncle Sam's plantation
Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist

http://townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/2009/02/09/back_on_uncle_sams_plantation

Product Description

America has two economic systems: capitalism for the rich and socialism for the poor. This double-minded approach seems to keep the poor enslaved to poverty while the rich get richer. Let's face it, despite its $400 billion price tag, welfare isn't working. The solution, asserts Star Parker, is a faith-based, not state-sponsored, plan. In Uncle Sam's Plantation, she offers five simple yet profound steps that will allow the nation's poor to go from entitlement and slavery to empowerment and freedom. Parker shares her own amazing journey up from the lower rungs of the economic system and addresses the importance of extending the free market system to this neglected group of people. Emphasizing personal initiative, faith, and responsibility, she walks readers toward releasing the hold poverty has over their lives.


Touching on Sex and the City, Snoop Dogg, the National Organization for Women, stem-cell research and "the It's-Natural-To-Be-Gay movement," born-again Parker decries the "radicalized progressive liberalism that has pervaded Middle America and usurped the authority of our founding fathers" in her indictment of all things not hard-line Christian that posits the suburbs are just as rife with immorality as the inner-city. Parker discusses "sexual pandemonium," the dissolution of the traditional family and the concepts of the insanity plea and hate crime (not the existence of the crimes, but the existence of the concept) in an effort to discover "why so many obvious areas of moral breakdown exist throughout the country." No matter what the perceived malady, the cure is simple: the moral alignment of all with Judeo Christian values. Parker may mean well, but her shallow critique will turn off anyone not already in her camp.






Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam's Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas -- a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s by Democrats, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?"

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems -- the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996 which was passed by a Republican controlled Congress.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are now going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, "Thank you, Suh."

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-Ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

"This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education."

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place "with unprecedented transparency and accountability."

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 -- The War on Poverty -- which President Johnson said "...does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.

It's not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama's invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

"The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN !

The Dallas Morning News covered this story but I forgot the link to the Willingham's execution for Arson related deaths... "smoking gun" ?

The head of a Texas anti-death penalty group has accused that state's governor of scuttling an investigation into a possible wrongful execution for political reasons.

"[Texas Governor Rick] Perry saw the writing on the wall," Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network, told CNN. "He moved to cover that up."

The "writing on the wall" Cobb was referring to was the investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission into the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death in 2004 for the 1991 arson deaths of his three daughters.

Forensic investigations done since Willingham's conviction have found no evidence of arson. Nonetheless, Perry refused to grant Willingham a stay of execution in 2004, even though credible questions had already been raised about Willingham's guilt.

On Wednesday, Gov. Perry ordered the removal of three members of the forensics commission, and instituted a "political ally," as CNN described him, to head the committee. That ally is reported to have ordered the investigation into Willingham's execution delayed indefinitely, saying he "couldn't begin to guess" when the commission would reconvene.

As CNN's Randi Kaye noted, since Willingham's conviction, "three forensic investigations found there was no evidence of arson. None."

What's more, as RAW STORY reported in August, Gov. Perry was informed before Willingham's execution that the claim of arson made by fire officials and the prosecution in the 1991 trial was likely unfounded.

Put together, those facts may make Gov. Perry "the first governor in history to preside over the death of [a known] innocent man," CNN stated in a report aired Friday.

"Critics suggest he's trying to delay or maybe even derail the state's own investigation" into the Willingham case, CNN's Kaye stated. And the reasons for it may be quite obvious: The commission's final report would likely have arrived weeks before the primary gubernatorial election Perry faces next year.

Asked about the removal of the three commissioners, Perry stated: "Those individuals' terms were up, so we replaced them. There's nothing out of the ordinary there."

But, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram notes, some of those removed had already had their terms renewed.

CNN's Kaye noted that Perry "declined to make the time for an interview" for its report.

ACLU: 'EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS' TIMING

"Gov. Perry said that the change was 'business as usual,'" the ACLU wrote on its blog Friday. "Unfortunately, his words ring all too true. Willingham is not the first likely innocent person executed by the State of Texas. Others include Carlos De Luna and Ruben Cantu. But the state has never acknowledged any of these tragic mistakes. Business as usual, all right."

The ACLU statement described the governor's timing for the removal of the three commissioners as "extremely suspicious, to say the least."

But some observers have gone further. Glenn W. Smith at FireDogLake states that Gov. Perry may have violated federal law when he shut down the investigation into Willingham's execution.

Smith argues Perry could be prosecuted under USC.18.1001, which makes it a crime for anyone "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States" to "falsify, conceal, or cover up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact."

The federal statute applies, Smith argues, because Texas takes money from the federal government for its justice system, and the funding guidelines refer to the law directly.

"If firing three members of the commission and bringing to a screaming halt an investigation and hearing about the execution of an innocent man is not a trick to cover up material facts, nothing is," Smith wrote.

The following video was broadcast on CNN's AC 360 on Friday, Oct. 2. 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9KQuDAKiz4