New Jersey dad infected with flesh-eating bacteria while crabbing to lose fingers, some toes

A New Jersey father who contracted a flesh-eating bacteria while crabbing at Matt’s Landing in Maurice River in early July will reportedly need to have his fingers and some toes amputated in order to prevent the spread of infection — and his family hopes the loss of body parts ends there.

Angel Perez, 60, has remained in critical condition at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, ever since he started experiencing symptoms after his July 2 crabbing trip. A day after being on the water, Perez noticed his skin was blistering and all four limbs had begun to swell and change color.

Doctors believe Vibrio bacteria, which is often found in warmer waters where the river meets the sea, is behind the aggressive infection. And it's even more dangerous for Perez, who has a weakened immune system due to Parkinson’s disease.

So far, both Perez and his family have been staying positive.

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http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/07/19/new-jersey-dad-infected-with-flesh-eating-bacteria-while-crabbing-to-lose-fingers-some-toes.html

Groups Linked to George Soros Behind Campaign to Repeal Trump Tax Cuts

Left-wing financier George Soros figures prominently in a campaign by progressives to repeal the Trump tax cuts, according to a review of the campaign’s allied organizations and their tax records by The Daily Signal.

The campaign, called “Not One Penny,” first came together almost a year ago with what The Washington Post reported was “a seven-figure ad buy in eight Republican-held congressional districts.”

All of the districts, the Post reported, include “large numbers of white voters without college degrees, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but have not historically been passionate about tax cuts.”

The “direct action and activism” of the Not One Penny campaign, the Post reported, closely model the Tax March held April 15, 2017, and successful efforts to block repeal of Obamacare in the Senate.

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Foster Care Needed In Salisbury

Concealed Carry Holder Vet Shoots Attacking Pit Bull, Saves His Service Dog

A Fernandina Beach, Florida veteran used his concealed-carry weapon to shoot and kill a pit bull that was attacking his service dog Wednesday morning.

“It was self-defense pure and simple,” Jim Strickland told First Coast News. “That dog would have killed my dog. No question.”

Strickland and his wife had taken their dog, Betty Boop, to the Fernandina Beach Animal Clinic get its nails cut. While his wife went inside the clinic to check in, Strickland took his dog to a wooded area for a “little break.”

“[The other dog] ran 35 feet across a parking lot to the wooded area where Boop and I were taking a little break, and he attacked her,” said Strickland.

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Brian Griffiths: Jealous breaks the mold for Maryland Democrats, but ultimately will fail

Maryland voters are about to experience a once in a generation election this fall.

When the Maryland Democratic Party nominated Ben Jealous for governor during the Primary Election on June 26, the Democrats made a break from the past in a number of different ways.

First, the Democratic tradition of choosing the establishment candidate was not followed. For 40 years, the Democratic machine in Maryland made sure that their candidate was the one that survived the primary and the outside candidate lost.

It didn’t matter how they made it happen, from begging William Donald Schaefer to run in 1986 to stop Stephen Sachs to Doug Duncan’s withdrawal from the 2006 race, the machine made it happen. The establishment did what they could to pull Rushern Baker across the line, but Ben Jealous still won.

Second, Democrats eschewed the traditional profile of a Democratic nominee. Over the last 40 years, the Democrats have nominated so-called “good government” liberals. These have been machine politicians that have extensive experience in elected office with pushing typical Maryland Democratic policies that raise your taxes, increase the size of government, and reduce liberty at the margins. From Schaefer to Anthony Brown, this has been their playbook.

Ben Jealous breaks that mold in quite a few ways.

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Trump Slams Interest Rate Hikes, Ignoring Hands-Off Tradition Toward Fed

The Federal Reserve got a rare piece of advice from the president Thursday. The central bank is an independent agency and presidents usually don't comment directly on Fed policy.

But President Trump broke with that tradition, saying in a CNBC interview, "I'm not thrilled" about the Fed's interest rate hikes. "Because we go up, and every time you go up, they want to raise rates again. I don't really — I am not happy about it. But at the same time, I'm letting them do what they feel is best."

Trump also said Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he nominated, is "a very good man."

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Washington, D.C., Is Counting All Its Cats. It Will Take 3 Years And $1.5 Million

Counting cats, much like herding them, is a complicated proposition.

But a coalition of groups in Washington, D.C., is giving it a shot.

PetSmart Charities, the Humane Society, the Humane Rescue Alliance and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are collaborating on a project called the D.C. Cat Count, which aims to create a more accurate estimate of the city's entire cat population — both feral cats and pet cats.

The project is anticipated to take three years and cost $1.5 million. The groups hope the data will help improve efforts to manage the cat population.

As Jacob Fenston of member station WAMU explains, "cats are controversial. ... felines have long been blamed for killing wildlife like birds and small mammals."

In some cases, as The Washington Post reports, cats threaten protected or endangered species. But in other cases, they can be helpful at reducing pest populations, like rats.

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California Supreme Court Squashes Bid To Split State Into Three

California will be staying in one piece, at least for now, after the state's supreme court ruled that a proposal to divide California into three cannot be placed on the ballot in November.

Tim Draper, a wealthy venture capitalist, has spent years arguing that the Golden State would be better off as several smaller states. He says California is too large to be governed effectively and that splitting up would result in "better decision making and real solutions closer to home." This year, he got enough signatures to put it before voters — although experts said that even if the proposal passed, it would face a range of daunting legal and political hurdles.

Then the Planning and Conservation League (PCL), a nonprofit environmental group in California, filed a lawsuit to block the measure from getting to a vote.

The PCL says the proposal amounts to a change in the state constitution, which must be decided by the Legislature before it goes to voters, The Sacramento Bee reports.

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How Luxury Hotels And Restaurants In Developing Countries Fight Food Waste

If you've never considered what happens to the remnants of the fully loaded plate of enchiladas, chips and salsa you grab from the buffet at an all-inclusive Mexico resort, you might be in for a shock.

Mexico's Velas Vallarta produces a veritable ton of food waste each day, but rather than dumping it into the trash, the Puerto Vallarta resort delivers roughly 700 pounds of it, each morning, to a hog farmer down the road to use as feed.

Much of what doesn't go to the pigs is composted on site and then used to fertilize the resort's verdant gardens. Ultimately, the combo of food waste, leaves, and grass trimmings are returned to the soil, while diverting waste from Mexico's overloaded landfills. Compost is also shared with staff, for use at their homes.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly a quarter of food purchases in hotels and restaurants are simply thrown away. While food waste is a hot topic in the U.S., it's a particular challenge in low-income nations where food is sometimes a scarce resource to begin with. Some resorts are doing their part to address it — even when governmental regulations and a general lack of awareness make that difficult.

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Liberals PUBLICLY CHEER Attack on Teens for Wearing a MAGA HAT

Do you think someone should be punched in the face for wearing a Hillary Clinton t-shirt? Should people who support abortion have drinks thrown on them in restaurants? Should Republicans harass Michelle Obama and her children when they see them in public?

Even though conservatives feel just as strongly about politics as liberals, I would hope the answer to those questions is still “no.” In a country with very divergent political views, we need to be able to live with each other. That means we need places where politics are set aside. That means having a certain amount of tolerance for people with differing views. That means an acceptance that every person who disagrees with you is not a Nazi.

This is a hard concept to grasp for liberals, who seem to be quite literally saying in large numbers that people who openly support Donald Trump deserve to be harassed or even attacked in public.

If you want to see how off the rails the Left has gone on this front, the Kino Jimenez case is a perfect example. Jimenez stole a MAGA hat from a teen at a Whataburger and threw his drink in his face.

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Breaking News: The Trump administration released secret records at the center of a partisan clash over the wiretapping of a former campaign aide

The Trump administration has disclosed a previously top-secret set of documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. had abused its surveillance powers.

Democrats in February rejected the Republican claims that law enforcement officials had improperly obtained the warrant, accusing them of putting out misinformation to defend President Trump and sow doubts about the origin of the Russia investigation. But even as Republicans and Democrats issued dueling memos characterizing the materials underlying the surveillance of Mr. Page, the public had no access to the records.

Late on Friday, those materials — an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, along with several renewal applications — were released to The New York Times and several other news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain them.

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Opinion: One FBI text message in Russia probe that should alarm every American

By John Solomon
Opinion Contributor

Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the reported FBI lovebirds, are the poster children for the next “Don’t Text and Investigate” public service ads airing soon at an FBI office near you.

Their extraordinary texting affair on their government phones has given the FBI a black eye, laying bare a raw political bias brought into the workplace that agents are supposed to check at the door when they strap on their guns and badges.

It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trumpfrom becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question.

For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read.

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Trump: ‘Ready to go’ with $500 billion in tariffs on China

President Trump in an interview that aired Friday said that he’s “ready to go” with $500 billion in tariffs on China after already slapping the country with a series of tariffs.

Trump said in an interview with CNBC that the U.S. is “down a tremendous amount” in terms of trade with China saying that China “can’t match us because otherwise we’re always going to be behind the 8-ball.”

“I’m not doing this for politics. I’m doing this to do this right thing for our country. We have been ripped off by China for a long time and I told that to President Xi,” Trump said.

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How Socialism Can Ruin Your Life

“The startling truth is that nearly all of human progress has taken place in the last three hundred years (and for many of the billions of non-Westerners lifted out of crushing poverty thanks to capitalism, it’s happened in the last thirty years)….Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples’ lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn’t feel like it. The market system is so good at getting people—from all over the world—to work together that we barely notice how much we’re cooperating.” – Jonah Goldberg

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” – Anonymous

In America, especially on the Left, socialism has begun to rehabilitate its well-deserved horrible reputation. In a poll last year, 37 percent of all Americans and 54 percent of liberals preferred socialism to capitalism. Another poll from last year had 44 percent of millennials saying they prefer to live in a socialist society while only 42 percent prefer to live in a capitalist society.

Given that America became the most successful economy in the world because of capitalism and because there are many horror stories about socialist countries, it may be hard for some people to understand why socialism would have any appeal. However, there are three factors you have to consider.
1. Socialism SOUNDS really good

Socialists promise all sorts of “free” things, but never discuss the true cost. Capitalism is Microsoft, Apple, and Exxon. Socialism is Santa Claus.

2. The successes of capitalism are taken for granted

We live in the richest, most successful, most prosperous society in human history and like the trust-fund kid who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, we assume this is just HOW IT IS and assume that becoming a socialist nation wouldn’t change it. (Spoiler Alert: It would.)
3. There are no purely capitalist or socialist economies

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The 30 Best Thomas Sowell Quotes

Thomas Sowell is a prolific author and brilliant economist and he is about as good at distilling conservative wisdom into pithy quotes as anyone you will ever read. If you think there’s not enough extraordinary brilliance left in the world, let me introduce you to Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest minds of our generation….

30. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

29. “One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”

28. “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”

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25 UFO Sightings Reported In Maryland During 2018 So Far

Here's where you're most likely to see E.T.'s shiny ride. Did you see any of these UFOs in Maryland skies?

ANNAPOLIS, MD — UFOs and the notion that aliens from another galaxy could be sending emissaries to check things out on planet Earth have captivated Americans for decades, including in Maryland. The state ranks 44th in the country for unidentified flying object sightings, according to a new report. The last sighting in Maryland was July 11 in Silver Spring, where someone reported seeing a dancing light in the sky.

From 2001-2015 there have been 1,646 total UFO sightings in Maryland, according to the financial news and opinion site 24/7 Wall St. That's 27.4 sightings per 100,000 people. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, there have been 25 reported UFO sightings so far in Maryland this year.

Sightings were reported in Catonsville, Frederick, Clarksburg, Mechanicsville, North East, Manchester, Butler, Halethorpe, Owings, Germantown, Annapolis, Lutherville-Timonium, Hagerstown, Nottingham, Waldorf, Williamsport, Bel Air and Sharptown so far this year.

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Democrats Don't Fear Brett Kavanaugh. They Fear the Constitution.

Sure, some of the anger aimed at President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is partisan bluster meant to placate the activist base.

Still, most Democrats were going to get hysterical about any pick, because any conservative pick was going to take the Constitution far too literally for their liking.

For those who rely on the administrative state and coercion as a policy tool—forcing people to join political organizations, forcing them to support abortion, forcing them to subsidize socially progressive sacraments, forcing them to create products that undermine their faith, and so on—that’s a big problem.

Some, such as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, indulged in the histrionic rhetoric we’ve come to expect in the Trump era, claiming that Kavanaugh would “threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.” But almost none of the objections coming from leading Democrats have been even ostensibly about Kavanaugh’s qualifications as a jurist or, for that matter, his interpretation of the Constitution.

“Specifically,” prospective presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., argued, “as a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy, his nomination presents an existential threat to the health care of hundreds of millions of Americans.” Surely, the former attorney general of California comprehends that “health care” is not a constitutional right but rather a policy concern whose contours are still being debated by lawmakers—and probably will be for decades.

What Harris probably meant is that Kavanaugh is an existential threat to the practice of forcing Americans to buy products in the private marketplace against their will. Kavanaugh, incidentally, upheld Obamacare as an appellate judge for jurisdictional reasons even though it displeased him on policy grounds. (He wrote that the law is without “principled limit.”) He did this because he has far more reverence for the law than Harris does.

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Will Insurance Be The Next Anti-Gun Weapon Deployed?

Anti-gunners are getting creative. This year, they’ve used financial institutions to try and undermine the Second Amendment. After all, if they refuse to do business with any gun manufacturer or gun store, they can effectively destroy the gun culture without the first bit of legislation.

Now, it seems they might be deploying another weapon. Insurance.

Kristen Moore is an associate professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan. She co-authored a piece for The Actuary Magazine exploring how the insurance industry treats the risk of firearms.

“Actuaries use math, statistics, and finance to figure out the cost today of uncertain risky things in the future,” explained Moore.

So, if you apply for health insurance, an actuary will assess your behaviors – like whether you exercise, are overweight, or engage in risky sports like rock climbing – to determine the likelihood and cost of you getting sick.

Yet, despite the potential risks of injury and death from firearms, Moore found very little evidence that insurance companies consider gun ownership when determining the cost of coverage.

“There’s not a lot in the literature about how firearm risk compares to scuba diving or private aviation,” said Moore. “To the best of my knowledge, it has not been studied.”

That doesn’t mean that gun ownership is risk free.

According to Moore’s research, death rates are higher for gun owners than they are for scuba divers. In fact, Moore found that gun owners would see changes in several kinds of insurance policies, including life, health, homeowners, commercial liability, and disability, if actuaries calculated gun ownership risk.

Of course, her research shows that.

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Trump: Biden Would Be My 'Dream' Opponent in 2020

President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Thursday morning that his "dream" opponent in 2020 would be former Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden, who considered running for president in the 2016 election, recently said he would decide if he will run in 2020 by January 2019.

CBS News anchor Jeff Glor asked Trump about a few potential Democratic candidates, including Biden, he could end up facing in 2020. Trump said Biden would not be able to amount to much of a challenger on his own and only succeeded at becoming vice president because of his running mate, President Barack Obama.

"Let me ask you about 2020. Who do you think your Democratic opponent will be?" Glor said. "Joe Biden says he'll make a decision by January. Tough opponent?"

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Firing a Bad Federal Employee May Get a Little Easier

Holding federal employees accountable is essentially impossible. They have the highest job security of any sector of the economy. In fact, out of a federal non-military workforce of 2.1 million, only 11,046 persons—or 0.5 percent—were fired in 2017.

One reason for this is the cumbersome process managers must endure to fire a single employee. Multiple appeals involving as many as four separate agencies, as well as union representatives, are not uncommon. This process can last years even in the most cut-and-dry cases.

Faced with such obstacles, federal managers often let misconduct go unaddressed.

But two bills moving through Congress now would make it much easier for federal managers to take action when an employee is simply not getting the job done. The Modern Employment Reform, Improvement, and Transformation (MERIT) Act and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) Reauthorization Act would strip away several layers of red tape that insulate federal employees from accountability.

How 2 Bills Would Fix the Problem

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