November 24, 2014


News Clips For The Day


A life-saving alternative to open heart surgery – CBS
By INES NOVACIC CBS NEWS November 20, 2014, 5:00 AM

Dr. Susheel Kodali kept his gaze fixed on the four monitors suspended above the patient he was operating on at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center's Heart Valve Center.

"You see, one of the keys to this procedure is imaging, because we're not opening the chest, so we use all modalities available including X-Ray and echo," he said.

Kodali and his team have performed more than 1,200 transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedures just like this one, more than any other institution in the U.S., since TAVR was approved by the FDA three years ago. It's a non-invasive alternative to heart surgery that replaces the aortic valve, responsible for pumping blood out of the heart, via a narrow tube called a catheter. The catheter is expanded using a balloon structure, much like a heart stent, and through it a replacement valve is fitted into place.

Because TAVR does not stop the heart or require putting the patient on a heart-lung bypass machine, it's made treatment for aortic valve conditions accessible to thousands of patients, mostly elderly, who would otherwise have been deemed "too risky" for open heart surgery and left with no other options. And compared to open heart surgery, the recovery period after TAVR is much less difficult.

With ongoing advances in technique and technologies, specialists like Kodali say TAVR will soon present an alternative to traditional surgery for most patients, not just the ones who currently meet the required criteria.

"Surgery is great but it's not improving, for the most part they've perfected what they can do," said Kodali. "But now, with TAVR, we're just at the infancy, it's within 10 years and such a rapid rate of iteration... I think we'll be doing it in a large majority of patients that need valve replacement."

For now, however, TAVR is not recommended for younger patients because its long-term durability is unproven.

The first TAVR procedure was done in France 12 years ago. Doctors began clinical trials in the U.S. in 2005, led by the director of the New York-Presbyterian/ Columbia University Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy, Dr. Martin Leon.

"Aortic stenosis is the most common disease of aging in heart valve patients," Leon told CBS News. "Before TAVR, 30 to 50 percent of them were literally left behind, with no therapy, with a rapid downhill course. That was the basis of developing this newer, less invasive technique."

Aortic stenosis, the narrowing of the aortic valve opening, occurs in roughly 5 percent of all people over the age of 75. In America it affects 300,000 people, and many require a heart valve replacement. Left untreated, severe symptomatic aortic stenosis carries a poor prognosis; up to 60 percent of patients will die within 2 years, and fewer than 30 percent will survive 3 years.

Leon explained that that TAVR does not extract the old, failing valve, but simply displaces it within the heart and replaces it with a new valve.

"We've developed techniques that minimize the likelihood of problems arising from the old valve remaining in the heart," said Leon, adding that the shrinking size of catheters and types of transcatheter valves used are also improving even faster than many experts expected.

Two types of replacement transcatheter valves are currently on the market in the U.S.: the Edwards SAPIEN and the CoreValve system. The former requires a balloon structure to inflate the valve once in the heart, while the newer CoreValve system is self-expanding.

"The low rates of stroke and valve leakage with the CoreValve System - two of the most concerning complications of valve replacement because they increase the risk of death and have a dramatic impact on quality of life - set a new standard for transcatheter valves," said Jeffrey J. Popma, co-principal investigator of the most recent transcatheter valve trial.

TAVR is done in an operating room set up to easily convert to a full surgery in case complications arise, and it involves a collaboration between various medical specialists.

"There will always be an interventional cardiologist, a surgeon, an imaging expert, all in the same room sharing their skills in order to take care of these very difficult patients," said Leon.

Mary Fuller, 67, was one such patient of Kodali's earlier this year. She had already had open heart surgery six years ago. When she found out that she needed another valve replacement, but was too sick to undergo surgery again, she thought she was out of options.

"I thought, I was lucky enough to have lived this long, and I thought maybe I'm pushing my luck," said Fuller.

When she heard about TAVR, she immediately signed up, and says she's had no regrets.

"It was quite a remarkable thing and I would recommend anyone to just go for it and not be afraid. I had the most wonderful doctors and nurses reassuring me every step of the way," said Fuller, who was quickly back to her job as a psychology professor following surgery. "The most amazing thing is, I was home within three days!"

According to Kodali, patients sometimes leave the hospital the day after their procedure. "It's relatively painless," he said. "They're awake during catheterization, and some of the patients we operate on are awake during the procedure."

As yet, TAVR is offered by only a handful of hospitals in the U.S. However, doctors say that as it improves it should become increasingly accessible to more people.

"Most of the patients I treat are going for a treatment for quality of life," said Kodali. "Most of them say I don't care if I will long but I can't live like this."

"I think the devices and procedures are going to look very different in 10 years and our patients will benefit enormously from it," he added.

According to Fuller, her quality of life after TAVR is already an improvement compared to traditional surgery, which had taken her months to recover from: "I can't say I'm bouncing around, but I'll tell you I was running from my classroom to my office and people literally had to run to keep up with me."



http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aortic-stenosis/basics/causes/con-20026329

Aortic valve stenosis
Causes
By Mayo Clinic Staff

Many things can narrow this passageway between your heart and aorta. Causes of aortic valve stenosis include:

Congenital heart defect.
Calcium buildup on the valve. With age, heart valves may accumulate deposits of calcium (aortic valve calcification). Calcium is a mineral found in your blood. As blood repeatedly flows over the aortic valve, deposits of calcium can accumulate on the valve's leaflets. These deposits may never cause any problems. These calcium deposits aren't linked to taking calcium tablets or drinking calcium-fortified drinks.

However, in some people — particularly those with a congenitally abnormal aortic valve, such as a bicuspid aortic valve — calcium deposits result in stiffening of the leaflets of the valve. This stiffening narrows the aortic valve and can occur at a younger age. However, aortic valve stenosis that is related to increasing age and the buildup of calcium deposits on the aortic valve is most common in men older than 65 and women older than 75.

Rheumatic fever. A complication of strep throat infection, rheumatic fever may result in scar tissue forming on the aortic valve. Scar tissue alone can narrow the aortic valve and lead to aortic valve stenosis. Scar tissue can also create a rough surface on which calcium deposits can collect, contributing to aortic valve stenosis later in life.





“Kodali and his team have performed more than 1,200 transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedures just like this one, more than any other institution in the U.S., since TAVR was approved by the FDA three years ago. It's a non-invasive alternative to heart surgery that replaces the aortic valve, responsible for pumping blood out of the heart, via a narrow tube called a catheter. The catheter is expanded using a balloon structure, much like a heart stent, and through it a replacement valve is fitted into place. Because TAVR does not stop the heart or require putting the patient on a heart-lung bypass machine, it's made treatment for aortic valve conditions accessible to thousands of patients, mostly elderly, who would otherwise have been deemed "too risky" for open heart surgery and left with no other options. And compared to open heart surgery, the recovery period after TAVR is much less difficult.... For now, however, TAVR is not recommended for younger patients because its long-term durability is unproven.... Aortic stenosis, the narrowing of the aortic valve opening, occurs in roughly 5 percent of all people over the age of 75. In America it affects 300,000 people, and many require a heart valve replacement. Left untreated, severe symptomatic aortic stenosis carries a poor prognosis; up to 60 percent of patients will die within 2 years, and fewer than 30 percent will survive 3 years.... As yet, TAVR is offered by only a handful of hospitals in the U.S. However, doctors say that as it improves it should become increasingly accessible to more people.”

Aortic stenosis affects some 300,000 Americans, and up to 60% of them will die within two years. Their quality of life also is lowered to the point that many of them don't want to keep living. Open heart surgery is an operation in which the breastbone is split and the ribs pulled apart. This new operation is very easy, comparatively, and hopefully will become much more available as hospitals start using the procedure. I don't know that I would want open heart surgery, but this TAVR would be much better. Unfortunately, doctors don't know how durable the new valve will be. Only 5% of the population over the age of 70 are affected and likely to be in need of TAVR. Those of us who have had strep throat may have aortic valve abnormalities. That's a lot of people, including me, but drinking milk and other calcium fortified liquids doesn't cause a greater amount of calcium deposit on the valve.





The future of food: Crushed bugs, chemical elixirs and apps
CBS NEWS November 23, 2014

What is the "next course" for humankind? A glass of a nutrition drink called "Soylent"? Along with some freeze-dried ice cream like the astronauts eat for dessert? Our Cover Story comes from David Pogue of Yahoo Tech:

Most folks really like food. Trouble is, we can't keep eating the way we're eating if we're going to keep breeding the way we're breeding.

We like meat. But raising the animals we like to eat requires a crazy amount of land, water and energy. And all that meat isn't actually that good for us. Something will have to give.

Maybe we'll eat meat that's grown in a lab. Maybe we'll eat meat made from plants.

And maybe we'll take a cue from Megan Miller, who makes things with flour made from ground-up bugs.

Yes, Miller's company, Bitty, sells cookies made from cricket flour. She believes that the future of protein is bugs.

"People all over Asia, Latin America, Africa already eat insects as part of their everyday diet," she said.

Pogue sampled one of Bitty's Chocolate Cardamom Cookies, made with cricket flour (which, he said. "has a very farm-like, organic scent to it").

Pogue asked, "How much crickets are there actually in one of those cookies?"

"Each one of those cookies probably has 25 crickets in it," Miller replied.

And to supply all those insects, there are now cricket farms.

Crickets have almost as much protein as ground beef, but are much quicker to raise than cattle - they mature in just six weeks -- and they require much less land and water.
As Pogue discovered, cricket-flour recipes taste exactly like regular-flour recipes, once you get past the idea that you're eating bugs.

Recipes: Cookies baked with Cricket Flour (from Bitty)

Not all food futurists think bugs are the answer. Rob Rhinehart thinks we won't wind up eating anything -- we'll drink our nutrition.

Rhinehart explained his creation, Soylent, "an engineered staple food. It's something that is designed to deliver the maximum nutrition to your body with minimum effort and cost."

And what's in a glass of Soylent? "Everything the body needs," Rhinehart said.

When he was an electrical engineer, Rhinehart resented the time he had to take away from his work to buy food, prepare it, and then clean up after it. So he invented a drink called Soylent: cheap, nutritionally complete, environmentally sound -- and very bland.

"I did a lot of research, and I collected what would really be necessary for the body to be healthy," he said. "And then tried to package it in a form that's as convenient and affordable as possible."

"Most people think that Soylent is a loaded name for your company and your product," said Pogue. "All I can hear is Charlton Heston from the 1973 movie going, 'Soylent Green is made out of people!'"

"Well, there are no human remains in the product!" Rhinehart said.

"Glad we cleared that up!"

He says they've shipped out three million meals this year.

When you order Soylent, you get a bag of powder, a little bottle of oil, a pitcher, and a user manual. Pour in the powder, add the oil, and fire up the blender - and, Rhinehart said, "You have cooked an entire day's worth of food. Three meals, two thousand calories."

Cheers! Well, as Pogue described it, "it's like drinking blended chemicals and lipids. It's a little gritty."

Now, if you think that powdered bugs and drinkable meals sound a little unappetizing, you'll be happy to hear that the future of food science isn't all quite so radical.

"For regular people, what to cook tonight is a problem," said Adam Rapoport, editor-in-chief of Bonb Appetit magazine. "Watson helps solve it."

At least one new food technology is designed to work with the ingredients we have now. It's the result of an unlikely collaboration between Bon Appetit magazine and IBM's Watson computer -- the computer that beat the humans and won a million dollars on "Jeopardy."

Florian Pinal, the lead engineer on Chef Watson, said Watson is not really a supercomputer any more. "It lives on the cloud."

The magazine's editors fed 9,000 Bon Appetit recipes into Chef Watson's little silicon head. Based on those proven combinations, Watson can now invent newrecipes all its own, based on starter ingredients that you specify.

But, Pogue said, "it's software. It is unable to taste anything. Wouldn't that be considered a drawback for a cook?"

"Well, it 's not able to taste anything, but it knows a lot of things about ingredients," said Pinal.

"Chef Watson presents suggestions, ideas, data that we as home cooks probably never think of," said Rapaport.

Soon, you'll be able to try Chef Watson yourself on the Web. But for now, only beta testers like Lauren Sandtorv can access it. Her kitchen may be small, but it's got enough room for a culinary supercomputer.

"I tend to use it as a way to say, 'Hey, this recipe can use a little extra oomph,'" Sandtorv told Pogue.

With pork and apples as her inspiration, Sandtorv asked Watson for some "computer enhancement." Chef Watson produced 100 different recipes that involved pork chops and apples.

Watson's idea? Using some fresh herbs, like sage and thyme, and parsnips. Fifteen minutes later, Pork Chop à la Watson was ready to serve.

"Mmmm," said Pogue. "It's complex, it's Thanksgiving-y. It's just a little bit digital!"




“Maybe we'll eat meat that's grown in a lab. Maybe we'll eat meat made from plants. And maybe we'll take a cue from Megan Miller, who makes things with flour made from ground-up bugs. Yes, Miller's company, Bitty, sells cookies made from cricket flour. She believes that the future of protein is bugs. 'People all over Asia, Latin America, Africa already eat insects as part of their everyday diet,' she said.... And to supply all those insects, there are now cricket farms. Crickets have almost as much protein as ground beef, but are much quicker to raise than cattle - they mature in just six weeks -- and they require much less land and water. As Pogue discovered, cricket-flour recipes taste exactly like regular-flour recipes, once you get past the idea that you're eating bugs.... Not all food futurists think bugs are the answer. Rob Rhinehart thinks we won't wind up eating anything -- we'll drink our nutrition. Rhinehart explained his creation, Soylent, 'an engineered staple food. It's something that is designed to deliver the maximum nutrition to your body with minimum effort and cost.' And what's in a glass of Soylent? 'Everything the body needs,' Rhinehart said.... He says they've shipped out three million meals this year. When you order Soylent, you get a bag of powder, a little bottle of oil, a pitcher, and a user manual. Pour in the powder, add the oil, and fire up the blender - and, Rhinehart said, 'You have cooked an entire day's worth of food. Three meals, two thousand calories.'... With pork and apples as her inspiration, Sandtorv asked Watson for some 'computer enhancement.' Chef Watson produced 100 different recipes that involved pork chops and apples. Watson's idea? Using some fresh herbs, like sage and thyme, and parsnips. Fifteen minutes later, Pork Chop à la Watson was ready to serve.”

Unless meat becomes very rare indeed, I don't think many Westerners will go after the crickets. When I was in college, however, my Literature of the Bible professor said that the manna the Israelites were provided when they were wandering in the wilderness was probably locusts, which are unfortunately know for hatching out by the millions all at the same time during a year with lots of rain and flying in huge clouds to the next source of vegetation. Such a large food supply would have indeed been miraculous. Locusts are a basic part of many people's diet in Third World countries to this day, and those who have tasted them often say they're kind of crunchy and really delicious. I would eat them if I were starving. They're in the same phylum as lobsters, crabs and crayfish and may well taste like them. A Chinese woman from Beijing once said to me that at her wedding, a large wing ding, one of the foods served was a great delicacy. She didn't know the English word for it, but she took a pen and drew an unmistakable picture of a scorpion!





Parents' brawl costs kids' football teams shot at championship – CBS
AP November 23, 2014, 8:55 PM

VANCLEAVE, Miss. - Two teams of five- and six-year-old football players had to sit out a Mississippi Gulf Coast championship because some players' fathers brawled during the teams' playoff game.

The Mississippi Gulf Coast Youth Football League held championships Saturday in Vancleave.

Two "mini division" teams from the city of St. Martin were banned after up to four men fought in the parking lot during the teams' playoff game Tuesday night, officials said.

Two of the men already had been banned from games and practices for a regular-season incident involving racial slurs, St. Martin Youth Football Association board member Jimmy Williams and coach Ezell Johnson Jr. told The Mississippi Press.

Both teams would have played Saturday: Ezell's team, which won Tuesday, in the championship, and the other in a consolation game, Williams said.

"At some point, you have to say enough is enough," he said. "You can't have 5-, 6-year-old kids seeing that kind of behavior. That's not the kind of league we want to be."

Parents were told any fights would disqualify the teams, parent Jeremy Harlan told WLOX-TV.

"I broke up a few fights this season from parents, and it's pretty sad," he said.

Williams said the Jackson County Sheriff's Department was called to the Vancleave field to stop Tuesday's fight, but it reignited after deputies left.





“Two 'mini division' teams from the city of St. Martin were banned after up to four men fought in the parking lot during the teams' playoff game Tuesday night, officials said. Two of the men already had been banned from games and practices for a regular-season incident involving racial slurs, St. Martin Youth Football Association board member Jimmy Williams and coach Ezell Johnson Jr. told The Mississippi Press.”

This is one of those shameful stories that I've seen before, though the last time it occurred it was over a junior league soccer match. One of the reasons that so many of our young people turn to violence as teens is that their parents give such a poor example for them. A child who has seen his father beat his mother, or who has been the recipient of such an assault himself, is much more likely to act out violently. Sports has taken on a status comparable to religion with some adults in this country. Those stories about football players having permanent and debilitating brain damage due to concussions is also a product of that extreme focus on sports. The mention of racial slurs during these four's altercation is not surprising. An excessive amount of competition is one of our national characteristics. That is very depressing to me. We need cooperation rather than an ongoing culture war.





NAACP president "concerned" about Ferguson grand jury decision – CBS
By REBECCA KAPLAN FACE THE NATION
November 23, 2014, 12:30 PM

NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said he was "concerned" about the forthcoming grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting case because the prosecutor failed to act upon previous complaints about the Ferguson, Missouri police department and didn't give the jurors sufficient instructions.

"We have a prosecutor who had five complaints filed with the Justice Department concerning his police department by the NAACP. He failed to take action. This was before Mike Brown. He then conducts a grand jury, a process where he essentially dumps evidence into the laps of the grand jury with little direction. So are we concerned? Yes," Brooks said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.

"But we're more concerned about the failure of the grand jury to be given the kind of direction, as it is typically the case, and we're concerned about a grieving family and an outraged community," the NAACP president added. " We want justice for them first and foremost."

Multiple sources told CBS News Saturday that an announcement from the grand jury is not expected before Monday. The 12-person panel is weighing whether to indict Darren Wilson, who is white, with fatally shooting Brown, a black teenager who was unarmed, on Aug. 9.

Brooks also had critical words for Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, saying it was "presumptuous" for Nixon to declare a state of emergency in Ferguson before the grand jury announced its decision.

"The governor's responded to this as though it were a security crisis, as opposed to a social justice crisis, and so, I believe that his actions with respect to the guard in the state of emergency are presumptuous as to the intent of the demonstrators who are really young practitioners of democracy, and presumptuous with respect to what may happen," Brooks said.

"We can go into this expecting non-violent civil disobedience. I believe that the government should respond systemically, in terms of what he's going to do, what he's going to call upon the state to do," he said.

But Brooks still expressed confidence that most of the response to the grand jury decision will be non-violent, and said the NAACP has urged members of the community to remain calm.

"But we need to be clear here," he added. "There's an asymmetry of responsibility. The police have the greatest responsibility to keep peace and order and to behave in a fashion that encourages non-violence, not to agitate the situation."

"Michael Brown's death is more than individual tragedy, it feels like a generational assault for many young people," Brooks continued. "And so, where we have the lowest crime rate in 20 years, we've yet have a generation of young people who perceive themselves in the midst of a pandemic of police misconduct in terms of racial profiling."




"'We have a prosecutor who had five complaints filed with the Justice Department concerning his police department by the NAACP. He failed to take action. This was before Mike Brown. He then conducts a grand jury, a process where he essentially dumps evidence into the laps of the grand jury with little direction. So are we concerned? Yes,' Brooks said in an interview on CBS' 'Face the Nation' Sunday. 'But we're more concerned about the failure of the grand jury to be given the kind of direction, as it is typically the case, and we're concerned about a grieving family and an outraged community,' the NAACP president added. ' We want justice for them first and foremost.' ….But Brooks still expressed confidence that most of the response to the grand jury decision will be non-violent, and said the NAACP has urged members of the community to remain calm. 'But we need to be clear here,' he added. 'There's an asymmetry of responsibility. The police have the greatest responsibility to keep peace and order and to behave in a fashion that encourages non-violence, not to agitate the situation.'”

We will see what happens. I do hope the demonstrators remain peaceful even if the police behave in a threatening way. To me, the secrets to Martin Luther King's success in the 1960s are, first, his non-violent stance and, second, his sheer persistence. The rioting and looting that has occurred several times in Ferguson doesn't work to their advantage, I don't think. The good news is that representatives from the Ferguson community have met with members of the city government to solve their mutual problems. They will hopefully do a lot more of that. I would like to hear more about that in the news. See this website about such a meeting after Ferguson. http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article3667645.html – In the wake of Ferguson, black teens and Kansas City police meet to discuss issues of trust, BY JOE ROBERTSON, THE KANSAS CITY STAR, 11/08/2014.





Lindsey Graham: House Benghazi report "full of crap"
By JAKE MILLER CBS NEWS November 23, 2014, 3:10 PM

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, doesn't think much of a new report from the House Intelligence Committee that exonerates the administration of any alleged wrongdoing in its response to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"I think the report is full of crap," Graham told CNN on Sunday.

The report, quietly issued on Friday afternoon, rebutted many of the most persistent accusations Republicans have lobbed at the administration's handling of the Benghazi attack, which claimed four American lives, including then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

Among other findings, the report concluded that the administration did not delay in dispatching a CIA rescue team to the attack site, that there was no missed opportunity to stage a military rescue, and that nobody in the government issued a "stand down" order to halt a planned rescue. The report did acknowledge, however, that the State Department facility in Benghazi was not adequately secured prior to the attack.

Perhaps most importantly, the report said administration officials did not intentionally mislead the American people about the nature of the attack, blaming any false descriptions offered on bad intelligence.

Graham said the record demonstrates otherwise, accusing former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell (now a CBS News contributor) of misleading Congress when he was asked who changed the talking points the administration was using to brief the public on the attack.

"He never told me or anybody else he had a hand in it, and he sat quietly in front of a Senate and House committee when asked directly, 'Do you know who changed the talking points?' He didn't come forward," Graham said of Morell. "We only know later that he was involved when we found information gathered through a lawsuit."

When CNN's Gloria Borger asked Graham why the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, would buy what the senator described as a "bunch of garbage," Graham replied, "Good question."

"The House Intelligence Committee is doing a lousy job policing their own," he said. "This report puts all the blame on the State Department and absolves the intelligence community. When the Department of Defense committees looked at it, the Department of Defense was held blameless. At the end of the day, everybody is pointing fingers to everybody else."

Graham said he would await the findings of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is continuing its own investigation of the incident.

Appearing after Graham on CNN, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Illinois, who serves on both the Benghazi select committee and the intelligence committee, described the report as "exhaustive," saying it "exonerated" the administration on most counts.

"I have great respect for Lindsey," Schiff said, "but it reminds me of a lawyer's maxim that, if the law is not on your side, emphasize the facts. If the facts aren't on your side, bang on the table. I think we heard Lindsey banging on the table quite a bit this morning."

Schiff said it was "fair to ask" whether better intelligence could have prompted the State Department to strengthen security at the facility, but he said there's no evidence of any intentional wrongdoing.

"I think we have had really the final word on many of these conspiracy theories, on the fact there was no stand-down order, there was no political interference, there was no effort to politically spin the talking points," he said.




“The report, quietly issued on Friday afternoon, rebutted many of the most persistent accusations Republicans have lobbed at the administration's handling of the Benghazi attack, which claimed four American lives, including then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Among other findings, the report concluded that the administration did not delay in dispatching a CIA rescue team to the attack site, that there was no missed opportunity to stage a military rescue, and that nobody in the government issued a 'stand down' order to halt a planned rescue. The report did acknowledge, however, that the State Department facility in Benghazi was not adequately secured prior to the attack.... Graham said he would await the findings of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is continuing its own investigation of the incident. Appearing after Graham on CNN, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Illinois, who serves on both the Benghazi select committee and the intelligence committee, described the report as 'exhaustive,' saying it 'exonerated' the administration on most counts. 'I have great respect for Lindsey,' Schiff said, 'but it reminds me of a lawyer's maxim that, if the law is not on your side, emphasize the facts. If the facts aren't on your side, bang on the table. I think we heard Lindsey banging on the table quite a bit this morning.'”

I love lawyer jokes, and this is one of the best ones I've ever heard. The Republicans are highly discomfited over this report, and the Democrats are pleased. You win some and you lose some, and this time we won, and it wasn't even an election. It was a Congressional report headed by the Republican chaired House Intelligence Committee that denied all the conservative Fox News stories about the Benghazi attack. The Republican propaganda machine has been challenged, and hopefully the matter will rest here.





Why UK Officials Believe Terrorism Threat in Britain Is Greater Than Ever Before
By Lama Hasan
Nov 23, 2014, 6:30 AM ET

In perhaps her most stark message yet, British Home Secretary Theresa May warned that Britain is facing its greatest terrorism threat in its history.

"When the security and intelligence agencies tell us that the threat we face is now more dangerous than at any time before or since 9/11, we should take notice," May said today during a news conference in which she was laying out plans on the government's new counter-terrorism and security bill set to be introduced this week.

The home secretary also addressed the serious threat from ISIS, also known as ISIL or the Islamic State, saying the "threat from ISIL has made no secret of their desire to bring death and destruction to the U.K., U.S. and other Western countries."

The new bill, introduced last week and touted as being tough, will be brought forward in order to try to stamp out home-grown extremism. It includes a set of new measures to prevent radicalization, making conditions difficult for extremists to operate, giving the government greater power to disrupt those wanting to travel abroad to countries such as Iraq and Syria to fight.

Since the attacks on July 7, 2005, about 40 terrorists plots against British targets have been disrupted by the police and intelligence services, May said.

"There have been attempts to conduct marauding Mumbai style 

gun attacks on our streets, blow up the London Stock Exchange, bring down airliners, assassinate a British ambassador and murder service members of our armed forces," she said. "Almost all of these attacks have been prevented by the first class men and women of our security and intelligence services, the police and our allies overseas."

The U.K.'s threat level was raised in August due to the threats from fighters returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. The threat level was raised from "substantial" to "severe," meaning an attack on home soil is highly likely.

The message from May today was clear: The country is engaged in a struggle that is being fought on many fronts and one that will go on for many years. She ended her speech on a sober note, saying, "The threat we face right now is perhaps greater than it ever has been -- we must have the powers we need to defend ourselves."




“The new bill, introduced last week and touted as being tough, will be brought forward in order to try to stamp out home-grown extremism. It includes a set of new measures to prevent radicalization, making conditions difficult for extremists to operate, giving the government greater power to disrupt those wanting to travel abroad to countries such as Iraq and Syria to fight.... She ended her speech on a sober note, saying, 'The threat we face right now is perhaps greater than it ever has been -- we must have the powers we need to defend ourselves.'”

British Home Secretary Theresa May announced a new bill to deter homegrown terrorists in the UK, and prevent would be fighters from going to Syria and Iraq. A news report last month stated that certain fundamentalist clerics have been stopped from delivering fiery exhortations encouraging young Muslims to commit violence. We have similar radical mosques in this country, and a number of young men have left the US and gone to join ISIS. The following article on Muslims in America is interesting. There are fewer here than most imagine.


http://www.idigitaltimes.com/muslim-population-us-new-poll-shows-none-us-have-any-idea-392930

Muslim Population in US: New Poll Shows None of Us Have Any Idea
By Andrew Whalen
Mon, 11/03/2014

About 1.6 billion of the world’s population are Muslim, collectively comprising the world’s second largest religion and 23 percent of the world’s population. Contrary to popular association, the vast majority of Muslims live in Asia and the Pacific Rim, rather than the Middle East. The Middle Eastern Islamic population is more comparable to Sub-Saharan Africa’s 248 million than Asia’s nearly one billion. But the distribution of Islam throughout the world is not the only perception radically distorted by our current foreign policy and political fixation on Muslim populations. It turns out that most of us don’t even know how many Muslims live in the US.

Muslim Population in the US – Misperceptions

A new poll conducted by Ipsos MORI, the second largest polling organization in the United Kingdom, tracks perceptions varying nationalities have about the demographics of their own country. The results reveal the incredible disparity between our perception of the Muslim population and the reality in the US. And while the poll can’t reveal the motivations behind the way Americans answered, drawing a connection between our demographic misperceptions and the current media and political fixation on radical Islam seems reasonable.

According to the new poll, US citizens guessed the Muslim population of the US to be about 15 percent when asked “Out of every 100 people, how many do you think are Muslim?” This would mean that the US has 47.4 million Muslims. The reality is quite different, with current research putting the percentage of Muslims in the United States at about .8 percent of the population, with an estimated 2.6 million Muslims in the US as of 2010. Even higher estimates find that there are between five and eight million Muslims in the entire country.

This incredible disparity between reality and perceptions regarding the Muslim population in the US is indicative of American fears regarding Islamic terrorism. It has been so consistently trumped up by our media and our politicians, so consistently been conflated with Muslims generally, that the US respondent imagines the Muslim “threat” to be immense. The view that a large portion of the US population is Muslim results in spectacles like state legislatures passing panicked laws against “creeping Sharia.”

The poll also found a corresponding belief that the Christian majority is far less dominant, with the average US respondent guessing that only 56 percent of the US population is Christian. In reality America is 78 percent Christian. This jives perfectly with the perception regarding Muslims: the “enemy” is bigger than reality, and the “good guys” are so much smaller.
While it seems unlikely to get much reporting from a press that’s done more than just about anyone to perpetuate the mass generalization of Muslims as Arabic radical jihadists, this is the kind of poll that Americans should see before worrying about immigrants taking over and destroying “traditional values.” The real numbers reveal a minority population in far more danger from their fellow citizens’ prejudice than a fifth column in US society.