Women in Combat Could Hurt Retention, Marine Study Suggests

Nearly one in four males in the U.S. Marine Corps said they would leave the service if women were involuntarily posted in combat positions, according to the executive summary of a little-known survey commissioned by Marine Corps leaders and obtained by the Free Beacon.

A similar number of Marines of both sexes said they would not have enlisted in the corps if this had been policy at the time.

Twenty-three percent of both male and female Marines “said that they would not have joined” if women were involuntarily placed onto the front lines of combat, such as in the infantry, according to a summary of the surveyprovided to the Free Beacon.

Retention rates also could be affected at a time when the Marines areshrinking the force to cope with budgetary constraints.

Twenty-two percent of males who were surveyed said they “likely would leave the corps at their next opportunity” if women were involuntarily placed into primary combat roles.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGn4o1Lb6L0

Dr. Peter Linnerooth spent nearly five years wearing an Army uniform, including the bloodiest 12 months in Iraq at the height of the surge. As a mental-health professional, his top mission was to keep troops from killing themselves. After he returned home, he spent another two years trying to save the vets he loved, working for the VA in California and Nevada.

Few who wore the uniform in the nation’s post-9/11 wars better understood the perverse alchemy that can change the rush and glory of combat into a darkening cloud of anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress. But strikingly, all that understanding — and the knowledge, education and firsthand experience that nurtured it — didn’t save Linnerooth.

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BURLINGTON, N.C. — Police in North Carolina say a deaf man was stabbed several times after his sign language was mistaken for gang signs by another man.

Burlington Police Sgt. Mark Yancey said 45-year-old Terrance Ervin Daniels was using sign language with another deaf man. He said a third person saw them, thought they were flashing gang signs and stabbed Daniels with a kitchen knife. A neighbor saw the victim and called emergency personnel.

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This is absolutely a MUST WATCH. Ben Shapiro takes on a very smug Piers Morgan and decimates him. He starts out by pointing out how Morgan bullies his interviewers by standing on the graves of the little children that died in Newtown which quickly draws Morgan’s ire. But it’s absolutely true. Even last night with Larry Pratt Morgan accused him of having no empathy for the children. Of course Morgan’s response to Shapiro is “how dare you!”

You have to watch the video, here.

You can fast forward through the lunacy to about the 35 second mark.

Wow, this is sad, these are real people.

Watch this video, and imagine the government taking your guns…

HERE

Vice President Joe Biden got a little frisky with the wife of Senator Angus King at today’s ceremonial swearing-in at the Capitol:

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Gun advocates are not the only ones speaking out about Piers Morgan. There’s now a counter-petition to keep the CNN host in the United States that reads, “No one in the UK wants him back.”

The counter-petition was started on the White House website on Tuesday, and had 126 signatures as of Wednesday morning. It cites three reasons that Morgan should stay in the country.

“Firstly, the first amendment,” it begins. “Second and the more important point. No one in the UK wants him back. Actually there is a third. It will be hilarious to see how loads of angry Americans react.”

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In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.

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The Bank of Japan (8301) expanded its asset-purchase program for the third time in four months, and will reconsider its objectives for inflation as incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urges more action to end price declines.

The central bank expanded its asset-purchase fund to 76 trillion yen ($906 billion) from 66 trillion yen, according to a statement released in Tokyo today. The bank kept its credit lending program unchanged at 25 trillion yen.

The expanded purchases failed to halt gains in the yen, which reversed three days of declines today as investors sought a haven amid concerns at a stalemate in U.S. budget talks. Abe, whose party swept to victory in this week’s election, will have a chance to reshape the BOJ early next year when the terms of Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and his two deputies expire. He’s pressing for a 2 percent inflation target, compared with an existing 1 percent goal.

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Net purchases of Japanese stocks by Overseas investors rose last week to the highest since last year’s record earthquake and tsunami, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Foreign investors were net buyers of Japanese stocks last week for the fifth consecutive week, purchasing a total of 462.9 billion yen ($5.5 billion) more shares than they sold on the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya bourses, the exchange said. That’s the most since the week ending March 18, 2011, when net purchases were 955.2 billion yen.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average (NKY) has gained 16 percent since Nov. 14 when the previous government said they would call elections. The Liberal Democratic was returned to power in a Dec. 16 poll on pledges to boost government spending and press the Bank of Japan for more monetary stimulus.

“Foreign investors are starting to expect more aggressive policies and economic stimulus measures in Japan,” said Jun Yunoki, an equity analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. “Foreign investors’ risk tolerence is increasing and that’s being directed with capital inflows to Japanese stocks.”

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Hong Kong will ban high-polluting vehicles and offer subsidies to replace diesel-powered buses and trucks, after 15 years of clean-air measures failed to limit smog responsible for more than 3,000 premature deaths a year.

The government will introduce its new “carrot and stick” approach next month, Christine Loh, undersecretary for environment, said in an interview. She said past incentives weren’t big enough, declining to provide the size of the planned subsidies.

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When we first collected much of this data, it was after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”

Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.

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Here we go again…

The euro rose against the dollar, extending a gain from last week, amid optimism Europe’s leaders meeting this week will signal support for Greece and outline fresh measures to combat the region’s debt crisis.

Europe’s shared currency rose toward a six-week high against the yen after Germany’s Spiegel magazine reported the European Central Bank’s governing council may decide at its next gathering to set yield limits on each country’s debt. The dollar fell from the most in more than a month against Japan’s currency and the Australian dollar climbed against all of its major counterparts tracked by Bloomberg amid stronger demand for higher-yielding assets.

“The market is concentrating on political news,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of currency strategy at Commerzbank AG inFrankfurt. “There’s a lot of negative news priced in about Greece and if the politicians sound constructive on that it may support the euro. There are also a lot of rumors about what the ECB might do.”

Europe’s shared currency advanced 0.1 percent to $1.2351 at 8:51 a.m. London time after climbing 0.4 percent last week. It added 0.1 percent to 98.19 yen after rising 2 percent in the five days ended Aug. 17. The dollar weakened 0.1 percent to 79.50 yen after earlier touching 79.66, the strongest since July 12. The Australian dollar rose 0.3 percent to $1.0455.

 

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Thus, IBEX futures are up 39.5 basis points. Enjoy the impending rally.

Spain is about to receive an emergency disbursement from the 100 billion-euro ($123 billion) bailout of its financial system because of restrictions the European Central Bank imposed on bank borrowing, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The ECB last month imposed limits on how much it will lend banks against government-guaranteed bonds. The rule change meant Spain had to ditch a plan for nationalized lender Bankia group to get a loan from the Frankfurt-based central bank, said the person, who asked not to be named because the matter is private.

Bankia group, formed in 2010 from the merger of Spain’s troubled savings banks, will now get the first portion of the country’s European Union cash imminently, the person said. The rescue program always included a 30 billion-euro tranche to be paid out first and “mobilized in any contingency,” according to the agreement document dated July 16.

Bankia SA (BKIA), the listed unit of Bankia group, advanced 11 cents to 1.31 euros as of 10 a.m. in Madrid, valuing the lender at 2.62 billion euros, Bloomberg data show.

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Courtesy of the good Dr.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wHYSzwwVDo&feature=player_embedded#!

here we go again “US Army Veteran.”

His music, Wade M. Page once said, was about “how the value of human life has been degraded by tyranny.”

ut on Sunday, Mr. Page, an Army veteran and a rock singer whose bands specialized in the lyrics of hate, coldly took the lives of six people and wounded three others when he opened fire with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., the police said. Officers then shot him to death.

To some who track the movements of white supremacist groups, the violence was not a total surprise. Mr. Page, 40, had long been among the hundreds of names on the radar of organizations monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of his ties to the white supremacist movement and his role as the leader of a white-power band called End Apathy. The authorities have said they are treating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.

In Oak Creek and in nearby Cudahy, Wis., south of Milwaukee, where Mr. Page lived in the days before the attack, the magnitude and the nature of what had happened were only beginning to sink in, grief competing with outrage. A company flew its flag at half-staff. A Christian minister offered his parishioners’ help to a Sikh gathering at the Salvation Army.

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Wait…what?

U.S. equity-index futures rose, while Spain’s two-year note yield increased. Standard CharteredPlc tumbled the most in four years after a U.S. regulator said the lender may face suspension of business activities.

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures added 0.3 percent at 9:45 a.m. in London. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose less than 0.1 percent, after advancing as much as 0.6 percent. Standard Chartered slumped 16 percent, the most since October 2008. The Spanish two-year yield jumped 24 basis points and the German 10- year yield increased three basis points. The euro strengthened 0.1 percent to $1.2417. Soybeans climbed 1.3 percent.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed a bond-buying plan announced last week by the European Central Bank, a spokesman said yesterday. Reports today will probably show factory orders in Germany dropped, while Italy’s economy contracted in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg surveys of economists.

“The risk of the euro being abandoned has been reduced quite substantially,” said Khiem Do, Hong Kong-based head of Asian multi-asset strategy at Baring Asset Management (Asia) Ltd., which oversees about $8 billion. “That’s allowed risk assets to be re-priced.”

Standard Chartered slid for a second day after a New Yorkregulator said it may stop the bank from doing business in the state because it handled transactions for Iranian institutions that are sanctioned by the U.S.

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