Students who attended Catholic high schools were approximately twice as likely as students who attended public high schools to go on and graduate from college, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
According to the report, 61.9 percent of Catholic high school students went on to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher by the time they were 8 years out of high school. By contrast, only 31.1 percent of public school students had gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Jeffrey doesn't mention one key reason why that is: Catholic schools get to be selective about the students they enroll, while public schools do not.
A pro-Catholic education website even admits this, citing as one reason for higher achievement rates that "smarter parents send their smarter students to Catholic schools, an effect called pre-selection."
Since Catholic schools are in large part selective, they can also remove students who do not perform well -- and those students usually end up in public schools.
WND's Kupelian Serves Up Hypocritical Drug Rant Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian has long had a hypocritially adversarial relationship with prescription drugs. For example, he has previously attacked antidepressants while citing the case of Andrea Yates, who killed her five children, as an argument against them while ignoring the fact that she and her husband were in thrall to a fundamentalist Christian preacher who likely contributed to her mindset.
Kupelian takes on painkiller abuse in a Feb. 9 WND column:
“Prescription drug abuse,” announced the CDC, “is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States.”
The skyrocketing rate of drug-overdose death rates “has been driven,” says the report, “by increased use of a class of prescription drugs called opioid analgesics” – drugs like hydrocodone (brand names Norco, Vicodin), hydromorphone (Dilaudid, Exalgo), oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet) and morphine (Astramorph, Avinza).
“Opioid analgesics suppress your perception of pain,” explains WebMD, “and calm your emotional response to pain by reducing the number of pain signals sent by the nervous system and the brain’s reaction to those pain signals.”
For the last decade, “more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined,” reports the CDC. In addition, “for every unintentional overdose death related to an opioid analgesic, nine persons are admitted for substance abuse treatment, 35 visit emergency departments, 161 report drug abuse or dependence, and 461 report nonmedical uses of opioid analgesics.” In other words, it’s an epidemic.
America’s traditional drug paradigm has long been something like this: On the one hand is the respectable, legal, medical world where enlightened doctors prescribe their patients wonder drugs that relieve their symptoms and make them feel more comfortable – OxyContin, anti-anxiety drugs (Valium, Xanax), sleeping pills, stimulants, mood stabilizers and, more recently, marijuana, hallucinogens and so forth.
On the other hand is the sleazy, criminal world of drug pushers who supply low-life users and addicts with drugs to satiate their habits, make them feel better and relieve their stresses, troubles and anxieties – drugs like OxyContin and other illegally obtained psych meds, marijuana, stimulants, cocaine, hallucinogens and so forth.
But WND has as a columnist Lee Hieb, a past president of the right-wing Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. We've documented how the AAPS defended a doctor who prescribed massive doses of painkillers like morphine and OxyContin to patients, some of whom abused and resold the pills. The DEA stated that the doctor's actions "caused at least one death, several nonfatal overdoses, and countless addicted patients."
The AAPS has a list of doctors who have prosecuted for overprescription of painkillers, stating that because of this prosecution, "tens of thousands have been deprived of life-saving treatment."
If Kupelian is really concerned about drug misuse, he should rethink his employer's relationship with Hieb and AAPS.
Bozell Turns Heathering Into A Political Movement Topic: Media Research Center
Apparently, Brent Bozell has decided that Heathering conservatives who aren't conservative enough has worked so well, he's turning it into a movement.
TPM reports on Bozell's latest project, launched while wearing the hat of his PAC, ForAmerica:
ForAmerica announced Tuesday that it's pouring six-figures into its "Dump The Leadership" campaign.
It probably won't come as a surprise that the man behind the group is none other than L. Brent Bozell III, the right-wing flamethrower who's proven himself plenty willing to take on the GOP establishment.
After Paul Ryan hashed out a bipartisan budget deal late last year, Bozell predicted that the conservative base would "stampede away from a party that has lost its principles and bearings.”
"Time and again, year after year, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate has come to grassroots conservatives, and Tea Party supporters pleading for our money, our volunteers, our time, our energy and our votes," Bozell told CNN in a statement.
Bozell said the group will use digital ads between now and November to target House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX).
Interestingly, ForAmerica shares the same offices as the MRC, which makes one wonder where, exactly, the line between the two organizations is.
Last Tuesday, fraudulently elected President Barack Hussein Obama treated the American people to yet another empty and frightening speech. Not even eligible to be standing on the podium addressing a joint session of Congress for the State of the Union Address – as Obama is not a natural born citizen, as required by the Constitution, sired in the United States by two citizen parents – the socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-white, anti-Israeli, Muslim-sympathizer-in-chief spewed forth a masterful performance, all the while ignoring the cancer that has metastasized in his administration – a cancer that threatens the continued existence of our severely wounded nation.
America, we’ve got to stop celebrating American communists, communist sympathizers and liberal fascist radicals like Pete Seeger, Hollywood, Broadway, Obama and the Democratic Socialist Party, and instead marginalize and punish them as the traitors they truly are.
The Democrats for deceptively and deliberately changing our laws and seeding the bureaucracy and the judiciary with like-minded deceivers who will remain to do their damage long after Barack Obama has gone on to become an even richer half-black, half-white man who still thinks people dislike him because of his skin color.
And flunk the Republicans, too, for allowing it to happen.
I will believe Barack Obama’s heart is in the right place when he vows that he is a follower of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and will take no actions and make no pronouncements that he cannot square with His Holy Word. I will believe Barack Obama’s heart is in the right place when he repents of all the evil he has wrought since assuming office five years ago. I will believe Barack Obama’s heart is in the right place when he turns from his wicked ways, scrupulously follows the law of the land and listens not only for the voice of God but for the voice of the people he is sworn to serve.
A few days ago, [Lars] Hedegaard wrote me with a new assignment:
“Would you write something about a disturbing phenomenon: the fact that Obama rules by decree and neglects the Constitution. How can this go on? Nixon was a complete amateur compared to this would-be Kim Jong-un. It looks like a coup d’etat. Nobody talks about it in Europe.”
[...]
But Obama’s systematic assaults on constitutional governance require more than defunding, and more than static. They require, first and most urgently, a full airing. Impeachment, which may begin with an impeachment inquiry, is the means the Constitution provided us. It offers the way “forward,” as the president might say, to re-establish that America is a nation of laws, not men.
Was Obama’s move against Dinesh D’Souza a kind of Rubicon, across which we must expect new and higher benchmarks of tyranny? However that may be, thanks to the quisling temperament of the GOP leadership, only a determined push from the grass roots will re-energize Congress’ constitutional power to thwart dictatorship. America needs a Congress willing and able to call Obama to account by way of the Constitution’s impeachment/removal provisions. Without that impetus, the political class will fall-in behind his bid to free the U.S. government’s power from all semblance of prior constraint (too many of them quite eagerly).
The political change needed to get this result must either overthrow the quisling leadership of the GOP, or else forge the basis for a national grass-roots voter mobilization poised to replace the now shiftless Republican Party. If things just go on as they are, liberty will fail for lack of a party of liberty willing to battle against the elitist faction’s budding tyrants.
While the left’s tactics were disgraceful, I was pleased that someone had finally caught the nation’s attention with the hard truth – that our president is an anti-Semitic, anti-Christian bigot who favors Muslim interests over our own. It needed to be said.
At The MRC, Telling the Truth Is 'White House Spin' Topic: Media Research Center
It is simply not accurate to say that a new Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obamacare will eliminate more than 2 million jobs -- to the contrary, the report said that the number of full-time-equivalent workers will decline by that amount because they will choose not to because of Obamacare subsidies. In other words, it's an issue of supply, not demand.
Yet the Media Research Center insists that accurately portraying what the CBO said is nothing more than "White House spin."
Matt Hadro complained that "the networks played to the White House spin that ObamaCare won't cut jobs since those expected to move from full-time to part-time work would do so voluntarily."
Kyle Drennen falsely declared that the CBO report stated that "ObamaCare will cost the American economy about 2.5 million jobs." Drennen then bashed NBC's Chuck Todd for noting how "Republicans immediately seized on" the Congressional Budget Office report on ObamaCare costing the economy over 2 million jobs "and spun it the way they want to spin it."
Drennen did ultimately condede the truth, but decided it wasn't important:
While it's true that the CBO report does not speak to current employees be fired over ObamaCare, it does conclude that 2.5 million people will give up working in order to receive governments subsidies instead. Not exactly the formula for growing a struggling economy.
Scott Whitlock got it wrong as well, claiming that the CBO said "ObamaCare will likely cost the U.S. 2.3 million jobs."
Matt Hadro asserted that "Liberal columnist Paul Krugman ludicrously blamed the press for 'malpractice' in reporting that ObamaCare would cut two million full-time jobs," insisting that "Krugman's cry of 'malpractice' is silly after the media either ignored the CBO or gave a White House-friendly spin."
But the right-wing media did get it wrong -- as did the MRC. But you won't see them doing a fact-check on it anytime soon.
Colin Flaherty's Race-Baiting Psychologist Checks In Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last month, we profiled Marlin Newburn, the retired psychologist who plays a key role in bolstering Colin Flaherty's race-baiting and "black mob" fearmongering at WorldNetDaily. He contributes again in a Feb. 8 WND article by Flaherty in which he obsesses over a black man convicted of killing a white college student who according to Flaherty "repeatedly referred to his victim as the 'little white boy.'":
“After at least two generations (now) of black people being immersed in resentment politics administered by their race-hustling idols, they have become the creatures they claim to despise,” said Newburn. “That’s the primary toxic by-product of harboring a resentment, and the young psychopath’s remorselessly labeling his victim a ‘little white boy’ demonstrates this predictable result.
“The MSM’s viewpoint is that black people need their ongoing protection due to ancestral suffering inflicted at the hands of non-black people. This is pre-adolescent, lazy, and enabling logic that perpetuates the misery, but the mainstream reporter apparently gets the wonderful feeling they’re helping an imaginary downtrodden race.
“Another result in sustaining and then nurturing resentments is that the carrier begins rationalizing like a common, habitual felon in that they speak and act on emotions instead of rational thought. This then carries over into nearly every other aspect of their daily lives since they’ve become conditioned to believe they’re not responsible for anything. Can’t read? It’s the school’s fault. No jobs? It’s not because they have no skills, discipline, or sense of responsibility. It’s because someone won’t just give them one.
“In short, criminals like Seandell believe themselves to be officially exempt from any failures or setbacks in their lives. Their handlers in the media and those with the title of ‘reverend’ told them so. The resentment and chronic failure continue due to these disastrous fantasies.”
Nice bit of armchair psychology there, Marlin. No wonder he's latched onto Flaherty.
Newsmax's Ruddy Hangs With Donald Trump Topic: Newsmax
The Newsmax-Donald Trump romance -- which started with Newsmax promoting Trump's presidential aspirations, followed by a failed attempt to host a Republican presidential debate -- is continuing apace.
Last Sunday, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy hung out at Trump's Super Bowl party in Palm Beach. Ruddy tweeted a photo of him and Trump that also went out on Newsmax's Twitter account:
That served as the basis for a Feb. 4 Newsmax article by Alexandra Ward that touted how "Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy joined billionaire Donald Trump at his Super Bowl Bash in Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday and heard first-hand from the real estate mogul what his key election plank would be if he chooses to run for governor of New York later this year."
So it seems Newsmax will continue to serve as Trump's public-relations agents for some time to come.
AIM Column Wants To Fix The News, But Not The Right-Wing Media Topic: Accuracy in Media
Daniel Greenfield's Feb. 2 Accuracy in Media column is called "Fixing the News," but you can't fix something properly if you misdiagnose the problem.
Greenfield starts off by getting his facts wrong in claiming that a New York Times investigation of the Benghazi attack published in December had been discredited: "It did not take very long for a Senate report and other media outlets to shoot down the story which had left out information about the Al Qaeda links of the attackers, but did include a dubious claim that the attackers had been angry about a YouTube video." In fact, the article has not been discredited, and the Times reporter stands by the article.
But never mind the facts, Greenfield is on a roll:
There are things about the news that actually do need to be fixed and political bias tops the list.
Even though David Kilpatrick’s story was discredited shortly after it was published, Kilpatrick and the New York Times suffered no personal or professional consequences for a story that supported the administration’s line on Benghazi. That is markedly different from what happened to Lara Logan and 60 Minutes for airing a Benghazi report that the administration did not approve of.
Both stories suffered from errors, but while 60 Minutes was deceived, the New York Times did the deceiving. And yet Lara Logan has been denounced for journalistic malpractice, while hardly anyone in the media has criticized Kilpatrick for attempting to sell blatantly refried nonsense that had long ago been discredited and that not even the administration was willing to stand behind.
Despite claiming that "political bias" in reporting needs to be fixes, there's only particular side he's concerned about:
Serious news however comes with so much political context that it’s easier to just rewrite Think Progress or Media Matters content than to do any original reporting on a national or international issue. There is safety in numbers because it’s harder to lynch a reporter whose only crime is reworking an AP story that is based on a Media Matters email that is based on a White House press release.
Greenfield provides no evidence that any of this has ever happened. (Disclosure: I work for Media Matters.) Further, he appears to not be aware that the right-wing media actually does what he accuses the "liberal media" of doing -- for example, CNSNews.com's enthusiasm for shilling for the oil and gas industry.
Greenfield continues his rant:
The news is broken because it follows the left’s usual model of insider highbrow content and outsider lowbrow content. That same model destroyed art, literature and theater. Now it’s wiping out the news media. The general public gets cat videos, pop stars and stories about a Republican who said something racist. The insiders get endless analyses that read like a case of college sophomore arrested development accompanied by politically correct spin on the latest trends.
"Insider highbrow content and outsider lowbrow content"? That sounds like the Daily Caller, where right-wing politics shares space with pictures of hot babes. Yet Greenfield, to our knowledge, has not raised any objections to that.
Greenfield tries to end on an overused right-wing slam:
The news media has become just another outlet in the culture war of the left. Its business model can’t be fixed because it isn’t in business to make money, but to indoctrinate. It doesn’t care about the financial bottom line, but about the political bottom line. Its future is boutique journalism funded by liberal billionaires looking to influence policy by subsidizing failed media outlets that would otherwise go on the block for a buck just like Newsweek.
Meanwhile, right-wing journalism is boutique journalism funded by conservative billionaires looking to influence policy by subsidizing failed media outlets that would otherwise go on the block for a buck just like the Washington Times.
WND Cheers Threat of Divine Punishment for Kerry Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily loves it when someone issues death threats in the name of Israel. Joe Kovacs happily writes in a Feb. 6 WND article:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is now being warned he’s risking the divine wrath of God if he continues plans for Israel that some feel is a war against the Almighty.
“By the power of our Holy Torah, we admonish you to cease immediately all efforts to achieve these disastrous agreements – in order to avoid severe Heavenly punishment for everyone involved,” a group of Israeli rabbis wrote Kerry in a letter on Sunday.
According to Israel National News, rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel are warning Kerry about his “antagonism” of the Jewish state, sharply criticizing him for plans “to establish an Arab capital in Jerusalem for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and to have Israel withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines.”
Over the weekend, Kerry threatened Israel with an international boycott if peace talks fail.
“Your incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’ terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe. For G-d awarded the entire Land of Israel to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in order that they bequeath it, as an everlasting inheritance, to their descendants, the Jewish people, until the end of all time,” the rabbis’ letter opens.
If Kovacs and WND didn't approve of this threat, they wouldn't have let the claim not only stand unchallenged but be bolstered by birther Carl Gallups, whose WND-published book dubiously claims that a similar curse led to the stroke and ultimate death of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Kovacs' lazy reporting falsely leaves the impression that these extremist rabbis hold a view that is mainstream. Nothing could be fartherfrom the truth: The Jerusalem Post describes the group of rabbis as "hard-line," and two leading American Orthodox Jewish groups criticized the rabbis for "degenerating into personal venom and threats."
But hey, support for murderous extremist rabbis is just another reason why nobody believes WND.
MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on "Cavuto" on the Fox Business channel on Monday night to discuss Bill O'Reilly's Super Bowl interview with President Obama.
Bozell said O'Reilly did a good job, but he wished he would have pushed back harder on the president's attacks on Fox News. "He’s speaking to his base. He’s speaking to his radical base – that’s what he’s got left – and he’s trying to mobilize them."
Bozell is basically admitting the MRC's modus operandi here. If Obama criticizing Fox's clear bias is "speaking to his radical base," so is Bozell's obsession with the "liberal media."
The fact that MRC must resort to dishonest "research" to prove the continued existence of its "liberal media" meme suggests it can't be backed up any other way. That means Bozell's posturing is solely to mobilize the right-wing base (and, of course, to raise money so the MRC can perpetuate the fraud).
Of course, as with Bozell's fauxoutrage about others who engage in "character assassination," the guy who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" will never, ever admit that the rules he demands others live by should also apply to himself and his employees.
WND's Unruh Ignores Evolution Side of Evolution-Creation Debate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh, being the loyal right-wing Christian he is, devotes a Feb. 6 WorldNetDaily article on this week's debate between evolutionist Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham solely to touting Ham's reaction to it.
Unruh couldn't be bothered to contact Nye for his response to the debate. But then, Unruh hasanaversion to telling the side of the story that interferes with his agenda. Unruh quotes Nye only once in his article, giving an answer that he thinks makes creationists look good.
Because of Unruh's aversion, you also won't learn that a reader poll on a British Christian website found that 92 percent of respondents said Nye won. That doesn't fit with Unruh's agenda.
Ex-Senator Rents Mailing List to Newsmax, Gets Email From Dubious Doctor In Return Topic: Newsmax
Former senator and Fox News contributor Scott Brown rented his mailing list to Newsmax to make a little money. What Scott and his email recipients got in return was not quite what he expected.
Media Matters reports Newsmax sent out on Scott's list a mailing from Dr. Russell Blaylock -- who, as we've documented, has made numerous questionable medical claims, like fearmongering over vaccinesand linking aspartame and MSG to diseases nobody else can seem to find a link to. Brown's subscribers also received a dubious financial pitch from a Newsmax-affiliated publication.
After being alerted to the questionable Newsmax emails, New Hampshire's WMUR reported that Scott said he is "terminating my relationship with this vendor effective immediately." Brown said with regard to the Blaylock email that he "did not approve or authorize the sending of this particular email."
In addition to renting others' email lists, Newsmax manages the mailing lists of other conservative figures and groups, including Dick Morris, Herman Cain, Rasmussen Reports and National Review.
The Return of Scarf-Gate, WND Edition Topic: NewsBusters
Some years ago, NewsBusters tried to invent a controversy by claiming that NBC's Matt Lauer was wearing a "Palestinian support scarf." Surprisingly, the guy who penned that, Mark Finkelstein, still writes for NewsBusters despite the utterly absurd premise.
Now, WorldNetDaily wants in on some of that sweet terror-scarf action. From a Jan. 29 WND article:
The report Tuesday of a photo showing Barack Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama, wearing a Hamas scarf that declares the Palestinian organization’s aim of destroying Israel tells only part of the story of Malik’s role in the violent advance of Islam.
The photo, posted at the website of Malik Obama’s nonprofit Barack H. Obama Foundation, shows Obama’s half-brother – the best man in the president’s wedding – wearing the scarf at a 2010 conference in Sanaa, Yemen.
The text of the scarf, reports Arabic-language researcher Walid Shoebat, features the Palestinian slogan “Jerusalem is ours – We are coming” and a map with the phrase “From the river to the sea,” a reference to the elimination of Israel, which lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Well, there's your problem right there. Shoebat is an Obama-hater who can't quite prove he's the former Palestinian terrorist he claims to be and whose funding is murky.We last saw Shoebat promoting a claim that Muslims were buying the blood of beheaded Christians -- a claim WND's Jerome Corsi took seriously but almost nobody else did.
Since Shoebat, like WND, puts its anti-Obama agenda ahead of actual facts, there's no reason to trust anything being reported here. After all, nobody believes WND.
Michael Chapman writes in a Jan. 30 CNSNews.com article:
The state's attorney report on the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School by shooter Adam Lanza found no "conclusive motive" for his actions but did document unsettling facts about the 20-year-old killer, including computer files he kept on the rights of pedophiles, a movie about man/boy love, instant messages concerning "homosexual fantasies," numerous mass murder documents, and a computer game entitled "School Shooting."
This is the second article Chapman has written in the past week that address the issue of child pornography. By contrast, Chapman and CNS have yet to devote any original coverage to the case of Ryan Loskarn, the chief of staff to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who was charged in December with possession of child pornography. Loskarn later committed suicide.
Perhaps Chapman should explain to his readers why child pornography accusations against a conservative aren't as newsworthy as when they are brought against, say, a gay man or the perpetrator of a massacre.