Archive for August, 2009
Mysterious Origins: 8 Phenomena That Defy Explanation [Slide Show]
Mysterious Origins: 8 Phenomena That Defy Explanation [Slide Show] – : Scientific American
The unknown origins behind language, handedness, flu seasons, superconductivity, antimatter, proton spin, cosmic rays and sex
Our September 2009 special issue on origins contains articles on 57 innovations and insights that shape our world today. They include some big ones, like the origin of life, the universe and the mind; sobering stories, like mad cow disease and HIV; and whimsical tales, like paper clips and cupcakes. This past week, we’ve posted a dozen additional online-only origins: the open-plan office space, fruit ripening, malaria, the computer mouse, atmospheric oxygen, hatred, wine, dogs, rubber boots, zero and, of course, Scientific American . Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical astrophysicist and popularizer perhaps best known for his book, The Physics of Star Trek, describes his origins symposium held this past spring at Arizona State University. Our origins landing page contains links to some that appear in the magazine.
To end our weeklong look at beginnings, we present eight phenomena whose origins are unknown or lack a definitive narrative of their start. The list is by no means complete, and Scientific American readers are sure to have their own favorite mysteries. Share them with us in Comments
via Mysterious Origins: 8 Phenomena That Defy Explanation [Slide Show]: Scientific American.
Disappearing Bees Have Devastated Ribosomes:
Disappearing Bees Have Devastated Ribosomes - Scientific American
A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by May Berenbaum and colleagues finds that bee colony collapse disorder seems to be related to bees’ ribosomes breaking down, which keeps them from making the proteins they need to deal with stress and disease. Steve Mirsky reports
A big clue about what’s behind the disappearing honeybees, also known as colony collapse disorder, or CCD: May Berenbaum’s team at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign found that bees’ ribosomes were torn up.
“The ribosomes make the proteins that allow bees to respond to pesticides, to respond to diseases, to respond to poor nutrition. So the ribosomal fragments that we were finding explain a lot of things, explains among other things the observation that CCD seems to be caused by everything. And in fact it very well might be that once the ribosomes cease functioning properly, then anything can cause bees to go under.”
A possible cause is multiple viral infections. “So the bee apparently has the capacity to deal with one or two of these, but multiple viral infections, basically the whole system breaks down.” The finding, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doesn’t pinpoint a cause or cure for CCD. But “we now have an explanation for what went wrong.”
via Disappearing Bees Have Devastated Ribosomes: Scientific American Podcast.
A Real Fish Story
A Real Fish Story – - NYTimes.com
Here is an unusual fish story. And a positive one.
On Thursday, Gary Locke, the secretary of commerce, approved a plan that would prohibit commercial fishing in a huge swath of American waters in the Arctic that have never been actively fished and that nobody is much interested in fishing now.
That sounds odd, but it’s a smart move based on the assumption that the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change will someday make the area more accessible and commercially more attractive.
This was also the first time the United States shut down a fishery because of climate change rather than overfishing. Mr. Locke’s objective is to buy time to get a fix on the area’s resources and develop a sustainable fishing plan that would assure lasting protection for a fragile and poorly understood ecosystem.
via Editorial – A Real Fish Story – NYTimes.com.
Tamiflu: Swine flu drug increases stroke risk
Tamiflu: Swine flu drug increases stroke risk
While Tamiflu is one of the most effective drugs in treating swine flu infection, a new report warns that the drug may increase the risk of stroke.
Previously, researchers had urged parents to avoid using the drug in their offspring as its risks outweighed the benefits. Nausea and nightmares were among the most frequent side effects reported in children.
According to the report recently released by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Tamiflu may interact with the blood-thinning medication warfarin, placing the individual at an increased risk of uncontrolled bleeding (INR rate).
A significant increase in the INR rate could consequently lead to the development of a hemorrhagic stroke.
Despite the fact that such a complication was never reported in performed clinical testing, the MHRA has received 418 reports of suspected adverse reactions including two deaths because of Tamiflu.
Some 12 of these reactions were related to warfarin interactions.
Warfarin is known to interact with a wide range of drugs and even some foods and drinks. Many of the consumers, therefore, are hospitalized due to increased INR rates while many others die.
via Tamiflu: Swine flu drug increases stroke risk.
The “Populist Revolt” against the Obama Administration’s Health Care Proposals
The “Populist Revolt” against the Obama Administration’s Health Care Proposals
by Richard C. Cook
Is anyone more than a little curious about where the so-called “populist revolt” against the Obama administration’s health care proposals is coming from and who is paying for it? You know, the revolt where people scream and disrupt town hall meetings, brandish guns outside in the street, and label a public option that would help some of the 47 million without health insurance get treatment as “socialist”?
My question is where were these brave patriots hiding when the Bush administration launched massive undeclared wars against Iraq and Afghanistan ? Where were they when the military/CIA torture and rendition scandals erupted? Where were they when the Bush and later the Obama administrations gave away several trillion dollars in government bailouts, guarantees, and commitments to the financiers who engineered the biggest heist of the people’s money in history?
The health care revolt stinks of hypocrisy, manipulation, and behind-the-scenes collusion between right-wing political groups and their financial backers. I haven’t yet figured out the paper trail, but I bet the financial sources are the same as, or very close to, the financial oligarchs who just finished ripping off our republic on such an unprecedented scale.
I think that many, if not most, of these protesters are cowards who only step forth when someone big, important, and powerful is signaling it’s okay and paying for it.
In fact I think the health care revolt is a staged distraction to divert attention away from the fact that the recession isn’t really ending, that jobs continue to disappear even as the stock market firms up, that worker purchasing power continues to drop, and that the plight of the poor, elderly, disenfranchised, and out of work gets worse every day.
Wanna bet?
Richard C. Cook is author of We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. His website is at http://www.richardccook.com. He will be speaking at the annual conference of the American Monetary Institute in Chicago September 24-27, 2009. Register for the conference at http://www.monetary.org/2009conference.html.
via The “Populist Revolt” against the Obama Administration’s Health Care Proposals.
Global War and Dying Democracy: The Revolution of the Elites
Global War and Dying Democracy: The Revolution of the Elites
Global Power and Global Government: Part 5
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
This article is the 5th and final part in the series, “Global Power and Global Government,” published by Global Research.
Part 1: Global Power and Global Government: Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System
Part 2: Origins of the American Empire: Revolution, World Wars and World Order
Part 3: Controlling the Global Economy: Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve
Part 4: Forging a “New World Order” Under a One World Government
Transnational Totalitarianism
Global trends in political economy suggest that “democracy” as we know it, is a fading concept, where even Western industrialized nations are retreating from the system. Arguably, through party politics and financial-corporate interests, democracy is something of a façade as it is. However, we are entering into an era in which even the institutions and image of democracy are in retreat, and the slide into totalitarianism seems inevitable.
The National Intelligence Council report, Global Trends 2025, stated that many governments will be “expanding domestic security forces, surveillance capabilities, and the employment of special operations-type forces.” Counterterrorism measures will increasingly “involve urban operations as a result of greater urbanization,” and governments “may increasingly erect barricades and fences around their territories to inhibit access. Gated communities will continue to spring up within many societies as elites seek to insulate themselves from domestic threats.”[1] Essentially, expect a continued move towards and internationalization of domestic police state measures to control populations.
The nature of totalitarianism is such that it is, “by nature (or rather by definition), a global project that cannot be fully accomplished in just one community or one country. Being fuelled by the need to suppress any alternative orders and ideas, it has no natural limits and is bound to aim at totally dominating everything and everyone.” David Lyon explained in Theorizing Surveillance, that, “The ultimate feature of the totalitarian domination is the absence of exit, which can be achieved temporarily by closing borders, but permanently only by a truly global reach that would render the very notion of exit meaningless. This in itself justifies questions about the totalitarian potential of globalization.” The author raises the important question, “Is abolition of borders intrinsically (morally) good, because they symbolize barriers that needlessly separate and exclude people, or are they potential lines of resistance, refuge and difference that may save us from the totalitarian abyss?” Further, “if globalization undermines the tested, state-based models of democracy, the world may be vulnerable to a global totalitarian etatization.”[2]
via Global War and Dying Democracy: The Revolution of the Elites.
The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency
The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency
by Michel Chossudovsky
“Over the course of the next few months, with the assistance of our partners in the private and public sector and at every level of government, we will move aggressively to prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of the H1N1 virus. We will do all we can to plan for different scenarios. We ask the American people to become actively engaged with their own preparation and prevention. It’s a responsibility we all share.” (US Government advisory, flu.gov: Vaccines, Vaccine Allocation and Vaccine Research )
A Worldwide public health emergency is unfolding on an unprecedented scale. 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine are envisaged by the World Health Organization (WHO).
A report by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology “considers the H1N1 pandemic ‘a serious health threat; to the U.S. — not as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic but worse than the swine flu outbreak of 1976.”:
“It’s not that the new H1N1 pandemic strain is more deadly than previous flu threats, but that it is likely to infect more people than usual because so few people have immunity” (Get swine flu vaccine ready: U.S. advisers)
Responding to the guidelines set by the WHO, preparations for the inoculation of millions of people are ongoing, in the Americas, the European Union, in South East Asia and around the World. Priority has been given to health workers, pregnant women and children. In some countries, the H1N1 vaccination will be compulsory.
In the US, the state governments are responsible for these preparations, in coordination with federal agencies. In the State of Massachusetts, legislation has been introduced which envisages hefty fines and prison sentences for those who refuse to be vaccinated. (See VIDEO; Compulsory Vaccination in America?)
The US military is slated to assume an active role collaborate in the public health emergency
via The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency.
The Corporate Person Without a Country: AIG Spits in America’s Eye, Again
The Corporate Person Without a Country: AIG Spits in America’s Eye, Again – by Brian Donohue – | CommonDreams.org
corporations and their executives, … have been made unimaginably wealthy
Robert Benmosche is a veteran of the corporate wars and the insurance industry’s greed-fest. The former MetLife exec is now the new CEO of the beleaguered AIG, and recently he held an employee town hall to introduce himself to the troops.
I’ve been through a number of such affairs, and one thing about them is certain: they are carefully scripted and rehearsed events. “Questions” from employees are carefully screened and filtered for their fit with the scripted Message. Corporations know damned well that some reporter from Bloomberg or Marketwatch will inevitably obtain login credentials (usually, via an inside connection with an employee, to a WebEx or similar platform) and listen in. Therefore, they go in knowing that they are delivering a very public message.
So last week, Robert Benmosche decided to take an aggressive, blame-the-US-government rant to his employees, that, in classic Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, shifted blame from AIG to America. “It’s not your fault, it’s theirs,” he told the AIG faithful, and on the topic of the company’s debt to the nation, he added, “if they want out so badly, they should never have come in in the first place.”
via The Corporate Person Without a Country: AIG Spits in America’s Eye, Again | CommonDreams.org.
Health Care Reform: A Time for Real Action
Health Care Reform: A Time for Real Action
By JOHN W. DEAN
President Barack Obama has called on his army of volunteers, those who were responsible for sending him to the White House, to go to work on health care reform. It is not a moment too soon.
Republicans have succeeded beyond their wildest dream in derailing President Obama’s mandated election issue of 2008. I know this because I have talked with many of them. They are ecstatic, and they understand well that if they beat Obama on his signature issue, they have seriously damaged him politically and hurt his presidency. Today, Americans clearly disapprove – according to Gallup, by some six points – of Obama’s handling of the issue that he used to win his near-landslide election victory.
Of course, the true losers will be the American people, if Republicans succeed in defeating health care reform using tactics more suited for war against a true enemy of the nation, than for opposition to a program that seeks to make Americans more secure and to better their lives.
via Health Care Reform: A Time for Real Action.
Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze
Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze – - The Boston Globe 
WE DON’T MISS the water when the cash runs dry. Bottled water, that is. That refreshing news came recently as Nestle reported nearly a 5 percent drop in bottled water sales in North America and Western Europe. That company bottles water under the familiar names of Poland Spring, Perrier, S. Pellegrino, and Deer Park.
Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani reported declining or weakening bottled-water sales as well. The president of Pepsi’s North American bottling group, Rob King, said in a July conference call, “In just a tough economic environment, one of the first things that a shopper can do is consume tap water as opposed to purchasing bottled water.’’
The sad part is that ending the bottled-water fad took a recession, when common sense should have kicked in long ago.
via Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze – The Boston Globe.
Court Orders Federal Reserve to Disclose Emergency Loan Details
Court Orders Federal Reserve to Disclose Emergency Loan Details - - Bloomberg.com
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve must for the first time identify the companies in its emergency lending programs after losing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled against the central bank yesterday, rejecting the argument that loan records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions.
The Fed has refused to name the financial firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, most put in place during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued on Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.
“The Federal Reserve has to be accountable for the decisions that it makes,” said Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, after Preska’s ruling. “It’s one thing to say that the Federal Reserve is an independent institution. It’s another thing to say that it can keep us all in the dark.”
via Court Orders Federal Reserve to Disclose Emergency Loan Details – Bloomberg.com.
Leonardo da Vinci, Good Vibes, Unlimited Power, & Who Needs Big Oil?
Leonardo da Vinci, Good Vibes, Unlimited Power, & Who Needs Big Oil? – | Antemedius
The executive summary of the final report published on June 30, 2006 by the U.S. Department of Energy of a study headed by Project Director & Principal Investigator Michael M. Bernitsas, PhD, titled Low Head, Vortex Induced Vibrations River Energy Converter (.pdf) states that:
Vortex Induced Vibrations Aquatic Clean Energy (VIVACE) is a novel, demonstrated approach to extracting energy from water currents. This invention is based on a phenomenon called Vortex Induced Vibrations (VIV), which was first observed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1504AD. He called it ‘Aeolian Tones.’
For decades, engineers have attempted to prevent this type of vibration from damaging structures, such as offshore platforms, nuclear fuel rods, cables, buildings, and bridges. The underlying concept of the VIVACE Converter is the following: Strengthen rather than spoil vortex shedding; enhance rather than suppress VIV; harness rather than mitigate VIV energy. By maximizing and utilizing this unique phenomenon, VIVACE takes this “problem” and successfully transforms it into a valuable resource for mankind.
Dr. Bernitsas is also Chief Technology Officer/Interim Chief Executive Officer of Vortex Hydro Energy LLC (VHE), a Michigan based company.
via Leonardo da Vinci, Good Vibes, Unlimited Power, & Who Needs Big Oil? | Antemedius.
The Ultimate Burden
The Ultimate Burden - - NYTimes.com
BOB HERBERT
If you want to get a little bit of a sense of what the wars are like in Afghanistan and Iraq — a small, distant sense of the on-the-ground horror — pick up a book of color photos called, “2nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die.” It’s chilling.
Most Americans have conveniently put these two absurd, obscene conflicts out of their minds. There’s an economy to worry about and snappy little messages to tweet. Nobody wants to think about young people getting their faces or their limbs blown off. Or the parents, loaded with antidepressants, giving their children and spouses a final hug before heading off in a haze of anxiety to their third or fourth tour in the war zones.
The book is the work of the photographer Peter van Agtmael, who has spent a great deal of time following American combat troops in both countries. One of the photos in the book shows an Army captain standing exhausted and seemingly forlorn on the blood-slicked floor of a combat support hospital in Baghdad. Mr. van Agtmael was sensitive to the heavy psychological load borne by the medical personnel, writing in the caption:
“Their humor was dark and their expressions often flat and distant when they treated patients. The worst casualties were given nicknames. One soldier melted by the fire caused by an I.E.D. blast was called ‘goo man.’ But certain casualties would hit home, especially injured children. Some staff resorted to painkillers and other drugs.”
via Op-Ed Columnist – The Ultimate Burden – NYTimes.com.
Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR
Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR – Arianna Huffington:
Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo’s Nest menagerie.
But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It’s time to take a cold, hard look at how the president’s leadership — or, more accurately, his lack of leadership — on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.
Recent polls show that while Obama’s personal approval rating remains high (57 percent), only 49 percent of the public has confidence that he will make the right decisions — down 11 percent from April. This means that Americans still like him, but have less faith in his leadership.
via Arianna Huffington: Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR.
What the Hell Is a Jobless “Recovery?”
What the Hell Is a Jobless “Recovery?” – Daniel Denvir:
The economic recovery has begun! And while Chairman Bernanke is apparently miffed that he doesn’t get more credit for the spectacular turnaround, all it really represents is a widening gap between the official assessment of economic well-being (Obama just tapped the guy for a second term) and how the rest of us are actually feeling.
When I first heard the phrase “jobless recovery,” it confirmed my worst suspicions about the long-term results of a government policy that was too much bank bailout and too little public spending stimulus. But I was also struck by the absurdity of the very term — indeed, a contradiction thereof. Just what the hell do we mean by “recovery” if it doesn’t create jobs?
Financial journalists breathlessly use the phrase without realizing that it explodes the myth that “what’s good for the market is necessarily good for the rest of us” — perhaps even more so than the crash itself. Paul Krugman wittily calls this a “postmodern recovery“, although I’m not sure he grasps the full irony of the phenomenon.
via Daniel Denvir: What the Hell Is a Jobless “Recovery?”.
Finally, an apology from the National Geographic Channel
Finally, an apology from the National Geographic Channel - | 911Blogger.com
Six days after September 11th, National Geographic Today (NGT) published one of the very first descriptions of the official myth for what happened to the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.[1] This article exaggerated the little known facts about the fires in the towers, equated gas temperatures with steel temperatures, and detailed the long-surviving but incorrect Pancake Theory of “collapse.” Since that time, millions of people have been killed or injured in the 9/11 Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that originated from the official myth about 9/11.[2,3] Fortunately, this week it was announced that the NGT’s parent, the National Geographic Channel (NG Channel), is scheduled to broadcast a new television special covering the science behind the events of 9/11. We can only assume that this new show is meant to correct the record and apologize for the company’s false statements that contributed to the ongoing wars.
Some of the false statements made in that NGT article had to do with an early version of the Pancake Theory for destruction of the buildings. One claim was : “As the steel columns at the core of the Twin Towers collapsed, the floors they supported fell on each other like two stacks of pancakes.” Another statement was more authoritative, saying: “Once the structural support of the upper floors is removed, a few falling floors can bring down an entire building.” The Pancake Theory did not make sense to many people but was tested by my former employer, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), in August 2004. The tests showed that the floors in the WTC buildings could not have pancaked, even when exposed to higher temperatures for longer periods of time than was actually the case. Two years later, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally made clear that its “findings do not support the ‘pancake theory’ of collapse.”[4]
To date, there have been no apologies from any of the media sources that, oftentimes arrogantly, promoted the Pancake Theory as a means to prevent further questioning of the WTC events. But we all know that “National Geographic” is different, right? Actually, some people are unaware that the NG Channel is majority controlled (67%) by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.[5] The National Geographic Society, publisher of the well-known magazine, was a minority partner in creation of the NG Channel, but does not have editorial control over what is produced there. Instead, the News Corporation controls the programming much like it controls Fox News.
via Finally, an apology from the National Geographic Channel | 911Blogger.com.
GOP Rep. Herger Praises Self-Identified Right-Wing Terrorist As a ‘Great American’
GOP Rep. Herger Praises Self-Identified Right-Wing Terrorist As a ‘Great American’ – Jon Ponder | pensitoreview.com
Was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh a “great American?” How about Eric Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph? 
In light of his statements during a town hall on Aug. 18, it would be good to hear whether Rep. Wally Herger, a Republican representing a rural district near the California-Oregon border, agrees that these killers are “great Americans.”
At the town hall, Herger — a Mormon and former oil executive who has served in Congress since 1987 — first stoked hatred for the U.S. government by right-wingers in the crowd of 2,000 by spuriously claiming that health-insurance reform is dangerous:
“Our democracy has never been threatened as much as it is today,” Herger said to a loud standing ovation.
via Pensito Review » GOP Rep. Herger Praises Self-Identified Right-Wing Terrorist As a ‘Great American’.
Thriving on myths: Television news and the corruption of the American mind
Thriving on myths: Television news and the corruption of the American mind – | BuzzFlash.org
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Thriving on myths: Television news and the corruption of the American mind. Pseudoconservative pols know they can always get abundant airtime from the networks (most Americans’ principal source of information) by leveling the most irrational, disprovable claims: from Cadillac welfare queens to budget-balancing-through-budget-destruction to the unavoidability of unprovoked wars to death panels. Just fling something out there, boys, and the network newsies will come running, airing that something with unfiltered abandon.
Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s big-media guy and thus, many think, conflicted host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” was in a terrible funk yesterday.
It’s these “death panels,” you see, which his colleagues in mainstream journalism have tried mightily to debunk — “telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you’ve got to quit making things up,” as Kurtz characterized the showdown — “but it didn’t matter. The story refused to die.” The sorry result: Last week, nearly half of all respondents in an NBC News poll believed in the very real possibility of euthanizing Star Chambers with Aunt Bessie in their sights.
Here’s a short passage that maybe helps to explain why: “Even when [news organizations] report the facts,” wrote Kurtz, “they have had trouble influencing public opinion.”
Did you catch that? Even when they report the facts, as though reporting the facts has become some sort of noble, experimental enterprise within the otherwise (ab)normal course of mainstream journalism, for which Kurtz expected, I guess, awe-inspired applause and instant civic snap-to-it-ness.
via Thriving on myths: Television news and the corruption of the American mind | BuzzFlash.org.
Can Your Cat Make You Crazy?
Can Your Cat Make You Crazy? - – ABC News
One Researcher is Looking for a Connection Between Cats and Schizophrenia
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., has been studying whether a parasite found in cat droppings called Toxoplasma gondii can trigger an onset of schizophrenia later in life.
“Most people have not thought of schizophrenia as being caused by a virus or bacteria or a parasite,” Torrey said. “This is a relatively new idea.”
It’s long been established that the parasites found in cat droppings are a health risk to pregnant women and young children, but whether the cat can be directly linked to schizophrenia remains to be seen.
Torrey’s study found a 53 percent increase in risk for schizophrenia if you owned a cat during childhood, but he also found a 51 percent increase in risk if you were breastfed. Statisticians believe the increase in risk has to be above 200 percent for there to be an actual association between something like owning a cat and schizophrenia.
“We haven’t proven anything,” Torrey said. “Infectious agents, virus, etcetera really need to be looked at very carefully in these cases.”
In the meantime, Torrey is still cautious of cats.
“Personally I would not buy a kitten for a small child,” he said. “I don’t think we know enough to be able to say there’s no risk.”
via Can Your Cat Make You Crazy? – ABC News.
New York Fed Names AFL-CIO Leader as Chairman of the Board
Denis Hughes Named Chairman of New York Fed’s Board of Directors - washingtonpost.com
Denis M. Hughes, a New York labor leader, was named Monday to chair the Federal Reserve Bank of New York‘s board of directors.
Instead of a résumé filled with corporate or financial experience, as has been typical of his predecessors, Hughes is president of the New York State AFL-CIO. He succeeds Stephen Friedman, who resigned from the job in May after drawing criticism for his simultaneous service as a director of Goldman Sachs and for buying stock in the company even after it became regulated by the New York Fed.
The board of directors of the regional Federal Reserve banks serves mainly an advisory role, sharing with bank presidents its views of economic conditions and business trends. The directors have no role in setting monetary policy or determining how banks are regulated, though they select the president of the bank, who does have those powers, subject to approval by the Fed board of governors in Washington.
via Denis Hughes Named Chairman of New York Fed’s Board of Directors – washingtonpost.com.
New Clues in the Mass Death of Bees
New Clues in the Mass Death of Bees
In late 2006, something strange began to happen to America’s honeybees. Colonies that were once thriving suddenly went still, almost overnight. The worker bees that make hives run simply disappeared, their bodies never to be found. Over the past couple of years, nearly one-third of all honeybee colonies have collapsed this way, which led to a straightforward name for the phenomenon: colony collapse disorder (CCD).
This might seem like little more than a tantalizing mystery for entomologists, except for one fact: honeybees provide $15 billion worth of value to U.S. farmers, pollinating crops that range from apples to avocados to almonds. Any number of possible causes for CCD have been put forward, from bee viruses to parasites to environmental triggers like pesticides or even cell-phone transmissions. Despite the Department of Agriculture‘s allotment of $20 million a year for the next five years to study CCD, it’s still a mystery – and the bees keep dying. (Read “Why We Should Care About Dying Bees.”)
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that the causes of CCD may be more varied than scientists expect. The bees may be dying not from a single toxin or disease but rather from an assault directed by a collection of pathogens. A research team led by entomologist May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois compared the whole genome of honeybees that came from hives that had suffered from CCD with hives that were healthy. The sick bees exhibited genetic damage that could account for the die-off, and that damage indicated that they might be afflicted with multiple viruses simultaneously. This could weaken them enough to trigger CCD. “It’s like a perfect storm,” says Berenbaum.
via New Clues in the Mass Death of Bees – Yahoo! News.
1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime’
1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime’ - BBC NEWS
CCTV camera in the Embankment, central London
London is one of the world’s most monitored cities
Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed.
The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.
In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.
David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”
via BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | 1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime’.
Turn Up the Heat on the Insurance Industry
Turn Up the Heat on the Insurance Industry - Peter Dreier:
It is time for health care reformers to turn up the heat on the major obstacle to Congress passing a good policy — the private insurance industry.
Few Americans know the names of the nation’s largest health insurance companies or their CEOs. That has to change, quickly.
The political muscle of the insurance industry is the major reason that seven conservative Democratic Senators — led by Max Baucus (Montana) and including Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) — are blocking President Obama’s proposal for a public option to compete with the private insurance companies.
via Peter Dreier: Turn Up the Heat on the Insurance Industry.
Health insurers mobilize 50,000 employees to lobby Congress, defeat the public option.
Health insurers mobilize 50,000 employees to lobby Congress, defeat the public option. - Think Progress » 
The LA Times reports that health insurance companies, on the cusp of defeating the threat of a public option and after winning a set of important legislative health reform battles, is “poised to reap a financial windfall” for their efforts. Big insurance companies have outflanked proponents of reform with a flood of lobbyists, advertising, campaign donations, and, it appears, a well-organized strategy of coordinating their employees to contact lawmakers:
– AHIP, the lobbying juggernaut representing the industry, says 50,000 employees have been engaged in writing letters and making phone calls to politicians or attending town hall meetings.
– UnitedHealth, one of the largest insurers, organized a hot-line for employees to be directed to protests and town hall meetings. In Ohio, the number directed people to attend a radical tea party protest, sponsored by religious fundamentalist Dave Daubenmire, outside the office of Rep. Zach Space (D-OH).
60 percent of Blue Dog Jim Cooper’s constituents disapprove of his actions on health care.
60 percent of Blue Dog Jim Cooper’s constituents disapprove of his actions on health care. - Think Progress »
Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) has long been viewed by many progressives as a “uniquely pernicious” opponent of health care reform. Now, a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll has found that 60 percent of his constituents disapprove of his handling of the health care issue:
The poll also goes on to find that 61 percent of his constituents support the creation of a new public insurance plan that anyone can purchase. Cooper will be appearing with Karl Rove and other conservatives this Saturday at a conference titled “The Third Rail of Healthcare Reform: Cost,” yet he has shied away from holding a town hall meeting with his constituents.
Update Cooper responded to the polling with a statement to the Nashville Times: “The whole premise of the poll is that I oppose a public option, and that is simply not true. I have repeatedly said that I’m FOR a public option, and that there are multiple ways to do it.”
Pentagon Hires Controversial Firm To Screen Whether Embedded Reporters Wrote ‘Positive’ Stories
Pentagon Hires Controversial Firm To Screen Whether Embedded Reporters Wrote ‘Positive’ Stories - Think Progress »
Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon has hired The Rendon Group to screen journalists seeking to embed with U.S. forces. Specifically, the contractor will examine whether these reporters gave “positive” coverage to the military’s work in the past:
Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was “positive,” “negative” or “neutral” compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials. It conducts similar analysis of general reporting trends about the war for the military and has been contracted for such work since 2005, according to the company. [...]
The backgrounders are part of a wide scope of work Rendon does for the Defense Department under its current $1.5 million “news analysis and media assessment” contract, according to military and company officials.
Fox News: The Notion That Republicans Are Trying To Block Health Care Reform Is A ‘Conspiracy Theory’
Fox News: The Notion That Republicans Are Trying To Block Health Care Reform Is A ‘Conspiracy Theory’ - Think Progress »
This morning on Fox and Friends, host Brian Kilmeade did a segment defending the Republican Party against accusations that it is trying to “sink” health care reform. “[D]oes this conspiracy theory really hold any water?” asked Kilmeade, adding that it was “a bit of a reach to blame the GOP.” The two Republican guests on the panel agreed:
KT McFARLAND, FMR REAGAN OFFICIAL: First thing — the right-wing conspiracy? The GOP isn’t that organized. Secondly, they’re not against health care reform, they’re just against this health care reform, and they’re particularly against nationalized health care, which is the direction that we’re going. [...]
JOHN FUND, WSJ: How in the world can Republicans — even if they wanted to be obstructionist — do anything? They don’t have any votes in the Senate to block a filibuster, they’re a hopeless minority in the House, they don’t have the White House. So even if they were obstructionist, this is all on Democrats because they have all the votes they need. So to blame the other party is, frankly, I think, passing the buck. And I think the fact that Democrats now want to move to this reconciliation measure, which would require only 51 votes to pass something in the Senate — I think this is very politically perilous becase Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would have to lead that fight.
Watch it:
Bring back American Capitalism
Bring back American Capitalism – Jack Buffington – economyincisis.org
We should demand our government entities to establish an industrial policy for production in America as a method of reestablishing Henry Ford’s manufacturing multiplier effect.
In 1908, the American brand of capitalism was founded when Henry Ford rolled out the Model T, a real automobile for the masses. This auto was reasonably priced (cost was lowered from $850 to $440, making it affordable to the middle class), and was produced at a factory where wages were doubled (from $2.34 to $5 a day) in order to improve productivity and worker satisfaction. When Henry Ford unveiled a business model for which wages were doubled while the price of the auto fell, he was castigated as a villain by his industry counterparts for “misapplying biblical concepts.” Instead, what he was doing was providing the finishing touches for a new model of capitalism that led to the greatest path of growth in economic history.
Today, U.S. policy experts and economists view a model of production much differently than how it was measured in the early 20th century: back then, the role of the company was to enable people to participate in the production and consumption of goods and services, while today, our corporations and governments have chosen in many cases to bifurcate the role production and consumption across the world. Henry Ford’s vision was to create a “multiplier effect” within an economy, allowing the worker to aid the consumer, and the consumer to aid the worker; they were both the same person! The role of the manager in the 20th century company was to ensure that this would happen, and it did; today’s modern manager has no such responsibilities.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
This Week-Paul Krugman: Public Option opponent’s arguments are “sheer nonsense”
This Week-Paul Krugman: Public Option opponent’s arguments are “sheer nonsense” Visit:
YouTube – This Week-Paul Krugman: Public Option opponent’s arguments are “sheer nonsense”.
Conventional Farming vs. Organic Agriculture Sparks Online Battle of Wits
Does Recent Criticism of Sustainably Produced Food Mean We’re Winning? - | EcoSalon
With growing numbers of food-conscious consumers, big corporations are trying to sully the reputation of alternatives to their style of agriculture.
What do you get when you cross a grassroots movement with a food industry fearful of losing its influence? Bogus studies, campaigns of misinformation and opinion pieces filled with myth and vitriol.
You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.
Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning.
via Conventional Farming vs. Organic Agriculture Sparks Online Battle of Wits | EcoSalon.
Is Glenn Beck Finished?
Is Glenn Beck Finished? – By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet.
In his eight months at Fox, Glenn Beck has repeatedly prophesied the advent of both Socialism and Fascism. He’s wished for Osama bin Laden to attack America. He’s hosted 911 truther Alex Jones on his show, and helped fan the bizarre conspiracy theory that FEMA plans to imprison dissidents in internment camps. He paces, rants and cries on the air like a crazy person. Once, he pretended to set someone on fire.
Beck’s weird theatrics and paranoid right-wing rants have earned him the 3rd highest ratings on Fox (Bill O’Reilly still regularly beats Beck, Sean Hannity beats him sometimes), even as liberals, many corporate media pundits and most non-crazy people shrink away with equal parts bewilderment, horror and disdain. The week before last Beck averaged 2.4 million viewers a day, edging out Hannity for the number 2 spot.
But a Color of Change campaign urging advertisers to drop Beck has already been so successful that Fox may have to reconsider whether Beck is worth it, despite his popularity with the right-wing fringe. At last count, 36 advertisers have pulled their advertising from Beck’s show. These include: GEICO, Radio Shack, SC Johnson, Progressive Insurance and Sprint. Last Monday Wal Mart – hardly a poster-child for progressive politics – also dropped Beck’s program.
via Is Glenn Beck Finished? | | AlterNet.
There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History
There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History – By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
One writer spent four years inside the world of modern-day slavery; an industry that produces huge profits and countless wasted lives.
The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc. To those who say we’re not really making progress, many might point to the fact that at least we’ve eliminated slavery.
But sadly that is not the truth.
One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history — 27 million.
Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money.
via There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Everybody In, Nobody Out — Single Payer Health Care Plan — HR Bill 676 (Expanded Medicare for All) — Short Videos To Enjoy, Learn From and Pass Along
OPS: Title should include : Everybody In, Nobody Out and employers off the hook
Everybody In, Nobody Out — Single Payer Health Care Plan — HR Bill 676 (Expanded Medicare for All) — Short Videos To Enjoy, Learn From and Pass Along
What is Single Payer?
http://www.youtube.com/HR676Contest
You Bet Your Health!
http://youbetyourhealth.com/
Rage-Ex
http://www.markfiore.com/political/rage-ex
What is Single Payer?
http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/whatissinglepayer.php
Where is my health card?
http://www.whereismyhealthcard.com/
“Put The Piggy In Its Place” HR 676
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zC0YVlxRjM&feature=related
SiCKO Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BJyyyRYbSk&feature=related
Union Presentation: US vs. Canada Healthcare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npnfbF_PEVc
Health, Money and Fear
http://www.ourailinghealthcare.com/
Remote Area Medical throws America a lifeline:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4256735n&tag=related;photovide
US Air Force training more drone operators than pilots
US Air Force training more drone operators than pilots – - – NZ Herald News
As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the American Air Force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots.
In a controversial shift in military thinking – one encouraged by the death of Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone strike on August 5 – the Air Force is looking to hugely expand its fleet of unmanned aircraft by 2047.
Three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50.
At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones which attack in swarms.
via US Air Force training more drone operators than pilots – World – NZ Herald News.
Sen Coburn Tells Women Crying Over Health Care “Govt Is Not The Answer”
Republican Senator Tom Coburn Tells Women Crying About Her Health Care Coverage At Town Hall: “Government Is Not The Answer” – 08/24/09
via YouTube – Sen Coburn Tells Women Crying Over Health Care “Govt Is Not The Answer”.
China Outdoes U.S. in Making Solar Products
China Racing Ahead of America in the Drive to Go Solar – - NYTimes.com
— President Obama wants to make the United States “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy,” but in his seven months in office, it is China that has stepped on the gas in an effort to become the dominant player in green energy — especially in solar power, and even in the United States.
Chinese companies have already played a leading role in pushing down the price of solar panels by almost half over the last year. Shi Zhengrong, the chief executive and founder of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings, said in an interview here that Suntech, to build market share, is selling solar panels on the American market for less than the cost of the materials, assembly and shipping.
Backed by lavish government support, the Chinese are preparing to build plants to assemble their products in the United States to bypass protectionist legislation. As Japanese automakers did decades ago, Chinese solar companies are encouraging their United States executives to join industry trade groups to tamp down anti-Chinese sentiment before it takes root.
via China Outdoes U.S. in Making Solar Products – NYTimes.com.
It’s The FASCISM, Stupid!
It’s The FASCISM, Stupid! – by: Paul Rosenberg – Open Left::
“Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline.”
On August 7, Sara Robinson wrote a very throrough, very frightening diary at Orcinus, Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
She began:
All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history’s worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who’d made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?
Previously, the answer had been “As bad as this looks: no — we are not there yet.”. Now, though…
In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world’s pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History [pdf], Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn’t by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton’s stages, we weren’t there yet. There were certain signs — one in particular — we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren’t seeing it.
And now we are. In fact, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s suddenly everywhere.
Paul Rosenberg :: It’s The FASCISM, Stupid!
Before going any further, we need to be clear about what we’re talking about. Here’s Paxton’s essential definition of the term:
via Open Left:: It’s The FASCISM, Stupid!.
Federal Reserve loses suit demanding transparency
Federal Reserve loses suit demanding transparency - | Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday ruled against an effort by the U.S. Federal Reserve to block disclosure of companies that participated in and securities covered by a series of emergency funding programs as the global credit crisis began to intensify.
In a 47-page opinion, Chief District Judge Loretta Preska of the federal court in Manhattan said the central bank failed to show that disclosure would cause borrowers in the Federal Reserve System to suffer “imminent competitive harm,” by stigmatizing them for using Fed lending programs.
“The board essentially speculates on how a borrower might enter a downward spiral of financial instability if its participation in the Federal Reserve lending programs were to be disclosed,” she wrote. “Conjecture, without evidence of imminent harm, simply fails to meet the board’s burden.”
via Federal Reserve loses suit demanding transparency | Reuters.
PETER HITCHENS: Democracy? We’re just wasting brave lives on a country we’ll never free
| Mail Online
It is certain that British troops will quit Afghanistan in the next few years, leaving that country, as it is now, corrupt, repressive and ruled either by warlords or mullahs.
When that day comes, what will politicians of both major parties say to the families of those soldiers who die between now and then?
Or to the many who will be horribly injured in the same period?
How will they dare to live in the same country, to walk to work, to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, to greet their families, watch their children grow, knowing all the time that they have, through cowardly negligence, ensured that scores of others will never do these things again?
What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report
What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report - - Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
I wrote earlier today about Eric Holder’s decision to “review” whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in connection with the torture of Terrorism suspects — that can be read here — but I want to write separately about the release today of the 2004 CIA’s Inspector General Report (.pdf), both because it’s extraordinary in its own right and because it underscores how unjust it would be to prosecute only low-level interrogators rather than the high-level officials who implemented the torture regime. Initially, it should be emphasized that yet again, it is not the Congress or the establishment media which is uncovering these abuses and forcing disclosure of government misconduct. Rather, it is the ACLU (with which I consult) that, along with other human rights organizations, has had to fill the void left by those failed institutions, using their own funds to pursue litigation to compel disclosure. Without their efforts, we would know vastly less than we know now about the crimes our government committed.
Marketers Answer Call to Eliminate High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Marketers Answer Call to Eliminate High-Fructose Corn Syrup – - Advertising Age
Corn Refiners Fight Back as Kraft, Pepsi Tout Revamped Products
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — First it was fat, then it was trans fat, and now it’s corn syrup.
Consumers are asking manufacturers to remove ingredients they believe are harmful, and high-fructose corn syrup is near the top of many a mother’s hit list. Some major manufacturers have responded by removing the offending syrup, and the Corn Refiners Association has staged a full-fledged media assault aimed at what it perceives to be “misinformation” in the media.
Kraft Foods has reformulated a handful of its most popular products in recent years, removing high-fructose corn syrup from Bulls-Eye barbecue sauce, Capri Sun Juice drinks with 25% less sugar, and the majority of its Kraft Salad Dressings line. The company is launching a campaign for Wheat Thins next week, from agency Draft FCB, Chicago. Kraft has reformulated the crackers, more than doubling their whole-grain content, and getting rid of HFCS.
via Marketers Answer Call to Eliminate High-Fructose Corn Syrup – Advertising Age – News.
Obama to Reappoint Bernanke as Fed Chief
OPS: Hope just became dimmer
Obama to Reappoint Bernanke as Fed Chief - – WSJ.com
Signs of Economic Recovery Cited by President’s Chief of Staff; Central Banker’s Renomination Requires Senate Confirmation
By DAVID WESSEL and JON HILSENRATH
President Barack Obama will announce the nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve chairman on Tuesday, opting for continuity in U.S. economic policy despite criticism in Congress of the low-key central banker’s frantic efforts to rescue the financial system.
Mr. Obama’s decision had become a subject of growing speculation and uncertainty in financial markets and in Washington policy circles.
The president called the Fed chairman to the Oval Office Wednesday evening to offer him another term. Mr. Bernanke then flew off to Wyoming where he gave a spirited defense of his controversial policies at the Fed’s annual meetings in Jackson Hole. Mr. Obama left for Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where he will deliver the news Tuesday with Mr. Bernanke at his side.
Mr. Bernanke is seen by supporters inside the administration and in markets as a creative and steady hand who helped to keep the financial chaos of the past year from leading to a second Depression.
via Obama to Reappoint Bernanke as Fed Chief – WSJ.com.
AG Holder appoints special prosecutor for CIA abuses
AG Holder appoints special prosecutor for CIA abuses – Boston.com
The simmering controversy over the Bush administration’s interrogations of terrorism suspects is about to boil over again with two major developments today.
First, the CIA released a once-secret report that sounds like plot points from “24.”
The report, written in 2004 and declassified in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, says interrogators threatened Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that if any more attacks hit the United States, “We’re going to kill your children.” Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince another detainee that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him, according to the Associated Press account of the report.
The White House confirmed earlier today that a new specialized unit, housed at FBI headquarters, will oversee future interrogations of “high value” terror suspects.
A Real Reason to Boycott Whole Foods?
A Real Reason to Boycott Whole Foods? - by Mike Adams the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) Whole Foods is in a public relations crisis. After its CEO John Mackey posted a widely-read opinion piece that insisted Americans have no intrinsic right to health care, it was slammed with angry liberal customers who picketed stores and organized a national Whole Foods boycott at a Facebook page now numbering over 26,000 members (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?g…).
Whole Foods customers are angry at the upscale retailer over the position of its CEO on health care reform, but I can think of a much better reason to avoid shopping at Whole Foods: The store sells a whole lot of junk products.
Those aren’t my words; they’re the words of CEO John Mackey, who admitted this during a discussion about how Whole Foods might improve its product offerings ((http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/…)).
The last time I was in the U.S., I shopped at Whole Foods because it was the best option for convenient health food. But even then, I noticed a whole lot of “junk” being sold by the store: Foods made with yeast extract (a hidden form of MSG), loads of processed pastries, fried snack chips and all sorts of other products I wouldn’t dare let touch my lips. Let’s face it: If you walk around Whole Foods and read the ingredients, you’ll be more than a little shocked to find out how much unhealthy stuff the store actually offers.
via A Real Reason to Boycott Whole Foods? by Mike Adams the Health Ranger.
Blackwater: More Help Than We Thought?
Newsy
Blackwater, a private security company, worked with the CIA to help assassinate terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bush Administration kept the contract from Congress. So what does it all mean?
Newsy | Blackwater: More Help Than We Thought? | The News With More Views.
Feingold to Obama: Announce Withdrawal Timetable from Afghanistan – The Note
Feingold to Obama: Announce Withdrawal Timetable from Afghanistan
The Obama administration has been keenly aware of discontent among many in its liberal base with regard to its Afghanistan policy and an expected request for additional troops following General McChrystal’s upcoming assessment of the situation there.
That liberal base just got a high-profile voice to lead its charge.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. “This is a strategy that is not likely to succeed,” Sen. Feingold said about the troop buildup in Afghanistan.
“After eight years, I am not convinced that pouring more and more troops into Afghanistan is a well thought out policy,” said Feingold. The liberal Democrat said he has expressed his reservations with President Obama, Admiral Mullen, and others inside the administration and he says he has “never been convinced they have a good answer.”
via Feingold to Obama: Announce Withdrawal Timetable from Afghanistan – The Note.
Panetta Threatened To Quit, Got In “Screaming Match” Over Torture Probe
Your request is being processed…
Panetta Threatened To Quit, Got In “Screaming Match” Over Torture Probe
CIA Director threatened to quit over an potential criminal investigation of CIA torture, ABC News reported Monday.
A “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.
According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of allegations that CIA officers broke the law in carrying out certain interrogation techniques that President Obama has termed “torture.”
via Panetta Threatened To Quit, Got In “Screaming Match” Over Torture Probe.
Up To Old Tricks, Wall Street Repackages Bad Mortgages
Up To Old Tricks, Wall Street Repackages Bad Mortgages
Wall Street may have discovered a way out from under the bad debt and risky mortgages that have clogged the financial markets. The would-be solution probably sounds familiar: It’s a lot like what got banks in trouble in the first place.
In recent months investment banks have been repackaging old mortgage securities and offering to sell them as new products, a plan that’s nearly identical to the complicated investment packages at the heart of the market’s collapse.
“There is a little bit of deja vu in this,” said Arizona State University economics professor Herbert Kaufman.
But Kaufman said the strategy could help solve one of the lingering problems of the financial meltdown: What to do about hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages that are still choking the system and making bankers reluctant to make new loans.
via Up To Old Tricks, Wall Street Repackages Bad Mortgages.
The Problem With Mercury: Pervasive, Perilous and Persistent
The Problem With Mercury: Pervasive, Perilous and Persistent
BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT – by Margaret Smith
You can’t fry it out. You can’t bake it out. You can’t fillet it out.
While a new government study shows how pervasive mercury contamination is in our waterways, what might surprise you is what it does to the human body. At high levels the contaminant can affect the central nervous system and irreversibly damage areas of the brain.
The scary part, though, is how hard mercury is to get rid of. For humans, it takes 70 days for half the body burden of mercury to be eliminated from the human body. And that’s if you manage to not eat any during that tim
via The Problem With Mercury: Pervasive, Perilous and Persistent | BuzzFlash.org.
Possible leak detected at chemical weapons depot
Possible leak detected at chemical weapons depot
The Army says a low level of mustard agent has been detected in a building storing chemical weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.
via Possible leak detected at chemical weapons depot.
How Whole Foods boycott groups are using social media to organize
How Whole Foods boycott groups are using social media to organize 
When Mark Rosenthal launched a Facebook group recently supporting a boycott of Whole Foods, he did virtually nothing to promote it. He left his computer for a few hours and when he came back he found that between 50 and 100 people had already joined.
“I was just starting it as a place to get the word out to my friends who I know shop at Whole Foods,” Rosenthal, 39, told me in a phone interview. “I have friends who spend hundreds of dollars a month at Whole Foods in Los Angeles and New York.”
The activist decided to create the group after reading a now widely-circulated Wall Street Journal op-ed from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The op-ed argued against a public option and in favor of deregulation of the current health insurance system in the US, and it blasted universal health care systems in other countries like Canada and the UK.
via Bloggasm » How Whole Foods boycott groups are using social media to organize.
Coming Home: Appliance Maker Drops China to Produce in Texas
Coming Home: Appliance Maker Drops China to Produce in Texas – - WSJ.com 
HOUSTON — Farouk Shami, a Palestinian-born hairdresser who built a $1 billion manufacturing company around a popular line of hair irons, is moving all of his production of hand-held appliances from China to a sprawling new factory here.
The move flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says gadgets like this are best made in a low-cost country. But, he says, outsourcing has led to a loss of control over manufacturing and distribution.
“We’ll make more money this way — because we’ll have better quality and a better image,” says the 66-year-old, who says his company, Farouk Systems Inc., spends about $500,000 a month fighting counterfeits, most of which he says originate in China. The company collects the fake products and tracks the source, and then brings action in China to shut down illegal producers.
via Coming Home: Appliance Maker Drops China to Produce in Texas – WSJ.com.
Want to Stimulate the Economy? Lower the Retirement Age to 55 Now!
Want to Stimulate the Economy? Lower the Retirement Age to 55 Now!
by Thom Hartmann
One of the most powerful forms of stimulus we could apply to our economy right now would be to lower the current Social Security retirement age from the current 65-67 to 55, and increase the benefits back to where they were in inflation-adjusted 1960s dollars by raising them between 10 to 20 percent (so people could actually live, albeit modestly, on Social Security).
The right-wing reaction to this, of course, will be to say that with fewer people working and more people drawing benefits, it would bankrupt Social Security and destroy the economy. But history shows the exact reverse.
Instead, it would eliminate the problem of unemployment in the United States. All those Boomers retiring would make room in the labor market for all the recent high-school and college graduates who are now finding it so hard to find a job.
If enough Boomers left the job market, it would even flip the current dynamic of too-many-people-chasing-too-few-jobs upside down, and create a tight labor markets. Tight labor markets drive up wages.
And as wages go up, tax revenues – which are paying for Social Security (among other things) – would increase.
via Want to Stimulate the Economy? Lower the Retirement Age to 55 Now! | CommonDreams.org.
True Health Care Reform: 10 Missing Pieces
True Health Care Reform: 10 Missing Pieces
Dr. Frank Lipman:
I applaud President Obama for his efforts. I too believe that everyone deserves proper healthcare and that access to healthcare must be a right for all. But I think Washington is barking up the wrong tree. They’re busy arguing about what amounts to health insurance reform, while what this country needs is true health care reform.
Interestingly, what is happening in Washington mirrors much of what we do in Western Medicine. We suppress symptoms instead of dealing with the root causes of the problem. All the options on the table now only address how we pay for healthcare, rather than why we are unhealthy and how we change that. But if we don’t change why we are unhealthy, we are not only likely to fail in securing better medical outcomes, it will likely bankrupt us too. In terms of getting better health care or becoming a healthier nation we have to make serious changes. We will only flourish if we address the root causes of the problem.
via Dr. Frank Lipman: True Health Care Reform: 10 Missing Pieces.
Jim Cooper’s Constituents Not With Him On Health Reform
Jim Cooper’s Constituents Not With Him On Health Reform
Blue Dog Democrats have defended their reluctance on health care legislation by saying their moderate constituents can’t stomach a bill that’s too far to the left. A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, however, shows that at least one Blue Dog, Rep. Jim Cooper (R-Tenn.), is not representing his district’s desires. Sixty percent of those polled disapprove of the lawmaker’s actions on health care, and 61% favor a public option.
That’s even higher than the 44 percent of Montanans polled that disapproved of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-Mont.) work on health care.
Cooper was instrumental in helping kill health care reform under President Clinton. Ezra Klein explained:
via Jim Cooper’s Constituents Not With Him On Health Reform.
Rep. Weiner to Scarborough: Health Care is Not a Commodity!
Rep. Weiner to Scarborough: Health Care is Not a Commodity!
by Ernest A. Canning – The BRAD BLOG :
Appearances by single-payer advocates on corporate mainstream media are few and far between — all the more reason that when a golden opportunity arises, single-payer advocates must take care to appropriately frame the base-line issue of health care reform.
While there can be no doubt that a single-payer system, which President Obama concedes, provides the only means by which every American can be “covered,” is the most cost-effective, the issue is really more basic.
It’s about the immorality of treating the health of our people as a commodity; that those who seek to perpetuate a system designed to create obscene wealth for a few insurance company CEOs and their Wall Street investors are advocating nothing less than a death sentence for more than 18,000 Americans each year…
The appearance by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on MSNBC’s Good Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough (video below) produced a classic colloquy.
via The BRAD BLOG : Rep. Weiner to Scarborough: Health Care is Not a Commodity!.
Fire Ben Bernanke
Fire Ben Bernanke – | Dean Baker | guardian.co.uk
Because so many people have lost their jobs due to his mismanagement, Fed chair Ben Bernanke should lose his too
The world’s central bankers met in Jackson Hole last weekend for their annual gathering. Undoubtedly one of the main topics of discussion was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve board chairman. His reappointment would almost certainly win the support of the vast majority of attendees. This should raise serious concerns.
This is the same group that in 2005 devoted their meeting to an Alan Greenspan retrospective (seriously). The world’s leading thinkers and practitioners of monetary policy debated whether Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time.
I’m not sure how the polling on this question turned out, but four years later the world is facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression because of Greenspan’s failed monetary policy. Greenspan either did not recognise an $8tn housing bubble or did not think it was a big enough deal to demand his attention. The collapse of this bubble gave us the financial panics of 2008 and more importantly led to the falloff in demand that produced the downturn.
via Fire Ben Bernanke | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery
This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery
By Chris Hedges – Truthdig
Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%
Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10
—Harper’s Index, September 2009
Capitalists, as my friend Father Michael Doyle says, should never be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate scramble to pay for medical care. The sick do not have a choice. Medical care is not a consumable good. We can choose to buy a used car or a new car, shop at a boutique or a thrift store, but there is no choice between illness and health. And any debate about health care must acknowledge that the for-profit health care industry is the problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that hires doctors and analysts to deny care to patients in order to increase profits. It is an industry that causes half of all bankruptcies. And the 20,000 Americans who died last year because they did not receive adequate care condemn these corporations as complicit in murder.
The current health care debate in Congress has nothing to do with death panels or public options or socialized medicine. The real debate, the only one that counts, is how much money our blood-sucking insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health services are going to be able to siphon off from new health care legislation. The proposed plans rattling around Congress all ensure that the profits for these corporations will increase and the misery for ordinary Americans will be compounded. The corporate state, enabled by both Democrats and Republicans, is yet again cannibalizing the Treasury. It is yet again pushing Americans, especially the poor and the working class, into levels of despair and rage that will continue to fuel the violent, proto-fascist movements leaping up around the edges of American society. And the traditional watchdogs—those in public office, the press and citizens groups—are as useless as the perfumed fops of another era who busied their days with court intrigue at Versailles. Canada never looked so good
via Truthdig – Reports – This Isn’t Reform, It’s Robbery.
Study Shows Massive Rise In ADHD Drug Abuse Among Teens
Study Shows Massive Rise In ADHD Drug Abuse Among Teens
Calls to poison control centers about teens abusing attention-deficit drugs soared 76 percent over eight years, sobering evidence about the dangerous consequences of prescription misuse, a study shows.
The calls were from worried parents, emergency room doctors and others seeking advice on how to deal with the problem, which can be deadly. Four deaths were among cases evaluated in the study.
Kids taking ADHD drugs to get high or increase alertness may not realize that misuse of the drugs can cause serious, sometimes life-threatening symptoms, including agitation, rapid heartbeat, extremely high blood pressure.
“They say, ‘It’s FDA approved, how dangerous could it be?’” said Steve Pasierb, head of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, based in New York.
In the study, researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center evaluated 1998-2005 data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. During that time, nationwide calls related to teen abuse of ADHD drugs, specifically stimulants, increased from 330 to 581 yearly, and there were four deaths. Overall, 42 percent of teens involved had moderate to severe side-effects and most ended up getting emergency-room treatment.
via Study Shows Massive Rise In ADHD Drug Abuse Among Teens.
Goldman ‘trading huddles’ offer tips to top clients: report
Goldman ‘trading huddles’ offer tips to top clients: report
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS – News) holds a weekly meeting of its research analysts where they offer trading ideas that are given to top clients, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Sunday.
But the paper cited Steven Strongin, Goldman’s stock research chief, as saying these meetings did not give anyone an unfair advantage and the tips did not contradict research notes that carry predictions over a longer term.
Goldman’s analysts talk about short-term developments around specific stocks during the meeting, called a “trading huddle,” which is also attended by some of the firm’s own traders, the Journal reported.
The practice started some two years ago, and since then the Wall Street firm has given ideas on hundreds of stocks, the Journal reported, citing internal Goldman documents.
Goldman could not be reached immediately for comment on Sunday night.
via Goldman ‘trading huddles’ offer tips to top clients: report – Yahoo! Finance.
BERNARD MADOFF IS SUFFERING FROM CANCER IN NORTH CAROLINA PRISON – New York Post
UPDATE 16:50 8.23.09 – UPDATE: Prison Officials Say Madoff Doesn’t Have Cancer
OPS: so what’s your choice? Will they let him go “for humanitarian reasons’ or, whisk him off to be Ken Lays roomy?
BERNIE ‘DYING’ IN JAIL
Bernie Madoff had little to lose by confessing to masterminding the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme — he’s dying of cancer, sources told The Post.
Madoff, who is serving 150 years at a North Carolina federal lockup after pleading guilty to swindling more than $65 billion, has been telling fellow inmates he does not have much longer to live.
“He’s been taking about 20 pills a day for his cancer,” said one inmate.
“He talks about it all the time. He’s not doing very well.”
via BERNARD MADOFF IS SUFFERING FROM CANCER IN NORTH CAROLINA PRISON – New York Post.
Millions face shrinking Social Security payments
Millions face shrinking Social Security payments
Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.
The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.
By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.
via Millions face shrinking Social Security payments – Yahoo! News.
Judge allows lawyers to question 9/11 suspect in writing only
Judge allows lawyers to question 9/11 suspect in writing only – Raw Story »
Federal judge rules detainee’s lawyers can question 9/11 mastermind Mohammed _ in writing
Lawyers for a Guantanamo Bay detainee will be allowed to question — in writing — accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a federal judge has ruled. The decision is a setback for government lawyers who had sought to limit the scope of detainee lawyers’ challenges to the detention and prosecution of terror suspects.
n a written ruling, Judge Ricardo Urbina says lawyers for detainee Abdul Raheem Ghulam Rabbani can submit written questions about their client to Mohammed. Prosecutors say he worked for Mohammed, but Rabbani’s lawyers contend he was just a menial servant, not a part of any terror network.
The ruling says prosecutors may review the answers before delivering them to Rabbani’s lawyers to remove any national security information.
via Raw Story » Judge allows lawyers to question 9/11 suspect in writing only.
North American Summit: Fruitless on Fair Trade
North American Summit: Fruitless on Fair Trade - Dustin Ensinger – economyincisis.org
Last week’s North American Summit produced few substantive results on the trade front and instead the chief executives of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. returned to their home countries empty handed.
The heads of state from the three nations that comprise the North American Free Trade Agreement met last week for a two day summit in Guadalajara, Mexico to discuss the most pressing issues facing the continent.
Given the importance Obama put on renegotiating NAFTA during the presidential campaign, one would expect the flawed “free trade” agreement to be one of the main topics of conversation, however, according to reports, much more emphasis was put on how the three nations could cooperate to combat the swine flu and the Mexican drug war threatening to send the country spiraling into a failed state.
That is quite the opposite of what President Obama promised during the campaign.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Grassley Blames Obama For Making Him Say That Health Care Reform Would ‘Pull The Plug On Grandma’
Grassley Blames Obama For Making Him Say That Health Care Reform Would ‘Pull The Plug On Grandma’ - Think Progress »
Earlier this month, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) came under fire for telling Iowans that they were right to “fear” that the federal government would “pull the plug on grandma”:
“In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life,” Grassley said. “You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.“
Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Grassley struggled to explain why he made that statement. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Grassley stumbled over his words and even blamed President Obama for his word choice. He said that even though he knew the House bill “doesn’t intend to” kill senior citizens, he felt that he had a responsibility to nevertheless play to those fears:
Historian’s New Book Takes hard Look at Wal-Mart
High Noon in Aisle 9 - | Miller-McCune Online Magazine
Wal-Mart Faces Its Day of Reckoning. Wal-Mart’s relentless growth and Darwinian competitiveness have created a world that is increasingly inhospitable to its own success.
Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein has been following Wal-Mart for half a decade now, and he believes changes in China, and not in the domestic landscape, may force its day of reckoning.
Since Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Ark., in 1962, the company has grown into a global retailing colossus employing more than 2 million people in almost 8,000 stores worldwide and ringing up annual sales topping $400 billion.
The sheer size and scale of the empire is such that when someone holds up a mirror to Wal-Mart, what we see reflected back are many of today’s most potent social, political, economic and cultural issues.
Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, provides such a mirror in his latest book, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.
He previously edited a collection of essays on Wal-Mart published in 2006 that defined the chain as “the face of 21st century capitalism.” He began to focus on the company during the long-running 2003-2004 grocery store strike in Southern California, when three major grocery chains cited fear of Wal-Mart selling groceries for their hard-line stance in negotiations.
Why Women Need Healthcare Reform
Why Women Need Healthcare Reform - The Nation
By Sharon Lerner
Many of women’s problems stem from the fact that to get anything close to decent private insurance, you usually need a full-time job, which women are less likely than men to have–52 percent versus 73 percent. (The flip side of this problem is that linking jobs to insurance leaves many women tethered to full-time jobs they’d rather not have, given their other responsibilities. In fact, 60 percent of full-time working mothers would prefer part-time work, according to a 2007 Pew poll. While some keep their full-time jobs for the income, many others stay because they have no other way to get health benefits.) Many women who work part-time or stay at home have become a sort of medical underclass, stuck without insurance, paying dearly for it out of their own pockets or, as was Jemilla Mulvihill’s experience, begging desperately, and unsuccessfully, for the opportunity to pay dearly for it out-of-pocket.
via Why Women Need Healthcare Reform.
Why don’t Catholic bishops care about healthcare? | Salon
Why don’t Catholic bishops care about healthcare?
Catholic leaders lobby against abortion and euthanasia, but where’s their activism on that other “life” issue? 
By Frances Kissling
We Catholics believe in two kinds of sin — sins of commission and sins of omission. On healthcare, church leadership is committing the sin of omission. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is just not working hard enough on behalf of the most important and desperately needed healthcare reform — the public option.
For decades the bishops have advocated for universal healthcare — in fact, for a single-payer system with a strong emphasis on covering the uninsured, the poor and immigrants. The best shot at reform is now. But the bishops are squandering every ounce of moral capital they have, not on the public option, but on ensuring that in any reform bill not one penny of federal funds is used for abortion.
This strategy has put them in the extremist camp among those opposed to abortion. Moderate evangelicals and antiabortion Catholics bit the bullet on abortion four years ago and decided that other issues like ending wars, reducing global warming, and fighting poverty meant it was time to move on from attempting to outlaw abortion. While one can quibble with their strategy, working to prevent the need for abortion was a step forward from working to make it illegal.
via Why don’t Catholic bishops care about healthcare? | Salon.
Counterfeiting: Notes on a scandal
Counterfeiting: Notes on a scandal - - The Independent
As the US edges towards engagement with North Korea, it will be forced to address Pyongyang’s booming trade in fake American currency. David Samuels investigates how ‘supernotes’ are funding crime – and a dictatorship
n October of 1997, a white-haired 63-year old Irishman named Sean Garland paid a visit to Moscow in the company of an acquaintance subsequently identified only by the initials “JM”. Garland was a self-proclaimed Marxist who dressed like a professor and served as head of a far-left faction called the Irish Workers Party that had never elected a single one of its members to any mainstream political body. Garland’s first visit to Moscow was followed by three return trips in the first half of 1998, made in the company of known criminals from Dublin and Birmingham.
Garland’s pilgrimage to Moscow made little ideological sense, since Boris Yeltsin had turned the former Soviet Union from a communist state into heaven on earth for gangsters of all nationalities – and the company that Garland kept made observers wonder about the true purpose of his visits. In addition to his career in leftist fringe politics, Garland was a lifelong terrorist who had personally engaged in deadly attacks on British soldiers and police in Northern Ireland since the 1950s, and whose exploits were said to have inspired Tom Clancy’s novel Patriot Games. As the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) entered into fitful negotiations with Protestant groups in the 1990s, Garland served as chief of staff for “the Official IRA” or OIRA, which rejected the idea of a peace deal in favour of the continuation of bombings, bank robberies and other politically-motivated crimes.
via Counterfeiting: Notes on a scandal – Asia, World – The Independent.
‘Superjuices’ Touted as Cures for Cancer, Swine Flu and the Recession — Are They Dangerous Scams?
OPS: Snake Oil making another come-back
Superjuices’ Touted as Cures for Cancer, Swine Flu and the Recession — Are They Dangerous Scams? – By Stan Cox, AlterNet.
Those expensive juices with exotic ingredients promise a healthy body and a fat income. But can they pull you through a recession and a health-care crisis?
“They sold considerable quantities of the elixir of life, performed many cures, and recruited their finances … Gold flowed into their coffers faster than they could count it.” — Charles MacKay, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” 1852 (writing of the 18th-century swindlers Joseph Balsamo and Lorenza Feliciana)
The unemployment rate is climbing toward 10 percent, underemployment has hit 1 in 6 members of the U.S. workforce, and more than 60 percent of bankruptcies are now linked to medical bills. But you don’t have to wait for the government to fix the economy.
You can give yourself a job and give jobs to your friends and family members as well, while building up protection against chronic diseases and ruinous medical crises. You’ll no longer be exploited by corporate retailers and employers or ripped off by greedy pharmaceutical companies. You can think globally and earn locally …
Or that’s the impression you’ll get from listening to superjuice promoters, anyway. Their lavishly packaged, exotic extracts, sold as nutritional supplements via multilevel marketing (MLM) systems, are said to be packed with antioxidants and other healthful compounds. They sell at a retail price of $35 to $45 per 25.5-ounce bottle.
Rachel Maddow: The Growing Threat Posed by Gun-Strapped Right-Wingers at Obama’s Townhalls
Rachel Maddow: The Growing Threat Posed by Gun-Strapped Right-Wingers at Obama’s Townhalls
By Rachel Maddow and Frank Rich, MSNBC
Rachel Maddow and Frank Rich discuss the use of intimidation as a political tactic.
When President Obama spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Phoenix on Monday, you‘ll recall that he was greeted by a dozen or so regular citizens, not police officers, not Secret Service officers, who were openly carrying firearms.
It‘s now been revealed that a right-wing online radio host organized the “people with guns near the president” stunt, including the man who‘s carrying an assault rifle who we pictured and talked about on this show.
But the second important update about this story is about the “not just metaphorical ties” between the open display of weaponry by protestors against the president — in other words, the use of intimidation as a political tactic — and the political violence in our own country‘s history, even our own country‘s recent history. We‘re now learning about actual, direct links between the gun stunt this week at President Obama‘s event in Arizona and a militia group that was convicted in the 1990s of conspiring to blow up federal buildings.
As If Limbaugh and Beck Weren’t Bad Enough, the Granddaddy of Hate Radio Is Back on the Air
As If Limbaugh and Beck Weren’t Bad Enough, the Granddaddy of Hate Radio Is Back on the Air - By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet.
Bob Grant taught a generation of conservative talkers how to channel white rage, until a listener boycott helped push him off the air. Now he’s back.
Here’s a talk radio riddle: What do Glenn Beck’s recent radio meltdown and the ongoing boycott against his television show have in common?
Answer: Both find echo and inspiration in the career of Bob Grant, the granddaddy of conservative hate radio who this week announced his return to New York’s 77 WABC for one last go-around. Starting September 13, the frail octogenarian will host a Sunday show between noon and 2 p.m.
It’s hard not to wonder if Grant is returning to terrestrial radio in an effort to reclaim his identity. Not only has Glenn Beck borrowed Grant’s two trademark catch phrases—”Get off my phone!” and “Sick, twisted freak”—this month Beck even reprised Grant’s former role as the tallest whipping post for organized liberal outrage.
Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases
Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases – - NYTimes.com – By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.
The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.
When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general’s findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder’s associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider.
via Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases – NYTimes.com.
Exposed: The Swine Flu Hoax
Exposed: The Swine Flu Hoax - Citizens For Legitimate Government
By Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D.
The alarm has been sounded. Politicians, pharmaceutical executives and media conglomerates would have us believe that a 1918-style pandemic is a real threat. The 1918 pandemic, however, evolved out of conditions unique to World War I, for four specific reasons.
Why 2009 is Not 1918
First, World War I was characterized by millions of troops living in waterlogged trenches along the Western Front. This war zone became fertile ground for an opportunistic virus, as medical literature reveals:
“…a landscape that was contaminated with respiratory irritants such as chlorine and phosgene, and characterized by stress and overcrowding, the partial starvation in civilians, and the opportunity for rapid ‘passage’ of influenza in young soldiers would have provided the opportunity for multiple but small mutational charges throughout the viral genome.” (1)
Second, the war witnessed the growth of industrial-scale military camps and embarkation ports, such as Etaples in France, enabling the flu virus to enter into another phase of accelerated mutation. On any given day, Etaples was a makeshift city of 100,000 troops from around the British Empire and its former dominions. These soldiers concentrated into unsanitary barracks, tents and mess halls.
Today, many cities and nations have dense concentrations of people; none of these, however, are geographically isolated under the conditions of trench warfare and World War I-style deployments. Of course, there are smaller, sub-populations of people in prisons (prone to multi-drug resistant tuberculosis), in military barracks (prone to respiratory pathogens and meningococcal infections) and on cruise ships (prone to the Norovisus) – all proof of the connection between human confinement on the one hand and infectious disease on the other.
Third, after the war, ships such as the USS Alaskan became floating Petri dishes. Thousands of soldiers were packed like sardines for the long voyage home, allowing the virus to reverberate within hermetically-sealed units.
via Citizens For Legitimate Government.
All the President’s Zombies
All the President’s Zombies - – NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman
The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a government program.
Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.
Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.
Let’s talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over.
via Op-Ed Columnist – All the President’s Zombies – NYTimes.com.
Rigging the polls on healthcare reform
Rigging the polls on healthcare reform .jpg)
Polling is nothing more than short hand market research, ostensibly designed to gather information about public opinion. But polling has seemed a fraud to me in many ways for a long time and I have written about it a few times.
via Rigging the polls on healthcare reform.
Three Former Top CIA Agents Say War In Afghanistan Making World More Dangerous (VIDEO)
Three Former Top CIA Agents Say War In Afghanistan Making World More Dangerous (VIDEO)
In a powerful new documentary, “Security” from the Rethink Afghanistan project, three former high-ranking CIA agents explain why the war in Afghanistan is making the world more dangerous, rather than safer, for Americans.
Robert Baer, former CIA field operative in the Middle East and the author of “See No Evil,” says: “The notion that we are are in Afghanistan to make our country safer is complete bullshit.”
And Graham Fuller, former CIA station chief in Kabul, emphasizes: “Both wars have made the world much more dangerous for Americans and for any American presence overseas.”
Watch the video:
via Three Former Top CIA Agents Say War In Afghanistan Making World More Dangerous (VIDEO).
What went wrong?
What went wrong? - | Salon
It’s almost Labor Day. Healthcare reform is struggling, the public option is near dead. Why couldn’t Obama deliver?
By Thomas Schaller
Barring a major public groundswell or miraculous reversal in Congress, Barack Obama’s healthcare reform package will not include the provision that matters most to the Democratic base, the so-called public option. Why has a president who entered the White House with the second-biggest winning margin of any Democratic president since the New Deal, and who is blessed with solid Capitol Hill majorities in both chambers of Congress, struggled to save this key agenda item?
Was the White House’s public relations rollout insufficient to counter the stronger-than-anticipated resistance from healthcare opponents? Was the public option always just a bargaining chip to give away in exchange for what the president really wants? What happened to the vaunted Obama campaign apparatus, which was supposed to morph into a machine delivering support for Obama’s agenda? Did Obama simply lack the political will or political capital? Or should he have been less of a consensus seeker and more of a Rove-ian steamroller?
Maybe there’s some truth to all those scenarios. Call it the public option’s “imperfect storm.” Yet the policy stumble by a president who demonstrated so much political skill over the past two years merits further inquiry into what went wrong, and why. Here are four possible explanations:
Screwing the Self Employed Out of Health Insurance
Screwing the Self Employed Out of Health Insurance - | The Smirking Chimp
by Michael Collins
If you work for yourself, you are literally screwed out of large sums of money every year for health insurance. There are few differences in cost based on region or state regulation. Ultimately, plans in Salt Lake City and Boston cost the same, about $17,000 a year (premiums plus deductibles). Despite the costs, many self employed are grateful to just have insurance since without it a major acute or chronic illness can bankrupt a family and the absence of care can be fatal.
The self employed are denied insurance on a regular basis due to preexisting conditions. When they’re able to get health insurance, they pay more for premiums and their deductibles are higher than any other group. Even after a federal income tax deduction, the cost of health insurance is the equivalent of annual payments for a condominium, at the low end, or a medium sized home, at the top of the cost scale.
via Screwing the Self Employed Out of Health Insurance | The Smirking Chimp.
Private Insurance Companies to Make Out Like Bandits Under So-Called “Healthcare Reform.”
Private Insurance Companies to Make Out Like Bandits Under So-Called “Healthcare Reform.”
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
In a stunninng revelation in the LA Times today, it appears that that the for-profit health insurance companies are poised to make out like bandits under the so-called “health reform” bills being considered by Congress, particularly if they succeed in defeating the “government option” in the Senate.
The LA Times article is a must read because it shows that the “change” being supported by the WH is going to make the for-profit companies fatter and wealthier at the expense of a healthcare system bloated by the excessive administrative, profits, and grossly high salaries of the health insurance and drug companies.
Here is one of the more understated quotations in the article about how the insurance companies are crying wolf while they tailor the bills to insure even greater profit at government expense:
“The insurers are going to do quite well,” said Linda Blumberg, a health policy analyst at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. “They are going to have this very stable pool, they’re going to have people getting subsidies to help them buy coverage and . . . they will be paid the full costs of the benefits that they provide — plus their administrative costs.”
EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water
EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water 
One of the nation’s most widely-used herbicides has been found to exceed federal safety limits in drinking water in four states, but water customers have not been told and the Environmental Protection Agency has not published the results.
Records that tracked the amount of the weed-killer atrazine in about 150 watersheds from 2003 through 2008 were obtained by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund under the Freedom of Information Act. An analysis found that yearly average levels of atrazine in drinking water violated the federal standard at least ten times in communities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas, all states where farmers rely heavily on the herbicide.
In addition, more than 40 water systems in those states showed spikes in atrazine levels that normally would have triggered automatic notification of customers. In none of those cases were residents alerted.
via EPA Fails To Inform Public About Weed-Killer In Drinking Water.
SPLC Report: Return of the Militias
SPLC Report: Return of the Militias – The Southern Poverty Law Center
Terror from the Right: 75 Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City including plots to bomb government buildings, banks, refineries, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians and more.
The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment “Patriot” movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called “sovereign citizens.” Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of the decade and continued to grow even after 168 people were left dead by the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s federal building — an attack, the deadliest ever by domestic U.S. terrorists, carried out by men steeped in the rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the militias. In the years that followed, a truly remarkable number of criminal plots came out of the movement. But by early this century, the Patriots had largely faded, weakened by systematic prosecutions, aversion to growing violence, and a new, highly conservative president.
They’re back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. “Paper terrorism” — the use of property liens and citizens’ “courts” to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” says one. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”
A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president’s country of birth.
via SPLCenter.org: SPLC Report: Return of the Militias.
Poll: Harry Reid faces formidable foes in 2010
OPS: At this point I don’t care who beats Reid, either party is fine as long as he’s gone so the Dems at least have a chance to elect a new leader
Poll: Harry Reid faces formidable foes in 2010
A newspaper poll says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces formidable opposition next year when he seeks a fifth term
A survey of 400 registered voters for the Las Vegas Review-Journal released Sunday paints the Democratic incumbent as an underdog when matched against either of two possible Republicans rivals in the election.
The poll, taken last week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., shows Reid lagging by as many as 11 percentage points against Danny Tarkanian. He had 49 percent to Reid’s 38 percent.
via Poll: Harry Reid faces formidable foes in 2010.
Put an end to insurance companies rationing health care
Congresswoman Betty McCollum says “I want to put an end to insurance companies rationing health care”. She is speaking to volunteers who are about to go door knocking in her district to support health care reform.
via YouTube – Put an end to insurance companies rationing health care.
Analyst Bove sees 150-200 more U.S. bank failures
Analyst Bove sees 150-200 more U.S. bank failures - | Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A prominent banking analyst said on Sunday that 150 to 200 more U.S. banks will fail in the current banking crisis, and the industry’s payments to keep the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp afloat could eat up 25 percent of pretax income in 2010.
Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities said this will likely force the FDIC, which insures deposits, to turn increasingly to non-U.S. banks and private equity funds to shore up the banking system.
“The difficulty at the moment is finding enough healthy banks to buy the failing banks,” Bove wrote.
The FDIC is expected on August 26 to vote on relaxed guidelines for private equity firms to invest in failed banks, after critics said previously proposed rules were too harsh and would actually dissuade firms from making investments.
Bove said “perhaps another 150 to 200 banks will fail,” on top of 81 so far in 2009, adding stress to the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund.
via Analyst Bove sees 150-200 more U.S. bank failures | Reuters.
Washington’s Blog
OPS: and every one of them has been bought and paid for by the Corporations
6 Senators – Who Together Only Represent 2.6 Percent of Americans – Are Deciding the Fate of Health Care
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich notes:
It’s come down to these six senators. The House has reported a bill as has another Senate committee, but all eyes are fixed on Senate Finance — and on these three Dems and three Republicans, in particular. But who, exactly, anointed these six to decide the fate of the nation’s health care?
…
It’s not even as if the gang represents America. The three Dems on the gang are from Montana, New Mexico, and North Dakota — states that together account for just over 1 percent of Americans. The three Republicans are from Maine, Wyoming, and Iowa, which together account for 1.6 percent of the American population.
So, I repeat: Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House. At least that’s what I’m repeatedly being told by sources both on the Hill and in the administration. “The Finance Committee is where the action is. They’ll tee-up the final bill,” says someone who shoul
Rachel Maddow: Democrats Decide: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way
Rachel Maddow: Democrats Decide: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way
Video at link
via Rachel Maddow: Democrats Decide: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way | AfterDowningStreet.org.
The risk of a double-dip recession is rising
The risk of a double-dip recession is rising - FT.com
By Nouriel Roubini
T he global economy is starting to bottom out from the worst recession and financial crisis since the Great Depression. In the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 the rate at which most advanced economies were contracting was similar to the gross domestic product free-fall in the early stage of the Depression. Then, late last year, policymakers who had been behind the curve finally started to use most of the weapons in their arsenal.
That effort worked and the free-fall of economic activity eased. There are three open questions now on the outlook. When will the global recession be over? What will be the shape of the economic recovery? Are there risks of a relapse?
On the first question it looks like the global economy will bottom out in the second half of 2009. In many advanced economies (the US, UK, Spain, Italy and other eurozone members) and some emerging market economies (mostly in Europe) the recession will not be formally over before the end of the year, as green shoots are still mixed with weeds. In some other advanced economies (Australia, Germany, France and Japan) and most emerging markets (China, India, Brazil and other parts of Asia and Latin America) the recovery has already started.
via FT.com / Comment / Opinion – The risk of a double-dip recession is rising.
The empire’s operatives exposedhe Krongards, 9/11, and Blackwater/Iraq: T
OPS: I’ve been saying it for years – Some day will will learn that Blackwater was deeply involved in 9-11.
The empire’s operatives exposed: The Krongards, 9/11, and Blackwater/Iraq – By Larry Chin – Online Journal Associate Editor
New bombshell testimony before Congress has revealed that Alvin B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the former CIA executive director connected to 9/11 insider trading, is a consultant and advisory board member of Blackwater USA, the New World Order’s leading intelligence-related corporate mercenary death squad now under investigation for war crimes, murder, arms smuggling, and fraud in Iraq.
“Buzzy” Krongard’s Blackwater role was confirmed by “Buzzy”’s brother, Howard “Cookie” Krongard, who (not ironically) is the Bush/Cheney administration’s State Department’s inspector general, and the official under fire for stonewalling and quashing attempted probes of Blackwater’s operations.
It was during the last Wednesday’s hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Henry Waxman (D-CA), that “Cookie” Krongard denied, then confirmed later in the same testimony, the fact that his own brother was a Blackwater advisory board member throughout the period in which “Cookie” engaged in the cover-up of Blackwater. It is not known if “Cookie” Krongard lied, or was lied to, but he has now recused himself from “all matters having to do with Blackwater.”
As thoroughly documented by Michael C. Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, until 1997, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard was the vice chairman of investment bank A.B.Brown (Alex. Brown). A.B. Brown and its previous incarnations have been involved with Bush family business ventures for generations, including deals with the Carlyle Group. It was also one of many major investment houses implicated for money laundering in congressional probes.
via The empire’s operatives exposed: The Krongards, 9/11, and Blackwater/Iraq.
Customers call for Whole Foods boycott
Customers call for Whole Foods boycott - BBC NEWS
It’s the shop where wealthy American liberals buy their groceries.
But the American supermarket chain Whole Foods Market has found itself at the centre of a storm of controversy after its chief executive, John Mackey, wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal presenting a free market alternative to President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.
Mr Mackey began his article with a quote from Margaret Thatcher and went on to add that Americans do not have an intrinsic right to healthcare – an idea strongly at odds with the views of a large proportion of Whole Foods’ customer base.
The company, which has 270 stores in North America and the UK, sells organic vegetables, biodegradable washing powder and sustainable seafood to a well-heeled clientele and champions its liberal credentials.
via BBC NEWS | Business | Customers call for Whole Foods boycott.
-
Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
-
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
