By David Edwards
Friday, January 13, 2012
Bill Maher on Thursday said that there was a connection between
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s sexual frustration and
his desire to bomb Iran.
In an interview with Chelsea Handler, Maher explained that former
candidate Herman Cain was scheduled to appear on an upcoming episode of
his HBO show.
“I like Herman Cain,” Maher admitted. “You know, I said to him, I
said, “Look, I don’t like hate your fucking guts like I hate Newt
Gingrich.’ I mean, I really don’t like him.”
“No, I hate Newt Gingrich,” Handler agreed. “And everyone watching also hates them, OK?”
Mayer said, however, that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was
the most ridiculous candidate because of his views on gay rights. READ MORE
The video:
A collection of articles defining our times. The pages contain clickable links, don't let the titles fool you, some of the best articles have very non-descript titles and there are usually more articles on the matters in the days and week pages the links land on so it's a sort of treasure hunt through history, Enjoy!
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From? Over 40% of Pills Made Overseas -- Many in Unregulated Factories
January 9, 2012
Headaches. Insomnia. Anxiety.
American medicine cabinets are packed with remedies for these common
maladies. And up to 40 percent of them are manufactured overseas (along
with 80 percent of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals). But a recent
report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that in
fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited just 11
percent of the 3,765 foreign factories it is responsible for inspecting —
compared to 40 percent of domestic factories. In 2008, the GAO found
that the FDA took two to five years to follow up with foreign plants it
cited for safety issues — if it followed up at all.
In
2008, 30 products made by a single Indian company were banned by the
FDA, and a tainted batch of the blood thinner heparin from one of many
hundreds of Chinese pharmaceutical plants was linked to 81 U.S. deaths. READ MORE
Don't Be Fooled -- Why the Tea Party Is More Powerful Than Ever
January 9, 2012
Go to the panels with the boring
names. That’s the secret to any political conference. Flashy names are
candy floss meant to tempt you into meetings that at best will tell you
what you already know, and at worst will bore you mindless.
That’s
the approach I take, anyway, at the 2011 Defending the American Dream
Summit, the annual megaconfab put on by Americans for Prosperity. This
is the Tea Party group chaired by the billionaire industrialist David
Koch with a budget, at last measure, of more than $40 million. Herman
Cain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani are all here to address thousands
of Tea Partiers. But the actual planning is happening in small
rooms, under titles like “Property Rights in Peril.” I head inside to
find AFP’s petite Oregon director, Karla Kay Edwards, clicking “Play” on
a PowerPoint. We see a map of the United States with public lands
marked in red.
“Dead capital is
property that has no possibility of securing property rights on it,”
says Edwards. “Folks, I submit to you that everything in red has no
possibility of securing property rights on it.”
A
few dozen Tea Party activists take it in, scribble down notes. They’re
spending two days in Washington, D.C., on heavily discounted tickets. If
they live close by—Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina—odds are that they
took a chartered bus here with fellow Tea Partiers. They’re the vanguard
of the movement, Republican precinct chairs and campaign volunteers,
and they are learning that the 2012 elections won’t count for much
unless victory results in a huge sell-off of public lands. READ MORE
Romney Screams "Pampered Elite": How Toxic Will His 1% Image Be in the Election?
January 13, 2012
Among those who have put themselves
forward, Mitt Romney remains the Republican Party’s best bet to reclaim
the White House this year – by far.
This
is partly by default, a product of the almost comical deficiencies of
his opponents, but Romney does deserve credit for assembling the most
professional campaign organization on the GOP side and for stepping up
his game compared to four years ago and turning in a series of
impressively punchy and agile debate performances. As he showed with his
New Hampshire victory speech this week, Romney is capable of delivering
a forceful indictment of the Obama presidency that (however misleading
it is) could resonate with swing voters this fall if they are looking
for a reason to fire the incumbent.
Still,
his nomination could be problematic for the GOP for a very unique
reason that is now coming into focus: He exudes top 1 percent-ness. READ MORE
How Genetically Modified Foods Could Affect Our Health in Unexpected Ways
January 11, 2012
Chinese researchers have found
small pieces of rice ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of
humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this
genetic material will bind to receptors in human liver cells and
influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood.
The type of RNA in question is called microRNA (abbreviated to miRNA)
due to its small size. MiRNAs have been studied extensively since their
discovery ten years ago, and have been implicated as players in several
human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. They
usually function by turning down or shutting down certain genes. The
Chinese research provides the first in vivo example of ingested plant miRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function in this way. READ MORE
Confiscating Condoms? The Dumbfounding Ways Police Deal With Prostitution
 |
| Photo Credit: coreyann on Flickr |
January 13, 2012
It's not enough for some lawmakers that for the better part of a century, selling and buying sex has been illegal in every state of the union. (The exception is the system of legalized brothels dotting a handful of low-population counties in Nevada, the existence of which has done little to deter an underground, illegal sex trade.) Each year, scores of new laws are proposed to make prostitution somehow even more illegal than it already is.
These laws against prostitution don't simply increase penalties for buying or selling sex; they extend to creating criminal consequences for every aspect of sex workers' lives. After just one prostitution arrest, a person can be denied a job, an apartment, or the right to parent her children. She could find herself followed by police just for leaving her home.
Though it's now fashionable for some anti-prostitution activists and lawmakers to position these laws as being of aid to prostitutes, there is absolutely no moral or legal basis for arresting and jailing a person “for her own good.” Yet this is what we have been told about sex workers: that the conditions of prostitution are so horrific that a jail cell is preferable. For sex workers who escape that cell, they still must face the consequences of their prostitution arrest, and in some cases, for the rest of their lives. Today's new anti-prostitution laws don't stop anyone from buying or selling sex – instead, they serve as tools for chipping away at people's rights through profiling and surveillance, a 21st-century continuation of the Scarlet Letter, establishing an entire underclass of people. READ MORE
Report: US, Afghan Troops Forced Locals to Walk Mined Road
Villagers in Afghanistan say they were forced to walk ahead of Afghan and U.S. Soldiers along roads in areas believed to be mined by the Taliban.
National Public Radio reports villagers said the Afghan and U.S. troops pulled them from their homes one evening in early September and forced them to walk in front of the troops for more than a mile in the Panjwai district, southwest of Kandahar city.
No one was injured, but if the incident happened, it would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of civilians, NPR said.
The Afghan general in charge of Afghan troops in the Panjwai district and Panjwai's district governor denied the villagers' accounts, while a spokesman for NATO's joint command said the incident was under investigation. READ MORE
John Bolton Admits All of These Wars Are for Oil
 | |
| During an interview on Fox News, John Bolton let it slip that we have been fighting wars for oil. (photo: EPA) |
25 October 11
Selling the Right to Live in America
25 October 11
Why we shouldn't be selling the right to live in America.
merica is having a fire sale. Why not sell wealthy foreigners the right to live here, too?
That's the notion behind a bill introduced last week
by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Democrat Senator Charles
Schumer of New York: Stoke demand for American homes by allowing foreign
nationals to buy them. In return, give foreigners the right to live
here (although not work here).
The price? At least $500,000 cash. It could be one
piece of real estate costing $500,000 or more, or several - one would
have to be worth at least $250,000.
Presumably, this would help homeowners by boosting
demand. "This is a way to create more demand without costing the federal
government a nickel," Schumer told the Wall Street Journal.
And it would help the Street. Rather than have the big
banks carry all those non-performing mortgage loans on their books or
be forced to write them down, we'll just goose the housing market by
selling off the right to live in America. READ MORE
East Bay firm keeps log of private cars' locations
 |
Sacramento's Arden Fair mall uses eight license
plate scanners. The mall's security chief says the scanners have led to
dozens of arrests and a significant decrease in car thefts.
|
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private company in Livermore has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million bits of information that let police know when and where specific license plates of both innocent and criminal drivers were spotted.
The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It's also evidence that 21st century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.
A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.
Glenn Greenwald: The Real Reason the GOP Primary Is a Pathetic, Incompetent Clown Show
Because Barack Obama has adopted so many core Republican beliefs
-- particularly in the realm of foreign policy -- the Republican race is
a shambles.
December 27, 2011 |American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation's airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America's tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.
The
Republican presidential primaries – shortly to determine who will be
the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next
November – has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has
devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with
the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free,
anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of
defeating the president.
In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon),
party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to
the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were
subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party's ostensibly more
respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly
rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus
slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely
malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.
Bernanke's Obfuscation Continues: The Fed's $29 Trillion Bail-Out Of Wall Street
Posted: 12/14/11 09:07 AM ET
Since the global financial crisis began in 2007, Chairman Bernanke has striven to save Wall Street's biggest banks while concealing his actions from Congress by a thick veil of secrecy. It literally took an act of Congress plus a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Bloomberg to get him to finally release much of the information surrounding the Fed's actions. Since that release, there have been several reports that tallied up the Fed's largess. Most recently, Bloomberg provided an in-depth analysis of Fed lending to the biggest banks, reporting a sum of $7.77 trillion. On December 8, Bernanke struck back with a highly misleading and factually incorrect memo countering Bloomberg's report. Bloomberg has largely vindicated its analysis.
Any fair-minded reader would conclude that Bernanke's memo to Senators Johnson and Shelby and Representatives Bachus and Frank is misleading. One could even conclude that it is not just a veil of secrecy, but rather a fog of deceit that the Fed is trying to throw over Congress.
READ MORE
Google For It
The Fed's $29 Trillion Bail-out of Wall Street - EconoMonitor
AllGov - News - The Real Wall Street Bailout Totaled $29 Trillion
Bailout Total: $29.616 Trillion Dollars | The Big Picture
Bail-out Bombshell: Fed "Emergency" Bank Rescue Totaled $29
$29 Trillion Bailout: Response to Critics « Multiplier Effect
The Size of the Bank Bailout: $29 Trillion - US Business News Blog
The G.O.P.’s ‘Black People’ Platform
 |
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Charles M. Blow
|
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: January 6, 2012
That didn’t take long.
You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.
On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he’s saying that he didn’t say “black people” at all but that he “started to say a word” and then “sort of mumbled it and changed my thought.”
(Pause as I look askance and hum an incredulous, “Uh huh.”) READ MORE
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Say What? Company Off the Hook on Providing Clean Water to Residents Screwed by Gas Drilling
Rick Perry recently made the ludicrous statement that there is not “a single incident of unsafe hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.” Tell that to the residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania who are finally settling a case around methane leaks in local water supplies.
After
finding Cabot Oil & Gas Company responsible for the methane
contamination of 18 domestic water wells in northeast Pennsylvania, state
regulators now say the company can discontinue providing water to
affected residents because it has met the terms of a legal settlement
with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Next
up is a decision by regulators on Cabot’s request to resume drilling
for natural gas in Dimock, PA, where the methane contamination incidents
– featured in the movie “Gasland” – have given the town a central role
in the ongoing controversy over drilling for shale gas using hydraulic
fracturing. Dimock is in the heart of the Marcellus Shale formation that
stretches from southwestern New York State to western Virginia.
Residents
of Dimock began complaining of exploding water wells and discolored,
foul-smelling water shortly after Cabot began drilling in August, 2008. READ MORE
Will Obama Issue an Order Exposing Big Corporate Political Spenders in Citizens United Era?
A executive order requiring that
federal contractors disclose their electoral spending—by top officers
and as corporations—is being reconsidered by the White House despite
stiff opposition from the business lobby after it was first proposed
last spring, according to civil rights attorneys working on the issue.
“There’s a lot of movement at the White House,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.
“I just had a meeting at the White House counsel’s office, trying to
encourage them to move forward with the executive order. They have the
perfect window of opportunity to get the executive order done.”
“It’s
simple—any company that is paid with taxpayer dollars should be
required to disclose political contributions,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo,
D-Calif., who has pushed for the White House to issue the order. “With
public dollars come public responsibilities, and I hope President Obama
will issue his executive order right away.” READ MORE
Meet the Man Behind "Citizens United": What Does the Ultra-Conservative Lawyer Have Planned Next?
Wedged up against the Illinois
border on the banks of the Wabash River, Terre Haute, Indiana, has seen
better days. Many factories have closed, and downtown has too many
vacant storefronts. But there are signs of activity: Indiana State
University has grown, the federal prison still provides reliable
jobs—and the ten-lawyer litigation machine that occupies the offices of
attorney James Bopp Jr. at the corner of 6th and Wabash is going full
tilt.
Bopp is best known as
the lawyer behind a case involving a 90-minute film made in 2008
attacking then–presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Bopp’s suit
ultimately resulted in the landmark 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision,
in which the Supreme Court held that corporate funding of independent
political broadcasts such as the movie and its promotional ads were
legitimate expressions of free speech and couldn’t be limited by
campaign-finance laws. The ruling overturned key restrictions on the use
of corporate and union money in politics.
Bopp
is already well into the next phase of his crusade to topple as many of
the state and federal limits on the role of money in politics as can be
done in one man’s lifetime. READ MORE
Marines to probe video of soldiers urinating on corpses
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Military officials said Wednesday that they’re investigating a video published online showing four men in U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) uniforms urinating on several lifeless bodies purported to be dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
“While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps,” a USMC spokeswoman told celebrity gossip website TMZ. ”This matter will be fully investigated and those responsible will be held accountable for their actions.”
The video was published by an unknown person with a caption that reads, “scout sniper team 4 with 3rd battalion 2nd marines out of camp lejeune peeing on dead talibans.”
The men pictured have not been positively identified and it was not clear when the video was shot.
An uncensored version of the footage was available via YouTube.
From the site click here
Huge Blow to Science Deniers: Koch Funded Researchers Confirm Global Warming
October 25, 2011
Physicists are notorious for believing that other scientists are mathematically incompetent. And University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard Muller is notorious for believing that conventional wisdom is often wrong. For example, the conventional wisdom about climate change. Muller has criticized Al Gore in the past as an "exaggerator," has spoken warmly of climate skeptic Anthony Watts, and has said that Steve McIntyre's famous takedown of the "hockey stick" climate graph made him "uncomfortable" with the paper the hockey stick was originally based on.
So in 2010 he started up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) to show the world how to do climate analysis right. Who better, after all? "Muller's views on climate have made him a darling of skeptics," said Scientific American, "and newly elected Republicans in the House of Representatives, who invited him to testify to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology about his preliminary results." The Koch Foundation, founded by the billionaire oil brothers who have been major funders of the climate-denial machine, gave BEST a $150,000 grant. READ MORE
Nuclear Disaster in the US: How Bechtel Is Botching the World's Costliest Environmental Cleanup
October 21, 2011
Razor wire surrounds Hanford’s
makeshift borders while tattered signs warn of potential contamination
and fines for those daring enough to trespass. This vast stretch of
eastern Washington, covering more than 580 square miles of high desert
plains, is rural Washington at its most serene. But it’s inaccessible
for good reason: It is, by all accounts, a nuclear wasteland.
During
World War II, the Hanford Reservation was chosen by the federal
government as a location to carry out the covert Manhattan Project.
Later, plutonium produced at Hanford provided fuel for the "Fat Man"
bomb that President Truman ordered to be dropped on Nagasaki in 1945,
killing upward of 80,000 Japanese. In all, nine nuclear reactors were
built at Hanford, the last of which ceased operation in 1987. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that as a result of the
nuclear work done at Hanford's facilities, 43 million cubic yards of
radioactive waste were produced and more than 130 million cubic yards of
soil ultimately were contaminated.
Pat Robertson: GOP Base Is Becoming Too Extreme
25 October 11
This
is no joke. The granddaddy of extreme GOP views has warned the current
crop of candidates against adopting extreme GOP views. -- JPS/RSN
Televangelist and mogul Pat Robertson - a man whose name is practically synonymous with the Religious Right - likely took 700 Club viewers by surprise today when he opined that the Republican base is losing support by "pushing" what he described as "an extreme position."
Robertson expressed worry that Republican front
runners are going to alienate voters during the general election by
catering to a narrow base:
Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They're forcing their leaders, the front runners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election. Now whether this did it to Cain, I don't know, but nevertheless, you know, you appeal to the narrow base and they'll applaud the daylights out of what you're saying, and then you hit the general election and they say "no way" and then the Democrat, whoever it is, is going to just play these statements to the hilt. They've got to stop this! It's just so counterproductive! READ MORE
Greed is good? Not a chance!!!
One can only be "greedy" when, knowing the outcome already, they place a "wager" -- which is really no wager at all -- of such size that they risk giving away the fact that they have advanced knowledge. So, in short, greed is parasitism carried to ridiculous heights. Heights, such that, the fraud being perpetrated, is placed at risk of being revealed, simply because the actors acquisitiveness can't be contained.
In the marketplace, investors use various strategies to contain and/or offset the risk they must take to make money. While the greedy, merely work to gain foreknowledge of already known outcomes, and seek to take full advantage of that knowledge. This actually introduces a cost to the market, rather than doing anyone but the perp, any good. Therefore greed does nothing good for the market at all! In fact it is a negative that destroys trust and does damage to the market. Ayn would have you believe that people, taking advantage of unfair and likely prohibited situations, are to be lauded and held in high esteem, when, in fact, they should be scorned, castigated and shunned, if indeed not punished.
Since it is her central theme, this attempt to turn bad into good, that underlay all her thoughts on matters, she totally fails. People who follow her missives advice are either twisted themselves, or hopelessly unable to think clearly enough, to see that she is ultimately wrong. By her metrics Bonny and Clyde are to be lauded for how, their efforts and greed, inspired the banking security industry, rather than opposed for the crimes they committed.
Real investors are risk takers, they do not know the outcome of what they've wagered on. They have only certain, perhaps educated, guesses about what kind of outcome to expect, but beyond that they can't know anything for certain, because they're not using knowledge certain, of things already done and decided. After the coin lands heads up, any wager made then is not a bet but trickery. Ayn Rand would have you believe otherwise!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Confiscated bushmeat 'poses virus threat'
 |
| Much of the trade in wildlife meat, or bushmeat, has its origin in Africa |
Scientists have documented potentially dangerous viruses entering the US through illegally imported wildlife products.
Retroviruses and herpesviruses were identified, some of them isolated from remains of endangered monkey species.
The research study is reported in the journal PLoS One.
Its authors say better surveillance measures are needed to ensure this trade does not result in the emergence of new disease outbreaks in humans.
"Although the findings to date are from a small pilot study, they remind us of the potential public health risk posed by illegal importation of wildlife products - a risk we hope to better characterize through expanded surveillance at ports of entry around the country," said Dr Kristine Smith, from EcoHealth Alliance, who led the investigation team.
Scientists estimate that some 75% of emerging infectious diseases affecting people have come from contact with wildlife.
Some of this is the result of animals biting humans, but the handling and consumption of infected meats is also considered a significant route of transmission.
Classic examples of infections that have jumped across the species include HIV/Aids, which is thought to have originated in primates, and Sars, an infection that caused global concern in 2003.
Follow-up work traced its beginnings to Chinese restaurant workers butchering the cat-like Asian palm civet. READ MORE
This is where giving money to "Job Creators" goes wrong!
This is where we go wrong. Believing that the industrial age brought goods and services. It didn't! What goods and services could any industry bring anyone, if no one could afford them? Henry Ford made cars because he hoped he could find a market for them, not just by selling them to people who could afford them, but by making the cars cheaply enough so that more people could afford them.
Before Henry Ford set up his assembly line production methods, people were making cars, but since only the wealthy could afford them, they would not make very many. Part of the high cost of owning a car was, because there were so many "proprietary" models, you could only get parts from your cars maker, who owned the specifications and knowledge needed to make repairs to their product. So they could charge whatever they wanted and you had no choice but to pay. Henry Ford, not only standardized the parts, he also raised his employee's wages, to make them his customers and a sales force of sorts as well.
Republicans want you to think that someone, anyone, can simply create a new product and presto the jobs appear. How many new products, over the years, have been created, for which no market could be found? Or which no market would support? Scads! The products either cost too much to find a wide enough market, or ran up against competition from people who were able to produce it cheaply enough, to find wide market acceptance.
Betamax was superior to VHS, but the makers refused to lower their prices, to where the average person could afford it. So, the lesser VHS, came in cheaper and was snapped up by the masses. The producers of movies and shows saw the VHS market swelling, while the Betamax market was slow and stagnant, so they began producing movies and shows in VHS format. By the time Betamax decided to lower their prices, few if any users owned any of their machines. So there was less produced to play on that format. Mostly they'd sold Betamax to producers who needed their higher quality for production. Unfortunately these "rich" consumers, weren't enough to support mass marketing of the Betamax machines, so they went out of business, creating no new jobs, and in fact costing many people their jobs.
This is where we are today with our entire market. New products are few, because consumers who can afford them are few. In fact, many products that already had a wide market, are too expensive now that so many people have lost their jobs, so the products have lost their market. When you have to front millions of dollars to bring a new product to market, you'd better be sure that there are millions of consumers clamoring for it. If not, you'll soon be bankrupt, even while millions of people stand, looking in store windows, wishing they had the bucks to buy it if they could. If these big mfg's lose money they've borrowed from banks, then the banks must tighten their lending. That means more lost jobs all around.
So, as you can see, new products alone don't create new jobs and may take jobs away! Keep giving money to "job creators" who have no market and you're just wasting your money! Sure, they'll bring new products to market, but with only the 1% able to afford them, they'll soon be filing for bankruptcy, costing their bankers and investors money and forcing them to tighten up on new lending. Which puts existing jobs at risk.
Analysis: Human genome hype or reality?
 |
| One day will all children have their genes mapped at birth? |
It seems a long time since Tony Blair and Bill Clinton announced the first draft of the human genome had been completed.
Almost 12 years on, you could perhaps be forgiven for thinking it's been a long time coming. Here's one of the big dreams. One day every newborn will have their entire genetic code mapped. Then, if a doctor ever needs that information, they can check for secrets to molecular diseases buried in our DNA.
Here's another. A patient is diagnosed with cancer. During their biopsy, a tiny sample of the tissue sent to pathology is used to read all the billions of the genetic letters in the human genome. A clinician can then use that information to prescribe the right drugs.
The first scenario is a long way off. And it won't mean much unless mass decoding efforts create a database of genomes - a kind of catalogue of human genes - as a reference library.
The second is already happening. But it will be a while before the advances filter through to the majority of NHS cancer patients. READ MORE
Skyscrapers 'linked with impending financial crashes'
 |
| Burj Khalifa Dubai and other tall buildings |
There is an "unhealthy
correlation" between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent
financial crashes, according to Barclays Capital.
China is currently the biggest builder of skyscrapers, the bank said.
India also has 14 skyscrapers under construction.
"Often the world's tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and an impending economic correction," Barclays Capital analysts said. READ MORE
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Immunity and Impunity in Elite America
 |
| Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon, center, leave the White House, 03/28/09. (photo: Getty Images) |
25 October 11
As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding - indeed, an integral part of it.
Income inequality has worsened over the past several
years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is
not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid
rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process:
"During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United
States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained
economic growth - the ‘seven fat years' and the ‘long boom.' Yet from
1980 to 2005, more than 80% of total increase in Americans'
income went to the top 1%. Economic growth was more sluggish in the
aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20%. Yet
virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and
lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their
heads."
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top 1% of earners in America have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades. READ MORE
Surprise! Pat Buchanan's Book Is Riddled With Racism
 |
| Not Everyone is a racist Pat! |
You know, because to Uncle Pat, things were so much better in the glory old era of segregation:
Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.
Also, this little gem:
Before the 1960s, equality meant every citizen enjoyed the same
constitutional rights and the equal protection of existing laws. Nothing
in the Constitution or federal law mandated social, racial, or gender
equality.
Read all Rayfield's findings here, and an earlier AlterNet story wondering why this bigoted man is still given a position of influence at MSNBC and elsewhere.
By Sarah Seltzer
| Sourced from
AlterNet
Judges Lock-Up Kids For Cash
A former juvenile court judge in Pennsylvania was sentenced to 28 years in prison for his part in an alleged "kids for cash" scam considered one of the worst judicial scandals in US history.
Mark Ciavarella Jr., 61, a former judge in Luzerne County, was also ordered to pay $1.17 million in restitution.
Mr. Ciavarella was convicted in federal court in Scranton, Pa., in February on charges that he and a second judge, Michael Conahan, ran the local court system as a racketeering enterprise.
Scientology Targeted "South Park" Creators After Spoof Episode
Long before Trey Parker and Matt Stone were Tony Award winners for skewering Mormonism lovingly, they were causing controversy within Scientology. Specifically, a 2005 episode of South Park which
poked fun at Scientologist beliefs along with many of its practitioners
(Tom Cruise, obviously, and John Travolta, to name two).
The airing
prompted Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist who had voiced the role of the
Chef for many years, to quit his role. Cruise threatened to stymie
publicity efforts for Paramount Pictures' Mission Impossible III if the episode was re-aired on Comedy Central (both were Viacom holdings; it was not rerun).
But that wasn't the only backlash. Today the Village Voice points out that Marty Rathbun, defected Scientologist, has published an alleged internal memo that says Parker and Stone were targeted for their humorous critique of the famously insular religion: READ MORE
Manliness in a Can? Dr. Pepper's New Soda Is a Laugh
If
you worry that American corporations have lost the innovative, can-do
edge necessary to compete in today's global economy, you need to spend
some time with Dr Pepper.
I
don't mean a shrink, but the soft-drink. It's a brand that, let's face
it, has seemed a bit stodgy. But — Pow! — no more. Meet Dr Pepper Ten, a
brand-new concoction that promises to deliver the impossible: a macho
diet soda. How's that for innovation?
It
seems that the honchos over at the Dr Pepper Snapple Group have done
intensive market analysis and found that men think of diet drinks
as...well, girly. So they flinch at buying them.
No
sweat, said the corporate alchemists, we'll make a manned-up soda that
has only 10 calories, but still contains a manly dose of real sugar and
other stuff. It's low-cal, but none may dare call it "diet."
Corporate
officials won't disclose what's in the formula that supposedly will
make men salivate for a can of Ten, but the key ingredient seems to be
raw hucksterism. The pepped-up Dr Pepper is being launched with a
massive, testosterone-infused ad campaign that bluntly proclaims: "It's
not for women."
Be the first on your block to turn your manhood into something no woman would go near! HA!
The 147 Banks and Super-Companies that Run The Entire World Economy
In other words: valuable data which will not only strengthen OWS' political arguments but will help us identify whether, and how, the global economy is unstable. READ MORE
Read the full summary and list at New Scientist.
Republican Jobs Plan: An Economy for the 1%
October 24, 2011
Republicans jammed together a mess of old, failed and vague schemes and called it a jobs bill. Sen. John McCain conceded the reason for the rehash: “Part of it is in response to the president saying we don’t have a proposal.”
They
still don’t. This despite the fact that they promised voters during
their campaign to take control of the U.S. House one year ago that
they’d create jobs. That they’d focus on jobs. That nothing was more
important to them than jobs.
Now,
what they’ve offered instead of actual jobs is a polyglot of GOP
talking points. It’s certainly no vision to move the country forward.
It’s a plot to set the country back – to repeal the health care law that
will soon help provide coverage for the nearly 50 million Americans
without insurance, to rescind the Wall Street reform law designed to
prevent another financial sector-caused meltdown, and to thwart
regulations, like those that stopped distribution of listeria-infected
cantaloupe that killed 25.
GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio called the Republican polyglot a “pro-growth
proposal to create the environment for jobs.” It is, in fact, a
pro-business proposal to permit corporations to destroy the environment
for humans. READ MORE
4 Polls That Show Occupy Wall Street is Just Getting Started
October 24, 2011
After over a month of
demonstrations, numerous dismissals, and thousands of arrests, Occupy
Wall Street is gaining momentum. Over the last two weeks, polls have
poured in revealing that Americans familiar with the protests largely
support them. And since that familiarity will continue to increase, we
can only conclude that the country's support for the movement will keep
on growing. When you've got NYT pundit Charles Blow unfurling his hipster flag comparing OWS to legendary 90s band Nirvana, you know a tipping point has been reached!
Recent polls prove that when Americans hear this band, they dig it.
Here’s a round-up:
READ MORE
Worst Food Additive Ever? It's in Half of All Foods We Eat and Its Production Destroys Rainforests and Enslaves Children
 |
| Palm Oil Plantation |
October 24, 2011
On August 10, police and security
for the massive palm oil corporation Wilmar International (of which
Archer Daniels Midland is the second largest shareholder) stormed a
small, indigenous village
on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They came with bulldozers and
guns, destroying up to 70 homes, evicting 82 families, and arresting 18
people. Then they blockaded the village, keeping the villagers in -- and
journalists out. (Wilmar claims it has done no wrong.)
The
village, Suku Anak Dalam, was home to an indigenous group that observes
their own traditional system of land rights on their ancestral land
and, thus, lacks official legal titles to the land. This is common among
indigenous peoples around the world -- so common, in fact, that it is
protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
 |
| Rafflesia arnoldii |
Indonesia, for the record, voted in favor
of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Yet the
government routinely sells indigenous peoples' ancestral land to
corporations. Often the land sold is Indonesia's lowland rainforest,
a biologically rich area home to endangered species like the orangutan,
Asian elephant, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger, and the plant Rafflesia arnoldii, which produces the world's largest flower. READ MORE
Racial Profiling on an “Industrial Scale”: FBI Using Census Data to Map and Police Communities By Race
This story originally appeared at Salon.
New documents obtained
by the ACLU show that the FBI has for years been using Census data to
“map” ethnic and religious groups suspected of being likely to commit
certain types of crimes.
Much is
still not known about the apparent large-scale effort in racial
profiling, partly because the documents the ACLU obtained through public
records requests are heavily redacted.
The FBI maintains that
the mapping program is designed to “better understand the communities
that are potential victims of the threats,” but the ACLU says it is
plainly unconstitutional.
To
learn more about the FBI program, its implications for civil liberties
and the questions that remain unanswered, I spoke to Michael German,
policy counsel at the ACLU’s Washington office and a former FBI agent.
What is the new information that has come to light here? READ MORE
Monday, January 9, 2012
Preppy protester: The moment a 19-year-old Mitt Romney demonstrated in favour of Vietnam War draft
 |
| Fortunate son: Mr Romney's status as a 'Mormon missionary' meant he was exempt from the Vietnam War draft |
- Teenage Romney takes unpopular stance in favour of south-east Asian war
- But his status as 'Mormon missionary' exempted him from the draft
- Future GOP presidential candidate dressed in smart, preppy clothes
- Romney's father George was the Governor of Michigan at the time
Last updated at 1:06 PM on 6th January 2012
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