Super PACs Are Making Their Rich Presence Felt in 2012 Campaigns

 

Friday 13 January 2012

by: David Goldstein, McClatchy Newspapers | Report

Washington - Super PACs are living up to their early billing as potential game-changers in the 2012 elections.

Free to flood a campaign with as much money as they can, these souped-up political action committees have already impacted the Republican presidential contest.

Newt Gingrich saw his sudden surge in Iowa squashed when super PAC allies of Mitt Romney spent millions on negative ads against the former speaker of the House of Representatives. Gingrich finished fourth in both the Iowa caucuses and in the New Hampshire primary.

But a $5 million pledge from a Las Vegas casino mogul and friend of Gingrich to a super PAC run by his supporters could help him make a stand in South Carolina's Republican primary on Jan. 21.

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Robert Greenwald and Reporter Michael Hastings Take on the Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War Machine

Hastings, in his hard-hitting new book, discusses "politically correct imperialism," why the military is obsessed with its legacy, and why we're stuck in post-9/11 thinking.

January 25, 2012

Not many journalists can say they had a hand in getting a commanding general relieved of duty in the middle of a war. But Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings did just that when his 2010 story on Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, sent shockwaves through Washington and resulted in McChrystal being recalled to DC and uneremoniously fired by Barack Obama.

Hastings' report, “The Runaway General,” detailed how McChrystal and his top officers spoke of their civilian superiors with sneering condescension, and revealed that they didn't genuinely embrace the counterinsurgency strategy being sold to the public at home. The piece was a result of fortuitous circumstances. Hastings had at first been allowed only controlled access to McCrystal, but when European air-traffic was grounded following the eruption of the Eyjafjöll volcano in Iceland, Hastings ended up catching a bus to Berlin with McChrystal and his staff, who let down their guard during the extended ride.  READ MORE

Why We Should Thank Stephen Colbert: 3 Ways the Culture-Jammer Exposes Our Rotten Corporate State

Colbert educates viewers on America's arcane political machinery, while schooling mainstream journalists on how to properly inform the citizenry.

 
January 26, 2012

He may no longer be running for president of the United States of South Carolina, but The Colbert Report's hyperreal satirist (and genuine nice guy) Stephen Colbert is still educating viewers on America's arcane political machinery, while schooling mainstream journalists on how to properly inform the citizenry. He's participated in the democratic process by recently launching the super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and campaigning for office in both 2008 and 2012. And he's amassed a well-funded war chest of still-unknown size, with which he plans on creating more attack ads to monkeywrench the electoral status quo, and perhaps more.   READ MORE

Why Is Type 1 Diabetes Rising Worldwide?

Why Is Type 1 Diabetes Rising Worldwide?

• By Maryn McKenna
• January 26, 2012

We’ve gotten sadly accustomed by now to warnings about obesity and its effect on health: joint damage, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and its complications such as blindness and amputation. We almost take for granted that as obesity increases worldwide, diabetes will also, and it is. That is, type 2 diabetes — the kind that is linked to obesity and used to be called adult-onset diabetes — is rising as obesity does.

But here’s a puzzle: Type 1 diabetes — the autoimmune disease that begins in childhood and used to be called juvenile-onset diabetes — is rising too, around the globe, at 3 percent to 5 percent per year. And at this point, no one can quite say why.


I have a column in the February Scientific American, on newsstands now and live on the web, exploring this conundrum. There is a raft of researchers exploring the issue, but so far there is only one thing they can say for sure: The increase, which began in the 1950s and accelerated in about the 1980s, is happening too fast to be due solely to genetic change. Something in the environment is driving the increase. But what?   READ MORE

Invisibility’s Next Frontier: Scientists Cloak 3-D Objects

• By Katie Drummond
• Email Author
• January 25, 2012 | 
• 7:00 pm | 
• Categories: Science! 

After five years of steady progress, scientists are now edging closer and closer to mastering real-world invisibility.

Sure, researchers have already made marked strides toward making objects unseeable. But much of the work was more like mimicry: Meta-materials that bent light around an object to conceal it, but only worked in two dimensions. Or a device that played tricks on the eye, by harnessing the mirage effect to make objects behind it “disappear.”

Now, a team of researchers have taken an incredible leap forward. They’ve successfully made a 3-D object disappear.

A group of scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have figured out how to “cloak a three-dimensional object standing in free space.” That means the object is invisible, from any angle of observation.

“This object’s invisibility is independent of where the observer is,” Professor Andrea Alu, the study’s co-author, tells Danger Room. “So you’d walk right around it, and never see it.”
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Watch: ‘Invisibility Cloak’ Uses Mirages to Make Objects Vanish 

FAMILY VALUES MAN

Oil-for-gold: Iran to dodge US ban with metal shield?

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Jan 24, 2012

The EU has delivered on its threat to ban the import of crude oil from Iran, in response to its nuclear programme. The latest round of sanctions prohibits any new oil contracts, while allowing for existing deals to run until July. But Tehran is apparently finding ways to keep business pumping. Reports say Iran will keep supplying one of its biggest customers - India - but will get payment in gold instead of dollars.

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