Fact-Checkers Stymied as Romney and Ryan Recall Their Seafaring Days

Now that a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations have cited candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for repeatedly lying about Obama’s record, Messrs. Romney and Ryan have begun telling whoppers that have nothing to do with their quest to hold the most powerful offices in the world.

Both candidates have stated that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare; that Obama closed a GM factory in Janesville, WI, when it was actually closed before he took office; and that his Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

Fresh out of political falsehoods, but seemingly pathological fabulists, Romney and Ryan spun unverifiable yarns about their exploits at sea.

“Ahoy me fine reporters,” Ryan began the press conference. “If ye be lookin’ for gripping adventure on the high seas, Mitt Romney be the man for ye,” he said, gesturing to the Republican presidential hopeful.

Romney chortled and said, “Of course, Paul is only kidding. But he hoisted me mizzenmast and shivered me timbers, yar!”

At that, the two men laughed hysterically. When Ryan pulled himself together, he added, “No, no, really. As crewmembers aboard the Farley Mowat, we spent months hunting down the Japanese whaling fleet near Antarctica. Isn’t that right, Mitt?” READ MORE

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The Conservative Psyche: How Ordinary People Come to Embrace Paul Ryan's Cruelty

Scientific research into the way we think explains the reasons decent people wind up supporting horrific policies.

August 19, 2012

Earlier this year, Democratic operatives looking for the best way to define Mitt Romney discovered something interesting about Paul Ryan's budget. The New York Times reported that when the details of his proposals were run past focus groups, they found that the plan is so cruel that voters “ simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”

In addition to phasing out the Earned Income Tax Credit that keeps millions of American families above the poverty line and cutting funding for children's healthcare in half, Jonathan Cohn described the “America that Paul Ryan envisions” like this:

Many millions of working-age Americans would lose health insurance. Senior citizens would anguish over whether to pay their rent or their medical bills, in a way they haven’t since the 1960s. Government would be so starved of resources that, by 2050, it wouldn’t have enough money for core functions like food inspections and highway maintenance.READ MORE

Chemist in drug lab scandal posts $10,000 bail

Annie Dookhan  Finally Arrested

By Erin Smith, Joe Dwinell And O’ryan Johnson
Friday, September 28, 2012 - Updated 1 day ago

Annie Dookhan, the former state chemist at the center of a massive lab scandal which may jeopardize thousands of drug cases, could face decades behind bars if convicted, said Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Dookhan, 34, pleaded not guilty this afternoon in Boston Municipal Court to two counts of obstruction of justice and falsely pretending to hold a degree from a college or university. She posted $10,000 bail late this afternoon.

Prosecutors said today Dookhan would sprinkle cocaine on negative test results, test them again, and report the positive finding; and test a few samples out of a batch of 25 and list them all as positive.

Coakley added Dookhan could face more charges as the investigation continues. Each obstruction charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

“This is not the end of the charging,” Coakley vowed.

State police arrested Dookhan this morning at her home in Franklin, leading her out of her modest split-level after handcuffing her inside shortly before noon. She did not speak and kept her head down as she was led down her walkway in front of reporters to one unmarked police car, then again to a cruiser which sped away up the suburban street not far from Interstate 495 with the rogue chemist inside.  READ MORE

‘Frightening’ influx of criminals feared

Eyed as fallout from drug lab scandal

By Dave Wedge

READ MORE

Coming to the night sky, the comet fifteen times brighter than the moon

Comet ISON is so named because it was first spotted on
photos taken by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok
from Russia using the International Scientific Optical
Network telescope Photo: E. Guido, G. Sostero and
N. Howes

September 26, 2012, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

Astronomers have discovered a new supercomet that will be fifteen times brighter than the moon when it crosses the night sky next year. 

Calculations show that the celestial visitor could be dazzlingly bright in November 2013 and be easily visible in broad daylight as it rounds the Sun. 

Comet ISON is so named because it was first spotted on photos taken by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok from Russia using the International Scientific Optical Network telescope. 

It is currently very faint because it is out in the depths of space near Jupiter's orbit. But it will steadily brighten over the coming months until it passes less than two million km from the Sun on November 28. 

That makes it a type of comet called a sungrazer, and there is a risk that the comet - essentially a giant ball of rock and ice, will break up when it makes that close approach. Comet ISON, which has the official label C/2012 S1, appears to be on a nearly parabolic orbit which leads scientists to believe that it is making its first trip through the Solar System. 

This means it may have been dislodged from a vast reservoir of icy debris surrounding the Sun far beyond the planets, called the Oort Cloud. It is a giant ball of rock and ice that is likely to be packed with volatiles including water ice that will erupt as brilliant jets of gas and dust when it is at its best. READ MORE

Why the US demonises Venezuela's democracy

October 3, 2012, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)

On 30 May, Dan Rather, one of America's best-known journalists, referred to [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez as "the dictator" – a term that few, if any, political scientists familiar with the country would countenance. 

Here is what Jimmy Carter said about Venezuela's "dictatorship" a few weeks ago: "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." Carter won a Nobel prize for his work through the election-monitoring Carter Center, which has observed and certified past Venezuelan elections. The opposition will probably lose this election ... because the living standards of the majority of Venezuelans have dramatically improved under Chávez. 

Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. 

 Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998. 

In Washington, democracy has a simple definition: does a government do what the state department wants it to do?

Note: For a powerful movie which shows how much our media distorts our perception of global events, watch "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez at this link. 

For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on mass media corruption, click here.

Billionaire Koch brothers try to buy state’s court

Koch Brothers

September 29, 2012, Miami Herald

The new stealth campaign against three Florida Supreme Court justices is being backed by those meddling right-wing billionaires from Wichita, Charles and David Koch. 

 Last week they uncorked the first of a series of commercials from their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity. The targets are Justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince. They were three of the five-vote majority that in 2010 knocked down a half-baked amendment slapped together by state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act. 

The Florida Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions in finding that the proposed amendment contained “misleading and ambiguous language,” the hallmark of practically everything produced by this Legislature. 

On the November ballot, Lewis, Pariente and Quince are up for merit retention, meaning voters can choose to retain them or not. This simple system was put in place to keep the state’s high court above the sleaze of political races.  

The mission of the Kochs, hiding as always behind their super PAC, is to get the three justices dumped at the polls so that Gov. Rick Scott can appoint replacements. 

The last thing these guys want is fair judges who know the law; they want partisan judges who’ll obediently support their political agenda. It’s worse than just trying to buy an election. It’s trying to hijack Florida’s justice system at the highest levels.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the control of elections by corporations and rich individuals, click here.

Study: Scientific research fraud on the rise

Fraud in scientific research, while still rare, is growing at a troubling pace, a new study finds. A review of retractions in medical and biological peer-reviewed journals finds the percentage of studies withdrawn because of fraud or suspected fraud has jumped substantially since the mid-1970s. 

In 1976, there were fewer than 10 fraud retractions for every 1 million studies published, compared with 96 retractions per million in 2007. The study authors aren't quite sure why this is happening. But they and outside experts point to pressure to hit it big in science, both for funding and attention, and to what seems to be a subtle increase in deception in overall society that science may simply be mirroring. 

Fraud in life sciences research is still minuscule and committed by only a few dozen scientific scofflaws. However, it causes big problems, said Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. 

Casadevall is the lead author of the study which looked at the reasons for 2,047 retractions among many millions of studies published in journals and kept in a government database. Fraud was the No. 1 cause of retractions, accounting for 43 percent of them. 

When fraud was combined with other areas of misconduct, such as plagiarism, it explained about 2 out of 3 retractions, the study found. "Very few people are doing it, but when they do it, they are doing it in areas that are very important," Casadevall said. "And when these things come out, society loses faith in science."

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in science, click here.