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‘Lumpectomy’ for Localized Prostate Cancer
Fitness Myths You Need to Forget
Plant Compound Resveratrol Shown to Suppresses Inflammation, Free Radicals in Humans
White Button Mushrooms Enhance Immune System Activity
Plus lots more.
Two-thirds of women report sex problems
10 tips to boost your metabolism
Is Beer Good for Your Bones?
Eat These “Top 3″ Antioxidant-Rich Veggies
Plus lots more.
Longtime political reporter Walter Shapiro thinks it’s time for another bloggers ethics panel. Because those horrible, horrible bloggers are posting erroneous stories just to beat the news cycle! (Bad, bad bloggers!)…
As a rule of thumb, liberal bloggers aren’t the ones with the “slippery ethics.” If [Shapiro wasn’t] a lazy “he said, she said” journalist who throws false equivalence into a story to appear “fair,” [he’d] know that liberal bloggers, much like the corporate journalists, actually do attempt to get the facts straight. (Even though most of us aren’t getting paid to do so.) We don’t manufacture stories out of whole cloth, nor do we knowingly twist and distort the facts. (*cough* Judy Miller *cough*)
You don’t, Susie, but some did–during the 2008 primary. Against their own side. Some of the websites that have done really commendable work (i.e. attorney firings) were also some of the worst when it came to vilifying Hillary (i.e., Whoever Kidnapped Josh Marshall).
New Scientist:
Climategate scientist breaks his silence
With inquiries into the affair now complete, Phil Jones reflects on his bruising experiences at the centre of the storm…
Some of your critics say the emails revealed distortions of peer review. In one, for instance, you wrote about keeping papers out of the IPCC report “even if we have to redefine peer review literature”.
PJ Muir Russell showed that to be wrong. He found there was no perversion of the peer-review process. The papers that we were referring to in that email were bad science. One was involved in a long saga in which half the editorial board of the journal that published it resigned.
Also in New Scientist:
Editorial: End dirty tactics in the climate war
Dream on, scientists. The dirty tactics won’t stop until they no longer work. And that depends on us.
AP, via Washington Post:
Shirley Sherrod suing Andrew Breitbart
SAN DIEGO — Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod says she will sue a conservative blogger who posted an edited video of her making racially tinged remarks last week.
Sherrod made the announcement Thursday in San Diego at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention.
Why Fad Diets Work Well for Some, but Not Others
Weight Issues Move Up Need for Walkers, Canes, Other Devices
Tip of the Week: Comfort Food or Just Comfort?
Local food trend helps more folks eat fresh fruits, veggies
Plus lots more.
Sam Smith, The Progressive Review:
It’s not easy being Green but it sure is easier than being a Democrat these days.
I was reminded of this as I scanned some proposed changes and additions to the Green platform. Over and over I found myself reading stuff that not only fit my views but those of many Democrats. The sort of things that would have been standard for the New Deal and Great Society.
Unfortunately, however, the Democratic Party has become the Bernie Madoff of politics. It gets unsuspecting individuals to trust it with their money, beliefs and future, and then immediately starts ripping them off.
There was, for example, Barack Obama’s Madoff moment at the liberal Netroots conference in which he admitted their returns had been slow, but it would improve if they would just be patient. In politics, however, what in fiscal fraud would be considered criminal evidence, is simply treated as “reassurance.”
If the only things that mattered in politics were the issues and you opposed the war in Afghanistan, wanted single payer health insurance, wished to preserve Social Security and thought the jobless should get more federal assistance than a handful of Wall Street bankers, there would be no doubt you’d be a Green.
Business Insider:
22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.
Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they’re making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost.
So with all this money and profit, they’ll start hiring again, right? Wrong – for three reasons.
First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that’s where they’re investing and expanding production…
Second, big U.S. businesses are investing their cash in labor-saving technologies. This boosts their productivity, but not their payrolls…
Finally, corporations are using their pile of money to pay dividends to their shareholders and buy back their own stock – thereby pushing up share prices…
Bottom line: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We’re witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs…
The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won’t even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won’t start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks.
-
. . . no matter how many laws you break.
Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case. Andrew Kreig writes that this previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague John Durham of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture.
Political Wire:
Massachusetts Approves Plan to Bypass Electoral College
The Massachusetts Legislature “has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote,” the Boston Globe reports…
Other states already on board: Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington.
Political Wire:
Democrats Seek to Depress Independent Turnout
Marc Ambinder notes the Democratic message for the midterms “just sort of came along, thanks to the Tea Party movement, which has invited into politics hecklers and cranks and fairly fringe candidates who are currently hurting the Republican Party in several key states.”
The message: “The Republicans want to be mayors of crazy-town. They’ve embraced a fringe and proto-racist isolationist and ignorant conservative populism that has no solutions for fixing anything and the collective intelligence of a wine flask. This IS offensive and over the top, and the more Democrats repeat it, and the more dumb things some Republican candidates do, the more generally conservative voters who might be thinking a sending a message to Democrats by voting for a Republican will be reminded that the replacement party is even more loony than the party that can’t tie its shoes. This is a strategy of delegitimization, not affirmation. It is how you reduce independent turnout.”
The Hill:
Filibuster reform is short of needed votes
The lack of support among a handful of Senate Democratic incumbents is a major blow to the effort to change the upper chamber’s rules.
New health policy: encouraging friendships?
In Conversation, People’s Brains Can Mirror Each Other
Guiding Your Sleep While You’re Awake
To Help Keep Weight Off, Turn to the Web
Plus lots more.
