Extending daylight could boost health, help planet

Getting older = more happiness

Go ahead and spend more time gardening — it’s good for you

FOOD, Inc. The Movie

Plus lots more.

Chipotle Boorito 2010

Test shows no health risk to food from Gulf spill

Use This Spice to Curb Holiday Snack Attacks

Olive Oil Protects Liver from Oxidative Stress, Rat Study Finds

Plus lots more.

Habit Formation Appears to Be an Innate Ability, Fine-Tuned by Experience

Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier

“Evening types” more likely to smoke: study

B-Complex Vitamins May Help Slow Progression of Dementia

Plus lots more.

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Krugman:

The whole attempt to bully Clinton into slashing Medicare by shutting down the federal government was a political failure for the GOP; but McConnell doesn’t see this as evidence that Republicans were too confrontational.

No, he sees it as evidence that they weren’t confrontational enough; they were too focused on their policy agenda, and neglected the necessary work of destroying Clinton…

So this time around they won’t bother much with trying to get actual legislation passed; they’ll focus on the important thing: undermining the man in the White House.

Robert Reich:

The great bulk of campaign money is coming from a narrower and narrower circle of monied interests. Anyone who doubts the corrupting effect has not been paying attention. Our elected representatives have been acutely sensitive to the needs of Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund managers, and the executives of big pharma, big oil, and the largest health insurance companies. This is not because these individuals and interests are particularly worthy or specially deserving. It is because they are effectively bribing elected officials with their donations.

Joe Conason:

In New York, there is a traditional name for the kind of anonymous cash now cascading into the American electoral process. It’s called sewer money…

[T]he largest amount by far is going toward the election of Republicans.

Bloomberg, thanks to Wonk the Vote, at The Confluence:

Republicans are poised to retake the U.S. House next week without a mandate from voters to carry out their policies, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

My comment:

The trouble is, for those of us silly enough to believe the government of we the people should actually work for we the people,

REPUBLICANS DON’T NEED A MANDATE!

They fight for their noxious policies, no matter what. George Bush took a fairly evenly divided nation and took a hard right turn.

As The Onion tweeted earlier this year, Democrats hoped to wrest control from the Republican minority in this year’s elections. But hope is all they do. They don’t fight.

Tuesday’s vote could change direction of healthcare reform

Portable Breast Scanner Allows Cancer Detection in the Blink of an Eye

Highly Targeted Radiation Technique Minimizes Side Effects of Prostate Cancer Treatment

Sugary Beverages Linked to Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome

Plus lots more.

Brent Budowsky:

On election day Wisconsin voters will fire a shot heard around the world. Senator Russ Feingold is the leading champion in the Senate of the battle against the corruptions of special interest money that pollute the politics of the nation.

If the oceans of outside money invading Wisconsin defeat Senator Feingold, it will be one more tragic proof that our country is becoming a land that where the power is controlled by the money.

Russ Feingold is the conscience of the Senate.

He has spent a lifetime standing courageously against a corrupted system that far too ofen has turned Washington into a house of ill repute run by closed fundraisers, secret meetings, and sweetheart deals bought in backroom auctions…

Who is attacking Russ Feingold today? Those who want to export jobs to slave wage nations. Those who want to prevent women from getting fair pay for good work. Those who want insurance premiums and credit card interest rates to rise. Those who want students to pay more for loans, while small business cannot get loans from bailed out bankers making multimillion dollar fortunes. Those who want to foreclose homes without any respect for the rule of law.

Russ Feingold is under attack by those who want the power of their money to buy the special favors of our government.

I am not particularly proud of many Democrats today, but I am very proud to call Russ Feingold the conscience of the Senate, the David of political reform who must not be destroyed by the Goliath of dirty money.

Please contribute to Russ, if you can.

Healthy Living Can Prevent Nearly 25% of Colorectal Cancers

Today’s 70-year-olds smarter

New Insight Into Links Between Obesity and Activity in the Brain

How to End Emotional Eating

Plus lots more.

Political Wire:

A new Pew Research poll finds 32% of voters think the country will be better off if Republicans win control of Congress, 32% think the country will be better off with Democrats in charge and 30% think it doesn’t make any difference.

Mr. Fish:

I didn’t start out as a great fan, but I am one now.

Pilgrim, via Wonk the Vote at The Confluence:

Blogger Wonk the Vote often says of Hillary that she’s a leader, and of Mr. Obama that he isn’t a leader. I fervently agree with her on both counts.

What is it that makes the difference in these two persons? I believe it is character.

Mr. Obama is needy. He needs to be liked.

Hillary does not need to be liked.

I mentioned recently that I had known a teacher who said she never forgot what a professor at teachers’ college had said: “The teacher who is the least concerned about being liked is the most likely to be liked.” That is true, not only of teachers, but of other leaders.

Wonk has posted the wonderful part of the debate in which Hillary is told that she is not as likable as her opponent, Barack Obama. It is instructive to watch closely her body (facial) language as she receives that insult.

Does she look to be insulted? No, she appears to be faintly amused. She makes a lovely, gracious joke about it, and agrees that Mr. O is indeed quite likable in her own opinion too.

She elegantly brushes off the insult because for Hillary, the crux of the issue is not about her. It is about the American people. That’s what she cares about, passionately.

I recall once hearing her reflect about the barbs that came her way. She said, “What do I care?” She didn’t care at all.

She does care quite deeply about policy. She has correctly been called a policy wonk. She knows that is where the American people will be helped, or hindered.

She doesn’t care greatly whether people like her. She cares about what she can do to make their lives better. Thus, she received the most votes ever. And the recognition of her worth has only increased since 2008.

As stated above, Mr. Obama needs to be liked. And he needs to please.

But the harder he tries to please, the less he succeeds. It’s because he tries to please everybody so he keeps twisting himself into a pretzel, because it just isn’t possible to be all things to all people. As Abe Lincoln might have put it, You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.

Hillary was pounded very hard about her Iraq vote. In her response, she at least managed to maintain consistency. You may not agree with her, but you know she doesn’t change her mind like a weather-vane.

The teacher I mentioned above also said that she had once read an essay, “On Education,” by Sir Richard Livingstone, and she said the most important thing she ever learned about teaching was a sentence in that essay: “The secret of education,” wrote Livingstone, “lies in respecting the pupil.” I have often thought upon that and I believe that it is not only the secret of education, but the secret of all worthy leadership.

I believe that Hillary Clinton respects the people to whose welfare she has devoted her life.

And she has earned their respect. That’s more important than to be liked. To be liked can be a fleeting thing. Respect is more solid, and is even a foundation upon which love develops.

Social support trumps bad health habits

Yoga Can Relieve Lower Back Pain

Heavy Smoking in Midlife May Be Associated With Dementia in Later Years

Increase Brain Blood Flow with This Chocolaty Treat

Plus lots more.

Amanda Terkel:

MoveOn.org has released an edgy, technologically innovative get-out-the-vote ad depicting a bleak dystopia run by a group called “RepubliCorp,” meant to underscore the high stakes in the 2010 elections.

DemRepubliCorp is more like it.

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Paul Jamiol:

David Cay Johnston:

Now for some really scary breaking news, from the latest payroll tax data.

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.

Not a single news organization reported this data when it was released October 15…

During the years from 1950 to 1980, the share of total income going to those at the top declined, and the real incomes of the vast majority grew much more quickly than did nearly all incomes at the very top.

In those years, America had the money, and vision, to invest in the future through education, research, and infrastructure.

In nearly three decades of Reaganism, however, we have become a society of mine-here-and-now. Now what we hear from Washington is about today, not tomorrow. War without sacrifice (or a congressional declaration). Savings without interest. More government services while lowering taxes…

[A]ll these data add up to policies that can be described with one word: failed.

Paul Krugman:

If Democrats do as badly as expected in next week’s elections, pundits will rush to interpret the results as a referendum on ideology. President Obama moved too far to the left, most will say, even though his actual program — a health care plan very similar to past Republican proposals, a fiscal stimulus that consisted mainly of tax cuts, help for the unemployed and aid to hard-pressed states — was more conservative than his election platform.

A few commentators will point out, with much more justice, that Mr. Obama never made a full-throated case for progressive policies, that he consistently stepped on his own message, that he was so worried about making bankers nervous that he ended up ceding populist anger to the right…

Maybe, just maybe, voters will have second thoughts about handing power back to the people who got us into this mess, and a weaker-than-expected Republican showing at the polls will give Mr. Obama a second chance to turn the economy around.

But right now it looks as if the too-cautious attempt to jump across that economic chasm has fallen short — and we’re about to hit rock bottom.

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Chris Hedges:

The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty… The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class’ flagrant betrayal of the citizenry…

Capitalism, and especially corporate capitalism, was once viewed as a system to be fought. But capitalism is no longer challenged in public discourse. Capitalist bosses, men such as Warren Buffett, George Soros and Donald Trump, are treated bizarrely as sages and celebrities, as if greed and manipulation had become the highest moral good. As Wall Street steals billions of taxpayer dollars, as it perpetrates massive fraud to throw people out of their homes, as the ecosystem that sustains the planet is polluted and destroyed, we do not know what to do or say. We have been robbed of a vocabulary to describe reality. We decry the excesses of capitalism without demanding a dismantling of the corporate state. Our pathetic response is to be herded to political rallies by skillful publicists to shout inanities like “Yes we can!”

The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will provide the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward despotism. The liberal class prefers comfort and privilege to confrontation. It will not halt the corporate assault or thwart the ascendancy of the corporate state. It will remain intolerant within its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into the halls of power. The press, the universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church and the Democratic Party, fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their positions within the corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who speak the unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless and bankrupt liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and intellectual trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents.

Barack Obama’s timidity is Bill Clinton’s fault? That’s a hell of a stretch.

Myiq2xu at The Confluence:

Maybe it’s just a coincidence but lately there seems to be a whole new movement of people dedicated to the revisionist-history version of bashing Bill Clinton. Some of the faces are new but some, like WKJM [Whoever Kidnapped Josh Marshall], are well known shills for the Democratic establishment…

I’m seeing a pattern, and wondering what is behind it. We know Obama is afraid of Hillary and for good reason. If she ran against him in 2012 she would beat him in a fair fight, and maybe even one that was supposed to be fixed. They can’t attack her as long as she is Secretary of State, so are they attacking Bill in an attempt to cast a stain on her?

What I see is a longer term churning, like the washing machine we were talking about the other day.

If Republicans take control of either house in January, they’ll have investigations going on 24/7, with impeachment as the goal, and a generation of Obama haters, many of them Democrats, will be born.

Just as happened to Bill Clinton. It’s deja vu all over again.

And Democrats still think they’re playing beanbag, instead of being at war with Republicans.

Greg Sargent:

President Obama, in an interview with National Journal:

Obama said that Democrats will need to show an “appropriate sense of humility about what we can accomplish,” and he pledged to “spend more time building consensus.”

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview with National Journal:

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Just perfect.