New posts at Many Years Young 6/30/11
Study finds text messages help smokers quit
Harlem barbershops, salons double as health clinics
Problem gambling linked to impulsivity
Why We Choose ‘Comfort Foods’ When Stressed
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 6/29/11
Black Members of Adventist Church Defy Health Disparities, Study Shows
Preventing Type 2 Diabetes Saves Money [and Reduces Suffering]
Fidgeting, housework help heart
Obesity a Major Cause of Early Death in Women: Study
Plus lots more.
Blago guilty
28-Jun-11
Okay, what about all the others who are doing exactly the same things, but haven’t been quite so open about it? There is a culture of corruption in this country that MUST BE STOPPED!
New posts at Many Years Young 6/28/11
Meditation can cut heart attacks by as much as half
Quick Tricks for Healthier Habits
It’s Not an Apple a Day After All — It’s Strawberries
Cinnamon may help prevent Alzheimer’s
Plus lots more.
Your Weight and Your Brain
27-Jun-11
New posts at Many Years Young 6/27/11
Your Weight and Your Brain
Diet Smart Not Hard
Don’t Just Diet—Exercise to Lose Weight, Too
Eat This Protein to Lose Weight
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 6/26/11
Diabetes on Upswing Worldwide
Pharmageddon: America’s Top Selling Drug Cause Diabetes
After Diabetes Diagnosis, Concentrate on Dietary Changes, Study Says
Tobacco labels — a model for potato chip labels?
Plus lots more.
For a real vacation, stay off Internet
25-Jun-11
New posts at Many Years Young 6/25/11
For a real vacation, stay off Internet
DailyData: The app that tells you when you’re getting sick
Lifestyle Changes Might Alter Breast Cancer Rates
Cut Down on ‘Carbs’ to Reduce Body Fat, Study Authors Say
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 6/24/11
Smoke From Wildfires in Southwest May Be Health Hazard
Weight loss surgery may cure diabetes in many cases
Poor ‘Fat-Tasters’ May Tend to Be Heavier
Dieters’ Brain Chemistry Works Against Their Weight-Loss Efforts
Plus lots more.
Stress in the City
23-Jun-11
New posts at Many Years Young 6/23/11
Stress in the City
Daily sexism often goes unnoticed
Daily Apple for Heart Health
Chips, Fries, Soda Most to Blame for Long-Term Weight Gain
Plus lots more.
Indecent exposure
22-Jun-11
Not from The Onion–really
22-Jun-11
Economists View:
House Keeps Farm Subsidies, Cuts Food Aid
Via Alex Tabarrok:
Not From the Onion, by Alex Tabarrok: The headline says it all:
House keeps farm subsidies, cuts food aid
Here are some of the other provisions which seem designed to be ridiculed by John Stewart:
—Directs the Agriculture Department to rewrite rules it issued in January meant to make school meals healthier. Republicans say the new rules, the first major overhaul of school lunches in 15 years, are too costly. …
—Prevents USDA from moving forward with new rules that would make it easier for smaller farmers and ranchers to sue large livestock companies on antitrust grounds. The proposed rules are meant to address the growing concentration of corporate power in agriculture.
—Delays for more than a year new rules for reporting trades in derivatives.
Inequality ‘R’ Us
22-Jun-11
Political Wire:
More Say They Are Worse Off Than Under Bush
A new Bloomberg Poll finds that by a 44% to 34% margin Americans say they believe they are worse off than when President Obama took office.
Two-thirds say they believe the country is on the wrong track overall.
The Washington Post notes that today’s managerial class is earning roughly four times as much as those in the 1970s, while pay for the remaining 90% of America’s employees remains the same.
Think Progress:
32 Corporations Spent More On Compensation For Top Executives In 2010 Than They Paid In Income Taxes
Over the last few decades, executive pay at large corporations has skyrocketed. Today, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s. In 2010 alone, CEO pay went up 27 percent while average worker pay went up just 2 percent.
At the same time, corporate tax revenue has plunged to historic lows. During the 1960s, for instance, the United States consistently raised nearly 4 percent of GDP in corporate revenue. During the 1970s, the total was still above 2.5 percent of GDP. But the U.S. now raises less than 1.5 percent of GDP from the corporate income tax.
It’s a really funny subject
22-Jun-11
Political Wire:
“Over the last 15 months we’ve created over 2.1 million private sector jobs. (Laughter.)”
– President Obama, in an official transcript of a fundraising speech this week. The transcript was later corrected by replacing “Laughter” with “Applause”.
Gallup (screen capture on 6/22/11):
Democrats = Republicans?
22-Jun-11
The Democrats are at a crossroads. They can continue to populate the third wing of the Republican Party, fundamentally accepting the premises of Reagan’s narrative about government the way Republicans from Eisenhower through Ford accepted the premises of Roosevelt’s New Deal. If they choose that course, they will continue to marginalize, antagonize, and demoralize not only their base but the vast majority of swing voters, who don’t give one whit about ideology but simply want someone to represent their interests and values — most importantly, the idea that America ought to work again for people who work for a living.
Alternatively, they can return to progressive principles, starting by articulating for themselves as well as the American people what those principles are. (Personally, I have no idea what it means to be a Democrat anymore, other than to “talk about jobs,” as if talking about them will somehow magically create them, while searching for compromises with Republicans at each successive “budget crisis” — this time the debt ceiling — that will endanger even more jobs.)
If they choose to endorse progressive principles again, they will need to hammer home the distinction between the party that cares first and foremost about working and middle class Americans, those who want to join the ranks of the shrinking middle class, and the small businesses that create two-thirds of all new private sector jobs for working Americans; and the party that cares first and foremost about the rich and well-connected, the big corporations that ship American jobs overseas and rake in massive profits without sharing that prosperity with their workers, and CEOs, Wall Street bankers, and their bloated bonuses.
That would be a change we can believe in. But the Democrats would have to mean it this time.
Al Gore for president!
22-Jun-11
Al Gore:
President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority…
[W]ithout presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is “the power to persuade.” Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.
Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.
Many political advisers assume that a president has to deal with the world of politics as he finds it, and that it is unwise to risk political capital on an effort to actually lead the country toward a new understanding of the real threats and real opportunities we face. Concentrate on the politics of re-election, they say. Don’t take chances.
All that might be completely understandable and make perfect sense in a world where the climate crisis wasn’t “real.”…
But in this case, the President has reality on his side. The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.
Where’s the Draft Gore in 2012 movement, already?
The real problem is a brain deficit
22-Jun-11
Greg Sargent:
Dems lost the argument over the deficit, because they never engaged it
In case you need further evidence that the Dem decision to effectively endorse the right’s austerity/cut-cut-cut frame is only harming themselves, check out the internals of the new Bloomberg News poll. They show that the public broadly agrees with Republican arguments about the deficit, spending cuts and what it takes to rebuild the “confidence” required for an economic rebound…
Maybe these numbers show that the public has internalized the idea taht government is a massive drag on the economy and can’t possibly create jobs — and that there’s no point in trying to change people’s minds…
Or maybe the … Dems, by effectively ceding the argument over the economy to Republicans and getting themselves caught in a Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop, only ensured that this entire battle would unfold entirely on the GOP’s rhetorical turf, leading Americans to except GOP doctrine as gospel.
Either way, the result of Dem conduct has been that Americans only got to hear one side of this argument, so it’s only natural if they agree with it.
Dean Baker:
The Endgame on the Debt Ceiling
While the country will still be left standing after a debt default, there is one important sector that will not be standing: Wall Street. A debt default would almost certainly make all the major banks insolvent as they would have to mark down the value of U.S. government debt, which had been held as a completely safe asset. The loss of value would also apply to all the assets backed by the government, such as the mortgage backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Even when the economy revived, the U.S. financial sector would never hold the same place in the world as it does today…
In this context the Republicans will do exactly what they did with the TARP. They will cut deals, make the threats and do whatever else is necessary to round up the votes needed to raise the debt ceiling.
When everyone remembers that this is what the endgame looks like, they will realize that there is no need to put essential programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block to get Republican support for raising the debt ceiling. The gun is pointed most directly at Wall Street’s head, and this incredibly powerful lobby is not going to let Congress pull the trigger.
This means that at the end of the day, President Obama holds the cards. He could say that he wants a clean debt ceiling bill and no deals on cutting back the country’s key social insurance programs. Of course, that may not be President Obama’s agenda.
Jon Stewart 1, Politifact 0
22-Jun-11
Chris Mooney:
Jon Stewart 1, Politifact 0: Fox News Viewers Are The Most Misinformed
Politifact [recently made a] deeply misguided attempt to correct Jon Stewart on the topic of…misinformation and Fox News. This is a subject on which we’ve developed some expertise here…my recent post on studies showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed, on an array of issues, is the most comprehensive such collection that I’m aware of…
[T]he bulk of the studies cited by Politifact have nothing to do with whether Fox viewers believe the truth, or falsehoods, on politicized and contested issues. I cannot stress how fundamental a distinction this is. Indeed, it is quite literally a separate issue from the perspective of psychology and neuroscience…
It is of course around contested political facts, and contested scientific facts, where we find active, politically impelled, and emotionally laden misinformation campaigns—and it is in the latter realm that Fox News viewers are clearly more misinformed…
UPDATE: I’ve run across (thanks to Steve Benen) a sixth survey that supports Stewart. It is a 2009 NBC News poll about health care misinformation, and guess what?
In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly. But it would be incorrect to suggest that this is ONLY coming from conservative viewers who tune in to FOX. In fact, 41% of CNN/MSNBC viewers believe the misinformation about illegal immigrants, 39% believe the government takeover stuff, 40% believe the abortion misperception, and 30% believe the stuff about pulling the plug on grandma. What’s more, a good chunk of folks who get their news from broadcast TV (NBC, ABC, CBS) believe these things, too.
The Daily Outrage
22-Jun-11
Health boost from red grapes confirmed
22-Jun-11
New posts at Many Years Young 6/22/11
Health boost from red grapes confirmed
Strawberries Boost Red Blood Cells, Study Finds
Blueberries Help Lab Rats Build Strong Bones
3 Reasons to Eat Turmeric
Plus lots more.
