RNC Chair: GOP’s Historic Unpopularity Shows Americans Are Upset With Obama

ROTFL!

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/09/292080/rnc-chair-blames-obama-for-gop-unpopularity/

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 9, 2011 at 4:45 pm

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll released today finds Republicans’ popularity badly bruised by the bitter debt ceiling debate, with the GOP’s unfavorable ratings climbing to an all-time high of 59 percent. The party’s favorable ratings, meanwhile, dropped eight points over the past month to just 33 percent. “The Democratic party, which had a favorable rating just a couple of points higher than the GOP in July, now has a 14-point advantage over the Republican party,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

The network brought on RNC Chairman Reince Priebus this afternoon to respond to numbers. While saying he hadn’t studied poll in depth, Priebus embarked on stunningly brazen spin, blaming the drop in Republicans’ approval on President Obama. Despite host Brooke Baldwin’s repeated attempts to get Priebus to address the GOP’s unpopularity, the chairman kept going back to Obama:

BALDWIN: To what do we attribute this? Fallout from the debt ceiling debacle?

PRIEBUS: First of all, I haven’t really looked at it too deeply, other than the fact that I think it’s true that people are frustrated with a lot of what goes on in Washington. I think, most of all, people are frustrated with the president who continues not to lead during the most important in our country. But it’s not just a matter of leadership, Brooke, it’s a matter of what this president has put in place when he’s had the opportunity to lead. [...] He put in Obamcare.

[.....]

Americans overwhelmingly disproved of the GOP’s handling of the debt negotiations, and 74 percent of even Republicans thought revenue increases should have been part of the final deal.

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Man arrested for giving HIV to partner

http://www.ajc.com/news/man-arrested-for-giving-1079358.html

Friday, August 5, 2011
By Rhonda Cook

A 24-year-old man is charged in Douglas County with reckless conduct for allegedly not telling his years-long partner that he had AIDS, even after she became pregnant with their son.

Douglas County District Attorney David McDade said the woman only learned Donte Martel Rhone was ill when she discovered his medications as they were packing to move. She researched the drugs to learn their purpose, McDade said.

“She confronted him and he said he had an immune system problem and not to worry about it. They continued the relationship,’ McDade said Thursday.

McDade said the woman and her 5-month-old son eventually were tested. She is HIV positive, but the child tested negative.

Rhone was arrested Monday and he was still in the Douglas County Jail on Friday.

McDade said Rhone was born with the virus -- both his parents had HIV – and he now has full-blown AIDS.

Rhone gave investigators the names of other women with whom he has had sexual relations before and during his three-year relationship with his son’s mother, McDade said. Those women were also unaware of his condition and at least one of them has tested positive for HIV.

[...]

“It’s one of those horrible cases,” McDade said. “ [Rhone] was born with it. Where do you begin to sort it out? But you can’t go on to have unprotected sex. It’s going to be a horrible, difficult situation to determine what justice would be.... Now he’s passing it on to another generation and we have to intervene."

======================================================

What? Unless the HIV has damaged the Donte's brain or he is otherwise thinking impaired, what is there to sort out? I wonder if MdDade would have the same reaction if the genders were reversed?

[.....]

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It occurred to me recently that people might not appreciate how much the predicted rise in sea levels, from global warming/climate change, will affect us, because the figures given are misleading to most people. A change in sea level refers to a vertical distance. The effects on shore line will be larger (except for sheer cliffs higher than that).

We can estimate this with a right triangle. The change in sea level would be the height. The change in the shore line would be the hypotenuse. For a fairly steep grade of 30 degrees, a rise in sea level of 3 feet would mean the water would come more than 6.7 feet farther up the shore. More shallow inclines would mean it would come up further.


http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/04/climate-desk-sea-level-rise-epa?page=2

By Josh Harkinson
Tue Apr. 27, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

[.....]

Titus estimates that a three-foot rise in sea level will push back East Coast shorelines an average of 300 to 600 feet in the next 90 years, threatening to submerge densely developed areas inhabited by some 3 million people, including large parts of New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

[...]

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Medicare Administrative Costs

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/health-care-rationing-death-panels

July/August 2010 Issue

[.....]

In a country that already spends more than 16 percent of each GDP dollar on health care (PDF), it's easy to see why so many people believe there's simply not enough of it to go around. But keep in mind that the rest of the industrialized world manages to spend between 20 and 90 percent less per capita and still rank higher than the US in overall health care performance. In 2004, a team of researchers including Princeton's Uwe Reinhardt, one of the nation's best known experts on health economics, found that while the US spends 134 percent more than the median of the world's most developed nations, we get less for our money—fewer physician visits and hospital days per capita, for example—than our counterparts in countries like Germany, Canada, and Australia. (We do, however, have more MRI machines and more cesarean sections.)

Where does the money go instead? By some estimates, administration and insurance profits alone eat up at least 30 percent of our total health care bill (and most of that is in the private sector—Medicare's overhead is around 2 percent). In other words, we don't have too little to go around—we overpay for what we get, and we don't allocate our spending where it does us the most good. "In most [medical] resources we have a surplus," says Dr. David Himmelstein, cofounder of Physicians for a National Health Program. "People get large amounts of care that don't do them any good and might cause them harm [while] others don't get the necessary amount."

[...]

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The sad truth behind London riot

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/07/7292281-the-sad-truth-behind-london-riot

8/7/2011
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News correspondent

LONDON -- As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in North London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool."


[.....]

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Prayer Rally Dwarfed By Texans Who Flock To Nearby Convention Center, Desperate For Free School Supplies

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/08/290973/prayer-rally-school-supplies/

Aug 8, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Sarah Bufkin

Houston’s biggest gathering on Saturday didn’t see national television news crews. It didn’t draw out protestors. It didn’t spark its own Twitter handle. And the event — which attracted an estimated 100,0000 people to a convention center just seven miles down the road from Gov. Rick Perry (R) and The Response prayer rally — had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Texas families struggling through hard economic times:

“Some families camped out for hours to gain admittance into Houston’s first-ever, citywide back-to-school event at George R. Brown Convention Center, where free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations, and fresh produce were provided.

Others were turned away.

“It was getting beyond capacity,” [Houstan Independent School District] spokesman Jason Spencer said. “If nothing else, it shows the need.”

[.....]

Only a few miles down the road from Jones, her governor prayed alongside 30,000 people for all those “who have lost hope.” He did not see fit to mention either the thousands of his constituents lined up for free back-to-school items or the multi-million dollar cuts his budget will inflict upon the Texas education system.

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Baby's Palate And Food Memories Shaped Before Birth

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/139033757/babys-palate-and-food-memories-shaped-before-birth?sc=fb&cc=fp

by Gretchen Cuda-Kroen
August 8, 2011

Want your child to love veggies? Start early. Very early. Research shows that what a woman eats during pregnancy not only nourishes her baby in the womb, but may shape food preferences later in life.

At 21 weeks after conception, a developing baby weighs about as much as a can of Coke — and he or she can taste it, too. Still in the womb, the growing baby gulps down several ounces of amniotic fluid daily. That fluid surrounding the baby is actually flavored by the foods and beverages the mother has eaten in the last few hours.

"Things like vanilla, carrot, garlic, anise, mint — these are some of the flavors that have been shown to be transmitted to amniotic fluid or mother's milk," says Julie Mennella, who studies taste in infants at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. In fact, Mennella says there isn't a single flavor they have found that doesn't show up in utero. Her work has been published in the journal Pediatrics.

[.....]

This makes a lot of evolutionary sense, says Mennella. Since mothers tend to feed their children what they eat themselves, it is nature's way of introducing babies to the foods and flavors that they are likely to encounter in their family and their culture.

[...]

Menella acknowledges that many toddlers will still make a sour face when given broccoli, no matter how much the mother ate while pregnant. And maybe they will never like it. But she says parents should keep exposing young children to these flavors because they can eventually learn to like them.

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Santorum’s Message To People Who Can’t Afford Health Care Costs: Lower Your Cell Phone Bill

There is a video of Santorum's comments at this link:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/08/08/290934/santorums-message-to-people-who-cant-afford-health-care-costs-lower-your-cell-phone-bill/

By Igor Volsky on Aug 8, 2011 at 3:13 pm

During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register on Friday, Rick Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills:

SANTORUM: All the other necessities of life, we allow people to have varying degrees of creature comforts, if you will. Why? Because we are people who ration our resources based upon what’s important to us and health care has to be one of those things, which is in the mix of things we make decisions about as to what type of, what kind of money we want to allocate to that.

I had a woman the other day who came up and complained to me that she has to pay $200 a month for her prescriptions…I said, in other words, this $200 a month keeps you alive, she goes yes. I said, and you’re complaining that you’re paying $200 a month and it keeps you alive? What’s your cable bill? I mean, what’s your cell phone bill? Because she had a cell phone. And how can you say that you complain that you have $200 to keep you alive and that’s a problem? No, that’s a blessing!

But for the majority of Americans, crawling out of medical debt isn’t as simple as changing to a cheaper phone plan. According to a 2007 study, more than 60 percent of all bankruptcies are “actually capsized by medical bills” and most bankruptcy filers are “middle-class, well-educated homeowners” who can probably control their texting addictions. A more recent study published this year found that bankruptcy rates are particularly high among cancer patients, but “much lower for people age 65 and up, who would be eligible for Medicare.”

==================================================

My comments

Of course, Santorum has health care subsidized by taxpayers.
And if someone has $200/month in prescriptions, she probably has hefty medical bills, even with co-pays.

I noticed from the video that he doesn't say how much her cable and cell phone bills are. He also doesn't say if the cell phone is her only phone, which is the case for many people.

I have a land line which costs $20/month. For emergencies while driving, I have a pre-paid cell phone, which costs me @20 every 3 months.



[.....]

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To Every Thing There is a Season

Boomers have been paying higher social security taxes to prepare for the increased revenues that will be needed when they retire. Under Clinton, the national debt was being reduced, so there would have been no problem. Bush reduced taxes on the rich while starting two wars. The rich have had plenty of time to invest those savings they have been getting, so they should have no problem going back to higher tax rates.

...

Texas, home of nauseating hypocrisy.

Texas, home of nauseating hypocrisy.

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/texas-schedules-one-execution-tries-to-forget-another/

Posted by: Brian Evans, August 5, 2011 at 5:00 PM

Hank Skinner, who resides on death row in Texas, won a case at the U.S. Supreme Court recently. He got the right to sue, in federal court, for access to DNA evidence he says would exonerate him. Officials in Gray County, Texas, are in possession of the evidence in question (including vaginal swabs, fingernail scrapings, hairs, and two bloody knives), but have refused to either test it or hand it over for testing.

So, a civil case is now pending in the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division. But that hasn’t stopped Texas from going ahead and setting an execution date anyway. Skinner is now scheduled to die on November 9. His lawyers believe the date has been set as “an effort to put pressure on the federal court to act quickly.”

Why not just let the untested evidence be examined?

Perhaps for the same reason the Texas Attorney General recently ruled that the Texas Forensic Science Commission can’t look at any evidence collected before September 2005. The Commission had been investigating the bogus fire science used to facilitate the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, which took place in 2004.

Apparently, the best way to avoid errors or mistakes (or worse) in Texas justice is to not look for them.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/06/7282137-perry-doesnt-disappoint-crowd-of-25000-plus

8/6/2011

HOUSTON -- If Texas Gov. Rick Perry runs for president, the type of crowd that attends a seven-hour prayer rally in a football stadium would not be disappointed.

Held in the venue where the Houston Texans play, more than 25,000 people here attended "The Response," an event that was part prayer service, part Christian rock concert, and part marathon pep rally for Jesus Christ.

[...]

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Carbon-gobbling trees in Northwest forests change the forest equation, a new study finds

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/08/carbon-gobbling_trees_in_north.html

Published: Thursday, August 04, 2011, 4:53 PM
By Brandon Blakeley, The Oregonian

A near halt to logging in the Northwest's federal forests has left a lot of trees standing in the past two decades, and a new study shows a robust forest can help combat climate change by trapping carbon dioxide emissions. And it soaks up more than we knew.

Researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University show for the first time just how much carbon unharvested Northwest forests can trap. These forests now constitute a carbon "sink" for the first time in decades.

The controversial 1993 Northwest Forest Plan, aimed at preserving the endangered northern spotted owl, slashed timber production by 80 percent in northern California, and western Oregon and Washington. While the upshot of the plan remains hotly debated, an unanticipated side effect isn't: Powerful forest "sinks" store the carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion for heat, transportation and power generation.

"The original goals of the Northwest Forest Plan had nothing to do with the issue of carbon emissions, but now carbon sequestration is seen as an important ecosystem service," David Turner, a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society who led the research, said in a press release covering the research.

[.....]

In previous work, Turner and colleagues found that carbon sequestration in Oregon forests balances almost half the carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion by state residents.

This newest forest research dovetails with other recent reports that highlight ecosystem damage caused by ocean acidification, a result of increased atmospheric carbon.

Researchers from The University of California at Davis reported in mid-July that more acidic oceans could weaken the shells of California mussels and diminish their size. Other reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate coral is at increasing risk. More acidic conditions greatly slow coral growth and accelerate coral bleaching, often leading to death. Coral reefs shelter a quarter of all marine species. Economically, NOAA estimates coral reefs' worth at up to $375 billion a year when coastline protection, fishing and tourism are added up. By holding carbon, trees pitch in to help oceans and marine life.

Turner's study helps put a number on the carbon value of Northwest forests. While trees alone are not the solution to climate change, it appears they can slow the pace because they handle more carbon than expected. It changes the equation for figuring out the best use of the forest.

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Tent City in New Jersey Forest

[Why do we often have to get such news from a news source in another country?]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/6922-tent-city-in-new-jersey-forest

By Daily Mail UK
06 August 11

In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute US families who have set up their own 'Tent City' only an hour from Manhattan.

More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey's forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.

And as politicians in Washington trade blows over their country's £8.8 trillion debt, the prospect of more souls joining this rag tag group grows by the day.

Building their own tarpaulin tents, Native American teepees and makeshift balsa wood homes, every one of the Tent City residents has lost their job.

These people have been reduced to living on handouts from the local church and friendly restaurants and the community is a sad look at troubles caused as the world's most powerful country struggles with its finances.

'We have been in and out of the camp for a year,' said ex-hotel worker Burt Haut, 43, who lives with his wife, ex-teacher Barbara, 48 in a tent styled like a teepee from the Old West.

'Our financial difficulties since the credit crisis three years ago have caused us to camp on public ground, at the back of churches and down the backs of closed down stores.

'We have had help from our friends and family, but we have run that well dry.

'We are trying to get back on our feet and with help from the camp leadership we hope to get back onto a social security scheme or help with some assisted housing.'

Ravaged by the loss of their jobs and their homes, the residents of Tent City struggle to get by without day-to-day luxuries that we take for granted such as food on the table and a roof over their heads.

Ex-minister Steve Brigham, 50, runs Tent City, which consists of a dirt road running through a two-acre encampment which has flowerpots laid out front of proud tents and homes.

[.....]

'We have pet chickens which are not for eggs, they are to eat the ticks that could make us feel very ill with Lyme disease or a blood infection.

'It is a racially diverse community with Mexicans, Polish, Irish, African American and white people.

'There are eight women living here too, which was a problem in the past, but has now made the camp more calm by their presence.

[...]

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Famine in the Horn of Africa: How to help

Some aid is getting thru to Somalia. And aid is desperately needed in refugee camps that Somalian people have fled to in other countries.

A malnourished child lies in a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. The United Nations says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43841708/ns/nightly_news/

A list of charitable organizations fighting famine and drought in the Horn of Africa

updated 7/22/2011 2:28:48 PM ET

More than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa require food assistance due to the region's worst drought in half a century, the United Nations says.

The UN says that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia, southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle. Across the country, nearly half of the Somali population — 3.7 million people — are now in crisis, of whom an estimated 2.8 million people are in the south.

But parts of Kenya and Ethiopia are also in crisis.

Here are some key organizations that are providing aid in the region.

UNICEF
Text FOOD to UNICEF (864233) to donate $10, enough to feed a child for 10 days or provide 321 sachets of nutrient powder to boost infant survival and development, the aid group says.

International Committee of the Red Cross
Make donations online at www.redcross.org.au or by calling 1-800-811-700.

Doctors Without Borders    Donate here or by calling 1-888-392-0392.

Save the Children Click here for ways to give.

The World Food Programme
Donate $10 by texting the word AID to 27722 or make a donation online

World Vision
Donate online.

The International Rescue Committee Donate online.

Oxfam International Donate online.

AmeriCares Donate online.

Action Against Hunger Donate online or call 877-777-1420.

ActionAid Donate online.

Adventist Development and Relief Agency Donate online.

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America’s Debt, and Student Debt

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/americas_debt_and_student_debt.php

August 5, 2011 11:00 AM
America’s Debt, and Student Debt
by Daniel Luzer

The debt deal, reassuring as it may have been after such a long process, won’t be very good to college students.

According to an article by Candice Choi in the Chicago Sun-Times, political compromises made by both parties in order to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling mean that several federal college financing programs are in trouble.

Beginning a year from now graduate students won’t be eligible for subsidized federal loans. Forcing them to finance their educations with unsubsidized private loans could, according to the article, increase average graduate student debt by 16 percent.

Students also won’t receive discounts for making on-time payments on their student loans. The total financial impact of this particular change is unclear, since the discounts depend on when the loan was issued. But for a loan made last year, for instance, graduates get a .5 percent discount for making the payments on time. And now they won’t

In addition, the super committee of a dozen lawmakers may implement tax reforms to reduce the tax benefits families can claim as part of college savings.

[.....]

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Tax Flight Is a Myth

Georgia has a favorable climate for business, but every month for the last 47 months, the unemployment rate in Georgia has been higher than the national average. And there is no indication that is about to change.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3556

By Robert Tannenwald, Jon Shure and Nicholas Johnson *

August 4, 2011

Executive Summary

Attacks on sorely-needed increases in state tax revenues often include the unproven claim that tax hikes will drive large numbers of households — particularly the most affluent — to other states. The same claim also is used to justify new tax cuts. Compelling evidence shows that this claim is false. The effects of tax increases on migration are, at most, small — so small that states that raise income taxes on the most affluent households can be assured of a substantial net gain in revenue.
Migration is not common. Most people have strong ties to their current state, such as job, home, family, friends, and community. On average, just 1.7 percent of U.S. residents moved from one state to another per year between 2001 and 2010, and only about 30 percent of those born in the United States change their state of residence over the course of their entire lifetime. And when people do relocate, a large body of scholarly evidence shows that they do so primarily for new jobs, cheaper housing, or a better climate. A person’s age, education, marital status, and a host of other factors also affect decisions about moving.

The migration that’s occurring is much more likely to be driven by cheaper housing than by lower taxes. A family might be able to cut its taxes by a few percentage points by moving from one state to another, but housing costs are far more variable. The difference between housing costs in two different states is often many times greater than the difference in taxes. So what might look like migration in search of lower taxes is really often migration for cheaper housing.

[.....]

Recent research shows income tax increases cause little or no interstate migration. ...

Low taxes can prevent a state from maintaining the kinds of high-quality public services that potential migrants value. ...

[...]



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July Heat Records Define The United States

"the data is incomplete", so there will probably turn out to be even more records broken than so far found.

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/08/05/288768/july-heat-records-define-the-united-states/

By Brad Johnson on Aug 5, 2011

July was so hot “that just by plotting the location of each daily heat record that was broken, a nearly complete image of the contiguous United States is visible,” reports NOAA. “Almost 9,000 daily records were broken or tied last month, including 2,755 highest maximum temperatures and 6,171 highest minimum temperatures (i.e., nighttime records).” “Some cities reached daily high temperatures 19 out of the 31 days in the month.” The data is incomplete, as they include “only include weather stations with real-time electronic reporting, which accounts for about two-thirds of the locations.”


[.....]

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Effects of solar flares arriving on Earth

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44037650/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.Tjxv5WNGZhk

By Randolph E. Schmid
updated 8/5/2011 2:59:57 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The impact of a series of eruptions on the sun began arriving at Earth on Friday and could affect some communications for a day or so.

Operators of electrical grids are working to avoid outages, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says some satellite communications and Global Positioning Systems could face problems.

Three solar flares erupted on the sun starting Tuesday, and the strongest electromagnetic shocks were being felt Friday by the ACE spacecraft, a satellite that measures radiation bursts a few minutes before they strike Earth, said Joseph Kunches, a scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.

Tom Bogdan, director of the center, said the sun is going from a quiet period into a busier cycle for solar flares and an increase in the number of such blasts is expected over the next three to five years.

Solar flares send out bursts of electromagnetic energy that strike the Earth's magnetic field. The most common impacts for the average person are the glowing auroras around the north and south poles, and the researchers said those could be visible this weekend.

[.....]

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Breast cancer patient denied Medicaid coverage in S.C. because he's a man

This is crazy. I believe I've read that breast cancer tends to be very aggressive when in occurs in men.

http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/national/breast-cancer-patient-denied-medicaid-coverage-because-he%27s-a-man-

8/5/2011

By: Kristal Roberts

CHARLESTON, S.C. - A Breast cancer patient who didn’t have insurance was thrilled to learn that a state program provided Medicaid for treatment, until that patient was turned down because he was a man.

Only 26-years-old, Raymond Johnson of Charleston, South Carolina decided to have a exam after feeling a lump, thinking that it was probably just a cyst, ABC NEWS 4 reports.

To his surprise, he was diagnosed with breast cancer, a rare condition that only one in 100 men will get per year.

As a tile layer, he didn’t make enough money to afford an insurance plan.

A patient advocate, Susan Appelbaum, had him apply for the state Medicaid program, believing that he’d qualify. But he’d received a rejection notice instead, citing that the program was for women only.

With each treatment totaling around $10,000, the bills are quickly piling up.
"Right now I'm stuck with these bills and I'm trying to find a way," said Raymond, who just underwent his second round of chemotherapy at Roper Saint Francis Hospital.

The state department of health recognizes that there is a problem and has asked the federal government for assistance. But for Johnson, that assistance can’t come soon enough.

Despite the rough road ahead, Appelbaum hasn't given up hope for getting Johnson financial help.

"He's young. He's working and he's worried this could be financially devastating to him."

She is contacting lawmakers, trying to get the Medicaid program changed.

Johnson is grateful for Applebaum’s assistance, calling her his “new best friend”. "I don't know where I'd be without her," he said.

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Republican House leader Cantor Opposes Extending Unemployment Benefits: We Need To Stop ‘Pumping Up’ Jobless Americans

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/05/288965/cantor-unemployment-pumping-up/

By Tanya Somanader on Aug 5, 2011 at 10:39 am
The unemployment rate inched downwards to 9.1 percent today, with private sector jobs increasing by 154,000. While a slight improvement, these better-than-expected figures provide little comfort to the 14 million Americans who are unemployed. 44.4 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more.

For these Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, the federal unemployment benefits program provides much needed financial support. Every dollar the federal government spends in federal unemployment generates two dollars of economic growth. These benefits, however, are set to expire at the end of the year.

In response to today’s jobs report, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) declared that “unemployment is far too high” and that Congress “must push pro-growth policies to get back on track.” Noting Cantor’s apparent concern as “spot on,”, CNBC host Jim Kramer told Cantor that obviously, “you’re for extending unemployment benefits given the chaotic situation.” Cantor’s response? Nope, because “for too long in Washington now we’ve been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits”:

Cantor declared that “the most important thing we can do for somebody who’s unemployed is to see if we can get them a job” and declared that the only way unemployment benefits could be extended is if “we find commensurate cuts somewhere else”

[.....]

A brief survey of Cantor’s priorities quickly reveals why his callous lack of concern for the unemployed is not surprising. He has always intimated that extending jobless benefits, or even preventing layoffs, are not his priorities. Even though unemployment benefits actually spur economic growth, Cantor prefers to focus on preserving tax cuts for the wealthy — something he even admitted actually would “dig the hole deeper” on the deficit.

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Republican Governor Scott Walker Cuts State Health Services, Then Rejects Health Reform’s Public Health Grants

Makes me feel less bad about living in Georgia!

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/08/05/289193/wisconsin-rejects-grants-from-health-law-despite-cutting-health-services-in-state-budget/

By Igor Volsky on Aug 5, 2011 at 12:08 pm

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) has rejected more than $9 million in grants from the Affordable Care Act that would have “focused on fighting drug and alcohol abuse; assessing health impacts of public policies; and signing up state residents who qualify for state health programs.” State health commissioners are outraged by the move, pointing out that the state is turning away money “at a time when there is a proliferation of illicit drugs and documentation of binge drinking and drunken driving in the state.” “Wisconsin would put its head in the virtual sand and not go after this funding,” Bevan Baker, commissioner of health for the City of Milwaukee said.

Walker’s administration claims the grants “duplicated existing efforts,” despite making significant cuts to health care programs in the state’s recently-passed state budget. Walker slashed $500 million from Department of Health Services and instituted a $1.6 billion reduction in public school funding.

In fact, some of the budget cuts specifically targeted drug and alcohol prevention programs in schools, while others will allow the health department’s secretary, Dennis Smith, “sole authority to make cuts to whatever programs he likes — or doesn’t like.” Smith hasn’t yet offered a finished proposal, but wouldn’t rule out cuts to addiction services.

Wisconsin is also near the very bottom of states for public health funding, ranking 49th in the nation for state funding of prevention services per capita.


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Security Guards At American Legislative Exchange Council Conference Physically Attack ThinkProgress Reporters

It has been my observation that ThinkProgress is a professional, credible source of news. I will be curious to see if the MSM (main stream media) give any attention to this incident.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/05/288405/alec-security-attacks-thinkprogress/

By Lee Fang and Scott Keyes on Aug 5, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Yesterday, at a conference in New Orleans, two ThinkProgress reporters were attacked by security guards for no apparent reason. Reporters Scott Keyes and Lee Fang were at the Marriott Hotel for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting, an event that brings together state lawmakers with corporate lobbyists to draft “model” legislation.

While we stood by the second floor lobby of the conference hotel, security guards surrounded us, demanding that we leave. As we were leaving, they approached us, violently pushed us and twisted our arms. A guard approached Fang from behind, tackling him and later bending his arm to take his camera. Keyes, faced similar treatment: two security guards roughed him up on the escalator, taking his video camera, and cutting Keyes’ hand as he attempted to leave the premises. As Keyes asked why he was being forced to leave, he was shoved from the back.

Asked why they were being so belligerent, the security guards said they were acting on instructions from ALEC. At certain points during the incident, they were able to turn on their video cameras and record it [See link for video]

Although ThinkProgress has attended ALEC conferences in the past as credentialed media (we broke the story about BlueCross BlueShield lobbyists writing ALEC’s anti-health reform legislation in 2009), we were denied credentials this time.

ALEC calls itself an open organization that exists simply to advance “principles of Jeffersonian democracy.” Facing recent scrutiny by the media, one prominent ALEC member told the Daily Iowan that there’s “nothing sinister, there’s nothing secretive about [ALEC].” However, the incident today underscores the suspicion that the organization is a secret conduit for corporate lobbyists to literally write legislation for state lawmakers without having their fingerprints on the bill. To maintain this secrecy, ALEC appears more than willing to kick out media and close their doors to the public.

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Public Employment Job Losses Continue to Slow the Recovery

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/public-employment-job-losses-continue-to-slow-the-recovery/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=TWITTER&utm_campaign=CBPPTwitter

August 5, 2011 at 11:52 am
Nicholas Johnson

July’s employment report included more bad news from states and localities: job losses are continuing. Since August 2008, state and local governments have slashed 611,000 positions, and the cuts have been getting worse — 340,000 of those jobs were lost in the last 12 months. July was the ninth consecutive month, and the 29th out of the last 35, in which total state and local employment shrank.

[.....]

The job cuts have been widespread. Since state and local employment peaked in August 2008, payrolls have shrunk by 611,000 jobs:

Local school districts have cut 229,000 positions.
Cities, counties, and other local governments have cut 237,000 positions.
State governments have cut 145,000 positions.

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Compression Stockings May Reduce Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Some Patients

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110804082010.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2011) — Wearing compression stockings may be a simple low-tech way to improve obstructive sleep apnea in patients with chronic venous insufficiency, according to French researchers.

"We found that in patients with chronic venous insufficiency, compression stockings reduced daytime fluid accumulation in the legs, which in turn reduced the amount of fluid flowing into the neck at night, thereby reducing the number of apneas and hypopnea by more than a third," said Stefania Redolfi, MD, of the University of Brescia in Italy, who led the research.

CVI occurs when a patient's veins cannot pump enough oxygen-depleted blood back to the heart. It occurs most often in the veins of the legs.

[.....]

In active people, fluid accumulation in the legs is counteracted by leg muscle contractions that squeeze the veins. However, prolonged sitting can prevent this process, and the accumulated fluid in the legs then shifts rostrally overnight. This shift results in fluid accumulation in neck tissue and is thought to increase apneic events by increasing the volume of the tissue, leading to repetitive collapse of the pharynx during night breathing. In otherwise healthy subjects who have heart failure or hypertension, the amount of this overnight rostral fluid shift is strongly correlated with the degree of overnight increase in neck circumference and the number of apneas and hypopnea per hour of sleep.

[...]


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Widespread Mistaken Beliefs About Memory

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110803174742.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2011) — A new survey reveals that many people in the U.S. -- in some cases a substantial majority -- think that memory is more powerful, objective and reliable than it actually is. Their ideas are at odds with decades of scientific research.

[.....]

"Our book highlights ways in which our intuitions about the mind are mistaken," Simons said. "And one of the most compelling examples comes from beliefs about memory: People tend to place greater faith in the accuracy, completeness and vividness of their memories than they probably should."

[...]

While studies have shown, for example, that confident eyewitnesses are accurate more often than eyewitnesses who lack confidence, Chabris said, "even confident witnesses are wrong about 30 percent of the time."

Many studies have demonstrated the ways in which memory can be unreliable and even manipulated, Simons said.

"We've known since the 1930s that memories can become distorted in systematic ways," he said. "We've known since the 1980s that even memory for vivid, very meaningful personal events can change over time. For example, (Cornell University psychology professor) Ulric Neisser showed that personal memories for the Challenger space shuttle explosion changed over time, and (University of California professor) Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues have managed to introduce entirely false memories that people believe and trust as if they had really happened."

[...]

The new findings also have important implications for proceedings in legal cases, the researchers said.

"Our memories can change even if we don't realize they have changed," Simons said. "That means that if a defendant can't remember something, a jury might assume the person is lying. And misremembering one detail can impugn their credibility for other testimony, when it might just reflect the normal fallibility of memory."

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U.S. Physicians Spend Nearly Four Times More On Health Insurance Costs Than Canadian Counterparts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110804082005.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2011) — U.S. physicians spend nearly $61,000 more than their Canadian counterparts each year on administrative expenses related to health insurance, according to a new study by researchers at Cornell University and the University of Toronto.

The study, published in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs, found that per-physician costs in the U.S. averaged $82,975 annually, while Ontario-based physicians averaged $22,205 -- primarily because Canada's single-payer health care system is simpler.

Canadian physicians follow a single set of rules, but U.S. doctors grapple with different sets of regulations, procedures and forms mandated by each health insurance plan or payer. The bureaucratic burden falls heavily on U.S. nurses and medical practice staff, who spend 20.6 hours per physician per week on administrative duties; their Canadian counterparts spend only 2.5 hours.

[.....]

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Hunger in America growing at staggering pace

http://situationroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/04/blitzers-blog-hunger-in-america/?hpt=hp_t2

August 4th, 2011
Wolf Blitzer

It’s hard to believe, but one in seven Americans – 15% of the country – now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive.

The new numbers just came out from the United States Department of Agriculture, which administers what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people. That’s the highest number on record.

The continued high unemployment and the weak U.S. economy have contributed to the explosive growth of the food stamp program – with no end in sight to the monthly increases.

Here’s some context:
- In October 2007, some 27 million Americans were on food stamps.
- A year later, October 2008, the number had reached nearly 31 million.
- By October 2009, the number was approaching more than 37 million.
- Last October saw the program increase to 43 million.
- By the end of May, 45,753,078 Americans were dependent on food stamps.

So how much money in food stamps do they get?
- An eligible individual gets $200 a month in food stamps – in the form of a debit card that can be used at supermarkets and stores to buy authorized food.
- A two-person household gets $367 a month.
- A three-person household gets $526 a month.
- And a four-person household gets $668 a month.

That’s certainly not a lot of money to purchase food for adults and children, but that’s what so many American families have to live on. Many of them simply don’t have any other money.

By the way, the just-approved first round of nearly $1 trillion in debt ceiling spending cuts over the next 10 years exempted any cuts in the food stamps program.

[.....]

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Tax Rates For Millionaires Have Fallen 25 Percent Since 1995

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/04/287913/tax-rates-millionaires25-percent-since-1995/

2011/08/04

The Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon took a look at new IRS data and found that “as a percentage of their incomes, millionaires are now paying about one-quarter less of their income to federal taxes than they did in the mid-1990s”:

“Millionaires paid an average tax rate of 22.4 percent in 2009, down by a quarter since 1995, when they paid an average of 30.4 percent,” Hanlon noted.

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Short-Lived Firm Dissolves After $1 Million Pro-Romney Donation

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/08/04/138989269/report-short-lived-firm-dissolves-after-1-million-pro-romney-donation

August 4, 2011

How's this for an example of just how porous the U.S. campaign finance system is? A recently created company made a $1 million donation to a pro-Mitt Romney political action committee, then went out of business, leaving no fingerprints from the money's donor.

Michael Isikoff of NBC News reports on this fascinating example in an investigative piece. An excerpt:

The company, W Spann LLC, was formed in March by a Boston lawyer who specializes in estate tax planning for "high net worth individuals," according to corporate records and the lawyer's bio on her firm's website.

The corporate records provide no information about the owner of the firm, its address or its type of business.



Six weeks later, W Spann LLC made its million-dollar donation to Restore Our Future — a new so-called "super PAC" started by a group of former Romney political aides to boost the former Massachusetts governor's presidential bid. It listed its address as being in a midtown Manhattan office building that has no record of such a tenant.

Isikoff lays out a trail of circumstantial facts that raise eyebrows but aren't conclusive.

For example, the lawyer who formed and dissolved W Spann works for a firm that has Bain Capital as a client. Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, was once Bain's CEO. Bain has offices in the midtown Manhattan building given as W Spann's address.

Isikoff writes that the contribution is the fruit of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision:

Campaign finance experts say the use of an opaque company like W Spann to donate large sums of money into a political campaign shows how post-Watergate disclosure laws are now being increasingly circumvented.

Much of this, the experts say, is because of last year's Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political advocacy, including giving to supposedly "independent" super PACs like Restore Our Future. That ruling also opened the door for newly created nonprofit groups — such as Crossroads GPS, started by Karl Rove — that spent tens of millions of dollars on attack ads during last year's campaign without disclosing any donors.

A $1 million contribution from an unknown source raises all kinds of questions about these kinds of donations generally if not this one specifically.

Much of this kind of cash will likely come from domestic contributors. But how would you know if donations like these came from abroad? What if wealthy persons in China or Saudi Arabia or government entities in those places made such donations, for instance? That would be illegal but who would ever know?

It just further highlights an existing paradox: voters are increasingly being asked in states to identify themselves through government-issued ID as voter ID laws crop up in various states. But big-money donors to the political system who want to affect those votes are shrouded in a fog of secrecy.

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Leaked Wal-Mart Memo Reveals America's Not Buying Their Stuff

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/644585/leaked_wal-mart_memo_reveals_america%27s_not_buying_their_stuff/#paragraph5

Bloomberg News obtained an internal memo revealing that the economic downturn companies like Wal-Mart help create isn't exactly helping its sales--while competitors' sales continue to grow.

This leads Gawker's Hamilton Nolan to wonder if America's "love affair" with the nasty corporate giant may be slowly coming to an end.

Here's the dirt from the Bloomberg story this morning:

Those Wal-Mart stores had 82.8 million fewer visits through the first five months of the company’s fiscal year than a year earlier, says the memo, which was obtained by Bloomberg News. Wal-Mart doesn’t disclose those traffic numbers, and David Tovar, a spokesman, declined to comment on the memo.

Wal-Mart’s plan to recapture customers by returning thousands of products to U.S. store shelves has failed to reverse a decline in foot traffic at the world’s largest retailer, said Jeff Stinson, an analyst at Cleveland Research Co. That’s primarily because Wal-Mart’s core low-income customers are shopping less and going to other retailers more often, according to two recent shopper surveys.

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Pelosi: Republicans Aren’t Interested In Deficit Reduction, They Are Interested In Destroying Government

An additional incentive for the Republicans is the hope that economic problems will help them defeat Obama next year.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/04/288248/pelosi-republicans-aren%E2%80%99t-interested-in-deficit-reduction-they-are-interested-in-destroying-government/

By Judd Legum on Aug 4, 2011 at 2:33 pm

In an interview with ThinkProgress and other online reporters this morning, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) flatly asserted that Republicans were not interested in deficit reduction. Pelosi asserted that the purpose of the GOP obsession with deficits is to destroy government, which she referred to as “the public space.” Pelosi said the programs under attack include “education, clean air, clean water, food safety, public safety” and more. Pelosi concluded, “You name it, they’re there to diminish it, destroy it.”


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Texas sees power outages in heat wave for the ages

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44019419/ns/weather/#.TjsSoGNGZhk

The National Weather Service chief calls it a heat wave more intense than any he can remember — and nowhere is it being felt as intensely as in Texas, where high electricity use triggered power outages Thursday and Dallas saw its 34th straight day of triple-digit temperatures.

Thursday afternoon, the power-grid operator in Texas declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 2, where companies that agree to see temporary power cuts get paid to be dropped.

It also warned that Level 3 — rolling blackouts across the state — might be required later Thursday unless residents and businesses do more to voluntarily reduce electricity use.

Dallas is also well on its way to breaking its record of 42 straight days at 100 or above, set in 1980. The Weather Channel's forecast through Aug. 13, which would be day 43, shows no day with a high below 102 degrees.

So how rough is this heat wave compared to ones in recent summers?

"I can't remember any year with the magnitude and length of this heat wave," Jack Hayes, director of the National Weather Service, told msnbc.com on Thursday.

And it's not just Dallas, or even Texas, for that matter. On Thursday, 14 states from Texas to Virginia were under heat alerts. Several dozen deaths have been tied to the heat since early July.

Though it is hot across much of the South, the "bull's-eye" of the heat is being felt in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, said National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Jurecka.

Little Rock, Ark., which hit an all-time record high of 114 degrees on Wednesday, faces another stifling 108-degree high on Thursday, Jurecka said.

[.....]

"One thing that really causes this to stand out is the nighttime lows are much higher in this outbreak," he said, comparing the current hot spell to a similar one in 1980.

"It doesn't cool down. That puts additional overnight strain on everything."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, all-time heat records were set at 15 cities and towns, mostly in the South and central U.S., National Weather Service statistics show. That's preliminary data based on just half of the weather stations across the U.S., so the number's likely to be higher when all stations are counted.

In July, 49 all-time records were set and 29 were tied, according to preliminary data. That's well above the average over the previous decade.

[...]

Texas state climatologist John Nielson-Gammon said the current drought is now the worst since Texas started keeping records on rainfall in 1895.

"Never before has so little rain been recorded prior to and during the primary growing season for crops, plants, and warm-season grasses," he said on Thursday.

July was the single warmest month ever in Texas, with an average 24-hour temperature of 87.2 degrees, beating the previous warmest month by two full degrees, he said.

"Unfortunately, we're in a vicious cycle of dry weather leading to hot temperatures and a lack of thunderstorms," he said.

[...]

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/07/13/north-texas-heat-causing-roadways-to-buckle/

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The extreme heat pounding North Texas is wreaking havoc on roadways.

Cynthia White, with Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), says repair crews make at least one heat-related repair a week because of buckling.

“Concrete actually expands in the heat [and] of course the soil contracts – so, you’ve got that buckling that goes on,” explained White.

According to White, the areas of most concern are sections of road on Highway 161, between Highway 114 and Highway 183.

“A lot of times we’ll have to go in and basically cut out that concrete and redo that,” said White. “Sometimes we’ll just seal the cracks if it’s an asphalt road.”

White says the buckling problem is exacerbated when summer temperatures of more than 100-degrees heat roads that were icy during the winter.

While heat-related road damage isn’t uncommon, it usually happens in late summer.

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29,000 Somali children under 5 dead in famine

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44021514/ns/world_news-africa/#.TjsOdWNGZhk

By JASON STRAZIUSO
updated 8/4/2011 1:44:21 PM ET

NAIROBI, Kenya — The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5, according to U.S. estimates, the first time such a precise death toll has been released related to the Horn of Africa crisis.

The United Nations has said previously that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, a statistic that suggests the death toll of small children will rise.
Story: Famine in the Horn of Africa: How to help

Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia. That number is based on nutrition and mortality surveys verified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[.....]

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Should we stop for a brick wall?

Saying we shouldn't be doing something to alleviate climate change because we can't precisely predict what the effects will be, is like saying that because we can't predict exactly what will happen, we should not step on the brakes when our car is headed for a brick wall. Exactly what will happen at a given speed will depend on how the car is made, if it has been weakened by age or accidents, the strength of the wall. But it would be totally stupid not to stop the car before we hit the wall.

A ploy the fossil fuel industry has recently been trying is to try to convince people that since a certain amount of damage has already been done, we shouldn't try to prevent even more. That is like saying that if we are headed for a brick wall, and won't be able to avoid hitting it, we shouldn't try to slow down the car as much as possible, to lessen the damage.

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NOAA study: Slowing climate change by targeting gases other than carbon dioxide

Public release date: 3-Aug-2011
Contact: Katy Human
NOAA Headquarters
NOAA study: Slowing climate change by targeting gases other than carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide remains the undisputed king of recent climate change, but other greenhouse gases measurably contribute to the problem. A new study, conducted by NOAA scientists and published online today in Nature, shows that cutting emissions of those other gases could slow changes in climate that are expected in the future.

Discussions with colleagues around the time of the 2009 United Nations' climate conference in Copenhagen inspired three NOAA scientists – Stephen Montzka, Ed Dlugokencky and James Butler of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. – to review the sources of non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases and explore the potential climate benefits of cutting their emissions.

Like CO2, other greenhouse gases trap heat in Earth's atmosphere. Some of these chemicals have shorter lifetimes than CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore cutting emissions would quickly reduce their direct radiative forcing – a measure of warming influence.

"We know that recent climate change is primarily driven by carbon dioxide emitted during fossil-fuel combustion, and we know that this problem is going to be with us a long-time because carbon dioxide is so persistent in the atmosphere," Montzka said. "But lowering emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide could lead to some rapid changes for the better."

Scientists know that stabilizing the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere would require a decrease of about 80 percent in human-caused CO2 emissions – in part because some of the carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. In contrast, cutting all long-lived non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent could diminish their climate warming effect substantially within a couple of decades. Cutting both CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions to this extent could result in a decrease in the total warming effect from these greenhouse gases this century, the new paper shows.

For the new analysis, the researchers considered methane; nitrous oxide; a group of chemicals regulated by an international treaty to protect Earth's ozone layer; and a few other extremely long-lived greenhouse gases currently present at very low concentrations.

The new review paper describes the major human activities responsible for these emissions, and notes that steep cuts (such as 80 percent) would be difficult. Without substantial changes to human behavior, emissions of the non-CO2 greenhouse gases are expected to continue to increase.

The climate-related benefits of reductions in non-CO2 greenhouse gases have limits, Montzka and his colleagues showed. Even if all human-related, non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated today, it would not be enough to stabilize the warming influence from all greenhouse gases over the next 40 years – unless CO2 emissions were also cut significantly.

The scientists also noted in the paper the complicated connections between climate and greenhouse gases, some of which are not yet fully understood. The non-CO2 gases studied have natural sources as well as human emissions, and climate change could amplify or dampen some of those natural processes, Dlugokencky said. Increasingly warm and dry conditions in the Arctic, for example, could thaw permafrost and increase the frequency of wildfires, both of which would send more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"The long-term necessity of cutting carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't diminish the effectiveness of short-term action. This paper shows there are other opportunities to influence the trajectory of climate change," Butler said. "Managing emissions of non-carbon dioxide gases is clearly an opportunity to make additional contributions."
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Research links diet during pregnancy to breast cancer risk reduction in female offspring

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/udod-rld080111.php

Public release date: 3-Aug-2011
Contact: Dayna Hochstein
US Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs
Research links diet during pregnancy to breast cancer risk reduction in female offspring
Era of Hope conference to feature compelling research examining benefits to daughters based on mother's diet

ORLANDO, Fla. — August 3, 2011 — During pregnancy, women are counseled to refrain from consuming certain types of foods, beverages and medications in order to avoid jeopardizing the health and development of the fetus. In fact, the American Pregnancy Association has a list of a dozen items they recommend expectant mothers omit from their diets. However, there are some additions, such as folic acid, that, when taken before and/or during pregnancy, can actually reduce the risk of birth defects and other disorders.1 Research presented today at the Era of Hope conference, a scientific meeting hosted by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP), reveals findings suggesting that if an expectant mother increases her consumption of foods high in certain fatty acids or nutrients during her pregnancy, she can potentially reduce the risk of breast cancer in her female offspring.

The research delves into breast cancer risk reductions attributed to the fetus when the mother, while pregnant, increases omega 3 fatty acids within her diet or consumes dietary methyl nutrients (methionine, choline, folate and vitamin B12). Some findings hypothesize that these diet augmentations may even prevent breast cancer from ever developing in the offspring.

[.....]

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Product stewardship: Designing for life after the consumer

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/acs-psd080311.php

Public release date: 3-Aug-2011
Contact: Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society
Product stewardship: Designing for life after the consumer

Manufacturers of everything from smart phones to SUVs are starting to design products not just for the customer's use, but also for an often troublesome life after the consumer, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

The cover story by C&EN Senior Editor Melody M. Bomgardner focuses on product stewardship, an increasingly popular approach to environmental protection in which manufacturers, retailers, users, and disposers share responsibility for reducing the environmental impacts of products. That means, for instance, making products from biodegradable materials that decompose quickly in landfills, or fabricating products for easy disassembly so their components can be economically recycled and reused.

Bomgardner explains how Federal and state policies and regulations already are driving retail product companies to establish stewardship policies. At least 25 states have regulations requiring recycling of electronic waste, and others are considering such action. The article describes how the move toward product stewardship is fostering take-back programs to recover and reuse materials that previously could have posed environmental pollution risks.


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Health Insurers Sacrifice Americans for Profit

http://www.truth-out.org/health-insurers-sacrifice-americans-profit/1312391666

Wednesday 3 August 2011
by: Wendell Potter, The Center for Media and Democracy

Three of the biggest health insurers have announced quarterly earnings in the past few days. If Americans were able to eavesdrop on what executives from those firms tell their Wall Street masters every three months, they would have a better understanding of why premiums keep going up while the number of people with medical coverage keeps going down.

It only takes three words, when you get right down to it, to describe the real of those folks: profits over people.

CIGNA and Humana are scheduled to report earnings this week. The three companies that have already spoken -- UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna -- earned a combined $2.51 billion from April through the end of June, more than analysts expected. On a per share basis, their earnings were up more than 17 percent on average compared with the second quarter of 2010.

[.....]

One of the secrets to achieving these results is what the insurers euphemistically call "medical management." That often translates into denied claims and denied coverage for doctor-ordered care. The fewer claims you pay and the more procedures you refuse to pay for, the more money is left over for investors to put in their pockets.

Another important way they've been able to sustain such a string of impressive earnings results is to shift more and more of the cost of care to their policyholders. An increasing percentage of these companies' policyholders are enrolled in plans that require greater cost sharing. Those policyholders pay more for care out of their own pockets than ever before while their insurers are paying much less.

[...]

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Famine in Somalia

Hawa Barre Osman looks for a sign of life from Abdi Noor Ibrahim, her severely malnourished 1-year-old, inside the Doctors Without Borders therapeutic feeding center at the Dadaab complex in Kenya. She walked for a month with her five children from Somalia to reach the camp. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/18/117785/snap.html#ixzz1U0pUcC4h

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Judge Allows Torture Suit Against Rumsfeld

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138963649/judge-allows-torture-suit-against-rumsfeld

August 3, 2011

A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq.

The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld from court filings for fear of retaliation. Attorneys for the man, who speaks five languages and worked as a translator for Marines collecting intelligence in Iraq, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.

The government says he was suspected of helping pass classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces get into Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime, and he says he never broke the law and was risking his life to help his country.

Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused while being held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value" detainees, then suddenly released without explanation in August 2006.

Two years later, he filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to courts in violation of his constitutional rights.

[.....]
In many other cases brought by foreign detainees, judges have dismissed torture claims made against U.S. officials for their personal involvement in decisions over prisoner treatment. But this is the second time a federal judge has allowed U.S. citizens to sue Rumsfeld personally.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen in Illinois last year said two other Americans who worked in Iraq as contractors and were held at Camp Cropper, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, can pursue claims that they were tortured using Rumsfeld-approved methods after they alleged illegal activities by their company. Rumsfeld is appealing that ruling, which Gwin cited.

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Fox News Compares Helping Battered Women To Getting a Manicure

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/08/03/fox-news-compares-helping-battered-women-to-getting-a-manicure/

August 3, 2011
By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario

In a move that surprised exactly no one, Fox News has launched a shrill protest against the Obama administrations’ decision to have heath insurance companies provide counseling for abused women with no co-pays (among several other benefits for women).

While it has always been clear that reason and compassion are not Fox’s strong points, one would hope that battered women would be a subject they might tread lightly around. Then I remembered that, on Fox, a rape/murder is the fault of the victim for dressing sexy.

Whatever was I thinking?

From Family PAC Federal Vice President Sandy Rios on Fox:

“Is the White House out of their mind? Does the West Wing not know what the left wing is doing? We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well?”

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Dad demands answers after man dies in alleged police beating

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44005599/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/#.TjnLGGNGZhk

8/3/2011

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Six police officers have been placed on leave after a surveillance video surfaced of witnesses expressing horror moments after seeing a homeless man beaten to death, allegedly by the officers.

Kelly Thomas, 37, died five days after an altercation with Fullerton, Calif., officers at the Fullerton Transportation Center.

[.....]

When speaking to the City Council, Thomas referred to audio of the alleged altercation that was posted online on You Tube, NBC Los Angeles said.

"Listen to my son beg those officers, 'Please, please, please God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,'" said Thomas. "And, then, the last words of his life — 'Dad, dad.' I want you to hear that for the rest of your life like I will."

Thomas said his son had been a normal teen who aspired to be a wildland firefighter until he began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia in his early 20s.

[...]

In the video taken aboard an Orange County Transportation Authority bus, passengers say officers pounded Kelly Thomas' face and hog-tied him as he cried out for his father.

[...]

On the bus surveillance video, passengers boarding a bus that arrived minutes after the confrontation tell the driver what they saw.

A woman who appears upset tells the driver: "The cops are kicking this poor guy over there. ... He's almost halfway dead."

A male witness says the man, later identified as Thomas, was sitting on a bench when he was approached by two officers and ran from them. The man says police used a stun gun on Thomas six times.

[...

Thomas suffered severe head and neck injuries and was taken off life support on July 10. On Wednesday, a small group of protesters marched outside the police station with posters depicting Thomas' bloodied and swollen face after the altercation.

[...]

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Sexual assault, domestic violence can damage long-term mental health

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/02/sexual.assault.domestic.violence/index.html

By Amanda MacMillan, Health.com
August 2, 2011 4:01 p.m. EDT

Women are drastically more likely to develop a mental disorder at some point in their lives if they have been the victim of rape, sexual assault, stalking, or intimate-partner violence, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While the connection between these harrowing experiences and poor mental health is hardly surprising, experts say the new findings highlight just how strongly the two problems are intertwined -- and how important it is for doctors and other health-care workers to ask women about past episodes of violence, even if they happened years ago.

"When professionals are treating women with depression or mental health issues, it's best to be clued in to the fact that violence might be behind [it]," says Andrea Gielen, Sc.D., director for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study.

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Calif. resident died after eating tainted ground turkey

From comments at the original site:

The Bush administration cut WAY back on food safety enforcement. And the Republicans in Congress are more interested in protecting the welfare of billionaires than that of ordinary Americans. Look for this to happen more often.

The Republican's domestic spending cuts will guarantee more of the same. We need MORE food inspectors (and funding) not less!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43988256/ns/health-food_safety/#.TjiLy2NGZhk

By JoNel Aleccia Health writer
updated 8/2/2011 1:15:17 PM ET

A Sacramento, Calif., resident has died after eating ground turkey that appears to be tied to an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning that has sickened at least 76 other people in 26 states, health officials confirmed Tuesday.

[.....]

States in which illnesses have been reported, and the number of illnesses, follow here: Alabama, 1 case; Arizona, 2 cases; California, 6 cases; Georgia, 1 case; Iowa, 1 case; Illinois, seven cases; Indiana, 1 case; Kentucky, 2 cases; Louisiana, 1 case; Massachusetts, 1 case; Michigan, 10 cases; Minnesota, 1 case; Missouri, two cases; Mississippi, 1 case; North Carolina, 1 case; Nebraska, two cases; Nevada, 1 case; New York, two cases; Ohio, 10 cases; Oklahoma, 1 case; Oregon, 1 case; Pennsylvania, five cases; South Dakota, three cases, Tennessee, two cases; Texas, nine cases; Wisconsin, three cases.
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Debt deal: anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires' coup

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/01/us-debt-deal-tea-party

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 August 2011 21.29 BST

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 (shamefully extended by Barack Obama), taxation of the wealthy, in Obama's words, "is at its lowest level in half a century". The consequence of such regressive policies is a level of inequality unknown in other developed nations. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue-collar male workers has fallen by 12%.

[Obama fought extending the tax cuts for the rich.]

The deal being thrashed out in Congress as this article goes to press seeks only to cut state spending. As the former Republican senator Alan Simpson says: "The little guy is going to be cremated." That means more economic decline, which means a bigger deficit. It's insane. But how did it happen?

The immediate reason is that Republican members of Congress supported by the Tea Party movement won't budge. But this explains nothing. The Tea Party movement mostly consists of people who have been harmed by tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor and middle. Why would they mobilise against their own welfare? You can understand what is happening in Washington only if you remember what everyone seems to have forgotten: how this movement began.

On Sunday the Observer claimed that "the Tea Party rose out of anger over the scale of federal spending, and in particular in bailing out the banks". This is what its members claim. It's nonsense.

The movement started with Rick Santelli's call on CNBC for a tea party of city traders to dump securities in Lake Michigan, in protest at Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers". In other words, it was a demand for a financiers' mobilisation against the bailout of their victims: people losing their homes. On the same day, a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events. The movement, whose programme is still lavishly supported by AFP, took off from there.

So who or what is Americans for Prosperity? It was founded and is funded by Charles and David Koch. They run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of", and between them they are worth $43bn. Koch Industries is a massive oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals company. In the past 15 years the brothers have poured at least $85m into lobby groups arguing for lower taxes for the rich and weaker regulations for industry. The groups and politicians the Kochs fund also lobby to destroy collective bargaining, to stop laws reducing carbon emissions, to stymie healthcare reform and to hobble attempts to control the banks. During the 2010 election cycle, AFP spent $45m supporting its favoured candidates.

[.....] [I suggest reading the whole article]


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A great life

A humble life dedicated to a great purpose, becomes great.
Paul Brunton
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Murdoch App for the Android

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/02/7230825-creepy-android-malware-records-your-phone-calls

By Rosa Golijan
8/2/2011

What if your beloved phone suddenly turned against you and began recording your calls without your knowledge? If you get tricked into downloading a nasty piece of Android malware, it just might.

According to researchers at CA Technologies, this latest Android security threat is significantly more advanced than previously seen Trojans — which merely snooped on text-based details such as call duration or incoming/outgoing call logs — and takes steps to record and build an archive of your actual phone conversations.

The malware basically cajoles users into allowing it to be installed by behaving like a legit Android app, creates a "configuration" file for itself so that it can operate properly, and then starts spying on you the instant you make an outgoing call.

Phone calls are recorded as AMR files — AMR is a file format frequently used for storing spoken audio — and placed directly onto your device's SD card into a freshly created directory called "shangzhou/callrecord." There aren't details regarding what happens once the audio files are saved. The folks at CA Technologies don't elaborate on whether the malware attempts to send the recording anywhere, but it wouldn't be surprising if this was a "feature" built into this or future versions of the Trojan.


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more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=WO-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-SSA-080211-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 1, 2011
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.

The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.

Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.

Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.

“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”

[.....]

This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.

¶ Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.

[...]

People from those areas who were interviewed in Mogadishu say Shabab fighters are blocking rivers to steal water from impoverished villagers and divert it to commercial farmers who pay them taxes. The Shabab are intercepting displaced people who are trying to reach Mogadishu and forcing them to stay in a Shabab-run camp about 25 miles outside the city. The camp now holds several thousand people and receives only a trickle of food.

[...]

A few years ago, the Shabab began banning immunizations, deeming them a Western plot to kill Somali children. Now countless unvaccinated children are dying from measles and cholera as tens of thousands of malnourished, immunity-suppressed people flee the drought areas and pack into filthy, crowded camps.

¶ The other day, Kufow Ali Abdi, a destitute herder who lost all his cattle, trudged out of Banadir Hospital, gently carrying a small package in his arms wrapped in blue cloth. It looked almost like a swaddled newborn but it was the opposite. It was the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Kadija, who had just succumbed to measles.

¶ “I just hope they can save the others,” he said, referring to his two remaining children, down to skin and bone.

[...]

A few years ago, the Shabab began banning immunizations, deeming them a Western plot to kill Somali children. Now countless unvaccinated children are dying from measles and cholera as tens of thousands of malnourished, immunity-suppressed people flee the drought areas and pack into filthy, crowded camps.

¶ The other day, Kufow Ali Abdi, a destitute herder who lost all his cattle, trudged out of Banadir Hospital, gently carrying a small package in his arms wrapped in blue cloth. It looked almost like a swaddled newborn but it was the opposite. It was the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Kadija, who had just succumbed to measles.

¶ “I just hope they can save the others,” he said, referring to his two remaining children, down to skin and bone.

[I heard on NPR this morning that the Obama administration is working on some kind of waiver to allow aid. If the Republicans hadn't been holding up negotiations over the debt ceiling, maybe we could already have a plan in place.]

[...]

A few years ago, the Shabab began banning immunizations, deeming them a Western plot to kill Somali children. Now countless unvaccinated children are dying from measles and cholera as tens of thousands of malnourished, immunity-suppressed people flee the drought areas and pack into filthy, crowded camps.

¶ The other day, Kufow Ali Abdi, a destitute herder who lost all his cattle, trudged out of Banadir Hospital, gently carrying a small package in his arms wrapped in blue cloth. It looked almost like a swaddled newborn but it was the opposite. It was the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Kadija, who had just succumbed to measles.

¶ “I just hope they can save the others,” he said, referring to his two remaining children, down to skin and bone.


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Your own brain thwarts diet with 'feed me' signals

That's why losing weight too fast is counter-productive.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43989918/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/your-own-brain-thwarts-diet-feed-me-signals/from/toolbar#.Tjh1g2NGZhk

By Jennifer Welsh
8/2/2011

When dieters starve themselves of calories, they starve their brain cells as well. New research finds that these hungry brain cells then release "feed me" signals, which drive hunger, slow metabolism and may cause diets to fail.

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MIT Creating 24-Hour Solar Power on the Cheap?

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/02/285708/solar-for-vampires-mit-team-creating-low-cost-247-solar-power/

By Stephen Lacey on Aug 2, 2011 at 3:14 pm

Researchers at MIT are designing a new method of building concentrating solar power plants with thermal storage that they say could lower the cost of energy by 50% compared with existing technologies.

Last month, a 19.9 MW power-tower concentrating solar power plant in Spain became the first to generate electricity for 24 hours using molten-salt storage. But the cost of building that demonstration plant is higher than most CSP technologies – around $18 per watt, putting the cost of electricity somewhere around 30 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour.

The company developing the plant, Torresol, wasn’t building it to prove the design could be the cheapest. It was a demonstration plant to prove molten storage technology and allow the company to scale up a much larger plant. But it also showed that there’s still work to be done in order to bring down costs of concentrating solar power designs.

MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor Alexander Slocum – along with a group of other researchers – says he’s designed a new type of tank for molten salt storage that could reduce equipment needs, increase durability and ultimately reduce the cost of electricity being generated by a plant.


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The Stench of Koch-backed foul play in Wisconsin recalls

This is not the first election in which the Republicans have done something like this. It has become the norm in important elections.

http://www.salon.com/news/wisconsin/?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/koch_group_wisconsin_recall_wrong_date_absentee_ballot

Tuesday, Aug 2, 2011 11:03 ET
By Natasha Lennard

Something is rotten in the state of Wisconsin -- and the Koch-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is behind it.

The second round of state Senate recall elections is scheduled for Aug. 9 -- when six Republicans will face Democratic challengers -- and voters have been sent absentee ballot applications. The problem is, Democratic voters in a number of districts received mailers advising that they return absentee ballots by Aug. 11 (two days too late to be counted). The misleading notices came from AFP.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party, Politico reports, is now filing a formal complaint against the conservative group for "falsely representing the time frame" of the recall elections.

"[AFP] has displayed a continued pattern of tampering with the electoral process in Wisconsin with elaborate, illegal and fraudulent schemes designed to suppress Democratic votes," Margaret Brick of the WDP told Politico.

The mailers specifically targeted Democratic voters in two districts where Republican incumbents face recall on Aug. 9. In response to accusations that it intentionally deceived voters, AFP claims that the wrong election date on the applications was a "printing mistake" -- a mistake the group says it is addressing by putting calls in to every person on the mailing list to remind them of the correct election date.

AFP claims that the mailers were only sent to its members, despite the fact that those targeted with the ballot notices were nearly all self-identifying Democrats. However, AFP-Wisconsin's director, Matt Seaholm, is not taking seriously the allegations : "I'm sure the liberals will try to make a mountain out of a molehill in an attempt to distract voters' attention from the issues."

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