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^#1

PETA passes out McCruelty meals to kids

Parents in Albany, New York are upset with the prominent animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals)... more

Manatee_man
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Massachusetts Man Fired for Telling Colleague Her Gay Marriage Is Wrong

What a turd!! A manager at a Massachusetts retail store claims he was unjustly fired after he told a colleague he thought her... more

KSirys
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SNL's Parody of Fox Election Coverage Hit Out of the Park!

Saturday Night Live's parody of Fox News Tuesday election coverage is a must see. As good as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin.

neocongo
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Ft. Hood Shooter was Mistreated

"Everyone else just sat down there and drunk their beer and looked at him and giggled at him," the woman said, starting... more

JonRaymond
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Actually, Free-Markets DON'T WORK, Survey says

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8347409.stm Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found... more

asherp
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Have the mega-rich achieved victory in their class-war?

http://www.alternet.org/story/143678/have_the_very_wealthy_achieved_victory_in_their_class-war/

How rich—and powerful—have today’s rich become? Some numbers can help tell the story. In 1974, the most affluent 1% of Americans averaged, in today’s dollars, $380,000 in income.

Now let’s fast-forward. In 2007, the most recent year with stats, households in America’s top 1% averaged $1.4 million, well over triple what top 1% households averaged back in 1974—and, remember, this tripling came after adjusting for inflation.

Americans in the bottom 90%, meanwhile, saw their average incomes increase a meager $47 a year between 1974 and 2007, not enough to foot the bill for a month’s worth of cable TV.

The bottom line: top-1% households made 12 times more income than bottom-90% households in 1974, 42 times more in 2007.

The numbers become even more striking when we go back a bit further in time and focus not on the top 1%, but on the richest of the rich, the top 400, the living symbol of wealth and power in the United States ever since America’s original Gilded Age in the late 19th century.

In 1955, our 400 highest incomes averaged $12.3 million, in today’s dollars. But the top 400 in 1955 didn’t get to enjoy all those millions. On average, after exploiting every tax loophole they could find, they actually paid over half their incomes, 51.2%, in federal income tax.

Today’s super rich are doing better, fantastically better, both before and after taxes. In 2006, the top 400 averaged an astounding $263 million each in income. These 400 financially fortunate paid, after loopholes, just 17.2% of their incomes in federal tax.

After taxes, as a group, the top 400 of 2006 had $84 billion more in their pockets than 1955’s top 400, $84 billion more they could put to work bankrolling politicians and right-wing think tanks and Swift Boat ad blitzes against progressive candidates and causes.

How could America’s super rich have so little, relatively speaking, back in 1955 and so much today? What has changed between the mid 20th century and the first decade of the 21st? We have lost, simply put, the economic checks and balances that so significantly discouraged grand concentrations of private wealth in the years right after World War II.

[more after the jump]http://www.alternet.org/story/143678/have_the_very_wealthy_achieved_victory_in_their_class-war/ How rich—and... more

asherp
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69 comments

19 hours ago

^#7

Corporate Rule

http://dieoff.org/page3.htm

kennymotown
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16 comments

16 hours ago

^#8

Say "Goodbye" to Bluefin Tuna

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091105/sc_afp/environmentanimalfish_20091105180943 As the insistent beat of unregulated mass... more

Progresshiv
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12 comments

22 hours ago

^#9

"The Preposterous War on Pot"

Seven million Americans have been arrested since 1995 on marijuana charges and 41,000 of them are rotting in federal and state... more

FishaHouse777
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5 comments

10 hours ago

^#10

Journalism Students find evidence that may overturn a conviction. They get issued subpoenas

A Northwestern University professor and journalism students who spent three years investigating the case of a man convicted in the... more

LowShred
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0 comments

7 hours ago

^#11

Can smells trigger memories from the past?

FRIDAY, Nov. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Do you remember the first time you smelled a type of flower? You almost certainly don't,... more

FishaHouse777
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4 comments

10 hours ago

^#12

Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?

The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise... more

Tyrannous
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2 comments

6 hours ago

^#13

Should cities tax marijuana?

Taxing medical marijuana sales is an idea worth considering, not because it is a potential cash cow for fiscally constrained... more

copperdragon
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16 comments

22 hours ago

^#14

Kucinich's Brave Health Vote Vs. Obama's Failed Promise

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/kucinichs-brave-health-vo_b_349857.html There were plenty of cowardly votes in the... more

SleepDirt
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18 comments

20 hours ago

^#15

Old ancient Egypt photos

http://www.cracktwo.com/2009/11/old-ancient-egypt-photos.html

singhbharti
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3 comments

12 hours ago

^#16

Cocaethylene studied: Cocaine, Alcohol mix to create toxic 3rd chemical

Drug addiction clinics say they are becoming increasingly concerned by the health risks associated with the chemical -- the only... more

atomiclegion
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5 comments

19 hours ago

^#17

Melting glaciers jolt smokestack China

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6907919.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093 AS an expedition from Chinese... more

JanforGore
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5 comments

22 hours ago

^#18

Genetically modified organisms: Where is the science?

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/11655-where-is-the-science
What has been of particular interest in this and past debates on the subject is the way in which those who oppose GM crops are painted as being against science (see for instance, the editorial in The Hindu on 21 October, 2009 or Starved for Science by R Paarlberg). There is a blatant attempt by GM promoters to polarise the discussion and manufacture a science-vs.-antiscience debate. All those who oppose GM crops are neither anti-science nor luddites. Indeed, many scientists have been, and still are, critical of GM for a number of good reasons. Scientists and scientific academies, including the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences, have expressed serious concerns regarding the scientific rigour of experiments and the impacts of GM crops, especially on biodiversity.

Those who support GM crops generally believe that science and technology can solve most problems, and see crops as requiring tinkering to improve agriculture. It is such short-term and piecemeal thinking that led to the excesses of the Green Revolution causing damage to soils, depletion of ground water and other harms to ecosystems. There are other supporters of GM who continue to believe that private production of goods and services is inherently superior to public ones, even as governments have been bailing out the private sector in the last year! And then there are those who have financial gains to make if the GM industry prospers.

Let me compare the GM debate with the other major scientific debate - global warming. While scientists who work on climate change and global warming rightly embrace the precautionary principle, many who work in the area of GM plant technologies abandon it altogether. A charitable explanation is that this may have to do with differing perceptions of risk in each case. Perhaps global warming is seen as a serious threat to the entire world, and GM crops may not be understood in the same way. Moreover, some benefits have been attributed to these crops by promoters, making it harder for people to reject them.

But while the naysayers of climate change have now been marginalised through more research and data, those who are concerned about GM crops have been silenced through smear campaigns launched against them. Some of the scientists, like Arpad Pusztai, who raised questions regarding the health effects of GM crops, have had their careers turned upside down. In order to learn about the tentacles and might of agribusiness, one must ask Ignacio Chapela from UC Berkeley about his gut-wrenching tenure battle, which followed his publication in Nature on the contamination of wild strains of Mexican maize by GM maize

The mere use of technology does not make an approach scientific, but this is a common fallacy even among scientists. Good science is characterised by transparency and falsifiability. These do not figure in GM. Instead, faith, the antithesis of science, features in a big way. There are few peer-reviewed journal articles on GM crops. When companies make claims about various positive contributions from their engineered crops, their statements cannot be verified or tested independently. Policymakers and even other scientists who work in the same area have to accept the results on faith.

Earlier this year, an anonymous public statement was signed and submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 26 leading scientists, entomologists who work with insects that infect corn. It stated that scientists are unable to conduct independent research on GM crops as patents prevent full access to research materials and the ability to grow and study these plants. As a consequence, the scientists state, the data that the Scientific Advisory Panel of the EPA has available to it is unduly limited. This means the claims of GM proponents cannot be verified independently or indeed be falsified.

There is general agreement among scientists and academics on the adverse effects on biodiversity as a result of cross-pollination from engineered to non-engineered crops. Still, field trials for GM crops in unmarked areas blow caution and engineered pollen to the winds in closely cultivated fields in India.

The potential damage to human health from GM crops has been shown quite clearly in a few animal systems, but perhaps needs further study. There is good peer-reviewed published evidence to show that Bt toxins are both immunogens (a substance that provokes an immune response) and immunoadjuvants (a substance that enhances immune response) for mammals. Moreover, studies have shown that Bt toxins bind to the mammalian small intestine and have effects on its proper functioning. The concerns raised by the use of viral promoters, which are hotspots for genetic recombination, the use of antibiotic resistance genes, and strong gene promoters (sequences that facilitate the transcription of a gene) to ensure that the foreign genes are expressed, have already been highlighted by many scientists.

end of excerpt.http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/11655-where-is-the-science What has been of particular interest in this and... more