"The public panned it. Republicans obstructed it. Many Democrats fled from it. Even so, the session of Congress now drawing to a close was the most productive in nearly half a century."
- Jim Abrams AP
Where is that liberal media bias?
Tax liens against home owners are sold off by cash poor cities to large Wall St banks. These banks have shell offices in empty office parks send out notices of foreclosure with additional fees added to the original liens. These dodgy practices are forcing many people out of their homes, unable to afford the added on charges.
These are the same banks we bailed out.
Their scheme to use anonymity is despicable and we need to shine a light on these scumbag bankers.
World-renowned education expert Sir Ken Robinson takes a hard look at modern education in the latest RSA Animate.
O'Donnell in Delaware: Tea Baggers don't do too well in populated areas where educations and a logical understanding of histories matter.
WALLACE: I’m going to try one last time, and if you don’t want to answer it, Miss Fiorina, you don’t have to.
FIORINA: It’s not a question of not wanting to answer it!
WALLACE: Let me ask the question, if I may, please. You’re not willing to put forward a single benefit – I’m not talking about the people 60 or let alone 65, or 70. I’m talking about people under 55. You’re not willing to say there is a single benefit eligibility for Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security that you are willing to say “Yeah, I would cut that?”
FIORINA: What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. Then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.
As Wallace notes earlier in the interview, "Back when there was talk about a non-partisan, or a bipartisan deficit, debt commission you blasted that idea in January and said we know all the solutions."
If you are a fiscal conservative, vote for these Republicans at your peril. They're frauds and liars.
"It is obviously difficult for many people to differentiate between Islam and political Islamism, the ideological strand within Islam that breeds terrorism and extremism. But it is exceedingly important to understand that difference; if we don't, we will give al Qaeda what it wants -- a civilizational struggle between the West and all of Islam." - Jeffrey Goldberg
Conservatives always need a boogie man so they can justify all the bullshit they do. Was the domestic Patriot Act needed to stop Bin Laden in a Afghan cave or poverty-level Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11?
The Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman:
"Islam is one of the world's great religions. But, like Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism and others, if you it isn't your religion you most likely have little knowledge, if any, of it, its beliefs and practices. Ignorance has always been one of the common denominators of those who are bigoted against "the others." And ignorance can breed fear which too easily can become hatred. We must differentiate between extreme theology and ideology in Islam and condemn it and challenge it, while at the same time define and separate it from the non-extremist ideology and theology. We must condemn the brand of Islam that venerates violence and intolerance. And welcome into the modern world the rest of Islam that rejects violence and intolerance. And at the same time keep it in perspective.
The Muslim community in America is being confronted by ugly in-your-face religious bigotry and we must speak out against it, educate against it and label it anti-American."
Banks couldn't give away money fast enough, now the paperwork to document the mortgages are in question. Better bail them out, again.
So, fine, the 2010 deficit was around $1.294 trillion.
But it's actually $122 billion less than Bush's 2009 budget deficit.
...the $122 billion improvement on the deficit "is the biggest one-year nominal drop in the deficit that has ever occurred." We probably won't see headlines blaring, "U.S. achieves biggest one-year deficit reduction in American history," but that just happens to be the case.Of course based on the silence from the Democrats, they're not interested in ballyhooing the fact that they're more fiscally responsible than the Bush administration's last budget.
Total silence. Ugh. Come on, people. Wise up.
There's simply no "reckless, irresponsible, out-of-control spending" going on. Any "spending" that is going on is really quite careful, responsible, and under control.
Do Tea Baggers honestly believe that the stimulus, health reform, and the bailouts "tripled the deficit" and "tripled" the amount of federal outlays? Seriously? The answer is yes, they do, even as Obama has historically lowered the deficit.
Where is this headline in the mainstream press?
In this year’s midterm elections, there is no talk of satchels of cash from donors. Nor is there any hint of illegal actions reaching Watergate-like proportions. But the fund-raising practices that earned people convictions in Watergate — giving direct corporate money to a campaign and doing so secretly — are back in a different form in 2010.
This time around, the corporations are still giving secretly, but legally. In 1907, direct corporate donations to candidates were legally barred in a campaign finance reform push by President Theodore Roosevelt. But that law and others — the foundation for many Watergate convictions — are all but obsolete. This is why many supporters of strict campaign finance laws are wringing their hands.
Not too many things bum me out, this does.
Corporations, for the first time, are allowed to finance ads that directly support or oppose political candidates. Thank you Supreme Court.
Governing from the bench? Activist judges? Exactly what Conservatives complain about but this time they have absolutely no problem. The Chamber of Commerce, the American Action Network and Crossroads GPS will own a part of the 2010 elections.
At least you can vote politicians out, corporations now own the process.
The GOP: Things you do earlier in life do not matter. A shallow grasp of complex issues is folksy.
BUT, things your opponents do early in life are clear signs they are indeed secret agents from a foreign society here to brainwash you and force you into slavery.
"All the classic lines of our 1994 model but with an aggressive new sense of entitlement"
So we have mortgages based on lies that were not intendend for the purposes normally associated with mortgage lending. Now we’re learning that the legal processes necessary to carry out the securitization process was in many — perhaps even most — cases not actually followed. The transfer of property rights that lies at the basis of a form of security that has wrought massive destruction may never have happened, meaning that mortgage-based securities, which nearly brought down the financial system and triggered a near-depression that has ruined countless lives, may not technically exist.
–Evil as privation in the world of finance « An und für sich
If there is a better argument for capitalism not just as fundamentally amoral but fundamentally not a system at all…
(via champagnecandy)
To this day, no one really knows what those securitized mortgage instruments are worth… It’s a market completely divorced from the reality of the original collateral. It’s just composed of “something” and the prices people are willing to pay for the unknowable “something”. I’ve been thinking that was actually an extension of the Enron model of creating markets from anything… I wonder if that’s true?
"Something that I have learned over the last couple of years is that I have to make decisions based on the long view. And I have to suppress my own desire for a short-term fix if I’m going to be able to lead the country effectively over the long term... I will keep on making that case, and I think that to point — to quote my vice president — I believe that voters are going to stop comparing me to the Almighty and compare me to the alternative." - President Obama
We're lucky to have him.
Is the common nature of cancer worldwide purely a man-made phenomenon? That is what some researchers now suggest.
Still, other specialists in cancer and in human fossils have strong doubts about this notion.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for roughly one in eight of all deaths in 2004, according to the World Health Organization. However, scientists have only found one case of the disease in investigations of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, researcher Rosalie David at the University of Manchester in England said in a statement. (The researchers did not reply to repeated queries made via phone and e-mail.)
The rarity of cancer in mummies suggests it was scarce in antiquity, and "that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization," researcher Michael Zimmerman at Villanova University in Pennsylvania said in a statement. "In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases."
Zimmerman was the first to diagnose cancer in an Egyptian mummy by analyzing its tissues on a microscopic level, identifying rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy who had lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period 1,600 to 1,800 years ago.
Story: Is it time to return to caveman parenting?
David and Zimmerman also analyzed ancient literature from Egypt and Greece for hints of cancer, as well as medical studies of human and animal remains going back to the age of dinosaurs. They suggested evidence of cancer in animal fossils, non-human primates and early humans was scarce, with a few dozen uncertain examples. As they analyzed ancient literature, they did not find descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers until the 17th century, and the first reports in the scientific literature of distinctive tumors have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweepers in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin's disease in 1832.
One possible reason cancers might have been comparatively rare in antiquity is that the short life span of individuals back then precluded the development of the disease. Still, the researchers did note some people in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to develop such diseases as atherosclerosis, Paget's disease of bone, and osteoporosis.
'Sin' of modern societies
David and Zimmerman therefore argue that cancer nowadays is largely caused by man-made environmental factors such as pollution and diet. They detailed their findings in the October issue of the journal Nature Reviews Cancer."In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death, but in ancient times, it was extremely rare," David said in a statement. "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer."
Despite that statement, dinosaurs did develop cancer well before humans were on the scene. Also, others argue the short life spans of antiquity could be a profoundly effective reason as to why cancer might have been rare then.
"Cancer is very rare in modern societies in humans under age 30," oncologist Dr. John Glaspy at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center told LiveScience. "In ancient times, people rarely lived to be much older than that. So cancer was rare. The 'sin' of modern societies is having people live to be much older."
Story: 3 ways to lower your breast cancer risk
Another concern when examining the fossil record is that skeletal remains might not preserve cancers very well. "To see cancers with the skeletal record, you really have to have a tumor that's affecting bone," paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin at Madison said in a phone interview. "Although there might be few confirmed diagnoses of tumors in bones, it's because cancer is a difficult diagnosis to make from bone."
Hawks did note that modern lifestyles could certainly lead to much higher rates of cancer than in the past, but not necessarily due to pollution.
"When it comes to cancers such as breast cancer, we know the age that a woman first has children or not makes a lot of difference in whether they get breast cancer, and back then people had children early, which would have put them into a lower-risk category," Hawks said.
"I’ve got Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys."
Christine O’Donnell - according to two top GOP insiders…(via brooklynmutt)
Continue reading… Howard Finneman, HuffingtonPost
