Like many people these days, Lori Potter, a 50-year-old massage therapist living on Kauai, Hawaii, has explored alternative healing for everything from headaches to skin problems. So when she wanted to boost her immune system and lower her stress levels a few years ago, she made an appointment with a visiting practitioner of ayurveda, a medical system that originated in India thousands of years ago and has gained wide popularity in the United States. He prescribed herbal supplements, which he tested himself for impurities, to help boost her immunity. Soon, Ms. Potter said, she felt more energetic and her digestion was better. After two years, the practitioner stopped visiting the island, and she has not taken any supplements since, she said, because she has not met any practitioners she trusts. ‘You never know what’s really in these supplements,’ she said. ‘This is serious stuff, and you can’t just take them without knowing the source.’ Ms. Potter may be right to be wary. A report in the Aug. 27 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly 21 percent of 193 ayurvedic herbal supplements bought online, produced in both India and the United States, […]
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or Who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because ‘every family has challenges,’ even as black and Latino families with similar ‘challenges’ are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a ‘fuckin’ redneck,’ like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll ‘kick their fuckin’ ass,’ and talk about how you like to ‘shoot shit’ for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in Six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and […]
I have been a longtime admirer of John McCain. During the 2000 Republican presidential primaries I publicly defended McCain against the pro-Bush Republicans’ whisper campaign that he was too unstable to be president (aware though I was that he had a temper). Two years later I published a positive book about him, ‘Citizen McCain.’ I admired John McCain as a man of principle and honor. He had become emblematic of someone who spoke his mind, voted his conscience, and demonstrated courage in bucking his own party and fighting for what he believed in. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a maverick. He was seen as taking principled positions on such issues as tax equity (opposing the newly elected Bush’s tax cut), fighting political corruption, and, later, taking on the Bush administration on torture. He came off as a man of decency. He took political risks. Having emerged, ironically, from his bitter 2000 primary fight against Bush as an immensely popular figure, he set out to be a new force in American politics. He decided to form and lead a centrist movement, believing that that was where the country was and needed leadership. He went against the […]
A new Government Accountability Office report on voting system testing finds that the Election Assistance Commission has not notified election officials across the country about electronic voting machine failures. And a new study by Common Cause and the Century Foundation finds that 10 very vital swing states have significant voting problems that have not been addressed since the last election. Those 10 states, according to Common Cause, are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In Colorado, 20,000 left polling places without voting in 2006 because of crashed computer registration machines and long lines. And this election day, Colorado will have another new registration system. ‘You know, Colorado is two years behind many states in implementing a statewide voter database. … This is a new system, and there’s just a lot of unknowns as to whether or not voters will be successful,’ said Jenny Flanagan of Common Cause. The problems listed in the report range from not enough voting machines to glitches with electronic registration poll books. Read the report ‘We’re seeing a lot of problems where people are being kicked off the data base rolls if their name […]
When Warren Buffett said that derivatives were ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’, this was just the kind of crisis the investment seer had in mind. Part of the reason investors are so nervous about the health of financial companies is that they do not know how exposed they are to the derivatives market. It is doubly troubling that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG) came before such useful reforms as a central clearing house for derivatives were in place. A bankruptcy the size of Lehman’s has three potential impacts on the $62 trillion credit-default swaps (CDS) market, where investors buy insurance against corporate default. All of them would have been multiplied many times had AIG failed too. The insurer has $441 billion in exposure to credit derivatives. A lot of this was provided to banks, which would have taken a hit to their capital had AIG failed. Small wonder the Federal Reserve had to intervene. The first impact concerns contracts on the debt of Lehman itself. As a ‘credit event’, the bankruptcy will trigger settlement of contracts, under rules drawn up by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). Those who […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
