Friday, January 4th, 2013
American-Statesman Investigative Team, - Austin Statesman
Stephan: This is what we are doing to an entire generation of patriotic young men and women, who answered their country's call and were sent by the Bush neocons into the wars that have dominated our foreign policy and drained our resources for a decade, and will earn us generations of enmity in the years to come.
We must, as citizens, demand that these wars cease. Otherwise we are complicit in these tragedies.
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — After coming home from Iraq, Ray Rivas’ life had become a grind of rehab and chronic pain from a brain injury. On that morning in July 2009, he told his wife he hadn’t slept the night before - the headaches that had plagued him since a mortar shell exploded near him three years earlier often robbed him of sleep.
But Colleen Rivas said her husband was in good spirits as he drove away from their New Braunfels home.
‘He left with a doughnut in his hand and a smile on his face,
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Friday, January 4th, 2013
IAN MILLHISER, - Think Progress - Justice
Stephan: Voter suppression and IDs are only two of the ways the Republican Party has sought to control elections and, thereby, the government. This has been a concerted effort 30 years in the making. A kind of coup. Only citizen participation through voting is going to straighten this out. We have got to get everyone eligible out to vote.
As of this writing, every single state except Hawai’i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent - meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress.
A deeper dive into the vote totals reveals just how firmly gerrymandering entrenched Republican control of the House. If all House members are ranked in order from the Republican members who won by the widest margin down to the Democratic members who won by the widest margins, the 218th member on this list is Congressman-elect Robert Pittenger (R-NC). Thus, Pittenger was the ‘turning point
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Friday, January 4th, 2013
MARY PEMBERTON, - USA TODAY/The Associated Press
Stephan: I am assuming you have seen something about this. If not look at Google News. This is an update, and should be a major wakeup call, and result in the end of oil drilling in the Arctic. This story could, in a heartbeat, end up being worse than the Exxon Valdez. If they can get the rig off the island where it has run aground, without the diesel fuel tanks breaching, it will be an act of grace. I cannot believe that except for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, the corporate media is not treating this event proportionally.
Click through to see the video.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — High seas and strong winds prevented crews from boarding an oil drilling ship to check for any damage after the large vessel went aground off an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska.
A Coast Guard plane and a helicopter flew over the Kulluk on Tuesday, but severe weather didn’t permit putting marine experts on board the drilling rig, which had grounded on a sand and gravel beach in stormy seas.
Federal on-scene response coordinator Capt. Paul Mehler said the Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig is carrying about 143,000 gallons of diesel and about 12,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid, and appeared stable.
‘There is no sign of a release of any product,’ Mehler said during a news conference.
A team of company, Coast Guard and local officials said they were mobilizing spill response equipment and preparing a plan in the event of a spill in the Partition Cove and Ocean Bay areas of the island. The area is home to at least two endangered species, as well as harbor seals, salmon, and sea lions.
The storm eased Tuesday, with gusts up to 35 mph and waves up to 30 feet high, and similar conditions were expected Wednesday. Officials were […]
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Friday, January 4th, 2013
MARILYNN MARCHIONE and MIKE STOBBE, Medical Writers - Fox TV (D.C.)
Stephan: Virtually every processed food has high fructose corn syrup in it. The next time you are in a restaurant read the label on the little jelly packets. Look at any candy, or commercial cereal, and on and on. Fructose is a critical ingredient for the industrial food industry. Once again, it is profit over wellness. You must take charge of your diet; your life depends on it.
This is your brain on sugar – for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.
After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn’t register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.
It’s a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.
All sugars are not equal – even though they contain the same amount of calories – because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all […]
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Thursday, January 3rd, 2013
EMILY BADGER, - Pacific Standard
Stephan: I find this report particularly interesting, because it is the scientific manifestation of an insight known to pre-technological cultures and nonlocally derived systems. Anyone who is familiar with Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, knows of its notable focus on the shape and color of rooms, and the things in it. And from having two Waldorf educated daughters I know the choices made have an effect on children. Chartre Cathedral, the Great Pyramid, are earlier examples of architecture designed to produce specific states of consciousness.
Architects have been talking for years about ‘biophilic
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