Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
Ben Norton, Politics Staff Writer - Salon
Stephan: The hysteria and fear mongering makes perfect sense for arms merchants, and those corporations that make up the military/intelligence/security industry. Freak the peasants out and they'll tolerate any level of public expenditure. And it's quite safe to do this because the corporate media is all too willing to buy into that story. It's profitable for them as well.
But the truth is you are much more likely to be shot by your Theocratic Rightist cousin Roy, or your husband than a terrorist. In fact you are more likely to be killed by a snow storm. Here are some facts.
Wind-blown snow buries vehicles, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, in Parkville, Md. Millions of Americans were preparing to dig themselves out Sunday after a mammoth blizzard with hurricane-force winds and record-setting snowfall brought much of the East Coast to an icy standstill.
Credit: AP/Steve Ruark
Snow storm Jonas was not kind, to put it mildly.
Many died in car accidents, with icy roads covered in blankets of snow greatly increasing the chances of deaths and injuries. Several died from carbon monoxide poisoning, such as a 23-year-old New Jersey mother and her son, after their car was stuck in the snow.
New America, a non-partisan think tank, calculated […]
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
Bethania Palma Markus, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Terrorists are your concern? You are more likely to be struck by lightning than shot by a terrorist. But your aunt Maude who goes around casually carrying a Glock in her handbag? Perhaps that should concern you. Here's another one of those gun stories I see every day.
Tragic news for a Tennessee family who probably wishes they hadn’t carried around a loaded gun:
Officers say four children had been left in the car while their mother and step-father were inside the building a short distance away, paying a bill.
Police say the boy’s 8-year-old brother fired the gun. The 7-year-old boy was bleeding from the head.
Investigators say one of the children found a loaded semi-automatic pistol in their mother’s purse. They say the child tried to unload the weapon by removing the magazine when the gun discharged.
The boy was transferred to a nearby trauma center where he later died. The Department of Children’s Services in Tennessee has opened an investigation.
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
Alex Zielinski, - Think Progress
Stephan: The Flint, Michigan lead poisoning situation is the direct result of incompetence by Governor Rick Snyder. But it is just the most egregious example of yet another infrastructure crisis. The older cities in the U.S. have water systems that are a century or older, and are breaking down. Here is an example of what I mean.
As all eyes are on the water contamination crisis plaguing Flint, Michigan, another U.S. city is grappling with similar questions about whether its public officials ignored warning signs suggesting its tap water wasn’t safe to drink.
It’s been two months since the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency first identified excessive levels of lead in the town of Sebring’s public water system. However, despite the EPA’s requirements to inform the public by the end of November, Sebring residents were only told of the contamination last week.
“It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring’s ‘cat and mouse’ game and should have had closer scrutiny on the water system meeting its deadlines,” Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler told the Daily Mail.
Coming just days after President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint — where residents have been exposed to toxic levels of lead in their own water system — this news isn’t being taken lightly by Ohio officials. On Monday, the state ordered the suspension of Sebring Water Superintendent Jim Bates […]
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
Stephan: Here's a food story I hadn't heard, and maybe you haven't either.
An infantryman eats food rations from cans during the Vietnam War.
Credit: Corbis
Many of the foods that we chow down on every day were invented not for us, but for soldiers.
Energy bars, canned goods, deli meats — all have military origins. Same goes for ready-to-eat guacamole and goldfish crackers.
According to the new book, Combat-Ready Kitchen: How The U.S. Military Shapes The Way You Eat, many of the packaged, processed foods we find in today’s supermarkets started out as science experiments in an Army laboratory. The foodstuffs themselves, or the processes that went into making them, were originally intended to serve as combat rations for soldiers out in the battlefield.
Indeed, military needs have driven food-preservation experiments for centuries.
Canning, or bottling, was invented at the turn of the 19th century, when the French army offered a reward for someone who could invent a way to keep foods longer. (Napoleon’s men, as The Salt has reported, were often […]
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2016
Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, - Think Progress
Stephan: It is my view that the election hangs on what Millennials (of all races) do, whether they vote or not. If they vote Bernie Sanders could well become President. If they don't it could be Trump, and they will reap the whirl-wind of his craziness. Will they vote? Nothing I see answers that question, and the fecklessness of American voters can hardly be exaggerated.
Ganovana Ayala of Boulder, Colo., holds a sign while attending a Latino voting rally on the campus of the University of Colorado before the Republican presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015, in Boulder, Colo.
Credit: AP Photo/David Zalubowski
The Latino electorate will reach a record high in 2016, soaring to 27 million eligible voters and nearly outpacing African American voters, according to a new Pew Research Center report — suggesting that members of immigrant families could help change the outcome of future elections.
The bulk of the group is increasingly young. Millennials make up almost 44 percent of the Latinos who will be eligible to vote in the 2016 election, according to the report’s projections. The Latino electorate also swelled in part because of the 1.2 million adult Latino immigrants who are living in the […]
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