"Mariah Blake" - Michele Bachmann's Husband's Clinics Practiced Ex-Gay Therapy (While Pocketing $161,000 of Your Tax Money)

By Mariah Blake, The Nation

Posted on July 11, 2011, Printed on July 12, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151592/michele_bachmann%27s_husband%27s_clinics_practiced_ex-gay_therapy_%28while_pocketing_%24161%2C000_of_your_tax_money%29

The following article first appeared on the Web site of The Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their e-mail newsletters here.

In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. “He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house,” Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.

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"James Galbraith" - Everything You Need to Know About the Twisted, Dangerous Debt Ceiling Fight

By James K. Galbraith, New Deal 2.0

Posted on July 11, 2011, Printed on July 12, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151593/deficit_predators%3A_everything_you_need_to_know_about_the_twisted%2C_dangerous_debt_ceiling_fight

News reports hold that President Obama scored a political victory by agreeing to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block to achieve a “go-big” $4 trillion deficit reduction. Speaker Boehner had to concede that Republicans won’t vote for any package that includes tax increases – and the deal died. So the gambit worked and the President emerged with a solid image as the alpha deficit hawk.

To which one can only say: how nice for him.

We’re in a summer that only Salvador Dali could paint, a reality so twisted that one almost yearns for the simple verities of the War on Terror or even the invasion of Iraq. Then as now, to be serious one must be a “hawk.” (The dove is a weakling, a loser, and the owl for practical purposes does not exist.) So let’s review some of the strange and mysterious faces of this ugly, vicious bird.

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"C.J. Ciaramella" - Government wiretaps increase by 34 percent in 2010

By C.J. Ciaramella   7:27 PM 07/08/2011

The Daily Caller

The number of wiretaps conducted by federal and state law enforcement in 2010 jumped 34 percent from the prior year, according to a new federal report.

The 2010 Wiretap Report said federal and state courts approved 3,194 orders for intercepting wire, oral or electronic communications. That was up from the 2,376 intercepts approved in 2009.

Here’s some more fun facts from the report:

• Of all the applications for wiretap intercepts, 84 percent (2,675) cited illegal drugs as the most serious offense under investigation. The top three state wiretaps resulting in the most arrests were all narcotics related.
• The average cost of a wiretap was $50,085, down 4 percent from 2009.
• The average number of persons whose communications were intercepted rose from 113 per wiretap order in 2009 to 118 per wiretap order in 2010.
• Only 26 percent of intercepted communications in 2010 were incriminating. Only one request for authorization was denied.
• The top three states with approved wiretap applications were California, New York and New Jersey.

The report did not include wiretaps regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or those approved by the president outside the authority of the federal wiretap law and the FISA.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/08/government-wiretaps-increase-by-34-percent-in-2010/#ixzz1RtPormmq

Multi-Billion-Dollar Terrorists and the Disappearing Middle Class

By James Petras The US government (White House and Congress) spends $10 billion dollars a month, or $120 billion a year, to fight an estimated “50 -75 ‘Al Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan”, according to the CIA and quoted in the Financial Times of London (6/25 -26/11, p. 5). During the past 30 months of the Obama presidency, Washington has spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan, which adds up to $4 billion dollars for each alleged ‘Al Queda type’. If we multiply this by the two dozen or so sites and countries where the White House claims ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists have been spotted, we begin to understand why the US budget deficit has grown astronomically to over $1.6 trillion for the current fiscal year

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"Tara Green" - The top 20 foods for reversing type-2 diabetes

by Tara Green

http://www.naturalnews.com/032959_type-2_diabetes_foods.html

(NaturalNews) The CDC has estimated that by 2050, as much of thirty percent of the American population could suffer with diabetes. New studies show that diabetics, in addition to coping with the effects of their disease, also have nearly double the risk of cancer compared to the rest of the population.

Although much of the mainstream media continues to focus on the latest Big Pharma proposed "magic bullet" drug to cure diabetes (see, for example: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/ju...), increasing evidence shows that the disease can be prevented, curbed, or even cured by choosing the right foods.

"Nature is the best chemist" states University of Rhode Island researcher Navindra Seeram whose team studied the health benefits of maple syrup. Their findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, showed that the substance derived from the sap of maple trees can protect against both diabetes and cancer.

This natural sweetener offers abundant anti-oxidants. It also contains a newly identified substance called Quebecol, formed when the sap is boiled. This study is particularly interesting since the old-fashioned medical advice to diabetics was to steer clear of anything sweet.

Ayurvedic healers have long used natural herbs and spices to treat a variety of conditions, including diabetes. Two spices familiar to those who consume Indian food offer some protection against diabetes. The yellowy-orange powder turmeric, made from the rhizomes of a plant native to South Asia.

Research in the past decade has shown that turmeric not only aids against diabetes but also helps cleanse the liver; offers natural anti-inflammatory properties; protects against breast and prostate cancers; counteracts depression; and slows the advance of Alzheimer's disease. Curcumin is the key substance in turmeric which researchers identify as the source of its multitude of healing powers.

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New Study: Fluoride Can Damage the Brain - Avoid Use in Children

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-fluoride-can-damage-the-brain---avoid-use-in-children-124299299.html

NEW YORK, June 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system," concludes a review of studies by researchers Valdez-Jimenez, et al. published in Neurologia (June 2011), reports New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc. (NYSCOF).

The research team reports, "It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride." (1)

"Fluoride can be toxic by ingesting one part per million (ppm), and the effects are not immediate, as they can take 20 years or more to become evident," they write.

Most fluoridating U.S. public drinking water suppliers add fluoride chemicals to deliver 1 ppm fluoride (equal to about 1 milligram per quart) intending to benefit teeth and not to purify the water.

"Fluoridation clearly jeopardizes our children and must be stopped," says attorney Paul Beeber, President, NYSCOF.  "We can actually see how fluoride has damaged children's teeth with dental fluorosis; but we can't see the harm it's doing to their brains and other organs. No U.S. researcher is even looking," says Beeber.

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University of Wisconsin: Indoor air pollution linked to cardiovascular risk

July 8, 2011

University of Wisconsin

http://www.news.wisc.edu/19548

An estimated two billion people in the developing world heat and cook with a biomass fuel such as wood, but the practice exposes people — especially women — to large doses of small-particle air pollution, which can cause premature death and lung disease.

In a study just published online in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have associated indoor air pollution with increased blood pressure among older women.

In a remote area of Yunnan Province, China, 280 women in an ethnic minority called the Naxi wore a portable device that sampled the air they were breathing for 24 hours. The Naxi live in compounds including a central, free-standing kitchen that often has both a stove and a fire pit, says Jill Baumgartner, who performed the study with National Science Foundation funding while a Ph.D. student at UW-Madison.

"I spent a lot of time watching women cook in these unvented kitchens, and within seconds, my eyes would burn, it would get a little difficult to breathe. The women talk about these same discomforts, but they are viewed as just another hardship of rural life," Baumgartner says.

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"Paul Joseph Watson" - Brzezinski: Middle Class Unrest To Hit U.S.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, July 7, 2011

http://www.infowars.com/brzezinski-middle-class-unrest-to-hit-u-s/

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who forty years ago wrote of a highly controlled future society where the population would be subjugated by a technocratic elite, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe yesterday to predict that middle class unrest caused by economic disenfranchisement would soon hit America.

“I don’t want to be a prophet of doom — and I don’t think we are approaching doom — but I think we’re going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society,” Brzezinski said, adding that civil unrest would begin when the lower middle class becomes severely affected by the economic fallout and rising unemployment.

The former National Security Advisor predicted “really serious international turmoil” as a result of the United States, Europe and Japan, the three traditional pillars of global economic strength, struggling with deep financial crises.

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Obama's Jobs Council, Stacked with Business Honchos, Offers Nothing But Political Theater

By John Schmitt, AlterNet
Posted on July 5, 2011, Printed on July 11, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151524/obama%27s_jobs_council%2C_stacked_with_business_honchos%2C_offers_nothing_but_political_theater

In the run-up to his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama announced a "President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" as part of efforts to demonstrate his laser-like focus on jobs. In an interim report in mid-June, the council made a set of "fast-action" recommendations, which the president trumpeted in a set-piece economic speech at a high-tech manufacturing facility in North Carolina.

Unfortunately, it is not an exaggeration to say that even if fully implemented, the council's collection of small-bore recommendations would have no discernible impact on the current jobs crisis. The main problem is that the proposals flow from a fundamental misdiagnosis of the jobs problem we face.

We have over 14 million unemployed and almost 25 million "underemployed" workers because employers have no markets for their goods and services --and therefore no need for workers to produce them. The bursting of the housing bubble wreaked havoc on family finances, leading Americans to cut back their spending. In a chain reaction, businesses cut hiring and investment, and the economy went into a tailspin. The only thing that kept the economy from falling off a cliff were the efforts of the federal government to make up for part of the catastrophic drop in demand.

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Chris Hedges: Carlos Montes and the Security State: A Cautionary Tale

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/carlos_montes_and_the_security_state_a_cautionary_tale_20110710/

Posted on Jul 10, 2011

By Chris Hedges

On May 17 at 5 in the morning the Chicano activist Carlos Montes got a wake-up call at his home in California from Barack Obama’s security state. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s SWAT team, armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests, as well as being accompanied by FBI agents, kicked down his door, burst into his house with their weapons drawn, handcuffed him in his pajamas and hauled him off to jail. Montes, one of tens of thousands of Americans who have experienced this terrifying form of military-style assault and arrest, was one of the organizers of the demonstrations outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and he faces trial along with 23 other anti-war activists from Minnesota, as well as possible charges by a federal grand jury. 

The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civilian policing. City police forces have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters. Poor urban neighborhoods, which bear the brunt of the estimated 40,000 SWAT team assaults that take place every year, have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us—in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants. And that is exactly how Montes was treated. There is little daylight now between raiding a home in the middle of the night in Iraq and raiding one in Alhambra, Calif.

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