“Dr. Mercola” - This Common Food Additive Now Linked to Weight Gain

Dr. Mercola

June 1, 2011

http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2011/06/01/this-common-food-additive-now-linked-to-weight-gain.aspx

The food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) could lead to obesity. Recent research found that people who eat more MSG are more likely to be overweight or obese. What’s more, the link between high MSG intake and being overweight held even after accounting for the total number of calories people ate.

MSG is a widely used food additives. It is often present in processed foods although it is frequently not clearly labeled.

Reuters reports:

“In the latest research ... [scientists] followed more than 10,000 adults in China for about 5.5 years on average. The researchers measured MSG intake directly by before-and-after weighing of products, such as bottles of soy sauce, to see how much people ate ... Men and women who ate the most MSG (a median of 5 grams a day) were about 30 percent more likely to become overweight by the end of the study”.

“Jess Zimmerman’ - Why Republicans are fighting Obama’s commerce pick

Jess Zimmerman

June 1, 2011

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-01-why-republicans-are-fighting-obamas-commerce-pick

President Obama nominated long-time successful energy executive John Bryson to be secretary of commerce yesterday, in a move representative Darrell Issa calls "deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge." Wait, what?

See, before Bryson was the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, or the CEO of Edison International, or the director of Boeing, or a trustee at CalTech, or the chairman of the board of BrightSource Energy (which built Google's solar farms), he co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. A hippie! What do hippies know about our current energy challenge??

Issa's not the only one throwing shade. Jim Inhofe objected to Bryson on the grounds that the NRDC is a "radical environmental organization" -- and Inhofe knows from radical! Slightly less insanely, 44 Republican senators are saying that they will filibuster his confirmation, not because they have any problems with his record, but because they want to use their cooperation to blackmail Obama into ratifying trade agreements they favor.

“Reuters” - Hundreds feel sting of jellyfish on Florida’s east coast

Reuters

June 1, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/01/hundreds-feel-sting-of-jellyfish-on-floridas-east-coast/

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla (Reuters) - Thousands of jellyfish washed up on Florida's east coast over the Memorial holiday weekend, stinging swimmers and thwarting beachgoers.

Ocean lifeguards said about a thousand people had been stung since Friday, mostly at central Florida's popular Cocoa Beach.

"There's so many. If you walked out into the water, I almost guarantee a sting," Brevard County Ocean Rescue Assistant Chief Eisen Witcher told Reuters on Tuesday.

Large numbers of jellyfish are not uncommon, but the particular species getting blown ashore by strong east winds is unusual for the area.

Known as mauve stingers, the sea critters are a reddish-purple color. This is the first time a big bloom of the species has come ashore in the past decade, said Kevin B. Johnson, associate professor of oceanography at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

Why they arrived instead of the more familiar cannonball or Portuguese man-of-war breeds is the result of a combination of environmental factors tough to pin down, Johnson said.

But this much is known: Their on-shore appearance is as bad for them as it is for vacationers.

"As soon as they hit the beach, they start dying," Johnson said.

He suspects the jellyfish could stick around for a few more weeks, though there is no way to know for sure.

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"Kase Wickman" - Egypt president, sons to be tried on August 3: sources

Kase Wickman

June 1, 2011

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/01/egypt-president-sons-to-be-tried-on-august-3-sources/

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons have been ordered to face trial starting on August 3 in a Cairo criminal court for their role in killing protesters and for graft, judicial sources said.

Mubarak, ousted on February 11 after mass demonstrations demanding he end his 30 years in power, has been questioned for his role in a crackdown that led to the killing of more than 800 demonstrators and has been probed over corruption.

Mubarak could face the death penalty for a charge of "pre-mediated killing" if convicted.

“Michael Lind” - I am not a "global warming denialist"

Michael Lind

June 1, 2011

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/01/lind_leonard_global

In his thoughtful criticism of my essay on the future of fossil fuels and the poor prospects for renewable energy, Andrew Leonard characterizes my message as one that "we have nothing to worry about." This may be partly the fault of my presentation, because in the course of being provocative I did not make it sufficiently clear that I was engaged in analysis, not advocacy. I made the prediction that, even in the presence of global warming, the countries of the world are unlikely to allow the vast stores of fossil fuels in the earth’s crust to lie there undisturbed, when technology is making many of them ever more accessible and cheaper than the renewable energy alternatives. For the record, I personally wish that greenhouse gas emissions would stop immediately, and I personally would prefer a world of harmonious international cooperation for all time. Neither of my personal preferences is going to be fulfilled and neither affects the accuracy of my analysis.

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"Progressive Radio Network Host Bhavani Jaroff, Wednesday @ 5pm I Eat Green Newsletter

iEat Green with Bhavani on The Progressive Radio Network            

School Garden in Uganda that Slow Food Huntington is helping to support.

Lettuce planted with the Girl Scouts to feed the needy

Hello Everyone,

I'd like to remind you to listen to my radio show today at 5pm, EST.  My guest will be Dr. Paul Connett. He is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Dartmouth College.  Since 1983, he taught chemistry at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he specialized in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. He retired in May 2006.  Over the past 26 years his research on waste management has taken him to 49 states in the US, and 55 other countries, where he has given over 2000 pro bono public presentations.  Ralph Nader said of Paul Connett, "He is the only person I know who can make waste interesting.”

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Special Interests...EXPOSED!!!

Some interesting clips in this video! - Gary

The College Conspiracy

Great piece with Gerald Celante!

"Sahil Kapur" - Climate 'Trutherism' -- The Conspiracy Theory That's No Joke

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/30/climate-change-conspiracy-theory

To its eternal shame, the Republican party has taken climate change denial out of the crank fringe and made it mainstream

by Sahil Kapur

The United States is experiencing a golden era of conspiracy theories. From the "9/11 truthers" to the "Trig birthers" to the "Obama birthers" and, most recently, the "Bin Laden deathers", alternate theories of reality are alive and thriving on the American fringes, perhaps more so than ever in the age of digital media. As Hendrik Hertzberg recently wrote in a New Yorker comment article about Donald Trump's recent championing of birtherism: John Boehner, speaker of the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, has declared the settled scientific consensus that manmade climate change is happening 'comical'.

The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.

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"Robert Reich" - The Truth about the US Economy

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by RobertReich.org

http://robertreich.org/post/5993482080

by Robert Reich

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It’s growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down. Home prices are down. Jobs and wages are going nowhere.

It’s vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.

During these three decades everyone’s wages grew — not just those at or near the top.

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