"Progressive Radio Network Host Danny Schechter, Fridays @ 1pm" - The Kabuki Play On Capitol Hill Comes Right Before The Deal

By Danny Schechter

Director of Plunder The Crime Of Our Time

Oh, the gnashing of the teeth, Oh, the flamboyant tactics. Oh, all the breaking news excitement on cable news as the debt ceiling countdown saga went down to the wire with an intense political confrontation of a kind we haven’t seen before …

 Or maybe we had---in the TARP debate and so-called Obamacare vote, to cite but two moments of high political drama. Once again, all the key players knew the outcome but wanted to keep us guessing because it served everyone’s interests.

For Boehner and the boys on the GOP side it was the great leadership test subplot. He would prove how tough he was, demonstrate his leadership mettle, get equal time with the president, and even look presidential. The orange tan was gone. His moment had in the sunlight had come as he roped the Tea party kids into the politically correct corral. The Congressman from Ohio was now a national force to be reckoned with,

Lets not forget that he had become Wall Street’s butt boy, had been put on their financial slush fund, had many of the big money lobbyists on his side even as the financiers whined and complained about exaggerated threats to the world economy.

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Mark Sircus: Out of Control Weather

by Mark Sircus., AC, OMD

http://www.naturalnews.com/033178_radical_weather_extremes.html

(NaturalNews) Bizarre reports of weather extremes continue to come in from all over the world. As the northern hemisphere bakes in record breaking heat the southern half of our earth is suffering record breaking cold. In South Africa, for instance they have just experienced one of the worst storms and extreme weather conditions with snow and ice in areas never seen before. A week of the COLDEST freezing weather in 100 years has created a national emergency with roads closed everywhere with thousands of motorists stranded.

Dreadful Combination of Man and Nature

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"Ethan A. Huff" - Monsanto-spawned superweeds growing three inches daily, destroying farm equipment

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

http://www.naturalnews.com/033195_superweeds_farm_equipment.html

(NaturalNews) The proliferation of superweeds -- weeds that have mutated to develop resistance to popular herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup formula -- continues to rise. But the individual plants' overall size and strength is also increasing. According to a series of new studies published in the journal Weed Science, farmers are having more trouble than ever dealing with out-of-control superweeds in their fields, some of which grow up to three inches a day in size, and are so strong and thick that they are destroying farm equipment.

The studies reveal that there are currently at least 21 different weed species known to be resistant to Roundup, also known generically as glyphosate. These species include ragweed, pigweed, horseweed, waterhemp, and ryegrass. Since 2007, the total acreage of farmland known to be infested with superweeds has also jumped more than 450 percent, from 2.4 million acres to 11 million acres, which means that the problem is only going to get exponentially worse.

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Spiritual retreat can lower depression, raise hope in heart patients

Public release date: 1-Aug-2011
University of Michigan Health System

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/uomh-src072811.php

4-day, non-denominational spiritual retreat may help patients who want to avoid antidepressants

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Attending a non-denominational spiritual retreat can help patients with severe heart trouble feel less depressed and more hopeful about the future, a University of Michigan Health System study has found.

Heart patients who participated in a four-day retreat that included techniques such as meditation, guided imagery, drumming, journal writing and outdoor activities saw immediate improvement in tests measuring depression and hopefulness. Those improvements persisted at three- and six-month follow-up measurements.

The study was the first randomized clinical trial to demonstrate an intervention that raises hope in patients with acute coronary syndrome, a condition that includes chest pain and heart attack. Previous research has shown that hope and its opposite, hopelessness, have an impact on how patients face uncertain futures.

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The Hindu: NASA warns of global catastrophe post upcoming 'huge space storm'

Published: July 26, 2011 16:47 IST | Updated: July 26, 2011 16:47 IST Washington, July 26, 2011

The Hindu

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/article2296011.ece

NASA has warned of a once-in-a-lifetime ‘space storm’ after the sun wakes ‘from a deep slumber’ sometime around 2013, causing ‘20 times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina’.

Senior space agency scientists believe that the super storm would hit like ‘a bolt of lightning’ and damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

And unless precautions are taken, it could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security.

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"Kiera Butler" - Will Chickens Give Your Kids Cancer?

— By Kiera Butler

Mother Jones| Mon Aug. 1, 2011 2:30 AM PDT

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/07/chickens-cancer

Last week, researchers from New Zealand published a paper that showed that kids raised on livestock farms had an elevated risk of developing blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma later in life.  It didn't take long for the news of this finding to make it around the world. On Friday, an MSN Health News headline proclaimed, "Growing Up Near Livestock Tied to Blood Cancers." Whoa now, I thought. Near livestock? Plenty of people grow up in the general vicinity of farms. And given the growing popularity of urban agriculture, even city kids could be exposed to livestock on their very own block!

But before you forbid your kids to visit the petting zoo, let's take a closer look at the study. The researchers analyzed death certificates for more than 100,000 New Zealanders between the ages of 35 and 85, from 1998 and 2003, cross referencing cause of death with parents' occupation. If the deceased person had a parent who was, say, a poultry farmer, the researchers took that to mean that the person grew up on a poultry farm. The team found that subjects whose parents were livestock farmers were 22 percent more likely than those whose parents weren't farmers to develop blood cancer as adults. The finding was especially pronounced among children of poultry farmers, whose blood cancer rate was three times that of their non-farm-kid peers.

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Michael Hudson: The Debt Ceiling Set For Progressive Repealing

Mr. Obama’s scare tactics to get Democrats to vote for his Republican Wall Street plan

The Wall Street bailout melodrama should be viewed as a dress rehearsal for today’s debt-ceiling non-crisis.

You know that the debt kerfuffle is as melodramatically staged as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

This is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week now, ever since the President used almost the same words in his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!

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Ellen Brown: Forget Compromise -- The Debt Ceiling Is Unconstitutional

July 31, 2011

By Ellen Brown

The debt ceiling crisis can be averted by enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates the government to pay its debts already incurred, including pensions.   That means Social Security, which IS an "entitlement," in the original sense of the word.   We're entitled to it because we've paid for it with taxes.      

The game of Russian roulette being played with the U.S. federal debt has been called a "grotesque political carnival" and political blackmail.   The uproar stems from a statute that is unique to the United States and never did make much sense.   First passed in 1917 and revised multiple times since, it imposes a dollar limit on the federal debt.   What doesn't make sense is that the same Congress that voted on the statute votes on the budget, which periodically exceeds the limit, requiring the statute to be revised.   The debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since 1962, 10 of them since 2001.   The most recent   increase, to $14.294 trillion by H.J.Res. 45, was signed into law on February 12, 2010.  

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David Dayen: America Unmoored – Elite Failure Leads to Utter Confusion

Published on Friday, July 29, 2011 by FireDogLake

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/07/29/america-unmoored-elite-failure-leads-to-utter-confusion/

by David Dayen

I’m not a big Charlie Cook fan, and I think he’s deeply confused about economics in this post. But I feel like he definitely gets it right about the era we’re heading into.

Over the course of history, Congress and the White House have seen highs and lows. Times that can be remembered with pride and other times when politicians failed to meet the American people’s expectations. Right now, we are at a very, very low point—the worst I’ve seen since I moved to Washington in September 1972. Never in my memory have both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue appeared as dysfunctional as they do today [...]

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Thomas Naylor: Vermont's Village Greens -- An Alternative to Empire

By THOMAS NAYLOR

http://counterpunch.org/naylor07292011.html

Where have all the village greens gone?  They have been destroyed one by one.  Oh, when will we ever learn, sang Pete Seeger, a long time ago.

America needs a lot more village greens and far fewer unmanned drone aircraft, F-35s, and SUVs.  Village greens are small communities devoted to life, liberty, land, and locality rather than death, doom, and destruction of the planet earth.

The village green is a place near the center of town where people meet to chat, have a coffee, a beer, a glass of wine, or a bite to eat.  They may also buy a newspaper or a book, read it, listen to a concert, see an art exhibit, watch a play, smell the flowers, and pass the time away.  There are trees, bushes, birds, and grass and it is clean, green, and sustainable - - a place to be enjoyed for the ages.  It may be across the street from the town hall, the court house, the library, or the post office - - all purveyors of freedom and democracy.  Food and local trade are important elements of village greens - - locally owned restaurants and shops and perhaps a farmer’s market, not a Wal-Mart or a McDonald’s.  There may also be a church nearby. 

Vermont village greens are democratic, nonviolent, crime free, noncommercial, egalitarian, and humane – a mirror image of the way America once was, but no longer knows how to be.

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