September 20, 2011

People with diabetes are at increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke at an early age, and diabetes appears to dramatically increase a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia later in life, according to a new study conducted in Japan and led by Yutaka Kiyohara, M.D., an environmental medicine researcher at Kyushu University, in Fukuoka. The study included more than 1,000 men and women over age 60. At the beginning, tests showed that 15% of the participants had full-fledged diabetes, while 23% had prediabetes, also known as impaired glucose tolerance. The participants were all dementia-free when the tests were done, but over the next 15 years 23% received a diagnosis of dementia. Slightly less than half of those cases were deemed to be Alzheimer's disease, with the remainder roughly split between vascular dementia and dementia due to other causes. The diagnoses were confirmed with brain scans of living patients and brain autopsies in deceased patients. Both diabetes and prediabetes were associated with an increased risk of dementia diagnosis, although the association was weaker for prediabetes. And the link persisted even after the researchers took into account several factors associated with both diabetes and dementia risk, such as age, sex, blood pressure, and body mass index. The researchers found that people with diabetes were twice as likely as the other study participants to develop Alzheimer's disease within 15 years. They were also 1.75 times more likely to develop dementia of any kind. Diabetes could contribute to dementia in several ways, which researchers are still sorting out. Insulin resistance, which causes high blood sugar and in some cases leads to type 2 diabetes, may interfere with the body's ability to break down a protein (amyloid) that forms brain plaques that have been linked to Alzheimer's. High blood sugar (glucose) also produces certain oxygen-containing molecules that can damage cells, a process known as oxidative stress. In addition, high blood sugar -- along with high cholesterol -- plays a role in the hardening and narrowing of arteries in the brain. This condition, known as atherosclerosis, can bring about vascular dementia, which occurs when artery blockages (including strokes) kill brain tissue. Studies dating back to the late 1990s have suggested that people with diabetes are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. The next step will be to understand whether controlling blood sugar and reducing risk factors for type 2 diabetes also reduces dementia risk. Before it’s too late, I’d just like to say, it’s been nice to know you.

September 13, 2011

From the Salt Lake Tribune:
Ever since the LDS Church declared its support for the Utah Compact, advocating compassion in the illegal immigration debate, and support of Utah’s guest-worker law, tea-party Mormons have seemed to waver between following their church leaders or Glenn Beck. Delegates at Republican conventions, while debating whether to ask for the Legislature’s repeal of the guest-worker bill, argued among themselves about the church’s role in the issue, whether it had a right to express an opinion, and what its statements really meant. Now we have the definitive answer from a former Arizona state senator who ran in the Republican primary for governor of that state last year and is a loudly proclaimed tea-party Mormon steeped in the belief she and all other good people are surrounded by government conspiracies. Arizona State Sen. Karen Johnson says her beloved Mormon Church was brainwashed by evil liberals. And now, she surmises, Mormon leaders have something in common with the news media: They wallow in ignorance by opposing her righteousness. Yep, in the world of Johnson and the tradition of Mormon conservatives in her area of Mesa, Ariz., the LDS Church in Utah is now a liberal bastion. Johnson, who gave a speech in the Arizona Senate in 2008 alleging the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 was the result of government conspiracy, wrote a lengthy piece on her blog last week that claims the Utah Compact was a carefully crafted conspiracy that sucked Mormon leaders in by using LDS code words. Johnson, who was named worst legislator of the year by the Arizona Republic in 2002, charged in her editorial that nobody would claim authorship of the Utah Compact which, among other things, advocates keeping families together when dealing with undocumented workers who Johnson and other tea partiers say should all be deported. She had harsh words for such liberal radicals as Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce President and former president of the Utah Senate Lane Beattie. Another liberal rascal revealed by her research is Paul Mero, of the Sutherland Institute (and you thought that was a conservative think tank). She unmasked the plot by pointing out that Chamber of Commerce executive Natalie Gochnour couldn’t say in a television interview who was the actual author of the compact. Johnson mocked Gochnour’s answer that up to 100 people had input into the final product. But Johnson found out that the real culprit was longtime political consultant Carter Livingston, a Democrat. Livingston was working with the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Forum and, in an interview uncovered by Johnson, said that in order to work with the conservative culture in Utah to arrive at a solution, he tried to find common ground, like keeping families together. And that’s what duped the church, says Johnson. The Arizona political culture from which Johnson comes is the same culture that created the political philosophy of Utah Eagle Forum president Gayle Ruzicka, who, while living in Arizona was part of the political machine that elected former Republican Gov. Evan Mecham, later disgraced by scandal. Ruzicka moved to Utah after that and has been molding Utah County in the image of Mesa ever since.

September 12, 2011

This is what I wrote in my journal about yesterday:
Can’t really stand having the TV on now or reading the papers. Everything is about feeding our orgy of self pity on the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 without any intelligent discussion of the causes or what has happened since. The way that event was politicized and used to undermine the democratic elements of our republic has tainted it for me.
This is what Paul Krugman wrote:
The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud. It was a time when tough talk was confused with real heroism, when people who made speeches, then feathered their own political or financial nests, were exalted along with – and sometimes above – those who put their lives on the line, both on the evil day and after. So it was a shameful episode in our nation’s history – and it’s one that I can’t help thinking about whenever we talk about 9/11 itself. Now, I should have said that the American people behaved remarkably well in the weeks and months after 9/11: There was very little panic, and much more tolerance than one might have feared. Muslims weren’t lynched, and neither were dissenters, and that was something of which we can all be proud. But the memory of how the atrocity was abused is and remains a painful one. And it’s a story that I, at least, can neither forget nor forgive.

September 6, 2011

How many species are there on this planet? In 1691, the scientist John Ray estimated that there were 20,000 species of insects. His numbers were significantly off — so far, at least a million insect species have been described. But he reached that estimate the way most scientists still do, by extrapolating from the number of already known species. Three centuries later, there is still no scientific consensus on the total number of species. The most rigorous attempt at a statistical analysis of the problem, a recent study led by scientists at Dalhousie University, concludes that there are about 8.7 million species on Earth. The team analyzed the numerical relationship between species, genus, family, and order in well-studied life-forms and used that pattern to estimate the number of species in categories of life that haven’t been well studied. Some scientists argue that that almost surely underestimates some lesser-known classes of life. Only 1.25 million species have been described in the 253 years since Linnaeus devised the method we use to name them. This means that if there are, indeed, roughly 8.7 million species over all, nearly 90 percent of the species on Earth have not yet been discovered and described. According to the study, it would take another 1,200 years to provide a scientific description of them all at our current pace. (The study estimates that it would take 303,000 taxonomists working full tilt just to provide the most basic scientific description of all the unknown species.) At the rate we are losing species, a huge number currently alive will have gone extinct in that time. And that 8.7 million? It doesn’t include the species of bacteria, which may number in the millions. So, while we are learning more each day, it is still true to say that no matter how much we think we know about life on Earth, we know almost nothing; except, perhaps, that Life is varied and extraordinary beyond even our imaginings.

September 2, 2011

There’s good news and bad news about Utah, which is kind of an improvement because usually there is only bad news. Keeping with tradition, the bad news first:
A 2007 survey by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice put Utah’s reported rape rate at 63.7 per 100,000 females compared to the U.S. rate of 57.4 per 100,000 females. The survey also found that nearly one-third of Utah (still 60% Mormon) women surveyed had some type of sexual assault during their lifetimes. Surveys have shown that in many cases where family members are the perpetrators, other family members of the victim advise them not to tell authorities because they fear damage to the family image. That’s right, families are forever.

Next, the good news:
One characteristic about Salt Lake City that you may not have guessed is that it has the third-highest rate of same-sex couples among America’s mid-size cities (those with populations between 100,000 and 250,000). It even ranks in the top 10 for same-sex couples of all cities, with such well-known liberal places as Berkeley, Calif.; Cambridge, Mass.; and Madison, Wis. Salt Lake City has 17.31 same-sex couples per 1,000 households, with 1,290 such couples overall. That is more than double the national rate of 7.7. “It doesn’t surprise me,” Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker said. “I have known as mayor, and as anyone here who pays attention also knows, that we have a relatively large and active LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community.” A series of state-by-state data releases from the 2010 census containing data on same-sex couples was recently completed, allowing national comparisons. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law used it to rank states, counties, and cities. On the census form, a household head indicated that a second adult of the same sex is a spouse or an “unmarried partner.” The study uses census data on same-sex couple households to estimate the size of the LGBT population. That indicates about 8.5 percent of adults in Salt Lake City identify themselves as LGBT, compared with 3.8 percent of adults nationally. Among large cities with populations of more than 250,000 people, San Francisco has the highest rate of same-sex couples at 33.41 per 1,000 residents, followed by Seattle at 25.54 and Oakland, Calif., at 24.61. The proportion of households with same-sex couples in Salt Lake City is similar to that of Denver, Boston, and even Manhattan, which has 19.32 per 1,000 households. Cities like Salt Lake City, Denver, Atlanta, and Minneapolis have a “regional draw” for LGBT people who are looking to live in a more accepting city without leaving their home state or region. In the past, it was more common to move to San Francisco or New York, but now it’s easier to find a welcoming climate closer to home. Jakob Crawford, a 21-year-old gay man who lives in Salt Lake City, agrees. “Gay people in Utah come to Salt Lake City because it’s almost like an island of liberal progressives in a sea of conservative Mormon culture,” he says.

August 29, 2011

Women’s rights are increasingly under attack in the United States. Since last year, 13 states, including Kansas, have enacted laws banning insurance coverage of abortion in the health insurance exchanges created by the federal health care reform law. Some states have gone even further, aggressively restricting abortion coverage even in private insurance plans sold outside the exchanges. The Kansas statute, which is being challenged in court, forbids abortion coverage (except to save a woman’s life) in comprehensive insurance plans sold in the state, but permits companies to sell a separate rider covering abortion care for an additional cost. It also bars abortion services in policies sold after 2014 in the new exchanges. That part of the law, which also contains only a single exception limited to life endangerment, does not allow for a separate rider for broader abortion coverage. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Kansas, argues persuasively that the law is unconstitutional because it essentially levies a tax on a constitutionally protected procedure. It also charges that the ban on abortion coverage amounts to sex discrimination because it prevents women from buying plans covering all of their health care needs while imposing no limitations on men’s medical needs. The suit comes amid a flurry of court decisions on other abortion-related restrictions. In recent weeks, federal judges in Indiana, Kansas, and North Carolina have granted preliminary injunctions against state measures barring the use of Medicaid and federal family-planning money at Planned Parenthood clinics serving low-income women. In late June, a federal district judge in South Dakota blocked as unconstitutional a state law imposing a 72-hour waiting period for abortion services, the longest in the country. The same law also subjects women seeking abortions to counseling at so-called pregnancy help centers run by antiabortion activists. In July, a federal judge in Kansas preliminarily enjoined a new licensing law that imposes onerous and medically unnecessary requirements on the state’s three remaining abortion providers. Unfortunately, an Arizona state court refused this month to block several bad provisions enacted in 2009, including one limiting the work of nurse practitioners, which has caused Planned Parenthood to scale back its services. Since a majority of Americans support a woman’s right to an abortion, the self-righteous have to use deceptive methods such as these to further restrict women’s legal rights. These cases highlight the deviousness of the ongoing attack on women’s freedom by conservatives.

August 27, 2011

For a hundred years, poll taxes were used throughout the South to keep African-Americans from voting. As Representative John Lewis points out:
Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth, was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, and nine other states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification. Having fought for voting rights as a student, I am especially troubled that these laws disproportionately affect young voters. Students at state universities in Wisconsin cannot vote using their current IDs (because the new law requires the cards to have signatures, which those do not). South Carolina prohibits the use of student IDs altogether. Texas also rejects student IDs, but allows voting by those who have a license to carry a concealed handgun. These schemes are clearly crafted to affect not just how we vote, but who votes. Conservative proponents have argued for photo ID mandates by claiming that widespread voter impersonation exists in America, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While defending its photo ID law before the Supreme Court, Indiana was unable to cite a single instance of actual voter impersonation at any point in its history. Likewise, in Kansas, there were far more reports of U.F.O. sightings than allegations of voter fraud in the past decade. These theories of systematic fraud are really unfounded fears being exploited to threaten the franchise. In Georgia, Florida, Ohio, and other states, legislatures have significantly reduced opportunities to cast ballots before Election Day — an option that was disproportionately used by African-American voters in 2008. In this case the justification is often fiscal: Republicans in North Carolina attempted to eliminate early voting, claiming it would save money. Fortunately, the effort failed after the State Election Board demonstrated that cuts to early voting would actually be more expensive because new election precincts and additional voting machines would be required to handle the surge of voters on Election Day. Voters in other states weren’t so lucky. Florida has cut its early voting period by half, from 96 mandated hours over 14 days to a minimum of 48 hours over just eight days, and has severely restricted voter registration drives, prompting the venerable League of Women Voters to cease registering voters in the state altogether. Again, this affects very specific types of voters: according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, African-Americans and Latinos were more than twice as likely as white voters to register through a voter registration drive. These restrictions purportedly apply to all citizens equally. In reality, we know that they will disproportionately burden African Americans and other racial minorities, yet again. They are poll taxes by another name.

August 24, 2011

There’s a new billboard along the 2100 South freeway just west of 5600 West in Salt Lake City. “Don’t believe in God?” it asks. “You are not alone.” The billboard was purchased by the Utah Coalition of Reason with a grant from the Washington D.C.-based United Coalition of Reason, and it will remain up through Sept. 19. “We’re hoping to reach a lot of people on their way to the Utah State Fair,” said Elaine Ball, director of the Utah coalition. “We want everybody to know we’re coming together as people who are atheists, agnostic, or freethinking and open to discussing ideas. We’re not trying to convert or de-convert people.” The Utah Coalition of Reason also seeks to act as a counterbalance to public discussions embracing religion and the blurring of lines between church and state. “It’s a concern that candidates embrace God publicly,” she said. “We’re in a political climate where it’s not acceptable to embrace humanism. We’d like to change that.” Among other things, the Salt Lake City billboard is part of a national campaign that seeks to remove any social stigma from those who do not believe in a deity. Non-believers are inundated with religious messages at every turn. This is just one, tiny counter assertion. The day after an article appeared, a local newspaper columnist wrote about being showered with emails denouncing the atheist billboard in terms he could not print. They are most afraid of “freethinking and open to discussing ideas”, attributes very rare in Utah and completely absent from Utah politics.

August 21, 2011

Throughout history, societies have struggled with how to deal with children and childhood. In the United States and elsewhere, a broad-based “child saving” movement emerged in the late 19th century to combat widespread child abuse in mines, mills, and factories. By the early 20th century, the “century of the child,” as a prescient book published in 1909 called it, was in full throttle. Most modern states embraced the general idea that government had a duty to protect the health, education, and welfare of children. Child labor was outlawed, as were the sale and marketing of tobacco, alcohol, and pornography to children. Consumer protection laws were enacted to regulate product safety and advertising aimed at children. By the middle of the century, childhood was a robustly protected legal category. In 1959, the United Nations issued its Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Children were now legal persons; the “best interests of the child” became a touchstone for legal reform. But the 20th century also witnessed another momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation. Lawyers, policy makers, and business lobbied successfully for various rights and entitlements traditionally connected, legally, with personhood. New laws recognized corporations as legal — albeit artificial — “persons,” granting them many of the same legal rights and privileges as human beings. In an eerie parallel with the child-protective efforts, “the best interests of the corporation” was soon introduced as a legal precept. A clash between these two newly created legal entities — children and corporations — was, perhaps, inevitable. Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations, and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children. Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising, even at school. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study reports that children spend more hours engaging with various electronic media — TV, games, videos and other online entertainments — than they spend in school. Much of what children watch involves violent, sexual imagery, and yet children’s media remain largely unregulated. Attempts to curb excesses — like California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — have been struck down by courts as free speech violations. Another area of concern: we medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices. In the early 2000s, for example, drug companies withheld data suggesting that such drugs were more dangerous and less effective for children and teenagers than parents had been led to believe. The law now requires “black box” warnings on those drugs’ labels, but regulators have done little more to protect children from sometimes unneeded and dangerous drug treatments. Children today are also exposed to increasing quantities of toxic chemicals. We know that children, because their biological systems are still developing, are uniquely vulnerable to the dangers posed by many common chemical compounds. We also know that corporations often use such chemicals as key ingredients in children’s products, saturating their environments. Yet these chemicals remain in circulation, as current federal laws, enacted with corporate profits in mind, demand unreasonably high proof of harm before curbing a chemical’s use. The challenge before us is to reignite the guiding ethos and practices of the century of the child. As Nelson Mandela has said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” By that measure, our current failure to provide stronger protection of children in the face of corporate-caused harm reveals a sickness in our societal soul. Greed is strangling us all, and, as always, children are harmed the most.

August 17, 2011

A dispute over breast-feeding at a Salt Lake City grocery store has sparked plans for a nationwide nurse-in this Saturday, when moms armed with hungry babies are expected to descend on dozens of Whole Foods Markets. Angelina Love, 23, was nursing her 17-month-old son while shopping at the Trolley Square store this June when an employee asked her to cover up. Another customer had complained after seeing Love feed her child with her tank top-style dress pulled down beneath her left breast. Love was shocked. “A breast-feeding woman is feeding her child,” she said this week. “She’s not exposing herself.” An employee explained that some customers found the behavior offensive. Several other employees arrived and said there were other places in the store she could nurse with more privacy, such as the café. They said they were trying to please everybody. “You’re putting shame on me and my family by telling me to cover up or asking me to move,” Love said she told the employees. The mother and employees couldn’t come to any resolution, so Love took the manager’s phone number and walked out of the store with her family. Now she is asking Whole Foods to develop a pro-breast-feeding policy and training that would prevent a similar confrontation from happening again. The corporation, which is welcoming the nurse-in, says such a change is in the works. “The bottom line is some people made some mistakes and we have addressed that internally,” said Libba Letton, a Whole Foods spokesperson. “This nurse-in is a great way to bring attention to an important issue.” Utah has one of the highest percentages of breast-feeding moms in the nation, according to the 2011 report card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 85 percent of children are breast-fed at some point, with 61.5 percent still nursing at six months, compared to 44.3 percent nationwide. If Love returns to Whole Foods and nurses her son, she will not be asked to cover herself, Letton said. A complaining customer would be told about the policy. But Love said, “I’m not going to shop in that store again until they make it sure this won’t happen again. Nursing a child is normal and not something unsightly that should be hidden.” I agree, and to support that, I plan to be at Whole Foods Saturday to keep an eye on things.

August 15, 2011

This year's State of the Union address was only the second since 1948 by a Democratic president that did not mention poverty or the poor. And the President and Congress have not promoted a bold jobs program. "When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed them out and they found $700 billion," said Cornel West during a nine-state Poverty Tour with Tavis Smiley. “When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion. When the poor and working classes are living in a state of emergency, it's a matter of national security, especially the children. We have 21 percent of our precious children of all colors living in poverty. That's morally obscene in the richest country in the history of the world." It's also illegal, say experts. They point out that the federal government is required by law to create jobs.  The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and international law require it.  A bill now in the House, H.R. 870, would fund job creation as required by Humphrey-Hawkins.  If this is not passed, the President legally must instruct the Fed to fund job creation. European nations have their own crises now, but nowhere near our level of poverty. This really is the greatest country in the world.

August 13, 2011

After World War II, Germany was divided into four zones, one for each of the victorious armies. The three western powers, Britain, France, and the United States, merged their zones into what was West Germany, but the zone controlled by the Soviet Union remained separate. As a result, Germany was divided into two countries. By 1961, more than 2.5 million of East Germany's 19 million people had moved to the West to escape the looting of the country by the Soviets and the political oppression. With thousands leaving every day, communist authorities feared the exodus would seriously undermine the state. So, on August 13, 1961, 50 years ago today, the East German regime began sealing their border. In Berlin, soldiers blocked off the streets, cut off rail links, and began building what was initially a barbed-wire fence. It became a wall which spread for nearly 160 kilometers (100 miles). In some cases, it cut straight through streets, neighborhoods and public spaces. Known in East Berlin as the "anti-fascist protection wall," it became a symbol for the geographical, ideological, and political divide between Europe's democratic West and the communist East. Berlin at the time was considered the most dangerous place in the world because it was the locus of the cold war.It is a huge element of the political consciousness of everyone of my generation. The Wall finally fell on November 9, 1989, in a bloodless uprising which saw East Germans allowed to cross freely into the West for the first time in nearly three decades, and eventually lead to the reunification of the two countries into a single German state. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the East, said, "I myself, from when I was seven years old, can remember the horror that the building of the Wall created in my family. We were torn from our aunts and grandparents. What is even more unforgettable for me is the happiness the fall of this appalling structure made us Germans feel in 1989." Officially, 136 people are known to have died in Berlin while trying to cross the border. Some historians believe this number may have been as high as 700. Germany commemorated the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall with a memorial service and a minute of silence in the capital in memory of those who died trying to flee to the West.

August 10, 2011

This is an example of what it’s like living in our corporatized country:
Verizon’s executives are trying to squeeze workers when Verizon's profits have more than tripled, and its CEO, Lowell McAdam, is getting more than $18 million in compensation. This squeeze on workers – 45,000 of whom went out on strike this week – comes just after Verizon’s top five executives gave themselves hefty raises while raking in more than a quarter-billion dollars over the past four years. And, the company claims record profits. Yet it's busy demanding major concessions from workers instead of putting those profits into broadband deployment. And when it isn’t trying to take away workers’ benefits, Verizon is busy dodging taxes while netting vast benefits from American taxpayers and exacting political favors from Congress and the FCC. This is the same company that's suing the FCC to kill even the weakest Net Neutrality protections. It’s the same company that got caught blocking smartphone apps and text messages it didn’t like. Today Verizon is squeezing its workers. Tomorrow it plans to squeeze customers through price gouging and by eliminating the right to choose the information we need online. Instead of trying to punish workers, nickel-and-dime its customers, and kill consumer protections, Verizon should spend its vast profits to bring broadband to more Americans. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. God bless America.

August 1, 2011

The debt ceiling deal struck last night does not tax the rich or even allow temporary tax cuts on the rich to expire. Nor does it defund any wars. Yet it requires cuts of $1.2 trillion now and $2.5 trillion over a decade. Details of much of the cutting will be worked out by a new 12-member Super Congress empowered to cut any spending, and to force a rushed vote with no amendments on whatever it proposes to the actual Congress. And if that anti-democratic procedure fails, cuts will happen automatically. Half of those cuts might be to the military, but I’ll believe that when it happens, and the devil will be in the details - details being rammed through under the gun of a crisis manufactured by radical conservatives. Obama gives us credit for solving this problem, "The voice of the American people is a powerful thing," but this solution does not help anyone except the corporate wealthy. This is a terrible deal that will increase unemployment, further burden the overburdened state and municipal governments, who will in-turn have to cut services, and move the United States closer to being the banana republic desired by the rich and their tea-party dupes. We’re in real trouble.

July 28, 2011

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel spacecraft has identified the source of water vapor ring surrounding Saturn. Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, spews 550 pounds of water vapor into space every second. Anywhere from three to five percent of that water ends up falling onto the planet itself, influencing the chemical composition of its atmosphere. No other moon in the solar system is known to do that. The water expelled from Enceladus mostly erupts from jets in an area of the moon's south pole known as the "Tiger Strips" for their distinctive markings. Paul Hartogh, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, led the analysis of data gathered by Herschel and said the water emitted by Enceladus is "enough to explain the amount of water first discovered in Saturn's atmosphere" in 1997. According to Tilman Spohn, of the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, the discovery is a puzzling one which gives rise to more questions than it answers. Enceladus' eruptions are surprising for a body of its size. A general assumption is that the larger a body in space is, the more unstable and active it becomes. Enceladus is too small to generate volcanic activity and heat. There is much more heat output than you would expect for a body like that. Yet beyond Enceladus' inexplicable qualities, the moon has caught scientists' interest in part because of the presence of liquid water which is a prerequisite for life as we know it. Enceladus seems to be covered by an ice cap with water underneath. An early explanation for the eruption of water could be Saturn's gravitational pull on its moon. Other moons of Saturn also have eruptions, although they spew materials other than water. Because of the low pressure in space, the water coming from Enceladus becomes vapor because can't remain in its liquid form or freeze. The water vapor is then broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by UV light and collisions with solar wind particles. Studying the conditions on Saturn and Enceladus can help scientists to understand what makes Earth so special in its ability to sustain life and explain how water came to Earth in the first place.

July 27, 2011

How can so many Republican lawmakers justify pushing their country toward catastrophic default just to score ideological points? The answer can be found in their statements and writings: They are constructing an alternative reality far different from that of most Americans. A large number of Republican lawmakers, for example, simply don’t accept that the United States is going to be in default as of Tuesday. (Wall Street banks say the nation will run out of money within a few days of that date.) The Treasury Department, which keeps the government bankbook, set the Aug. 2 deadline, but they say it cannot be trusted because it is an arm of the Obama administration. Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman from Illinois, recorded an instantly notorious video in which he accused President Obama of lying about the dangers of default. “There’s plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all of our Social Security obligations,” he said, without saying where all these billions might be hidden. Representative Michele Bachmann, the Tea Partier running for president, went even further, saying there would be no default at all because the government would always find a way to pay the interest on its debt. Her level of disbelief in any statement made by the White House is so complete that she disregarded the possibility that the global financial system could impose its own devastating downgrade on the government’s obligations. Mrs. Bachmann’s denial of economic reality puts her at the far-right end of the House, alongside eight other Republicans who voted against the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act” last week because it was too liberal. More typical are those who are sticking by that bill and its balanced-budget amendment, though the Senate effectively rejected it. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who leads an influential group of House conservatives, said he is willing to go down with the cut, cap and balance ship even if default is the only option, since he, too, is not persuaded that the Treasury is telling the truth. He and several members of his Republican Study Committee have said they could not support Speaker John Boehner’s watered-down version of “cut, cap,” because it does not require passage of a balanced-budget amendment before the debt ceiling can go up. (In Mr. Boehner’s alternative reality, by the way, it just popped into Mr. Obama’s head to ask for “the largest debt increase in American history, on the heels of the largest spending binge in American history.” The president was required to ask for an increase by law, and the spending was mostly incurred by his Republican predecessor.) Mr. Jordan’s words offered one of the best explanations of the House’s determination to beat Mr. Obama at any cost. A former state champion wrestler, he told The National Review that in politics you pin your opponent whenever possible. “We want to get the win now,” he said. House members have been encouraged in their destructive daydream by many outside organizations and Web sites. An arm of the Heritage Foundation sent out a letter saying the government should live under the current debt ceiling rather than pass the Boehner plan, ignoring the need to raise the ceiling to pay for bills already incurred. Several right-wing bloggers, notably Erick Erickson of RedState, have threatened brimstone on any errant Republican lawmaker who even considers compromise with the president. And I can’t even repeat the idiocy of the entire conressional delegation from Utah. If the economy does begin to crumble next week, the trail back toward the reason will not be hard to follow, though the perpetrators of the disaster undoubtedly won’t be able to follow it.

July 26, 2011

As others have written, if China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage. Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists. We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home. House Republicans start from a legitimate concern about rising long-term debt. Politicians are usually focused only on short-term issues, so it would be commendable to see the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party seriously focused on containing long-term debt. But on this issue, many House Republicans aren’t serious, they’re just obsessive in a destructive way. The upshot is that in their effort to protect the American economy from debt, some of them are willing to drag it over the cliff of default. It is not exactly true that this would be our first default. We defaulted in 1790. By some definitions, we defaulted on certain gold obligations in 1933. And in 1979, the United States had trouble managing payouts to some individual investors on time (partly because of a failure of word processing equipment) and thus was in technical default. Yet even that brief lapse in 1979 raised interest payments in the United States. Terry L. Zivney, a finance professor at Ball State University and co-author of a scholarly paper about the episode, says the 1979 default increased American government borrowing costs by 0.6 of a percentage point indefinitely. Any deliberate and sustained interruption this year could have a greater impact. We would see higher interest rates on mortgages, car loans, business loans, and credit cards. American government borrowing would also become more expensive. In February, the Congressional Budget Office noted that a 1 percentage point rise in interest rates could add more than $1 trillion to borrowing costs over a decade. In other words, Republican zeal to lower debts could result in increased interest expenses and higher debts. Their mania to save taxpayers could cost taxpayers. That suggests not governance so much as fanaticism. More broadly, a default would leave America a global laughingstock. Our “soft power,” our promotion of democracy around the world, and our influence would all take a hit. The spectacle of paralysis in the world’s largest economy is already bewildering to many countries. If there is awe for our military prowess and delight in our movies and music, there is scorn for our political/economic management. While one danger to national security comes from the risk of default, another comes from overzealous budget cuts — especially in education, at the local, state and national levels. When we cut to the education bone, we’re not preserving our future but undermining it. It should be a national disgrace that the United States government has eliminated spending for major literacy programs in the last few months, with scarcely a murmur of dissent. Consider Reading Is Fundamental, a 45-year-old nonprofit program that has cost the federal government only $25 million annually. It’s a public-private partnership with 400,000 volunteers, and it puts books in the hands of low-income children. The program helped four million American children improve their reading skills last year. Now it has lost all federal support. “They have made a real difference for millions of kids,” Kyle Zimmer, founder of First Book, another literacy program that I’ve admired, said of Reading Is Fundamental. “It is a tremendous loss that their federal support has been cut. We are going to pay for these cuts in education for generations.” The attack on literacy programs reflects a broader assault on education programs. Republicans want to cut everything from early childhood programs to Pell grants for college students. Republican proposals have singled out some 43 education programs for elimination, but it’s not seen as equally essential to end tax loopholes on hedge fund managers. So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.

July 24, 2011

Happy Anniversary.

July 23, 2011

The United Nations Security Council has for the first time admitted that global warming poses a major threat to world security and peace. The move catapults climate change higher up the global agenda. What might appear self-evident to many took days of complicated discussions and negotiations at the UN Security Council. But in the end, the 15 member-states agreed that a rise in global temperatures could pose a serious threat to world peace. They point out that drought, for example, could lead to conflicts over food and water. Even floods, such as the devastating one last year in Pakistan, or a rise in sea levels, could threaten the very survival of island nations. It was the first time in four years that the Security Council formally debated the environment. And it was the first-ever Council statement - at the insistence of this month's council president, Germany - linking climate change to global peace and security. The final statement expressed "concern that possible adverse effects of climate change may, in the long run, aggravate certain existing threats to international peace and security." It also requested UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to include information on possible climate change impacts in his regular reports on global trouble-spots. It is a breakthrough because it's the first time that the Security Council has officially admitted the possible security and political dimensions of climate change. The declaration had to be voted on by all the 15 member states. In 2007, a similar initiative failed to get the necessary backing. Whether it's an exodus of refugees, conflicts over water and food, or rising sea levels, scientists have long been warning about the possible security risks of climate change. UN chief Ban Ki-moon too sounded the alarm about the risks associated with rising temperatures. "Extreme weather events continue to grow more frequent and intense in rich and poor countries alike, not only devastating lives, but also infrastructure, institutions, and budgets - an unholy brew which can create dangerous security vacuums," he told a Security Council debate on the issue. Also, the UN declared a famine in parts of war-torn Somalia. It was another sad illustration of the links between climate change, drought, food shortages, and security.

July 22, 2011

A very sad occurrence.

July 21, 2011

Is this a great country, or what?

July 20, 2011

Today, I sent this letter to Jim Matheson who purports to be my congressional representative:

I was surprised and deeply disappointed that you voted for the outrageous Cut, Cap, and Balance Act that would, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, eliminate another 700,000 jobs in just its first year. America’s richest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, and you have ensured your place among those who are working diligently to increase that economic disparity by voting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs while happily relieving the wealthy of their share of the tax burden. Shame on you! You say you voted for it because the “time has come to impose spending discipline.” Just on everyone but the wealthiest, I guess. I love the picture of you on your website “serving lamb to families at the Emery County Fair”, while voting to rob them of the few social protections they have. Hypocrite. But then, I guess they haven’t paid enough to actually be represented by you. You will never get my vote. Ever.

July 19, 2011

Unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, and suicide rates are on the rise. Obsessing about the debt ceiling at a time like this is a lethal fraud. Naomi Klein said this about the debt ceiling charade being performed in Washington: “Using trumped up crisis to raid the public purse and attack the basic rights and benefits is a very old trick - but rarely is the shock doctrine tactic wielded as brazenly as in the pseudo debate about the debt ceiling. This is naked class war, waged by the ultra rich against everyone else, and it's well past time for Americans to draw the line.” The phony debt ceiling crisis is just one more excuse to further shred our already puny social safety net and increase wealth concentration at the top. But more to the point, I thought it was American policy not to negotiate with terrorists. The Republican tactic in Minnesota and Washington, D.C. is the same: do what we want or we’ll blow up the government. And, as we saw in Minnesota, they did just that. Unfortunately, governor Dayton did a Neville Chamberlin and let them get away with it. Appeasement is not the answer with these Republican Nazis just as it was not the answer in 1938. It’s just going to get worse. We are not amused.

July 16, 2011

There is simply no exaggerating the importance of the oceans to earth’s overall ecological balance. Their health affects the health of all terrestrial life. A new report by an international coalition of marine scientists, International Earth system expert workshop on ocean stresses and impacts, concludes that the oceans are approaching irreversible, potentially catastrophic, change. The experts, convened by the International Program on the State of the Ocean and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, found that marine “degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted.” The oceans have warmed and become more acidic as they absorbed human-generated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are also more oxygen-deprived, because of agricultural runoff and other anthropogenic causes. And, according to the report, these three conditions were present in previous mass extinctions. The oceans’ natural resilience has been seriously compromised. Pollution, habitat loss, and overfishing are themselves dangerous threats. But when these factors converge, they destroy marine ecosystems. The severity of human impact was reinforced last week when scientists concluded that seven commercially important species, including marlin, mackerel, and three tuna species, were either vulnerable to extinction, endangered, or critically endangered according to I.U.C.N. standards. The solutions that might help slow further degradation include immediate reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, a system of marine conservation areas, and a way to protect ocean life that goes beyond national jurisdictions. As the new study notes, changes in the oceans, caused by carbon emissions, are perhaps “the most significant to the earth system,” particularly because they will further accelerate climate change.

July 15, 2011

According to a recent study, the widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information. Researchers wondered whether  people were more likely to remember information that could be easily retrieved from a computer, just as students are more likely to recall facts they believe will be on a test. They staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” — into a computer. Half of the subjects believed the information would be saved in the computer; the other half believed the items they typed would be erased. The subjects were significantly more likely to remember information when they thought they would not be able to find it later. Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read, according to the study’s authors. A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember. For example, If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one color in their flag, do we think about flags — or immediately think to go online to find out? In this case, participants were asked to remember both the trivia statement itself and which of five computer folders it was saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that people seemed better able to recall the folder. The experiment explores an aspect of what is known as transactive memory — the notion that we rely on our family, friends, and co-workers as well as reference material to store information for us. The researchers conclude that these experiments indicate the Internet has become our primary external storage system, that human memory is adapting to new communications technology. For better or worse…

July 14, 2011

In three new rulings, federal judges in different states have acted to block immediate enforcement of measures that restrict abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception, lifesaving cancer screenings, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. These rulings are important victories for women’s health and reproductive rights. On June 24, Judge Tanya Pratt of the Federal District Court in Indianapolis issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a new Indiana law banning the use of Medicaid funds at Planned Parenthood clinics, which provide essential health services to low-income women. The mean-spirited law is part of a Republican-led national campaign to end public financing for Planned Parenthood. The Obama administration promptly told Indiana, and other states weighing similar legislation, that the measure violated federal law by imposing impermissible restrictions on the freedom of Medicaid beneficiaries to choose health care providers. Judge Pratt agreed with that assessment in her decision. In another ruling six days later, a federal trial judge in South Dakota issued a preliminary injunction blocking, on constitutional grounds, a deeply intrusive state law requiring women to wait at least 72 hours after an initial doctor’s visit before terminating a pregnancy — the longest waiting period in the nation. This law also requires that women seeking abortions endure counseling at so-called pregnancy help centers run by antiabortion activists with the aim of discouraging abortions. “Forcing a woman to divulge to a stranger at a pregnancy help center the fact that she has chosen to undergo an abortion humiliates and degrades her as a human being,” Judge Karen Schreier wrote in her decision. On July 1, Judge Carlos Murguia, a federal district judge in Kansas, blocked immediate enforcement of a new Kansas licensing law and health department regulations imposing extensive, medically unnecessary requirements on the state’s three remaining abortion providers — like mandating 50 square feet of storage space for janitorial supplies — with the obvious goal of shutting them down. While these rulings are preliminary, each is a determination that enforcing the law would cause irreparable harm and that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail at trial. They do not, however, address other threats to women’s health. Those include the slashing of state support for family-planning services by governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey, and attacks from Congress like the bill Republicans pushed through the House in May that would use the nation’s tax system as a weapon to end abortion insurance coverage in the private market, as discussed in the June 2 post. Still, these rulings serve to at least temporarily block the extreme anti-abortion, anti-family-planning movement accelerating in the states and in Washington.

July 13, 2011

Men are at higher risk than women of developing cancer within their lifetime, and a recent study shows they are also more likely to die from it. The analysis, published in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, examined 36 types of cancer by gender, using almost 30 years of data, from 1977 and 2006. It found that for the vast majority of cancers, men have higher mortality rates than women, with the highest disparities for conditions such as lip, throat, and the rare hypopharyngeal cancer, which affects the area where the larynx and esophagus meet. Men were found to be about five times more likely to die from these diseases. Cancers with the highest mortality rates — such as leukemia and lung, colon, and pancreatic cancers — were also found to pose a greater risk of death for men. Men were found to be almost twice as likely than women to die from leukemia. Cancers of the colon and rectum, pancreas, and liver killed about one and a half to two times as many men as women in the U.S. over a 30-year period. In addition, lung cancer killed nearly two and a half times as many men during that time. The American Cancer Society estimates that men have about a 1 in 2 chance of developing cancer at some point in their lives, compared with women, who have a 1 in 3 chance. In general, women have earlier-stage cancers at diagnosis, though this isn't true for all types of cancer. It's not clear why there is a disparity, but men may be exposed to more carcinogens, have hormonal or metabolism differences, or be less protected from antioxidants than women.

July 9, 2011

Wars launched by the U. S. since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have left 225,000 dead and cost up to $4.4 trillion, according to a new study published by Brown University. It focused on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, which came in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The authors argue that governments almost always go to war underestimating the potential duration and costs of a conflict while overestimating "the political objectives that can be accomplished by the use of brute force." "An extremely conservative estimate" of the casualty toll is about 225,000 people killed and 365,000 wounded in the wars so far. The number of soldiers killed comes to 31,741, including about 6,000 Americans, 1,200 allied troops, 9,900 Iraqis, 8,800 Afghans, 3,500 Pakistanis as well as 2,300 US private security contractors. The civilian toll was much higher, with an estimated 172,000 dead, including about 125,000 Iraqis, 35,000 Pakistanis and 12,000 Afghans. The study acknowledged that estimating the number of dead was difficult, particularly the toll for insurgents, putting the number at between 20,000 to 51,000 insurgents killed. The report found that 168 reporters and 266 humanitarian workers were among the dead in the period of the U. S. “war on terror.” The wars also have triggered a massive flow of refugees and displaced persons, with more than 7.8 million displaced, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study estimated the financial cost of the wars at a minimum of $3.7 trillion and up to $4.4 trillion, which represents about a quarter of the current U. S. debt. The researchers arrived at a much larger figure than the Pentagon's previous estimates, as they included spending by the Department of Homeland Security to counter terrorist threats, government projections for spending on wounded veterans through 2051 and war-related funds from the State Department and the U. S. Agency for International Development. "Wars always cost more than what the Pentagon spends for the duration of the combat operation", said the study.

July 5, 2011

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase. Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts. The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care, and public safety programs. The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1. More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will actually cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets, and park fees. As painful as the closure may become, Dayton is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington, and across the country. President Obama has done so twice and faces an emboldened opposition willing to create chaos in the credit markets rather than agree to modest revenue increases from the richest people. Republican anti-tax radicalism, maintained at any cost, is doing enormous damage at all levels and may soon engulf the economy if the standoff in Washington does not end. In Minnesota, there is now a chance to draw a line and say, no further. Time to stop giving in to the threats and vote these guys out.

June 30, 2011

The ethical judgments of the Supreme Court justices became an important issue in the just completed term. The court cannot maintain its legitimacy as guardian of the rule of law when justices behave like politicians. Yet, in several instances, justices acted in ways that weakened the court’s reputation for being independent and impartial. Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito Jr., for example, appeared at political events. That kind of activity makes it less likely that the court’s decisions will be accepted as nonpartisan judgments. Part of the problem is that the justices are not bound by an ethics code. At the very least, the court should make itself subject to the code of conduct that applies to the rest of the federal judiciary. Among the court’s 82 rulings this term, 16 were 5-to-4 decisions. Of those, 10 were split along ideological lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy supplying the fifth conservative vote. These rulings reveal the court’s fundamental inclination to the right, with the conservative majority further expanding the ability of the wealthy to prevail in electoral politics and the prerogatives of businesses against the interests of consumers and workers:

· It struck down public matching funds in Arizona’s campaign finance system, showing again a contempt for laws that provide some balance to the unlimited amounts of money flooding the political system.

· It made it much harder for private lawsuits to succeed against mutual fund malefactors, even when they have admitted to lying and cheating.

· It tore down the ability of citizens to hold prosecutors’ offices accountable for failing to train their lawyers, even when prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence and send innocent people to prison.

· It issued a devastating blow to consumer rights by upholding the arbitration clause in AT&T’s customer agreement, which required the signer to waive the right to take part in a class action.

· In the complex Wal-Mart case, the conservative majority, going beyond the particular issues in that case, made it substantially more difficult for class-action suits in all manner of cases to move forward.

These and other decisions raise the question of whether there is still a line between the court and politics, an issue since the Republican-led Rehnquist court decided Bush v. Gore in 2000, though the federal judiciary’s shift to the right has been happening since the administration of Ronald Reagan. The framers of the Constitution envisioned law as having authority apart from politics. They gave justices life tenure so they would be free to upset the powerful and have no need to cultivate political support. Our legal system was designed to set law apart from politics. But this court has become illegitimate by crossing the line into politics and refusing to be accountable to any code of conduct. The conservatives on the court are the ultimate activist judges, and their recent rulings are unconvincing as law.