December 2010
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42% of American Kids Live in Low Income Homes →
With the recession in a supposed retreat, sobering statistics on American children and poverty point to a growing problem no one wants to acknowledge. 42% of the nation’s children live in low-income homes and a fifth of those children live in poverty.
What’s even worse is that since 2000, the number of children living in poverty has risen by 33 percent, even though the total number of children in...
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The 2010 "Are You Serious?" Awards →
Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus:
“The Harry Potter Award to the British technology company ATSC Ltd for its invention of a ‘wand’ that, according to the company, detects explosives, drugs, and human remains for up to six miles by air and three fifths of a mile by land.
The ADE 651 sells for $16,000 a unit. The only problem is that it doesn’t work, which users...
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EXPOSED: Teabaggers PAID To Troll Liberals Online... →
This is from an amazing article found on Alternet. It details current Chinese and Western Neo-Corporate paid astroturfed trolling online.
For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organized by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”. This...
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Real-life member of 'Sound of Music' family dies →
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — Agathe von Trapp, a member of the musical family whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria was the basis for “The Sound of Music,” has died, a longtime friend said Wednesday.
Von Trapp, 97, died Tuesday at a hospice in the Baltimore suburb of Towson after suffering congestive heart failure in November, said Mary Louise Kane. Kane and von Trapp lived together for...
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New First-Class Stamps Are 'Forever' →
Rummaging around for 1- and 2-cent postage stamps when postal rates go up is heading the way of the Pony Express. Beginning in January, all new stamps good for 1 ounce of first-class mail will be marked as “forever.”
The move is designed to help customers cope with postage increases, a U.S. Postal Service official told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The official requested anonymity...
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2011: A Brave New Dystopia →
Chris Hedges of Truthdig:
“The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’ The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right.
Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and...
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Is Nature Doing a Snow Job On Us? →
I’m writing this with an ache in my back and shoulders, the result of shoveling some 28 or so inches of snow from my front yard here in north-central New Jersey. The Holiday Blizzard of 2010 has made mincemeat of thousands of peoples’ holiday travel plans, in the form of airport closings, Amtrak cancellations, power outages. Yesterday, we found ourselves in blizzard white-out...
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Stars Who Passed Away in 2010 →
In the headline-link, CNN offers a very short overview of stars who passed away in 2010.
Some of the people they left out include:
Country music singer/songwriter Carl Smith, actress Zelda Rubinstein-best known for being in the “Poltergeist” movies, actor Glenn Shadix-best know for playing Otho in ”Beetlejuice”, Doug Fieger-singer/songwriter with the group “The...
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Policies and Taking Stock: A Progressive Triumph →
This is the end of the year - the time when a lot of people take stock of the ups and downs in the past year and prepare for the next one. I believe that the best way to take stock of the policies is by approximating their impacts on real people, not by filling space on some ideological pie chart.
There was a lot of bru-ha-ha after the President’s tax deal, with many on the Left calling...
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$250 Million Unclaimed in Stop Loss Compensation... →
Michael Pereira served his country with honor — in Afghanistan. Four years ago, he looked forward to leaving the service to be with his wife and family. But he was forced to put his civilian life on hold, reports CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts. “When I was told that our unit would be stop lossed due to our deployment to Afghanistan I really didn’t know what it meant at that...
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Experiments Test if Implant Can Block Sleep Apnea →
Loud snoring may do more than irritate your spouse: It can signal sleep apnea, depriving you of enough zzzz’s to trigger a car crash, even a heart attack.
Now scientists are beginning to test if an implanted pacemaker-like device might help certain sufferers, keeping their airways open by zapping the tongue during sleep.
Wait, what does your tongue have to do with a good night’s...
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What the U.S. Offers vs. What the Rest of the... →
Although there are many (too many to list) superb categories in which the United States is undeniably “exceptional,” there are several important categories where we lag behind the world.
By “lag behind,” we don’t mean the U.S. simply falls a bit short of the leaders; we mean the U.S. is not even on the same page. And by “the world,” we’re not referring to countries like Sweden, Norway, Germany...
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For Hawaii governor, discrediting anti-Obama... →
By Michael A. Memoli, Washington Bureau
Reporting from Honolulu — Neil Abercrombie knew Barack Obama’s parents when the future president was born here in 1961, and he has been aggravated by the so-called birther movement, which alleges Obama was not born in the United States and thus should be expelled from office.
Now Abercrombie has an office of his own — he became governor of Hawaii on...
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President Obama Still 'Most Admired' Man, Gallup... →
President Obama remains the nation’s most-admired man, Gallup and USA Today report.
Their annual “most-admired” list shows that 22 percent of the 1,019 people surveyed chose President Obama. At No. 2: George W. Bush, who was the choice of 5 percent.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the solid top No. 1 as most-admired woman, finishing first for the ninth...
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Food Aid Stalled in Northern Pakistan After Female... →
From Kristen Chick, of The Christian Science Monitor:
“Aid agencies have closed down much-needed food-aid operations in parts of northwest Pakistan after a female suicide bomber struck a crowd at a food aid distribution center Saturday, killing at least 45 people and wounding as many as 100 more.”
Read the Article
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5 Shocking Facts From The Deepwater Horizon's... →
This morning, the New York Times released a telling compliation of personal accounts from workers who survived not only the Macondo Well blowout, but also the fire and destruction of the Deepwater Horizon that followed. Although Justice Department has spent countless hours investigating the initial well failure and subsequent oil spill, hardly any attention has been paid to the events that...
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President Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That... →
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over(what the Republicans called) “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise...
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Economy Appears To Show Signs of Life; Some Expect... →
Expectations for economic growth next year are turning more optimistic now that Americans will have a little more cash in their pockets.
A cut in workers’ Social Security taxes and rising consumer spending have led economists to predict a strong start for 2011.
Still, most people won’t feel much better until employers ramp up hiring and people buy more homes.
Analysts are predicting...
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President Obama To Restore Wilderness Rules For... →
The Obama administration plans to reverse a Bush-era policy and make millions of undeveloped acres of land once again eligible for federal wilderness protection, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.
The agency will replace the 2003 policy adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Salazar said. That policy — derided by some as the “No More Wilderness” policy —...
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Russian President Lauds U.S. Passage of Nuclear... →
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday congratulated President Barack Obama on the Senate’s approval of a new nuclear arms control treaty between the countries, the White House said.
According to a White House statement, the two presidents spoke by phone on the first day of Obama’s Hawaiian holiday after Congress adjourned Wednesday in a flurry of legislative action, including...
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The Worst Speed Trap Cities In North America →
For years, drivers from every U.S. state and Canadian province have reported speed trap locations to the National Motorists Association’s National Speed Trap Exchange.
With the combination of heavy holiday traffic, federally-funded ticketing campaigns, and financially-strapped local and state governments, motorists have good reason to feel like they have dollar signs painted on their vehicles.
...
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Pat Robertson ( Yes, THAT Pat Robertson) Supports... →
The infamous right-wing Christian Pat Robertson, who has blamed natural disasters on gay people, supports marijuana legalization, according to a Raw Story report. Robertson recently explained his views on drug law reform on his “700 Club” television show. “I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing...
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Bread for the World: Reasons to Rejoice this... →
The tax package Congress passed last week extended tax credits for the working poor—the goal of our 2010 Offering of Letters. While most people have reservations about various aspects of the tax package, the extension of the tax credits will keep more than 1 million children out of poverty next year. It will provide $10 billion to low-income working families. That’s twice the value of all the aid...
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ChickenHawk Tom Tancredo on the repeal of 'don't... →
Failed gubernatorial candidate, failed presidential candidate and noted xenophobe Tom Tancredo shares his deep thoughts … or, as some might describe it, bigoted homophobia … on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
And I would — among other things I wonder to what extent this ruling allows the military to segregate within their own ranks. That is to say,...
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South Carolina Archaeologists Say Confederate... →
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The recent discovery of what is believed to be a Confederate gunboat scuttled by its own crew in the Civil War’s waning days could yield valuable knowledge about the South’s sputtering attempts to maintain its own Navy, South Carolina’s state archaeologist said Wednesday.
In November, Jonathan Leader — state archaeologist and researcher at the University of...
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Almost $1 Trillion - America's College Debt Crisis →
It’s the next big financial crisis that no one wants to talk about: college student debt in the U.S. is nearing one trillion dollars, with no end in sight. The debt is growing at the rate of $2,853 per second. Cost Of Higher Education Rising At 2 - 3 Times The Inflation Rate This means that the cost of higher education is currently rising at two to three times the rate of inflation, so...
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Rain-Soaked California Now At Risk Of Mudslides →
A monster storm that triggered severe flooding in Southern California appeared to be easing Wednesday, leaving behind saturated mountainsides that could be at risk of mudslides for weeks to come.
The National Weather Service said the torrential rain that has fallen for the past few days is expected to become fierce — but brief — thunderstorms by the afternoon.
Los Angeles was largely spared, but...
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START Treaty Ratified →
The Senate just voted to ratify the START Treaty, 71 to 26.
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday ratified an arms control treaty with Russia that reins in the nuclear weapons that could plunge the world into doomsday, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign policy win in the closing hours of the postelection Congress.
The Republicans who decided NOT to play politics with our National Security and...
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Senate Passes the Revised 9/11 Health Benefits... →
The Senate on Wednesday passed a compromise version of a bill to provide free medical treatment to first responders of the September 11 terrorist attack.
The bill passed on a voice vote on what is expected to be the final day of the lame-duck session of Congress. It now goes to the House, which also is expected to approve it and send it to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
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Victory and Vindication -- President Obama and... →
Eugene Robinson of Truthout:
“President Obama must be tempted to respond to his progressive critics with a quote from the old-school rapper Kool Moe Dee: ‘How ya like me now?’ Repeal of the military’s bigoted and anachronistic ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays in the military - a campaign promise that seemed to be slipping out of reach -...
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Los Angeles Evacuations Ordered; California Braces... →
LOS ANGELES — If six days of pounding rain wasn’t enough to dampen holiday spirits, a seventh could prove to be downright dangerous.
Forecasters expected heavy rains across California going into Wednesday, and authorities began evacuations late Tuesday as concern grew about potential mudslides in the wildfire-scarred foothills across the southern part of the state.
Gov. Arnold...
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WatchStephen Colbert with Some Straight Talk About Sanctimonious Republicans
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Senator Arlen Specter Farewell Speech Slams... →
Departing Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday said conservative Republicans who backed Tea Party challengers against establishment candidates in the recent elections engaged in political cannibalism.
In his final floor speech, Specter complained there’s scant room for centrists like himself in a polarized Senate where civility is in short supply.
“In some...
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Death Penalty Less Common in U.S. Now Than in... →
The American justice system sent 114 convicted murderers to death row in 2010, continuing a decade-long trend that has seen the number of death sentences reduced from more than twice that level in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a year-end report released Tuesday by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
At the same time, the number of executions carried out in 2010 – 46 – is down from the...
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PPACA (The New Health Care Law) Regulating... →
PPACA = Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Kathleen Sebelius (Secretary of Health and Human Services) has sent out an announcement discussing the $250 million PPACA provides to states to monitor and review insurance rate hikes. It’s an excellent foil to the Medical Loss Ratio requirements, as insurers now have to think twice about upping premiums to boost their profit volume....
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Iraqi Parliament Approves New Government →
Iraq’s parliament has approved a new government including all major factions, ending nine months of deadlock after inconclusive elections.
In a special session, MPs voted for the 29 ministerial candidates nominated by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shia, who was reappointed for a second term.
But doubts persist about whether all the political groups can work together.
The key ministries...
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Census Data Will Reshape U.S. Political Landscape →
States in the South and West gained residents — and political clout — at the expense of the Midwest and East, according to new census figures that will change the nation’s political makeup.
The 2010 Census Bureau report, released Tuesday, officially put the U.S. population at 308.7 million, reflecting the lowest growth since the Great Depression. Texas and Nevada led the way, reinforcing a...
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A Letter From Democratic Senator Al Franken... →
If you saw my op-ed in the Huffington Post yesterday, you know how concerned I was about today’s FCC meeting on net neutrality (and, by the way, would you mind sharing it on Twitter and Facebook?).
Chairman Genachowski’s draft Order was worse than nothing—and we needed to make sure the FCC didn’t approve it today.
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news...
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