Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
Brian Moench, President of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment - truthout
Stephan: The GMO/Pesticide/Herbicide trend is shifting. A growing number of countries are outlawing GMO seeds, and the research and medical communities are more aggressively taking on the bio-tech industry. Here's the story.
Credit: Shutterstock
Ever since the rise of the Tea Party, the Republican Party has developed an allergy to science – especially any science related to climate or environmental protection. They have been called the “Anti-Science Party” and “Luddites,” even by prominent members of their own party. Lately, they have even trumpeted that “they are not scientists,” apparently in a tortured attempt to glorify their ignorance.
Rivaling their allergy to science is their disdain for federal agencies that use science to make rules they don’t like, based on science – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Land Management – and just about anything that represents “big government.” So the rise of a Republican campaign that represents the exact opposite of their professed ideology is worth taking note of.
Whether or not GMOs are safe is strictly a scientific issue, but labeling is much more than that.
The “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act” (which should win an […]
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Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
James Kitfield, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress - Politico Magazine
Stephan: General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has just retired. In my opinion he has been an excellent CJCS serving at a time when American civilian leadership has made so many miscalculations that his tenure was in constant turmoil -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. Americans don't hear much about that world so I thought some insight into it might be useful.
General Martin Dempsey
Chariman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Crredit: www.defense.gov
Remarkably, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein chose that moment to swim against the liberalizing tide of history by invading Kuwait in the summer of 1990. As part of the 3rd Armored Division, Dempsey took part in Operation Desert Storm, which in a matter of days in January 1991 expelled the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. As part of a Cavalry unit, Dempsey helped spearhead a “left hook” maneuver that sealed off the path of retreat for vaunted Republican Guard units, which were methodically annihilated in the desert. At the time it was tempting to believe that unprecedented power might end the 20th century scourge of state-on-state aggression.
“There was a moment when the fighting was over when those of us who thought about war, and the future of warfare, kind of realized that we had become so good at that form of high-intensity maneuver that it was almost inconceivable that anyone would try and fight us that way again [on a conventional battlefield], […]
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Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
Stephanie Mencimer, Staff Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan: Did you wonder what happened in the Christian Rightist communities when the Boy Scouts decided to be tolerant and inclusive? Well here's the answer to that question.
Christian Rightist Trail Life USA boys Credit: Khampha Bouaphanh/TNS/ZUMA
Poor Boy Scouts. Earlier this year, their leadership made a fairly dramatic change in policy to allow gay people to become troop leaders, following on the heels of last year’s decision to stop kicking out gay Scouts. The move to end discrimination has cost the organization some members and donations from religious groups that were outraged about the change. But it’s also suffered smaller, pettier indignities—like its banishment from this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, the premier political conference for evangelical Christians.
The DC summit, organized by the conservative Family Research Council Action, is headlined by no fewer than seven GOP presidential candidates. For many years, the Boy Scouts have had a place of honor at the event, presenting the American flag as the color guard. This year, though, the Scouts are nowhere to be found. In their place are boys from Trail Life USA, the outdoor adventure and character development group created last year as a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts. Joining them were American Heritage […]
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Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
Denise Schipani, - The Raw Story/Van Winkle
Stephan: Sleeping in the nude is something you might consider. Believe it or not it has real health benefits, as this report describes.
Credit.www.allure.com
This will come as unwelcome news for the pajama industry: The best suit to sleep in, scientifically speaking, is the one you were born in. Still, only about eight percent of Americans routinely sleep in the buff.
If you’re accustomed to donning the plaid flannels or buttoning that granny nightgown up to the neck, listen up: Gettin’ nekkid between the sheets is healthier.
Here’s why:
You’ll sleep better.
When you doze off, your body temperature dips and climbs before you wake up. Clothing can interfere with this natural fluctuation, says Men’s Health sleep advisor W. Christopher Winter, M.D. The extra layers at night can keep you warmed up when your temperature is meant to drop. And a cooler body equals better sleep.
If you’re tossing and turning, waking up a hot mess at 3 a.m.? It’s probably not from a nightmare that Donald Trump is your new president.
Naked sleepers are able to maintain a comfortable core temperature. Plus, if your body doesn’t cool down enough at night, you’ll be unable to reach the deeper, most restorative stages of sleep. […]
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2015
Larry Beinhart, Author of “Wag the Dog” - Aljazeera America
Stephan: In the aftermath of Watergate the Republican Party made a critical decision. It never wanted to be humiliated like that again by the media, and so it decided to change the media. To change the ground rules. When Ronald Reagan became President two things happened. The laws concerning ownership of media were radically altered, and the requirement for fairness was rescinded. This led inevitably to blatant propaganda operations like Fox.
Where before a corporation could own only one media outlet in a market thanks to Reagan's changes they could now own whatever they could buy. This is led to consolidation until today we are the definition of
an oligopoly -- just a few firms dominate an economic sector.
Corporations want to make money, money is made by ratings, ratings are produced by treating politics as a sport, with an emphasis not on substance but personalities and superficial easily understood controversies. And thus we got to the shabby shoddy reality of journalism in corporate media that we have today. This exegetic essay spells it out.
Credit: www.homesteadnotes.com
After the second prime-time Republican presidential debate on Sept. 16, The New York Times published an astonishing editorial. It said the candidates must be “no longer living in a fact-based world” and described what they said as “a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns.”
It was about time that someone as authoritative as The New York Times editorial board said it as bluntly as that.
One of the things that made the editorial so striking is that the news coverage of the same events, in the same paper as well as in the rest of the media, treated what the candidates said as almost entirely unremarkable.
That prompts interesting questions. Why was this only an editorial? Why wasn’t it in the news? Shouldn’t it be newsworthy that the leading contenders for the Republican nomination are “no longer living in a fact-based world” and that what they say is “untrue … […]
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