Vaccines Found to Cause Diabetes in Children
August 20, 2008 Two new studies showing that vaccines increase the risk of diabetes have been
published in the Open Pediatric Medicine Journal.
In a prior
study, published in the journal Autoimmunity, Dr. J. Bartholomew Classen
of Classen Immunotherapies and David Carey Classen of the University of Utah
compared more than 100,000 children who had received between one and four doses
of the hemophilus vaccine with more than 100,000 unvaccinated children. The
Classens found that after seven years, children in the vaccination group had a
26 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than children in
the non-vaccine group. This amounted to an extra 54 cases of diabetes per
100,000 children vaccinated.
The Classens noted that the vaccine itself
is only projected to prevent seven deaths and seven to 26 cases of permanent
disability per 100,000 children.
Child Paddling Persists in Schools
August 20, 2008 According to a study by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, plenty of schoolteachers still spank and swat their students, particularly in the South. Researchers found that African American, Native American and special education students were especially vulnerable to corporal punishment.
AP via Yahoo:
“One of the things we’ve seen over and over again is that parents have difficulty getting redress, if a child is paddled and severely injured, or paddled in violation of parents’ wishes,” said Alice Farmer, the study’s author.
A majority of states have outlawed it, but corporal punishment remains widespread across the South. Behind Texas and Mississippi were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri.
African American students are more than twice as likely to be paddled. The disparity persists even in places with large black populations, the study found. Similarly, Native Americans were more than twice as likely to be paddled, the study found.
Cartels, Mexican army blamed for interference
August 20, 2008 
How Do We Seize the Obama Moment?
August 19, 2008 Electric. When Barack Obama receives the Democratic presidential nomination before 75,000 people in Denver’s Mile High Stadium on the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, new possibilities will be born. A historic candidacy, a new generation in motion, a nation yearning for change. Even the cynics running the McCain campaign might be touched, if they weren’t so busy savaging Obama as a vain celebrity not up to the task of leading a nation.
No one should be blinded by the lights. It will take hard work to turn the nomination into victory in a campaign that has already turned ugly. Moreover, even if victorious, Obama will inherit the calamitous conditions wrought by conservative failures — a sinking economy, unsustainable occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, accelerating climate change, Gilded Age inequality, a broken healthcare system and much more.
Obama will also be limited by the constricted consensus of an establishment not yet able to contemplate the changes needed to set this country right again. To be successful, his presidency will have to be bolder and more radical than now imagined.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry OK with teachers, staff carrying guns at schools
August 19, 2008 AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry said Monday that he supported the Harrold school district policy to allow teachers and staff members to carry guns at school as long as they are adequately trained in gun safety.
“I’m pretty much a fan that if you’ve been trained and you are registered, then you should be able to carry a weapon. Matter of fact, there’s a lot of instances that would have saved a lot of lives,” Mr. Perry said.
Russia Vs. USA????
August 19, 2008 
Knights Templar 'Heirs' Sue Pope For Billions
August 19, 2008 
Plinio Lepri
An image of Pope Clement V apparently absolving the Knights Templar of heresy charges 700 years ago, from the book Processus Contra Templarios. The book is a compilation of documents found in the Vatican’s secret archives in 2001. AP
How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America
August 18, 2008 It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” Barack Obama finally said it.
Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right’s stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them — and us — unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.
American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes “the jury is still out” on evolution.
Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on “The Colbert Report.” Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn’t actually list the commandments.
This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
Warrior John McCain: Far More Dangerous Than Bush
August 18, 2008 During the hottest days of the Cold War, Gen. Thomas Power headed the Strategic Air Command, whose nuclear-armed B-52s were meant to deter the Soviet Union. General Power, like many of the Air Force brass at the time, believed that nuclear war with the Soviets was inevitable. He thought the United States would do better to fight that war sooner rather than later and believed we could emerge victorious. “At the end of the war,” he argued in 1960, “if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!”
Listening to John McCain talk about Iraq and Iran, I keep thinking of Power. Counter-insurgency and nuclear obliteration are poles apart, I know. But McCain’s insistence on “winning in Iraq,” remaining there “until Iraq is secure,” and “bomb-bomb-bombing Iran” reveal the same mindset that made General Power so dangerous. Caught up in his fear that a military failure would encourage America’s enemies, McCain can see no alternative to military victory, no matter what the cost. This might be a laudable spirit to drum into raw military recruits, but could prove extremely self-destructive in a commander in chief.
The Plot Against Liberal America
August 18, 2008 The most cherished dream of conservative Washington is that liberalism can somehow be defeated, finally and irreversibly, in the way that armies are beaten and pests are exterminated. Electoral victories by Republicans are just part of the story. The larger vision is of a future in which liberalism is physically barred from the control room — of an “end of history” in which taxes and onerous regulation will never be allowed to threaten the fortunes private individuals make for themselves. This is the longing behind the former White House aide Karl Rove’s talk of “permanent majority” and, 20 years previously, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s declaration to the Republican convention that it’s “the job of all revolutions to make permanent their gains.”
When I first moved to contemplate this peculiar utopian vision, I was struck by its apparent futility. What I did not understand was that beating liberal ideas was not the goal. The Washington conservatives aim to make liberalism irrelevant not by debating, but by erasing it. Building a majority coalition has always been a part of the program, and conservatives have enjoyed remarkable success at it for more than 30 years. But winning elections was not a bid for permanence by itself. It was only a means.
Meet the Economist Who Thinks We're Doomed
August 18, 2008 On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The audience seemed skeptical, even dismissive. As Roubini stepped down from the lectern after his talk, the moderator of the event quipped, “I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that.” People laughed — and not without reason. At the time, unemployment and inflation remained low, and the economy, while weak, was still growing, despite rising oil prices and a softening housing market. And then there was the espouser of doom himself: Roubini was known to be a perpetual pessimist, what economists call a “permabear.” When the economist Anirvan Banerji delivered his response to Roubini’s talk, he noted that Roubini’s predictions did not make use of mathematical models and dismissed his hunches as those of a career naysayer.
The 50 Cent Machine
August 18, 2008 
At Cuban Americans' mom-and-pop agency, travel business isn't moving
August 16, 2008 