Artist: Goodnight Irene Y’all hang in there up North.
Continue reading …Bachmann Bizarro Minute: Health Care Law Is A Death Knell For Conservatism
August 27, 2011 No CommentDespite dropping in the polls, Michele Bachmann is undeterred. God will, evidently, perform a miracle and vault her to the White House, no matter what. In a town hall appearance Thursday in South Carolina, Bachmann answered a question from “undecided voter” Nikki Haley about the NLRB and Boeing (video above), and then made a couple of astonishing claims, even for her. Politico: The Minnesota congresswoman struck an urgent tone, issuing dire warnings to voters of the consequences of not electing a Republican who will repeal Obama’s health care law in 2012. “I have wept in Washington, D.C., watching what’s happening to our country,” Bachmann said. Speaking in hushed and sometimes pleading tones, she warned that the implementation of Obama’s health care law would be a death knell to conservatism in America. “You can’t put socialized medicine into a country and think that ever again you can elect as president a Republican or conservative or even a tea partier and think somehow we’re going to get back to limited government. It won’t happen because socialized medicine is the definition of big government,” she said. “That’s why this is it — 2012 is it,” she added, calling it a “last-chance election” for the country. Of course, I tend to think 2012 is probably the defining election of our existence, not a last-chance election. To me, a Republican victory in 2012 will spell an end to progressive values and quite possibly the country as we know it. This is a tipping point, and the one thing Bachmann has right is how important 2012 is. Joan McCarter at Daily Kos sums those remarks up well : So here’s Bachmann’s lesson for Democrats. The only hope Republicans have to finally create their permanent political majority is to destroy every good thing government has done or will do for middle class America, the vast majority of us. The best hope for Democrats is fighting tooth and nail to save those very programs. Here, let me give you another example of why it’s important. From Bachmann’s answer to Nikki Haley about the NLRB and Boeing: “Our president decided to allow the National Labor Relations Board to try to stop what Boeing is doing in South Carolina,” said Haley, referring to the NLRB’s complaint that Boeing moved the plant from Washington state to South Carolina to punish union workers, in violation of law. “It’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen. If you were president — knowing he is saying he can’t do anything because it’s an independent agency, what would you do?” “Why thank you for asking that question,” Bachmann said, inviting the crowd to applaud Haley and promising she would take her calls if elected president. “If the NRLB would also be continuing their current stance, they may not last very long. Once they see what I do to the EPA, they may shape up.” Ooooh, be afraid.
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Middle class mothers-to-be are paying for a service that is likely to be unavailable to poorer families The flight of the middle classes to paid-for antenatal classes as free NHS services are run down threatens to exacerbate the divide between the rich and poor, according to the Royal College of Midwives. The number of parents attending classes run by the largest private provider has nearly doubled in the past five years, at a time when the NHS service has become increasingly patchy. Yet research shows that advice and support to a woman before and shortly after pregnancy is crucial to providing the best start in life. Janet Fyle, the Royal College of Midwives’ policy adviser, said she feared that existing class inequalities between families were being built upon by a system that helped affluent families to provide the best parenting while lower socioeconomic groups missed out. In the wake of David Cameron’s pledge earlier this month following the riots to tackle families in which worklessness was endemic, Fyle added that the government should start at “the beginning”. “Antenatal classes are very important for early development. The government emphasis is on the 120,000 families they believe cause a lot of trouble in this country and you need to go back and look at the interaction at the beginning,” she said. “I am not saying that is the reason for what has happened [the riots], but if you have confident parents you have successful parents.” A survey carried out by Netmums, the parenting website, shows that 30% of first-time parents surveyed are not offered any antenatal care at all by the NHS. But Fyle added that even when free NHS antenatal classes were on offer, the distances people needed to travel put off those in the lower socioeconomic groups from attending at all. She said: “I would have a certain mother in mind whom I would like to attend my classes – and they used to attend 10 years ago. But if I am honest, I am not sure that the mothers we want to attend, who need help to consider and reflect on parenting, actually do attend any more.” Meanwhile, the number of parents attending paid-for antenatal classes run by the National Childbirth Trust charity, the country’s largest provider, jumped from 25,000 in 2005-06 to 40,346 in 2010-2011. The charity says an estimated 11% of first births in the UK – one in nine – are born to a parent who attended NCT classes. And while the average cost of a series of classes with NCT is £187, documents seen by the Observer show that nine out of 10 NTC members – the vast majority of whom have paid for antenatal care and now pay up to £36 a year for continuing help and advice – are within the top 50% socioeconomic groups. One in five members has a salary of more than £80,000 and their average annual income is
Continue reading …Rubberstamp? State Department Report on Keystone XL Pipeline Says ‘No Significant Impact’ On Natural Resources
August 27, 2011 No CommentDespite denials, it sure looks like they produced the report they were told to produce in order to justify rubberstamping this project: The State Department released its final environmental impact assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday, and it’s just as bad as some feared—perhaps worse. The report concludes, as did two prior versions, that there would be “no significant impact“ on natural resources near the pipeline route, while also downplaying the potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions. In a conference call with reporters, Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones stressed that “this is not the rubberstamp for this project. The permit that is required for this process has not been approved or rejected at all.” But the environmental concerns are clearly the main objection to Keystone XL, and the report is widely seen as removing one of the final roadblocks to the project. Environmental groups were quick to blast the results. “The U.S. State Department’s final report on the Keystone XL today is an insult to anyone who expects government to work for the interests of the American people,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. On the issue of pipeline spills, the State Department report assesses that “there could be from 1.18 to 1.83 spills greater than 2,100 gallons per year” for the entire project. It helpfully adds that “crude oil spills are not likely to have toxic effects on the general public.” While that many spills might already sound risky, the real number is likely much higher than what the State Department calculated. First, as the report itself notes, there have already been fourteen spills along the existing Keystone pipeline since it began operating in June 2010.
Continue reading …Gore: Scientists Wouldn’t Lie for Money to Advance Global Warming Theory – But Skeptics Would
August 27, 2011 No Comment
Nobel laureate Al Gore claimed on Friday that scientists involved in advancing the theory of global warming wouldn't do it just for the money. Without recognizing the hypocrisy, he also told FearLess Cottage consumer advocate Alex Bogusky that scientists espousing a skeptical view of his money-making theory are exclusively doing so for their own financial benefit (video follows with transcript and commentary): ALEX BOGUSKY , CONSUMER ADVOCATE, FEARLESS COTTAGE: Well, they also funded and created some think tanks that would release reports, and there were scientists that worked there, but they were funded by the tobacco industry. AL GORE: Yeah, yeah. BOGUSKY : And some of those are, are now, have gone to work for oil and gas, or oil and coal. GORE: What a lot of people don’t realize, this is so astonishing, some of the same people… BOGUSKY : Yeah. GORE: …who took money from the tobacco companies to put out lies about the science of smoking and health are now taking money from the coal and oil companies to put out lies about the science of global warming. BOGUSKY : Yeah. GORE: And those lies in this new communications environment gain a much larger audience on a regular basis than what the real scientists are actually saying. BOGUSKY : Well, and, and, and you talk about the special interests, but there’s more and more special interest in government. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : At least that’s, you know, my analysis. GORE: For sure. For sure? Was Gore actually agreeing that there’s more special interests in government? I think Bogusky caught him off-guard with that, and the Nobel laureate didn’t realize what he was saying “for sure” to. But in this instance, he was right. As Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-Ok.) former communications director Marc Morano reported in 2007: Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, but the Magazine chose instead to focus on how skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades. Two years later, the Science and Public Policy Institute updated and confirmed these numbers: The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in. Despite the overwhelming majority of funds concerning this matter going to climate alarmists, Gore claimed it's skeptics that are willing to lie for money. Moments later, he ironically said the folks on his side would never do this: BOGUSKY : Governor Perry suggests that scientists have gotten together to foil the American public, or the global public. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : There aren’t even movie scripts like that, where every, it’s, it’s, it’s, it seems difficult for me to understand how people would believe that. Yet there are actual incidents – tobacco being the most recent – of industries that have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : Scientists in general don’t really like to agree. That’s not what science does. Right? GORE: Right, right, right. Yeah, and, and, and sometimes contrarians in science have become famous by overturning an accepted view. BOGUSKY : That’s how you get reputations. GORE: Yeah, there’s a natural respect for that impulse, absolutely. Okay, so there are incidents when industries “have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie.” But Bogusky doesn't consider that since Gore has huge investments in companies that benefit from global warming activism, he himself might be less than honest with his assertions. As is typical, the motivation of liberals is never questioned. As for the Nobel laureate, he admitted a “natural respect” for ” contrarians in science [who] have become famous by overturning an accepted view.” But not when they go against his view: GORE: But this is different. This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money. Look, first of all, these scientists don’t make a lot of money. They’re comfortable, and as they should be, but they don’t make a lot of money. That’s not their motivation for doing what they do.
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Atiyah Abd al-Rahman rose to his position after Osama Bin Laden was killed in raid on compound in May Al-Qaida’s second-in-command has been killed in Pakistan, delivering a “major blow” to the terrorist group still reeling from the death of Osama bin Laden, American officials said on Saturday. Libyan national Atiyah Abd al-Rahman rose to his position when Ayman al-Zawahiri took command after Bin Laden was killed in a raid on his Pakistani compound in May. Officials did not reveal how al-Rahman was killed but said it happened on 22 August in Waziristan, north-west Pakistan, where members of al-Qaida are thought to be hiding out. A CIA drone strike was reported that day. “Atiyah’s death is a tremendous loss for al-Qaida, because [Zawahiri] was relying heavily on him to help guide and run the organisation, especially since Bin Laden’s death,” one American official said. “The trove of materials from Bin Laden’s compound showed clearly that Atiyah was deeply involved in directing al-Qaida’s operations even before the raid. He had multiple responsibilities in the organisation and will be very difficult to replace.” Since bin Laden’s death, counterterrorism officials have hoped to capitalise on al-Qaida’s unsettled leadership. The more uncertain the structure, the harder it is for them to operate covertly and plan attacks. Another official added: “There’s no question this is a major blow to al-Qaida. Atiyah was at the top of al-Qaida’s trusted core.” US defence secretary Leon Panetta said on a visit to Afghanistan last month that he believed the strategic defeat of al-Qaida was within reach if the United States could kill or capture up to 20 remaining leaders of the core group and its affiliates. “Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them,” he said. Al-Rahman joined Bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. He once served as Bin Laden’s personal emissary to Iran. Al-Rahman was allowed to move freely in and out of Iran as part of that arrangement and has been operating out of Waziristan for some time, officials have said. al-Qaida Pakistan United States guardian.co.uk
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• Five people die as Hurricane Irene lashes US east coast • Two million homes without power as Irene tracks north • New York braced for storm-surge flooding and high winds • Irene downgraded to category one hurricane • Read the latest summary here • Read our latest news story on Irene • Follow me on Twitter @MatthewWells • Email me at matt.wells@guardian.co.uk 8.01pm ET: While I took a break from the liveblogging hotseat earlier, I went out for a walk around Tribeca, where I live, and down to the shore of the Hudson. Night has fallen now, and the rain is lashing down. But a few hours ago, you can see from this video – usually teeming with ferries and other craft – that the river was as calm as a millpond. 7.44pm ET: More on the growing concern over the New York mayor’s attitude to Rikers Island . At a press conference earlier, he breezily dismissed a reporter’s question about why the 17,000 prisoners on the island were not being evacuated, despite being in the evacuation zone. Tonight, City Hall has put out a more reasoned explanation of why the inmates on Rikers are staying put. “Rikers Island does not touch the Atlantic Ocean and, like Manhattan Island, Roosevelt Island and City Island, it does not need to be evacuated, according to a spokeman for the mayor’s office told the Wall Street Journal . 7.40pm ET: While we gear up for a big night in New York, Irene will pass by the US capital, Washington , first. The Weather Channel is forecasting hurricane-force winds heading for Washington and Baltimore now. Ewen Macaskill , our chief Washington correspondent, another Scot on the Guardian US team, has just been out for a walk around the streets. He reports: It is wet but no worse than typical day in Glasgow, it definitely does not feel anything like a hurricane. But it is supposed to get worse in the next hour or so. I called into my local, which had plenty of people in it, but it was just closing up: I suppose the staff want to go home early, given the forecast. Many people have opted to stay at home. Having said that, there are lots of cars on the road and many of people wandering about the city. 7.00pm ET: Good evening and welcome to our continuing coverage of hurricane Irene’s track up the Atlantic coast of the United States, with New York braced for a night of heavy winds and potentially damaging storm surges. This is Matt Wells live blogging from Lower Manhattan – right in the middle of the area where the storm surges are expected to hit. Fortunately, I’m nine floors up. You can catch up with our earlier coverage here. Here’s a summary of events so far. • At least five fatalities have now been attributed to the storm. Three of these deaths were caused, directly or indirectly, by trees felled by high winds. In Florida, a surfer was killed while attempting to take advantage of the hurricane-powered waves. • Approximately 1 million Americans – in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and DC – are without electricity. The mayor of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania has warned citizens that outages could last for days, even weeks. As Irene heads north, that number is likely to grow. • Hundreds of thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate coastal and low-lying areas along the eastern seaboard. As many as 1 million people have left the Jersey shore . In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has warned that “we are going to break down doors if we have to” to enforce the evacuation. • Transport has ground to a virtual halt on the east coast. Some 9,000 flights have been cancelled from affected airports. In New York, all public transport has closed down until Monday . • Despite Irene losing force, downgraded to category 1, storm surges and heavy rains are creating danger of widespread flooding. In northern New England, Vermont’s governor has declared a state of emergency, with flooding predicted in every river in the state. Hurricane Irene Natural disasters and extreme weather United States Matt Wells guardian.co.uk
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Lawyer for Tom Condliff, a retired police officer, says human rights appeal to Strasbourg will go ahead to clarify law A health authority that refused to pay for a 22-stone man to be fitted with a gastric band has said it will now fund the operation, in a move that has potentially wide-ranging legal ramifications for future claims by obese people. Tom Condliff, a 62-year-old retired police officer, was told by the North Staffordshire primary care trust (PCT) that it would not pay for the £5,500, life-saving operation. Condliff fought the decision in court, arguing that many other health authorities would have paid for his operation under national guidelines, but judges ruled against him . However, the trust has now said it will fund the operation on the grounds that Condliff, who has a needle phobia and type 2 diabetes, is an “exceptional” case. “I really believe that the operation will save the PCT money,” Condliff said. “The operation will cost the PCT £5,500. At the moment my symptoms, particularly my diabetes, kidney and liver functions, are getting worse week by week and the more ill I become the more support and care I need from the PCT, so the cost of my care without the operation would just keep increasing.” The U-turn is likely to encourage other morbidly obese people to bring similar claims. It is predicted an increasing number of people will need similar surgery as obesity levels in the UK soar. Health researchers predicted last week that the number of obese adults will rise by 73% over the next two decades, from 15 million to 26 million, resulting in more than a million extra cases of diabetes, heart disease and cancer. “I think that my case is a sad indictment of what seems to be happening within some parts of the NHS,” Condliff said. “The litigation has been very difficult for me, and I think it is wrong that people have to resort to legal action to get the treatment.” In a move that will see the rights of obese people placed firmly on the legal agenda, Oliver Wright, Condliff’s solicitor, said he would appeal against the trust’s initial refusal to pay for the operation to the European Court of Human Rights. “The law, as it currently stands, is out of kilter with article 8 of the Human Rights Act [respect for private and family life] and European
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Thinktank tracked 30,000 people across four decades and says parental discipline is big factor in cutting alcohol problems Poor parenting significantly increases the likelihood that children will grow up to be binge drinkers, according to the findings of a controversial study. The thinktank Demos, which tracked the lives of 30,000 people across four decades, found that high levels of parental warmth and attachment until the age of 10, combined with strict discipline by the time they are 16, play a powerful role in reducing the likelihood that a child would go on to be a binge drinker. The findings will chime with claims from the right that many of society’s problems are attributable to inadequate parenting. But it is unusual for a left-of-centre thinktank with historically close links to the Labour party to identify dysfunctional parenting as one of modern society’s most high-profile problems. Advocating a traditional “tough love” style of parenting, Demos claims its research suggests that high levels of attachment between parents and pre-fives significantly reduce the chances a child will drink excessively. It warns that bad parenting at age 10 makes a child twice as likely to drink excessively in their 30s. But it is during the teenage years that “tough love” parenting seems to exert its most crucial influence. Demos claims a 16-year-old child is more than eight times more likely to drink excessively if there are poor levels of parenting. They are more than twice as likely to drink excessively in their 30s. “The enduring impact of parenting on a child’s future relationship with alcohol cannot be ignored,” said Jamie Bartlett, author of the report. “This is good for parents: those difficult moments of enforcing tough rules really do make a difference, even if it doesn’t always feel like that at the time.” Levels of binge drinking in the UK have been dropping since 2000. But Bartlett said the media’s infatuation “with a boozed-up Britain” had made the “culture of a binge-drinking minority more extreme, and more public”. The thinktank suggested a number of measures parents could take. These include not appearing drunk in front of their children and resisting having a relaxed attitude to under-age consumption. Demos also recommends that alcohol should be discussed in the context of setting firm boundaries, with children encouraged to develop “sensible and responsible” expectations of consumption. Alcohol in the home should be monitored and teenagers prevented from having access to it. However, Demos also called for the government to help parents by making it harder for children to obtain alcohol and by ensuring sales to under-age drinkers were better policed. Research shows that young people who buy their own alcohol are especially at risk of becoming problem drinkers, while strictly enforced laws strengthen the social norm that under-age drinking is unacceptable. One of the thinktank’s more radical suggestions is to spread the six-week school summer holiday throughout the year and provide activities for at-risk children. Bartlett said: “For children whose parents may be disengaged, very practical measures like spreading the school summer holiday throughout the year, and providing activities for children in the school breaks, will go some way to preventing boredom and avoiding risky behaviour like under-age drinking.” Demos’s research was based on a statistical analysis of two sets of data, involving more than 30,000 children born during the past 40 years, including the respected 1970 British Cohort
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Imperial College team says government is ‘seriously undermining’ anti-tobacco campaign Health experts have accused the government of spending more on subsidising American films that contain smoking scenes than on anti-tobacco campaigns. Researchers at Imperial College London calculated that between 2003 and 2009, £338m of tax credits in Britain went to US-produced films with imagery “promoting” tobacco use. Foreign film-makers receive 16% tax relief against their British production costs if more than a quarter of their budget is spent in Britain. More than three-quarters of British film subsidies go to US production companies. “In the period we looked at, the government gave £48m a year in tax credits to American films that feature smoking, almost all of which were rated suitable for children and adolescents,” said Christopher Millett, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. “By comparison, the government spent £23m a year on mass media anti-smoking campaigns.” Research has shown that young people heavily exposed to tobacco imagery in films are more likely to begin smoking than those who are only lightly exposed. This led the World Health Organisation (WHO) to recommend in 2009 that films with scenes of smoking should be given an adult content rating, creating an economic incentive for producers to leave smoking out of their films. But in the open access journal PLoS Medicine, the Imperial team says its findings show the recommendation has been largely ignored in the UK, US and Canada. They accuse all three governments of underwriting many films that promote youth smoking with public subsidies. They estimate that of the “high-grossing” films that had their tobacco content monitored, 66% featured tobacco imagery. More than half (57%) containing scenes of smoking were rated U, PG or 12A, and only 8% were given an 18 certificate. Recent UK-subsidised films featuring smoking include Mamma Mia! , Nine , Quantum of Solace , Sherlock Holmes and The Wolfman . Millett said that by “promoting smoking in films” the government was “seriously undermining” tobacco control efforts. “We think film subsidy programmes should be harmonised with public health goals by making films with tobacco imagery ineligible for public subsidies,” Millett said. “This wouldn’t cost anything to implement so in the current financial climate it should be an attractive policy option.” His comments were echoed by Martin Dockrell, director of research at Action on Smoking and Health. “The research is clear: the more a young person sees smoking in films the more likely they are to try smoking themselves,” he said. “This study reveals the astonishing fact that the government has spent an average of almost £50m a year subsidising films that encourage children to smoke, more than twice as much as they spent on advertising supporting people to quit.” The previous Labour government published a tobacco control strategy that recommended smoking “must not be condoned, encouraged or glamorised in other programmes likely to be widely seen or heard by under-18s unless there is editorial justification”. But health campaigners attacked the recommendations for being too vague and falling significantly short of actions proposed by the WHO. “This year the government promised to look at what more could be done to tackle the role of TV and films in stimulating smoking among children,” Dockrell said. “At the moment we have a film funding system that makes the problem worse., by investing millions in films made for young people that have the effect of encouraging them to smoke.” Smoking Tobacco industry Health World Health Organisation Film industry Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
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