Clinton Fact Check

by

AP has this up on the Clinton speech.

Yeah, I for one am sick of the “we were prosperous when Clinton was president…” while forgetting that he instituted NAFTA.  We, in the midwest, were feeling this before the rest of the country–there were factories closing down left and right in the town I was raised in.

The health care law only makes sense to me when it will help me with preventative care.  That includes organic food and attention to diet by the medical profession instead of pushing pills as the solution for health ills.

Of course, I don’t have cable and didn’t watch it, so I can’t comment on that, but from what is being reported–he took an hour to speak?  WTH?

 

Taibbi on Romney

by

DN! has this up with Matt Taibbi giving the scoop on what Romney is all about–he’s not about creating jobs, and saving companies, but swooping in, making a boatload of money, and leaving the carcass behind…

Taibbi mentions Carlyle Group--red flags go up. (hat tip to this site)

From the article:

But what sets Carlyle apart is the way it has exploited its political contacts. When Carlucci arrived there in 1989, he brought with him a phalanx of former subordinates from the CIA and the Pentagon, and an awareness of the scale of business a company like Carlyle could do in the corridors and steak-houses of Washington. In a decade and a half, the firm has been able to realise a 34% rate of return on its investments, and now claims to be the largest private equity firm in the world. Success brought more investors, including the international financier George Soros and, in 1995, the wealthy Saudi Binladin family, who insist they long ago severed all links with their notorious relative. The first president Bush is understood to have visited the Binladins in Saudi Arabia twice on the firm’s behalf.

Another article here.

On the rest of the video–the guy going to the Romney campaign event and being told he was unpatriotic for wanting to save his job should be blasted on every radio station, every TV station, and printed on the front page of every newspaper (what ones are left…).  People are being lied to and are not getting that “fair and balanced” coverage.  I mean, the utter gall of them saying that unemployed people on food stamps are just lazy and unmotivated…while shipping their jobs to China…

…my mind flashed to Romney’s poor rendition of “America, the Beautiful…”  while Taibbi speaks of him and his cohorts’ non-allegiance to the States and the people trying to earn a living.

Taibbi makes a good point when he says the dispute over the actual time that Romney left Bain isn’t as important as to what profit he was reaping from Bain’s actions…that’s the key–what money did he make off the deals?

And Taibbi hints about how they don’t want to pay for anything–they make boatloads of money on these companies, after borrowing the money to do it.

 

 

Entertainment?

by

You know, sometimes it ain’t so bad being without cable…

I had no idea this kind of garbage was on NBC.  And look at the cast–Todd Palin…why does that not surprise me?

…um, do people know that GE, a defense contractor, owns NBC?  Do they think that just maybe this is a way to *glam up* war so more folks will blindly go into combat not knowing how horrific and soul-destroying it is…?  Or how the viewers watching it will become more numb to human suffering?

What about Mark Burnett, the producer of “Survivor”…which I always detested for its pitting people against one another, and encouraging a “weakest link” mentality…I often said that I grew up on “Gilligan’s Island”, where everyone worked together– while my kids were exposed to crap like “Survivor”, where people worked against one another for their own selfish reasons.  This encourages that  mentality of fear and violence and discourages cooperation and charity.

Good God.

When profits come up against morality…

by

…it’s rare that profit loses… (Shirley Chisholm, first woman presidential candidate)

commondreams has the story here on the banks’ speculation on food:  corn, soy, and wheat.  Be sure to look at the comments–someone has posted on the Federal Reserve bailing out foreign banks, as well as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase…the list goes on…

I’m a little skeptical, however, of the person who lists the quotes against the Federal Reserve…sounds too civil libertarian, right-wingish for my liking…

If you recall, I wrote about the drought here in Indiana, but how the ag undersecretary was saying that it shouldn’t affect corn because there were record numbers of corn planted this year.  But after that declaration, they suddenly started saying that there was, indeed, a corn crop shortage and prices at stores were going to reflect that.

About six months ago, a resident of the building I’m in said something prophetic—when Social Security gave a cost-of-living increase…she said that grocery prices were going to go up–they always went up after s.s. increased their checks.  I’ve seen more than one single item jump $2.00 in a month’s time…and they weren’t corn, soy, or wheat or anything that depended on those three…

 

Being Peace

by

Rev. John Dear has this up on Sister Anne Montgomery, and her work for peace.

I was raised to believe that peace would only be attained if we were all Christians.  After studying Buddhism, Hinduism, Tao and Confucious in college, I discovered that all religions said the same thing–they all say, in so many words, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”  All of them say it…so in my view, it isn’t that we should all have the same way that we worship, but that we actually follow that simple sentence.

I think peace will only be attained when we put it into action…not as easy as it seems…it takes actively thinking about it with every action/every decision we make–and not believing that we all have to have the same religion.  I truly believe that we are individuals led along a certain path and those experiences along that path lead us to our spirituality–and no one has a right to interfere with that or impose their own beliefs upon another.  That’s just wrong to me.

Whales attacked by seagulls

by

Michael Warren of the AP has this up on a disturbing story of whales being attacked by seagulls.

I’m concerned that the seagulls, since they are feeding on fish, perhaps are exhibiting such bizarre behavior because of mercury.  It’s a big clue that this has only been happening the last eight years.  This leads me to be skeptical that the open trash containers and fish refuse thrown by fisherman is the cause…trash has been around for a few decades and the fishermen have most likely always discarded the unwanted fish parts…so why now?

I found this. Interesting–but not really surprising because mercury is a known neurotoxin, so it is conceivable that it would affect that part of the brain that sexual desire is located.  It is fairly well known among the mercury group that desire is affected.  I don’t think this subject has been broached, probably because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Here’s a paper on mercury’s devastating effects on humans, fish, birds, et al.  If you look on page 7, there is a table with an astonishing number of over 4 billion tons of mercury in the ocean water.

From the paper:

There is a strong relation between the food of birds from Minamata and the Hg content in feathers; the content is highest in fish-eating seabirds and lowest in herbivorous waterfowl (Doi et al. 1984; Table 4). This same relation held in birds collected from China and Korea, although concentrations were significantly lower (Doi et al. 1984). There are close correlations between Hg contents of zooplankton and suspended particulate matter, and of sediments and fish muscle, suggesting a pathway from sediment to fish by way of suspended matter and zooplankton. The conversion from inorganic Hg to methylmercury is believed to have occurred primarily in zooplankton (Nishimura and Kumagai 1983).

page 13:

An elevated concentration of mercury (i.e., >1.0 mg/kg fresh weight), usually as methylmercury, in any biological sample is often associated with proximity to human use of mercury. The elimination of Hg point-source discharges has usually been successful in improving environmental quality. However, elevated levels of mercury in biota may persist in contaminated areas long after the source of pollution has been discontinued (Rada et al. 1986). For example, Hg remains elevated today in resident biota of Lahontan Reservoir, Nevada, which received about 7,500 tons of mercury as a result of gold and silver mining operations during the period 1865 to 1895 (Cooper 1983). It is noteworthy that some groups of organisms with consistently elevated Hg residues may have acquired these concentrations as a result of natural processes, rather than from anthropogenic activities. These groups include older specimens of long-lived predatory fishes, marine mammals (especially pinnipeds), and organisms living near natural Hg-ore-cinnabar deposits.

~~~~~~~~~

If you look down a bit, they list the Bald Eagle egg as increasing its mercury contamination from .35 in 1974 to .84 in 1979–doubled.

Further down, it lists a cat that ate fish below a chloralkali plant–look at the fur:  121 mg mercury /kg

The harbor seal in California: 269 mg/kg

The striped dolphin in Japan: 205 mg (in the liver)

The sea lion in California: from 73.0 to 1,026 mg/kg

The paper goes on to summarize that mercury in birds was highest by those that ate fish and other birds.

More from the paper:

The most probable source of recent elevated Hg residues in feathers of the Finnish sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) was from consumption of avian granivores that had become contaminated as a result of eating seeds treated withorganomercury compounds; in 1981, 5.6 tons of methoxyethylmercury compounds were used in Finnish agriculture for protection of seeds against fungi (Solonen and Lodenius 1984).

~~~~~~~

Another reason to push for sustainable farming practices…birds being contaminated by mercury application (as a fungicide) by farmers.

This is an understatement:

Mercury is a known mutagen, teratogen, and carcinogen. At comparatively low concentrations in birds and mammals, it adversely affects reproduction, growth and development, behavior, blood and serum chemistry, motor coordination, vision, hearing, histology, and metabolism. It has a high potential for bioaccumulation and biomagnification, and is slow to depurate.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mutagens change your DNA.  Teratogen is a fancy word for birth defects.  And of course, carcinogen is cancer causing.  Note that this states low concentrations affect behavior–hence my concern about the seagulls attacking the whale is not normal behavior and that’s why I suspect mercury (or other toxins).

This also applies to we mammals by the way:

MAMMALS
Mercury has no known physiological function (EPA 1985). In humans and other mammals, it causes teratogenic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic effects; the fetus is the most sensitive life stage (NAS 1978; Chang 1979; Khera 1979; EPA 1980, 1985; Elhassani 1983; Greener and Kochen 1983; Clarkson et al. 1984). Methylmercury irreversibly destroys the neurons of the central nervous system. Frequently, a substantial latent period intervenes between the cessation of exposure to Hg and the onset of signs and symptoms; this interval is usually measured in weeks or months, but sometimes in years (Clarkson et al. 1984). At high sublethal doses in man, mercury causes cerebral palsy, gross motor and mental impairment, speech disturbances, blindness, deafness, microcephaly, intestinal disturbances, tremors, and tissue pathology (Chang 1979; EPA 1980, 1985; Elhassani 1983; Clarkson et al. 1984). Pathological and other effects of Hg may vary from organ to organ, depending on factors such as the effective toxic dose in the organ, the compound involved and its metabolism within the organ, the duration of exposure, and the other contaminants to which the animal is concurrently exposed (Chang 1979). Many compounds–especially salts of selenium–protect humans and other animals against mercury toxicity, although their mode of action is not clear (NAS 1978; Chang 1979; EPA 1980, 1985; Eisler 1985).