I was approached by Markos Moulitsas with an intriguing offer — the chance to not only publish my own work on the Daily Kos, but to serve as the site’s Comics Editor, to help create an entirely new space online for political cartoons.Something to check out - I wish them both the best and look forward to their work.
Under the proposed plan, Vermont would create a state-run insurance exchange which would then be converted to the single-payer model in 2013. Despite Republican efforts to exempt some businesses who self-insure their health benefits, the Democrats remained united and passed it without those exemptions.
Unfortunately, successful legal challenges may not stop Wisconsin Republicans from passing legislation attacking workers and Wisconsin's poor. But successful lawsuits demonstrate how state GOP members are growing desperate in their attempts to pass laws paying-back their corporate campaign backers.
The Datta Khel airstrike was an American military airstrike carried out on 17 March 2011 in Datta Khel, North Waziristan that killed 38 people and led to widespread condemnation in Pakistan. The airstrike was part of a long series of drone attacks in Pakistan carried out by the United States military.
The online survey of 1,021 Canadians — commissioned by public relations firm Navigator Ltd., and conducted between March 14 and 15 by Angus Reid Public Opinion — found that 66 per cent believe the NHL isn't doing enough to curb violence in hockey.I seriously doubt people like Gary Bettman, the owners, the players' union, or that group of hockey fans who love Don Cherry and every stupid thing that comes out of his mouth really will ever learn.
Perhaps more troubling for the league, 25 per cent said they will watch less hockey as the result of last week's hit by Boston Bruins defenceman Zdeno Chara on Montreal Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
"Fans are fed up and they are signalling that they will change the channel if substantive changes aren't made," said Jamie Watt, chair and senior partner of Navigator in a release.
The Japanese National Police Agency has officially confirmed 3,676[6][7] deaths, 1,990[6][7] injuries, and 7,558[6][7] people missing across 16 prefectures, but estimated numbers are far higher, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands dead or missing.[35] The earthquake and tsunami caused extensive and severe damage in Japan, including heavy damage to roads and railways as well as fires in many areas, and a dam collapse. Around 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.4 million without water.[
Radiation sickness typically occurs at about 1000 millisieverts total dose.[159] Normal background radiation varies from place to place but is around 2.4 millisievert per year (or about 0.3 µSv/h).[160]I have a deep morbid sense that the reality of the situation will never ever be fully publicly disclosed, not in this lifetime.
At 400 mSv/h near No. 3 reactor, experts are urging a rapid rotation of emergency crews at Fukushima I, to limit their exposure to its DNA-destroying energy.[161] At these levels, the 50 workers still on site ran the real risk of developing radiation sickness.[161] Public health physicians are saying that the levels are much higher than the limit set for workers in occupational health settings of 20 millisieverts annually.[161] The general population faced separate risks from chronic exposure to lower-level contaminants released into the environment.[161]
Radioactive isotopes from nuclear accidents, like Fukushima I, emit alpha particles. Outside the body they are not usually a problem, but if swallowed or inhaled, they can do great damage. The isotope iodine-131 is easily absorbed by the thyroid. Caesium-137 is also a particular threat because it behaves like potassium and is taken-up by the cells throughout the body. Strontium-90 behaves like calcium, leading to accumulation in bones and teeth.[161]
Increases in cancer rates could be expected to follow a significant radiation leak.[161]
"What's interesting ... is that the rise in concussions in the preliminary data from this season seem to be coming from accident events, collisions, players falling and banging into other things, not from head hits," he told reporters."No, what's interesting is that comment is essentially admitting that the NHL is violating pretty much every labor safety code in the United States and Canada.
Senior U.S. officials in Paris advised the George Bush administration to launch a military-style trade war against the European Union for resisting genetically modified foods, according to newly released WikiLeaks cables.Ah, moronicism and Monsanto. They seem to go hand-in-hand.
The then U.S. ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, asked the government to penalize the EU and particularly countries that banned the use of genetically modified (GM) crops.
The move came in response to a 2007 French ban on a GM corn variety made by U.S.-based company Monsanto.
Commodities markets involve essentially two kinds of participants: there are so-called “end users” like farmers and airlines that use commodities markets as a form of insurance against future price fluctuations, and then there are speculators—hedge funds, investors, big banks that try to make money by correctly betting on those same price fluctuations. The presence of these speculators isn’t in and of itself a bad thing; in fact, they bring liquidity that should, in theory, make the market more efficient. According to an analysis by the House Energy Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, in 2000, physical hedgers, trucking companies, farmers, bakers, made up 63 percent of the crude oil futures markets, with speculators accounting for the rest. By 2008, those proportions had basically flipped.
Of course, the Wall Street banks say there’s nothing to see here, but that’s hard to believe. It’s almost impossible to make sense of 2008’s massive commodity price spike without concluding that the speculators played an outsized role. When enough money floods into a booming market, Greenberger says it can “unmoor” the prices of commodities from their underlying supply-and-demand fundamentals. The basic mechanism by which this might happen should be familiar; it’s the same principle that drove the housing market bubble or the tech stock boom. When a bunch of people think the price of a stock is going to go up, they rush to buy it so they can realize the imminent gains. Of course, a surge of demand itself pushes the price up and the price cycles upwards until it pops. The difference being, no one puts Pets.com in their cars, trucks and airplanes.
It's really sad how good ideas often get trumped. Never underestimate the awesome power of greed and stupidity.
One way to attempt to constrain these volatile mini-bubbles is for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to impose “position limits,” essentially limits on the size of the bets that speculators can make. The New Deal–era Commodities Exchange Act gives the CFTC power to curb “excessive speculation,” and the just-passed Dodd-Frank bill explicitly calls for the CFTC to promulgate position limits.
Not surprisingly, the big Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs don’t want this ...
Study senior author Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center and her co-authors measured the anogenital distance — from the anus to the underside of the scrotum — of 126 college students in New York.
Men whose AGD was shorter than the median length — about 52 millimetres — were 7.3 times more likely to have a low sperm concentration, Swan's team found.
All of this relates directly to the journalistic biases discussed here yesterday. Journalists and editors love to endlessly tout their own objectivity, yet their editorial conduct is so often driven by their sentiments and allegiances toward the parties involved in the story (just yesterday, the NYT used the word "torture" to describe Zimbabwe's actions because, it is claimed, "a dozen [] activists had been beaten with broomsticks, metal rods and blunt objects on their bodies and the soles of their feet" -- just as they freely apply the word to anyone that's not the U.S.). Nobody -- not even the Guardians of the National Security State -- loathes Assange the way that journalists do; recall that they led the way in condemning him and calling for his prosecution for doing what they're supposed to do. These Beacons of Objectivity thus use entirely different editorial standards -- far more unfavorable ones -- when reporting on him.
