Saturday, Dec 13th
Last update09:42:56 AM GMT
This will surely get taken out of context in my future political career, but I will say it now anyway: I am embarrassed, saddened, and yes, disgusted, by the behavior and beliefs of the majority of Americans.
A new report came out Tuesday, showing that the poverty rate in America rose to a whopping 15.1% in 2010. That means that nearly one in six Americans gets by on less than $11,139 a year, or $22,314 for a family of four. At the same time, the average CEO rakes in $11.3 million EACH.
Many of those plump, juicy strawberries found on produce section shelves are hiding a deadly little secret. In 2010, regulators in California, where over 90 percent of conventional strawberries are grown, quietly approved the use of toxic methyl iodide as a fruit pesticide after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved it nationally. But new evidence has now surfaced that government officials twisted study data to make the chemical falsely appear safe in order to get it approved -- and individuals everywhere are now increasingly demanding that methyl iodide be banned.
In case you believed that elaborate government conspiracies were merely the driving force behind X-Files episodes, the Science Channel is setting the record straight. As a compendium to their latest show, "Dark Matters," which explores the darker side of science, the Science Channel has published introductions and full transcripts from government hearings on some of the most unbelievable -- yet true -- conspiracies, including the highly-controversial MKULTRA project.
Agents at the FBI's Quantico, Virginia, training grounds are taught that all mainstream American Muslims are terrorist sympathizers in a cult that likes to donate money to killers. That's according to a scoop by Wired's Spencer Ackerman, who has exposed a series of amazingly clueless Powerpoint slides and documents from the federales' training on Islam. If you haven't read his story yet, do so now.
Ackerman's report brings new light to an alarming problem that's been well-documented since 9/11: American police officers, airport screeners, and soldiers have no freaking clue how to deal with the distinction between the vast majority of Muslims and the minisule minority that actively seek to do us harm.
There is a specter haunting America today. It is the specter of stupidity. A few months ago, I wrote a column I called “The Problem of Republican Idiots.” Believe me, this problem has not gone away. Rick Perry, the Republican Party’s presidential front-runner right now, believes the phenomenon of man-made global warming to be a conspiracy by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data.”
No less alarming is that this stupidity is apparently contagious. The men and women who inhabit the upper reaches of the US media (and pull down the multimillion-dollar salaries) appear to believe that to do their jobs properly, they must make themselves behave like idiots in order to be “fair” to the Republicans and their idiotic ideas.
A trillion is a huge number — when you're talking dollars or euros. But a trillion miles is not so much in the cosmic scheme of things. Astronomers say they've now found a planet that orbits two suns a mere thousand trillion miles from here. It's yet another example of a weird solar system being discovered around nearby stars.
Two years ago, NASA launched the Kepler observatory to look for Earth-like planets beyond our own solar system. It has found more than 1,000 apparent planets around distant suns.
Arctic sea ice melted this summer to the second lowest level since record-keeping began more than 50 years ago, scientists reported Thursday, mostly blaming global warming.
"This is not a random event," said oceanographer James Overland of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's a long-term change in Arctic climate."
Psychologists say that new guidelines being developed in America will lead more young people seeing their common problems regarded as illnesses that must be treated, rather than just being given support.
They fear that pupils who are quiet at school could be diagnosed with “social anxiety disorder” while those who become withdrawn after suffering a bereavement are classified as having a “depressive disorder”.
Children who just talk back to adults or lose their temper regularly could be diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder”.
As you can see, the U.S. outspends every other industrialized nation on its health care, yet it is dead last in life expectancy compared to its peers. It's also the most vaccinated country in the world. Yet a ground-breaking study recently revealed that countries that give the most vaccines have the worst infant death rates, again, with the U.S. leading the pack. Sadly, these trends aren't limited to the U.S. – the truth is too many people in industrialized nations are sick – and getting sicker.
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