- Occupy Wall Street: Another world is possible
- Obama's rightward shift since taking office has alienated many former supporters, helping to fuel the 'Occupy' movement.
- From Naomi Wolf's arrest in New York to shootings in Tucson and Florida, forces face allegations of abuse of power
- The protesters seeking to “occupy” the financial district in New York and other cities have been widely depicted in the media as having no coherent rationale for their protests. In fact, though, these protesters have chosen the right target: a set of institutions and actors who not only played a central role in creating the financial crisis, but have worked to foster a more unequal U.S. economy and democracy over recent decades – with the effect of undermining America’s middle class.
- If you’re having trouble understanding what’s driving the “Occupy” protests, here are some numbers that help explain what’s at stake and why the new movement against economic inequality is growing so rapidly. The video is courtesy of the new solidarity group Occupy Animators.
- A dramatic study released today shows income inequality in the United States is on a furious upward trajectory: since the late 1970s, the top one percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income. From 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew by 275 percent—and the top one-fifth now receives more income than the other four-fifths of the population. Meanwhile, people in the middle three-fifths of the population saw their shares of after-tax income decline by two or three percentage points.The study’s results are dramatic, though certainly have been studied and noted before. But what adds juice is who conducted the study—it was released today in the heat of the Occupy Wall Street movement by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, after years of work.
- In an episode of The Simpsons, nuclear power plant owner Mr. Burns tries to justify the existence of Blinky, a three-eyed fish caught in the local river, by saying it is the next step in evolution and not a horrible mutation. Strangely though, he refuses to eat Blinky when it is served to him — we’re not surprised. But while Blinky is the product of a fictional cartoon, this three-eyed fish caught nearby a nuclear facility in Argentina, is not.
- Controversial 'fracking' technique to extract gas from the ground was the 'highly probable' cause of earth tremors, report finds
- Back in March I wrote about Peak Arabica Coffee: Top coffee scientist warns, “Coffee production is under threat from global warming.” I ran this chart:Seven months later, Big Media grabbed the story when Starbucks started talking up the threat. Good Morning America and the CBS Early Show both did segments on it.
Characteristically, though, both networks treated the story mostly as a source for levity. And you’d be hard-pressed to find them given equal time to the far more consequential, far more serious, impact of climate change on global food prices and supply
- This past year the world has witnessed a spike in food prices, which some experts believe correlate with the rising number of developing countries experiencing societal unrest.“Climate change increases the probability of extreme weather, which is likely to result in increased scarcity of food, land and water and access to other resources,” said Rob Bailey, an energy, environment and development expert at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs organization.
Where vital resources are scarce, there will be “conditions for conflict,” he said in a telephone interview.
- Fox News' Sean Hannity has spent the past week attacking President Obama over what Hannity called Obama's "incendiary language," because Obama said Republicans want "dirtier air, dirtier water." But Obama is right in that Republicans have repeatedly voted to weaken pollution limits this year.
- On last night's episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart highlighted the media's failure to cover the results of a new study debunking the myths of the so-called "Climategate" controversy. Earlier this week, we pointed out that, aside from one brief mention on CNN, major television news outlets have ignored the new study. These same outlets previously fueled baseless claims that scientists doctored data to exaggerate global warming.
- More than half of tree species in eastern U.S. forests aren't adapting to climate change as quickly or consistently as predicted, researchers said.
- Myles Allen, with the complicity of the UK’s Guardian, has put words into Al Gore’s mouth in order to attack the Nobel-Prize winning former Vice President. What makes this attack a particularly egregious breach of journalism is that Allen and the Guardian could have avoided it had they spent even 30 seconds reading their own damn links.
- Officials in Rick Perry's home state of Texas have set off a scientists' revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state's environmental agency.
- Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry says debates aren't his strong suit, but apparently history isn't either.Speaking at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity on Dartmouth College's campus after Tuesday night's The Washington Post/Bloomberg presidential debate, Perry missed the date of the American Revolution by about 200 years.
- The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant.
- Politicians pushing right-wing positions in public debate now operate with the assumption that they can get away with saying anything without getting serious scrutiny from the media.That is why right-wing politicians repeatedly blame government regulation for the failure of the economy to generate jobs. Even though there is no truth whatsoever to the claim, right-wing politicians know that the media will treat their nonsense respectfully in news coverage.
- ...the Pew study found that Mr. Perry received the greatest proportion of positive coverage of any candidate May 2 through Oct. 9. The recipient of the greatest proportion of negative coverage was President Obama.
- The former chancellor is an avowed climate sceptic - and the 'facts' he repeats are demonstrably inaccurate
- Climate skeptics are once again proven wrong, and this time even Koch money can't skew the facts.
- The aftermath of a tar sands oil spill in Michigan has left a community with sickness, anger, and loss of livelihood.One cause for concern among opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline is its potential to leak into and damage the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies 78 per cent of the public water supply in Nebraska and one-third of all the water used for irrigation in the US.
- One of the reasons the number of Americans without insurance has increased to more than 50 million is because it has been perfectly legal for insurance companies to refuse to sell coverage to people who have been sick in the past. This includes those who were born with birth defects or who were diagnosed with chronic illnesses when they were children. In fact, many parents have learned that they could not add a child to a family policy because the child had been treated for a condition that was on their insurer’s automatic denial list.Fortunately, ObamaCare already is forcing insurers to change their business practices.
- Experts say the dose from the backscatter is negligible when compared with naturally occurring background radiation, but a linear model shows even such trivial amounts increase the number of cancer casesmpre
- I must point out that republicans usually universally support Citizens United (as do republican politicians and pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Fox "News", etc). So the claim made in this vide that republicans are upset over this, along with liberals, is more wishful thinking than reality.
Sean
