Best of the Web:


Holly

Best of the Web: US: Just Say No to Christmas?

Judy Keen
USA Today
Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Denny Simmons/USA TodayGriffin Holland, with mom Sarah Stewart Holland, plays in his family's Paducah, Ky., home on Dec. 14. The family has scaled back on Christmas spending, and Griffin will get gifts stashed after his birthday celebration.
Susan Lee, a divorced mother of three in New York City, is taking a drastic step this year. "No Christmas for me," she says. "No gifts, no turkey, no tree, no kidding."

Lee, 41, a marketing consultant, says she needs a break from the stress and spending that are integral parts of the holiday. Her kids will celebrate a traditional Christmas with their dad, but she's ignoring all the rituals.

"I start dreading Christmas from the time the decorations go up in the stores," she says. "It stopped being fun for me, so I'll find out this year if I can do without it altogether. I think it will be a relief. It already is."

The holiday is in no danger of extinction. Retail sales broke records over the Thanksgiving weekend, and online sales are up 15% from 2010, according to ComScore, a research company. A Gallup Poll found that Americans expect to spend an average of $764 on Christmas gifts, $50 more than a year ago. And forecasters expect spending on Christmas to rise 3.1% to $3.4 billion this holiday season.
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Bomb

Best of the Web: FDA Targets 'Unproven' New Supplements While Allowing Harmful GMOs

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post
Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:18 UTC
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© gaia-health.com
The FDA is seeking to outlaw the majority of supplements created after 1994 until they have been heavily proven to be 100% effective and free of any slight side effects.

Meanwhile, the organization allows for harmful genetically modified ingredients to fill the world's food supply.

While the FDA's NDI (New Dietary Ingredient) regulations seek to remove your right to freely purchase powerful superfoods, they are simply not concerned over the fact that GMO food consumption has been linked with severe organ disruption and other health concerns.

Under the new guidelines, every nutritional supplement company will be required to compose and submit a comprehensive NDI (New Dietary Ingredient) documentation for every single ingredient used in each product they are currently selling.

This tedious and ridiculous process will hinder the sales of legitimate nutraceuticals, and removes your free choice to determine which ingredients you find to be the most beneficial to your health.
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Bell

Best of the Web: "I Cannot Eat Your Prayers": How Student Debt Changed One Woman's Mind on "Christian Charity"

Kristin Rawls
Alternet.org
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:10 UTC
From an evangelical home to over $100,000 in student loans and healthcare debt, one writer faces the ways in which even progressive Christianity comes up short.

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© Jasmic
I'm going to tell you a story. It's the story of a good girl from a quiet town who prayed, studied hard, said no to drugs, and otherwise did everything she was told - and then went on to become Sallie Mae's bitch and lost just about everything. This story is mine.

I grew up in an evangelical home, and was an earnest "liberal-evangelical" into my early twenties. Now I think that my former religious faith - not unlike my faith in the U.S. higher education system - gave me a warped sense of optimism about the way the world works. I believed in faith-based platitudes, plus a few secular ones. Examples:
  1. God has a plan for my life.
  2. My whole future is ahead of me.
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Black Cat

Best of the Web: R.I.P. America

Karl W B Schwarz
CTBusters
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© corporatecriminalsexposed.com
It has been painful and disgusting for me to watch the US continue to devolve into a beast worse than any real or perceived 'terrorist'. With the passage of The Defense Authorization Act, aka: Bill S.1867, the leadership of America has proven to the world that are psychopathic, traitorous, treasonous and do not stand for anything that has made America in the past the beacon of freedom, liberty, democracy and hope in this world. They have also proven they are anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-democracy, anti-justice, and anti-rule of law.

Whatever scant remains of a moral high ground the US government may have claimed in the midst of all of its grotesque lies and misdeeds, and its malfeasance of office since 9-11-2001, it was forfeited it with the passage of S.1867.

When any citizen of the US can be perceived, deemed, or even deliberately painted as an enemy combatant of 'this government', that person can now be detained without trial indefinitely. To Hell with the US Constitution, to Hell with the 4th, 5th and 14th Amendments, to Hell with the right of habeas corpus, and the Bill of Rights and the law of the land. Any sense of decency, any sense of veracity, any sense of leadership was sacrificed with the passage of this monstrously un-Constitutional bill by the Senate and House.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: A Christmas Message From America's Rich

Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:05 UTC
Wall Street Sign
© Dario Cantatore/Getty

It seems America's bankers are tired of all the abuse. They've decided to speak out.

True, they're doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don't have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn't have to apologize for being so successful.

But while they haven't yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.

Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, for instance, is not worried about OWS:
"Who gives a crap about some imbecile?" Marcus said. "Are you kidding me?"
Former New York gurbernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the billing firm Paychex, offered his wisdom while his half-his-age tennis champion girlfriend hung on his arm:
"If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit," said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
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Igloo

Best of the Web: US: Congress Cuts Winter Heating Aid For The Poor While Boosting The Defense Budget

Travis Waldron
Think Progress
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:32 UTC
Federal Budget
Poverty in America is only getting worse, with data showing rising income inequality and the startling fact that half of all Americans are now either in poverty or considered low-income. Were it not for the government programs that comprise the social safety net, those numbers would be even worse. More than a quarter would live in poverty without the safety net, according to one study, and Social Security alone kept 14 million out of poverty last year. Despite that, Congress - and particularly Republicans in Congress - have made cuts to various programs meant to aid the poorest Americans.

Congress reached a deal Thursday to avert a shutdown that would have begun at midnight tonight, and in doing so, Republicans found another low-income program to target, cutting funding for subsidies that help the poor stay warm during the winter by nearly 25 percent. At the same time, however, the Pentagon's budget is getting a 1 percent boost, as the Associated Press noted:
Highlights of the $1 trillion-plus 2012 spending legislation in Congress:

- $518 billion for the Pentagon's core budget, a 1 percent boost, excluding military operations overseas. [...]

- $3.5 billion for low-income heating and utility subsidies, a cut of about 25 percent.
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Family

Best of the Web: US: Children of welfare recipients in California forced to pay for welfare debt

Kevin Martinez
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:02 UTC
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© Illustrated London News (23 December 1843)Refuge for the Destitute
Children in California are being fined for debt payments their parents incurred while on welfare. The vindictive practice has been going on for years, as California welfare agencies collect money from family members living off of government assistance, even if a family member was a minor when the debt occurred.

Many of the debts were brought on by clerical error or fraud and therefore were especially no fault of the children. A lawsuit on behalf of two girls, Irene Ayers and Jamie Hartley, has been filed by two legal organizations, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Public Interest Law Project.

Patti Prunhuber, a lawyer from the Public Interest Law Project, told the WSWS that state agencies are barred from collecting payment or seeking criminal charges from cases that are more than four years old. However, according to Prunhuber, the state can still seek repayment for "extremely old" overpayments by intercepting income tax rebates and garnishing wages.
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Dollar

Best of the Web: Wealth Inequality In America May Be Worse Than It Was In Ancient Rome

Travis Waldron
ThinkProgress
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:36 UTC
roman coin
© Unknown
The 99 Percent Movement effectively changed the American political debate from debt and deficits to income inequality, highlighting the fact that income inequality has increased so much in the U.S. that it is now more unequal than countries like Ivory Coast and Pakistan. While those numbers are startling, a study from two historians suggests that American wealth inequality may actually be worse than it was in Ancient Rome - a society built on slave labor, a defined class structure, and centuries of warfare and conquest.

In the United States, the top 1 percent controls roughly 40 percent of the nation's wealth. According to the study, which examined Roman ledgers, previous estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages, Rome's top 1 percent controlled less than half that at the height of its economic power, as Tim De Chant notes at Per Square Mile:
Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America's top 1 percent control.
Of course, the millions of Romans at the bottom of the empire's class structure - the conquered and enslaved, the poorest Romans, and the women who had little civic or economic empowerment - would probably disagree with the study's conclusion. Still, it serves as yet another highlight of how large the income gap in the United States has become over the last three decades.
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: US: Giant Tsunami-Shape Clouds Roll Across Alabama Sky

Natalie Wolchover
Life's Little Mysteries
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:12 UTC
Tsunami Clouds
© ABC 33/40 in BirminghamClouds along the horizon in Birmingham, Ala., on Friday (Dec. 16).

For a morning, the sky looked like a surfer's dream: A series of huge breaking waves lined the horizon in Birmingham, Ala., on Friday (Dec. 16), their crests surging forward in slow motion. Amazed Alabamans took photos of the clouds and sent them to their local weather station, wondering, "What are these tsunamis in the sky?"

Experts say the clouds were pristine examples of "Kelvin-Helmholtz waves." Whether seen in the sky or in the ocean, this type of turbulence always forms when a fast-moving layer of fluid slides on top of a slower, thicker layer, dragging its surface.

Water waves, for example, form when the layer of fluid above them (i.e., the air) is moving faster than the layer of fluid below (i.e., the water). When the difference between the wind and water speed increases to a certain point, the waves "break" - their crests lurch forward - and they take on the telltale Kelvin-Helmholtz shape.

According to Chris Walcek, a meteorologist at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York, Albany, fast-moving air high in the sky can drag the top of slow-moving, thick clouds underneath it in much the same way.
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Meteor

Best of the Web: Surprising Comet Lovejoy Now Becoming Merry and Bright

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:36 UTC
Lovejoy_1
© kommet.czComet Lovejoy photographed remotely with the FRAM telescope in Argentina on Dec. 17 by a Czech team of Jakub Cerny, Jan Ebr, Martin Jelinek, Petr Kubanek, Michael Prouza and Michal Ringes.

It was almost a pre-holiday miracle that Comet Lovejoy survived its close encounter with the Sun on Dec. 15, 2011. But now, the feisty comet is making a 'merry and bright' comeback, re-sprouting its tail and showing up brilliantly with binoculars and in telescopic images from southern hemisphere skywatchers.

"It was a big surprise that after going through the solar atmosphere it re-emerged with a beautiful tail," Karl Battams told Universe Today. Battams is with Naval Research Laboratory and has been detailing the Comet Lovejoy's incredible journey on the Sungrazing Comets website. "And basically within a day it was as bright after the encounter as it was before."

The beautiful image above was taken on Dec. 17, 2011, clearly showing two gorgeous tails on Comet Lovejoy. See more from the Czech team that took the image at their website, Kommet.cz.

As much as this comet has surprised everyone, no one is going out on a limb and predicting it will become visible with the naked eye. But who knows? The comet's discoverer, Austrailian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy was able to image the comet in the day time! " I am hopeful of a nice binocular comet low in the dawn around Christmas time," Lovejoy said on the Ice in Space website.
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