The Nightowl Newswrap

By BG & YD

• Gun laws are not the most evil legislation crafted by @ALEC. Wait 'til you get a load of their environment-raping laws that allow big oil and big coal free rein to do as they please, consequence-free.

• Affordable Photo Voltaic cells are important, but unfortunately that is just one piece of the puzzle. Solar (and wind) will not be able to go much farther until we develop better storage capacity. The issue is politicized and bold, wince-worthy proclamations get made by people -- on both sides -- who haven't performed a single calculation and don't understand the math involved anyway, they're just parroting what they've been told that conforms to their own biases. Here's the bottom line...what matters is the science, and the science eventually reveals the truth, and the truth is the truth whether you believe it or not. Let's use that as our starting point,  what do you say?

• There needs to be consequences for this. The Inspector General for the National Labor Relations Board has uncovered evidence that a republican member of the body has leaked confidential information to a former NLRB member and helped edit op-eds on NLRB issues by the former member he passed information too without disclosing to the NLRB his activities.  

• Newt calls off his campaign, but the book tour continues apace. Basically, only one thing changed...the Secret Service guys went home.

• "Bobby Thompson" arrested. The scam artist who first stole valor then stole money under the banner of a phony charity he set up to collect donations for Navy veterans -- then funneled the money to republican candidates -- is in custody of the US Marshalls Service.

• The future Governor of Florida is undoubtedly one of the 107 individuals who have been charged with Medicare fraud for submitting a half-trillion dollars in phony charges for services that were never rendered.

• We can't say we're the least bit shocked by this. JT Ready is was one of those infamous folks, known to immigration advocates and those who keep tabs on hate groups and follow the SPLC. He fancied himself a soldier in a war for white supremacy. Today, he committed an attrocity. He killed four others, including a toddler, before taking his own life in a bloody rampage in a suburban home near Phoenix. Our condolences to the families of his victims, but we would be lying if we denied that we said a silent "good" when we saw that he had killed himself, before we knew about the victims.

• "Butter will make us fat. Guns will make us strong." Where have we heard that before? That's what cutting programs that feed the poor while preserving outrageous defense spending amounts to.

• Seriously, stop the freakin' revolving door. "Michael Bromwich, the former Interior Department official who helped boost offshore drilling safety regulations in the aftermath of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has joined Boston-based law firm Goodwin Procter. ... Bromwich will serve as a partner in the firm's Litigation Department, which is based in Washington and New York City. He will focus on corporate criminal investigations, among other things, according to a statement issued by the law firm Wednesday. ... "Mike will add even more strength to our active national and international investigations practice and also provide clients with unparalleled experience and expertise in the energy sector," Mark Tully, partner and chairman of Goodwin's Litigation Department, said in a statement."

• C'mon, Madame Secretary: You can do better than this. "The blind Chinese dissident who fled house arrest and placed himself under the wing of US diplomats has balked at a deal worked out between the two countries to let him live in China, saying he now fears for his familys safety unless they are all spirited abroad. After six days holed up in the US embassy, as senior officials in Beijing and Washington tussled over his fate, Chen Guangcheng left the compound's protective confines on Wednesday for a nearby hospital for treatment of a leg injury suffered in his escape."

• No. Not the military. You are not Syria, not yet. "Clashes have erupted between assailants and supporters of Egypt's Islamist political parties who had gathered near the defence ministry in Cairo, leaving 11 people dead and nearly 50 wounded, security and hospital officials said .... In response to the clashes, military and riot vehicles were deployed to the area later on Wednesday to quell the violence."

• There is a point at which the amount of money paid for a work of art does not compliment that work, but rather diminishes it. "The only privately owned version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" - one of the most recognisable images in history - set a world record when it sold for $119.9 million at Sotheby's in New York, far exceeding pre-sales estimates of about $80 million."

And finally...

• Too many have already been lost. "Can the internet save a language? For the Ktunaxa nation, an indigenous people inhabiting parts of north-western America, the answer may just be 'yes'. The Ktunaxa language is related to no other on earth and only a handful of people speak it fluently. Most of them are members of the oldest generation, something that has spurred a race against time for a community that must record and preserve as much of the language spoken today as possible. In a few years, it might already be too late. The challenge is not only to record endless hours of material but how to make it available to those wishing to learn the language. Here is where the internet comes in to play. Dedicated young community members, such as Marisa Philips, are working hard to publish recordings, interactive games for children and written language material online. "We're just going to be losing a lot of who we are as the Ktunaxa nation, the Ktunaxa people, once those elders have passed on," Philips says. "Since the younger generation is so well adapted to using technology, it only makes sense to me." With the help of a high speed fibre network owned by the community, the material is accessible to everyone - wherever they are. There are even college level online courses available for those wishing to learn the language as adults. Perhaps the 2,000 people-strong Ktunaxa nation will succeed in reversing the process that has silenced many languages in north-western America, an especially distressing hot spot of language extinction. Don Maki, the Ktunaxa nation council director, says: "We're trying to think ahead, we're trying to be very progressive and think of all the possible things that we need to do now for the future." "

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/5mplTBDWnV0/the-n
ightowl-newswrap

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Comment on Randy's blogg

Randy, I agree with much of what you've presented. The bureacracy doesn't change much from one[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2012/05/comment_on_randys_blogg.html

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Get a Better Price on These Stocks Than the Pros

These are heady times for the nation's top hedge fund managers. I've conducted a deep review of the top 20 holdings of the nation's most famous fund managers, and the relative gains or losses since those holdings were acquired. The recent performance has been remarkable: More than 85% of their recent … [visit site to read . . . → Read More: Get a Better Price on These Stocks Than the Pros

Read The Full Article:
http://jutiagroup.com/20120503-get-a-better-price-on-these-stocks-than-the-pros/

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Unemployment rate up in Germany, Italy and EU

The tough times continue in the eurozone, including in the pro-austerity Germany. Italy and Spain are back in recession (along with the UK, who is outside of the eurozone) and the overall unemployment rate is increasing in the eurozone. In addition, Spanish youth unemployment has now crossed over 51%. More on the faltering economies of Europe via the BBC:

For all 17 nations in the eurozone, the jobless rate rose again to 10.9%, from 10.8%, Eurostat said.

And the jobless rate in Germany - the largest and strongest economy in Europe - unexpectedly also increased.

Germany's jobless rate rose to 6.8% in March, official figures showed, having been expected to stay at the previous month's 6.7% after six months of declines.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/UVAiuq0yICs/unemployment-rate-up-in
-germany-italy.html

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You And I And Prostate Cancer

When I retired from Warner Bros a few years ago I was relatively young-- still in my fifties-- with everything in the world to look forward to. In fact, when I first took the job at Warner Bros many years earlier, I had retirement in mind. I had run my own indie record label in San Francisco and managed to get by on between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. And I never felt poor or in any way envious of what other people had. I felt very much on top of the world-- it just wasn't a very commercialized world. When I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles to take the job at Warner Bros, my salary shot up from $10,000 to $95,000 overnight. That's more than my dad had ever made. That's more than I had ever imagined making. I figured I could work 2 years-- 3 at the tops-- save every cent and retire to a beach for the rest of my life. But it wasn't long before there was another zero on that figure... and beyond.

I bought a big house in a "nice" neighborhood, very different from my railroad flat in the Mission District (before the Mission District became gentrified). Warners made me get rid of my Mercury Comet and I wound up with fancy cars. I had to buy clothes... and things. I didn't retire.

And one day I woke up and thought, now's the time: retire. I wouldn't be able to buy my own plane, but I'd be ok unless I lived longer than anyone in the history of my family. And then, just as I was packing it in, my doctor told me I had prostate cancer. So much for the worries about outliving my savings. My father had died of prostate cancer. Actually, he didn't. He died from the treatment he got to save him from prostate cancer. A lot of people do. And in the statistics, I soon learned, those deaths don' count as deaths from prostate cancer.

But long before I was learning, I was panicked, which was how most people feel when they get that kind of a "death sentence." My doctor, gently pushed me towards surgery, although he asked me to read a book he gave me so I could make an informed decision about which kind of treatment. The urologist he introduced me too-- "the biggest in L.A.; and the stars and all the doctors use him"-- insisted on surgery. He was a surgeon, I soon learned. He was an asshole as well. I hated everything about him. But all the alternative were abysmal. They guaranteed a miserable, brutish retirement, as you can see in the video above. In fact the head of radiology at Cedar Sinai had persuaded me to go for radiology (seed implantation). When I mentioned that radiology had killed my father, she said, "Oh, we didn't know a thing about it back then. We've come so far." But that was what my dad's radiologist had told him, more or less.

And then I met Dr. Tim Brantley who taught me how to heal myself. I'm a chapter in his book, The Cure: Heal Your Body, Save Your Life. I had already come to the conclusion from the book my "regular" doctor had given me that a last chapter, "Watchful Waiting" (he didn't know that chapter was in the book) would be the best thing for me. And Tim's treatment-- change in lifestyle and diet mostly-- was "Watchful Waiting" on steroids. I lost sixty pounds, built a swimming pool so I could swim everyday, cut out the worst poisons in the American diet, like sugar and... well it's about 8 years later and I feel more healthy than I did any time I was working at Warner Bros.

And my conclusions about Medicine, Inc being all wrong with their approach? Medicine, Inc. has now come to the same conclusions. Too late for my dad. But not to late for you. Again, watch the video above... and here's a story in the Independent, one the most respected newspapers in England, from this weekend.

Cancer specialists are bracing themselves for publication of a research study that will challenge the way one of the commonest cancers is treated. The world's biggest randomised trial of prostate cancer has found that the standard surgical treatment for the disease is ineffective.

The study compared surgical removal of the prostate gland-- radical prostatectomy-- with "watchful waiting" (doing nothing). The results show that surgery did not extend life. A leading British specialist, who asked not to be named, said: "The only rational response to these results is, when presented with a patient with prostate cancer, to do nothing."

Cancer of the prostate is the commonest male cancer affecting 37,000 men a year in the UK and causing 10,000 deaths.

But in up to 50 per cent of cases it is slow-growing so that patients affected, even when left untreated, can live for many years and die of something else.

Some specialists are beginning to question whether these cases qualify for the label "cancer" at all.
The results of the Prostate Intervention Versus Observation Trial (PIVOT), led by Timothy Wilt and started in 1994 with 731 men, showed that those who underwent the operation had less than a three per cent survival benefit compared with those who had no treatment, after being followed up for 12 years. The difference was not statistically significant and could have arisen by chance.

When the findings were presented at a meeting of the European Association of Urology in Paris in February, attended by 11,000 specialists from around the world, they were greeted with a stunned silence.

One expert who attended the meeting said that while most research results are immediately transmitted by specialists in the audience using social media, "I did not see any urologists enthusiastically tweeting about [this one]."

Prostate cancers are already classified as "tigers" (aggressive) or "pussy cats" (low risk). But some urologists who have spent years training to perform complex surgical techniques find the idea of watchful waiting unacceptable.

Surgery carries a risk of side effects that can have a serious impact on quality of life with 50 per cent of men suffering impotence and 10 per cent incontinence.

According to the NY Times hustlers and clueless doctors are still pushing ineffective-- at best-- treatment. When I asked a friend, a doctor, why those in his profession never consider warning people away from sugar, fast food, and other unhealthy things people eat, he told me that his entire time in medical school-- including advanced degrees for surgery-- included one two-hour lecture on nutrition. One. And yet... "The US National Cancer Institute reports that males who include greater than one third an ounce of chives, garlic, onions and scallions have a greatly reduced risk of developing prostate cancer.



Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2012/05/you-and-i-and-prostate-cancer.html

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Mitt Romney Courts Writers For Birther Conspiracy
Website In Two Hour Private Meeting

Tonight, the Huffington Post reports that Mitt Romney “met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C.” Among the attendees: World Net Daily.

World Net Daily is a site that, for the last several years, has been focused on conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama’s birth. They have published hundreds of articles directly questioning Obama’s eligibility.

Recent headlines include: “Expert: ?Forger? of Obama birth record left red herring,” “Nation ?tearing itself apart? over presidential eligibility” and “Now it?s time to answer ?Where?s the REAL Birth Certificate??”

The headline of the last article, promoting a eBook from conspiracy theorist James Corsi, is also available from WND as a yard sign for $17.95.

This is not the first time Romney has alligned himself with birthers to court the far right. He has deployed Donald Trump, perhaps the nation’s most prominent birther, as a top surrogate for his campaign.

Trump is supporting the investigation of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who claims the long-form birth certificate Obama released last year is a likely forgery. Arpaio, in turn, has relied on the research of Corsi and others at WND.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/special/2012/05/02/475850/romney-courts-writers-for-birt
her-conspiracy-website-in-two-hour-private-meeting/

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A.C.L.U. Files Suit Over PA Voter I.D. Law

Public News Service-PA
(05/03/12) HARRISBURG, Pa. - Between 90,000 and 900,000 Pennsylvanians could be shut out from the voting process because they don't have the "right kind" of photo identification under Pennsylvania's voter ID law, according to one argument in a lawsuit being filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU claims the law is unconstitutional. Its Pennsylvania legal director, Vic Walczak, says the Constitution mentions nothing about needing a photo ID to vote.

"This is a burden that is going to fall largely on the poor, on the elderly, on students, on the transgender community and on people with disabilities."

Walczak says the law puts an unnecessary burden on Pennsylvanians, who may have limited means to secure identification that would be suitable at the polls.

"We have found many people who have literally been trying for years, sometimes with the assistance of lawyers, and have been unable to get an original birth certificate, which is what you need in order to get this voter ID from the state of Pennsylvania."
The voter ID law also exposes voters to any number of problems on Election Day, Walczak says. If voters arrive at a polling place with an unacceptable form of identification, he says, they'll have only six days - two of them on a weekend - to get ID that will be accepted.

"It will be virtually impossible for a person to get that valid photo ID within those six days, which means all those people who show up at the polls who don't have acceptable ID, their votes will not be counted."

Proponents of the law say it will help curb incidents of voter fraud. State election officials say they get many reports of voter fraud, but say only one case, in Chester County, has been confirmed. Walczak says he has yet to see proof that even a single incident of in-person voter fraud has taken place in Pennsylvania.
Click here to view this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/26211-2

Read The Full Article:
http://keystoneprogress.blogspot.com/2012/05/aclu-files-suit-over-pa-voter-id-law
.html

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