Monday, January 23, 2006

As if We Didn't Have Enough to Worry About...


Don't know about you, but I'm already on overload...and now this:

Warren Buffett warns "the U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to "political turmoil."
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Working for Change published a Corruption Digest that's guaranteed to give you indigestion, detailing how America's politicos are being sold to the highest bidders.
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Another congressman, Chris Cannon from Utah bites the corruption cookie. "Utah congressman Chris Cannon loaned nearly $100,000 to the president of a Nebraska bank who extended at least $250,000 in credit the following year to the representative's business venture in the state, RAW STORY has found."
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Is It Warm in Here? Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wonders how it can be that the news media is ignoring the biggest story in history -- climate change. "The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining," Ignatius warns.
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As if global warming wasn't serious enough, UN experts now caution that climate change may be increasing the risk of landslides, which kill 800-1,000 people a year, from hillside slums in Latin America to Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
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And it gets worse. Cloudy with a Chance of Chaos,a ground-breaking article from Fortune magazine says that businesses and governments are not prepared for the likely impacts of climate change. A disturbing consensus has emerged among the scientists who study global warming: climate change may bring more violent swings than they ever thought, and it may set in sooner.
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Now that's definitely bad, but this is downright buggy. Today Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, and Rep. Hilda L. Solis criticized a Bush Administration plan to promote pesticide experimentation upon humans. You heard right--experiment with bug spray on humans. The plan, contained in a final draft rule, was leaked to the legislators by a concerned Administration official (bless his little heart) who requested that the original copy of the plan not be duplicated in its entirety and widely distributed out of concern for anonymity. Shades Dr. Mengele?
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And just in case you still had any doubts about our country's impending run on worry beads, a new study ranks the United States 28th in the world on Environment A study of environmental performance shows that just six nations - led by New Zealand, followed by five from Northern Europe - have achieved 85 percent or better success in meeting critical environmental goals ranging from clean drinking water and low ozone levels, to sustainable fisheries and low greenhouse gas emissions.
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Senior citizen's outrage over the abominable new Medicare prescription drug program is posing yet another potential political problem for Republicans. Hoping to avoid a political backlash at the November elections, they are desperately trying to reassure seniors--of what, I'm not sure.

Good luck, fellas. If my dear ol' mom's reaction to the program is any indication of the reception you're getting, you're gonna need a whole lot more than luck. Better re-check that armor shortage situation.
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More corruption! FirstEnergy Admits to Nuclear Power Plant Cover-Up: FirstEnergy Corp. admitted on Friday that some of its employees made false statements to US regulators about safety violations at one of its nuclear plants and said it had reached a deal with the US Department of Justice to avoid indictment of the utility.

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