Suddenly Sunday...

Finding cave paintings in Mexico

About the earthquake swarm near the Lassen Volcanic Center.... nothing to do with volcanoes.  (Rats.)

What the soldiers in the Vietnam War really thought.

Colony Collapse Disorder.

Marching against Monsanto.  Because of things like this.  And who actually owns organic products.

And because I haven't posted for a while... kittens and cats

US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates

Tell the FDA to Reject More Aspartame in Milk!

Right now, in the midst of a major childhood obesity epidemic, the giant dairy lobby is trying to force the federal government to redefine “milk” to include artificial sweeteners such as aspartame in children’s school lunches without proper labels. So instead of chocolate or strawberry milk with sugar, high fructose corn syrup or some natural sweetener, Big Dairy now wants to replace that with aspartame in our children’s milk and pretend it’s a healthy choice for you and America’s children and keep this all a secret by not requiring proper labels! 

Aspartame has a long clouded history, with fraudulent science submitted during the original FDA approval process, links to mood alterations including anxiety, agitation, depression, headaches, insomnia, and memory, learning problems and seizures and brain tumors. And not surprising, the company that created by aspartame was bought by Monsanto in the 1985. In 1999, Monsanto admitted to using genetic engineering of bacteria to create aspartame, which is now used widely as an artificial sweetener in diet soft drinks, chewing gum and diet foods as a sugar substitute. 

Tell the FDA not to cave to Big Dairy - Keep improperly labeled Aspartame out of our milk!

What could possibly go wrong?

Although... once the US is in the grip of a revolution, the power and resource grab by the monied corporations would be very easy....

Banksters will never stop being gangsters until they're put in prison

Because grabbing other people's money is all they're good at.

Monday minibits..

Rep. Darrell Issa's big day... oops.  And Issa's interesting background that people seem to ignore.

Eat more bugs and save the world!  Basically because we are cooking the earth and things are going to die.  C02 in the air.

Europe banned these food production practices... and the US does them.

Normality v Normalcy.  Normality, please.  Normalcy just grates on the ears...

Because

Cat.

Thursday things.

Every style of music on one page.

Superweeds and superbugs and more pesticides.

The Rude Pundit would like to nullify Kansas.

The essence of life.

Bees.

Timelapses on what humans are doing to the earth.

Benghazi scandalicious truthmangering!  One quote from the first link:

There are a few things that really have me both angry and annoyed with this whole Benghazi bullshit: 1) where is the outrage at the House Republicans who voted to CUT security for the embassy? They cut $300 million from the U.S. embassy security budget just before the attack. Why aren’t they being raked over the coals for that? 2) Where was the right-wing when, under G.W. Bush, seven embassies were attacked and many more than 4 people were killed? How come they never shrieked about that? 3) What about Reagan? Three embassy attacks, including Beirut where 17 Americans were killed. No? That was okay? 

This Benghazi thing is making the right insane. Literally. You know the saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? That’s where the GOP is right now. They are so invested in this fantasy that they have lost any ability to see reality. And Fox News feeds the fire, complaining that no other news outlets are covering this. Could it be because it’s utter and complete bullshit? Of course not, not to these modern-day inquisitors. They hate our president that much. It’s sickening.

China does it again with fake meat

Adding yet one more thing that illustrates why we can't trust food products (or anything else) from China:

More than 900 people have been arrested in China for involvement in meat-related crimes, including producing fake beef and mutton from animals such as rats, minks and foxes, authorities reported. 

A total of 382 cases of alleged crimes in food industry were uncovered in a three-month campaign launched by China’s Ministry of Public Security on January 25, the ministry reported. 

In addition to producing falsely-labeled meat, the crimes included using banned chemicals in processing of products, selling meat infected with various diseases and injecting water into meat to pad up its weight, according to Xinhua news agency. 

Security officials seized more than 20,000 tons of illegal meat products during the crackdown. 

The ministry said it will now focus on dairy products, continuing a larger campaign to combat crime and violations in food industry.

Nice to see official attempts to crackdown on this unregulated industry.  But I bet I will be posting yet another article sometime soon about poisonous/ toxic/ polluted/ contaminated products made in China.  Because that's the way it is.

Update:  I do hope the Chinese scientists know what they are doing....
Scientists warn Chinese-made air-transmissible bybrid bird flu puts humanity at risk

From my many posts on this subject:

Fake Medicine from China Threatening Lives in Africa

 *sigh*

Add it to the list:

BEIJING—The discovery of unusual levels of mercury in Chinese-produced infant formula reignited fears about the safety of the country's scandal-ridden dairy industry, and underlined the severe challenges the government faces in improving food safety.

Mercury in baby formula.

Pills for human consumption containing human remains.

China poisons more pets:

November 18, 2011 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an important bulletin warning consumers that chicken jerky products (also marketed as chicken tenders, strips or treats) may be associated with serious illness in dogs.
Over the past 12 months, the FDA has observed an increase in the number of complaints regarding canine illnesses associated with consumption of chicken jerky products imported from China.
These complaints have been reported to the government by both dog owners and veterinarians.

And here is the ever-expanding list:

But according to FSN, the biggest reason to avoid ultra-filtered honey is that pollen is the only sure-fire way to trace the source of honey to a geographic location. As a result ultra-filtered honey is often used to mask the shady origins of certain kinds of honey -- especially Chinese honey, which is subject to heavy import tariffs on account of its frequent contamination by heavy metals and illegal antibiotics. Chinese honeymakers ultra-filter their honey, and then ship it through byzantine paths, to sneak their sham product onto American grocery shelves without being hit with a tariff.

Vinegar from China kills 11 people.

"From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy."

Watermelons spiked with growth chemicals explode in the fields... so the farmers feed the forchlorfenuron saturated melons to fish and pigs.

Waste water forced into pigs going to market.

Fresh milk tainted with melamine and toxic substances extracted from leather scraps... killed 6 children in China and sickened 300,000.

Rice is contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium.

Fake rice made from plastic, potatoes and resin.

Pulverized lime added to bleaching agents widely used in flour production. Pulverized lime damages the lungs and the entire respiratory system.

Cadmium in children's toys and little girl jewelry. Lead in toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, baby bibs, cub scout badges, wooden blocks. Formaldehyde in candy, in baby clothing. Coma-inducing date rape drug in toys.

Asbestos in toys.

"The rampant use of chemical additives in animal feed can be traced to 1999. According to Gao Yinxiang, the research and development of high-protein feed additives was a hot field among scientists about 10 years ago due to shortage of animal fodder in the country at the time.

From that time, it's hard to define the exact role that scientists played in the evolution of the melamine scandal. Yet scientists certainly contributed to it by developing unsafe protein alternatives. Many Chinese are now calling on scientists to examine their conscience before making profits at the expense of public safety."

Melamine in pet food kills house pets in the US. Melamine is found in wheat, corn and rice gluten.

China says no to inspections and destroys evidence.

Rat poison in breakfast porridge.

Pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Toothpaste with diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in engine coolants.

Highly toxic puffer fish sold as monk fish.

Fake blood protein.

Wild mice used for meat.

Defective tires.

Use of illegal drift nets.

Fake kosher food.

Insecticide-tainted dumplings.

More than 40 percent of drinking water in rural China is unfit for drinking.

Poisoned chocolate.

Toxic drywall which caused houses to be uninhabitable.

Fake Cisco routers

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics. "Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA."

The list will inevitably be added to. When are we going to learn this is what happens to corporations when there is no regulation?

Friday frivolities

Victory for bees... in Europe.

Knowing what is broken.

Post a secret.

Dear god... goats with spider web genes in their milk.

The USA... the land of allergies.

What the human body can do... and why we keep doing things we shouldn't do to it.

More cat... suddenly visiting the fishes.

Economics 101

Here is the situation:
1) There was a downward spiral, businesses were laying off so customers were not spending. This caused businesses to cut back more, which caused customers to cut back more, which caused businesses to cut back more. 

2) Expectation were also in a downward spiral because everyone saw what was happening so they cut back too. 

3) Deflation joined the party as businesses cut prices to try to get customers, so customers decided prices were going down and decided to wait before buying. 

4) Unemoployment caused people to ask for lower wages when they took a job, which put downward pressure on wages, so cutomers were cutting back even more, (go to 1) 

5) Etc., spiraling ever downward. 

In the past, society learned that the way to fix this is for government to step in and “stimulate” the economy by investing in things like infrastructure project, hiring people to fix roads etc., which stopped the spiral. In fact the Obama stimulus reversed the downward spiral. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month until the stimulus kicked in, then after a while we were gaining jobs again 

But then came the Wall Street-backed “austerians” demanding that government cut back instead of stimulate. Wall Street benefits from unemployment because the very wage drop means they pay less for the labor commodity. And they benefit from deflation because people with lots of money gain while people who owe money lose. And the “study” by Reinhart and Rogoff provided an intellectual justification for Wall Street’s demand.

And Paul Krugman:

Let’s start with what may be the most crucial thing to understand: the economy is not like an individual family. 

Families earn what they can, and spend as much as they think prudent; spending and earning opportunities are two different things. In the economy as a whole, however, income and spending are interdependent: my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. If both of us slash spending at the same time, both of our incomes will fall too. 

And that’s what happened after the financial crisis of 2008. Many people suddenly cut spending, either because they chose to or because their creditors forced them to; meanwhile, not many people were able or willing to spend more. The result was a plunge in incomes that also caused a plunge in employment, creating the depression that persists to this day. 

Why did spending plunge? Mainly because of a burst housing bubble and an overhang of private-sector debt — but if you ask me, people talk too much about what went wrong during the boom years and not enough about what we should be doing now. For no matter how lurid the excesses of the past, there’s no good reason that we should pay for them with year after year of mass unemployment. 

So what could we do to reduce unemployment? The answer is, this is a time for above-normal government spending, to sustain the economy until the private sector is willing to spend again. The crucial point is that under current conditions, the government is not, repeat not, in competition with the private sector. Government spending doesn’t divert resources away from private uses; it puts unemployed resources to work. Government borrowing doesn’t crowd out private investment; it mobilizes funds that would otherwise go unused. 

Now, just to be clear, this is not a case for more government spending and larger budget deficits under all circumstances — and the claim that people like me always want bigger deficits is just false. For the economy isn’t always like this — in fact, situations like the one we’re in are fairly rare. By all means let’s try to reduce deficits and bring down government indebtedness once normal conditions return and the economy is no longer depressed. But right now we’re still dealing with the aftermath of a once-in-three-generations financial crisis. This is no time for austerity.

Update: Ezra Klein says: The era of austerity is over (for now)