More evidence that we have our heads seriously far up our asses by keeping industrial hemp cultivation illegal in this country. Geez, we look like a backward country in so many ways.
Here's a case where the use of hemp sheets and fabrics in hospitals could save MANY lives. So, tell me again what we are waiting for?
Lab Tests Show Hemp Fabric Stops Spread of Deadly Bacteria
June 25, 2013
Most people have become aware of the fact that hemp is a diverse plant, with a multitude of uses. The newest discovery of use for hemp could save lives.
Staphylococcus Aureus, more commonly known as staph, is a bacteria that causes thousands of deaths each year – specifically the drug resistant strain, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA. A study conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology showed that each year an estimated 2 million Americans contract MRSA during hospital stays, and at least 90,000 die from it. It has been determined that MRSA is a, if not the, leading cause of hospital-bourne infections.
New research has found that hemp fabrics actually kill bacteria, including MRSA. In a test conducted on a hemp-blend fabric (60% hemp / 40% rayon), where the fabric was infected with staph, researchers found that the hemp material killed the staph bacteria at an incredible rate – the material was found 98.5% bacteria free upon the first measurement. The same material was also infected with Klebsiella Pneumoniae (pneumonia). At first measurement, the pneumonia-infected material was 65.1% bacteria free.
The impact these results could have are immense; staph/MRSA spreads through contact, and by touching items that are infected – such as hospital gowns, towels, privacy curtains, etc.. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology tested both methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant staphylococci on common hospital materials (clothing, towels, scrub suits, lab coats, privacy drapes and splash aprons), and found the bacteria survived on every material for at least 1 day, and in some instances as long as 90 days. Replacing any number of these items with hemp-based materials could severely reduce transmission of these deadly bacterias.
Beyond the standard arguments offered to push the legalization of hemp cultivation (eco-friendly bio-fuels, heart-healthy foods, etc.), this new research presents evidence that not only can hemp help the economy and the environment, it can also prevent the spread of dangerous illnesses, and save thousands of people from infection and even death.
Everybody has a "This Week..." collection. Steve Benen's version, published weekly on The Maddow Blog, is fascinating to see the absurd stretches that religionistas go to to try and justify everything (or condemn everything) in a Biblical context.
It's rather sad to see so many people with this Biblical prism (or blinders) on their eyes. Lord (figure of speech) what a horrific waste of time and resources. Then again, a lot of people get rich off this schtick, so in many cases, I'm sure that the wallet outweighs the intellect. This Week in God by Steve Benen June 29, 2013
First up from the God Machine this week is a look at the reactions from the religious right movement to this week's Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. As one might imagine, the movement's leaders were less than pleased.
TV preacher Pat Robertson, for example, said on his nationally televised program that he wonders whether Justice Anthony Kennedy has "some clerks who happen to be gays." In Robertson's mind, this is a sensible question -- since it's not possible that Kennedy, who wrote the DOMA ruling, based his decision on equal protection and due process, there just has to be something else. And blaming some rascally gay clerk, who may or may not exist, for somehow influencing the justice, makes more sense than the alternatives.
Also note in the clip that Robertson asks right-wing lawyer Jay Sekulow, who heads Robertson's legal group, about the sexual orientation of federal district court Judge Vaughn Walker, who first ruled on the constitutionality of Prop. 8, as if Walker's personal life is relevant (it's not).
Robertson's conspiracy theory, of course, was really just the tip of an unhinged iceberg, Right Wing Watch rounded up all kinds of religious right reactions to developments at the Supreme Court -- some of which were almost amusing in their over-the-top vitriol. My personal favorite was the obscure far-right group that compared the ruling to Pearl Harbor.
Salon's Alex Halperin also had a good collection of reactions from social conservatives, including an inconsolable Mike Huckabee.
Also from the God Machine this week:
* The Roman Catholic Church ran into a different kind of controversy this week, with these unexpected developments at the Holy See: "A Vatican official already under investigation for money laundering was arrested after police say they caught him and two other men plotting a scheme that would bring in 20 million euros (about $26 million) in cash into Italy from Switzerland on a jet" (thanks to reader R.P. for the tip).
* The British government this week banned anti-Islam activist Pam Geller from attending a right-wing rally in the U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May personally decided to exclude Geller under the country's "Unacceptable Behavior policy."
* And Time magazine's Joe Klein published a piece this week on military veterans using public service to reduce the effects of posttraumatic stress, but in the article, the political columnist took a gratuitous shot at secularists: "[F]unny how you don't see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals." When evidence to the contrary proved overwhelming, Klein published a follow-up piece, but did not apologize or correct his factual error.
Texas has dodged a bullet shot by the GOP neanderthals, who attempted to pass one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the nation, largely thanks to Wendy Davis, a Democratic state legislator from Fort Worth. The law would have shut down 27 of the 31 remaining abortion providers in the state.
Now, Rick Perry had better respect these efforts and NOT call another Special Session of the Texas Lege to sneak the bill past.
Wendy for Governor? You see the good things that can happen when you stand up and make a stand?
According to Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the bill is dead. That means many things, but most (least?) importantly: GIF PARTY.
Today, Texas Senator Wendy Davis and her colleagues (and a room full of cheering activists) successfully killed the wack-ass bill that would basically ban abortion in the state. I know, it seems impossible that a human born with the vagina defect could stand that long and talk at the same timeand still make sense, but Sen. Davis fucking did it. The fact that she had to is infuriating and depressing, but there's no doubt that she's a total and complete hero for women's rights.
You know who else rules? The other Texas Senators — including West, Ellis, Watson, Zaffirini, Whitmire, and Van De Putte — who did their damndest to stop this heinous garbage bill. Plus, the thousands of men and women who showed up at the Texas State Legislature to make their voices heard for women's right to safe, accessible healthcare. Inspiring.
Thank you all for giving the rest of us hope that there are representatives who give a shit about women, and there's an army of unstoppable men and women who will show up and set things right for the ladies. We won't be silenced, and we will also have Gif parties. Eat it:
Finally, how do we send massage gift certificates, foot rubs from Fabio, and all the wine to Wendy Davis?
ETA: Honorable Wendy Davis, Texas State Senate, P.O. Box 12068, Capitol Station, Austin, TX 78711-2068 DO IT TO IT.
WTF is wrong with Republicans? Why do they seem so intent on controlling women's bodies and moving back to the 1950's?? It's like the dying, grasping gasp of people who are losing their ability to control others.
I bet you that much of this, IF NOT MOST OF IT, stems directly from religion and that most over-quoted and abused "good book" otherwise known as the Bible. THIS is what you get when you continue to elect superstitious neanderthals to public office.
Women are NOT going back to the Dark Ages, people! You may succeed in passing bullshit for a period of time in your regressive state legislatures, but eventually you will be turned back and revealed for the idiots that you are.
I tell ya, these religious zealots cannot die off fast enough for my taste.
Republicans Push 700 New
Laws to Regulate Women's Bodies
In the first quarter of 2013, states have
proposed 694 provisions related to a woman’s body, how she gets pregnant, or how
she chooses to end that pregnancy.
A new report released on Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute takes a
comprehensive look at how the War on Women has continued past the election cycle
and into 2013. It shows that the new legislatures across the country are still
very much dedicated to restricting sex education, availability of medication,
and abortion access for women. Indeed, 47 percent of the 694 provisions were directly
related to abortion:
During the first three months of 2013, legislators in 14 states
introduced provisions seeking to ban abortion prior to viability. These
bans fall into three categories: measures that would prohibit all abortions,
those that would ban abortions after a specified point during the first
trimester of pregnancy and those that would block abortions at 20 weeks after
fertilization (the equivalent of 22 weeks after the woman’s last menstrual
period, the conventional method physicians use to measure pregnancy).
All of these proposals are in direct violation of U.S. Supreme Court
decisions.
Legislators in 11 states have introduced proposals that would ban
all, or nearly all, abortions. In eight states (AL, IA, MS, ND, OK, SC, TX, VA and WA), legislators have proposed defining “personhood” as beginning at
conception; if adopted, these measures would ban most, if not all, abortions.
Seven
states are edging closer to achieving full approval for laws that would
reduce or essentially eliminate abortion access.
Enforcing unconstitutional abortion laws isn’t just a threat to women’s
rights — it’s also costly to the states caught up in legal battles. Last year,
Kansas spent
$628,000 defending its unconstitutional abortion restrictions. North Dakota
is in the middle of spending
$400,000 to defend its ban, and Arkansas is set
to do the same.
But if the number of proposed abortion restrictions is discouraging, the
upside of the Guttmacher report is that states are moving toward the prevention
of unintended pregnancy through sex education: It finds that two states —
Montana and North Dakota — are pushing for more restrictive, less informative
sex education laws, but that both Colorado and Hawaii are pushing for more
comprehensive, inclusive, and scientific sex education for students. Colorado’s
would even prohibit abstinence-only instruction, which has been proven to be more
harmful than effective.
ThinkProgress’s own survey of state legislation has
found a total
of five states that, like Colorado, are pushing for better sex ed. These
findings track with popular opinion that increasingly
recognizes the value of sex education.
On this date in 1983, Edward Snowden was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. Snowden is known for leaking highly classified information from the National Security Agency, where he worked, to the press in June 2013. Snowden did not receive a complete formal education. He dropped out of high school and later dropped out of Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland, where he studied computer science. He earned his GED. He taught himself computer science, information technology, politics, and Japanese and Chinese culture and language. He briefly joined the United States Army, where he listed himself as “Buddhist” because “agnostic” was not an option, according to his own web posting.
Beginning in 2006, Snowden started working on-and-off for the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA, receiving top-security clearance. In May 2013, Snowden left the United States for Hong Kong, and less than a month later he was fired from the NSA for leaking classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post . Snowden is seeking asylum in Hong Kong, while American officials attempt to extradite him. Some people see Snowden as a whistleblower, exposing many of the post-9/11 laws and the politicians who passed them for compromising Americans’ freedom and privacy. Others view Snowden as a traitor who jeopardized the safety of the United States by revealing confidential information.
“I feel that religion, adopted purely, is ultimately representative of blindly making someone else’s beliefs your own.”
The video below contains an inspiring speech from a religious leader in North Carolina at the June 17 "Moral Monday" gathering. There have now been seven such "Moral Monday" protests that have been staged in North Carolina to protest the regressive decisions of the North Carolina Republican-controlled government.
The main preacher in the video is inspiring indeed. As an atheist, it makes me somewhat sad for me to realize that it will probably take appeals to religion to accomplish significant progressive change in this country. Without Martin Luther King appealing to our "better angels" in a religious context in the '60's, the Civil Rights movement might not have had such success. Would not. There are no real secular leaders in this country that have the moral authority that religious leaders have.
At the risk of being labeled a hypocrite, I am all for using religion as a tool to accomplish positive change. I just wish we could "do the right thing" without appeals to mythology and superstition, but that's not where this country is at right now.
You could almost replace "North Carolina" with "Texas" in the video below and it would be equally apt. Except that Texans are not massing in large numbers to lobby the Texas Legislature. Yet.
This amazing video comes from the same guy who brought you the zig zag water video who clearly likes to illustrate the effects of sound with different media. This time around it's sand. Based on work originally done by Robert Hooke and Ernst Chladni in the 17th and 18th centuries, the video demonstrates the modes of vibration in a metal plate atop a tone generator. When the frequency of the tone generator equals a resonant frequency of the metal plate, the sand covering the plate is forced into patterns along the nodal lines (areas of zero vibration) between regions of the plate that are vibrating in opposite directions. At low resonant frequencies, there are only a few areas vibrating like this, but as the frequency increases, smaller and smaller areas on the plate start vibrating opposite to each other, creating more and more complex patterns. There is another version of this video where you can hear the tone actually being generated to make each pattern, but it comes with serious volume warning as the pitch goes high enough to cause hearing damage.
Finally, today is the 50th anniversary of the first woman launching into space. Soviet cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched on a Vostock rocket on June 16, 1963. She spent three days in space, orbiting the Earth approximately 48 times, which was more than all six of the American Mercury astronauts combined. At the risk of sounding cliche or dated or both: you go girl!
So here's an interesting snapshot of American culture:
Jacksonville, Florida is experiencing a budget shortfall. Not unusual these days in the U.S. Unfortunately, one thing municipalities find easy to do is cut back on services like libraries. Indeed, Jacksonville is going to close six libraries, saving under $3 million in the process.
However, the city of Jacksonville is going to spend $36 MILLION on improvements to the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium, in part on two scoreboards which will be "the largest of their kind in the world."
Get it?
So many in America have their priorities totally fucked up.
Close libraries used by large numbers of the, shall we say, less privileged members of society, and burn money on those that already have much more than they need. Sounds like conservatives are firmly in control in Jacksonville, Florida.
All I can do is shake my head at crap like this. I hope the citizens of Jacksonville pitch a fit about it, but, knowing how "important" the sport of football is in this country, I'm skeptical. (Does it matter that the Jacksonville Jaguars are one of the worst teams in the NFL? Apparently not.)
Last time I checked there wasn't anything new in the religious world. Oh wait, Jesus was spotted again, this time in a floor tile in an airport in Arizona.
I may be a male caucasian, but I don't see anything particularly horrible about "whites" becoming a "minority" in the U.S. in the near-future. Apparently, it drives some caucasians insane.
Hey sweetheart! I got a place you can lick! And it will be much more enjoyable, for both of us!
Eyeball licking: Don’t even think about it
The “worming” or oculolinctus fetish, which is basically licking a friend or lover’s eyeballs, is nothing new. But that it is affecting students is startling.
In fact, things have gotten so out of hand that multiple cases of pinkeye or conjunctivitis were reported at an elementary school in Japan.
One blogger reported that a sixth-grade teacher caught two of his students in the act in an equipment closet. When confronted, the kids told him that licking eyeballs was popular among their classmates — and that everybody else was doing it.
And the Daily Caller reported that in one class, one-third of students admitted to “worming” or having sometime tongue their eyeball.
Doctors are sounding the alarm while pointing out that the eye may be an erogenous zone because of its high concentration of nerves.
“This is a dangerous practice which has the potential to spread a number of bacteria that reside in the mouth to the eye resulting in bacterial infections such as conjunctivitis to styes as well as abscesses involving the lids and eye socket,” Dr. Robert Glatter told CBSNews.com.
Glatter also said he is worried the trend could also cause sexually transmitted infections like Chlamydia. And there’s always the fear that intense licking could actually scratch the eye.
In a worst case scenario, another doctor warned some untreated germs could even cause blindness, which is the reason using your tongue to moisten your contact lenses is a no-no.
Click here to read more on this trending story from CBS News.
Some memorable passages from Paul Krugman's column titled, "The Spite Club."
...the only way to understand the refusal to expand Medicaid (on the part of the GOP) is as an act of sheer spite. And the cost of that spite won’t just come in the form of lost dollars; it will also come in the form of gratuitous hardship for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
...Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, and the Supreme Court made it possible for states to opt out of the expansion. And it appears that a number of states will take advantage of that “opportunity.” What will that mean?
A new study from the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan research institution, examines the consequences if 14 states whose governors have declared their opposition to Medicaid expansion do, in fact, reject the expansion. The result, the study concluded, would be a huge financial hit: the rejectionist states would lose more than $8 billion a year in federal aid, and would also find themselves on the hook for roughly $1 billion more to cover the losses hospitals incur when treating the uninsured.
Meanwhile, Medicaid rejectionism will deny health coverage to roughly 3.6 million Americans, with essentially all of the victims living near or below the poverty line. And since past experience shows that Medicaid expansion is associated with significant declines in mortality, this would mean a lot of avoidable deaths: about 19,000 a year, the study estimated.
If Obamacare works (which it will), millions of middle-income voters — the kind of people who might support either party in future elections — will see major benefits, even in rejectionist states. So rejectionism won’t discredit health reform. What it might do, however, is drive home to lower-income voters — many of them nonwhite — just how little the G.O.P. cares about their well-being, and reinforce the already strong Democratic advantage among Latinos, in particular.
Rationally, in other words, Republicans should accept defeat on health care, at least for now, and move on. Instead, however, their spitefulness appears to override all other considerations. And millions of Americans will pay the price.
Well, the amendment to the long-overdue Agriculture Bill to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp in the U.S. was not even brought up to a vote in the Senate.
Harry Reid closed off all amendments, over 100 of them, that were waiting to be tacked onto the Ag bill, and one of them was the hemp amendment.
About the only hope now to allow hemp cultivation is for the House to add a hemp legalization amendment to their version of the bill, and then it would have to come back for a conference committee between the House and Senate to iron out the differences. A hemp amendment could in fact be eliminated by the conference committee.
There is, however, an "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013" (for bill details go here) independent of the Ag bill, that is sitting in the House and Senate, unacted upon. That could be passed without bothering the Ag bill at all.
It blows me away that some Senators and House members, especially from farming states, do not know the difference between hemp and marijuana. I used to think that our elected officials were the "best and brightest" with a broad base of knowledge. Although the "Tea Party" injected many know-nothings into the Congress, long before the Tea Party congresspeople had been bought and sold by large special interests.
Democracy in its current form in the US is unfortunately largely incompetent and inept, at least when it comes to actually serving the people. Serving big business? No problem. Serving the people? Yeah, right.
Today the U.S. Senate passed its version of the farm bill, a massive piece of legislation that sets U.S. agricultural policy until 2023. The bill is 353 days overdue, and lawmakers will still have to reconcile it with the version making its way through the House before it becomes a law. You may recall that once there was hope for major reform in the legislation: Strip away the subsidies supporting giant monocultures, and move that money to support the kind of farming that makes people, and the environment, healthier.
Remember that? Yeah, not going to happen.
The bill is called S. 954, Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act, which is a bit misleading. A small fraction of the bill is concerned with risk management and even less devoted to reform. The most accurate part is the 954 — which is about how much the bill would cost over a decade, in billions of dollars. A better title would be the Crop Insurance, Conservation and Food Stamps Act.
Here’s what changes actually made it into the bill: The Senate cut $41 billion in direct payments to farmers, but added a lot of that back in the form of crop insurance and disaster relief. Senators reduced the money for food stamps by $4 billion and cut conservation programs by $3.5 billion. (Details here [PDF], and Brad Plumer at Wonkblog has done a nice job breaking this down in plain English.)
You might expect the farm bill would have had an even tougher time of it: After all, coastal Democrats have constituencies pushing to cut the subsidies to big farms, and Republicans are generally against government payments. Why aren’t politicians pushing harder for genuine reform, or, barring that, just allowing the bill to die? As it turns out, the farm bill has bipartisan support, even though both Republicans and Democrats criticize it. That’s because each side gets a lot from this legislation.
The biggest difference between the Senate and the House bills (and therefore the biggest potential fight) is the size of the cuts to food stamps. Instead of cutting $4 billion, the House has proposed cutting food programs for the poor by $20.5 billion, and some conservatives say that’s not nearly enough. (Interestingly, one of the congressmembers most forcefully for food-stamp cuts, Rep. Stephen Fincher [R-Tenn.], gets his own farm bill welfare.)
It’s true that 80 percent of $955 billion in government spending is a lot of money. But liberals like to point out that food stamps are an extremely effective form of stimulus, and note that the people who get them really need the help. As The Economist put it:
It is also hard to argue that food-stamp recipients are undeserving. About half of them are children, and another 8% are elderly. Only 14% of food-stamp households have incomes above the poverty line; 41% have incomes of half that level or less, and 18% have no income at all. The average participating family has only $101 in savings or valuables.
It’s a little sad that this is what we’ve come to: Fighting over food stamps, when once there was hope that this bill might bring about an agricultural revolution. You may have also heard of any number of interesting amendments aimed at legalizing industrial hemp, saving honeybees, labeling genetically modified foods, and limiting antibiotic use in livestock. There were hundreds of these amendments up for debate, but most never had a chance, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to cut off the debate on these stragglers and put the bill to a vote.
Of course there’s still the possibility that the House will fail to pass any farm bill at all. Or that the House and Senate won’t make a deal before Sept. 30, when the current farm bill will expire once again.
I'm just a regular atheist guy who gets sick of all the bullshit and wonders where the time goes? Oh, and I really appreciate beauty, as in women, and nature.
However, the city of Jacksonville is going to spend $36 MILLION on improvements to the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium, in part on two scoreboards which will be "the largest of their kind in the world."
However, the city of Jacksonville is going to spend $36 MILLION on improvements to the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium, in part on two scoreboards which will be "the largest of their kind in the world."
Today the U.S. Senate passed its version of the farm bill, a massive piece of legislation that sets U.S. agricultural policy until 2023. The bill is 353 days overdue, and lawmakers will still have to reconcile it with the version making its way through the House before it becomes a law. You may recall that once there was hope for major reform in the legislation: Strip away the subsidies supporting giant monocultures, and move that money to support the kind of farming that makes people, and the environment, healthier.
