The Tokyo metropolitan government on July 8 detected levels of radioactive cesium 4.6 times the national standard in meat from a cow raised in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, officials said.
The beef, from the neck of an animal raised at a Minami-Soma ranch, showed cesium levels of 2,300 becquerels per kilogram. The national standard is 500 becquerels.
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A headline from The Hill reads:
McConnell denies GOP trying to sink economy to hurt the president
"That is my most single important political goal along with every active Republican in the country," McConnell said. "That is in 2012…our biggest goal for this year is to get this country straightened out."
Here is Mitch McConnell in 2010, in his own words.
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Plastic bags and where they end up going
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How Much Blame Do We Share for Our Leaders' Failures?
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Obama Administration: Pot has No Accepted Medical Use
What Big Pharma wants, Big Pharma gets. And in this case, Big Pharma wants marijuana to lack medicinal properties. "The Drug Enforcement Administration has ruled marijuana should remain classified as a dangerous drug like heroin because studies have not confirmed its medicinal value, but the agency may itself be to blame for the lack of evidence. ... The DEA denied a 9-year-old petition to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana in late June, claiming that "marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision." The decision (PDF) was announced Friday. ... The petition was filed by The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis and sought to have marijuana removed from schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act and rescheduled in schedule III, IV or V. Currently, the DEA classifies marijuana as a schedule I drug: the most restrictive classification reserved for street drugs like heroin with no real medicinal value. ... "Although this superficially looks like a defeat for the medical marijuana community," said Joe Elford, Americans for Safe Access Chief Counsel and lead counsel in the recent lawsuit. "It simply maintains the status quo.""
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QOTD:
"This 'pledge' is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn't fit into a particular definition of 'virtue'. While the Family Leader pledge covers just about every other so-called virtue they can think of, the one that is conspicuously missing is tolerance. In one concise document, they manage to condemn gays, single parents, single individuals, divorcees, Muslims, gays in the military, unmarried couples, women who choose to have abortions, and everyone else who doesn't fit in a Norman Rockwell painting." - Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the first 2012 GOP candidate to officially denounce the "offensive" moral pledge already signed by Crazy Eyes and Frothy Mix.
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In 1990, Congress passed a law that required that all — all — federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, must have auditable financial statements every year. Since that time, the Department of Defense has spent $10 trillion ... [a]nd yet, no audit has been conducted. ... In 2005 Congress passed a ban on completing an audit ... Yet we don't know where ... $2.3 trillion dollars went.
His amendment will end that exemption.
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Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) Pays $472.70 for One Bottle of Wine While Walking The Path to Prosperity
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Chart of the Day Save this one and pass it around. That deficit that some idiots are acting all hysterical about? It really is Bush's fault, as the graph at the link plainly shows.
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The Catholic Church can have a big steaming cup of shut the fuck up. We really don't give a rat's ass what a spokesman for the Death Cult says about gay marriage in New York. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York is terribly concerned. He's convinced that polygamy will follow gay marriage as sure as morning follows night.
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News of the World, the now-defunct British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, offered to pay a New York police officer for private phone records of 9/11 victims, according to a report by Britain's Daily Mirror. The tabloid wanted to check calls made and received by the victims in the days leading to the attacks, but was rejected by the officer, according to the Mirror's unidentified source.
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The New York Times finds that the economy will face a sharp shock at the end of this year when $37 billion in extended government benefits expire. This comes at a time when $2 out of every $10 that goes into Americans' wallets come from payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security, and disability.
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We can pay trillions to stop global climate change, or we can pay trillions to deal with the consequences. This is only the beginning "Hundreds of thousands of people continue to flee drought in East Africa, walking for days in search of food and water, with aid agencies saying the situation is now extremely serious. Many of those fleeing have come to the Dadaab refugee complex, in northeastern Kenya, near the borders of Ethiopia and Somalia. According to doctors in the area, most of the children have severe cases of acute malnutrition and related complications such as anaemia."
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Yesterday on Meet The Press, David Gregory pressed GOP presidential candidate Gov. Tim Pawlenty about his recent remarks that he likes Lady Gaga's song "Born This Way," asking if he believes being gay is a choice. Pawlenty responded that he thinks the science is still "in dispute":
GREGORY: Is being gay a choice?
PAWLENTY: Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, scientists work on that and try to figure out if it's behavioral or if it's partly genetic –
GREGORY: What do you think?
PAWLENTY: Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard.
GREGORY: So you think it's not a choice? That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you're born that way.
PAWLENTY: There's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic. We don't know that.
Watch the clip.
In fact, there is no dispute among health professionals. All major medical professional organizations agree that sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed, from gay to straight or otherwise. The American Psychological Association, the world's largest association of psychological professionals, describes sexual orientation as "a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors." There is considerable evidence to suggest that biology, "including genetic or inborn hormonal factors," plays a significant role in a person's sexuality.
Pawlenty's comments underscore the reality that promoting ex-gay therapy and the idea that homosexuality can be changed or denied (which it cannot) are at the root of all anti-gay perspectives. The broad consensus of scientists have condemned such notions — and the kinds of discrimination Pawlenty has protected — for decades.
Pawlenty has previously said that "the science is bad" on whether human activity has had any impact on global warming. When it comes to Pawlenty's unfamiliarity with science, perhaps he was just "born this way."
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