Saturday, October 30, 2010

F A C T S from various scoures I've collected for whatever reason(s)?

** 98,000 patients are killed annually by medical errors. Tort law changes won't fix health care. Tell Congress to put patients first.**

Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House.

A simple pucker involves two muscles, and a real hot sweaty smooch involves all 34 facial muscles. Each burns 26 calories a minute.

Democrats have won back-to-back victories, picking up at least 12 Senate seats and more than 50 House seats. They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G.O.P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign.

The accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

all those terrified Jews who reportedly abandoned their progressive heritage to buy into the smears libeling Obama as an Israel-hating terrorist? Obama drew a larger percentage of Jews nationally (78) than Kerry had (74)

United States is the only country in the industrialized world where children are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents were, according to a new study by the Education Trust

Britain had 27 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 between 2000 and 2005, according to a report published by Population Action International. Comparable figures are 10 per 1,000 for Spain , 8 in 1,000 for France , and 5 in 1,000 for The Netherlands.

Britain's teen pregnancy rate, however, is still far below that of the United States, which registers 44 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 and are more line with English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which respectively have 17 and 27 births per 1,000 women between 15 and 19, according to the report.

there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.

The money that foreign workers send home will shrink by $15 billion this year, as the global economy limps along, the World Bank projects.

Such remittances, or money transfers, will fall from last year's high of $305 billion to $290 billion in 2009, the World Bank said in a report released this week.

Money transfers are among the largest sources of external financing in developing countries, often used to buy basic necessities in areas with rampant poverty.

"Because they flow directly from people to people, remittances become especially important for poor people," said Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank and lead author of the report. "Many people use remittances as their only lifeline."

The main reason for the drop is the weakening of economies in "destination" countries where migrant and immigrant workers live, the report found.

"This time, the crisis did not start in the developing countries," Ratha said. "It started in the rich countries like the U.S. and in Europe."

There are an estimated 150 million migrants worldwide, many of who send part of their paychecks home each month, according to a 2006 U.N. report.

some defenses of the President. At Swampland, Michael Scherer wrote after the press conference:

I don’t really get all this gabbing about Obama and his teleprompter. Does anyone really doubt Obama’s ability to speak cogently and in detail without notes, after winning three presidential debates and slaying just about every press availability he gets? So he likes reading from a screen and not a piece of paper.

Yesterday in the Atlantic , James Fallows wrote :
The whole ‘Obama can’t talk on his own’ concept is bizarre, given his performance through two years of stump speeches and debates during the campaign. But it seems to have gotten so much credence in the right-wing world that it is worth addressing head on.”

More support for the president’s ability to extemporize also came to light on Tuesday, the day of the press conference. Following up on the St. Patrick’s Day incident, Telegraph reporter Toby Harnden tracked down a reporter who was there, listened to his audio tape of the event and concluded, as per the reporter he talked to, that when Obama was thanking Obama, he was making a joke at the Irish Prime Minister’s expense.

Or, as Harnden put it, “Ironically, therefore, Obama was ad-libbing rather than mindlessly reading the wrong speech from a teleprompter.”

According to the KlaasKids Foundation run by Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly was kidnapped and killed in 1993, 96 percent of those who abduct and kill children are male. Seventy-six percent of the victims in such cases are dead within three hours of being kidnapped, and the majority of those who kill children are acquaintances of the child.

9-17/09The United States lost 216,000 jobs in August, the department said earlier this month, down from 276,000 in July. Employers have eliminated 6.9 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

All truth goes through three phases.
1. First, it is ridiculed.
2. Second, it is violently opposed.
3. Third, it is accepted as being self evident.

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