US Facts

"50 Facts That Should Change the USA"

When Bush cut taxes for the rich in 2004, the family that owns Wal-Mart increased their wealth by $91,500 per hour

2.9 million Americans claim to have been abducted by aliens

Over twice as many Americans claim to go to church as actually do

65 percent of American adults are overweight, 30 percent are obese, and these proportions are growing

More than 37 million Americans, or one in eight of the population, live below the official poverty guidelines.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, it's down to six.

Tell us something new

Analysts are rubbish

Seemingly everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic, is now taking about recession. Even Mervyn King. So why, asks SocGen’s James Montier in his latest issue of Mind Matters, is the investment research industry still predicting earnings growth of between 12 and 15 per cent? 

He’s got a chart to illustrate that analysts are exceptionally good at one thing and one thing alone - telling you what has just happened.

How many dicks?

Porn's Dirty, Dangerous Secret

There are a finite number of ways that human bodies can fit together. So pornmakers resort to sexualizing degradation to stay "cutting edge".

Gonzo producers test the limits with new practices that eroticize men's domination of women. Less intense forms of those sexual practices migrate into the tamer feature pornography, and from there in muted form into mainstream pop culture. Pornography gets more openly misogynist, and pop culture becomes more pornographic -- many Hollywood movies and cable TV shows today look much like soft-core pornography of a few decades ago, and the common objectification of women in advertising has become more overtly sexualized.

Where will all this lead? How far will pornographers go to ensure their profits, especially as the proliferation of free pornography on the internet adds a new competition? How much eroticized misogyny will the culture be willing to tolerate?

Human decency and humanity found alive and well in Scotland

Lockerbie bomber in cancer battle

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is battling "advanced stage" cancer. His lawyer said: "Following hospital tests, Mr Megrahi was last month diagnosed with prostate cancer. Unfortunately the disease has spread to other parts of his body and is therefore at an advanced stage...He wishes me to make clear that the fight to overturn his wrongful conviction for the Lockerbie bombing will go on."

Dr Jim Swire, who is spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 group and whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, called for Megrahi's appeal to be speeded up.

"I'm not satisfied that the verdict against him is correct. It sounds to me like an unfolding human tragedy. If his prognosis is bad then I hope that the Scottish authorities would look for a way of speeding up the next appeal without compromising the fairness of it. It would be an act of great humanity to do that."

Mrs President

PalinAsPresident



Via Steve Rubel

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Honestly, tell us what you think about the prospect of a Black President, Mr McCain



Check this out too :)

Trick or Treat?

Can Halloween Mask Sales Predict the Election?

According to Fortune magazine, more than one Halloween mask retailer has claimed they can correctly predict who will win the White House. Spirit Halloween, the largest seasonal Halloween vendor in the US, says Bush outsold Kerry two to one in 2004, Gore sold 14 percent fewer masks in 2000, and Clinton masks won with 71 percent in 1996.

The Palin mask is selling well and has the advantage of being really scary.

Four to One

Four Tops star Levi Stubbs dies

Levi Stubbs, who sang on Motown band the Four Tops' biggest hits, has died at his home in Detroit aged 72. Abdul Fakir is the only surviving original member of the group, who have sold more than 50 million records.

Ah, sweet memories of the sixties, when I could dance anyone off the floor.

And the moral of this piece is...

The de-moralisation of a woman’s right to choose - Sp!ked

Arguments about why abortion should be considered a problem have changed considerably in recent years. Writing in the 1980s, the American philosopher LW Sumner stated: ‘Abortion is a moral problem… What is at stake for the fetus is life itself… What is at stake for the woman is autonomy – control of the use to be made of her body.’

In the early twenty-first century the issue appears far less clear. A whole range of issues – fetal viability, fetal sentience, and a range of areas relating to the effects of abortion on women’s health – are just as likely as moral questions to animate participants in the abortion debate. What these issues have in common is their (pseudo) scientific and medical character. In all these examples, the language of risk and safety replaces that of right and wrong. Heated debates about ‘the evidence’ take the place of that about political outlook.

Timing is everything

Niall Ferguson's new book trumpets the triumph of capitalism...whoops!

Ferguson, it seems, is - or was, at least - a fan of money, and the way the economy works. But it's as if he had written a fan's book about Manchester United, to be published on the eve of the Champions League final, only to discover that the whole team had been arrested for brawling the night before the match, and the board had been embezzling money, and the manager had bribed the referee. Right now, would you want to have written a book called The Ascent of Money?

As I've always suspected

Lies, Damn Lies, and Polls

David W. Moore, who worked for Gallup for 13 years as managing editor and senior editor of the Gallup Poll, has a new book out denouncing most polls by Gallup or anyone else as useless, and explaining that this became obvious to him when he first began work at Gallup, raising the obvious question of why he stuck around for 13 years. The explanation seems to be that he was trying to fix the problem, and one of the motivations for the book seems to be that he believes he still can fix it.

Don't step on my crepe-soled shoes

Garrison Keillor on The Financial Crash:

Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of perpetual profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn’t their money. It was your money they were messing with. And that’s why we need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say, ‘This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing backgammon.