What do you do when your traditional source of tourist income is dwindling because of a drawn out recession? You find a new source that isn’t.

Regional Map via Mapquest

On October 13 Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and Porter Airlines CEO Robert Deluce announced the public-private effort to bring twice-weekly roundtrip air service from Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport to Burlington International Airport beginning December 15th and running until April 8th.

“This is a great partnership that will boost tourism in Vermont and provide an economic boost to our ski areas,” Gov. Shumlin said. “Our new service to Vermont is a perfect complement to our current winter schedule already featuring prime destinations such as MontTremblant and Quebec City,” said Deluce. “Burlington offers access to an incredible array of spectacular ski mountains, and many vibrant communities to explore.” Canada’s economy is, unlike ours, relatively robust.

Main Entryway, BIA (courtesy Burlington International Airport)

In a joint statement, Vermont Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, and Representative Peter Welch said, “Porter Airlines, Ski Vermont, Governor Shumlin, the Burlington International Airport and Customs and Border Protection came together to introduce the people of Toronto to the best skiing and riding in the U.S.A. This announcement underscores the ‘international’ in Burlington International Airport, creating seasonal scheduled nonstop service between Toronto and Burlington. While it will offer a much-needed influx of visitors to the state this winter, especially needed following the devastating blow of Hurricane Irene, it will also give Vermonters an unprecedented opportunity to visit and do business in Toronto.”

The Vermont Congressional delegation initiated this partnership by writing to Porter Airlines this past summer inviting them to begin service between Toronto and Burlington. This fall, the lawmakers have worked with the airport and other stakeholders to help iron out details surrounding clearing international visitors at the airport.

Fly the Friendly Skies (courtesy flyporter.com)

Porter Airlines, whose brand slogan is “Fly refined”, is a high-end regional airline based out of the Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto. “In” the city is one of their touted benefits; they are not outside the city, with all the concommitent ground travel involved. They are five minutes from downtown. They fly a fleet of Q400 Bombadier planes, which are designed for greater passenger comfort than your average regional carrier. Their passenger lounge at Billy Bishop is all about comfort and convenience, with Wi-Fi and refreshements available in a living room atmosphere (no rows of plastic bucket seats). We’re not talking economy-class ambience here, so we’re also not talking skiing-on-a-shoestring visitors.

Funding for this international travel initiative is equal parts public and private. Vermont’s Global Trade Fund will invest nearly $200,000, while participating Vermont ski areas will invest $75,000 to market the new Toronto air route. Burlington International Airport will be making structural upgrades as part of the project.

Stowe 2007 Public Domain

The schedule will include weekly roundtrips on Thursdays and Sundays, with the exception of long weekends, which will offer Thursday and Monday roundtrip options. One-way fares start as low as $99, plus applicable fees and taxes, which should put the round-trip tickets in the reasonable range.

Currently Stowe Mountain Resort, Jay Peak, Smugglers Notch and Sugarbush are offering ski packages including air travel with Porter Airlines, available at www.skivermont.com. People wishing to book independently can go to Porter’s website to look for the right flights.

Unfortunately, there are no mass transit (buses or trains) routes between Burlington International Airport and the Rutland region, so the southwest part of the state loses out on this deal. Okemo in Ludlow may be able to cash in on it, as there are mass transit routes down to their neck of the woods.

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Harold Cunningham /GettyImages

We all vaguely remember Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare, right? How about the rabbit and the rabbit? Doesn’t sound familiar, does it. Well, Aesop didn’t have anything to do with this one. It is an emerging sports trend in Central Europe called “rabbit hopping”.

Harold Cunningham /GettyImages

Yesterday in Wollerau, Switzerland they held the first European Rabbit Hopping championships. Lada Sipova-Krecova of Czech Republic won (that’s the owner, not the rabbit).

They’re just so damned cute!

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Daniel the Miracle Beagle

St. Francis, the patron saint of animals, seems to have made a stop in Florence, Alabama. On Oct. 3, the 785th anniversary of the saint’s death, the local animal control officer was performing the saddest duty in his job, euthanizing unwanted strays the local shelter had no room for. Until Dec. 31st, Alabama still uses carbon monoxide gas chambers to euthanize shelter animals.

When the chamber was opened, a young beagle mix walked out, scared but alive, wagging his tail. Thank you, St. Francis, for saving this one. He was unwanted, dropped anonymously in a drop box outside the pound. With an influx of 60 dogs the day before, there was no room to give him a chance.

However, shelter policy states that if an animal survives the gas chamber, they have to find a home for him (guess they don’t want to mess with divine intervention!). Dubbed “Daniel” for the biblical figure who walked out of a lion’s den, the miracle dog has a second chance.

Wednesday he was flown to New Jersey, tail wagging the whole way, where the nonprofit Eleventh Hour Rescue group have placed him into foster care and will find him a new home. His foster mom says “He’s absolutely fabulous. He walked in the house like he had always lived there. He’s very sweet, happy and outgoing.”

The group will take its time sorting through the over-100 applications to adopt Daniel to find him the right home, where he will never be dropped off as unwanted again. Their only regret, right now, is that about 50% of those applicants said they don’t want another dog if Daniel is not available.

But then, there’s the 50% who will.

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Oh, go for pencil thin! (goodeveningworld.com)

I bet there are a few of you out there who remember the “Shave and a haircut” routine. You don’t have to admit it, just smile fondly and keep reading.

Well, some of our boys in Afghanistan have discovered that there is an extra grooming service that Afghan barbers throw in for free: eyebrow shaping. Imagine yourself in your desert cammies, sitting down for a little TLC from a local barber, maybe drifting a bit, and suddenly realizing that this guy is plucking your eyebrows! Hey, I’m a female and I don’t pluck my eyebrows!

Funny thing, though. Once over the shock, more than a few of the guys have gotten real fond of the look, and gone back for touch-ups. Enough, in fact, that the Marine Corps issued a fatwa, ahhh, regulation that “excessive plucking or removal of eyebrows is not authorized, except for medical reasons,”. Gotta love the Marines, that last bastion of macho manliness.

Women in Kabul (api.ning.com)

In Afghanistan, it’s a cultural thing. While advocating that women must cover every possible square inch of sexually inflammatory flesh, men have cultivated a “dreamy” look. This includes, frequently, enough eyeliner to make Priscilla Queen of the Desert‘s Adam/Felicia proud.

Cover of Thomas Dworzak's book "Taliban"

Even those proud defenders of Islam’s most severe cultural prejudices (anyone remember the bombing of the Buddhas?), the Taliban, have been seen preening. In fact, photographer Thomas Dworzak has recently published a book containing photographs he found in Afghanistan of young Taliban fighters posing for the camera, complete with the eye makeup. Considering that photographs were forbidden by the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, these guys had to have a compelling reason to risk this, right? Ummm, actually, the pics look like amateur hour at the online dating site.

I think, though, that in a choice between well-sculpted male brows and the infamous bushy unibrow, I might just go with the tweezers bunch.

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The Bank of America is moving to equalize the cost of health care for same-sex couples on bank-sponsored health-care plans.

Presently, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) forbids the federal government from recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages. So under federal law, employer-provided health benefits for same-sex partners are counted as taxable income, if the partner is not considered a spouse or dependent. Additionally, gay employees cannot use pretax dollars to pay for their premiums — unlike their opposite-sex married counterparts.

However, starting next year, B of A employees with same-sex partners will begin receiving reimbursements for the extra taxes they pay for health insurance.

According to the New York Times:

The banking giant will provide the reimbursement once a year, and it will be calculated for each employee on an individual basis. “We regularly review our benefits plans to ensure they meet the diverse needs of our employees,” said Ferris Morrison, a spokeswoman for the bank.

Bank of America also says  this option will only be offered  to gay couples,  since heterosexual domestic partners have the option to marry and avoid the extra taxes.

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Since 2006, Arsenault has sired fifteen children including a set of twins. Some of the pregnancies have ended in miscarriages as well. Arsenault has all of this information on his website including pictures of his life in chronological order. He also makes it clear that he is free of sexual transmitted diseases and includes the recent test results on the site.

Arsenault informed ABC News that he considers himself a ‘donorsexual’. He has made a total of 328 semen donations to a total of fifty women, many of whom are lesbians in the San Francisco area. He does not do this anonymously and is willing to have the children reach him in the future.

As the news report states:

He is part of a do-it-yourself fertility movement that caters to couples and single women who say they cannot afford the high cost of sperm banks. They also want their children to know their biological father.

Three Google sites, at least six Yahoo Groups and a dozen more fee-based websites cater to those looking for free sperm donors, according to a recent article in Newsweek. Most are in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Arsenault is strict about how often he is willing to donate- and that is once every twenty-four hours. According to the report “Fifteen minutes before the “hand-over,” he gets a text message from the prospective mother and downs a vitamin-rich slushy made of blueberries, kiwis and flax seed. Then he ejaculates into a sterile cup, one of 200 a year he buys for $50 online from Amazon. Women typically do the artificial insemination right afterwards, filling a latex cup with the fresh semen and placing it on their cervix.

Keri and Amber Pigott-Robertson have a one year old daughter because of this arrangement, and the couple arranged for Arsenault to meet their daughter. Amber stated “When he saw her for the first time, his face just lit up. He was a perfect match. He gave us what we had been longing for, what we felt would complete us. So there’s no expressing how much gratitude I have for him . People like Trent come once in a lifetime.”

Arsenault does not expect to have a family of his own, but has said that “It’s just a service I provide. My involvement is limited because I work so much, up to 60 or 70 hours a week.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, Arsenault’s services are not a private affair. Last fall, agents informed him that he had to stop manufacturing sperm, which is rather strange given that men produce them all the time. The government thinks of him as a firm, though, and feel that he is not providing adequate protections against any communicable diseases. He is appealing the order to stop manufacturing sperm, but could face up to $100,000 in fines and a year in prison. He has argued that this is a form of sex and not subject to government control.

A study published in this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology is saying that as many as 72 percent of throat tumors in men may be linked to the human papillomavirus, commonly known as HPV.

According to that report, researchers speculate that the virus spreads predominately via oral sex, and that it may already account for more cases of throat cancer than smoking.

Researchers examined 271 throat-tumor samples collected over 20 years ending in 2004 and found that the percentage of oral cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV, surged to 72 percent from about 16 percent, according to a report released yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. By 2020, the virus-linked throat tumors — which mostly affected men — will become more common than HPV-caused cervical cancer, the report found.

. . . Until recently, head and neck cancer mainly occurred in older patients and was associated with tobacco and alcohol use. The HPV-linked head and neck cancers, usually of the tonsils, palate or tongue, hit men their 30s, 40s, and 50s, Gillison said. It is unclear why women are affected much less often than men, she said.

. . . In a 2007 epidemiology study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gillison and her colleagues found that having a high number of oral or vaginal sex partners are risk factors for HPV-associated throat cancer.

The HPV virus is best known for causing cervical cancer, but the new study also showed the HPV virus is fueling a 28 percent raise in orpharyngeal cancer cases since 1988 – an additional 10,000 cases per year. If that trend continues, this type of upper throat cancer will surpass cervical cancer as the nation’s main HPV-related cancer within 10 years.

“The burden of cancer caused by HPV is going to shift from women to men in this decade,” said Maura Gillison, an oncologist at Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “What we believe is happening is that the number of sexual partners and exposure to HPV has risen over that same time period.”

Both of the vaccines currently approved for preventing cervical cancers (Gardasil and Cervarix, marketed by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively) do target the HPV strain linked to oral cancer, but whether these latest findings will put pressure on the companies to conduct trials to examine their vaccines’ abilities to ward off HPV throat infections remains to be seen. Neither company says they have any plans to do any clinical trials at this time.

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Curried meat with chili peppers

Well, they said it was “killer curry.”

The Kismot Indian Restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a curry eating contest to raise money for a children’s charity. It was advertised as the “world’s hottest curry-eating contest” and two of the participants have been admitted to a hospital, in addition to several contestants who were treated and released, and those who liked it so much, they did it twice.

The contest consisted of several rounds, each involving a progressively spicier dish. It was not reported at what level of “heat” the first reactions started. One contestant, Korean student Curie Kim, first went to the E.R. at 4 p.m., returned to the contest and had to go back to the hospital at 9 p.m. She told the press, “I’ve always enjoyed spicy foods and thought this was for a good cause. But it came with a price.”  I have been advised by my husband, the pepper lover, that there is a Pakistani chili pepper that is one of the hottest in the world, even hotter than his beloved piquinas.

The owner of the restaurant, Abdul Ali, said that half the contestants dropped out when others began vomiting and fainting. Mike Lavin came in fifth in the contest, but was transported to hospital by amulance.

The Scottish Ambulance Service was not terribly happy with the event. The EMTs couldn’t handle the type of ailments or the volume and multiple ambulances ended up being used. The service issued a statement later, “We would urge the organizers to review the way in which this event is managed in future in order to avoid another situation where emergency ambulances are required to treat their customers.”

There are no plans to cancel next year’s event.

And to think Texans believe they make hot food. Anyone know when the last time was a chili-eating contest ended up with the participants in the hospital?

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Doctor Garth H. Rauscher, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, along with he colleagues, have released a new study that shows that psychological stress could play a major role in the development of aggressive breast cancer, especially among minority populations.

He recently stated “We found that after diagnosis, black and Hispanic breast cancer patients reported higher levels of stress than whites, and that stress was associated with tumor aggressiveness.” His team studied patient-reports of their perceptions of fear, anxiety and isolation that they felt. These are known as psychosocial stresses. They then correlated it with the aggressiveness of the patient’s breast cancer.

According to PsychCentral

Researchers studied nearly 1,000 recently diagnosed breast cancer patients; of those, 411 were non-Hispanic black, 397 were non-Hispanic white, and 181 were Hispanic.

Researchers discovered psychosocial stress scores were higher for both black and Hispanic patients compared to white patients.

Rauscher stated:

“Those who reported higher levels of stress tended to have more aggressive tumors. However, what we don’t know is if we had asked them the same question a year or five years before diagnosis, would we have seen the same association between stress and breast cancer aggressiveness?

“It’s not clear what’s driving this association. It may be that the level of stress in these patients’ lives influenced tumor aggressiveness.

“It may be that being diagnosed with a more aggressive tumor, with a more worrisome diagnosis and more stressful treatments, influenced reports of stress. It may be that both of these are playing a role in the association.

“We don’t know the answer to that question.”

The research will be presented at the foruth American Association for Cancer Research Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities. This study joins a long list of studies that seem to show a strong link between the psychological health of cancer patients and the aggressiveness of their cancer, as well as the likelihood that it will go into remission or that they will suffer a relapse.

John Nash by Peter Badge, Life Made Into The Movie "A Beautiful Mind"

Researchers in Taiwan have apparently discovered a link between schiophrenia and epilepsy. Writing in Epilepsia, the researchers say that this link could be due to genetic, neurobiological or environmental factors, but they are not entirely certain why. They followed around 16,000 patients with epilepsy and schizophrenia between 1999 and 2008 in order to gather this data. At least one epilepsy expert has gone on record as saying that it is an interesting and convincing study.

According to the BBC, “The study used data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database and was led by researchers from the China Medical University Hospital in Taichung. They identified 5,195 patients with schizophrenia and 11,527 patients with epilepsy who were diagnosed during the nine years period. These groups of patients were compared to groups of the same sex and age who did not have either epilepsy or schizophrenia.”

What the researchers discovered is that the incidents of epilepsy in the schizophrenia patient group was almost seven times higher than that of the non-schizophrenia group. Specifically, 6.99 per thousand person-years in the schizophrenia group and 1.19 per 1,000 in the non-schizophrenia group. The incidence of schizophrenia was 3.53 per 1,000 person-years for patients with epilepsy compared to 0.46 for the non-epilepsy group.

Dr. Manny Bagary stated “This is the first convincing study to suggest that people with schizophrenia could also be at risk of developing epilepsy.”

Previously, studies have suggested a prevalence of psychosis among patients with epilepsy. Researchers did find that schizophrenia levels were slightly higher with men with epilepsy than with women who had epilepsy.

Associate professor at China Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan Dr. I-Ching Chou stated “Our research results show a strong bidirectional relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy. “This relationship may be due to common pathogenesis in these diseases such as genetic susceptibility and environmental factors, but further investigation of the pathological mechanisms are needed.”

Dr. Bagary, a neurpsychiatrist in Birmingham, called the study very interesting and said:

“We have been aware that epilepsy sufferers seem to be have an increased risk of psychosis but this is the first convincing study to suggest that people with schizophrenia could also be at risk of developing epilepsy, suggesting a bidirectional relationship has been found between depression and epilepsy”.

“The association may be due to a common environmental factors such as traumatic brain injury or brain haemorrhage in utero. Alternatively, a genetic association may be relevant such as LGI1 or CNTNAP2 genes which have been associated with seizures and psychosis.”

“However, there may be some questions to ask about the reliability of the schizophrenia and epilepsy diagnoses in the study because it is a retrospective health register study and both conditions can be difficult to diagnose.

“Nevertheless, this study will serve to guide further research into the relationship between epilepsy and psychosis.”

The study probably raises more questions than it answers, but it will bear keeping an eye on going forward.

Same-sex couples and other couples in domestic partnerships gained more control over what happens to their mates in the hospital, under new guidelines issued this week by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

On Wednesday, HHS provided new guidance on the enforcement of regulations to protect the visitation rights of same-sex domestic partners in a hospital setting. This is the final step in the process of implementing the regulation which the Obama administration issued last November and went into effect in January.

Under the new regulations, hospitals are being told they should not bar domestic partners from visiting their mates unless there’s a medical reason, and those partners should not be required to produce documents to prove their relationship.

Also, if patients are incapacitated, hospitals should not deny domestic partners from being decision-makers, although they may have to prove they are health-care surrogates.

The new guidelines as well, tell 6,150 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare funding that they could lose the right to treat Medicare patients if they discriminate against same-sex and unmarried couples.

In statement announcing the new enforcement provisions HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said:

Couples take a vow to be with each other in sickness and in health and it is unacceptable that, in the past, some same-sex partners were denied the right to visit their loved ones in times of need.”

President Barack Obama ordered the expanded rights last year in response to the case of a cruise tourist who was blocked from seeing her lesbian partner for more than eight hours at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in 2007. The woman had a power of attorney faxed to the hospital but still was denied access

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A recently released study of North American medical schools says that they are not giving thier students enough training on issues particular to the LGBT community.

While experts have called for medical schools to cover LGBT issues, the study says the actual content and amount of such training hasn’t been known. It also noted medical schools set aside an average of only seven hours for topics related to the health care needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) patients.

The survey of deans of 150 American and Canadian medical schools as well found wide variation in the amount, content and quality of instruction on LGBT health.

The researchers discovered that the average reported combined hours assigned to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender content was five hours. The corresponding median value was seven hours. During clinical years, 44 medical schools (33.3%) reported 0 hours of LGBT content, 9 schools (6.8%) reported 0 hours during preclinical years, and five medical schools (3.8%) reported 0 combined hours. Compared to U.S. allopathic schools whose reported median clinical hours were 2 hours, U.S. osteopathic schools had considerably less median with 0 clinical hours.

97% of those who responded to the questionnaire, reported that their school educates medical students to ask patients if they have sex with men, women, or both when obtaining a sexual history. 72% of the institutions reported teaching students the difference between behavior and identity (e.g., men might have sex with men and identify as straight), while 21.2% were not sure if this difference was taught.

62.9% of the institutions reported teaching half of 16 topics related to LGBT in their required or elective curricular, while 8% reported teaching all 16 of the topics.

Study author Dr Mitchell R Lunn of Harvard University added  in a statement: “Every time a patient comes to a new doctor, that individual effectively has to ‘come out’ again.

“There is a lot of fear about how that is going to go. The fear of discrimination has pushed some people away from the doctor and some never return.”

The findings appeared Sept. 7 in a medical education theme issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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"American Girl In Italy" c. 1952, 1980 by Ruth Orkin

It is the men in the photo who date it. The young woman walking down the street in Florence, Italy, could be a contestant on Next Top Model today – classically beautiful, wearing a dress Kate Middleton would be comfortable in, striding tall and long legged. It is the men, in their loosely- fitting suits and slacks that date the photo to the 1950′s.

It was 1951 and Ninalee Craig, just 23-years-old, was traveling alone in Europe. In Italy, she met photographer Ruth Orkin, who was also traveling alone on a continent barely six years out of war, divided by the Soviet Union, struggling to recover, repair, restore normality. Craig and Orkin hooked up for a few days in Florence as Orkin photographed Craig in markets, in cafes and one day just walking along a street through a gaggle of 15 men who unabashedly admired the beautiful young woman in their midst. The photographer died in 1985 after a long and successful career in a field dominated by men. Ruth Orkin was nominated for an Oscar in 1956 for co-writing and co-directing the film Little Fugitive. Ninalee Craig is now an 83-year-old great-grandmother living in Toronto, still a stunning woman who proves that People magazine is wrong when they end their Most Beautiful Person edition’s “beauty at any age” sections with a 59-year-old.

Craig was interviewed on the Today show for the 60^th anniversary of this photo. She insisted that people view the photo in context, not as a symbol of sexual harassment, but “a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time.” It was not staged, but was totally spontaneous. The only “staging” consisted of Orkin suggesting that Craig repeat the walk for a second photo. Craig explained that none of the men in the photo approached her in any unseemly way. They simply admired her, took a moment of life-affirming joy out of their day.

I think Craig misses the point. The photo is neither a symbol of sexual harassment nor of a young woman’s joy. It is a symbol of a lost innocence, a freedom from reality that we no longer enjoy. Even traveling in a group is not safe enough, as Natalee Holloway showed us. Liam Neeson’s Taken, Mina Sorvino’s Human Trafficking, Rachel Weisz’s The Whistleblower, the Amanda Knox trial, even the episode of Absolutely Fabulous set in Morocco – these are the modern images of women alone in the world. A woman traveling alone today is as unsafe as women were in the days of Jack the Ripper.

1951 was an exceptional year in American and European social history. In spite of the war in Korea, there was a real sense of the world cleansing itself of the horrors, deprivations and pall of death that had hung over the two continents for 20 years, through the Great Depression and World War II, through the first years of reconstruction in Europe and adjusting to the realities of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. There was a present to enjoy and a future to claim and there was no urgency to either. We could stroll into the future and stop to smell the roses. We could admire the beautiful woman, the handsome man passing by us without a need to despoil or possess. We could believe that Annette Funicello was an American art student in Florence riding around on her cute little Vespa finding true love while solving some un-dangerous mystery.

That is what American Girl In Italy really represents – a time when a portion of our societies could convince themselves that they lived in a perfect world, a shining moment in human history between long periods of harsh reality. Unfortunately for both America and Europe, there are those who think that moment is normal and not a myth created as a collective catharsis for the decades that preceded it.

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After a volatile trading session, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up nearly 430 points Tuesday, on news the Federal Reserve has pledged to keep short-term interest rates near zero for at least another two years.

In the wake of the economy’s fading pace and the stock market’s recent plunge, many analysts had been expected the Fed would show that it was willing to provide more financial support.  And In a contentious afternoon meeting, the Fed did just that when it signaled that the central bank expects to keep short-term interest rates low for an extended specific period — “at least through mid-2013.”

That announcement appears to have energized some investors, who looking were for any scrap of good news after seeing the global decline that hit the markets following the contentious US debt ceiling negotiations and Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the U.S. credit rating late last week.

The Dow closed up 429.92 points, or 4%, to 11,239.77, its biggest gain of the year, after having fallen 635 points in reaction to that downgrading at closing bell yesterday.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index also soared 53.07 points, or 4.8%, to 1,172.53, as did the Nasdaq composite, which jumped 124.83 points, or 5.3%, to 2,482.52.

The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose following the Fed’s statement, pushing the yield down to 2.28% from 2.34% late Monday.

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to sell $72 billion in bonds this week. Its first auction was held Tuesday, during which the government sold $32 billion in 3-year notes. The bid-to-cover ratio, a measure of demand, came in roughly in line with other recent 3-year note auctions — an indication that investors are not afraid to stash their cash in Treasuries, even with the warning from S&P

However, even with today’s rally, the Dow is still down 2.9% year to date, the S&P 500 is down 6.8% and Nasdaq is off 6.4%. Productivity of U.S. workers also slipped 0.3% during the second quarter, after falling 0.6% the prior quarter. Labor costs rose by 2.2%.

Reflecting the extreme continued investor anxiety caused by those figures, gold futures, settled at $29.80, or 1.7%, higher at a record $1,743.00 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.  Earlier, gold prices hit a record intraday high of $1,782.50 an ounce. Crude-oil futures also slid below $80 a barrel for the first time in nearly 10 months to settle at $79.30 a barrel, while the U.S. dollar lost ground against both the euro and the yen.

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Investors bailed out of stocks and ran to the few “safe havens” left to them, as they responded to Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating with a massive sell off that had the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down 634.76 points.

The concern about the U.S. credit rating was amplified when Standard & Poor’s announced Monday morning that it was also downgrading the debt of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which rely on U.S. government guarantees.

But traders said much of the pessimism Monday resulted from broader concerns about the economy. Worries about the U.S. economic recovery have been building since the government said that economic growth was far weaker in the first half of 2011 than economists expected.

Combined with Fridays US credit rating downgrade, and a  lack of investor confidence, stocks ended up with their worst day since the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 and extended Wall Street’s sudden, sharp decline that have seen stocks lose 15 percent of their value in just two and a half weeks.

The Dow ended the day down 634.76 points, or 5.5%, to 10,809.85.

Last week, the Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 700 points. That was its biggest weekly point loss since 2008, during the financial crisis.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell even more abruptly, finishing the day down 79.83 points, or 6.6%, to 1,119.55, its worst day since December 2008, with every stock in the benchmark index ending in negative territory.

The Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 174.72 points, or 6.90 percent, to close at 2,357.69.

The Vix, the measure of market volatility and fear among investors, shot up 50 percent, in its steepest rise since February 2007.

Gold set a record, up $61.40 an ounce to settle at $1,713.20.

Crude oil, natural gas and other commodities fell sharply on worries that a weaker global economy will mean less demand. Oil fell 6.4 percent to $81.31 per barrel, its lowest price of the year.

Stock markets worldwide also took a hit. The main stock index fell almost 4 percent in South Korea and more than 2 percent in Japan. European markets as well opened and fell, with Germany down 5 percent and France 4.7 percent.

Related articles

• Dow, NASDAQ plummet after S&P downgrade (bizjournals.com)
• U.S. stocks rocked by credit cut; Dow off 635 pts (marketwatch.com)
• Dow Jones industrial average plunges 600 as market rout continues – Los Angeles Times (news.google.com)
• Summary Box: Stocks plunge after US downgrade (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

05 August 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says it has downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.

The credit rating agency says that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said late Friday that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.

A statement issued by the company this evening said:

We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term rating.

We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from CreditWatch negative.

The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.

Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.

The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.

On Aug. 5, 2011, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered its long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to ’AA+’ from ’AAA’. The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. At the same time, Standard & Poor’s affirmed its ’A-1+’ short-term rating on the U.S. In addition, Standard & Poor’s removed both ratings from CreditWatch, where they were placed on July 14, 2011, with negative implications.

The transfer and convertibility (T&C) assessment of the U.S. — our assessment of the likelihood of official interference in the ability of U.S.-based public- and private-sector issuers to secure foreign exchange for debt service — remains ’AAA’.

Rationale

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.

Our lowering of the rating was prompted by our view on the rising public debt burden and our perception of greater policymaking uncertainty, consistent with our criteria (see “Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions,” June 30, 2011, especially Paragraphs 36-41). Nevertheless, we view the U.S. federal government’s other economic, external, and monetary credit attributes, which form the basis for the sovereign rating, as broadly unchanged.

We have taken the ratings off CreditWatch because the Aug. 2 passage of the Budget Control Act Amendment of 2011 has removed any perceived immediate threat of payment default posed by delays to raising the government’s debt ceiling. In addition, we believe that the act provides sufficient clarity to allow us to evaluate the likely course of U.S. fiscal policy for the next few years.

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a ’AAA’ rating and with ’AAA’ rated sovereign peers (see Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions,” June 30, 2011, especially Paragraphs 36-41). In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government’s ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging (ibid). A new political consensus might (or might not) emerge after the 2012 elections, but we believe that by then, the government debt burden will likely be higher, the needed medium-term fiscal adjustment potentially greater, and the inflection point on the U.S. population’s demographics and other age-related spending drivers closer at hand (see “Global Aging 2011: In The U.S., Going Gray Will Likely Cost Even More Green, Now,” June 21, 2011).

As we have already said on LezGetReal, the decision by the Republicans to play chicken has hurt us all. Their obsession with destroying President Barack Obama has created a situation where the United States is now in real and serious threat of damage. Where as the US economy was once heading into a second recession, now it is heading into a depression. Job growth is unlikely in the near future, and the problems that the economy is already having will just get worse because of this reckless disregard for the future of America.

It was Jon Stewart who basically said that he was against this idea of no government, but that is what these people want. The Republicans are doing what they can to ensure that there will be no American government. As India and China have a burgeoning middle class who can buy stuff from American companies, the megacorps are looking for new places to find cheap labor, and given the instability in Africa, they are choosing to implode the United States rather than allow a recovery.

On Monday, the stock market will crash. The big question now is, will it take the nation with it, or will the Republicans finally wake up and act like the patriots that they claim that they are and raise revenue and really get our financial house in order.

During the market’s wildest day in recent memory, the Dow Jones industrial average swung 416.41 points from its session high of to its intraday low, before finally closing the day with marginal gains in the last hour of trading. The S&P 500 also covered 50.02 points from peak to bottom, before finally ending the day lower, this despite a U.S. Labor Department report that said the country’s economy generated 117,000 jobs in July.

At closing bell, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 60.93 points, or 0.5 percent, at 11,444.61, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 index fell 0.69 point, or 0.1 percent, at 1,199.38 and the Nasdaq composite lost 23.98, or 0.9 percent, at 2,532.41.

Commodities were relatively stable. Crude oil rose 25 cents a barrel to $86.88, while gold fell $7.20 an ounce to $1,651.80.

For the week, the Dow fell 5.8 percent, losing nearly 1000 points after plummeting over 500 points Thursday. The S&P 500 was down 7.2 percent and the Nasdaq was off 8.1 percent, closing a trading week that saw all three indexes showing their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis

Fears over a slowdown in the U.S. economy and increasing economic turmoil in Europe have rattled investor confidence.

In Europe, debt problems are spreading, threatening the both the Italian and Spanish economies. In the U.S, a possible debt default was averted earlier this week, but concerns remain. Chief among them, less spending by consumers, which is leading to lackluster growth by both manufacturing and service companies and too few new jobs to lower the unemployment rate significantly.

Investors also worry that the federal government is more likely to hurt the economy than help it. Instead of more spending, the government is trying to reduce its budget deficits by spending less.

Speaking Friday, President Obama said his administration remains focused on lowering the nation’s unemployment rate as the 2012 election approaches.

“We have to create more jobs than that each month to make up for the more than eight million jobs that the recession claimed,” said Obama. “We need to create a self-sustaining cycle, where people are spending, and companies are hiring, and our economy is growing. And we have known that will take some time.”

Related articles

• Stocks mostly lower after a day of wild swings (csmonitor.com)

An Indian Man went to the hospital complaining of severe stomach pains only to discover, in addition to having  a hernia, he also had a full female reproductive system in his body.

According to The Daily Telegraph the man, identified only as Ryalu, checked into a hospital near Bhopal with severe stomach pain, where doctors initially diagnosed the 35-year-old farmer and father of two with a hernia. However, when they performed exploratory surgery they found a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and vaginal tissue.

The Doctors then performed a hysterectomy, in addition to repairing the the hernia, and a “stunned” Ryalu is now recovering.

Though most people are born with defined sexual organs, one out of 100 births differs from a standard male or female, according to the Intersex Society of North America.

According to Dr. Shrivastava, “Usually the contents of the hernia sac are abdomen organs like large intestines and small intestines but when we operated on the patient we were surprised to find female reproductive organs.”

Shrivastava also said that although Ryalu is medically considered intersex,  his hormones and sexuality are male.

“The external reproductive organs of the patient were masculine and he has no problems whatsoever with his sexuality. He had functional male genitals and there was no formation of breasts in the patient. It’s an embryological accident at the time of embryonic formation,” Shrivastava concluded.

Related articles

• Indian man has hysterectomy after doctors find uterus (telegraph.co.uk)
• Man Leaves Hospital After Hysterectomy! (now100fm.radio.com)
• Man Enters Hospital with Stomach Pains and Leaves with a Hysterectomy [Science] (gizmodo.com)

Image via Wikipedia

8/4/11 by LGR Health and Wellness News Staff

In a move that is sure to have far reaching ramifications, the American Psychological Association (APA), the world’s largest and most respected organization of psychologists has unanimously approved a resolution in support of full marriage equity for gay and lesbian couples.

According to USA Today, the policy making body of the American Psychological Association (APA) unanimously approved the resolution 157-0 on the eve of the group’s annual convention, which opens in Washington DC today.

The group, with more than 154,000 members, has long supported full equal rights for gays, based on social science research on sexual orientation. Now the nation’s psychologists — citing an increasing body of research about same-sex marriage, as well as increased discussion at the state and federal levels — took the support to a new level.

“Now as the country has really begun to have experience with gay marriage, our position is much clearer and more straightforward — that marriage equity is the policy that the country should be moving toward,” says Clinton Anderson, director of APA’s Office on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.

The resolution points to numerous recent studies, including findings that “many gay men and lesbians, like their heterosexual counterparts, desire to form stable, long-lasting and committed intimate relationships and are successful in doing so.”

It adds that “emerging evidence suggests that statewide campaigns to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage are a significant source of stress to the lesbian, gay and bisexual residents of those states and may have negative effects on their psychological well-being.”

Six states , Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont and the District of Columbia currently allow same-sex marriage.

The last APA resolution on sexual orientation and marriage was approved in 2004.

Related articles

• The Case for Same-Sex Marriage (psychologytoday.com)
• Plurality Of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage (lezgetreal.com)

Stocks edged narrowly higher Wednesday after initial deep losses, snapping an eight-day streak of losses.

The trading day started with steep declines after reports showed the U.S. services sector had softened and factory orders fell last month, adding to economic worries that this was the beginning of a second drip recession. After an hour of trading, the Dow had tumbled 166 points.

However, buyers came back into the market after a Wall Street Journal report said that three former top Federal Reserve officials had suggested the central bank may consider a new round of stimulus measures to help boost the economy. By the mid-afternoon, stocks had reversed their declines and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose one-quarter of one percent to end the day at slightly more than 11,896.

The S&P 500 was also up one-half of one percent to close at just above 1,260. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced nearly one percent to 2,693.

European stock prices closed sharply lower. London’s Financial Times index fell 2.3 percent to end the day at 5,585. The CAC-40 index in Paris plunged 1.9 percent to finish at 3,455. The DAX index in Frankfurt fell 2.3 percent to close at nearly 6,641.

In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei index slid more than 2 percent to finish at 9,637. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 1.9 percent to finish the day’s trading at nearly 21,993.

Gold traded at $1,663.40 per ounce, up $21.50 from Tuesday.

The dollar fell against the yen and the euro.

Related articles

• Dow edges higher, breaking an 8-day losing streak (chron.com)

Plans for the world’s tallest building were announced this week… and that record breaking build is going to be built in Saudi Arabia, by the Bin Laden family.

An affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Co., Jeddah Economic Co., has signed a deal worth roughly $1.23 billion with the Bin Laden Group, the Saudi construction company owned by the family of Usama bin Laden, to build the world’s tallest tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Called The Kingdom Tower, it will measure at least 3,280 feet high, and will be part of the $20 billion Kingdom City project that will be located just to the north of the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah.

Once built, the tower will eclipse the world’s reigning tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Financing for the Jeddah project is already in place, with construction, which should take about 63 months, expected to begin shortly.

“We intend Kingdom Tower to become both an economic engine and a proud symbol of the Kingdom’s economic and cultural stature in the world community.  We envision Kingdom Tower as a new iconic marker of Jeddah’s historic importance as the traditional gateway to the holy city of Mecca,” said Prince Al Maiman, a board member of Kingdom Holding and the Jeddah Economic Co,

Under the deal, the Bin Laden Group will take a 16.63% stake in both the Jeddah Economic Co and the Kingdom Tower

Related articles

• World’s tallest building coming to Saudi Arabia (msnbc.msn.com)

As leaders in Washington conclude their debt-ceiling political kabuki  averting the potential economic disaster that would have come with the US government defaulting on its loan payment, the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 150 points Tuesday, as investors worried that the debt-ceiling agreement could further weaken an already sluggish economy and plunge the economy into a recession.

The Dow was off  265.87 points, or 2.2%, to 11866.62.

Foreign stock markets sold off heavily, with the Spanish and German markets sinking more than 2%.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index shed 21 points, or 1.6%, to 1266, led lower by industrial and consumer-discretionary stocks. All 10 sectors in the S&P 500 traded in negative territory, leaving  the S&P 500  at a 2011 closing low.

The technology-oriented Nasdaq Composite gave up 46 points, or 1.7%, to 2698.

Treasury bonds continued their startling three-day rally. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note plunged to a nine-month low of 2.62% from 2.75% on Monday.

New reports showing U.S. manufacturing grew at its slowest pace in two years in July, now have Wall Street’s attention focused on indications of a global growth slowdown that is reviving fears of recession.

Investors scrambled into gold and U.S. Treasury bonds, perceived havens, as talk on Wall Street turned to whether the economy might be headed back into recession.

Today’s selling was driven by a government report that showed consumer spending suffering its worst decline in June since September 2009 as consumer spending fell 0.2%, compared with the 0.1% increase that economists expected.

Combined with a related rise in personal savings, the economic news indicated that the American public, barraged with pervasive warnings about the debt ceiling and reeling from chronic unemployment, are further cutting back on their discretionary spending.

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity fell to 50.9, the lowest level since July 2009, from 55.3 in June.

Economists had expected a reading of 54.9, a reading below 50 indicates a contraction in manufacturing. As new orders contracted, doubt in being cast on expectations the faltering recovery would quickly regain steam.

Additionally, a report last week showed that gross domestic product only grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter of the year following 0.4 percent in the first three months, prompting economists to warn of possible relapse into recession.

The results of Gallup’s Job Creation Index also show poor job creation numbers throughout most of the country.  Hiring has remained virtually flat over the past six months, and employers appear to be holding back on their hiring indicating that many companies may be concerned about how much business they expect to get in the future, That report, as well, has investors running for cover.

8-1-11

By LGR Financial News Staff

U.S. stocks were down after the closing bell on Monday, as concerns about weak manufacturing data and worries that ratings firms could still downgrade the U.S. government’s credit overpowered investor relief about a debt-ceiling deal, damped investor confidence.

At the close of U.S. trade today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 110 points, or 0.9%, to 12033, in afternoon trading. Earlier, it briefly fell below 12,000 for the first time since late June. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index also fell 14 points, or 1.2%, to 1278 recently, with all sectors except telecommunications losing ground. The Nasdaq Composite lost 35 points, or 1.3%, to 2721.

European stock markets also closed lower today. France’s CAC 40 was down 2.27%; Germany’s DAX shed 2.86%; Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 0.70%; and the EURO STOXX 50 fell 2.88%.

The price of gold edged up less than $1 to trade at $1,627.28 an ounce.

Wall Street Analysis are saying  stocks took a plunge today after industry data showed that the U.S. ISM manufacturing PMI fell more-than-expected to 50.9 last month from 55.3 in the preceding month, renewing worries about the overall state of the U.S. economy.

Investors were also still fretting over the state of the U.S. debt-ceiling negotiations, in which the House and Senate were expected to vote on the weekend plan during the afternoon. Details of this weekend’s debt pact have some investors worrying that the deal wouldn’t be enough to avoid the threat of ratings downgrades. There also was concern that the length of the talks and severity of recent market fluctuations were beginning to have a long-term impact on the wider economy.

“Clearly what’s going on in D.C. is affecting the overall economy,” Gary Flam, portfolio manager at Los Angeles-based Bel Air Investment Advisors told the Wall Street Journal. “The longer [the debt debates] go on, the more headwinds we face. The bulls’ argument was [that] you’ll have acceleration in the economy in the second half. That’s being called in to question now.”

Related articles

• Dow stumbles on weak manufacturing report (sfgate.com)
• Stocks turn lower on weak manufacturing report (money.cnn.com)

8-1-11
By LGR Science and Tech News Staff

The Ohio State Highway Patrol say two men were killed Saturday when a replica of a 1910 Wright brothers “B” Flyer they were testing went down north of Dayton, Ohio.

According to reports, the fabric-covered aircraft went down in a farm field about four miles south of the Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport, at about 10:45 a.m. local time, resulting in the deaths of the planes two pilots.

Dead are Don Gum, 73, of Beaver Creek, Ohio, and Mitchell Cary, 64, of Yellow Springs, Ohio.

The Ohio Highway Patrol, the FAA, and National Transportation Safety Board investigators are currently trying to determine what caused the experimental plane to crash but several  witness’ said the plane’s engine was sputtering just before the crash. Another witness said they heard the engine backfire and then a pop as it flew over their home.

Authorities also said they are not sure who was flying the plane at the time of the crash. However, authorities did say both men were experienced pilots.

The crash inquiry is expected to last six to eight months.

The men were flying a model known as “Silver Bird,” which was built by volunteers from a non-profit company called Wright “B” Flyer Inc, an organization dedicated to preserving the heritage of the Wright Brothers and their association with Dayton, Ohio.

The original Wright B, manufactured at the Wright Co. factory in Dayton from 1910-11, saw service in the U.S. Army and civilian operations.

Related articles

• 2 die in crash of Wright Brothers replica (cnn.com)
• Replica of Wright brothers 1910 plane crashes in Ohio, killing 2 – CNN (news.google.com)
• Wright Brothers model kills pilots (independent.co.uk)
• 2 Killed After Wright Bros Replica Plane Crashes (foxnews.com)

8-1-11

By LGR Financial News Staff

Global markets responded favorably to the news of an apparent end to the debt ceiling crisis in Washington late Sunday with shares in Asia jumping nearly two percent and early signs pointing to a big rise at the opening bell on Wall Street.

As trading day began in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was up 170 points, or about 1.7 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500/ASX 200 index, a measure of Australia’s blue-chip stocks, rose 1.95 percent after opening up 0.36 percent before the announcement.

Singapore’s benchmark Straits Times index began trading up 0.77 percent, while South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI edged up 1.69 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index moved 1.49 percent higher.

Futures contracts predicting the open in New York suggested the Dow could open up close to 200 points, or about 1.5 percent.

However, many big investors still remained cautious after the deal was announced by President Barack Obama Sunday Evening, as it remains far from certain that the debt ceiling deal will help the United States avoid losing its triple-A credit rating for the first time in history. Analysts also warn that there are still risks for the US economy and investors will be closely monitoring jobs numbers due out next Friday.

The debt deal hammered out by the White House and Congressional Leaders on Sunday involves raising the debt ceiling through the end of 2012, there will be $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years ($100 billion per year), a bi-partisan “super-committee” comprised of one member of each party from each chamber of Congress will be set up to determine how to best reduce spending and stimulate our economy to report back before November for a vote. Everything will be on the table in this committee.

The deal still needs approval from the full Congress, with the Senate vote tentatively set for 1 p.m. Eastern time on Monday and if it passes, a House vote to be held later in the day.

Related articles

• Asian markets jump as Obama announces US debt deal (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Financial markets show optimism on debt deal (cbsnews.com)

By LGR Financial News Staff

The S&P 500 fell for a fourth straight day, and the market to end mostly lower on Thursday, as buyers stepped back to wait out lawmakers in Washington who are trying to hash out an agreement on the deficit.

The wrangling over the U.S. deficit has boosted volatility as stocks fell throughout the day, leaving insiders saying that investors are skeptical a key vote by Congress would lead to a deal to avoid a default.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 62.44 points, or 0.51 percent, at 12,240.11. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 4.22 points, or 0.32 percent, at 1,300.67 points, or 0.05 percent, at 2,766.25, leaving the S&P 500 down 3.3 percent on the week.

The dollar also dropped toward a postwar low against the yen and the yield on 10-year Treasury notes fell 0.02 percentage point to 2.96 percent..

“During the course of the day, it became clear that even if (Republican House Speaker John) Boehner does get the vote, when it’s turned over to the Senate, the Senate is going to reject it. That seems to be the reason for the selling into strength,” said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

A vote on a Republican sponsored bill to raise the debt limit was expected after the close of trading today in the U.S. House of Representatives. However the Democratic-controlled Senate is also offering up a competing bill, and Democratic leaders have said the House bill will be defeated in the Senate. Analysts also cite dissension among the ranks of GOP lawmakers as reason investors are less certain that a deal to avoid defaulting on the debt can happen.

Even if a deal is reached and the U.S. doesn’t default, investors are, as well, worried that the country might lose its triple-A credit rating. That could raise interest rates and possibly slow down the U.S. economy, which is still recovering from the worst recession in decades.

Related articles

• Can America avoid debt ‘suicide’ (business.financialpost.com)
• US debt fears hit world markets (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Dollar Approaches Postwar Low Versus Yen Before U.S. Budget Vote (businessweek.com)

By LGR Financial News Staff

Stocks drew back deep into negative territory for a fourth straight session Wednesday amid signs of economic softness and a deepening concern over the impasse on the debt crisis in Washington, D.C.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 164 points, or 1.3%, to 12337, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 23 points, or 1.8%, to 1308 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 67 points, or 2.4%, to 2773. The Dow has shed nearly 400 points over the course of its losing streak.

The declines were led by technology and industrial stocks, which were among the weakest stocks in the S&P 500 for a second consecutive session. Caterpillar was off 3.7%, United Technologies fell 2.3%, DuPont fell 2.7% and Alcoa shed 3.2%, while 3M fell 1.6% after dropping 5.4% on Tuesday following its earnings results.

Cisco Systems was the Dow’s biggest decliner, dropping 3.7% after rival Juniper Networks reported weak second-quarter results and offered a downbeat forecast. Juniper tumbled 21%.

In bond markets, Treasury prices also slipped today because of a mediocre five-year note auction and another day of continued political gridlock about raising the debt ceiling.

Much of the market pessimism today came after the Congressional Budget Office released reports that said budget plans put forth by both Senate Democrats and House Republicans wouldn’t reduce the deficit by as much as promised, casting a shadow on the latest round of negotiations over the U.S. debt crisis.

Financial experts are now saying even a last-minute measure to raise the debt ceiling might not be enough to satisfy the markets, since the three major ratings agencies are threatening to lower their top AAA scores for U.S. government bonds, a move which could potentially trigger massive interest rate hikes that will further stymie the economic recovery.

7/27/2011

Gaga and Midler in feud?  How did that happen??

Bette Midler became one of the biggest female talents on the face of the earth when she first performed her cabaret act at famed gay men’s club, The Continental Baths, in the 70′s with piano accompaniment from Barry Manilow.  Lady Gaga Became one of the biggest female talents on the face of the earth when she released her first album, The Fame, in 2008.  What else do these lovely ladies have in common?  They have now both pulled out a character that can only be explained as a swim-impaired mermaid with a lack of water.

When Gaga revealed her wheelchair toting mermaid character, Yuyi, at a performance in Sydney, Australia, Midler was not the happiest person.  She was upset at the thought that someone was using, and copying, an act that she has perfected by performing for more then 20 years as wheelchair toting mermaid, Delores DeLago.

“I’ve been doing singing mermaid in a wheelchair since 1980,” Midler said in a livid response, “You can keep the meat dress and the firecracker tits–Mermaid’s mine.”

Gaga responded with timeliness.

“I had no idea that she did that and I’m a huge Bette Midler fan.” Gaga explained after hearing the accusations, “It was not a Midler tribute in the beginning…because I didn’t know that she’d done it, but I do now and I think it’s great.  Obviously I feel connected to women in theater and women from the past.”

Gaga also added, “Maybe we’re just cut from the same cloth.  I couldn’t hop around in that tail so I just stuck myself in a wheelchair.  All I’ll say is that I admire her and find her to be one of the most brilliant and incredible performers, so that’s all I’ll say.”

via http://bust.com/blog/2011/07/12/would-you-wear-a-steve-buscemi-dress.html

14 July 2011
by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

What in the name of all that is holy are these fashion designers smoking. The notion that some woman wants to wear a dress- in color- splashed with the face of Steve Buscemi all across it larger than life is not only baffling, but, somehow leaves a rather bad taste in the mouth. Let us be honest, though, this is hardly the worst monstrosity to come out of the fashion industry over the last decade or more. After all, there are so many people who seem to design things that make one look more like they walked off the set of Doctor Who circa 1970 rather than out of real life.

What is more, while Buscemi is a decent actor, he is not exactly the prettiest face in the world.

One has to wonder just why this designer would choose to put Buscemi’s face on a dress that, well, gets to go over some of the most attractive parts of a woman’s body…namely all of it. Ugh, and this is what people think should be worn?

I live here in Vermont, give me practical. While I may love wearing skirts and dresses, I’m happier with simple colors (preferably purple), rugged, keeps me warm in winter, cool in summer, and won’t get caught on things. Furthermore, I’d rather not have to try and slink into a dress like that. Vermonters want practical. In fact, most women want practical. They don’t want dresses that are designed to make splashes like this, or cause a stir. For that matter, one has to wonder just what kind of woman or man would go for a woman wearing the face of a man across her body?

Let us just go ahead and say that the creator of this dress should just start discounting it right now, and prepare to do what he needs to in order to destroy them.

However, the model is lovely to look at, if she’s your ‘type’.

Alex Fox

I started with your typical sports. Tee-ball when I was old enough, moving into softball, dance (tap, ballet, jazz), eventually basketball, then when I was in eighth grade, out of nowhere, I turned to my stepmom and said:

“I want to play soccer.”
“What? Why? That’s too manly of a sport.”
“I want to play soccer.”
“No.”

Ok. There went that dream.

For the time being.

Without her approval or signature on the little slip, I decided to change the conversation:

“I want to play volleyball.”
“Oh how fun! That’ll be so much fun for you..!”

So there it was. I was a volleyball player.

NO OFFENSE! I love standing around and hitting balls, but coooome oooon! I wanted to run! I wanted to run and kick balls! But… No. It wasn’t “feminine” enough.

Two years later, I tried again.

“I want to play soccer.”
“No.”
“I’m going to play soccer.”

And so I did. And I LOVED it. Excuse me. LOVE it.

It is something they have been searching for…

Individual sports for women have always had greater success and longevity than team sports. One of the oldest professional sports for women in the United States is golf. Established in 1950, it only took two decades for it to become an international organization. Even women’s professional bowling was established before the 1960s. Women’s tennis in the 1970s. All still going strong.

It is something they have fought for…

Something they have earned…

On the opposite side, we have women’s professional team sports, which have always had a difficult time surviving and stabilizing. Why? Well, some people argue that it is the masculine image of team sports that has inhibited some women from participating. The aggression. The sweat. The contact. The competitiveness… All these “unladylike” attributes… And yet men don’t think women sports are intense or aggressive ENOUGH, so there goes that fan-base…

It is something they are slowly receiving…

Respect.

Not only as women, but as female athletes.

The professional female athletic organizations and systems are finally gaining acceptance as offering respectable and entertaining sports that are worthy of public and national attention. Now it is up to the management of these organizations to attract more spectators in order for them to be considered successful and for women’s athletics to permeate society as a whole.

Considering the lack of acknowledgement soccer has received in the United States, it doesn’t exactly surprise me that rumored gay-thletes are hesitant to come out and embrace their assumed sexuality/relationships (cough-cough Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe). The seductive looks… The matching hair… the on- and off-field chemistry… It’s all there. We see it.

And we LOVE it.

While some of us may agree that it would be extremely liberating and show immense support for the gay community, I personally don’t think it’s solely their decision to keep their relationship and sexual preferences a secret. Their “agents” more than likely view homosexuality as a “threat” to their “brand.” Even some college coaches threaten their players about announcing and admitting to their tendencies while some coaches won’t even allow gay-thletes on their team. I mean even going from the long-haired, ponytail, feminine brunette to a hair cut that just screams LESBIAN!, Wambach took a huge step forward; she now looks the “part” to fit the rumors.

And with the recent, undeniable success of the U.S.A. National Women’s soccer team? The last thing the owners/coaches/players/agents/organizations want is a reason to deter any of their potential fans.

Yet, what they neglect to consider is the number of fans they would ATTRACT by openly admitting to who they are. Showing that they have personalities outside of the soccer facade. A new [and dare-I-say and improved] role model for younger female athletes. Although some may ridicule, others would relentlessly support. Those who may have never been interested in soccer before, now would be.

BASICALLY, all I’m saying…

Abby. Megan. When you read this, just know:

1. Your sexuality is acknowledged.
2. You should embrace it.
3. You have more support than you know.
4. You would make one HOT couple.

GO U.S.A.!

Want more information on this or other gay-thletes? Contact me, Alex Fox, at theunluckyfox@gmail.com.

Summer is in full swing, so what better way to celebrate the season than by spritzing on a flowery scent? Lately, floral designs have been popping up on everything from sunglasses to rompers, so it makes perfect sense that the biggest names in fashion are creating perfumes to match. Here are three fragrances that will leave you smelling better than a blooming garden – even if you live in a city of concrete.

Hello, Jasmine! You’ll want to stay with this luscious scent for so much longer than your summer fling.

Diorissimo Eau de Parfum, $77.00 (1.7 oz), Dior.com

This instant mood-lifter is perfect for days spent stuck behind a desk at work (when you just want to frolic on the grass!). The flowery mix is refreshingly sweet, yet subtle enough to not be overwhelming.

Clinique Happy, $42.50 (1.7 oz), Clinique.com

Leave it to Burberry to create a fragrance perfect for the butch woman. The citrus and floral combination has a tinge of white musk and spice, making this scent crisp and woodsy.

Burberry Touch Eau de Toilette, $57 (1.7 oz), Sephora.com

7/7/2011

Most people know how controversial the world of child beauty contests can be.  The Learning Channel‘s Toddlers and Tiaras reveals to the world what parents will do to help their child succeed in the ruthless world of beauty and competition.  Sometimes the show is extremely hard to watch, because some of the things the parents put their children through are harsh and cruel.  However, most episodes show how dedicated the children really are when it comes to competitions like this.  Some of them actually love the spot light, and the work, including a 7 year old boy who loves to compete up on stage with the girls.

Last night, on the premier of the latest episode, the show introduced self-described “diva” Brock Ritter.  According to his mother, Tori Ritter, he became interested in pageants at the age of 2, and when expressing his dream at the age of 5 was bullied by fellow students.

“We dealt with it in kindergarten,” Tori explains during an interview on E!. “A couple of boys in his class said dancing was a girls thing. It took the teacher telling them that football players take ballet for them to understand.”

During the E! interview Tori talked about her son very proudly.

“He loves school, he loves to read,” She said.  She also explained that he is currently in a “hardcore” advanced reading program that has him reading way beyond his age group.

He is also a “tap dancing machine,” she explained, “I asked him ‘What kind of dance do you want to do?’ and he said tap. He’s been dancing for six years now.”

As anyone would ask, where is the father in all of this, and how does he feel about it?  Well according to Tori, Dad is the one mixing and cutting all the music Brock dances to, and his routines are a family affair.  “We don’t work with a coach, we play around at home.”  She said.

Brock has already become a pro at dance and gymnastics, and has earned a half dozen first-place trophies.  He also dreams of performing on stage on Broadway one day.  He even makes up his own routines and songs at home according to Tori.

“He’s not your typical kid.”  She explained.

7/4/2011

Almost everyone remembers watching the animated show Smurfs on NBC when they were little.  Those little blue people fascinated the child’s mind with life lessons and quirky humor for many years before being taken off air in December of 1989.  The show aired an amazing 256 episodes with a total of 421 stories.  Released on the big screen on July 29th 2011 Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and the whole gang returned for a 3D extravaganza staring vocal talents such as Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live, Kenan & Kel), Katy Perry, Paul Reubens (Peewee’s Playhouse), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), and many more.

The Smurfs producers went way out of the way to promote the film giving a new definition to the phrase “Smurf Fever.”  Juzcar, a remote village in southern Spain, which sits in the Genal Valley and is less than 2 miles wide, allowed Sony Pictures to paint it blue agreeing to host the film’s world premier on June 16th.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the project took 12 local painters who used up 4,000 liters of blue paint causing Juzcar to look like a giant blue dot in the midst of beautiful mountains and forests.  The town has already had an incredible increase in tourism.

Sony has agreed to restore the buildings to their original colors, however, it has been said that the town is considering leaving them all blue.  Whoever said there’s no such thing as a Smurf Village needs to recheck their information.

6/30/2011

I remember when I was young, going to piano classes that my mom would pay for, and enjoying it so much.  The feel of the keys beneath my fingers and the harmonious sound of the notes that filled the room as I practiced.  My instructor always told me I was a really fast learner, and playing the piano quickly became a favorite pastime of mine.  Throughout the years I have drifted away from playing, however the memories still rest deep in my mind of those wonderful days sitting in front of the worlds most beautiful instrument.

From Beethoven to Fiona Apple, many people, gay and straight, have embraced the beauty of the piano’s sound.  Thanks to British artist Luke Jerram thousands of people in NYC can join the musicians around the world by sitting at a piano and performing for the public for free.

Jerram, sponsored in New York by the non-profit arts group “Sing for Hope,” has placed 88 decorated pianos around NYC for public display and use.  Debuting in 2008, the artist’s musical project has been touring the world ever since.  The decorated street pianos have been seen, so far, in eight cities around the world, with more to come.

What is awesome about this display is that all 88 pianos have been decorated differently by well known, and not so well known, visual artists.  There are pink pianos, rainbow pianos, spatter painted pianos, abstract pianos, flower power pianos, and many more.

“A blank slate for everyone’s creativity” is what Jarram is calling his piano installments.  Which is a very true statement.  Each host city the project hits is given brand new pianos that are painted, and designed, by local students and artists, and then placed randomly around the city.  After the instillation is shut down, the pianos are donated to schools and community centers so the music never stops.

People throughout NYC were skeptical about playing the pianos at first, but not for long.  Soon enough sounds of Beethoven, Billy Joel, Bach, Elton John, Mozart, Alicia Keys, and many more pianists started to flow through the summer air through strange fingers.  These sounds will probably never leave.

The piano instillation will soon be seen in other cities such as Cincinnati, San Jose, and Grand Rapids later this year.  The NYC instillation can  be seen, and played, through July 5th.

Have you ever been tempted to head to work in a pair of shorts on a blisteringly hot summer day? If you have, I’m right there with you. After all, it doesn’t get easier than slipping into a cool pair of cutoffs that go with just about anything in your closet.

We dreamers are in luck: somehow, the once uptight office style gods have loosened up -and employees everywhere are finally cooling down.

Done right, shorts can be a stylish addition to your workplace gear. Just be sure to pair them with a crisp button down or blouse and your usual dress shoes.

Meet your new summer fling: these shorts come in a variety of sizes and are very professional-looking. But they already had me at the price.

Luxe Stretch Notch-Back Shorts, $29.99, Express.com

While their name may suggest otherwise, these linen Bermudas belong anywhere but the sand. Butches, femmes, and everyone in between can add these to their cubicle wear.

Ralph by Ralph Lauren Jodie Linen Bermuda Shorts, $71.40, LordandTaylor.com

Don’t be caught with these on your short list:

-Daisy Dukes or any other type of super-short shorts. Those belong only in the Dukes of Hazzard or on the sand.

-shorts so loose they look like they’ll be around your ankles in .05 seconds. Despite what your girlfriend tells you in the bedroom, we would rather not see your underwear at the next business meeting.

-flip flops. They’re never appropriate in any office, anywhere. Need we say more?

Tip:

If you’re unsure whether your boss will approve of you donning a pair, look around you. My office is young, creative, and very trendy; the shorts craze has already caught on over here. But if suits and ties are the norm, you should probably save your shorts for the weekend.

To some, British comedienne and writer Dawn French is the Fat Lady in the portrait who opens the door to Gryffindor Tower, to others, the star of The Vicar of Dibley. For thirty years, she has been partnered with Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fame in a team that formed part of the center of a generation of British comedians and actors whose one-degree-of-separation includes Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and just about everyone in British television and movies who’s around 50 years old. People tend to forget that Laurie, of House, and Fry, of Bones, started as a comedy duo within an overlapping group of skit comedy shows.

To women of a certain size, though, Dawn French was an earth goddess who celebrated her “19 stones” weight (265 pounds) on a five-foot tall body and posed nude for some absolutely fabulous artistic portraits during her “Big Is Beautiful” campaign aimed at improving British women’s self-image problems. She carried that weight with far more dignity than Kirstie Alley, but could make fun of it constantly in Dibley with candy-bar binges and jokes about growing up nurturing dreams of being a super model, but never getting tall enough. Geraldine Granger’s romantic encounters were both glorious hosannas to huge boobs and poignant reminders of the manner in which society equates boney rib cages with sex appeal. I was disappointed when she was cast as the Fat Lady in the Gryffindor portrait. I wanted her to play Madame Maxime, the headmistress of Beauxbatons. The Vicar of Dibley was both slapstick comedy and social commentary, touching on such issues as hunger in the third world and the quiet coming-out of an older gay man.

Dawn French, now

At this week’s Glamour Magazine awards in London, French revealed her new body, nearly 25% slimmer than her former self, having shed “four-and-a-half stones” (63 lbs.). Still favoring the tent-like tunic-and-pants look of the past (where are Trini and Suzanne when someone needs to learn What Not To Wear?) Dawn’s new figure became the headline, instead of her award-winning first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous. She had previously written Dear Fatty, which was not addressed to herself, but was a collection of fictionalized letters to her jokingly-nicknamed, skinnier partner Jennifer Saunders.

The novel was the result of her British-cliche separation and divorce from fellow comedian Lennie Henry, best known to American PBS audiences as the title character in the series Chef!  They continued to share their Cornwall home for nearly a year after separating, just as Prince Andrew and Fergie have continued to share homes. A Tiny Bit Marvellous draws on the people in French’s life for the story of a family in meltdown. French retreated to a few rooms in her home and began writing as a coping mechanism. She continued performing primarily as a guest, but French and Saunders were on a hiatus from their joint work as writers, directors, producers and performers in a broad range of projects while Saunders successfully battled breast cancer.

French explained the weight loss as something that just evolved. She reached the age of 50 and accepted what professionals had been saying about her weight for years in their condemnation of her “Big Is Beautiful” campaign – being overweight is unhealthy. For the sake of her daughter Billie, (now 19) French changed her “life priorities” from “my daughter, writing, chocolate and kissing” to her daughter, writing, walking and kissing, though she’s not revealing who she’s kissing these days. In the course of her career, she’s kissed Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, chef Gordon Ramsay and Hugh Grant – and that doesn’t even include her co-stars. French’s “diet” consisted of making healthy food choices and doing a lot of walking. Though nowhere near the size 0 that is the current standard of beauty on both sides of the ocean, French is poised to become the next role model in the mold of Queen Latifah – a woman who can publicly express the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and strong body while still being voluptuous. We don’t have to trade in our grapefruits for Keira Knightly’s grapes. We can exalt in our natural cleavage instead of relying on Victoria’s Secret trickery.

Now fully recovered from both breast cancer and the debilitating effects of chemo, Saunders is apparently moving ahead with a reunion show for AbFab with Joanna Lumley, and hopefully to more joint projects with French. As individuals, they are extraordinary performers, as a partnership, they have always been greater than the sum of their parts, no matter how zaftig those parts were.

Related articles

• Dawn French is dating again and “open to marrying again” after her split from Lenny Henry (mirror.co.uk)
• Dawn French reveals health fears inspired her weight loss (mirror.co.uk)
• Comic Strip returns for one-off potshot at Tony Blair (guardian.co.uk)
• My Crushes (mradclyffe.wordpress.com)
• The 9 0′Clock News – Victoria Beckham converts her gym to a new nursery (heatworld.com)
• AbFab To Return, Sweetie (joemygod.blogspot.com)
• All jokes aside, there’s nothing funny about obesity (thepunch.com.au)
• Radio review: French and Saunders (guardian.co.uk)

It’s hard not to love the maxi dress. Add one to your wardrobe and you’ll have a go-to, perfectly pulled together outfit in seconds.

Since lengthy dresses are on the racks everywhere from Forever 21 to Marc Jacobs this season, you’re bound to find a winner without having to go through the stress of multiple shopping trips.

Lesbian fashionista and Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon has been spotted rocking the maxi dress on more than one occasion.

Best of all, they come in a seemingly endless number of prints, so you’ll be hard pressed to find style copycats strutting the streets in your getup. Here are four maxi dresses we can’t wait to get our hands on:

Nautical Stripes Maxi Dress, $14.50, Forever21.com

Annie Maxi Dress by Love, $36, Topshop.com

Element “Garland” Floral-Print Maxi Dress, $54.50, Bloomingdales.com

Marc Jacobs Rex Tiered Low-Back Maxi Dress, $358, Bergdorfgoodman.com

Tip:

If you’re on the short side, wedges will give you instant height and make your legs look longer. So, don’t be afraid to scoop up a maxi!

(Full disclosure requires that I mention that Village Realty is sponsoring OBX Pride)

In honor of Pride month, I’ve decided to dedicate this week to the sexier side of lesbian love. You know, the part that doesn’t involve U-Hauls, cat hair, rescue dogs and your best friend telling you she’s dating your ex.

Sensual product company Athena’s Home Novelties offers Spa and adult toys that will relax and excite you. Athena’s works like a tupperware party and has products that caters to the lesbian community. They encourage lesbians hosting Athena parties to display items geared towards girl love. Every day this week I will be putting up a new product review for you!

Let’s start at the beginning with some lube!

Embrace

Embrace is a water-based, sugar-free lube that won’t stain your sheets. It comes in flavor free, Wet Watermelon and Strawberry Bliss. I highly recommend the Strawberry Bliss. It smells and tastes great, which makes it good for oral.

Embrace has a pleasing viscosity, not too thin and not too thick. It’s also not sticky and will come off with a quick rinse. If you or your partner have severe issues with dryness, this probably isn’t hardcore enough for you. But I recommend it for everyone else. I give this lube the lesbian stick-her of approval.

To buy Embrace (and you know you wanna) click here: http://www.athenashn.com/StoreCart/viewItem.aspx?idProduct=169

Cleopatra’s Secret

Cleopatra’s Secret is a female response crème designed to heighten sensitivity. The bottle recommends that you lovingly apply this lotion to the clitoris for best results. This lotion comes in two scents, strawberry and crème de menthe. I tried the crème de menthe and the smell was a tad too strong for me. You and your partner both need to be really into mint if you try this flavor. You also need to be into the sensation of cold, as it will give you a chilly burst when you apply it. Overall, not my personal cup of tea but worth it if you are a big fan of minty cool freshness.

To give Cleopatra’s Secret a spin around your bean, click here: http://www.athenashn.com/StoreCart/viewItem.aspx?idProduct=143

Related articles

• Interview with Dawn Mueller, Author of “A Single Year” (lezgetreal.com)
• IN HEAT: Is She Hot Under Her Collar or Under Her Skirt, Comes to the NYC EAT Festival in May (lezgetreal.com)
• Lez Ask the Femme: I Want Sexier Bras! (lezgetreal.com)

Image via Wikipedia

06/03/2011- by Natasia Langfelder

Summer has finally hit NYC this week and women are donning their summer dresses and trying out new looks. The hottest trend? A Blue/Green eye. Not like, 80′s blue where you pile frosty shadow from your lashline to your eyebrow. Here are some tips on how to rock this trend right.

Blue Glitter Eyeliner

A little of this goes a looong way. Find a blue glitter eyeliner, such as Air Guitar from Urban Decay and draw a very thin line from the top inner corner

of your eye and sweep out. Don’t wear shadow with this look and don’t make the line too thick. This will overpower the liner and make you look like a crazed mermaid.

Green Eye Shadow

There is something incredibly fun about painting your lids in a color that’s as bold as vibrant green. MAC just released a collection of shadows called “Surf, Baby!” These limited edition shadows are perfect for the summer. Start by applying a sheer, shimmery light gold to your entire lid. Be sure to highlight your inner eye and browbone for some drama. I recommend using “Short Shorts” for this step. Then take a green like “Surf USA” and sweep out from the middle of your eyelid and just beyond the outer corners. Work some of the shadow up to the crease and blend so that you don’t have a hard division of the two colors. For a nighttime look, add a thin line of black eyeliner and tons of mascara.

Once you are all pretty, go out and find yourself a girl. Good luck, ladies!

Related articles

• Lez Ask the Femme: I Want Sexier Bras! (lezgetreal.com)
• Spring Trend Alert: Purple Frame Sunglasses (lezgetreal.com)
• Queer Themed Film “Spork” Hits the Quad in NYC (lezgetreal.com)

Image via Wikipedia

06/03/2011- by Natasia Langfelder

Mega-retailer and my personal favorite place to shop, Macy’s is celebrating Pride Month in a big way this year. Macy’s has dubbed the celebration, which will include events and sales, Pride + Joy.

Macy’s released a press statement saying:

“Macy’s is proud to recognize and honor our LGBT employees and customers during Pride Month with our nationwide Pride + Joy campaign. These festive celebrations and community initiatives showcase our steadfast commitment to inclusiveness in all aspects of our business,” said Corliss Fong, Macy’s vice president of diversity strategies. “During Pride Month and throughout the year, we will remain committed to supporting the LGBT community through a variety of initiatives including our long-standing partnership with the Human Rights Campaign.” [Source]

Macy’s will also be holding events all over the country. The events range from fashions shows and same-sex friendly registry booths to celebrity events with Olympic Skater Johnny Weir, Miss Lawrence from Real Housewives of Atlanta and Pandora Boxx and Alexis Mateo from Rupaul’s Drag Race. These are such awesome celebs to include as they really challenge the traditional rules of gender and are not “family friendly.” Johnny Weir was even excluded from a national ice skating tour because of his deemed “not family friendly” status. So it’s great to see a large mainstream corporation embracing these individuals. Especially when Urban Outfitters and Target have been caught donating money to homophobic politicians. Yes, I know no celesbians were included, but I’ll let that one slide. Hopefully we can get one in next year.

So go to the events! It’s a great place to feel comfortable shopping and to meet other gays. Who knows? Make some eye contact with a cutie and you might even score a date. For a listing of all the events in your area visit: www.macys.com/events.

For more info on their Pride celebration check out www.macys.com/pride

Related articles

• Interview with Dawn Mueller, Author of “A Single Year” (lezgetreal.com)
• Spring Trend Alert: Splurge or Save on Butterfly Print Dresses (lezgetreal.com)
• LGBT Wedding Trends to Watch For 2011 (lezgetreal.com)

It’s summer, the season that exists solely for the reason to ogle women who are wearing less clothes. I guess that’s why I’ve gotten so many bra questions from my lovely readers lately. I’m sooo not complaining.

Via Frederick's of Hollywood

Let’s get down to the dirty dirty:

Dear Natasia,

I’m a big girl. Okay, I’m not a big girl but I have big “girls.” It’s rough for me to find a bra that’s cute and sexy. Most of the bra’s around for D size boobs are plain. Victoria’s Secret has really cute bras but they are kinda out of my price range. Do you know where I should shop to get reasonably priced but sexy bras?

-Boobilicious

Hi Boobilicious,

Thanks for writing in! Let me tell you when to shop at Victoria’s Secret, once during the summer and once during the winter. That is when they have their semi-annual sales. Bras that go for $60 a pop will be on sale for $15. The only problem with these sales is that there is no guarantee they will have the size or the style that you want. But most women will be able to find something they like for a great price. Check out the Victoria’s Secret website for more details: www.victoriassecret.com

I also recommend that you check out Frederick’s of Hollywood. This is one of my favvvvvv stores for cute, sexy, affordable pieces. The blue bra pictured is $34, but if you buy two at a time they are only $26. How awesome is that? Shop full figured bras here: http://www.fredericks.com/

If you are comfortable shopping online, you can check out www.DivaBras.com A few of DivaBras products were one of Oprah’s favorite things, so I’m pretty sure that means they are worth checking out. They offer pretty, if not over the top sexy, feminine bras for under $40.

You can also always go with the old standard, Wonderbra. The classic look is totes in right now.

Good luck with your search! Send me some pictures when you find what you’re looking for!

Have a question for me? Email me at askafemme@yahoo.com

Related articles

• Lez Ask the Femme: Are Padded Bras False Advertising? (lezgetreal.com)
• Lez Ask the Femme Vlog: Help! My Girlfriend is a Sports Freak! (lezgetreal.com)
• Interview with Dawn Mueller, Author of “A Single Year” (lezgetreal.com)

Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America

According to the conservatives, America has the “greatest health care system in the world.” The fact that we’re only ranked 37^th by all measures of health care delivery never breaks they unflinching faith in our medical system.

Maybe this will……

In 2005, we had critical shortages of 70 widely used drugs. By the end of last year, that number had grown to 211. Though some shortages have been resolved, another 89 drugs were added to the shortage list in the first three months of 2011. Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians said that “It’s just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient’s life and we find out there isn’t any.” The drugs that are in short supply range from treatments for cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest.

Most of the shortages are in injectable medications used in hospitals. The shortages can last from weeks to many months, placing patients in jeopardy. A shortage of cytarabine caused delays in treatments for luekemia. Shortages can be caused by recalls for contaminated vials, trouble importing ingredients, increases in demand or factories shut down for quality upgrades. Factories can also be shut down because they have been manufacturing improperly prepared drugs and the FDA has had to step in, which was the cause of a 2009 shortage of generic metaprolol, a medication that regulates heart rhythm.

Among the drugs in short supply are a sedative used on death row, Thiotepa which is used for bone marrow transplants, Norepiniephrine injections for septic shock, Acetylcysteine for cystic fibrosis, a range of electrolytes needed for premature infants and tube feedings for the critically ill, some leuprolide hormone injections used in fertility treatments, some drugs for ADHD and injections used for cardiac arrest in ERs.

There have been no records kept of patient impact, but the Institute for Safe Medication Practices reported two incidents of patient deaths from the wrong dose of a substitute for morphine.

The FDA has asked that foreign companies ship forms of the short drugs that are not usually used in America. That has helped ease the shortage of Thoitepa and Propofol, an anesthesia. Some American companies are increasing production, but other aspects of the shortage are not easily dealt with, like stockpiling by companies and shutdowns for misproduction.

Congress is getting involved as well. Sen. Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, is asking the Federal Trade Commission to consider possible shortages when reviewing drug company mergers. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, has introduced a bill that would require drug manufacturers to notify the FDA if there is a potential for a shortage. While the FDA cannot force a company to manufacture a drug, they can use other methods to prevent a shortage, such as notifying competing companies so that they can increase supplies or speeding up approval of changes in the manufacturing methods. Sen. Klobuchar said, “No patient’s life should have to be at risk when there is a drug somewhere,” that could fill the gap.

Pharmaceutical companies have been under attack for some time in America for creating new drugs by making small tweaks in old ones to hold on to their patents, creating combination drugs that are nothing more than two existing drugs that together cost less than the combo, advertising so effectively that doctors have complained about people demanding drugs they don’t need, and charging far more for medications than their costs in other countries. Allowing critical shortages in almost 300 vitally important drugs isn’t going to do anything for big Pharmas image.

Related articles

• FDA approves new HIV drug from Johnson Johnson (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Global drug shortage hits Toronto (healthzone.ca)
• Thyroid Drug Shortage Presents Tough Choices for Cancer Patients (nytimes.com)
• Drug’s Shortage Prompts Finger-Pointing (online.wsj.com)
• Drug Shortages Continue – UCLA Spends 2 Hours A Day Checking on Cancer Drug Availability – ASHP Website Lists All Current Shortages (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• National drug shortage putting Houston patients at risk (chron.com)
• Senators rail at big pharma’s secretive lobbying (cbsnews.com)
• “Drug Shortage Keeping Parents From Stupefying Their Kids” and related posts (holycoast.blogspot.com)
• Leukemia Drug Shortage Forcing Hospitals to Turn Away Patients (abcnews.go.com)
• Pharmacists concerned amid reports of cancer drug shortages (ctv.ca)

Old Navy has decided to turn it up a notch on all those anti-LGBT haters by releasing a special line of Pride wear for those that love rainbows, equality and PRIDE.

Rainbow Goodness

The new rainbow-themed line will have four designs in all the sizes Old Navy has to offer (women, men and babies). Pricing will range from $7.50 – $14.50 (have to love Old Navy prices), so you can buy every shirt to complete your fabulous summer wardrobe.

Gone are the days when you had to go to a more “upscale” store to purchase LGBT themed clothing with a price tag to match. It is nice to see a recognizable clothing company step out promoting quality.

To those who are fans of Dan Savage and his “it Gets Better” project, 10% from each shirt sold will go towards the organization. Although, I am not a big fan of Savage by any means – I do love to flaunt my gayness when I can – so I will be sure to pick one of these up for Pride this year.

The rest of the shirt designs can be seen here.

It’s wedding season! Gay, straight or otherwise you are probably gearing up to attend someone else’s special day. Or maybe you are thinking of planning your own big event? Or daydreaming about the hot barista and planning a wedding before she even knows your name? Here are some of the top trends that the gays are employing into their nuptial celebrations so your big day doesn’t turn into a “My Big Fat Gay Wedding” disaster:

1. Destination Weddings

This trend used to be called “eloping” or “We’re going to Canada where it’s legal” but Destination Wedding sounds so much sexier, doesn’t it? Why is this trend popular? Because there is a one in 10 chance that you live in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, so most of us are going to be traveling for our big day so make it fabulous! Don’t sneak away by yourselves, hire a planner or quit your job and devote yourself to planning your big day in an exotic locale. Iowa, the gay-friendly state that could, is reporting a boost in tourism directly related to same-sex weddings. Giving back to a community that has recognized our rights is a great way to celebrate your love! Plus, I hear the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye there…or something like that.

2. Joint Bachelor/ette Parties

File this one under Best. Trend. Ever. Joint Bachelor and bachelorette parties mean that the wedding isn’t going to be called off because someone got drunk and accidentally groped a stripper. If you can party with your spouse-to-be you avoid all the drama, hurt feelings, jealousy and anxiety that live hand-in-hand with these bashes. Or you can sleep with the stripper together! Whatever works.

3. Furry Flowergirls and Ring Bearers

I know lesbians, we love our pussycats but maybe putting them in our wedding ceremonies is crossing the line? Apparently, the answer is no. Cats in tophats and dogs in bridesmaid dresses are taking over the internet. I for one, am guilty of following this trend. My 3 pound Yorkie wore lilac silk to my wedding. The only rule to remember when putting your pooch in the nuptial line of fire is be kind. Make sure you have someone to put your pet someplace safe once the festivities are underway and make sure they have food and water. Plus, keep any animal tormenting children far, far away.

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4. Same-sex Wedding Cake Toppers

Cute and kitch, many LGBT couples are opting to put two little Grooms or two little Brides at the top of their cakes. Wedding cake toppers have gone out of style among the hetero set, with outrageously priced and fondant sleek cakes being the norm. However, if you are queer- go ahead and shout it from the top of your cake!

5. Green Weddings

No, I’m not talking about color schemes, I’m talking saving the earth! Gays love a good trip down altruism lane and we have led the charge when it comes to environmental friendliness. When I got married last September, we contracted with a printer that used all recycled paper. This meant that our save-the-dates, invitations, menus, place cards and thank-you notes were all green! We also used a party bus to shuttle people to and from their hotels, that really cut down on the CO2 emissions and let our guests get as drunk as they wanted! Totally a win-win for all involved.

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Mass. Sen. Scott Brown

RomneyCare, the very successful inspiration for ObamaCare isn’t just coming back to haunt “possible” Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, it’s finally bitten Massachusetts’ Republican Senator Scott Brown.

Scott Brown did not endear himself to Massachusetts voters who love their health care insurance system when he bartered the ObamaCare public option into oblivion for his vote. Those people know how good their own health care insurance system is, just the way the people of Hawaii know and the people of Vermont know. Now, Brown has aligned himself with Maine’s two Republican senators in cutting themselves loose from Paul Ryan’s budget plan which would privatize Medicare. They call it a voucher system, promising it will “save Medicare” by handing out vouchers worth $6,000 a year for seniors to purchase private health insurance. In Brown’s own words, in an opinion piece for Politico, it’s not acceptable. “The cost of private plans will outgrow premium support – and the elderly will be forced to pay ever higher deductibles and co-pays.” Those deductibles and co-pays frequently make the difference between whether or not a person seeks medical care. The tendency is to avoid doctors until absolutely necessary, which is counterproductive because “when absolutely necessary” probably means it’s going to cost more than it would have in the early stages.

Brown has criticized President Obama for not offering an alternative to Ryan’s plan, which is disingenuous actually since the President’s plan calls for getting more revenue by making our tax system more fair and balanced, and also concentrates on finding and eliminating the waste and fraud that have plagued both the Medicare and Medicaid systems. He also praised Ryan for being the man who “finally jumpstarted the debate.” Yup – he sure did that. We all saw how well jumpstarted it has been watching those angry town hall meetings the Republicans endured during the Easter recess.

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too big for the limo?

Well, we have no idea who made the winning bid, but Princess Beatrice’s hat from last month’s Royal Wedding has been sold for $131,341.47 on E-Bay.

The Phillip Treacy creation has had a great run as one of the best millinery jokes of all times. We are all waiting to see what the new owner plans to do with this piece of Royal history. The hat, along with sister Princess Eugenie’s lopsided-hem outfit, has been blamed for the Queen removing the 24/7 bodyguards from her wayward granddaughters. Her Majesty was not amused by the diversion these girls’ fashion non-sense provided on Wedding Day. Her Majesty is rarely amused when members of her family can be parodied, satirized, lampooned and giggled upon with such ease, and a half-decent knowledge of PhotoShop.

The proceeds of the auction will go to “Little Bea’s” favorite charities. No, not her mother the terminally fiscally-stressed Fergie, but Unicef and Children in Crisis.

And I apologize for initially describing this valuable and expensive designer creation as a hollowed-out teddy bear. At approximately four times the height of the Coronation Crown, it was clearly a bow. Just blame it on Ascot Gavotte Shock – too many utterly British racing meet hats for one morning. Come on – it was what, 5 a.m.? I’m not used to seeing hats like those without thoroughbreds behind them. Horses, that is. Speaking of bows – wouldn’t it have been fun if any of these outrageous hats had had to curtsey to Her Majesty the way the bride did?

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U. S. Dept. of Health & Human Services

Nine months before my mother died, she underwent vascular surgery to repair a graft in her groin that had been part of a previous surgery involving a stent and an aortic aneurysm. She spent 48 hours in the hospital. There were no stitches over the surgical site, just a “wet to dry” dressing. Her discharge orders literally said “daughters are teachable.” We took her home in the back seat of a Ford Escort. The next morning, a nurse from the Visiting Nurse service arrived to teach us how to remove her dressing, lay gauze in the open gaping wound, pour in sterile water and lay in more gauze before taping the whole thing down with a special covering that wouldn’t tear her fragile skin. In a major screw-up, her follow-up appointment was not scheduled in a timely manner and she was off her Plavix long enough because of the surgery to cause a mini-stroke 32 days later.

Her doctor’s explanation for sending her home was that this was the procedure decided upon by the cost containment division of her hospital. I’ll spare them. Let’s just say it is one of the most prestigious hospitals in New England. I seriously adore this hospital. The doctors are incredible, the services are exceptional, the whole place usually operates with a precision I have rarely seen in medical facilities. Still….48 hours after major surgery on a woman in her eighties? Yeah, we were teachable. We should be. Mom was a highly-respected nurse and trained us very well. We’re both intelligent and responsible women. But how many families could have coped with such a situation?

Which leads us to the objections being raised to the draft regulations coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services for the new Health Care law’s “accountable care organizations” – those networks of doctors and hospitals which would collaborate on keeping Medicare patients healthier and save money for taxpayers. The law envisions setting up these networks to improve health care delivery. The aspect that is currently being put together in my home town involves computerizing all doctors’ offices and pharmacies, all nursing care facilities of every kind so that records are shared instantly. It’s driving my doctor’s staff nuts, but as an employee in an assisted living facility, I’d love for our staff to be computer literate enough to put our files and prescription orders into this system.

The American Medical Group Association, which represents almost 400 large medical groups and provide care for 1 of every 3 Americans, has raised objections to the proposed regulations. Among their members are the Cleveland Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah and Geisinger Health Systems in Pennsylvania. The claim the rules are so unacceptable, it would be impossible for them to work.

The AMGA, whose motto is “The Best Medicine In America, The Best Medicine For America”, has published a compensation and finanical survey for the past 22 years. It presents detailed date on what everyone is charging for their services. Such surveys can be used to set fees that are identical to each other and restrict competition.

AMGA President Donald Fisher said “It’s not just a simple tweak, it’s a significant change that needs to be made,” to the regulations. According to the group, there would be no flexibility for patients who need more expensive treatments or closer follow-up. So? How is that any different from the rules imposed by insurance companies?

The administration is gathering input from many sources to help them put the regulations together. Nothing is going to be easy with the implementation of this law. Everyone who has a stake in maintaining the status quo in medical care will fight to keep their system going. Let’s all make sure we are moving full speed ahead to standing still.

The resistence to making changes to cut costs is predictable. Every industry resists changes. It is easier to go with the momentum than to stop and assess what can be better done.

Our medical system is a mess. The hospitals that serve the poor are in deep debt and facing attempts to close them by state legislatures. We have a desperate shortage of general practitioners. We have an overabundance of specialists. Nurses have been driven from patient care to administration, while we increase the amount of responsibility that can be assigned to less-trained personnel. Doctors refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. An estimated 30 million of us have no health insurance and that number is going to rise as fewer and fewer of us can find full time jobs with benefits. We are falling further and further behind health care delivery in other countries while our costs go higher and higher. We have the most technologically advanced health care system in the world, and are rapidly reaching the point where only a small percentage of us will be able to afford the most basic health care.

The Affordable Health Care Act wasn’t perfect. It lacked the public option so many of us wanted. Most of us either approve of the law or think it didn’t go far enough. The Republicans have used those “not far enough” poll results to claim that the majority of Americans are opposed to the law. The majority of us want better health care at lower costs and accessibility for everyone. The last thing we need is the government being pushed by the profit-driven aspects of the system to limit the reforms.

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The Detroit that's not in the commercial.

While you read this, bear in mind that House Speaker John Boehner has just said that there must be “trillions of dollars” of cuts from the 2012 budget before the House Republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling. If we do not raise the ceiling, if we default on our debts by so much as 24 hours, we will literally crash the world’s economy. The Republicans are insisting that all of the cuts come from the 12% of our budget that is “discretionary spending” – that means all our social safety net programs, and from Medicare and Social Security. None must come from defense (where we spend almost half the money spent in the world on defense) and there must be no changes to our tax code or increase in taxes. This is blackmail. In any other scenario, threatening an action that would cause devastating consequences unless a payment is received would be a criminal act.

I can’t really say that the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans ever interested me too much. That changed when I read that there are almost 500 billionaires in America. Billionaires? Whatever happened to millionaires? When did we hit the point where there were more billionaires than the 400? Just to put these 400 in perspective, they hold as much wealth as the bottom 155,000,000 Americans. Allegedly, if we stripped them of all their wealth, it still wouldn’t amount to the national debt. No one is suggesting they be stripped.

The 400 is an interesting list. Let’s get the good guys out of the way first. Forty-three of the 400 have taken the Buffett-Gates giving pledge. Four of them are in the top ten – Gates, Buffett, Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg.

The other six in the top ten are Kochs and Waltons. The exemplify almost all of the people who have a company or industry behind their names. These are the owners of companies that, because they are privately held are classified in the tax codes as “small businesses.” HCA Health, which owns hospitals, has 190,000 employees. Cargill has 130,500. The Kochs have 70,000. The Waltons are the largest employers in the world. These business owners qualify for every tax break that is sold to the public as helping “small businesses.” They also have the ability to keep their personal taxable incomes very low. It’s a little complicated. A company owner can draw only as much money as he or she actually needs for personal expenses. With a really, really good accountant and tax lawyers, H. Ross Perot paid less in personal income taxes in 1991 than a family of four with a median income. Twenty of these 400 made their money in the oil and gas industries, which have their own sets of tax breaks and incentives on top of those available to small businesses.

So, what would these small business owners want from our elected officials? The answer is in a simple phrase “tax expenditures.” Those are the hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny little tax breaks, incentives, deductions, exclusions, whatevers that are available to these companies and their owners. “Tax expenditures” is a true government oxymoron. There is nothing expended by the government. These are the things that prevent the government collecting taxes. Calling them “tax barriers” would be more accurate. Even publicly traded companies – companies that issue stock that can theoretically be purchased by anyone – have their own set of “tax expenditures.” Those are the breaks that not only made it possible for General Electric to pay no taxes, but got them over $3 billion from the U. S. Treasury in tax returns – on the taxes they didn’t pay.

103 of the 400 made their billions in hedge funds, money management, investments, leveraged buyouts, equity trading, and venture capitol. While my friend was watching her 401k lose over $60,000 in one day, these people were moving into the billionaire classification. They have one big tax advantage – the capital gains tax rate. Let’s just take one man – hedge fund manager John Paulson. One one deal, the one Goldman Sachs admitted was a shitty one, he turned over a $3 billion profit for his clients. He was gambling that our mortgages would be foreclosed because the people holding our adjustable rate mortgages decided it was better to foreclose than to keep the rates affordable. As the manager of the hedge fund, he only paid the 15% capital gains tax rate on his commission, instead of the 35% income tax rate. That’s a 20% savings. It isn’t just the investors who only pay a 15% tax on the profit they make when they sell stocks, it’s the people who arrange those sales who also benefit from those tax rates. One quarter of these people are on this list because of the deregulation of the financial industry. The capital gains tax was instituted to encourage people to invest in businesses, not to push their brokers into the Forbes 400.

So, what would these 103 want from our elected officials? Repeal of the financial reform law passed last year that didn’t really go far enough to protect us from another stock market dive.

In the #5 and #6 slots on the 400 are the Koch brothers. They are the most blatant and open about their contributions to political causes. They have funded some of the most “respected” conservative think tanks – The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute and others, most with very patriotic names. These groups direct conservative public policy. The also funded Americans for Prosperity, the big name in the Tea Party movement. Rupert Murdoch is at #38. He has a whole television and newspaper empire to help protect his $6.2 billion by twisting the news to make people vote for politicians who will then shaft them to help out the top 2%.

There are people on this list who are not doing everything possible to elect Republicans who will protect their “tax expenditures” and repeal financial services reform. George Soros is at #14. Buffett, Gates, the other 41 believe that they should give back in some way. Soros’ MoveOn.org isn’t enough. It isn’t any of these people who are funding organizations that are in the top ten groups funding elections. Only the three largest unions are funding Democrats and are in the top ten. Those unions are being attacked by the people on this list who don’t want to pay decent wages or give decent benefits.

They are also, amazingly, the people who are most resistant to the idea of nationalized health. For decades, other businessmen have said that a nationalized health system is what this country needs to compete in the global marketplace. Thirty years ago, Lee Iacocca said that health insurance added over $1,000 to the price of every American-made car. No one even talks about that anymore. We pay almost twice as much per person for health care as the next most expensive country and don’t crack the top ten for health care delivery. The difference in our costs is in the for-profit nature of our health care industry and the insurance industry, not in superior health care.

To give these people and their companies even more tax breaks, Florida Governor Rick Scott wants to cut $1.6+ billion from education and public services. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin wants to cut $1 billion. These aren’t cuts that will balance their state budgets. They are just ways to give more money to that top 2% of Americans.

To achieve this, they have convinced a large part of the electorate that the goal is to cut taxes for the 98% of us, to cut off welfare to illegal immigrants who can’t get welfare, to cut off unemployement benefits because those subsistence payments make people lazy. To increase the Waltons’ share of those billions, they spread the doctrine that part-time jobs with no benefits is the new definition of employment. To protect the billions made by those owning retail chains, they are pushing the idea that unions are bad, so that the nascient movement to unionize their own stores will die. It’s been remarkably successful – persuading people that we should strip union workers of their pay and benefits to bring them down to the lower level all of us are supposed to accept. To fulfill the Kochs’ John Birch Society vision, they convince people that immigration is wrong and everyone who isn’t “like us” must be driven out – Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Asians, everyone who isn’t white and protestant. And when all else fails, they hitch themselves to religious issues like abortion and gay rights to win votes, covering up what they will really do with a smoke screen of piety. They have focused in on two small aspects of the Bible to ignore the overwhelming messages of charity and rejecting wealth. When you’ve got Murdoch’s media network to spread the narrative, and the internet to spread the outright lies and conspiracy theories, it gets really easy to control what people think.

The consequences of allowing the Republican agenda to succeed are in our past – the past we don’t teach anymore because we have allowed history to be downgraded. Before unions, we worked in sweatshops where we died from unsafe conditions – fibers in the air crippling our lungs, locked doors that trapped us during fires, mines that collapsed. Before food stamps, our seniors ate cat food and poor children suffered developmental problems because of poor nuitrition. Before Medicaid and Medicare people died because they couldn’t afford simple medical care. Before Roe v. Wade, thousands of women were permanently maimed and died of illegal abortions. Before the Civil Rights movement, not only blacks, but Hispanics, Asians, Jews, anyone considered “different” suffered killings, physical abuse and denial of basic rights. Millions died of influenza in over-crowded tenements. There are real reasons these programs came into being. There are real reasons unions were founded. There are real reasons we took the promise of equality into new laws and new protections. In the world before World War I, that Pollyanna world that is evoked when Tea Party candidates talk about taking our country back, a few people became fabulously rich, a small number became comfortably rich, and the majority lived just one step ahead of starvation, disability, disease, and early deaths. Only one heir of those fabulously rich is still on the 400.

There are 303 million of us who are getting screwed by this agenda. The challenge is to make half of us see the facts and understand just what they are getting if they take back our country – to the 19^th century.

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