Some interesting numbers

Americas Wars by TBP_Think_Tank on Scribd

Hitching a ride

Trump and the Media

The media reporting of Trump surpasses its reporting of any other president I can recall. Most days the Times front page has about 25% devoted to Donald. Now, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard has published a report on the first 100 days of Trump as seen by the media. Here are their findings:

President Trump dominated media coverage in the outlets and programs analyzed, with Trump being the topic of 41 percent of all news stories—three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents. He was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage.

Republican voices accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump protests.

European reporters were more likely than American journalists to directly question Trump’s fitness for office.

Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.

Fox was the only news outlet in the study that came close to giving Trump positive coverage overall, however, there was variation in the tone of Fox’s coverage depending on the topic.

Hearing Aids and Guns

The Senate wants to change the law so that people can buy hearing aids over the counter. The sponsors of the change believe it will lower prices, spur innovation, and help millions of people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss obtain devices and improve their lives. Naturally, hearing aid manufacturers oppose the proposed change. After all, they charge at least $3,000 for their devices, some cost as much as $10,000. Over-the-counter aids, which would be the purview of the FDA, would be a lot cheaper. 

Okay, I can understand why the manufacturers would oppose the law. But, Gun Owners of America also oppose the change because they claim it would impact hunters who purchase hearing enhancement devices as a way of better hearing their quarry. This, they say, is an infringement on their constitutional rights. Perhaps, the Gun Owners oppose the change because Elizabeth Warren is a sponsor along with Republican senators. The Senate version was recently approved in committee with bipartisan support. The House bill has been approved by a key subcommittee, winning praise from the panel’s staunchly conservative chairman, Texas Representative Michael Burgess. 

Why a Bar & Grill in Kansas is closed on Memorial Day

She is running for re-election

But, has she lost some faith in the US and UK? Two quotes from Angela Merkel:

"The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days.

"We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands."

Stop the media furor over Trump

Child Marriages in America

Would you believe that 27 states have no minimum age for getting married? Girls as young as 12 have gotten married in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina. More than 167,000 young people age 17 and under married in 38 states between 2000 and 2010. Among the states with the highest rates of child marriages were Arkansas, Idaho and Kentucky.

Theories of Smiling

One View of Trump's Budget

Excerpts from a phone call

The following is from an article in the NY Times. 

Mr. Trump placed the call and began it by congratulating Mr. Duterte for the government-sanctioned attacks on drug suspects. The program has been widely condemned by human rights groups around the world because extrajudicial killings have taken thousands of lives without arrest or trial. In March, the program was criticized in the State Department’s annual human rights report, which referred to “apparent governmental disregard for human rights and due process.”

Mr. Trump had no such reservations. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” he said. “Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”

Mr. Duterte responded that drugs were “the scourge of my nation now, and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation.”

Mr. Trump responded that “we had a previous president who did not understand that,” an apparent reference to President Barack Obama, “but I understand that.”

Note that the article vouched for its accuracy as follows:

The comments were part of a Philippine transcript of the April 29 call that was circulated on Tuesday, under a “confidential” cover sheet, by the Americas division of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. In Washington, a senior administration official confirmed that the transcript was an accurate representation of the call between the two iconoclastic leaders. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the call and confirmed it on the condition of anonymity.

A Good Way to start the Day

The Global Terrorism Database

In 2005 the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (known as START) was started at the University of Maryland, which is also the home of a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. The current Director of the Consortium, Gary LaFree, summarizes some of the conclusions that have been reached from an analysis of their  Global Terrorism Database:

#1: Terrorism is rare

#2: Mass attacks are rarer still

#3. Prevention is improving

#4. Terrorist groups are not all alike
2,300 unique terrorist organizations identified in the GTD since 1970, nearly 70 percent had a life span of less than a year.

#5. Assigning responsibility is tough
Data from the GTD shows that no terrorist group can be assigned responsibility in nearly 60 percent of the thousands of attacks that occurred worldwide since 1970.

#6: We’re still developing strategy

An evil landlord?

ProPublica decimates Jared Kushner's real estate companies. In a lengthy article Alec MacGillis documents the problems of tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes run by Kushner companies. Tenants complain that the company leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. He makes a strong case that their complaints are valid.

Helping their team win

Moving West

I'm talking about trees. Tree scientists tell us that over the past 30 years, three-quarters of eastern US tree species have been shifting to the west. And they are doing so at what the scientists consider a fast rate - 9.5 miles per decade. No, trees don't migrate by hitching up their roots and trudging through the forest; they gradually shift their population centers over many years to places that offer better conditions. But the scientists don't quite know exactly why this happening. Some of the factors causing the migration are: changes in how we're using the land, new pest infestations, and conservation and planting projects.

Learn about the Great Barrier Reef

The Global Seed Vault

Did you know about it? It's a storage facility, deep inside a mountain in the Arctic, designed to preserve the world's crops from future disasters. It stores seeds from 5,000 crop species from around the world. Dried and frozen, it is believed they can be preserved for hundreds of years. If a nation's seeds are lost as a result of a natural disaster or a man-made catastrophe, the specimens stored in the Arctic could be used to regenerate them. It is run by Norway.

Global warming has affected the vault.  Last year  unseasonably high temperatures caused the permafrost to melt, sending water into the access tunnel. No seeds were damaged but the facility is to have new waterproof walls in the tunnel and drainage ditches outside. 

More on Household Debt

He flunks as a business man

Barry Ritholz has a summary of a strong article in Business Week entitled "Would You Let Trump Run Your Company?" Here is a summary of his summary:

To be fair, he is running the country in the same style and manner as he ran his Casinos, Trump University, Trump Steaks, etc. His portfolio began with inherited money that he arguably mishandled; ha he merely put it into the market and sat tight for a few years, he would be worth 10X his current holdings. His real wealth all came about post 2012 election. His “business acumen” if we can call it that was using the 2012 run for president as a cynical branding exercise, which led to huge licensing dollars afterwards. Call it what you will: contemptible, vulgar, even unAmerican — all of that wildly understate how utterly damaging his flavor of cynical selfishness has been to the country.

On-line dating is not easy

They met on-line. They went to a movie on their first date. She texted on her phone. He didn't like that and told her to go outside to text. She did go outside, got into her car and drove away, leaving him stranded. He was so upset that he has sued her for the price of the movie tickets, which were a whopping $17.31.  She plans to file a protective order against him for contacting her little sister to get the money for the movie ticket.

The Pollinator

Name that color

Household Borrowing Post WWII

Climbing Mountains

Weakening Confidence?

Why not just backup?

Yesterday a friend of mine asked me, "Why couldn't the companies attacked by computer hacks simply use their backup files?" Today, McAfee asked me the same question. Even I use a backup service, Carbonite. There are others. Or, you could simply copy files to a USB.

Onward Together

That's the name of Hillary's new organization. Supposedly, Onward Together would support a few other liberal groups by fundraising and "amplifying" the organizations messages. Is this a smart thing to do? Will she use it as stepping stone to running for another office?

Ignoring PTSD

The GAO just did a study of how the military treats service members being thrown out of the military. The results show that the Department of Defense (DOD) does not do a very good job. 62 percent (51,741) of the 91,764 cases the GAO looked at showed that "service members separated for misconduct from fiscal years 2011 through 2015 had been diagnosed within the 2 years prior to separation with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), or certain other conditions that could be associated with misconduct". Of these 57,141, 23 percent, or 13,283, may not be eligible for veterans benefits as they received an “other than honorable”discharge.

An interesting question

Robert Jervis, Columbia professor of international politics, looks at Trump's firing of Comey in an interesting way.  He contends, and rightly so, that we have a "common psychological difficulty in facing painful trade-offs and realizing the costs of our preferred course of action. In a form of wishful thinking, when people come to believe that doing something is necessary, they have trouble seeing the obstacles and costs."

He then reviews the situation and concludes: "Liberals like me pride ourselves on being more sophisticated and on using what Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman called System 2, which is slow and careful thinking. But how many of them us have paused in our denunciations of Trump and calls for an unimpeded investigation into the Russian connections to ask whether such a strong instrument of state power as the FBI should be free to act without the supervision of elected officials? Do we really think that a return to the J. Edgar Hoover era is healthy for democracy? It is all too easy for us to overlook inconvenient questions and to see only what we need and expect."

Tweet, Tweet

Another person thinks he is a 9 year-old brat

Well, a 7 year-old brat. That's what David Brooks thinks of our president. I've had this feeling since last August. He writes "There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif."

The Three Tasks:
1. First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom.
2. Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.
3. Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they won’t be perceived as obnoxious.

Friends of Donald Trump

OOPS! I should have said "The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: the Russians". That was the title of a documentary released last week by Dutch public television. One of the people on the show was an economic investigator, James Henry, who has supposedly looked deeply into Trump’s Russian ties. Henry comments: “The only way that he was able to finance his resurrection after 2000 was a torrent of money flowing out of Russia and former Soviet Union countries like Kazakhstan. The investors that he got at that point were looking for safe havens, or opportunities to launder money that were proceeds from basically criminal enterprises.”  A biographer of Trump, Michael D’Antonio, says: “The thing to notice when Donald Trump talks about his relationship with Russia is that he always says I have no business in Russia. He doesn’t say that Russians have no business with me.”

Is this "fake news"? I don't know but I suspect not. Here is the video"

The new EPA

Chlorpyrifos is an endocrine disrupter used in pesticides. There is strong evidence to suggest that even at very low doses, the chemical triggers effects among children ranging from lower IQ to higher rates of autism. The National Institutes of Health concluded that chlorpyrifos can cause “adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects.” Many public health experts, scientists, and environmentalists have for years been pushing for a ban on chlorpyrifos. 

The EPA under Obama began the process of banning this chemical. Trump's EPA stopped this process. Last week a number of farm workers in Bakersfield, CA, were exposed to the chemical and became quite ill.

Early Onset Alzheimers?

Peace and Beauty

The threat of arrest

This woman was kicked out of her Congressman's (Patrick McHenry) office. He voted for the repeal of Obamacare. She needs the preexisting condition benefit for her daughter, who has a liver condition.

Diplomacy vs. Military

Steven Walt has an excellent article contrasting some diplomacy versus some military activities. 

In favor of a diplomatic approach: 

Think of the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country in 1803, or the formation of NATO and the Bretton Woods economic institutions, equally farsighted acts that enhanced American influence. Similarly, the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty slowed the spread of nuclear weapons and made it easier to monitor states with nuclear ambitions. The list goes on: Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972 tilted the balance of power in our favor and helped smooth the United States’ exit from Vietnam; Jimmy Carter’s stewardship of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty ended a conflict that had produced four wars since 1948. Adroit diplomacy managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. More recently, patient negotiations led to an agreement with Iran that reversed its progress toward a nuclear bomb.

Opposed to a military approach:

Mr. Trump’s deference to the military, meanwhile, is hard to square with its track record. The United States had more than half a million troops in Vietnam at the peak of the war and still lost. The 1991 Persian Gulf war was a short-term triumph but did not yield a stable peace. The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to a costly quagmire, to enhanced Iranian influence and, eventually, to the creation of the Islamic State. The American military has been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly 16 years, and the Taliban today controls more territory than at any time since 2001. United States airstrikes helped drive Muammar el-Qaddafi from power in Libya in 2011, and the country is now a failed state.

A new chemical weapon

Things are really, really tough in Venezuela. They have massive economic problems. with huge shortages in many crucial sectors of the economy, from food to health care. They have been protesting since April, forty have been killed and hundreds injured.

Many protesters are using "Poopootov cocktails" as a symbol of protest. These cocktails are small bottles stuffed with feces. They throw them at the troops blocking their path with tear gas and water. One protester refers to the cocktails as "our way of saying, 'Get lost Maduro, you're useless!" The government considers the cocktails as "biochemical weapons" which violate international treaties on biological and chemical weapons.

VJ Day in Honolulu

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

Courtesy of a Duncaster correspondent

Making it easy for the voter

The reverse of the title of this post was my experience in trying to let my representatives know my opinion of our current fiasco. It was virtually impossible to e-mail any of the three. John Larson, my Congressman, did offer e-mail capabilities. The problem was you needed to know all eight digits of your e-mail.  If you didn't, you were routed to the website of the Postal Service. The senators, Blumenthal and Murphy, wanted you to specify the topic of your message. True, they did list many topics, but there was no way I could figure out how to bypass this list.

For a while I have believed that a large part of this country's problems is the quality of our representatives. It's pretty poor. My current case is but a small indication of the weakness of our legislators.

Meet the inventor of the phrase "Priming the Pump"

What world does he inhabit? The general consensus is that the phrase dates from the 19th century.
From the transcript of Trump's interview with The Economist. Trump's responses are in bold.

But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit? 
It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”? 

Yes. 
We have to prime the pump. 

It’s very Keynesian. 
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event? 

Priming the pump? 
Yeah, have you heard it? 

Yes. 
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do. 

It’s… 
Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.

Making Sense

Don't ask the same question

A week ago a woman was arrested for laughing at a government confirmation hearing. This week a reporter was arrested for asking a question of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The reporter, Dan Heyman, asked the same question many, many times. He was arrested for "aggressively breaching the secret service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area walking up the hallway in the main building of the Capitol. The defendant was causing a disturbance at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price.” He was charged with willful disruption of governmental processes, a misdemeanor.

Preserving Net Neutrality

The Price of Water

Murder on Staten Island

Jonathan Mangia was having breakfast one day last week when he saw a squirrel near his window. Feeling his privacy violated, he went outside and threw a couple of rocks at the squirrel. The squirrel did not budge, but it made a fatal mistake. "Then the squirrel gave me a look and I took it personal," Mangia told police. So, he got his bow and arrow and shot the squirrel. Then, the squirrel did run but only a short way. I guess one of Mangia's neighbors saw what was going on and called the police as Mangia was arrested. he was charged with torturing and injuring animals and reckless endangerment.

More from Bacevich - Part 3

Here's the last it of it. Go here and here for the rest.

11. Deaths that matter and deaths that don’t: Why do terrorist attacks that kill a handful of Europeans command infinitely more American attention than do terrorist attacks that kill far larger numbers of Arabs?

12. Israeli nukes: What purpose is served by indulging the pretense that Israel does not have nuclear weapons?

13. Peace in the Holy Land: What purpose is served by indulging illusions that a “two-state solution” offers a plausible resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

14. Merchandizing death: When it comes to arms sales, there is no need to Make America Great Again.

15. Our friends the Saudis (I): Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, were Saudis.

16. Our friends the Saudis (II): If indeed Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing to determine which nation will enjoy the upper hand in the Persian Gulf, why should the United States favor Saudi Arabia? In what sense do Saudi values align more closely with American values than do Iranian ones?

17. Our friends the Pakistanis: Pakistan behaves like a rogue state. It is a nuclear weapons proliferator. It supports the Taliban. For years, it provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Yet U.S. policymakers treat Pakistan as if it were an ally. Why? In what ways do U.S. and Pakistani interests or values coincide?

18. Free-loading Europeans: Why can’t Europe, “whole and free,” its population and economy considerably larger than Russia’s, defend itself?

19. The mother of all “special relationships”: Why should U.S. relations with Great Britain, a fading power, be any more “special” than its relations with a rising power like India?

20. The old nuclear disarmament razzmatazz: American presidents routinely cite their hope for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet the U.S. maintains nuclear strike forces on full alert, has embarked on a costly and comprehensive trillion-dollar modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and even refuses to adopt a no-first-use posture when it comes to nuclear war.

21. Double standards (I): American policymakers take it for granted that their country’s sphere of influence is global, which, in turn, provides the rationale for the deployment of U.S. military forces to scores of countries. Yet when it comes to nations like China, Russia, or Iran, Washington takes the position that spheres of influence are obsolete and a concept that should no longer be applicable to the practice of statecraft.

22. Double standards (II): Washington claims that it supports and upholds international law. Yet when international law gets in the way of what American policymakers want to do, they disregard it.

23. Double standards (III): The United States condemns the indiscriminate killing of civilians in wartime. Yet over the last three-quarters of a century, it killed civilians regularly and often on a massive scale.

24. Moral obligations: When confronted with some egregious violation of human rights, members of the chattering classes frequently express an urge for the United States to “do something.” Holocaust analogies sprout like dandelions. Newspaper columnists recycle copy first used when Cambodians were slaughtering other Cambodians en masse or whenever Hutus and Tutsis went at it. Proponents of action -- typically advocating military intervention -- argue that the United States has a moral obligation to aid those victimized by injustice or cruelty anywhere on Earth. But what determines the pecking order of such moral obligations? Which comes first, a responsibility to redress the crimes of others or a responsibility to redress crimes committed by Americans? Who has a greater claim to U.S. assistance, Syrians suffering today under the boot of Bashar al-Assad or Iraqis, their country shattered by the U.S. invasion of 2003? Where do the Vietnamese fit into the queue? How about the Filipinos, brutally denied independence and forcibly incorporated into an American empire as the nineteenth century ended? Or African-Americans, whose ancestors were imported as slaves? Or, for that matter, dispossessed and disinherited Native Americans? Is there a statute of limitations that applies to moral obligations? And if not, shouldn’t those who have waited longest for justice or reparations receive priority attention?

Watch the formatting of your application

Upward Bound is a federal program that for quite a while has been providing low-income high-school students with tutoring and counseling to prepare them for college. These programs are usually offered by colleges. However, the current applications for funding of forty of the colleges that have been in the program has been denied by the Department of Education because the applications did not follow the rules of  formatting. These forty programs serve at least 2,400 low-income students. The rules that were not followed concerned form not content. 

For example:
Two infographics inserted in each of its applications included type with one-and-half-line spacing, rather than double-spacing.
Other applications violated the double-spacing rule requiring "no more than three lines per vertical inch," including text in charts and tables.
Wrong size and format of fonts was another serious error as was the width of margins.

More from Bacevich

Continuing Thoughts About America

6. Assassin-in-chief:  "After 9/11, however, Washington returned to the assassination business in a big way and on a global scale, using drones. But does assassination actually advance U.S. interests (or does it merely recruit replacements for the terrorists it liquidates)? How can we measure its costs, whether direct or indirect? What dangers and vulnerabilities does this practice invite?"

7. The war formerly known as the “Global War on Terrorism”: "What precisely is Washington’s present strategy for defeating violent jihadism?  What sequence of planned actions or steps is expected to yield success? If no such strategy exists, why is that the case?  How is it that the absence of strategy -- not to mention an agreed upon definition of “success” -- doesn’t even qualify for discussion here?"

8. The campaign formerly known as Operation Enduring Freedom: When is the war in Afghanistan going to end?

9. The Gulf: We now export oil. Why should the Persian Gulf still be considered essential to our security?

10. Hyping terrorism: Each year terrorist attacks kill far fewer Americans than do auto accidents, drug overdoses, or even lightning strikes. Yet in the allocation of government resources, preventing terrorist attacks takes precedence over preventing all three of the others combined. Why is that?

Thoughts about America

Andrew Bacevich believes that we are not discussing the issues that are relevant to our survival. The media is spending way too much time and effort palavering about Trump. I think he makes a lot of sense. He has 24 issues to discuss. Here are his first five:

1. Accomplishing the “mission”: He wants our allies to "assume responsibility for managing their own affairs". 

2. American military supremacy: This is something I've been wondering about for a long time - Since we have spent so much time and money on our armed services, why haven't we won a war since WWII? "Could it be that we’ve taken the wrong approach? What should we be doing differently?"

3. America’s empire of bases: We have troops stationed around the world. Has this made for a safer world?

4. Supporting the troops: We worship our "warriors".  "Why has discussion and debate about its deficiencies not found a place among the nation’s political priorities?"

5. Prerogatives of the commander-in-chief:  When was the last time Congress had a major say in our going to war?

I hope to comment on his remaining issues but I'm ready for bed and will do so over the next couple of days.

Still Working

He's an immunologist.

Another Effect of Climate Change

The temperature in the Arctic is rising faster than elsewhere, about three times faster than in the rest of the world. As a result, the permafrost  that has been frozen for thousands of years is melting, releasing ancient viruses and bacteria are springing back to life. 

A recent case in Siberia illustrates what can happen. Last August, a 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalized after being infected by anthrax. It is thought that, over 75 years ago, a reindeer infected with anthrax died and its frozen carcass became trapped under a layer of frozen soil, known as permafrost. There it stayed until a heatwave in the summer of 2016, when the permafrost thawed. This exposed the reindeer corpse and released infectious anthrax into nearby water and soil, and then into the food supply. More than 2,000 reindeer grazing nearby became infected, which then led to the small number of human cases.

One of my favorite songs

Action is Needed to Address the Federal Government’s Fiscal Future

That's the title of a GAO report issued this week. A couple of quotes from it: 

 “While health care spending is a key programmatic and policy driver of the long-term outlook on the spending side of the budget, eventually, spending on net interest becomes the largest category of spending in both the 2016 Financial Report’s long-term fiscal projections and GAO’s simulations.”

The GAO cited a simulation that showed net interest payments on U.S. debt increasing “from $248 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2045 in 2016 dollars.”

“Debt held by the public rose as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), from 74 percent at the end of fiscal year 2015 to 77 percent at the end of fiscal year 2016. This compares to an average of 44 percent of GDP since 1946.”

The report also noted that federal resources that could be deployed into key priorities like rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges are being diverted to interest on debt. Another concern expressed by the GAO is the upward rise in interest rates. 

The deserts of China are expanding.

And that means unbelievable dust storms. These storms used to happen every seven or eight years, now it's an annual occurrence. The increased frequency is tied to the rapid urbanization of northern China, deforestation and climate change. Not only do the storms reduce visibility in cities like Beijing, they also threaten the health of millions of people. The current storms led to the cancellation of flights and caused pollution in northern China to soar. 

Beijing’s air-quality index hit a level of 623 on Thursday; the United States rates readings above 200 as “very unhealthy” and 301 to 500 as “hazardous.” The government has spent billions of dollars to plant forests to stop the creeping desertification.

Here's a before-and-after shot:

Losing Weight

Eman Ahmed, a 36 year-old Egyptian, weighed 1,100 pounds in February. Today, she weighs a little less than 400, a loss of more than 700 pounds. She did not gain all that weight through eating. She has lymphedema, a condition that causes body tissue to swell. Through crowd sourcing she raised funds for her travel and medical care there and at home. She went to India for the weight-loss surgery. She is now back in Egypt along with nine Indian doctors who will continue treating her.

Water Problems

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been around for almost fifty years. It has just published a report  on the water systems we use. Their conclusion: Nearly one quarter of people living in the United States get their drinking water from one of the 18,000 water systems in all 50 states that reported violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2015. There were many violations that affected our health. These violations impacted about 27 million people. 

And Trump wants to cut the EPA budget?

Be careful when laughing

You don't want to laugh at a government confirmation hearing, especially if you are laughing at a description of the record of the person being confirmed. Desiree Fairooz was arrested at the hearing of Attorney General Sessions. She laughed when Senator Shelby claimed that Sessions had a long record of “treating all Americans equally.”  While her laugh did not interrupt Shelby’s introductory speech, it did amount to willful “disorderly and disruptive conduct” intended to “impede, disrupt, and disturb the orderly conduct” of congressional proceedings. Or, so the government charged when she was arrested and brought to court.

Bankruptcy and Obamacare

Ecological Footprints

Ecological footprint measures how much biologically productive area a country needs to fuel its resource consumption and absorb its waste.

Data source: data.world and GFNbr

A cremation gone awry

In 2014 a 500lb person was cremated in Virginia. Apparently crematoria are limited in the size of the body as while this person was being cremated the crematorium itself caught fire because the fat in the body burned at a higher temperature than the crematorium was geared for. The situation was repeated in Ohio recently when an 'extremely obese' person was cremated.

Meet Metro

What do you make of this?

Wasting Time, Shading Results

He really has some problems. Perhaps, he should take a  course in time management. The world is blowing up and he's spending time advertising.

Watch video!