Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Labor Force Participation Rate Is Now At A 35-Year Low

This morning's August jobs report brought us news that, once again, labor force participation dropped.
The rate fell to 63.2% from 63.4% the month before. That's the lowest since August 1978. So as the unemployment rate steadily drops, it's important to keep labor force participation — arguably a better indicator of real employment — in mind. What good is a decreasing unemployment rate (now at 7.3% from 7.4% last month) if it's a result of a mass exodus from the labor force?
fred labor force participation


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/american-labor-force-in-one-chart-2013-9#ixzz2gDqBotlO

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Keep your old computers, your old cars


Intel processors i3 and higher have backdoors that allow the government to access your PC even when it's off and the network cable is unplugged. Also, it bypasses hard drive encryption.

http://www.infowars.com/91497/

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

WASTE and FRAUD, let's fund this government monstrosity Harry!

The Fed's 'hidden agenda' behind money-printing

The markets were surprised when the Federal Reserve did not announce a tapering of the quantitative easing bond buying program at its September meeting. Indeed, its signal to the market that it was keeping interest rates low was welcome, but there may be a hidden agenda.



Getty Images
The markets were surprised when the Federal Reserve did not announce a tapering of the quantitative easing bond buying program at its September meeting. Indeed, its signal to the market that it was keeping interest rates low was welcome, but there may be a hidden agenda.
Since it began in late 2008, QE has spurred a vigorous debate about its merits, both positive and negative.
On the positive side, the easy money and low interest rates resulting fromquantitative easing have been a shot in the arm to the economy, fueling the stock market and helping the housing recovery. On the negative side, The Fedaccomplished QE by "printing money" to buy Treasurys, and through the massive power of its purchases drove interest rates to record lows.
But in the process, the Fed accumulated an unprecedented balance sheet of more than $3.6 trillion which needs to go somewhere, someday.
But we know all this.
I believe that one of the most important reasons the Fed is determined to keep interest rates low is one that is rarely talked about, and which comprises a dark economic foreboding that should frighten us all. Let me start with a question: How would you feel if you knew that almost all of the money you pay in personal income tax went to pay just one bill, the interest on the debt? Chances are, you and millions of Americans would find that completely unacceptable and indeed they should.
Gartman: Leave tapering to next Fed group
The economy is stronger than it looks, said Dennis Gartman, The Gartman Letter, sharing his outlook on gold, the next Fed chairman and the fate of Treasury rates.
Let me start with a question: How would you feel if you knew that almost all of the money you pay in personal income tax went to pay just one bill, the interest on the debt? Chances are, you and millions of Americans would find that completely unacceptable and indeed they should.
But that is where we may be heading.
Thanks to the Fed, the interest rate paid on our national debt is at an historic low of 2.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Given the U.S.'s huge accumulated deficit, this low interest rate is important to keep debt servicing costs down.
But isn't it fair to ask what the interest cost of our debt would be if interest rates returned to a more normal level? What's a normal level? How about the average interest rate the Treasury paid on U.S. debt over the last 20 years?
That rate is 5.7percent, not extravagantly high at all by historic standards.
So here's where it gets scary: U.S. debt held by the public today is about $12 trillion. The budget deficit projections are going down, true, but the United States is still incurring an annual budget deficit by spending more than we take in in taxes and revenue.
The CBO estimates that by 2020 total debt held by the public will be $16.6 trillion as a result of the rising accumulated debt.
Do the math: If we were to pay an average interest rate on our debt of 5.7 percent, rather than the 2.4 percent we pay today, in 2020 our debt service cost will be about $930 billion.
Now compare that to the amount the Internal Revenue Service collects from us in personal income taxes.
In 2012, that amount was $1.1 trillion, meaning that if interest rates went back to a more normal level of, say, 5.7 percent, 85 percent of all personal income taxes collected would go to servicing the debt. No wonder the Fed is worried.
Some economists will also suggest that interest rates may go much higher than 5.7 percent largely as a result of the massive QE exercise of printing money at an unprecedented rate. We just don't know what the effect of all this will be but many economists warn that it can only result in inflation down the road.
As of today, interest rates are rising, and if this is a turning point, it is a major one.
Rates in the U.S. peaked in 1980 (remember the 14 percent Treasury bonds?) so if we are at the point of reversing a 33-year downward trend, who wants to predict how this will affect the economy?
One thing is clear: Based on CBO projections, if interest rates just rise to their 20-year average, we will have an untenable, unacceptable interest rate bill whose beneficiaries are China, Japan, and others who own our bonds.
And if Americans find out that the lion's share of their income tax payments are going to service the debt, prepare for a new American revolution. 
Peter J. Tanous is president of Lepercq Lynx Investment Advisory in Washington D.C. He is the co-author (with Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore) of The End of Prosperity (2008), and co-author (with CNBC.com's Jeff Cox) of Debt, Deficits, and the Demise of the American Economy (2011).

Syria again (and McCain) Ooops

Evidently, a flood of experts and common sense was not enough to convince John McCain that the Syrian opposition was filled with hard core Islamists. In his mind, they were all moderates. Unless he was just lying to us.

On Tuesday evening, after President Barack Obama speech to the U.N. general assembly, America's strategy for Syria began to unravel.
At about 4 PM ET, 13 of the largest Islamist brigades in Syria formed the "Islamic Coalition," rejecting the Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC) and the opposition's planned exile government.
Two hours later the State Department wasn't prepared to talk about the announcement, and instead discussed the Syrian coalition's preparations for the upcoming Geneva II peace talks.
However, those plans were inherently muddled after "nearly all armed factions that matter in Syria just issued statement saying [the] political opposition doesn't represent them," as explained by Al Aan TV reporter Jenan Moussa.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-strategy-in-syria-is-unraveling-2013-9

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Here Is A Simple Explanation Of Obamacare

http://www.theonion.com/articles/dad-explains-obamacare,33961/


PITTSBURGH—After noticing a newspaper article about the implementation of the upcoming Affordable Care Act, local father Andrew Panetta, 53, made an effort Monday to explain the intricacies of Obamacare to his son, sources confirmed. “It’s bullshit,” Panetta reportedly said, clarifying how insurance companies will comply with federal law in order to properly set up state-sponsored health care exchanges. “All of it. Complete and total bullshit.” Panetta went on to conclude his seven-second explanation of the expansive new health care law by saying, “I’m telling you, it’s bullshit.”
Charlotte Police Officer Charged in Shooting
by DIANA RUGG / NBC CHARLOTTE

Bio | Email | Follow: @DianaRuggwcnc

WCNC.com

Posted on September 14, 2013 at 11:22 AM

Updated Sunday, Sep 15 at 11:49 AM

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer is charged with voluntary manslaughter after shooting an unarmed man in an eastern Mecklenburg County neighborhood early Saturday morning.

Officer Randall Kerrick was served with a warrant around 8:20 p.m., said CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe.  He was booked into the Mecklenburg County Jail under a $50,000 bond.

A statement from police said Kerrick used "excessive force" when he shot Jonathan Ferrell, 24, of Charlotte, multiple times.

Earlier, police said Ferrell had wrecked his car on Reedy Creek Road and run to a house in nearby Bradfield Farms for help.

Police said Ferrell had knocked on the door and the woman who lived in the home opened the door, thinking it was her husband returning from work, then closed it quickly when she realized it wasn't.

She then called 911 to report a man was trying to break into her home.

Officer Kerrick, along with two other officers, responded and encountered Ferrell about a block from the home.

The statement from police said the initial encounter was "appropriate and lawful," but that Ferrell "did advance" on officer Kerrick before Kerrick shot him.  Police did not detail whether words were exchanged, and public information officer Capt. Brian Cunningham said the case is still under investigation.

The statement said Officer Kerrick "did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon" at Ferrell.

According to CMPD, "voluntary manslaughter" is defined under North Carolina law as "when a person is killed by another human being without malice." 

The law says voluntary manslaughter is "committed in the exercise of imperfect self defense" when someone uses excessive force, but without "murderous intent."

"I believe that the investigation throughout the day, following the facts and evidence as it presented itself, led to this conclusion," said Chief Rodney Monroe when he announced the charges late Saturday night.

Monroe said his heart goes out to Ferrell's family.

"This is never something easy to deal with," said Monroe. "Never something easy for us to really quite grasp, but we're gonna rise from this as we've risen from other things, knowing we've done the right thing."

Two officers who were with Kerrick at the time of the shooting are on paid administrative leave, which is a standard procedure in shootings involving police officers.

Ferrell's friends posted their condolences on Twitter and Instagram Saturday, noting that Ferrell was a talented football player at Florida A&M University, and before that, had led the FAMU High School team to a state championship in 2006.

EPA chief says agency will ‘effectively shut down'

Irony: 2 days after killing coal jobs, EPA chief says agency will ‘effectively shut down’ without stopgap funding by Oct.1

Huffington Post reports:
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says the agency will “effectively shut down” unless Congress approves stopgap funding by Oct. 1.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the agency won’t be able to pay employees. She says only a core group of people will remain on duty in case the EPA has to respond to a “significant emergency.” The vast majority of employees will stay home.
That means that most of EPA’s functions, like drafting regulations and enforcing laws to protect the environment, will likely remain stalled until government operations fully resume.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Beaver anal secretions a vanilla substitute in some foods

Related

Beaver photo
The beaver provides plenty of "natural flavoring"
If stories about gross foods make you queasy, you may want to click away now. (May we suggest this adorable video about an elephant and dog who are best friends.)
If you have a hearty constitution and are still with us, we commend you. Consider yourself forewarned.
Recently, The Swedish National Food Agency confirmed what's long been a rumor on the internet: Anal secretions from beavers can be used as a vanilla-like flavoring in food.
The beaver's anal gland secretes Castoreum which can be used as a food additive. 
According to Health.com, while it sounds downright disgusting, the FDA says it’s GRAS, meaning it’s “generally recognized as safe.” You won’t see this one on the food label because it’s generally listed as “natural flavoring.” 
The story has been around on the internet for a while and gained attention in 2011 when chef Jamie Oliver talked about Castoreum on "The Late Show with David Letterman". Snopes.com has even evaluated the rumor and declared it true.
Consumer blog Savvy Saving Bytes wrote about Castoreum and found a food industry eBook published in 2005 that lists foods and beverages that may contain Castoreum extract. The list includes alcoholic beverages, baked goods, gelatins/puddings, ice cream, soft candy, chewing gum and more.
So the next you see "natural flavorings" listed as an ingredient on your favorite baked good or vanilla ice cream, try not to think about just how natural that flavoring might be.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

ELITES' STRANGE PLOT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD

The idea of a country seems pretty simple. I live in America, and I’m an American. She lives in France, and she is French. The Americans have a president who is their leader, the British have a prime minister, the French have their own president, and so forth.
But the way political decision-making around security issues ricochets around the world, from Western capital to Western capital, is making a mockery of commonly held conceptions of national sovereignty. In recent weeks, a British parliament vote on Syria forced the U.S. president to seek authorization from Congress, while leaked documents detailed extensive cooperation between the intelligence services of the U.S. and other nations. The president of Bolivia was forced to down his plane by Italy and France, just because he joked about having Edwards Snowden on board. And so on, and so forth.
This all demands the question: Why do we hold the conception that we live in separate nation-states? Well, it turns out that this question was actually asked after World War II, and the answer American leaders came up with was … we shouldn’t.
In fact, Western elites in America and Western Europe after World War II made a serious effort to get rid of nations altogether, and combine all “freedom-loving peoples” into one giant “Atlantic Union,” a federal state built on top of the NATO military alliance.
As odd as it sounds, the documentary evidence is clear. This movement did manage to create a “European Union,” which came from the same ideological wellspring as the “Atlantic Union.” Once we recognize that the Cold War saw the construction of a powerful international regime that explicitly sought to get rid of sovereign nations, these broad security architectures revealed by the Syria situation and the NSA spying revelations make a lot more sense.
The strange story of Atlantica
The effort to unite Europe and the U.S. started in 1939, with the publication of a book by an influential journalist, Clarence Streit. This influential book was called ”Union Now,” and had a galvanizing effect on the anti-fascist youth of the time, a sort of cross between Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” and Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” Streit served in World War I in an intelligence unit, and saw up close the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. He then became a New York Times journalist assigned to cover the League of Nations, which led him to the conclusion that the only way to prevent American isolationism and European fascism was for political and economic integration of the major “freedom-loving” peoples, which he described as America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and most of Western Europe. The Five Eyes surveillance architecture was created just a few years later, as was the international monetary regime concocted at Bretton Woods.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Arctic ice.

2013's Summer Arctic Sea Ice        

LiveScience.com
2013's Summer Arctic Sea Ice a Top 10 Low
A satellite image of Arctic sea ice snapped on Sept. 12, 2013.           
It's official: The Arctic icepack reached its summer low on Sept. 13, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., said today (Sept. 20).
The Arctic ice cover melted down to 1.97 million square miles (5.10 million square kilometers) — about the size of Texas and California combined.
The final tally puts 2013 in sixth place out of the top 10 record low ice years since tracking began with satellites 30 years ago. It also continues an overall downward trend in the extent of summer sea ice, the NSIDC said. (2012 is the top record holder, with the lowest summer ice extent ever recorded.)
The rebound in ice cover after a record low year was expected, Walt Meier, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "There is always a tendency to have an uptick after an extreme low; in our satellite data, the Arctic sea ice has never set record low minimums in consecutive years. [Video: Watch the 2013 summer ice melt]

Colder-than-average temperatures and stormy weather helped the ice stick around this year. Summer cyclones spread the ice over a large area, NASA said in a statement. Clouds blocked the sun, and the cool air kept the Northwest Passage frozen shut for the first time since 2007. The ice edge was several hundred miles farther south than last year near Alaska and Siberia in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian sea regions.
Though there is more ice this year than in 2012, the ice is much thinnerthan in previous decades, Meier said. Instead of thick, multiyear ice that survives through multiple melt and freeze cycles, most of the icepack is thinner first-year ice.
"This year, the cool temperatures saved more of the ice. However, the fact that as much of the ice melted as it did is an indication of how much the ice cover had changed," Meier said.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.co              
                

What a Novel Idea !

Bills Would Require Michiganders To Work For Welfare, Pass Drug Test

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Solar activity drops to 100-year low, puzzling scientists


LONDON: Predictions that 2013 would see an upsurge in solar activity and geomagnetic storms disrupting power grids and communications systems have proved to be a false alarm. Instead, the current peak in the solar cycle is the weakest for a century.


Subdued solar activity has promptedcontroversial comparisons with the Maunder Minimum, which occurred between 1645 and 1715, when a prolonged absence of sunspots and other indicators of solar activity coincided with the coldest period in the last millennium.

LONDON: Predictions that 2013 would see an upsurge in solar activity and geomagnetic storms disrupting power grids and communications systems have proved to be a false alarm. Instead, the current peak in the solar cycle is the weakest for a century.


Subdued solar activity has promptedcontroversial comparisons with the Maunder Minimum, which occurred between 1645 and 1715, when a prolonged absence of sunspots and other indicators of solar activity coincided with the coldest period in the last millennium.


The comparisons have sparked a furious exchange of views between observers who believe the planet could be on the brink of another period of cooling, and scientists who insist there is no evidence that temperatures are about to fall.


New Scientist magazine blasted those who predicted a mini ice age, opening a recent article on the surprising lack of sunspots this year with the bold declaration: "Those hoping that the sun could save us from climate change look set for disappointment".


"The recent lapse in solar activity is not the beginning of a decades-long absence of sunspots, a dip that might have cooled the climate. Instead it represents a shorter, less pronounced downturn that happens every century or so," ("Sun's quiet spell not the start of a mini ice age" July 12).


The unusually low number of sunspots in recent years "is not an indication that we are going into a Maunder Minimum" according to Giuliana DeToma, a solar scientist at the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado.


But DeToma admitted "we will do not know how or why the Maunder Minimum started, so we cannot predict the next one."


Many solar experts think the downturn is linked a different phenomenon, the Gleissberg cycle, which predicts a period of weaker solar activity every century or so. If that turns out to be true, the sun could remain unusually quiet through the middle of the 2020s.


But since the scientists still do not understand why the Gleissberg cycle takes place, the evidence is inconclusive. The bottom line is that the sun has gone unusually quiet and no one really knows why or how it will last.


Counting sunspots


Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), when billions of tonnes of solar plasma erupt from the surface of the sun and are flung out into space at speeds up to 3,000 kilometres per second, pose the biggest risk to power grids and communications systems.


Sunspots are less dramatic, but because they are easy to count and closely correlated with flares, mass ejections and other indications of solar activity, astronomers and scientists have used them for centuries to monitor variations in the sun's activity.


Careful observation has revealed the number of sunspots rises and falls in a regular cycle that repeats every 11 years.


Variations in the amount of heat and light reaching the planet's surface as a result of the cycle are tiny. Total solar output reaching the surface varies by just 1.3 Watts per square metre (0.1 percent) between the maximum and minimum phases of the cycle.


Even this variation has profound impacts on climate and weather. Rainfall, cloud formation and river run-off are all strongly correlated with the sun's 11-year cycle.


The impact is far smaller than the warming associated with man-made climate change. Solar activity cannot explain long-term trends in global temperatures such as those associated with global warming. But it may have a noticeable impact over shorter timescales.


Maunder Minimum


Not all solar cycles are the same. Cycles in the 1940s and 1950s were especially strong. Those at the end or the 19th century and the start of the 20th were much weaker.


More profoundly, in the 1890s, Walter Maunder of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, identified a "prolonged sunspot minimum" between 1645 and 1715 in which hardly any sunspots were observed by contemporaries.


At times, whole years passed without any sunspots being recorded. Sunspots became so rare that in 1684 Britain's Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed was moved to write: "these appearances, however frequent in the days of ... Galileo have been so rare of late that this is the only one I have seen ... since December 1676".


John Eddy of the High Altitude Observatory confirmed Maunder's findings in an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science in 1976 ("The Maunder Minimum: The reign of Louis XIV appears to have been a time of real anomaly in the behaviour of the sun").


Eddy found convincing evidence for an actual absence of sunspots, not just an absence of observations. Maunder's prolonged sunspot minimum correlates well with other evidence of unusually low solar activity at the time, including few sightings of the Northern Lights, no mention of the sun's normally spectacular corona during eclipses, and the carbon-14 record in tree rings.


The Maunder Minimum coincided with one of the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age, which spanned roughly the 15th to 19th centuries. Some observers have linked the lack of solar activity to the cooling of the climate, though the explanation remains controversial.


It is this interaction between sunspots, climate and global warming that makes analysis of the solar cycle so controversial. It is hard to write about sunspots without stirring furious reactions, which explains why New Scientist took a strong line on the issue.


Running late and low


Cycles are conventionally numbered from the time that the first comprehensive records were kept around 1755. Before this, sunspot counts have to be estimated based on incomplete data. The current cycle, Solar Cycle 24, dates from around December 2008/January 2009.


But Solar Cycle 24 is running late, and activity has been unusually weak throughout, taking solar scientists by surprise.


The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) convenes a panel to assess when peaks and troughs in the cycle have occurred and forecast when the next peak or trough will occur.


In March 2007 and again in June 2008, the panel forecast Solar Cycle 24 would peak between October 2011 and August 2012, with a monthly average of 90-140 sunspots.


But as the sun's activity fell below the prediction, the forecast peak was pushed back to May 2013. Now some scientists believe it is only the first part of a double peak, with a second peak scheduled for 2014 or even 2015.


During the minimum part of the cycle, "there are stretches of days and weeks when no sunspots can be seen, but a monthly mean of zero is uncommon," Eddy wrote in 1976. "In contrast, in the years around a sunspot maximum there is a seldom a day when a number of spots cannot be seen, and often hundreds are present."


Not this time. Between July 2008 and August 2009, an average of less than 1 sunspot was observed in eight out of 13 months.


Solar activity has since increased, but the cycle appeared to peak in May 2013, with only an average of only 77 sunspots visible, down sharply from previous peaks of 175 sunspots in July 2000 and 217 in June 1989.


It is far below the level the panel predicted. "Not only is this the smallest cycle we've seen in the space age, it's the smallest cycle in 100 years," according to a NASA research scientist cited in the popular blog Universe Today("Solar Cycle 24: On track to be the weakest in 100 years).


Even fewer sunspots


Solar activity has terrifying potential to paralyse modern electricity and communications systems.


Lower solar activity might also be one factor explaining some of the recent slowdown in global warming.


"The longevity of the recent protracted solar minimum, at least two years longer than the prior minima of the satellite era makes that solar minimum a potentially potent force for cooling," according to one group of climate scientists ("Earth's energy imbalance and implications" Dec 2011).


Even with the downturn in solar activity, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it radiated out into space.


Yet as the frequent revisions to the panel's forecasts demonstrate, scientists have little ability to predict solar activity accurately, even over short timescales.


The 11-year sunspot cycle, named after the amateur astronomer who discovered it in 1843, Heinrich Schwabe, is not the only cycle scientists have observed in the sun's behaviour.


In 1933, Wolfgang Gleissberg identified a super-cycle occurring every 87 years. Others have claimed to find even longer cycles. Some scientists believe the Gleissberg cycle accounts for the succession of three very weak 11-year cycles between the 1880s and the 1910s.


If that's true, and the Gleissberg cycle is being repeated, then the next solar cycle, Cycle 25, which will last into the 2020s, could see an even smaller number of sunspots and an even lower level of solar activity.


The problem is that no one knows what causes the Gleissberg cycle (and being much less frequent the evidence for it in the time series is much less than for the Schwabe cycle). Nor do they know how to distinguish between a normal Gleissberg cycle and the onset of a new Maunder Minimum.


So if a new Maunder Minimum is on the way, which the forecasters insist it is not, it is likely to catch us by surprise.


Given how little is known variations in solar activity, it would be foolish to rely on a Maunder Minimum to offset the rise in global temperatures due to greenhouse emissions.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Think of the money you could save!

A 61-year-old man — with a history of home-brewing — stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness. Nurses ran a Breathalyzer test. And sure enough, the man's blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.37 percent, or almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas.
There was just one hitch: The man said that he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that day.
"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says Barabara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas. "His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.
So the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.
Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut.
That's right, folks. According to Cordell and McCarthy, the man's intestinal tract was acting like his own internal brewery.
The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy reported the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.
When we first read the case study, we were more than a little skeptical. It sounded crazy, a phenomenon akin to spontaneous combustion. I mean, come on: Could a person's gut really generate that much ethanol?
Brewer's yeast is in a whole host of foods, including breads, wine and, of course, beer (hence, the name). The critters usually don't do any harm. They just flow right through us. Some people even take Saccharomyces as a probiotic supplement.
But it turns out that in rare cases, the yeasty beasts can indeed take up long-term residency in the gut and possibly cause problems, says Dr. Joseph Heitman, a microbiologist at Duke University.
"Researchers have shown unequivocally that Saccharomyces can grow in the intestinal tract," Heitman tells The Salt. "But it's still unclear whether it's associated with any disease" — or whether it could make someone drunk from the gut up.
We dug around the scant literature on auto-brewery syndrome and uncovered a handful of cases similar to the one in Texas. Some reports in Japan date back to the 1970s. In most instances, the infections occurred after a person took antibiotics — which can wipe out the bacteria in the gut, making room for fungi like yeast to flourish — or had another illness that suppresses their immune system.
Still, such case reports remain extremely rare. Heitman says he had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome until we called him up. "It sounds interesting," he says. But he's also cautious.
"The problem with a case report," he notes, "is that it's just one person. It's not a controlled clinical study."

Solving our problems OR trying to brainwash the American public

So what do you think about this ??




According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

A wave of reporters went to work for President Obama early in the administration, a time when many media organizations were going through layoffs and Obama's approval rating was sky-high. The flow has tapered off since then. The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe has semi-regularly kept tabs on the number of reporters working for Obama administration, counting 10 in May 2009, 14 in 2010, and 13 in 2011. The Washington Examiner's Paul Beddard counted 19 reporters working for "Team Obama" in February 2012, but he included liberal advocacy groups as part of the "team."
Whether the number is 15 or 19, the fact that this many so-called journalists from outlets as influential as CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times want to work at the very same administration they are supposed to hold accountable, is not only troubling, it also explains a lot.
Why would anyone enamored enough with an Obama administration they want to go work for, do anything that might make a potential employer uncomfortable -- you know, like actually report on ObamaCare and the economy honestly, or dig into Benghazi and the IRS?
The media is left-wing and crusading enough without the potential of a cushy government job being held out as a carrot.
And don't think the Obama administration isn't doling out these jobs for a reason. What a wonderful message to send to the world of media: Don't go too far, don't burn a bridge, don't upset us too much and there just might be a lifeline off the sinking MSM ship.
And obviously it is working.
On top of this problem, you have a number of top news network executives related to top Obama officials, many of them at the center of the Benghazi scandal - which also explains a lot.

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC              

- See more at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/13/15-journalists-have-joined-obama-administration#sthash.BnRr2OFn.dpuf


According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

A wave of reporters went to work for President Obama early in the administration, a time when many media organizations were going through layoffs and Obama's approval rating was sky-high. The flow has tapered off since then. The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe has semi-regularly kept tabs on the number of reporters working for Obama administration, counting 10 in May 2009, 14 in 2010, and 13 in 2011. The Washington Examiner's Paul Beddard counted 19 reporters working for "Team Obama" in February 2012, but he included liberal advocacy groups as part of the "team."
Whether the number is 15 or 19, the fact that this many so-called journalists from outlets as influential as CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times want to work at the very same administration they are supposed to hold accountable, is not only troubling, it also explains a lot.
Why would anyone enamored enough with an Obama administration they want to go work for, do anything that might make a potential employer uncomfortable -- you know, like actually report on ObamaCare and the economy honestly, or dig into Benghazi and the IRS?
The media is left-wing and crusading enough without the potential of a cushy government job being held out as a carrot.
And don't think the Obama administration isn't doling out these jobs for a reason. What a wonderful message to send to the world of media: Don't go too far, don't burn a bridge, don't upset us too much and there just might be a lifeline off the sinking MSM ship.
And obviously it is working.
On top of this problem, you have a number of top news network executives related to top Obama officials, many of them at the center of the Benghazi scandal - which also explains a lot.

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- See more at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/13/15-journalists-have-joined-obama-administration#sthash.BnRr2OFn.dpuf

According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

A wave of reporters went to work for President Obama early in the administration, a time when many media organizations were going through layoffs and Obama's approval rating was sky-high. The flow has tapered off since then. The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe has semi-regularly kept tabs on the number of reporters working for Obama administration, counting 10 in May 2009, 14 in 2010, and 13 in 2011. The Washington Examiner's Paul Beddard counted 19 reporters working for "Team Obama" in February 2012, but he included liberal advocacy groups as part of the "team."
Whether the number is 15 or 19, the fact that this many so-called journalists from outlets as influential as CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times want to work at the very same administration they are supposed to hold accountable, is not only troubling, it also explains a lot.
- See more at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/13/15-journalists-have-joined-obama-administration#sthash.jCApOlCP.dpuf

According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel's decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama's crusade to fundamentally transform America:

A wave of reporters went to work for President Obama early in the administration, a time when many media organizations were going through layoffs and Obama's approval rating was sky-high. The flow has tapered off since then. The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe has semi-regularly kept tabs on the number of reporters working for Obama administration, counting 10 in May 2009, 14 in 2010, and 13 in 2011. The Washington Examiner's Paul Beddard counted 19 reporters working for "Team Obama" in February 2012, but he included liberal advocacy groups as part of the "team."
Whether the number is 15 or 19, the fact that this many so-called journalists from outlets as influential as CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times want to work at the very same administration they are supposed to hold accountable, is not only troubling, it also explains a lot.
- See more at: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/13/15-journalists-have-joined-obama-administration#sthash.jCApOlCP.dpuf