I think the Washington Post has done a great job with the mystery of the new employment numbers.

By Associated Press 
Updated: Friday, February 7, 4:45 PM

...One is called the payroll survey. (click here) It asks mostly large companies and government agencies how many people they employed during the month. This survey produces the number of jobs gained or lost. In December, the payroll survey showed that companies and government agencies added 113,000 jobs.

The other is the household survey. Government workers ask whether the adults in a household have a job. Those who don’t have a job are asked whether they’re looking for one. If they are, they’re considered unemployed. If they aren’t looking for a job, they’re not considered part of the workforce and aren’t counted as unemployed. The household survey produces each month’s unemployment rate.

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also does a better job of capturing hiring by small businesses....

We know small businesses have not only recovered to pre-2008 levels, but, they are growing. Our local economies are doing well. We know that. I do believe this survey reflects the success of our small businesses and their growth. The growth of small businesses and local economies may not compliment Wall Street. I think we are seeing a real growth in the USA, but, in a non-traditional way.

This doesn't let Congress off the hook for those still unemployed without benefits that are now losing their homes. 

As a matter of fact, if there is a profound change in the USA economy and it's growth, the people who were traditionally employed are going to need a lot of help. They are going to need their unemployment benefits as well as training toward jobs known to exist. 

In 2008 we witnessed not only the loss of housing value, but, huge losses in construction jobs. We came to realize with #Occupy Wall Street there was an entire generation of Americans abandoned to their promise of a life they worked hard to prepare for. They were left without hope of jobs. So, as Americans came to grips with the reality of what 'somewhat covertly' happened to their country, including the abandonment by Wall Street to loans to small businesses, they set themselves on a path to correct the course of the country.

It is now over five years later and the path Americans FOUND to be successful for themselves and THEIR VALUES is becoming known. All their efforts are becoming a measurable aspect to the jobs market and/or an enterprise of their own.

With a change in the path of the country and it's growing economy and as Wall Street sheds jobs for whatever reason they do, there are new people becoming unemployed without a clue as to how they are going to solve their plight. Many, given the state of poverty in the USA and the Working Poor, won't have resources to even find a new path for their work life. 

I sincerely believe we are in a new territory and President Obama probably understands it better than anyone since he and his team of advisors has overseen the recovery during all those years of new economic growth.

Published time: February 06, 2014 12:13
 
...Some 300,000 people in nine counties (click here) were told not to drink the water for up to 10 days, while Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials advised pregnant women to consider a different water source beyond that point.

Federal officials on Wednesday, however, gave the water a clean bill of health.
"You can drink it. You can bathe in it," AP cites Dr. Tanja Popovic, acting director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, as saying. "You can use it how you like."
 
Popovic further affirmed that the water was safe, even for pregnant women, suggesting the CDC’s original message was only intended to help pregnant women make better informed health decisions for themselves. 

"They may not want to eat certain food," Popovic said. "They may not want to fly. It doesn't mean that flying isn't safe."
 
Many restaurants, however, have refused to cook with the water, while local doctors have not taken the official assurances at face value, telling children under three and those with compromised immune systems not to drink it, said Dr. Rahul Gupta, health officer for Kanawha and Putnam counties. 

On Wednesday, two schools closed early after the licorice odor associated with the chemicals wafted through the building. Students reported symptoms of light-headedness, itchy eyes and noses. One teacher fainted and another student was sent to hospital....

On January 25th the authorities stated MCHM and PPH should not be in the water at any level. That's all changed now. I don't think so. There has been a thorough study conducted in the past two weeks, right? Where are the findings. There is an LD50 study? Where is it?

There needs to be three investigations, the LD50s on MCHM and PPH and the MIXTURE of the two.

January 25, 2014

By Pamela Pritt

 Register-Herald Reporter

 

CHARLESTON — Crude MCHM and its companion chemical PPH (click here) should not be in drinking water at any level, the chair of the Chemical Safety Board said Friday morning.

Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso said those chemicals are created to be reactive with other chemicals and have the potential to affect human beings.

“We should be worried about it,” Moure-Eraso said.

The company that manufactures the chemicals — Eastman Chemicals produced the MCHM, Dow made the PPH — is responsible for testing the chemicals and providing answers about chemical safety guidelines, Moure-Eraso said. The company has “provided very little information,” he continued, but has conducted two or three small toxicological studies. Those studies are not “adequate to determine chronic effects over a long period of time,” the director said....

Here we go:

By Jeff Jenkins in News
January 21, 2014 at 11:53PM 

Toxicologic information on PPH is limited. (click here) Based on the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) provided by the manufacturer, the reported toxicity of this material appears to be lower than the toxicity of MCHM  (LD50 > 2000 mg/kg for the primary component of PPH vs. 825 mg/kg for MCHM).  Given the small percentage of PPH in the tank and information suggesting similar water solubility as MCHM, it is likely that any amount of PPH currently in the water system would be extremely low. However, the water system has not been tested for this material.

I am not saying the PPH in West Virginia came from Dow Chemical. However, Dow is a very reputable company that would have information about their chemicals. I would think any authority involved in this would seek opinion from private industry most familiar with the chemical.

DOWANOL™ PPh Glycol Ether (click here)

Where is the information for the mixture of the two. Simply because they are diluted in water doesn't make them safe.

DOWANOL™ PPh is a slow evaporating, very hydrophobic glycol ether.

it doesn't dilute in water. It is non-polar. That means it won't necessary flush out of the pipes easily with water. There are traces still there throughout the system. There is still a problem.

Okay, no one is going to like this but I am going to state it anyway.

PPH as a hydrophobic gylcol ether forms 'micelles' in water. They have similar structure to liposomes. I don't like it. The body can misinterpret the interaction as biological.

Sorry, I just don't like it.

O

There was never a real threat, reports of drunkenness. Did the airline have to provide a passenger that much alcohol?

I can't believe CNN is even bringing up the TERROR of "There are even weapons missing from Libya."

Right. Sure.

By Brian Resnick and Matt Berman

February 7, 2014

A man claiming to have a bomb attempted to hijack a Pegasus Airlines plane from Ukraine on Friday and take it to Sochi, where the Winter Olympics were just beginning.The plane's crew managed to divert the plane to Turkey.

Turkish officials tell the Associated Press that the plane has been evacuated, and the suspect has been subdued. There were reportedly no problems in evacuating the plane, and the operation is now over, says Istanbul's governor.

Intelligence officials tell National Journal's Michael Hirsh that they're still trying to figure out who the suspect is, and say that the person may have been drunk. It's unclear what the suspect's motives were, or if he actually did possess any weapons.

So far at the Olympics the only terror alert is that the red ring of the digital snowflake display was sabotaged. Maybe CNN is so enthralled with violence, suffering and war they can't find any beauty in the world, including the athletes in Sochi.

Beauty. Amateur athletes. How boring, huh? No adrenalin involved. No rightwing satiation at all, huh? Tough to yell, "...kill, kill, kill..." while everyone is getting along so well.

Sept. 1, 2004
Sammy Salama
Monterey Institute of International Studies

Introduction (click here)

In a stunning declaration on December 19, 2003, the Libyan government announced its intention to fully disarm its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal. The Libyan government charted this new course after many years of diplomatic and economic isolation, which was the product of its rogue behavior in past decades. In addition, Libya's announcement that it would unilaterally disarm its entire WMD arsenal came on the heels of nine months of secret negotiations with American and British officials. It appears clear that Libya's decision was to some strong degree the result of diplomatic carrots and sticks, but certainly a variety of factors may have influenced Libya's decision to renounce its WMD arsenal and pursue unilateral disarmament at this time....

The immune response would occur before there was sufficient myelin developed.

A team of researchers at John Hopkins University (click here) have found, in a study conducted on mice, that if a mother’s immune system goes into ‘overdrive’ during pregnancy due to exposure to a serious infection or other disease, the children may experience brain abnormalities that last through to adulthood. The mice in the study showed that males were more susceptible to this effect than females, and had smaller hippocampuses and fewer nerve cells in their brains than they should after prenatal exposure to high immune responses. Worryingly, their brains also contained a kind of immune cell which would not normally be there.

The study simulated exposure to an infection that would cause an immune response from the pregnant mice, and then analysed the effects of this on the baby mice that resulted. The team studied these mice and their brains into adulthood, and found that the abnormalities caused in the male mice lasted throughout their lives.

These findings lead the scientists studying this effect to believe the same may occur in humans, and that this could be a cause of some conditions like autism and schizophrenia, which are already thought to have neurobiological roots. These conditions are both significantly more likely to occur in males, which also suggests that the cause could be the immune system activity of their mothers during pregnancy, as this was seen to affect male mice more. More research will need to be done to see if humans indeed are subject to the same effect as mice.

I wonder if the difference between male and female is a link to hormones in the formation of the antibody and/or the myelin. It just seems to me it is hormone related. "Sex-linked" usually is genetic.

This isn't exactly hormone related at all. It is gender related and in utero development. It may be that the increased immune response effects more cells in the males over females. The spinal cord is more myelin dense. The above research doesn't examine the spinal cord. 

The fornix leads into the hippocampus. Just a guess. Mary Temple Grandin (click here) has stated visual/spatial thinking/learning  to be an origin for delayed speech in people with autism.

Mirela Cerghet, Robert P. Skoff, Denise Bessert, Zhan Zhang, Chadwick Mullins and M. Said Ghandour

26(5): 1439-1447

 doi: 10.1523

JNEUROSCI.

2219-05.2006 

 

Sexual dimorphism of neurons and astrocytes (click here) has been demonstrated in different centers of the brain, but sexual dimorphism of oligodendrocytes and myelin has not been examined. We show, using immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization, that the density of oligodendrocytes in corpus callosum, fornix, and spinal cord is 20–40% greater in males compared with females....

...Hippocampal neurons in males have a larger dendritic tree than females (Barrera et al., 2001). This structure, under the influence of sex hormones (Roof, 1993), has been postulated to play a role in spatial learning...

A good beginning to the peace process. The UN stated they were optomistic the chemical weapons would be secured in June of this year.

By Patrick J. McDonnell

February 7, 2014, 9:58 a.m.

HOMS, Syria — Dozens of people trapped (click here) in the historic center of Homs were evacuated Friday as part of a complex deal involving the Syrian government, the United Nations and armed rebels occupying the Old City district.

A total of 83 residents, mostly men but including some women and children, were able to leave in what officials called a successful first day of a plan to provide relief to the long-besieged area. A fragile cease-fire held up during the operation, despite an early violation.

“We had some bumps, but this was a good beginning,” said Yacoub Hillo, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Syria, who was at the scene helping to coordinate the relief effort. “In coming days we hope to do more to relieve the suffering of the people of Homs and of Syria.”

The plight of the residents of the Old City gained global attention during the Syrian peace talks last month in Geneva. But negotiators in Geneva were unable to work out a deal to evacuate civilians from the district and provide food and other aid to those stranded inside....

She is running a good race. I'd like to think the heatlh care insurance is helping.

I congratulate her. She and her father were being ridiculed for simply being Democrats. It is refreshing they maintained a positive campaign.

Posted: Friday, February 7, 2014 10:02 am

By Joseph Gerth The Courier-Journal

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trails Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes by 4 percentage points in this year’s U.S. Senate race, 46-42, according to the latest Bluegrass Poll of likely statewide voters.

Go idea. I would think the manufacturers would take the initiative on their own.

Tiffany Kaiser
February 7, 2014 12:31 PM
 
A new California bill (click here) could force mobile smartphone and tablet makers to place a "kill switch" on their devices in order to prevent theft.

According to The New York Times, Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) is expected to introduce the bill Friday, which would require all smartphones and tablets sold in California to have a kill switch.

Having a feature like this would make the smartphone or tablet unusable if it were stolen. In turn, Leno hopes that this will curb robberies of mobile devices, since they would be more difficult to sell that way....

Similar devices have worked to end car thefts when they were installed by the manufacturer.

...The best theft prevention device (cilck here) on the market is the passive immobilizer, now standard equipment on 98% of General Motors' light duty vehicles and nearly all of the new Fords. These immobilizers use a key that contains a computer chip which communicates with the car's engine. Without the proper key, the only way to steal the car is to tow it away. "Obviously, an immobilizer is more effective than an alarm," says GM spokesman Andrew Schreck. "An audible system is really just a noisemaker, but we can tie an immobilizer directly to the ignition system, to make sure it really is a deterrent. And it doesn't cost us any more than putting in an alarm."

The insurance statistics speak for themselves. When Ford added an immobilizer system to the Ford Mustang, theft rates dropped 77%....

The US House is out of order. They are not carrying out the country's business.

Legislation is not about bargaining with the lives of people, it is about resolving problems. The undocumented workers currently in the USA was welcome to perform work for slave wages and Americans profited. They built lives out of air and made the USA their home regardless of their struggle. Now they are thrown out of the country for political purposes of the rightwing. That is not solving the problems of the country, that is victimizing people that belong in this country.

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 12: Immigration reform advocates demonstrate on November 12, 2013 in New York City. Some 100 demonstrators called for Republican U.S. Congressman Michael Grimm, who represents New York City's 11th District, to back comprehensive immigration reform legislation in the House of Representatives. The 11-mile "pilgrimage for the 11 million" undocumented immigrants went from midtown Manhattan to Grimm's Staten Island office and was organized by the New York Immigration Coalition. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) John Moore, Getty Images

The United States should NEVER create a permanent underclass. That is developing a return to slavery. In the US every person has the same rights as the next. The idea there would be an exclusive class of citizen that has full rights creates a great problems for the country. The future with such an understanding holds a great deal of danger. 

Absolutely not.

The dangers include creating separate laws, a separate constitution for people with less rights. These people never receive a vote and never are represented. It creates poverty, unaddressed health problems and huge discrimination. This idea of a separate underclass is obvious bigotry and racism and has the potential to create civil war and domestic terrorism. How are they going to be treated within a prison system if they do break the law? 

Whether on a nonimmigrant visa or green card, (click here) committing certain acts or crimes can make a person deportable from the U.S. 

They have no right to due process. Their fate in the USA is not guaranteed and is completely victimized. The idea this is a permanent issue in any life will cause stress and enters into issues of longevity.  

"This is not an issue (click here) that's ready for prime time to move legislatively," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who said Republicans should use the principles to begin a dialogue with Hispanics. 

The USA would be creating it's won Palestine. This 'status bigotry' is an offense to the USA Constitution.

We are on a timeline that is more than substantial to pass legislation to solve this problem. 

June 15, 2012
Remarks by the President on Immigration (click here)

Rose Garden

2:09 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everybody.  This morning, Secretary Napolitano announced new actions my administration will take to mend our nation’s immigration policy, to make it more fair, more efficient, and more just -- specifically for certain young people sometimes called “Dreamers.”
These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag.  They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one:  on paper.  They were brought to this country by their parents -- sometimes even as infants -- and often have no idea that they’re undocumented until they apply for a job or a driver’s license, or a college scholarship. 

Put yourself in their shoes.  Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life -- studied hard, worked hard, maybe even graduated at the top of your class -- only to suddenly face the threat of deportation to a country that you know nothing about, with a language that you may not even speak.
That’s what gave rise to the DREAM Act.  It says that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you’ve been here for five years, and you’re willing to go to college or serve in our military, you can one day earn your citizenship.  And I have said time and time and time again to Congress that, send me the DREAM Act, put it on my desk, and I will sign it right away.....

The Legislature didn't have to write a word so much as pass a bill. This was a no brainer for the US House that can't deal with a bill longer than three pages. It looks like the President needs to do more and write an Executive Order that includes all current undocumented workers for at least another two years.