Eating Too Much Added Sugar May Be Killing You

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Allison Joyce, Getty ImagesSugar not only makes you fat, it may be killing you.

Consuming too much added sugar — in regular soda, cakes, cookies and candy — increases your risk of death from heart disease, according to a new study, the largest of its type.

“The risk of cardiovascular disease death increases exponentially as you increase your consumption of added sugar,” says the study’s lead author, Quanhe Yang, a senior scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On average, adults in the USA in 2010 consumed about 15% of their daily calories — about 300 calories a day, based on a 2,000-calorie diet — from added sugars. That’s far more than the American Heart Association’s recommendation that women consume no more than 100 calories a day from added sugars, or about 6 teaspoons of sugar; and men consume no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons. The World Health Organization recommends consuming less than 10% of calories from added sugars.

One can of regular soda contains about 140 calories of added sugar. That’s about 7% of the daily calories of someone eating 2,000 calories a day, Yang says.

Read more from this story HERE.

Farm Bill Moves Forward in Senate with Final Passage Expected Tuesday

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: ThinkstockThe Senate moved forward Monday on long-awaited legislation to authorize farm spending, voting to end debate on the measure so that the chamber can vote on final passage Tuesday.

Two years in the making, the $1 trillion bill ends a decades-old policy of providing taxpayer subsidies directly to farmers.

The five-year plan cuts spending by $16.6 trillion over a decade, including an $800 million annual reduction to the food stamp program.

The vote was 72-22, and included opposition from Republicans who wanted deeper cuts and Democrats who opposed the food stamp reduction.

The House approved the measure last week by a bipartisan 251-166 vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Forgetting Gun Was in Glove Box Could Land Veteran in Canadian Prison for 3 Years

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters Retired Army Sergeant Major Louis DiNatale was on his way to Vermont for vacation in his wife’s car when he took a wrong turn, ended up on a bridge to Canada, and was charged for possession of a firearm after Canadian customs agents found a small-caliber pistol in his wife’s console.

Although DiNatale made it clear he was on the bridge inadvertently and simply wanted to u-turn and return to the United States, he was handcuffed and could face three years in prison.

According to the LA Times, DiNatale had forgotten the gun was in his wife’s console shortly after putting it there so it wouldn’t be in his truck when he drove onto base at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. He put the pistol in his wife’s car for safe-keeping then forgot all about it.

When a Canadian custom agent asked DiNatale if he owned guns, the retired Sergeant Major said, “yes.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Farewell to Henry Waxman, Maker of Bad Laws

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteAfter 40 years in Congress, California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling it quits. His legacy includes a toxic fuel additive (a boondoggle known as ethanol), a failed pork-fest of a climate bill and the devastation of small businesses — to name a few of his legislative accomplishments.

Washington Post correspondent Karen Tumulty praised Waxman, calling him “one of the last to whom the word ‘lawmaker’ still applied.”

But here’s the thing: If you spend four decades making laws, you’re going to make some bad laws. And Henry Waxman made a lot of bad laws.

Waxman deserves praise for many things. Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, Waxman passed a reform that improved the prescription drug patent system. He also passed a postal reform.

Waxman kept his hands impressively clean of K Street’s tainting influence. Despite being in Congress longer than “Wheel of Fortune” has been on the air, Waxman has only six former staffers in the “Revolving Door” database at the Center for Responsive Politics. Since 1989, Waxman averaged less than $30,000 from lobbyists per election – a modest sum for a committee chairman.

Read more from this story HERE.

One of Gov. Christie’s Bodyguards Charged With Shoplifting in Pennsylvania (+video)

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APOne of Governor Chris Christie’s bodyguards has suspended without pay from the New Jersey State Police, charged with shoplifting in Berks County, Pa.

A state police spokesman says that William Carvounis, 35, was assigned to the executive protection unit and had been on Christie’s security detail.

But police in Tilden Township, Pa. — north of Reading and west of Allentown — say last month the trooper stole nearly $300 in gun supplies and other merchandise from a Cabela’s sporting goods store.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama on IRS Scandal: ‘Not Even a Smidgen of Corruption’

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APPresident Obama, in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, tried to put behind him the scandals that have hung over his second term, suggesting his administration did not mislead the public on the Benghazi attack and going so far as to say the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Obama addressed concerns over Benghazi, the launch of HealthCare.gov and the IRS, during the interview Sunday before the Super Bowl. He adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.

“That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.

“There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded.

But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption — not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama to O’Reilly: Fox News Reason for My Problems

/11 Comments/in , /by

President Barack Obama twice blamed Fox News Channel for misinforming the public on issues that have bedeviled his presidency in the past year during a pre-Super Bowl interview with the network’s Bill O’Reilly.

The two sat down in the White House on Sunday for a live pregame interview that started about 4:35 p.m. and aired for about 10 minutes.

O’Reilly first noted that Obama’s detractors believe he did not initially say the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was terrorism because it happened in the heat of an election.

Obama had just weeks earlier said al-Qaida was on the run after U.S. Navy SEALs assassinated its leader, Osama bin Laden.

“That’s what they believe,” O’Reilly said of Obama’s detractors.

Read more from this story HERE.

Does the Right to Self-Defense Have Boundaries?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDThe U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has sided with defenders of the Second Amendment, ruling that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to bear arms and that states cannot unreasonably restrict that right.

There’s also a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court considering whether or not states can limit the right to self-defense to a citizen’s private home.

Now, in a related move, U.S senators have proposed a law to establish that the right to bear arms cannot be restricted by political boundaries. The bill would establish that a permit to carry a concealed weapon in one state is valid in all states that allow concealed-carry.

Mississippi Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran recently signed on as co-sponsors of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2014.

The bill, they explain, “is intended to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of individuals with conceal carry permits, allowing them to carry those privileges from their home state to other states that also have conceal carry laws.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Best Super Bowl XLVIII Commercials (+video)

/5 Comments/in , /by

Budweiser “Puppy Love”Average and okay.” That’s Lee Garfinkel’s three-word assessment of this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. And Garfinkel knows of what he speaks. The CEO of DraftFCB NY is the auteur of numerous classic Super Bowl ads, most notably a series of iconic Pepsi spots featuring Cindy Crawford.

Garfinkel, who created high profile spots at BBDO, Lowe, DDB, and Havas Worldwide, knows how hard it is to make a great Super Bowl spot. The stakes are high and everyone has an opinion. “It’s a very delicate thing to create a great commercial, let alone a great Super Bowl spot,” he explains. “You need to take into consideration how people view Super Bowl spots, how it will do in the different Ad Meters and reviews, plus so many people are working on it that it’s easy to chip away at it and water it down.”…

Here are the ads, including a great spot that did not air during the game on Sunday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Welcome to the United States of Paranoia

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APFeel like Big Brother is watching you these days? You’re not alone.

“This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario,” wrote the late William Safire of The New York Times in 2002, in the panicky aftermath of 9/11. “Here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive . . . will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database.’ ”

Twelve years on, this is the world we live in, but worse. Through a combination of fear, cowardice, political opportunism and bureaucratic metastasis, the erstwhile land of the free has been transformed into a nation of closely watched subjects — a country of 300 million potential criminals, whose daily activities need constant monitoring.

Once the most secret of organizations, the NSA has become even more famous than the CIA, the public face of Big Brother himself. At its headquarters on Savage Road in Fort Meade, Md., its omnivorous Black Widow supercomputer hoovers up data both foreign and domestic, while its new $2 billion data center near Bluffdale, Utah — the highly classified Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center — houses, well, just about everything. As James Bamford wrote in Wired magazine two years ago, as the center was being completed:

“Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private e-mails, cellphone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter.’ ”

Read more from this story HERE.