37 times around the Sun, now with 7,000,000,000 of my closest friends. Thus we mark the year.
October 31, 2011The U.N. estimates that the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark on Monday.
Much of that growth has happened in Asia — in India and China. Those two countries have been among the world’s most populous for centuries. But a demographic shift is taking place as the countries have modernized and lowered their fertility rates. Now, the biggest growth is taking place in sub-Saharan Africa.
For all the actual problems the world faces, this is one that I think will largely moderate itself as more and more of humanity catches up to the present (in the 21st century, unless your political climate is noxious towards women, there are ample methods for taking control of one’s reproductive life).
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Wage stats for 2010. No surprise here…
Based on data in the table below, about 66.2 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the $39,959.30 raw average wage. By definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage, which is estimated to be $26,363.55 for 2010.
When the average is 50% higher than the median it’s probably a situation where people are taking to the streets to protest and….oh. And yes you read that right, half of wage earners earned less than $27K last year. These are the folks every Republican candidate wants to *raise taxes* on (i.e. “expand the base”), while cutting them further for the wealthy.
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Palestine goes for country-hood, U.S. promptly pulls funding (I hate this crap, the UN created Israel, but somehow it horrible to use the same mechanism to create Palestine).
PARIS (Reuters) – The United Nations’ cultural agency decided Monday to give the Palestinians full membership of the body, a vote that will boost their bid for recognition as a state at the United Nations.
UNESCO is the first U.N. agency the Palestinians have joined as a full member since President Mahmoud Abbas applied for full membership of the United Nations on September 23.
–followed by–
The United States has announced it will stop its financial contributions to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after the body admitted Palestine as a member on Monday.
“We were to have made a $60 million payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment,” said the US State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland.
This is another one of those things where the Obama administration is doing exactly what conservatives want them to do, but will get absolutely no credit whatsoever for doing it. Indeed, this will likely be interpreted as “throwing Israel under the bus” when in reality what we are doing, once again, is “going to the mat for an unthankful ally who ignores our requests they stop violating the law“.
Just to get an idea of what crap goes on and gets called justice over there…
An Israeli court on Thursday threw out a lawsuit filed by a Palestinian family that lost two relatives after their home in the Gaza Strip was bombed during an Israel Defense Forces operation.
The Jerusalem District Court refused the family’s request for damages, ruling that the fatal 2006 bombing was a legitimate act of war.
Fatma Wahabe and her son Khaled were killed after a missile fire by an IDF assault helicopter hit their home in Khan Yunis, instead of the targeted vehicle carrying wanted Palestinian militants.
The court’s decision was based in part on an affidavit filed by the head of the Shin Bet security service’s department on Gaza, who defended the IDF operation as necessary “to prevent a clear, immediate, and present danger to public safety.”
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“It was an initiated attack meant to strike a top terror operative based on solid intelligence, according to which he was about to attack Israeli citizens,” the judge said.
The plaintiffs were also ordered to pay NIS 25,000 in legal fees.
I can’t imagine how someone occupying your city, killing your family, and charging you for the service could do anything but build strong bonds of fellowship.
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Right Wing Pundit realizing GOP primacy choices are largely a joke.
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Great questions for anyone who wants to claim that Big Poverty caused the financial crisis of 2008. One of the more disturbing aspects of the collapse of 2008 is that the people responsible have done a bang-up job of blaming everyone else for the collapse. I’m guessing this is because they control most of the money and media, and therefore just get to propagate loads of self-affirming bullshit. However, when you run into someone that claims it was the CRA (from ’94) that caused the crisis (in ’08), there’s a few good questions on that link to ask them. (note: these are more technical economics questions, so it’s important to first ascertain if the person you are talking to has a basic understanding of how economics works. If they are a Ron Paul supporter….just nod and back away).
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Read this and then you’ll understand that cutting corporate tax rates won’t do a dang thing unless we cut them to negative numbers. (and that’s one of the “good” guys). We need a corporate AMT, based on yearly reporting earnings, firm-wide.
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Marco Rubio has been a’lyin about his origin story. Whenever I see this guy, I always think it’s this guy. Maybe it’s because when Rubio talks, it’s like he’s living in an imaginary Never Never Land
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Canadians seems to have taking a liking to Canadians. I can see why…who doesn’t like Canadians?
Robot Pirate Ninja 
