Dews Monday Wrap-up

Hope everyone is finally recovering from the typtophan poisoning over the holidays, because whether you like it or not, today you are stuck back in your wonderful job that did not allow you to sleep in, regardless of how much you wanted to, or prayed to some deity to allow to happen...

Yes, even us here at LSWTF.com do have to get up and be all "respectable" come morning time for "The Man", but thankfully we have this wonderful outlet to keep our minds from turning to jello. Thank being said, lets take a look at what's in the news today.

Strange evidence is surfacing that Wi-Fi, as well as high levels of heavy-metals in the bloodstream (heavy metal toxicity and no that is not a band that I know of), are linked to child-hood autism.

Dr Carlo said, "These findings tie in with other studies showing adverse
cell-membrane responses and disruptions of normal cell physiology. The
electromagnetic radiation apparently causes the metals to be trapped in cells,
slowing clearance and accelerating the onset of symptoms."

Really fascinating to see some of the technology we take for granted having such a profound effect on our health, though can't really say as I'm totally surprised... Anytime I use my cell phone for more then 20 minutes I feel like I've grown a tumor of some sort.

The interesting part of this story to me is how we are learning how various technologies are interacting with the brain (for good or ill). Always fascinating to hear we've found something that directly effects the functions of the brain, when we don't utilize close to 10% of it to begin with.

Great article in politico.com about how the New York Times (the apparently bastion of liberal commie pinko minded folks and all), sat on a story about a joint US-Pakistani Nuclear weapons operation for 3 years... Really hammering the point home about how biased these supposed papers are with their liberal agenda and all.

Regardless of how much the UN may have gotten their numbers off on HIV spreading globally, it has hit our little town (for some of the LSWTF.com staff) of Washington DC especially hard. According to latest research numbers it has hit the African American community the hardest.

The numbers most starkly illustrate HIV's impact on the African American
community. More than 80 percent of the 3,269 HIV cases identified between 2001
and 2006 were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women who tested positive, a rising percentage of local cases, nine of 10 were African
American.

Really shocking to see the numbers on this, especially given how are we have supposedly come as a society. You'd think these numbers would have to come down from everyone and their mother knowing the risks of X, Y and Z to prevent contracting HIV, but seemingly this just isn't the case here in the Nation's Capitol.

Finally, Mike Huckabee is making a lot of sense. That line alone will go over well with other writers here, but Huckabee's latest interview on CNN was really spot on when he spoke at length of the Saudi royal family's influence on America as a whole as well as our indifference to their notably long list of human rights violations.

"The United States has been far too involved in sort of looking the other
way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women,"
Huckabee said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich - filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas," schools "that train the terrorists," said Huckabee. "America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing."

Quite honestly, that is the smartest and gutsiest thing I've heard any candidate go out on a limb and say. Major Kudos to Governor Huckabee for establishing the fact that he may be the only candidate NOT already deep in Saudi interest. At the very least, he has at least demonstrated that he's not afraid of taking a wildly different stance on foreign policy then the "business as usual" approach that hasn't worked for 20 years. That and I actually met someone that used to work for him and she seemed totally normal, so he can't be nearly as crazy as he's made out to be...

Hope you been saving!

Now, we kinda should have been prepared for this dangerous possibility for a while now, but something tells me that being the "scared and thus must consume more then we can afford" good Americans we are, we are in for a rough ride here.

Our lil buddies in the Middle East (no, not Israel, those are "Big" buddies), The Kingdom of Saudia Arabia has announced that it will not follow our lead in cutting interest rates against the almighty dollar. Blah blah, economics, etc and all that, but basically what this could signal is an exodus of many nations away from using the dollar as the stabilizing currency or "peg" in their own economic systems.

What this could mean for us is that we are seeing less and less foreign investors trusting the way our economy is growing, as well as the difference in our own "Economic Might" as compared to other nations shrinking drastically.

Basically, that all-powerful force we used to crush communism in Mother Russia? You know, our Economy/Free Market/Trade power/Wealth advantage that we had over all the other nations of the world?

Yea.

Thats about to go away very very soon, with some very unhappy and confused citizens starting to wonder why it really is that European companies give almost a month off a year and yet are just as productive as us (and their currency is worth more and more by the day). Oh yea, and that whole "Health Insurance" thing too.

Think its probably time to take a step back and really think long and hard about the terrible decisions this Company, er, Country has made the last 20 years and make some pretty sweeping changes to how we do business. We still have some leverage today, but given the times, we won't have that for long.

*Edit 12:41pm: Just piling on at this point, but Canada's currency has almost reached parity with the dollar now. Something that has not happened since 1976.

This is especially disturbing to me, having grown up in Vermont... We used to use their funny money all the time to cross the border and go to... uh... Clubs! Like Tabby's in Bedford, cause they had good pizza.... I think that was our line anyway.