DADvocate

Thomas Wathen, at CNN.com, has decided it's time to panic over diminishing forests in North America.

If we are to transform the ideals of the International Year of the Forest into action, we must also take such migration needs into account. This vital global resource for traveling wildlife is irreplaceable -- and yet it is vanishing. According to the U.N., forests have disappeared in 25 countries, and another 29 nations have lost more than 90%.

The U.N. report Wathen refers to addresses forest and woodlands internationally. Wathen mistakenly assumes the forests in North America are disappearing rapidly. The truth is quite the opposite.Points from the linked source (Evergreen magazine. Figures as of the year 2000.):

• Wildlife has been a major conservation success story.
• Nationally, forest growth rates have exceeded harvest rates since the 1940s, with each decade generally showing a greater margin of growth over harvest than the one preceding. By 1986, the volume of tree growth nationally exceeded the volume harvested by 37 percent; and growth was more than 3 1/2 times what it had been in 1920.
• For the last 70 years there has been no increase in cropland area.
• Eastern watersheds have been reforested.
• The area consumed by wildfire has been reduced by more than 90 percent, from 40-50 million acres in the early 1900s to 2-8 million acres today—even in bad fire years.

We have more forestland now in the U.S. than we had in 1900. I'm an outdoors man and a conservationist, but lets get the story straight.

But, no, let's panic.

Some how, none of the information in this article surprises me and is a sad statement about our society.

More than one in four American women took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression last year, according to an analysis of prescription data.

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In adults 20 to 44, use of antipsychotic drugs and treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) more than tripled, while use of anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax, Valium and Ativan rose 30per cent from a decade ago.

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The company said women are twice as likely as men to use anxiety treatments as 11per cent of women 45 to 65 are on an anxiety medication.

Women are also more likely than men to take antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Abilify, which treat disorders like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

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'What is not as clear is if more people — especially women - are actually developing psychological disorders that require treatment.

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Medco found that prescriptions of those drugs for children have dropped since 2004, when the FDA warned they were linked to suicidal thoughts when used in people under 19.

The company said less than 1per cent of children use antipsychotics drugs, although the figure has doubled since 2001.

Some of this has to be due to big pharmco pushing drugs 24/7 on TV, radio, print, web, and thought projection. Some is probably due to people just wanting easy solutions. Pop a pill. You're done.

Yeah, Senators and Congresspersons can participate in insider trading. Stuff that would get you and I put in prison.

More HERE.

The problem with cases in which lawmakers, like Boehner and Pelosi, simply deny the allegations, is that the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t have the power to look into the reports of insider trading, Schweizer said.

“If you were a corporate executive and there was a pattern of stock behavior linked to inside information and you just told the SEC, ‘I don’t do it,’ the SEC wouldn’t just walk away,” he said on CBS. “The SEC would actually look and investigate and see if there is a link, and that’s what I think is troubling here — the SEC simply doesn’t have the authority or the power to go in and look and see, there is this interesting pattern linked to your legislative activity. Was there communication that took place that made this pattern exist?”

Pelosi Says Unemployment Rate Would Have Hit 14.5% Without 2009 Stimulus.

Nancy Pelosi refuses to use the word "stimulus" to describe the president's "American Jobs Act." But when asked today to name significant differences between the Jobs Act and the 2009 stimulus package, Pelosi didn't identify any, except the amount of money each bill costs. "This is a much smaller package," she said of the $447 billion American Jobs Act. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cost $862 billion.

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PELOSI: Well, let me just say that as a matter of fact that the Recovery Act saved millions of jobs--or saved or created millions of jobs for our economy. Without the Recovery Act and accompanying federal interventions, whether from the Fed, or cash for clunkers, or other initiatives, the unemployment rate last year at the time of the election would have been fourteen and a half percent, not nine and a half percent.

The lady is either insane, thinks we're idiots or both.

I vote for both.

I received this from a friend today.



"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.." -- Winston Churchill

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read: Unfortunately, most voters don't know this.

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them; and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.