Romney Fights for Ohio, Regardless of the Polls

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney speaks at a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio Sept. 25, 2012.

Romney needs to win Ohio! I have faith but saying a lot of prayers!

Before Mitt Romney set foot in Ohio for a two-day bus tour this week, his campaign was spinning the state of the presidential contest there. On a flight between Newark and Dayton on Tuesday, Romney political director Rich Beeson argued that publicly available polling, most notably a Washington Post survey that showed President Obama ahead by 8 points in the state, had the race all wrong. “The public polls are what the public polls are,” he said. “I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign on what the public polls say. We don’t. We have confidence in our data.”

Beeson didn’t share any of the campaign’s internal polling–nor did he explicitly say that it shows a radically different race than the public surveys. But like many Republicans at the moment, he was adamant that polling samples based on exit polls from the 2008 election overstate Democratic support. (Some are taking that theory to extremes.) Romney is “inside the margin of error in Ohio,” Beeson said, a statement that suggested a close race without really putting a number on it. True, the Post poll could easily be an outlier, and a New York Times/CBS News poll released Wednesday is almost certainly one: it found Obama up by 10 points in Ohio, a margin larger than any other major firm has reported. But even if the number strains credulity, it’s bad news for Romney.

Both candidates will sweep through Ohio on Wednesday, the unofficial start of the final mad scrum for swing-state votes. Romney rallied with Paul Ryan, Rand Paul and Rob Portman on Tuesday in Dayton, and he’ll hit three more cities Wednesday, while Obama visits Bowling Green State and Kent State universities. Those efforts make sense regardless of the latest polls.

Beeson claimed the map is “wide open,” that Romney does not need to win Ohio to carry the election. While it’s true that there are scenarios in which Romney would not need Ohio to win, losing it would seriously handicap his chances. If you add Ohio to the category of states that Obama is almost certain to win, that group adds up to 255 electoral college votes, just 15 shy of the total needed to carry the race. In other words, Romney can’t afford to withdraw from Ohio. Taken in this light, Beeson’s comments can be interpreted a little differently. He said repeatedly that the Romney campaign is “basing our decisions off” trusted internal data, not darkening public polls. If this week is any indication, that decision is to fight for Ohio, no matter what the numbers say

13 Reasons Tea Is Good for You

I am so glad I prefer tea over coffee simply for the many health benefits! I'm going to go get my tea on . . . all of you should to! 

Put down those saucer cups and get chugging — tea is officially awesome for your health. But before loading up on Red Zinger, make sure that your “tea” is actually tea. Real tea is derived from a particular plant (Camellia sinensis) and includes only four varieties: green, black, white, and oolong. Anything else (like herbal “tea”) is an infusion of a different plant and isn’t technically tea.

But what real tea lacks in variety, it makes up for with some serious health benefits. Researchers attribute tea’s health properties to polyphenols (a type of antioxidant) and phytochemicals. Though most studies have focused on the better-known green and black teas, white and oolong also bring benefits to the table. Read on to find out why coffee’s little cousin rocks your health.

1. Tea can boost exercise endurance. Scientists have found that the catechins (antioxidants) in green tea extract increase the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel, which accounts for improved muscle endurance.
2. Drinking tea could help reduce the risk of heart attack. Tea might also help protect against cardiovascular and degenerative diseases.
3. The antioxidants in tea might help protect against a boatload of cancers, including breast, colon, colorectal, skin, lung, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas, liver, ovarian, prostate and oral cancers. But don’t rely solely on tea to keep a healthy body — tea is not a miracle cure, after all. While more studies than not suggest that tea has cancer-fighting benefits, the current research is mixed.
4. Tea helps fight free radicals. Tea is high in oxygen radical absorbance capacity (“ORAC” to its friends), which is a fancy way of saying that it helps destroy free radicals (which can damage DNA) in the body. While our bodies are designed to fight free radicals on their own, they’re not 100 percent effective — and since damage from these radical oxygen ninjas has been linked to cancer, heart disease and neurological degeneration, we’ll take all the help we can get.
5. Tea is hydrating to the body (even despite the caffeine!).
6. Drinking tea is linked with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. When considered with other factors like smoking, physical activity, age and body mass index, regular tea drinking was associated with a lowered risk of Parkinson’s disease in both men and women.
7. Tea might provide protection from ultraviolet rays. We know it’s important to limit exposure to UV rays, and we all know what it’s like to feel the burn. The good news is that green tea may act as a back-up sunscreen.
8. Tea could keep waist circumference in check. In one study, participants who regularly consumed hot tea had lower waist circumference and lower BMI than non-consuming participants. Scientists speculate that regular tea drinking lowers the risk of metabolic syndrome (which increases the risk of diabetes, artery disease and stroke), although it’s important to remember that correlation does not equal causation.
9. Regular tea drinking might also counteract some of the negative effects of smoking and might even lessen the risk of lung cancer (good news, obviously, but not a justification for cigs).
10. Tea could be beneficial to people with Type 2 diabetes. Studies suggest that compounds in green tea could help diabetics better process sugars.
11. Tea can help the body recover from radiation. One study found that tea helped protect against cellular degeneration upon exposure to radiation, while another found that tea can help skin bounce back postexposure.
12. Green tea has been found to improve bone mineral density and strength.
13. Tea might be an effective agent in the prevention and treatment of neurological diseases, especially degenerative diseases (think Alzheimer’s). While many factors influence brain health, polyphenols in green tea may help maintain the parts of the brain that regulate learning and memory.

Though most research on tea is highly positive, it’s not all definitive — so keep these caveats in mind before stocking up on gallons of the stuff:

1. Keep it cool. Repeatedly drinking hot beverages may boost the risk of esophageal cancer. Give tea several minutes to cool off before sipping.
2. The studies seem convincing, but a rat does not a human make. Chemicals in tea may react differently in the lab than they do in the human body. Tannins (and the other good stuff in green tea) may not be bioavailable for humans, meaning tea might not always benefit human health to the same degree as in lab studies suggest.
3. All tea drinks are not created equal. The body’s access to the good stuff in tea might be determined by the tea variety, canning and processing, and the way it was brewed.

The takeaway: at the very least, tea should be safe to consume — just not in excessive amounts. So brew up a batch of the good stuff — hot or cold — and enjoy.

As Egypt’s Islamists Cement Their Rule, Can Secularists Reclaim the Revolution?

Anti-Morsy protesters hold a large Egyptian flag and chant slogans in front of the presidential palace during a demonstration in Cairo, Aug. 24, 2012. 

 

It has not been a very good 18 months for Egypt’s secular revolutionary political forces. After standing at the forefront of an unprecedented and triumphant popular uprising last year, which led to the ousting of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, their star rapidly dimmed. In the wake of the revolution, Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the even-more-conservative Salafists used their existing grassroots networks to dominate parliamentary elections last winter while post-revolutionary secular parties struggled to catch up. Presidential elections earlier this summer were an even bigger disaster: the  non-Brotherhood pro-revolution camp divisively split itself between multiple candidates, producing a thoroughly Mubarak-era runoff choice between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy and Mubarak’s former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq representing the military-backed deep state.

“What happened in the presidential election was a wakeup call to a lot of the players,” says Hussein Gohar, head of foreign affairs for the Social Democrat Party, one of the main post-revolutionary secularist parties.  “People panicked after Morsy became president and they’re still panicking.”

The Morsy-Shafiq choice left most of the secular revolutionaries out in the cold and thoroughly depressed. For the past several months, they have watched from the sidelines as Morsy and the Brotherhood faced off against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF—impotently hoping for a scenario where both sides lost.

Now Egypt faces a new crossroads. Morsy is firmly entrenched in the presidential palace; his power struggle with the military ended rather abruptly last month when he succeeded in outmaneuvering the SCAF—sending Mubarak-era Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi and his loyalists into early retirement. Most importantly, there’s a new parliamentary election looming after the previous parliament was dissolved via court order on a technicality. The exact timing of the new elections is uncertain; it’s tied to the ratification of a new constitution, which is still being drafted. Gohar said he expects the elections to come “any time between December and March.”

All of which begs the question: does Egypt’s secular opposition have enough time to make an impact this time around and can they learn from their tactical and organizational mistakes of the previous 18 months?

The looming deadline has touched off a flurry of political activity. The local press is now filled with daily updates on coalition negotiations between a host of post-revolutionary secular parties such as the Social Democrats and the Free Egyptian Party. This week a new political player emerged in the form of former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei, who officially launched his own Constitution Party.
 
“They’re just starting to realize that [elections] are fast approaching,” said secularist writer and analyst Bassem Sabry. “Everyone wants to get into some alliance or another. It’s a question of how and who approaches who and who’s in charge.”

Veteran socialist politician Hamdin Sabbahi–who finished a surprisingly strong third place in the presidential vote—is being courted by multiple parties to join forces. And longtime Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa, despite a weak fifth place presidential showing, “remains a towering figure” on the secular scene and is being similarly courted, according to Sabry.

Fourth place finisher Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood official who fashioned himself as a progressive  Islamist and an alternative to the Brotherhood, has so far remained distant from the more secular negotiations and is expected to form his own electoral bloc along with other centrist Islamist forces.

“The future of the Egyptian left is not as bleak as people think,” said Wael Nawara, a longtime progressive activist and a member of the Constitution Party. But Nawara acknowledges that whatever secular coalition emerges for the new parliamentary elections will still face an uphill battle to crack the combined Brotherhood-Salafist bloc that captured nearly 75 percent of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

“Financing, for starters, will be an issue. This is an area where the Muslim Brothers already have an advantage,” Nawara said. In addition to their own homegrown financing from disciplined loyalists, the Islamists are widely presumed to be benefiting from a river of overseas funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“These other parties will just have to rely on local donations—which is just not something people are used to here. They’re at a disadvantage,” Nawara said. There’s also a steep learning curve to be overcome on how to build the kind of grassroots mobilization machine that the Brotherhood spent decades crafting. To help speed that process, Gohar, the Social Democrat official, has turned to his European counterparts for help. A delegation from the Danish Social Democrat Party arrives in mid-September to conduct what Gohar calls “Democracy 101” training sessions, and the British Labor Party is planning to conduct similar training here.

There is, of course, a completely separate secularist opposition to Morsy that has been recently making its presence felt—the pro-military/pro-Shafiq crowd that viscerally hates the Brotherhood, but also deeply distrusts most of the secular revolutionaries.

On August 24, around 2000 people staged a defiant and decidedly angry protest outside the presidential palace, openly calling for a new revolution to purge the Brotherhood from power. The protest was most notable for the sense of pure paranoid rage coursing through the crowd. Several protesters told me that Morsy had stolen the presidential elections with the help of the U.S. government and the biased media. Two different television camera crews were attacked by the protesters.

“I’m here to bring down the Brotherhood. Their presence is illegitimate,” shouted Farida Mansour, a mid-50’s homemaker and one of many women there who wore the tradition Islamic hijab covering her hair. “Ahmed Shafiq won the election. Everybody knows that!”

Shafiq has been overseas, mostly in Dubai, since losing the election; Egyptian prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest at the end of the last month on corruption charges if he returns. But he remains a polarizing force and focal point for the free-floating anti-Brotherhood anger that simmers in some corners of Egypt’s secular society. If he were to return, or even if he forms a party from de facto exile, it could capture a surprising amount of reactionary protest momentum, buoyed by support from the vestiges of the old Mubarak regime.

Put simply, the pro-Shafiq secularist opposition regards the more revolutionary contingent as dangerous radical hippies, while the revolutionary crowd regards the Shafiq supporters as retrograde counter-revolutionaries who seek to dial back the clock to the Mubarak era. They both share a common enemy, and some politicians have spoken of forging an alliance between the two camps, but other observers find that impossible to imagine. “There are those who are angry and want things to go back to the way they were. For these people Shafiq and company are a natural solution,” says Sabry. “The progressive bloc is unable to reach out to that crowd. There’s too much distrust on both sides.”

Does the Internet Really Make Everyone Crazy?

Even as I'm posting this, I often have this very question........ is the Internet making me CRAZY?! 
Somedays I think so and wonder if I would be better off without it!!! :)

Sociologists call them moral panics — when a population pins its unanchored fear in uncertain times on a selected demon, whether or not the target is really a threat to society. Drugs are a frequent focus of these societal anxiety attacks, but this week, Newsweek tries to foment a classic panic against a more universal foe: the Internet.

Headlined online “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” the article begins with the story of Jason Russell, the filmmaker behind the “Kony2012″ video about the African cult-leader and warlord Joseph Kony. After the video went viral and suddenly brought Russell international fame, he wound up naked and ranting on a San Diego street corner. To make the case that the Internet caused Russell’s psychotic break, the Newsweek article rapidly generalizes from rare, extreme experiences like Russell’s and wends through a selective reading of the research to argue, in the words of one quoted source, that the Net, “encourages — and even promotes — insanity.”

According to senior writer Tony Dokoupil:

The first good, peer-reviewed research is emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed. The current incarnation of the Internet—portable, social, accelerated, and all-pervasive—may be making us not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking down in sad and seemingly new ways.

The problem is, this conclusion runs counter to what the research data actually show.

Dokoupil makes much of brain scan studies suggesting that Internet use “rewires” the brain in ways that look similar to changes seen in drug addiction. The reality is that any enjoyable activity leads to changes in the brain’s pleasure regions if a person engages in it frequently enough. Indeed, any activity we perform repeatedly will lead to brain changes: that’s known as learning. Riding a bicycle and playing the violin also rewire the brain, but we don’t choose to refer to these changes as “damage.”

As yet, there is no brain scan that can clearly determine whether certain brain changes signify addiction or simple, harmless enjoyment. Nor can brain scans predict, in the case of addiction, who will be able to regain control over their behavior and who will not.

Dokoupil cites a study that scanned 24 people, some experienced Web users and some who were less proficient. He says that the regular users had “fundamentally altered prefrontal cortexes,” but he fails to mention that the research only explored people’s Google use — comparing Google aficionados to newbies. He writes further that just five hours of time spent online (using Google) “rewired” the brains of the new users. This, of course, tells us nothing about addiction: we don’t know if the experienced Google searchers were even having trouble controlling their Internet use, or whether, based on one small study, a tiny bit of experience learning how to search the Web can “rewire” the brain dramatically. If so, then everyone’s addicted — or no one is, and the brain changes are meaningless.

Dokoupil acknowledges that the research linking Web and smartphone use to psychiatric problems cannot show clear cause and effect, but he brushes off this important caveat with quotes from experts who conduct this research and use it to confirm their own clinical observations — in other words, anecdotes, which are an even sketchier source of data — and make causal claims.

In truth, the research linking Internet use to addiction, depression or other behavioral and psychiatric problems simply cannot determine whether being online causes these ills or whether people who are already prone to such problems tend to go online more. In fact, there’s better evidence (not mentioned in the article) that the Internet can be used to treat anxiety and depression than there is suggesting it causes these problems. Randomized controlled trials of online therapy for depression have found it to be as effective as traditional therapy — and only randomized controlled trials, not the observational data cited by Newsweek, can scientifically demonstrate cause and effect.

Dokoupil also approvingly cites an expert who has become a target of widespread ridicule in the science blogosphere for her extreme claims about Internet-related brain damage. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a pharmacology professor at Oxford, told Dokoupil in her typically understated way that the Internet problem “is an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change.”

Greenfield has never published a study on Internet use. The logic behind her claims is often befuddling: for example, this is how she attempted to explain why she believes the Internet has something to do with the recent rise in autism, in a 2011 interview with the Guardian: “I point to the increase in autism and I point to Internet use. That’s all.” Obviously, that is not scientific reasoning, which is why her comments inspired an Internet meme (among other outrage and disdain) that trended on Twitter.

Dr. Ben Goldacre, a leading British science journalist and author of the “Bad Science” blog, sums up the criticisms of Greenfield this way: “[Her ideas] are never set out as a clear hypothesis, in a formal academic publication, with the accompanying evidence and a clear suggestion of what research programmes might be planned to clarify any uncertainties.”

The Newsweek feature also highlights stories from China, Taiwan and Korea, where Internet addiction has been accepted as a genuine psychiatric problem and treatment centers have been set up to deal with it. “Tens of millions of people (and as much as 30 percent of teens) are considered Internet-addicted” in these countries, Dokoupil writes.

Those facts, however, don’t necessarily mean that Internet addiction exists, let alone that it is widespread. Simply naming a disease and treating it doesn’t make it real, no more than the existence of witch hunts proves the existence of witches. Indeed, some of the treatments used for Internet addiction, such as the abusive Internet treatment boot camps in China where several teens have died, suggest how easily the cure can become worse than the disease when unproven therapies for ill-defined problems spring up. (Boot camps have never been shown to help with any form of addiction.)

In fact, while expanding the diagnoses for addiction overall, the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, which will be published next year, rejected Internet addiction as a bona fide disorder. The Newsweek article spun this fact, highlighting instead that Internet addiction “will be included for the first time, albeit in an appendix tagged for “further study.’”

The truth is, we really don’t know much about how our online lives are affecting us. It’s quite possible that Internet use has the deleterious effects critics suggest — certainly some people do have difficulty controlling the amount of time they spend online. But is it the addictive effect of the Internet that keeps us checking our work emails on vacation or during evenings and weekends — or is it the fact that we fear we may lose our jobs if we don’t?

The Internet might indeed be a cause of our societal worries, but not necessarily because we’re addicted to it. And creating a moral panic based on flimsy evidence isn’t going to help, no matter what the real cause of our problems.