November News Factoids (with election predictions)

PREDICTIONS

Barack Obama will win by a landslide 60% to 40% over John McBush in tomorrow's national election – UNLESS the Rove-bot machinery of the Republican Party manages to steal another election, in direct conflict with The Constitution and the Will of The People.

The once-red state of New Mexico will switch all five Congressional seats to Democratic. Bingaman continues as Senator; Udall replaces disgraced longtime Sen. Domenici; and Martin Heinrich & Harry Teague & Ben Ray Lujan sweep the House seats.

OTHER NEWS

Influenza kills about 36,000 people each year in America.
~~ A.P. Radio News

My local power company P.N.M. included a chart in the billing last month that defines their fuel sources as 41% coal (San Juan Generating Station), 16% nuclear, 22% natural gas, 8% wind, with solar a small part of 13% other. So New Mexico is basically up to speed with a lot of what T. Boone Pickens is after with his energy plan.
~~ sign up with the Pickens Army at www.PickensPlan.com

"One result of the Bush policies that erupted in the Russia-Georgia miniwar is that Russia now controls the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline."
~~ The Washington Spectator

"The [U.S.] military budget, now nearly $600 billion, is almost as large as the combined military budgets of the rest of the world. We outspend China by a factor of ten to one, Russia by sixteen to one, and Iran by almost ninety times."
~~ The Nation Magazine (Oct 2008)

THE ECONOMY

George W. Bush has run up more debt than any other person in the history of Mankind, i.e. fifteen trillion dollars (to be paid off by U.S. taxpayers).

The $700 billion subprime market bailout is the largest money bill ever passed by the U.S. Congress; it is also more money than it cost to fund the VietNam War.

September data on job losses in America show that we have lost jobs for nine months in a row.
~~ A.P. Radio News

There were 5.6 million jobs lost or displaced in 2007.
~~ Economic Policy Institute (Sept 2008)

Over the last 25 years, the percentage of obese children in America has doubled.
~~ www.EarthShare.org

"[Wall Street] had a party / Now you're going to pay"
~~ subhead of Time Magazine cover story (cover date 29 Sept 2008)

"The S&P Case-Schiller Index of house prices in 20 [U.S.] cities has been falling since February 2007. And the decline is accelerating. In June [2008], prices were down 16% compared with a year earlier."
~~ Time Magazine (Sept 2008)

As-of October 2008: The S&P 500 Index was down 33% for the year; the Nikkei Index fell to its lowest in 26 years; the Chinese stock market was down about 60% for the year; Germany's DAX Index was down 38%; the BM&F-Bovespa Index in Brasil was down 40%; Shanghai's S.E. Composite Index was down 60%; Russia's RTS Index was down 67%.

ENVIRONMENT

Worldwide, species threatened or extinct: birds, 1 in 7; amphibians, 1 in 3; mammals, 1 in 5.
~~ Time Magazine chart 10/2008

Due to global warming and to irrigation use during the dry season, the rivers Colorado, Yellow, Ganges, Nile (and many others) no longer reach the ocean.

"Our best hope for change is a fusion of those concerned about environmental sustainability, social justice, and political democracy into one progressive force."
~~ James Gustave Speth

"Environmental crisis is gathering as ... the result of a system of political economy - today's capitalism - that is profoundly committted to profits and growth and profoundly indifferent to nature and society."
~~ James Gustave Speth

"We are losing the planet ... Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are gone. Half the planet's wetlands are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone and 75 percent of marine fisheries are overfished, fished to capacity, or depleted. ... Twenty percent of the corals are gone, another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing about 1000 times faster than normal."
~~ James Gustave Speth (in 2008)

"[In the United States,] forty percent of ... fish species are threatened with extinction, a third of plants and amphibians, 15 to 20 percent of birds and mammals. Half of U.S. lakes and a third of the rivers still fail to meet the standards that the 1972 Clean Water Act said should be met by 1983."
~~ James Gustave Speth (in 2008)