America in Decline?

America In Decline: The Soul Crushing Despair Of Lowered Expectations

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse

All over America tonight there are people that believe that their lives are over.  When you do everything that you know how to do to get a job and you still can’t get one it can be absolutely soul crushing.

If you have ever been unemployed for an extended period of time you know exactly what I am talking about.  When you have been unemployed for month after month it can be very tempting to totally cut yourself off from society.  Those that are kind will look at you with pity and those that are cruel will treat you as though you are a total loser.  It doesn’t matter that America is in decline and that our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore.  In our society, one of the primary things that defines our lives is what we do for a living.  Just think about it.  When you are out in a social situation, what is one of the very first things that people ask?  They want to know what you “do”.  Well, if you don’t “do” anything, then you are not part of the club.  But the worst part of being unemployed for many Americans is the relentless pressure from family and friends.  Often they have no idea how hard it is to find a job in this economy – especially if they still have jobs.  Sometimes the pressure becomes too great.  Sadly, we are seeing unemployment break up a lot of marriages in America today.  Things are really hard out there right now.  A very large number of highly educated Americans have taken very low paying service jobs in recent years just so that they can have some money coming in even as they “look for something else”.  Unfortunately, in many cases that “something else” never materializes.  In the past, America was “the land of opportunity” where anything was possible.  But today America has become “the land of lowered expectations” and the worst is yet to come.
We live during a time when “the American Dream” is literally being redefined.  In the old days, just about anyone could get a good job that would pay enough to make it possible to buy a house, buy a nice car and raise a family. READ MORE



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Left-Wing Recall Effort Fails in Wisconsin

 

 

by Breitbart News 10 hours ago 1137 post a comment

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker beat back a recall challenge Tuesday, winning both the right to finish his term and a voter endorsement of his strategy to curb state spending, which included the explosive measure that eliminated union rights for most public workers.

The rising Republican star becomes the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall attempt by defeating Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and the union leaders who rallied for months against his agenda.

Democrats and organized labor spent millions to oust Walker, but found themselves hopelessly outspent by Republicans from across the country who donated record-setting sums to Walker. Republicans hope the victory carries over into November and that their get-out-the-vote effort can help Mitt Romney become the first GOP nominee to carry the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The recall was a rematch of the 2010 governor's race. Throughout the campaign, Walker maintained his policies set the state on the right economic track. Defeat, he said, would keep other politicians from undertaking such bold moves in the future.

"We're headed in the right direction," Walker said many times. "We're turning things around. We're moving Wisconsin forward."

Barrett repeatedly accused Walker of neglecting the needs of the state in the interests of furthering his own political career by making Wisconsin "the tea party capital of the country." He said Walker had instigated a political civil war in Wisconsin that could be quelled only by a change in leadership.

"I will end this civil war," Barrett promised in a debate. "That is something the people of this state want."

Walker ascended into the national spotlight last year when he surprised the state and unveiled plans to plug a $3.6 billion budget shortfall in part by taking away the union rights of most public workers and requiring them to pay more for their health insurance and pension benefits. It was one of his first moves in office.

Democrats and labor leaders saw it as a political tactic designed to gut the power of his political opposition. State Senate Democrats left Wisconsin for three weeks in a sort of filibuster, as tens of thousands of teachers, state workers and others rallied at the Capitol in protest. READ MORE

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A Peek Inside the Manta Ray Womb

by Helen Fields on 5 June 2012

Baby ray. Eight months before this baby manta burst forth from her mama's belly, she showed scientists how she breathes.

Credit: Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

In November 2008, a female manta ray got stuck in a fishing net off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. The fishermen called up the local aquarium, where scientists were studying how the creatures reproduce. The researchers lucked out: The ray was pregnant. Now, by using an ultrasound machine to take a close look at her unborn offspring, the researchers have figured out how manta ray embryos get oxygen without a mammal's life-support equipment.
Like many sharks and rays, manta rays give birth to live young, but they don't have an umbilical cord or a placenta to deliver oxygen. The uterus is closed off from the outside seawater, so the embryo has to be getting oxygen somehow, but nobody knew how.
When the researchers from Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium retrieved the manta ray, they corralled her in a portable pool that was 3.7 meters across—slightly smaller than the enormous ray, who had to fold up her long fins. Then they checked to see if she was pregnant using an ultrasound machine that had been modified to keep water away from the electronics. Holding the probe on her back, aquarium veterinarian Keiichi Ueda saw what came up on the screen: an embryo in the mother's uterus. "I was very excited because we could see the baby's mouth opening and closing," he writes in an e-mail. Eight months later, the manta ray gave birth to a healthy female, 2 meters from wingtip to wingtip and weighing 50 kilograms.
Later, Taketeru Tomita, a fish biologist at Hokkaido University Museum, examined the video from that ultrasound and several preserved manta ray embryos to figure out just how the baby was getting oxygen into its mouth. He worked out that the baby ray was raising and lowering its jaw, pumping uterine fluid in through its mouth and spiracle, an opening on the back of the head. Valves keep the flow going, presumably directing it over the gills so the embryo could extract oxygen from the fluid. Tomita's ideas on manta ray breathing were based on adults, which generally run water over their gills by swimming with their mouths agape.
"I was very surprised that the manta ray baby actively pumped the liquid," he says. Other studies have suggested that embryos also drink the uterine fluid for nutrition, making the mother's watery secretions a live-in oxygenated milkshake for the growing baby. Tomita says the research will help explain how sharks and rays evolved to produce live young. Sharks and rays that develop in eggs also breathe by pumping seawater with their mouths, but as far as he knows, this is the first time that researchers have seen the behavior in a vertebrate that gives birth to live young. He plans to publish results from similar ultrasounds on two other species of sharks and rays. The study appears online today in Biology Letters.
The work is the first to show how manta ray embryos get oxygen, says John Musick, a vertebrate ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point. "To actually see these respiratory movement in these rays is really cool."


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