Considering gun control...

"The American murder rate is roughly 15 times that of other wealthy countries, which have much tougher laws controlling private ownership of guns."

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “We are the only industrialized country that has this problem. In the whole world, the only one.”

As the prime minister of Australia said, “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

Read more at the New York Times.

Daylight Slavings Time

Do you hate waking up in the dark even when the days start getting longer, or do you just dread that lost Sunday hour when you're forced to turn your clocks forward every year? Either way, you'll probably appreciate these facts about Daylight Savings Time:

1. The Germans in World War I were the first to use Daylight Savings Time. Pushing daylight hours forward meant more hours that working troops didn't need lights, so the army saved on energy costs. After Germany enacted it, Britain and other European nations quickly followed suit.

2. Car accidents and heart attacks increase the Monday after DST goes into effect. Scientists explain that "the sleep deprivation on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time in the spring results in a small increase in fatal accidents."

3. Even though DST is supposed to save energy, it no longer seems to do so. A 2008 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the time switch actually increases electricity usage. "Consistent with Benjamin Franklin's original conjecture, DST is found to save on electricity used for illumination, but there are increases in electricity used for heating and cooling."

4. So if it doesn't actually save energy, why do it? Daylight savings supports capitalism. Longer light in the evening hours encourages people to shop and spend money after work, and was estimated to boost the European leisure economy by as much as 3%.

5.  A better alternative might be permanent DST, increasing daylight hours without causing heart attacks and car crashes...Check out this radical proposal and write your senators if you like it.

Until then, you can blame German soldiers and capitalism for messing with your clocks. And in case you still doubted that imperialist capitalist powers were the main force behind DST, check out this map of who's using it today:

Fish Fraud

Fish is commonly mislabeled in the USA, sometimes more than 50% of the time!

Fish is mislabeled so that unhealthy fish sells as healthier types...or threatened fish species are sold under the name of a sustainable fish species.  This means people trying to make purchasing choices based on their health or environmental concerns are not able to make accurate choices and fish sellers are profiting from trickery.

A group of 500 professional chefs has petitioned the federal government to enact stricter labeling rules so that they can actually buy the fish that they want.  Apparently the free market needs a bit of regulation;  consumer choice kinda fails to regulate things when people can't make accurate choices!  Remember this, the next time someone tells you that government regulation hurts the "free" market.

These results were found by Oceana, an international ocean advocacy group, who tested fish in stores and restauraunts across the nation from 2010 to 2012.

Valentine's Propaganda

Happy Valentine's Day, from Liberal Propaganda! Remember to celebrate in a safe and socially responsible manner!

Toy Drones: Ages 3+

Look what's for sale at Amazon.com...

"This is the best toy ever. Finally, I can pretend that I'm a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!
It's like I'm sitting right there in the White House with my very own kill list!"

Ah, yes.  Teach your child how to do an airstrike by age 3, and then by the time he's 18 he can be moving onto bigger and better things, like holding up 5 billion in relief funds to Haiti. Yes, along with the United Nations and good old World Bank, "relief" workers there have managed to build toxic school trailers, infect the water supply with cholera, and put a military dictator in power by banning the most popular party and 13 others from the last democratic elections in 2010. 

Why is this the kind of relief that Haiti gets after the earthquake that left 300,000 homeless and destroyed infrastructure across the nation? Well, the new president's "pledge to make Haiti business friendly made him the clear choice for U.S. interests."  And those school trailers weren't meant to poison the children, they were probably just cheaper since their producer got terrible press after using formaldehyde-laden trailers in United States relief efforts after hurricane Katrina.  Clearly Bill Clinton, President Bush and the United Nations are just worried about economic efficiency here.

Why, their economic efforts have been so efficient that the relief team built an amazing luxury hotel.  At this Royal Oasis Hotel it costs $142-$342 for a night's stay, far more than any of the hotel employees earn in a whole month!  Now that's the kind of luxury that could only be brought to you by professionals like the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund!