This week in science: jokers are wild

post from Daily Kos on 05 May 2012 09:00:05 AM. © Daily Kos

GISTEMP When last we heard from the Heartland Insitute, they were reeling from a leaked document revealing their duplicity and hypocrisy. The same jokers are back with a PR campaign comparing climate scientists to murderers and madmen, like bin Laden and the Unibomber:

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants. ... The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren?t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

Heartland got their ass kicked over it and said late Friday they're going to take it down. But still, I really have to wonder why companies like State Farm, Microsoft, Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Nucor, Pfizer, and Time Warner Cable are supporting these clowns. I guess they think it's good for a company's image ...?

Be sure and look up tonight to catch a glimpse of the huge, beautiful Super Moon:
Everyone on earth has dreamed of going to the moon and no wonder, it?s been hanging up there, big and beautiful, ruling the night sky since our remote forefathers first stumbled out of an Pliocene forest on two legs.
I think I'd rather wave down a Martian tripod brandishing its heat ray in full afterburner than try this: Sticking your hand in the Big Bang machine
This could drive the usual suspects nuts, if there are any left who can comprehend it:
Interestingly, the incomplete copy of the gene seems to have showed up just as the extinct hominin Australopithecus made room for the genus Homo, which led to modern humans.
A wingnut amendement that would have defined a blastocyst smaller than the period at the end of this sentence as a human being -- as long as the little tykes don't try to vote while black or join a union or anything subversive -- was struck down in Oklahoma this week. The forced birther brigades have vowed to fight on for the rights of rapists across the nation.
Why do conservatives deny so much science? Chris Mooney was on Up with Chris Hayes at MSNBC this morning discussing his new best-seller on that very topic. Daily Kos book review and Q & A with Chris posted here!

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Open Thread Plus Cartoon Of The Week

post from ThinkProgress on 05 May 2012 09:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

A penny for your cyber-thoughts.

By Mike Luckovich, From the Cartoonist Group

The Titanic At 100 Years: We?re Still Ignoring Warnings, This Time It?s Climate Change, Says Director James Cameron

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"It is time to focus on nation-building here at
home"

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 05 May 2012 09:00:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @KYYellowDog

No, Mr. President: don't waste half the war savings on appeasing the austerity hysterics. Use all of it to rebuild America. The economic growth from that spending will take care of the debt.

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-time-to-focus-on-nationbuilding-here-at-home

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On This Day In History May 5

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 05 May 2012 09:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow GazetteThis is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.Find the past "On This Day in History" here.Click on images to enlargeMay 5 is the 125th day of the year[...]

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By: medicinecat

post from Comments on: Women + Immigrants = Double War on 05 May 2012 08:31:48 AM. © Comments on: Women + Immigrants = Double War

Yeah, I spend a lot more time over at Naked Capitalism. FDL used to be unique. Now it's just more of the 24 hour horse race coverage that can be found at all the other progressive political sites.

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AmeriPavlovianisms

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 05 May 2012 08:06:34 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

"In this post 911 world""You DON'T have a cell phone,said with anger and disgust"Temp employment does not count in applying for home mortgages...Oh and if you have not applied for a mortgage lately? You will love the regulatory/IRS/ money/ Admiral[...]

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Pull Up a Chair

post from Firedoglake on 05 May 2012 08:00:40 AM. © Firedoglake

How did you learn about your background, and what did you learn?[...]

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Mike's Blog Round Up

post from Crooks and Liars on 05 May 2012 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

David E's Fablog - Mayor Bloomberg, like every other Republican, goes after education funding;

DeSmogBlog - if you believe in climate change you're worse than the Unabomber;

Goblinbooks - wherein 'Jimmy Carter' loses it; (mature language)

No More Mr. Nice Blog - Obama campaign kickoff on Karl Marx's birthday, MUST CREDIT GATEWAY PUNDIT!!!1!one!!

Right Wing Watch - Michele Bachmann still insane, thinks ACA is the work of Satan.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com and can't wait for Kim Kardashian to run for mayor of Glendale.

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Odds and ends

newspaper headline collage

_{Visual source: Newseum}

Mark Blumenthal:

It is still very early in the general election campaign and new surveys are released continually. The polling snapshots in these battleground states may look different in a few weeks than they do today, but for now, a close race nationally is translating into close contests in the critical swing states.
Nonetheless, Obama's current standing in three key swing states looks slightly better now than it did in June 2008, just after he clinched the Democratic nomination.

John Sides:

So why would Mr. Obama be more popular than the economy and other factors might predict? One possibility is his personal likeability. Despite the armchair diagnoses of some pundits, large majorities of Americans perceive him as warm, empathetic and a good communicator. Although many fewer Americans approve of his performance in office, perhaps his personal appeal has boosted his job approval among some Americans.
A second possibility concerns whom Americans blame for the economy. Based on some recent polling data, I found that Mr. Obama continues to receive less blame than George W. Bush for the country?s economic problems. If, hypothetically speaking, every American blamed Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush equally, his approval rating would be about 11 points lower ? enough to erase the gap between actual and expected approval in the first graph above. Of course, ?hypothetically speaking? is the best we can do, short of replaying history and having Americans blame Mr. Obama more.
Nevertheless, ?the blame game? conceivably has something to do with why Mr. Obama has remained more popular than we might expect. And if his better-than-expected popularity continues, it might give him just enough of an edge to defeat Mitt Romney in what is likely to be a close election.

John Sides also helped build the simple election predictor that Ezra Klein wrote up in the WaPo.

CSM on the twitterwar over The Life of Julia:

The April employment numbers out Friday morning, showing disappointing job creation, are no doubt a bigger problem for Obama than conservatives piling on poor Julia. But if all the attention gets more voters to click through her ?life,? driving home his message that the government is there to help women, then maybe Obama will actually win this skirmish.

Conservatives waste more money than even Americans Elect.

Rachel Weiner:

Mitt Romney boxed in by Richard Grenell
Spokespeople are supposed to help candidates out of tight spots. In quitting Mitt Romney?s campaign before he even started working, foreign policy flack Richard Grenell managed to stick his candidate into one.
The former Massachusetts governor is now forced to insist that he didn?t fire an aide for his sexuality, an assertion that could jeopardize his already shaky relationship with the religious right.

Chris Cillizza:

But, wait, you say: It?s only May. The election is still more than six months off. Yes, that?s, of course, true. (There are 186 days between today and election day ? but who?s counting?)
That seems like a long time ? plenty of time, certainly, for voters? perceptions on how President Obama is handling the economy to shift in the incumbent?s favor.
It?s not.
Consider: We are roughly one month away from most schools letting out and, therefore, we are one month away from the start of summer vacation season.
Add to that reality the fact that summer is traditionally a time when most Americans zone out a bit from politics ? yes, even more than they usually zone out ? and that by the time Labor Day rolls around peoples' perceptions about how things are going in the country begin to harden, and you begin to see the potential difficulties for Obama if the next few months of jobs reports don?t get (much) better.

Over at PNHP (the single payer advocates),Don McCann (via Paul Offit's JAMA article) takes on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Until now, I have been reserved in my comments on CAM, partly because so many sincere, dedicated individuals in our single payer coalitions are supportive of CAM - including some members of PNHP who should know better. But dammit! Quackery is quackery! The smug CAM producers who retreat to their mansions are "dem that takes," and the uninformed patient/victims lacking an adequate scientific background are "dem that gets took."

Caveat emptor. But if one simply looks at the money spent by NIH on CAM and the lack of results, a case can be made for some budget cuts.

WaPo on the shrinking labor force:

The ?demographics? story
But a number of economists are arguing that the recession is distracting people from the real story ? long-run demographic trends that have nothing to do with the current economy. Baby boomers are starting to retire en masse, which means that there are fewer eligible American workers.
Demographics have always played a big role in the rise and fall of the labor force. Between 1960 and 2000, the labor force in the United States surged from 59 percent to a peak of 67.3 percent. That was largely due to the fact that more women were entering the labor force while improvements in health and information technology allowed Americans to work more years.
But since 2000, the labor force rate has been steadily declining as the baby-boom generation has been retiring. Because of this, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago expects the labor force participation rate to be lower in 2020 than it is today, regardless of how well the economy does.
In a March report titled ?Dispelling an Urban Legend,? Dean Maki, an economist at Barclays Capital, found that demographics accounted for a majority of the drop in the participation rate since 2002.

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The LiberalOasis Radio Show: Pander Bear Edition

Will Romney be forced to pull a "Sister Souljah" or is he committed to non-stop pandering to all comers? Will the wingnut right blow it for Romney in the swing states? And how conservatives write letters to the editor. With Traci Olsen and the Stabby Five.

You can download the podcast at these links: (iTunes / XML feed / MP3).

Or you can simply listen below.

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