Guns Stores Can’t Get Guns Fast Enough To
Keep Up With Demand From Anti-Obama Paranoia

post from ThinkProgress on 30 April 2012 06:00:12 PM. © ThinkProgress

Last year, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made the odd claim that President Obama intentionally avoided gun regulation during his entire first term as part of a “massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” While LaPierre’s claim that Obama is simply waiting for a second term so that he can “get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms? freedom” is more than a little implausible, it’s also proved to be a bonanza for the gun industry. Thanks to gun owners who share LaPierre’s paranoia, gun manufacturers literally cannot produce guns fast enough to keep up with demand:

Royal Oak-based Target Sports normally sells about 10 guns a day, but that has increased to 30 a day this year, owner Ray Jihad said.
He’d be selling even more, if he could get them.
“I don’t have any Rugers. There are a few models we sell a lot of, but I can’t even get them,” he said. Southport, Conn.-based Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc., which makes rifles and handguns, has been so swamped with orders that it has stopped taking new requests until the end of May. . . .
Worries about stricter gun laws after the upcoming presidential election are the driving force behind the firearms sales surge, said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the nonprofit Newtown, Conn-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade association.
“There is significant concern among the consumers that in a second term by the administration they will pivot on the gun issue and pursue policies that will restrict their Second Amendment rights,” Keane said.

Of course, many of the gun companies that benefit from LaPierre driving up anti-Obama paranoia are also many of the biggest funders of the NRA and its lobbying arm.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/30/473733/guns-stores-cant-get-guns-fast
-enough-to-keep-up-with-demand-from-anti-obama-paranoia/

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Global Warming is Doubling Bark Beetle Mating,
Boosting Tree Attacks Up To 60-Fold, Study Finds

post from ThinkProgress on 30 April 2012 06:00:12 PM. © ThinkProgress

Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs.
Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven?t previously developed defenses.

Pine beetle damage

That’s from the University of Colorado, Boulder news release for a new study in in The American Naturalist.

We’ve known that climate change favors invasive species, but the mountain pine beetle infestation is far worse than anyone had imagined even a decade ago. This this new study, “Mountain Pine Beetle Develops an Unprecedented Summer Generation in Response to Climate Warming,” spells out the grim facts:

The current MPB epidemic is the largest in history, extending from the Yukon Territory, Canada, to southern California and New Mexico…. To date, more than 13 million ha [hectares] of trees have been killed in British Columbia. The MPB-killed trees in British Columbia alone will release 990 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, an amount equal to five times the annual emissions from all forms of transportation in the country. Forests affected by bark beetles also have altered hydrology and biogeochemical cycles. Thus, extensive beetle kill is altering forest ecology and tipping conifer forests from regional carbon sinks to carbon sources, thereby creating positive feedback for climate-change factors.

For more on the amplifying feedback, see “Nature: Beetle tree kill releases more carbon than fires.”

It turns out that there has been an “exponential increase in the beetle population.” Why has infestation been nonlinear? The study’s abstract explains:

The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) is native to western North America, attacks most trees of the genus Pinus, and periodically erupts in epidemics. The current epidemic of the MPB is an order of magnitude larger than any previously recorded, reaching trees at higher elevation and latitude than ever before. Here we show that after 2 decades of air-temperature increases in the Colorado Front Range, the MPB flight season begins more than 1 month earlier than and is approximately twice as long as the historically reported season. We also report, for the first time, that the life cycle in some broods has increased from one to two generations per year. Because MPBs do not diapause and their development is controlled by temperature, they are responding to climate change through faster development. The expansion of the MPB into previously inhospitable environments, combined with the measured ability to increase reproductive output in such locations, indicates that the MPB is tracking climate change, exacerbating the current epidemic.

[Read about diapause here. I welcome a simpler explanation from any biologist reading this.]

For more background on the study, here is an extended excerpt from the news release:

This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.
?This thing is immense,? Mitton said. The duo?s research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU?s Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.
?We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before,? Mitton said. ?Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees? — in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.
These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.
Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.
The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.
?While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago,? they write.
But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.
Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.
Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a ?marker? for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. ?The trees in that area are somewhat naïve in their response,? Ferrenberg said.
These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. ?We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread,? Mitton said.

And so the bark beetle is a major unexpected, nonlinear impact of manmade global warming with devastating economic and environmental consequences – that is also an unexpected amplifying feedback of a warming.

And we’ve only warmed about a degree Fahrenheit in the last few decades. Imagine the unexpected nonlinear impacts and feedbacks we face when we warm 10 times that this century, as we are likely to do if we keep listening to the do nothing or do little crowd.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/30/446908/global-warming-is-doubling-bar
k-beetle-mating-boosting-tree-attacks-up-to-60-fold-study-finds/

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Brit Marling On Sexual Assault As a Default
Obstacles for Heroines

post from ThinkProgress on 30 April 2012 06:00:12 PM. © ThinkProgress

io9 has a great interview with Brit Marling, the writer and star of low-budget sci-fi movie Sound of My Voice, which, as I told y’all on Friday, I liked very much. I wanted to pull out part of the interview where she talks about how frustrating it is to come up against the same obstacles and challenges for female characters?particularly the tendency to use sexual assault as a default major obstacle for a dramatic heroine:

When Zal and I write [the two wrote Sound of My Voice together] sometimes you find yourself in a passive position. And you have stop yourself: “I set out to write a story about a strong woman acting with agency. And now here I am having her be sexually assaulted by somebody so she can achieve something else.” You have to tell yourself to stop.
And you realize that so much of this stuff is the same narrative being recycled over and over again, because a lot of it is happening unconsciously. We consume, we watch, we take it in, we create, it’s this negative feedback cycle. When I see things like Bridesmaids I get really excited. That film was really subversive and widely consumed and entertaining, but also saying really interesting things on female friendships and weddings. It was making fun of it all, that was refreshing, I hope we see more of that…
As an actor, that’s why I started writing. I came out to LA and I would read these things, you are hard pressed to find a script where the girl is not sexually assaulted or raped or manipulated or a sex toy ? an object of affection. It’s always about the way men are looking at her. And cinema, traditionally has been about how men are looking at women. I do think we’re breaking that up now with more female directors, I think we’re starting to see the female gaze.

I think this is right. I should say that I have no problem with works that deal with women getting raped that are explicitly about examining the consequences of sexism. One of the reasons that the arc of Sons of Anarchy where Gemma is raped is so powerful is that it’s about the way she and everyone else around her deal with their internalized sexism: the men who rape her think she is a weak spot for the motorcycle gang she’s affiliated with, Gemma thinks her husband will put her off because men need to “own their pussy,” and her husband seduces her back to disprove that assumption. Similarly, as I argue in this book chapter I have coming out about A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, I really believe a lot of that series is about tying together sexual assault and monstrosity.

But rape doesn’t only happen to women, and it’s not the only thing that happens to women. You can lose your job, your house, your car, your kid, your best friend, your business, your family, your faith, your following, your office. If men are reaching for the worst thing that can happen to women and choosing rape out of a deficit of imagination, then that’s having a character be sexually assaulted for shock value. If you want to tell a story that’s about the worst thing that happened to a specific woman character, you should be thinking very specifically about her and less about your and the audience’s default answer to a question.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/04/30/473177/brit-marling-sexual-assault-as-
a-default-obstacles-for-heroines/

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Austerity Policies Hit Young Workers The Hardest,
Report Says

post from ThinkProgress on 30 April 2012 06:00:12 PM. © ThinkProgress

Spain officially plunged into its second recession in three years Monday, just days after the United Kingdom suffered the same fate. The driver of economic slowdowns across the European continent is austerity, the rapid reduction in debt and deficits that fails to address joblessness and leads to economic contraction.

Though the U.S. is experiencing slow but steady economic growth, austere economic policies are jeopardizing the future of the American economy as well. Half of the nation’s recent college graduates are either jobless or underemployed, according to data from Drexel University and the Economic Policy Institute. Republicans seized on the report as proof of President Obama’s failure, but youth employment numbers will only get worse under the GOP’s policies of austerity. That’s because austere government policies hit young workers the hardest, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization, as CNBC reports:

Youth unemployment has been singled out for particular concern in developed economies which critics argue governments have been slow to deal with. [Author of the report Raymond] Torres said the effects of austerity were particularly skewed against youth.
?It?s impossible to see massive declines in youth unemployment unless the economy itself starts to recover, because the youth are disproportionately affected by the stagnation and the recession. There are good practices that show that those countries which combine youth study with work experience do better,? he said.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman notes, Europe provides ample proof of austerity’s failures for young workers. In Ireland, nearly a third of young workers are unemployed. In Spain, the unemployment rate for workers under age 25 tops 50 percent. Across America, public sector budget cuts have hit younger workers hardest. The effects are damning — young workers who enter a depressed workforce spend the rest of their lives making up the lost wages, affecting economic growth for decades.

Conservatives in the United States and Europe have pursued deficit and debt reduction policies with reckless abandon since the end of the Great Recession under the assumption that they would spark investor confidence and inspire growth. The opposite has been true. Austerity is failing across Europe, particularly for the young workers economies will depend on in the future. And yet, Republicans continue to push the same policies right here at home.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/30/473848/budget-cuts-young-workers/

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"Toxic Culture of Entitlement"

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 30 April 2012 06:00:00 PM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @KYYellowDog

The first thing you need to know is that former Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture Ritchie Farmer is mentally deficient. That's not an insult. That's a fact.

The second thing is that his obvious retardation did not stop Kentuckians from voting him into oe of the most powerful statewide offices. Twice. All they cared about was his being a hometown boy who played on a championship UK basketball team.

The third thing is that literally nothing will come of the audit report that reveals widespread corruption and illegality on Reetchie's part. He will not go to jail, he will not pay any fines beyond returning all the stuff he stole, Kentucky will not turn the Commissioner of Agriculture into an appointed position the way it is in civilized states, and record-breaking corruption in the Agriculture Department will continue - albeit more circumspectly.

Joe Sonka at Leo's Fat Lip:

This morning, Kentucky State Auditor Adam Edelen released the findings of his special examination into Richie Farmer's handling of the Department of Agriculture during his term, which he says shows "a toxic culture of entitlement and self-dealing at Kentucky taxpayers' expense."
Edelen will be referring the report to the Kentucky Attorney General, Executive Branch Ethics Commission, IRS, Kentucky Department of Revenue, Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Personnel Board.
"The law makes no distinction between icons and the rest of us, and neither do I," Edelen said. "The report paints a clear picture of an administration that had no qualms about treating taxpayer resources as its own. The former commissioner had state employees on state time take him hunting and shopping, mow his yard, build a basketball court in his backyard, and even chauffer his dog. He showered himself with gifts and office equipment and rewarded friends with jobs. These are just some of the documented abuses that should outrage every Kentuckian."
Farmer refused to be interviewed by the auditor's office. I assume Farmer's lawyers will be the one's doing the talking now.
So... will Attorney General Jack Conway pursue this further, or is it politically dangerous to put an "Unforgettable" in jail? We'll find out ...

Read on for the best list of findings outside the full report.

Page One has an informed take:

Hoo boy, this report from State Auditor of Public Accounts Adam Edelen about Richie Farmer has been a long time coming.
Turns out? Richie used state resources and employees for his own personal gain. He's still refusing to be interviewed by auditors but you can bet he and his people will trash this report anonymously and in the press.
"The law makes no distinction between icons and the rest of us, and neither do I," Edelen said. "The report paints a clear picture of an administration that had no qualms about treating taxpayer resources as its own. The former commissioner had state employees on state time take him hunting and shopping, mow his yard, build a basketball court in his backyard, and even chauffer his dog. He showered himself with gifts and office equipment and rewarded friends with jobs. These are just some of the documented abuses that should outrage every Kentuckian."
The highlights:
SNIP
Richie signed the timesheets of his girlfriend/mistress because his chief of staff refused to do so/couldn't substantiate any work she did
A former executive director and former director told staff to delay action against a grain dealer because it was during an election year and could cause a negative political outcome for the former commissioner.
A $1.65 million fuel-testing lab that was projected to test 20,000 samples a year has not met its goal and lost the state more than $744,000 in fiscal year 2011.
Roughly half the department's employees had permanently assigned take-home vehicles. Many of the employees were not justified in having state vehicles.
There's lots more detailed in the report. 41 findings and 126 recommendations. Many issues surrounding the reporting of taxable benefits to the IRS and Kentucky Department of Revenue. So you'll likely want to read it all.

And it wasn't just money. There were casualties. Barefoot and Progressive before the audit report cam out:

It seems like Richie Farmer's time as Ag. Commissioner, with its lavish parties and missing rifles, is going to continue providing fodder for Herald-Leader investigative journalists well into the next decade. Here's the hilarity in today's paper:

A distant relative of former Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer worked in the Department of Agriculture for nearly five years as an amusement ride inspector despite never receiving certification to do the work.
George "Doug" Begley worked from July 1, 2007, to March 12 inspecting amusement park rides in Eastern Kentucky, according to documents obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader under the state's Open Records Act.
Documents in Begley's personnel file show he voluntarily accepted a demotion to the department's fuel-testing division in March after Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who took office in January, discovered that Begley never received his certification.
There's something comical about the pettiness of cousin George Doug not getting a certification that would have probably been easy for him to get and that the state would have paid for. Richie Farmer's corruption was mostly just laughs. Well, until somebody lost a foot.

A Louisville teen's feet were severed after she was hurt on a ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom in 2007. The park closed in 2009.
Begley, who worked out of Breathitt County and inspected rides in that area, could not be reached for comment.

B&P also rejects the compliments being showered on Ritchie's successor for requesting the audit and acting expeditiously to implement recommended changes.

I get the strong sense that Jamie Comer is, if not encouraging these stories, at least rooting for them because they show a lack of continuity between the two Republicans. Next to Richie Farmer, he looks like a high-minded reformer. But make no mistake, Jamie Comer is a right-wing son of a bitch who voted against felon re-enfranchisement, against providing HPV vaccinations to girls, and against equal pay for equal work for women when he was a state rep. Expect him to run for something fancier in 2014 or 2015 on his record of cleaning up Richie Farmer's mess and expect a lot of Democrats to talk about how he's a good man.

Yes, of course Ritchie's a republican.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/BoO-l0U1mow/toxic
-culture-of-entitlement

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Wisconsin Dems Face Divisive Primary Before
Walker Recall Election

post from Crooks and Liars on 30 April 2012 06:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

It would be a truly ignoble end if, after all this recall work, Wisconsin ended up with a new governor who's only Walker lite. But the Democratic party consensus is closing around Barrett, who state Democrats believe has the best chance of beating Walker:

MADISON, Wis. ? Wisconsin Democrats organized the protests that gripped the state. They turned Gov. Scott Walker?s plans to strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights into a national Democratic cause. They got the signatures they needed to force a recall election, and then some.
They are now just a little more than a month away from the big showdown with Walker they have been craving for over a year ? but rather than excitement, there is growing fear within the party that they just might blow it.
The problem for Democrats is that before they get their shot against Walker, they have to get through a divisive primary between an establishment pick and a union favorite that is threatening to undercut their unified front against the governor.
?We?re nervous,? said Julie Wells, who works with the grass-roots group United Wisconsin. Wells, a forklift operator from Fort Akinson, filed the papers to recall Walker, and she was there when they were submitted. But now volunteers who promised to help aren?t showing up. ?We know that we can win this, but we?re not seeing the level of participation we saw during the signature-gathering phase,? she said.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker by six percentage points in 2010, is the establishment pick for the May 8 Democratic primary. He leads three other primary candidates by double-digits, according to the latest polls. He has the support of most prominent elected officials in the state and, in a sign of his standing, Republicans have focused their attacks on him.
?The Republicans do not want me to emerge from this primary,? Barrett told a crowd of a hundred or so at a Waukesha coffee shop last week. ?They?ve made commercials about several candidates, they?re only running them against me,? he said, because ?they view me as the strongest candidate.?
But most of the unions that first revolted against Walker?s legislation have endorsed another candidate: former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk.
For many union leaders, Barrett is, if not as bad as Walker, not good enough either. As mayor, he used the rule changes championed by Walker to take away benefits from city employees. While Falk committed to vetoing any budget that does not include collective bargaining, Barrett favors a more conciliatory special session of the legislature.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in particular, has aggressively attacked Barrett, at one point suggesting that he supported Walker?s reforms.

More background here.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/wisconsin-dems-face-divisive-primary-

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Toilet trainwreck

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/uvgFAdgoU1Y/-Toilet-trainwreck

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May Day 2012 Coverage at Firedoglake

Tomorrow is May Day, and Occupy groups have spent months planning a general strike. Organizers are calling on people everywhere to show solidarity by abstaining from commerce, staying home from school and work, avoiding the bank, and other activities as[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/nCxrLBbItnI/

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What a Dearth of Small Donations May Mean for
Romney

Mitt Romney's campaign has had no trouble raking in big checks, but its struggles in attracting small donations could be a problem.

Read The Full Article:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/what-a-dearth-of-small-donati
ons-may-mean-for-romney/

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Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-On This Day In History April 30 by TheMomCatPunting the Pundits by TheMomCatThese featured articles-Pique the Geek 20120429: Technetium, An odd Element by TranslatorSunday Train: Leveraging HSR for a Fresno Regional Rail[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.docudharma.com/diary/29756/today-on-the-stars-hollow-gazette

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