More Benghazi Bluster

The Benghazi attacks have resurfaced again in the political world with the same ol' lines and tired reasoning. The mouth foaming about anti-Muslim videos, not using the word "terror," and not providing additional security remind us, once again, which party really embraces the credo "Do it again, only harder" (see also: the Affordable Care Act). Apparently, the Right needs a reminder again of a few key facts.

First, the attack in Benghazi was not on a US Embassy or a consulate. The official word is that it was a "diplomatic mission." In truth, it was a CIA listening station and that's why it was attacked. If you want to bitch about government secrets, that's fine but that means you can't move to crucify guys like Julian Assanges. There are secrets the government is keeping about this location and they have everything to do with why the word "terror" wasn't used and why additional security was not allowed there. The latter was also hampered by lack of funding, another fact that seems to have been conveniently forgotten.

Second, FORMER, not present, Navy SEALS were killed, along with Ambassador Chris Stevens. These men were private contractors working for the CIA. Be honest about this.

Third, this was an extremely destabilized area of the world, not on US soil. We had another attack on September 11th that was on US soil in which there was none of this "outrage" from the Right. Anyone remember that one? We've also had a few other attacks on consulates over the years that (hmmm...) were met with the sound of crickets.

Fourth, just admit that you're pissed off that the anti-Muslim video was brought into the mix because it reveals the rampant bigotry in your population of red faced miscreants. I love the "IT WASN'T THE VIDEO!!! IT WASN'T THE VIDEO!!!" screeches of desperate insecurity combined with the redirect on the president. Methinks thou protest too much...

I realize the Right is trying to find something to latch onto that will stick with the president but nothing is working. So, they keep going over the same ground because they can't find anything new. About time for another vote to repeal Obamacare, isn't it?

Charles Ramsey=Greatest Interview In Television History

This is the man that many across the nation are hailing as a hero today. His name is Charles Ramsey and he rescued three women in Cleveland who had been held hostage for more than a decade. Greatest interview EVER!

 

Miserable and Pathetic

I watched in complete wonder and awe at last weekend's annual NRA convention. I say that because I don't think I have ever seen a collection of more angry, hateful and paranoid people gathered in one place. Everyone is out to get them and they are eternally in a state of conflict. What a miserable and pathetic way to live your life. I'm nearly certain that many of the folks who fought hard for Manchin-Toomey and who still are fighting for changes to our gun laws felt beaten down after seeing the all the chest thumping and mouth foaming going on down in Houston last weekend. To those of you that do, I say this: the NRA is finished.

Their recent gathering demonstrated that they are going all in with one political party. They have more or less given up on the Democrats and have aligned themselves with the nutballs running the GOP today. Ultimately, this will prove to be a fatal error. Why? Because the GOP have a political agenda consisting of one belief: denying President Obama and the Democrats success. We've seen in the last several elections that only being the party of "No" is a loser. You have to stand for something.

The NRA used to stand for something and had broad support in both political parties. Heck, they used to even stand for universal background checks. Take a look at this...


WTF happened? Well, politics, along with business, did. The NRA knows that there are less people that own guns today than they did 20 years ago. They want those people to buy more guns and the only way to get them to do that is use the propaganda of fear, hatred, and anger. What better place to have a captured and ripe audience for this than the GOP in 2013.

The problem is that this demographic is shrinking and the NRA knows it. This is their last gasp to earn enough money to invest and live comfortably on a beach somewhere for the rest of their lives. There aren't very many younger people that own guns or are as fervent about this issue. Further, it's only a matter of time before the political head winds blow them over. The 80-90 percent of Americans who support universal background checks are going to remember this vote next year and in 2016 and it's not going to be good for many senators.

It's going to be even worse for them when another shooting happens, especially if the shooter purchased the guns at a place that would have had to require a background check under the new law. I'm betting that one of the next shootings is going to personal affect the gun community in such a horrific way that the paranoid bullshit will all finally be over.

Here's to hoping I'm wrong because I'm truly sick and tired of a collection of psychotic assholes putting the people I love at greater risk every day simply because they are riding the Randian high of a fevered, adolescent power fantasy that is clearly causing them to see and hear things that do not exist. Truly, we do not need any more senseless death from gun violence, particularly at this time when some of it could be mitigated by simply refining our gun laws.

Take heart, sensible people everywhere who don't see visions of government troops seizing your guns. It's only a matter of time now. Be patient...

Yet Another Terrorist We'll Immediately Forget

The FBI arrested a terrorist in Montevideo, MN, last Friday.

Buford “Bucky” Rogers, 24, of Montevideo, was arrested and charged Friday with being a felon in possession of a firearm after federal authorities found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and guns during a search of his mobile home, according to a federal criminal complaint and affidavit.

Authorities believed Rogers was about to attack the Montevideo Police Department.

Why will we forget Bucky? He's a white supremacist. He formed a group called the Black Snake Militia. Some of his Facebook rants include:

“The NWO [New World Order] has taken all your freedoms the right to bear arms freedom of speach freedom of the press ...” read one profanity-punctuated message.

“ever one better get your guns ready cuz there comeing FEMA” and “The war is here tsa agents are doing random cheeks and shooting people for no reson,” read others.

In short, Rogers is parroting all the nonsense the NRA and the Republican Party have been spewing for the last five years.

When two smart Muslim kids kill three people and injure hundreds it's time for a witch hunt. But when crazies like Adam Lanza mow down dozens of kids in a school, or illiterate white supremacist militiamen like Bucky Rogers plan to murder police with pipe bombs, there's absolutely no cause for alarm.

The right in America has a double standard on terrorism. If you're a Muslim or a lefty and you plot mass murder in Boston or New York you're a terrorist. But if you're a Christian, or a right-wing white supremacist, or a tax protestor who parrots everything Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh say, and then plot to blow up a Martin Luther King day parade, an abortion clinic, an IRS office or a police station in Montevideo or Spokane, you're a "wacko bird," as John McCain is wont to say.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked more than one hundred incidents of right-wing terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism between 1995 and 2012. These include attacks on temples, the police, judges, abortion clinics, race-based murders, murders of co-conspirators, IEDs planted along parade routes, and so on.

Much has been made of the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers watched videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, ostensibly motivating them to plan the Boston bombing. But, by the numbers, we should be more worried about the people who are watching Internet videos of Glenn Beck and the president of the NRA.

How Do We See Ourselves?

Take a look at this video from Dove...



It's truly amazing to me how so many women look upon themselves so negatively. What is it about culture that drives them to do this? It's not just advertising or Hollywood.

Nor is it just women. The next time you are in a group of people try this experiment. Tell a story about how you fucked something up and watch everyone laugh along with you. Then tell a story about how great you are at something and listen for the crickets. Maybe you might get one person that gives you some props but for the most part, we cheer self deprecation and jeer self affirmation.

I don't get it.

Great Tweets!

Perfect For A Saturday Night

This is one of the most deranged and hilarious things I have ever read. Apparently, things are just as bad in sororities as we thought they were. Here is an excerpt:

I will fucking cunt punt the next person I hear about doing something like that, and I don't give a fuck if you SOR me, I WILL FUCKING ASSAULT YOU.

Since authoring this email, she has resigned from Delta Gamma. She should take heart, though. There is a place for her on the inter webs...the right wing blogsphere.

She'd fit right in!

Come Again?

Poll: Gun vote boosts Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu 

TUCSON SHOOTING SURVIVORS GAVE JOHN MCCAIN 19 ROSES TO THANK HIM FOR HIS GUN VOTE

What was all that business again about senators being afraid to vote in favor of Manchin-Toomey?

Yep

Begin The Spin

U.S. Adds 165,000 Jobs, Unemployment Rate Dips

 The headline unemployment rate ticked lower to 7.5% from 7.6%, the lowest in four years. Economists had predicted an increase of 145,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate would remain unchanged.

Perhaps the best news out of the jobs report was that highly disappointing March numbers were revised upward to 138,000 non-farm jobs created, up from the 88,000 originally reported. In total, revisions added 114,000 jobs to the workforce in February and March. 

Get ready for the new spin which will shift from "Obama is ruining the economy" to "it should have happened sooner and would have if a conservative was in charge!"

Meanwhile, check out the revised February numbers...wow!

Tragic

We currently live in a society that goes to great lengths not to offend people for their way of life. Schools teach children to be kind to one another and try to understand what it's like to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Yet, I do not get this.

And I never will.

Truly, this is a foreign country to me and yet it's just a few states away from me. We have young hunters up here in the North Woods but there aren't any ads in the paper for "my first rifle" or an abundance of photos that show children with guns. People in my state take gun safety a lot more seriously. Apparently, they don't in states like Kentucky.

How could this mother be so fucking stupid? I really don't care if I offend anyone with this but what a class A moron! Even though this tragedy resulted in one death, it's still the same thing as Newtown...idiot mom allows child access to guns...results in loss of young life.

Oh well, accidents happen, I guess. There's nothing to be done whatsoever. Anyone who tries to do something or prevent something like this is Hilter.

The Greatest Nation, Impotent Before Madmen....

Proving Me Wrong Every Single Time

Take a look at this new ad from the GOP.



Note the photo at the 19 second mark. That's President Obama consoling Nicole Hockley, mother of Newtown shooting victim, 6 year old Dylan Hockley. I didn't think it was possible for conservatives to get any lower. They continue to prove me wrong every single time.

I'm wondering what kind of people do a victory dance by showing the mother of a 6 year old shooting victim in a campaign ad. Senator Toomey was right. This was all about stopping Obama, not about protecting 2nd amendment rights.

Great Blog

I was having a discussion with Nikto the other day about how informative it would be if someone started a web site that illustrated the regularity of gun violence in this country. Well, guess what? There already is one and it's great.

Joe Nocera is doing every American a service with his daily updates. This needs to be expanded on a larger scale so people can see how truly awful this problem is and work to prevent further injuries and deaths. As of right now, the federal government is not doing anything to stop this so it has to be up to us.

What should we do?

President Juice

At the press conference on Tuesday, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked the president whether or not he had "the juice" to get things done in Congress. Mr. Obama smiled and quoted Mark Twain about premature demises but the question made the rest of the nation wonder...does he?

It's fairly obvious that the president has a great deal of disdain for Congress. This would include his own party as well as the Republicans. He doesn't have the patience for the schmooze game and he lacks assholeishness of Lyndon Johnson to make people's lives a living hell until they pass what he wants passed. So, he opts to play the long game and that means that in the short term, he looks weak and ineffective. Hence, the comment about juice.

But reporters like Karl should take note of what the president has accomplished thus far. That's pretty impressive, if you ask me. It demonstrates that his opting for longer term victories is a much more effective strategies. Besides, the political media is locked in the 48 hour news cycle and has the emotional intelligence of Kim Kardashian so what do they really know?

What many also fail to note is that conservatives simply don't want to allow the president to win...anything. Senator Pat Toomey, co-author of the Manchin-Toomey gun safety bill, summed it perfectly.

"In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized," Toomey told editors from Digital First Media in an interview published Wednesday by the Norristown Times Herald. "There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it."

There's a word for that...what is it?....I can't quite seem to remember what it is...hmm...:)

David Firestone echoes this sentiment.

It doesn’t really matter how many business groups say the immigration system has to change, or how many suburban voters are disgusted by the easy access to guns for criminals. For these Republicans, the visceral hatred of the president is their only guiding star, and they are absolutely convinced the voters in their districts feel the same way.

I call it Obama Mental Meltdown Syndrome (OMMS). Not to be outdone by the Bush Haters and still stung by the fact that at least they had a reason to loathe our 43rd president, OMMS sufferers remind of children. They stomp their feet, foam at the mouth, and just can't stand the fact that "the other side" is, in reality, winning. President Obama is transforming this country to a center left one just as Ronald Reagan moved it to the center right. They know this is happening and that's why they are doing precisely what they are doing.

The problem for them, however, is that voters are not on their side. Further, the president and the Democrats have learned that they need to be more aggressive in an ongoing way in rallying support. 2014 is not going to be 2010, hence the transformation of the president's campaign machine into Organizing For America.. If conservatives continue the way they are now and don't pass immigration reform, for example, 2014 is going to be very kind to the president. 2016 will be even kinder.

Moreover, if Hillary runs and wins, which she likely will given all of this and the very weak GOP field, you can say buh-bye to the politeness and soft peddling of Congress by the White House. Heck, she'll make Lyndon Johnson look like Mother Teresa!

WTF??!!

PART FOUND NEAR WTC FROM TYPE OF JET HIJACKED 9/11

What I find interesting about this story is the rope they found that was possibly used to lower it in to the crevice. Is this a message? Or has it just been stuck there since 9-11-01?

Filthy Gun Grabber!

Not On Display

With the recent dedication of the George W. Bush presidential library, I think it is only fitting that I reprint, in its entirety, Tomas Young's letter to our 43rd president and vice president. No doubt, this will not appear on display in Dallas.


To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From: Tomas Young 

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care. 

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. 

I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief. I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. 

I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole. Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage. I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. 

I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences. I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. 

I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire. I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? 

I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul. My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

Sweet!

Good news on the economic front.

U.S. economic growth accelerated from January through March, buoyed by the strongest consumer spending in more than two years. The strength offset further declines in government spending that are expected to drag on growth throughout the year. 

Despite the sequester and the tax increases, I think this year is going to be fantastic, economically. We've certainly started it off right!

Good Words

If only Americans reacted the same way to the actual threats that exist in their country. There's something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers. Even though this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of 100 senators voted in favour of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of "law-abiding Americans". 

So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks). 

What makes US gun violence so particularly horrifying is how routine and mundane it has become. After the massacre of 20 kindergartners in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Americans began to take greater notice of the threat from gun violence. Yet since then, the daily carnage that guns produce has continued unabated and often unnoticed.

People are noticing, though, and I don't think the gun community is going to be happy in the next couple of elections. Kelly Ayotte isn't faring well after her vote. Pat Toomey, however, is faring well. Once again, I don't think the Right cares about winning elections anymore. Just arguments.

Where Are YOU on the Chart

Busted!

Over the course of the last few months, we've seen that austerity measures in Europe aren't working. One would think that they learned their lesson after the worldwide economic depression in the 1930s but they haven't. Neither have conservatives in this country who are so emotionally obsessed with the government spending less money that they really can't see how cuts in spending are harmful. Now we have the proof that not only are they harmful, they are decidedly not beneficial. In short, high public debt does not consistently stifle economic growth.

Thank you, Thomas Herndon!

Whither Syria...

President Obama has some tough choices to consider over the next few days as he considers whether or not Syria has crossed the red line of chemical weapons use. Assuming they have used them on the rebels (and that's a big "if," at this point), is it really our business to get involved in another country's civil war? The Assad regime is terrible for its people and awful for the world. They are a state sponsor of violent extremism and have a penchant for targeting Israel, one of our closest allies in the world. So, there's no doubt we'd all be better off if he was gone.

But what would be put in his place? We've seen that slippery slope with the Arab Spring in Egypt. The rebels that are fighting in Syria right now are jihadi extremists who very well could impose a theocracy complete with Sharia law in place of the Assad government. Clearly, this would be worse and likely destabilizing to the region. Israel would be at even greater risk. We also have to consider Russia's stake in all of this as they are a staunch ally of Syria.

If I were the president, I would tread cautiously and, if it is confirmed that chemical weapons were used, any action that is taken should be done so with a broad consensus starting with the Arab League. While this decision is being made, we need solid intelligence on what the Syrian rebels plan to do if they assume power. Are they going to be part of the world community and participate in open elections and democracy? Or will they be worse than Bashar Assad?

Football, Boxing, Boston and Three Unsolved Murders on 9/11/11

A couple of weeks ago the NFL moved to dismiss over 200 cases brought by thousands of football players suing the NFL for brain damage caused by concussions they received while playing football. In many cases players who had just suffered severe brain trauma were immediately sent back out on the field.

Repeated concussions, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, can cause dementia and Parkinson's Syndrome. There have been numerous documented cases where individuals suffering from CTE committed assaults, murder and suicide. The problem is that CTE is almost impossible to diagnose until an autopsy is conducted.

So when Time Magazine ran an article that asked whether brain damage that Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev suffered as an amateur boxer contributed to his rage against the United States, imagine the outrage among conservatives, as reported by Fox News:

“TIME should be ashamed and embarrassed by this article. It is just beyond absurd, and is another silly and infantile attempt to deny the obvious,” AmericanThinker.com columnist C. Edmund Wright told FOX411. “Boxing, and football, have been related to brain damage in the past, but none of the boxers or NFL players who committed suicide did so by killing innocent eight-year-olds in a crowded public square. The analogy doesn’t pass elementary school logic.”

No, football players haven't killed eight-year-olds in public. But victims of CTE have killed girl friends, spouses and their own children. 

Media critic John Ziegler concurred. “It is hilarious to watch the media do mental gymnastics to try to avoid concluding that radical Islam was what motivated the bombings,” he said. “If the fake Onion paper tried to parody this, they simply could not.”

John Conway, CEO of Astonish Media Group, found the article “sensationalized and grasping at straws,” while Dan Gainor, Vice President of Business and Culture and the Media Research Institute, noted: “Every time there is another act of terror linked to radical Islam, journalists go out of their way to excuse it or rationalize it. There was a time when news magazines had gravitas, now they only way they get attention is by acting like your crazy uncle.”

Of course, none of these media pundits knows anything at all about CTE. Nor do they seem to have read the Time article, which includes the following paragraph:

That points to the difficulty of establishing any link between the condition of a brain and actions that may or may not result from it. Cantu points to the case of the late pro wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and son and then himself in 2007. When his brain was studied after he died, it showed signs of CTE—but here too it might have had little to do with his murderous behavior. “In Benoit’s case the behavior was again premeditated. It took place slowly, over the course of a weekend. He even sedated his son first so he wouldn’t suffer,” Cantu says. Criminally pathological? Certainly. But triggered by CTE? Probably not.

Time asked an obvious question, consulted experts and printed their conclusions. The experts thought that the bombing was a premeditated act that lacked the impulsiveness usually associated with behaviors caused by CTE.

Conservatives and FOX News were confused because they thought Time was using their tried and true trick of "just asking a question" and guilt by association to link boxing and the bombers. They had to attack because they didn't want their simplistic narrative of radical Islam being the sole cause of the Boston bombing to be confused by inconvenient facts or mitigating circumstances.

In their rush to condemn all of Islam for the actions of two disturbed individuals (or "losers" as their own uncle describes them), conservatives are doing exactly the same thing they accuse liberals of when they demand restrictions on all gun owners because a few (well, it's actually dozens at this point) crazed individuals like Adam Lanza and James Holmes committed mass murder.

The NRA insists that mental illness is the cause of mass murder, not access to guns or explosives. We know that repeated brain injury is a cause of mental illness. So it's only logical to ask whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev suffered brain trauma that would cause murderous behavior.

Which brings us to those murders on 9/11/11. Authorities are now wondering whether Tamerlan murdered his best friend and two other men on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. If those murders were the kind of impulsive act of enraged violence typical of CTE, brain damage may well have sent Tamerlan on a downward spiral of guilt, anger, depression and despair that ultimately resulted in the senseless bombing in Boston and suicidal behavior afterwards.

We should also ask the following questions: did brain damage play a role in Tamerlan's arrest in 2009 for assaulting his girl friend? Could brain damage have made Tamerlan more receptive to a violent and radical interpretation of Islam in the first place? Did brain damage make it harder for Tamerlan to concentrate and therefore study, ultimately forcing him to drop out of college?

The authorities should look closely at Tamerlan's brain. If it has the lesions indicative of CTE he's no less guilty. But if brain damage was partially responsible for the tragedy in Boston, it raises questions about the potential risk from sports where concussions are routine.

Just because you're a boxer or a Muslim doesn't mean you're going to blow people up. Muhammad Ali was both. But all that brain damage did leave Ali trembling with Parkinson's at the age of 42.

So you might think long and hard before signing your kid up for football, boxing or martial arts.

Internet Sales Taxes: a Chance to Fix a Broken System

The Internet is going insane now that the Internet sales tax bill has passed a test vote in the Senate. The bill would require companies with sales of more than a million dollars worth of out-of-state sales to collect sales tax for the states where their customers live.

Why is this needed? When people buy things from out-of-state companies through mail order or the Internet they're supposed to pay sales tax to their state. But no one does. This means that the states, most of which are really strapped for cash these days, are not getting funds needed to pay for the services used by the freeloaders who actually live there. We're talking tens of billions of dollars here.

Thus, Internet companies that don't pay sales tax have a huge advantage over local businesses. Retailers watch helplessly as people stroll down the aisles of their stores looking at merchandise, trying it out and asking clerks questions, only to place an order on Amazon with their cellphone while they're still in the store.

The Senate bill, once opposed by Amazon, now enjoys the Internet pioneer's backing. The reason is that Amazon will soon be paying sales taxes anyway, because it's planning to build warehouses near large cities to achieve same-day delivery, allowing them to compete directly with brick and mortar retailers.

But some people are attributing a more sinister motive: they think Amazon wants to crush any upstart competitors by making them collect onerous sales taxes. This, everyone fears, will stifle innovation and snuff out the entrepreneurial spirit forever more.

Typical reactions to the bill are like Megan McArdle's, of The Daily Beast. They argue that small businesses won't be able to handle paying sales tax to all those jurisdictions. However, opponents of the bill keep forgetting that this will only affect companies with at least one million dollars in out-of-state sales. Small businesses will never have to bother with collecting out-of-state sales taxes.

All this outrage is misplaced. The real problem is that the sales tax system is broken and this is the perfect opportunity to fix it.  

The thing is, many small businesses already have to collect out-of-state sales taxes. For example, if you're a small vendor who sells stuffed animals, or comic books, or Star Wars light-sabers at out-of-state at conventions like Comic-Con or Gen-Con you have to collect sales tax for anything you sell there. And then you often have to continue to file with those states for years afterwards, even though you may never make another sale there again.

Selling things on the Internet is exactly the same thing: the customer brings your virtual sales floor directly onto their computer screen, and they make the purchase in their home.

Computing sales tax on such purchases is not difficult. This is the Internet, after all, and there are computers. Computers can take an address and calculate exactly how much sales tax is due and who should get it. PayPal already does this on behalf of small businesses, though it's up to the businesses to do the necessary filings and payments to the state.

And that's where the magic of entrepreneurship comes in. This is a perfect opportunity for an someone to start up a new Internet business to make collecting sales taxes painless for everyone.

When this bill becomes law state legislatures will have a huge incentive to streamline their sales-tax filing systems, which are predicated on the idea that only in-state businesses collect sales taxes. They will rush to provide mechanisms for direct computerized payment of sales taxes, and eliminate  onerous filing requirements.

That will also make it easier for in-state companies to collect sales taxes. And that's a win for everyone.

Standardized Testing: Do It Right or Not At All

There's been a lot of wailing and moaning about high-stakes testing in the schools lately. An article by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post caught my attention because it criticizes a company I used to work for. Strauss has a long litany of delays, errors committed, and fines paid by Pearson for problems with the administration of tests in schools. Another recent article discusses Pearson's role in jacking up the price of the GED. I even know the president of GED Testing Service; I worked with him 20 years ago.

I didn't work with high-stakes testing for kids; I worked for the companies that grew out of Control Data's PLATO division. They provided computerized certification exams for IT professionals who supported software products from companies like Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, etc. They also provided FAA pilot and mechanic exams, stock broker compliance testing, insurance and real estate sales exams, and so on. When I retired a dozen years ago, the business was quickly morphing into computerized delivery of certification testing for medical professionals and was about to enter the SAT/ACT market.

So I have a bit of inside knowledge about the testing business. I was on the software end of things, and wrote the code that delivered and scored computerized tests. I worked with a lot of exam developers and customers to get their exams into our delivery system and the results out of the back end. But the real work in testing is on the front end: the development of the exams themselves.

There were basically two kinds of customers. The first kind was the testing professional, who insisted on doing things the right way. That involves writing a large bank of test questions ("items") and then testing the items' performance in several series of exams to a large number (hundreds, if not thousands) of target candidates who demonstrate the expected range of knowledge of the subject matter. The quality of the items is then statistically determined by how well they predict the ability level of the candidate (which has be assessed separately).

A good item is one that someone with a firm grasp of the subject material gets right and someone who doesn't know the material gets wrong. A bad item has no correlation with subject matter expertise and a terrible one has a negative correlation. Bad items have factual errors, or are poorly written, unclear, misleading or "trick" questions.

Another consideration in writing an exam is the number of "forms" you deliver: in many testing regimes people take the exams on different days, so you have to write many different forms of the exam in order to avoid exposing all the items to the public at once. This is a serious concern because there are quite well-organized cheating efforts that involve people who've just taken an exam doing a memory dump of a few questions they are assigned to remember. With a relatively small crew you can completely reconstruct the exam: within a day your test -- and all the answers -- can be out on the Internet.

When you have multiple forms of an exam, it's critical that the forms be equivalent. That is, each form has to be statistically balanced to have the same degree of difficulty, even though not all items on the form are the same. Otherwise the test wouldn't be fair to all takers.

This means that if you want to give several alternate forms of a 50-question test to millions of kids across a state or a country, you're going to wind up writing thousands of items, many of which will be discarded because they do not accurately predict ability level.

This is extremely expensive and time-consuming. And it's a never-ending process because of the exposure problem and constantly changing curricula. Companies like Pearson manage item banks with millions of items whose statistical performance is monitored and are aged out over time.

That brings us to the second kind of customer: the average guy. The average guy thinks you can just jot down some questions and be done with it. That's probably true for teachers who know the kids in their class, where quizzes plus class participation plus daily homework provide a complete picture for the teacher to assign a grade. But you can't write a standardized test that way.

The problem with developing good exams, in my experience, is that people just don't want to pay for it. Their eyes glaze over as you explain that it'll require subject matter experts writing thousands of items, and months of testing and retesting the items' performance (you can't change a word of an item -- or even its formatting -- without affecting its stats), and analysis of the statistics, and careful construction of equivalent forms.  And then things like content balancing  (making sure subdisciplines of the exam subject matter aren't under- or overrepresented on a particular form) make the exam developer's job that much harder.

Not surprisingly, school districts are particularly concerned about costs and schedules. They never have enough money, and by the time the legislature appropriates it, the company that's supposed to develop and deliver the test may not have the time to do it right.

In my experience, corporate customers constantly changed their minds and added new requirements, but the schedule never changed. With state-wide tests and requirements coming from dozens of school districts, administrators and meddlesome politicians, the software developer in me would imagine the deadline at the end of the school year to be an all-consuming bottomless pit.

Thus, I'm sure that many of the problems Valerie Strauss cited with Pearson's performance are due to changes their customers demanded at the last minute, or customers skipping necessary quality control steps that they didn't want to pay for or have time for due to schedule constraints. From personal experience I'm absolutely certain that many of Pearson's alleged problems are really the fault of politicians, school boards, state education commissions and educators themselves.

I'm equally certain that many of the problems are due to sales guys who promised things Pearson didn't have, management who agreed to schedules their technical people told them outright were impossible, not to mention hardware problems, mistakes in coding and data entry, faulty statistical analysis, mismatching items and their statistics and/or answer keys, and simple cut/paste errors in item text.

Given the constantly shifting educational priorities and curricula, perennially tight school budgets and incessant political bickering I don't see how we'll ever be able to do large-scale standardized testing right, especially not with every state and local jurisdiction trying to reinvent the wheel themselves, and everyone insisting that we do it several times a year.

If we can't spend the time and the money to do standardized testing right, we shouldn't do it at all. With all due respect to my former colleagues, I think we should take the money out of the hands of companies like Pearson and put it back into the schools where it'll do the most good.

Voices In My Head (Blaming The Victim Edition)

I have something I want to say to the victims of Newtown or any other shooting, I don’t care if it’s here in Minneapolis or anyplace else: Just because a bad thing happened to you doesn’t mean that you get to put a king in charge of my life. I’m sorry that you suffered a tragedy, but you know what? Deal with it, and don’t force me to lose my liberty, which is a greater tragedy than your loss. I’m sick and tired of seeing these victims trotted out, given rides on Air Force One, hauled into the Senate well, and everyone is … terrified of these victims. I would stand in front of them and tell them, ‘Go to hell'

This is what happens when you come out of the bubble. You get smacked squarely in the head with your bullshit.

Several things amaze me about this very illustrative incident. We have the usual adolescent temper tantrum that is all too familiar. This stomp down the hallway precedes the equally familiar DARVO, a truly despicable  practice which seems to happen when the mouth foamer knows that he or she is completely wrong.

But the element that really stuns me is just how much of a fucking coward the Bob Davies' are of the world. If he truly has the courage of his convictions, he should go to Newtown and say those things in front of the victim's families. That goes for anyone else out there who hides behind a mic or a blog who thinks that victim's families or frightened children are being used as props or "human shields."

Go say that shit right to their face, fuckos. If you can't muster the sack to do it, then you obviously don't believe what you are saying and just being an immature ass hat.

Heed His Warning

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Is Joe channeling me?:)

Earth Day +1

Yesterday was Earth Day and Nikto and I were too busy talking about the gun debate and Boston so I thought I would put this wonderful documentary up today. It's an American Experience film, in its entirety, about the history of the modern environmental movement. Interesting how it started with Republicans...

Enjoy!

Well, This is Fantastic!

The Tsarnaevs: Islamic Warriors or Losers?

There's been a lot talk about whether Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (I'm not going continue the charade of calling him a "suspect") should be read his Miranda rights. It's almost a moot point: he's not going to be doing much talking because he was shot in the throat and may never speak again.

There's been a lot of talk about designating him an enemy combatant. This is crazy on the face of it, since he's an American citizen.

There's even been a suggestion, from one of the right's most brilliant luminaries, Donald Trump, of torturing Tsarnaev.

All of these things presume that Tsarnaev is a terrorist, and it's not at all clear that he is. Philip Mudd, a former CIA Deputy Director, said Sunday on Fox News that Tsarnaev should be charged as a murderer. Mudd thinks, as I wrote last Friday, that the marathon bombing was more like Columbine and not 9/11.

Who is Philip Mudd? Some liberal Obama appointee? Well, Obama did try to appoint him to a high position in the Department in Homeland Security in 2009. But Mudd withdrew after questions about his involvement in waterboarding terrorist suspects:

Mr. Mudd, who joined the C.I.A. in 1985 and served tours in the Near East and South Asia, is considered one of the government’s top experts on Al Qaeda.

“He’s not just an ops guy,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. “He’s probing. He asks questions. And he’s open-minded, and I don’t see that every day with this community.”

Several Republican lawmakers expressed anger over Mr. Mudd’s withdrawal. Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri said the nomination had become “the latest political casualty of a terror-fighting program no one in Congress objected to until it became politically risky.”

Thus, Mudd is not inclined to be soft on terror.

We don't yet know for sure that aren't any foreign terrorist connections in this case. Further investigation is obviously in order.  But the last thing we want is for our government to automatically treat people like terrorists. Because when we as a nation start treating members of a group as terrorists, other members of that group feel threatened and may become terrorists themselves to protest the injustice of that persecution.

History should be our guide: the invasion of Iraq was a recruiting bonanza for Al Qaeda. Let's not turn what may be a lone act of frustration by two young alienated guys by turning them into martyrs.

Ruslan Tsarni, the Tsarnaevs' uncle, was close enough to know them well, but distant enough not to think they were innocent angels like their parents did. What does he think motivated them?

Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves; these are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam – it’s a fraud, it’s a fake.

If we charge the Tsarnaevs as terrorists and enemies of the state we grant them status and renown as soldiers of Islam and martyrs. If we charge them with criminal murder we brand them as murderous losers.

If we want to discourage copycats the choice seems obvious.

Going Forward

It's hard to imagine where the gun safety movement is going to go from here. I've heard many people say to me, "If 20 dead elementary school children doesn't change our nation's gun laws, what will?" I certainly can sympathize with this sentiment.

What has to happen now is out of the box thinking. As I have said previously, bringing a knife to a gun fight never works and the families of the victims of the various shootings that showed up in DC these last two weeks didn't even bring that. They don't understand the nature of what stands in their way. Essentially, it is two distinct groups of people

First you have the gun lobby and the gun manufacturers. They don't give a shit about the 2nd amendment or possible futures in which an American Hitler or Stalin takes over. They care about one thing: money. Their livelihood is being threatened and they are going to do anything to prevent from happening. These people are fucking scumbags who peddle fear and death and they should be exposed as such. Think about how much money they have made since the president took office. Think about how much money has been made since Newtown. So many gun owners rushed to their local gun store because of a fear that ended up being nothing. They have their sheep and they know how to manipulate them.

The second group of people are the paranoid pyschotics that do think Democrats, proggressives and any to the left of the one yard line on the right side of the field is coming to get their guns and send them to re-education camps. These are the same people who sneer at frightened children who write to the president because they are scared, only to be later derisively called props. Or taunt the families of the victims and say things like, "But it must be for the children.." In so many ways, these people are actually worse than the gun lobby and gun manufacturers. The good news is that most of these people are over the age of 40 so time will do its thing in some respects.

Now,there is no earthly way to reach the second group. They are fucking gone into a never, never world of plots and fantasies so profoundly fictitious that it leaves me...even me...completely speechless. So, the attention should be on the first group. And that means one thing. We have to go after the money. The question is...how do we do that?

One idea I had recently was to go in the opposite direction. Rather than try and ban certain types of guns or limit ammo clips, why not simply give away free guns? The federal government could offer free weapons to any citizen who would pass a background check and go through the appropriate training and regular mental health checks. That would also really piss off the anti government spending crowd as they are usually the same demographic as the pro gun crowd. And, to get around the issue of buying the guns from the gun manufacturers, the government could just make their own guns. There are probably plenty of people who could use the work. Heck, that would solve the unemployment problem!

The other idea I had was a PR campaign based on what happened with smoking. If you start to pull together all the various groups that are adversely affected by gun violence, you could really start to change public opinion. These days, smoking is really looked upon like a giant fart that just hangs in the air and won't go away. Lock a bunch of ad guys in a room for a couple of weeks and there is no doubt in my mind that they could eviscerate the gun lobby. You could put together ads with the audio being comprised of the usual rhetoric from the pro gun folks and the video showing shootings, the aftermath, and victims families. The public needs to see this contrast.

Both of these ideas may seem out there but that's what it's going to take. Of course, there is something else that I haven't mentioned because it's not so much of an idea as it is a prediction, which would make both of my ideas moot. If you take a look at how change happens in this country, it only occurs when the right people are adversely affected by whatever issue is on the hot seat. Gay rights, for example, wasn't important until enough parents had children that came out and then that was pretty much fucking that. When it becomes personal, that's when the real change happens.

Right now, there is someone out there..or several someones...that sooner or later is going to be adversely affected by gun violence. I don't who they are or where they live but I do know that they will start a wave that will finally end all this nonsense. This person will likely be someone who arises out of the "pro-gun" crowd and will initially be labeled a "traitor." This same person or people will understand that you don't bring less than a knife or less to a gun fight. They'll know exactly what to do and they will fucking bury the NRA, the rest of the gun lobby, and the pro gun crowd up to their necks.

He or she won't take away their guns nor will they change the second amendment in any way. They will simply expose the anger, hatred, fear, and paranoia for all to see. And then we can finally put a serious dent in the already declining world of violent crime.

They Have More Money

Interesting piece over at the Atlantic about who gives more to charity...the wealthy or the poor. The answer is surprising.

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

While it's true and quite obvious that the wealthy give a larger dollar amount, the do not give as much percentage wise, as the less fortunate. Add in the fact that the poorer folks don't get a tax deduction and it seems even more generous. But why?

However, some experts have speculated that the wealthy may be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” 

They are, he continued, “more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.” Colorful statements aside, Piff’s research on the giving habits of different social classes—while not directly refuting the asshole theory—suggests that other, more complex factors are at work. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income people and people who identified themselves as being on a relatively low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than upper-class participants were. Notably, though, when both groups were exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to help others became almost identical.

Hmm...perhaps the wealthy are out of touch?

I think that people that have less money give more because they know what it's like to be poor. Perhaps they didn't have a lot of money in recent memory and can completely relate to the hardship. And the wealthy don't give as much because...well...that's why they are wealthy.

They have more money.

And So It Begins...

Adolphus Busch IV Resigns From NRA

It disturbs me greatly to see this rigid new direction of the NRA. As a starting point, one only has to ask why the NRA reversed its original position on background checks. Was it not the NRA position to support background checks when Mr. LaPierre himself stated in 1999 that NRA saw checks as “reasonable”? Furthermore, I fail to see how the NRA can disregard the overwhelming will of its members who see background checks as reasonable. In fact, according to a Johns Hopkins University study, 74% say they support background checks.

One only has to look at the makeup of the 75-member board of directors, dominated by manufacturing interests, to confirm my point. The NRA appears to have evolved into the lobby for gun and ammunition manufacturers rather than gun owners.

I'm quite proud of the family who has given so much to the state in which I was born. I'm thinking it's just the beginning. The aftermath of the Senate's vote has been quite pointed. As I have said, this does indeed sting, short term but long term? Say goodbye to the gun lobby...

Was Boston Really Terrorism or Just Another Columbine?

With the news that bombings in Boston were committed by guys that had been living in this country for 10 years, people are worried about a wave of "homegrown terrorism." They're wondering what we can do to combat this.

I have a suggestion: stop beating up innocent people.

After numerous false news reports that variously identified "a dark-skinned man," a Saudi, a guy from Nepal, a Moroccan, etc., as suspects in the bombing, there have been several revenge attacks against people who have nothing at all to do with the atrocity: a Bangladeshi network engineer, a woman doctor from Syria, and so on.

This is nothing new. When people are angry they vent their rage against innocent people who vaguely resemble someone they hate. For centuries these sorts of attacks were common against minorities including blacks, Catholics, Irishmen, Hungarians, gays, and especially after 9/11, Muslims.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came to the United States as refugees about that time. How did the intolerance and violence towards innocent Muslims did affect their attitudes about America?

The marathon bombings always seemed like an amateur affair, more like the mass shootings at Newtown, Aurora, and Columbine than a masterminded plot like 9/11. Tamerlan seems to have been alienated from American society. He reportedly said, "I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them." If the Tsarnaevs felt bullied and hated the same way that Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza felt, Boston may be exactly the same as Columbine and Newtown.

We don't yet know exactly why the Tsarnaevs detonated those bombs. There's simply no excuse for killing innocent people at a marathon. Just like there's no excuse for a man to assault a random Muslim woman on the street.

If you want to stop crimes like the Boston bombing, you have to understand what motivated the perpetrators. Random hatred and mistreatment of Muslims in America may or may not have been the trigger for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar. But anyone who feels oppressed by society could have the same reaction, including gay teenagers, home-schooled Christians, gun owners, you name it.

As we've seen time and again, your ethnicity and political and religious leanings have no real bearing on whether you'll commit atrocities like Boston. Abortion- and lesbian-hater Eric Rudolph was responsible for the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. Timothy McVeigh's attack in Oklahoma City killed far more people than the Tsarnaevs, and he called himself a true American Patriot.

All that's needed for mass murder is a righteous belief that violence is the appropriate response to a perceived affront. The rest is just details.

Dzhokhar's Joke

People are wondering what motivated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to commit the atrocity in Boston. His page on the Russian-language social networking site vk.com (short for "v kontakte," or "in contact") is still up as of this writing. It looks fairly normal, with links to a couple of generic pages about Chechnya.

His worldview is listed as "Islam" and his personal priority is listed as "career and money."  Not exactly a terrorist manifesto, is it?

There is one thing that may shed some light on his mindset, a joke he posted on March 19:

В школе задают загадку..Едет
автомобиль. В нем сидят – дагестанец,
чеченец и ингуш.
Вопрос – кто ведет машину ?
Мага отвечает: - Полиция.

Translated into English:

In school they posed a riddle: A car is going along. In it sit a guy from Dagestan, one from Chechnya and one from Ingushetia [regions of Russia that have been torn by insurrection and repression].
Question: who's driving the car?
Maga answers: The police.

Well, I Didn't See That One Coming

It looks like the two bombers of the Boston Marathon were Chechen rebels? Wow, I didn't see that one coming. One of them is dead and the other one is still at large of this post.

His Finest Hour

Everyone keeps talking about how the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey gun bill is the greatest loss the president has experienced and how awful it is. I disagree. In fact, I think it has been his finest hour. Watch his entire speech below from yesterday.



I don't think I have ever been prouder of the man. People are going to remember these words and, when juxtaposed with the 46 Senators that voted against Manchin-Toomey, the American people are going to remember the contrast.

One of the 2.5 Million?

A cop in DeKalb County Atlanta was charged with aggravated assault after pulling a gun on some kids waiting in a drive-thru at McDonalds.

Does the NRA count that as one of the 2.5 million defensive uses of guns they say happen every year?

Three New "Habitable" Planets Found?

Astronomers have found three new planets that are the most similar to earth so far. The scientists used NASA's Kepler spacecraft to observe variations in star brightness to find the planets. No question, this is a great discovery. But reading the popular press, you'd think they'd found little green men peering back at us with big, sad eyes.

The New York Times article is typical, with the headline "2 Good Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years Away." That's a colossal overstatement, much like their claim that Mars is "habitable."

Mars is in the habitable zone, to be sure, but it's not habitable in any real sense. It is far too cold and the atmosphere too thin and lacking oxygen for a person to survive without wearing a space suit. Crops will not grow except in hermetically sealed green houses. So far there's no trace of any form of life on the surface. Bacteria could likely be persuaded to live there in the soil fairly easily as they do in Antarctica. And, yes, humans could colonize Mars and perhaps thrive there. But it would be little different from living on the moon

The two parent stars, Kepler 62 and Kepler 69, are more than a thousand light years away. Kepler 62-e is on the inner edge of the habitable zone, and is 60 percent larger than earth. Kepler 62-f is only 40 percent larger than earth, and is at the outside edge of the habitable zone. A third planet, 1.7 times the size of earth, was found in the habitable zone of Kepler 69, a star almost identical to the sun. But those are the only things we know about the planets: we don't know if they're made of rock or gas. And we don't know what the atmospheres consist of.

Just being in the habitable zone doesn't make a planet habitable: the diagram on the right shows that Venus and Mars are both well inside the habitable zone of the solar system, but Mars is far too cold and Venus is far too hot for human habitation.

Why? The atmospheres: Mars was too small to hold on to its atmosphere for very long; what oxygen remained combined with carbon or other elements. It's only got a wispy envelope of carbon dioxide.

Venus, a bit smaller than earth, has a very thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid. The temperature on the surface of Venus is almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmospheric pressure is 92 times greater than earth's at sea level. It's the greenhouse effect gone mad: the same thing would happen to earth if we pumped enough CO2 into the air.

Finally, the only reason that earth is habitable in the sense that people can live here is that it has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. But such an atmosphere is impossible without bacteria and plant life that constantly produce the free oxygen required for animal life. Without those simpler forms of life, the reactive oxygen would oxidize everything around it. The entire earth would rust and perhaps wind up looking like Mars. So these planets we're finding out in the galaxy wouldn't be truly habitable for humans unless something is constantly replenishing atmospheric oxygen -- something we'd probably call life.

There's no question that this is a very cool discovery: it shows that earth-sized planets are common around stars like the sun at the distance necessary for the right temperature for human habitation. But it's way too early to claim they're "habitable" without any knowledge of the planets' compositions and the constituents of their atmospheres.

Beautiful

What Is Wrong with South Carolina Republican Voters?

Yesterday the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled the plug on funding former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford's run for Congress:

Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

Sanford has been a big story since he began his recent comeback. When a seat opened up in the House of Representatives due to the resignation of Jim DeMint, Sanford decided to run, even though everyone thought his political career was over. He beat 16 other Republicans in primaries to win the right to face Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Stephen Colbert's sister.

Sanford became infamous when he disappeared from South Carolina in 2009, telling aides that he was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. He was actually visiting his mistress in Argentina. A reporter caught him getting off the plane at the Atlanta airport.

To make matters worse, Sanford later gave tearful and sappy interviews about "finding his soul mate." He was accused of using state money to visit his mistress, and he returned funds to the state he'd spent visiting her in 2008. The South Carolina legislature wrestled with impeaching him, but finally decided against it. His divorce from his wife Jenny was finalized in 2010. He left office in 2011.

When the South Carolina House seat opened up, Sanford had the gall to ask his wife to run his campaign for him, saying,“I could pay you this time." His latest problems arose when his ex-wife caught him trespassing in her house. His excuse? He couldn't bear the thought of his son watching the Super Bowl alone.

Sanford has the worst case of serial idiocy I've ever seen. This guy is a liar, a cheat, a thief, a fool and a jerk. And the most incredible thing is that Republican primary voters chose him over 16 other Republicans!

Were those voters totally oblivious to the stench emanating from Sanford for the last four years? Or did they just not care? What kind of people would vote for a man like Sanford? He has violated every institution that Republicans claim to cherish: honesty, faithfulness, holy matrimony, careful stewardship of public funds, and on and on.

Yes, it's true, forgiveness is a Christian virtue. But just because you forgive someone doesn't mean you should put him in Congress.

Who is the "Adult" Party, again?

The photo above was put on Mitch McConnell's Facebook page right after Manchin-Toomey was defeated.  I think I'm going to enjoy watching Senator McConnell lose next fall to Alison Lundergan Grimes. Moreover,  it's going to be even more fun to watch Kentucky turn blue when Hillary wins there:)

Next Week's School Shooting Victims Thank Senate For Failing To Pass Gun Bill

WASHINGTON—Following the Senate’s rejection of a bipartisan amendment to expand background checks for gun buyers, the young victims of next week’s school shooting emphatically thanked members of Congress today for failing to pass more comprehensive gun control legislation. “Great job, guys,” said 14-year-old Jacob Miller, one of nine junior high school students who will be shot next week by a mentally ill gunman wielding a legally acquired assault rifle that was purchased at a gun show. “My classmates and I are really proud of you for cowering to the NRA and caring more about politics than my friends and I getting shot and killed. It totally makes sense. You’re the best.” The soon-to-be massacred teenager added that his parents, Caroline and Pete Miller, also wanted to extend their heartfelt congratulations to the Senate.

Retired Cop Shoots Self in School

From the Des Plaines Trib:

A retired police officer accidentally shot himself when he dropped his gun inside a Des Plaines school while attending his grandson's Boy Scout troop meeting.

He wasn't an official "good guy with a gun", but incidents like this show that the NRA's plan for preventing school shootings by "bad guys with guns" will instead result in many more accidental shootings by incompetent and clumsy "good guys with guns."

Considering that the bad guys will always have the drop on the good guys, the net number of dead kids is only going to go up.

54-46

The Manchin-Toomey Gun bill has failed by a vote of 54 to 46. Let the hand wringing and recriminations begin!

As I have said previously, this would be a great example of "losing the argument" but still managing to be right. Gun safety advocates should take heart that there are several things to be positive about after the vote today. Regardless of what happens from this point forward, it's going to work out for the best, with likely sacrifices along the way, unfortunately.

Newtown struck a very deep wound in the heart of America. My hope is that, even without new laws, there won't be another shooting on this scale, at least in the near term. People are going to start taking more of an interest in their local, young men who fit the same profile as Adam Lanza and be more aware of allowing them to have guns and play 'Call of Duty" for hours and hours. Perhaps I'm being naive but I've certainly seen it in my neck of the woods and I hope it lasts.

Yet, the regular, every day gun violence will still continue and now we have 46 senators on record as not even supporting expanded background checks. When something like this happens, it usually brings out the worst in people and we have certainly seen that from these senators and the gun rights lobby. It's a short term victory for them with long term ruin on the horizon. America is not with them on this one and they are going to pay a very steep penalty in 2014 and 2016. There will likely be many gun deaths between now and the next election and voters are not going to be happy about it. The chance for the president to revisit this issue again in 2015 is there.

And, if there is another Newtown or something like it, the next gun bill will make the gun lobby wish they had gone along with this one so they could at least look like they were trying to solve the problem. Another Newtown or Aurora means more people added to the gun safety lobby and that means you can say hello again to an assault weapons ban and ammo clip limitations with far more support than there is today.

I hope it doesn't come to that and we can, at least, turn our attention away from guns and towards mental health and how much parents really and truly are sucking right now. In the final analysis, that's why these shooting sprees happen. Parents are fucking morons and let their mentally ill children have guns. Of course, fixing this doesn't do much to the every day violence that occurs from guns and isn't much comfort to those who have lost loved ones in this manner. Maybe this will be the kick in the ass the federal government needs to start putting away more people who fail background checks.

Defense Contractor Signs Big Green Energy Contract with China

The Wall Street Journal reports that Lockheed Martin has signed a contract to build a 10-megawatt power plant for a luxury resort on the Chinese island of Hainan. The plant will use "ocean thermal energy conversion" technology, or OTEC:

The OTEC process uses warm tropical waters to power a steam-driven turbine. Cold water is pumped from the depths of the sea to condense the steam back into liquid.

Closed-system plants like the one Lockheed plans to build use a liquid such as ammonia that has a low boiling point to create the steam.

Warmer surface waters pass by a heat exchanger, causing the ammonia in the closed system to boil and create the steam that drives the turbine. Cold deep-sea water is pumped by another heat exchanger to condense the ammonia back to a liquid.

Similar technology is used in ground-source (also called geothermal) heat pumps for many large buildings and some homes in the United States. These systems use temperature differentials to transfer heat into the earth during the summer for air conditioning, and to transfer heat from the earth into buildings during the winter. Such temperature control systems are expensive to install, because they typically require sinking hundreds of feet of pipe into the ground, but because they are so efficient they're cheaper in the long run. They also produce less pollution compared to burning natural gas directly or by electric heating.

Republicans like John McCain have criticized the Defense Department for green initiatives, but since the US military is the largest consumer of oil in the entire world, defense planners have to be out in front on energy issues since it's vital to national security.

So it's good to see a company like Lockheed Martin, best known for aerospace and defense business, leading the way on technology that could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It would be nice not to be forced to invade a Middle Eastern country every time some nutjob threatens to stop the flow of oil out of there.

A Suspect?

CNN is reporting that they have video of a dark skinned male placing a bag at the site of the second bombing. He is considered a suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombing.