Something Every Teacher Should Watch

Obama Still Not Destroying Economy

U.S. Economy Grows at Steady Clip 

The economy grew at a solid pace during the third quarter, driven by an uptick in military spending and a drop in imports, showing the U.S. on relatively firm footing as worries mount about a global slowdown. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at a 3.5% annual rate from July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Maybe the Republicans should play the Ebola card again...

Since 1968...

The Real Health Problem Isn't Ebola, It's No Sick Time for Minimum-Wage Workers

Everyone in Maine is shaking in their boots because Kaci Hickox went on a bike ride. Hickox, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa, is fighting the state-imposed quarantine in court, saying that it violates her constitutional rights.

The fear is overblown. She is displaying no symptoms (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding from bodily orifices), and Ebola is not contagious until you are showing symptoms.

So far, no Americans have been infected by Ebola except health care workers who deal directly with Ebola patients. And all the Americans who have caught Ebola have survived (though one doctor is still in the hospital in New York).

This year Ebola has infected 13,000 people in West Africa and 5,000 have died. The death rate appears to be so high in Africa because they don't have the ability to keep sick patients alive long enough for their immune systems to beat the disease on their own. Americans aren't dying of the disease because our hospitals can provide that basic level of care (though the religiously-affiliated hospital in Texas where two nurses were infected was obviously not competent to care for Ebola patients).

Ebola sure does sound scary when you hear the numbers coming out of Africa. But when you look at Ebola in the US, it's much less contagious than many other diseases that infect millions of Americans annually, including flu, pneumonia, measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox, tuberculosis and hepatitis A, B and C.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans die from these diseases every year. Some will leave you physically impaired or sterile even if they don't kill you.

Flu alone kills as many as 50,000 people a year in the United States -- 10 times more than have died of Ebola in the world in the last year. But people go in to work with the flu all the time. Why? Because they don't have a choice: they work in low-wage jobs without any benefits -- in particular, sick leave. If they don't work, they don't get paid, and they can't pay the rent or feed their kids.

It's especially bad for people who work in minimum-wage service jobs -- cooks, dish washers, cashiers, waiters, maids, day care attendants, home care attendants -- exactly the people who are most likely to spread disease to the largest number of people.

Hickox isn't demanding to go to a U2 concert or a rave. She just doesn't want to be imprisoned when she is displaying zero symptoms. If she should be locked up for a month on the off chance that she has Ebola, then why shouldn't every American be forced to into quarantine when they (or their children) actually have diseases like flu, chicken pox, mumps and measles, which are much more infectious than Ebola and can have just as serious consequences?

The real health problem here isn't Ebola: it's the lack of sick days for minimum-wage workers. If you're sick -- with a cold, the flu, or Ebola -- you shouldn't be infecting your customers and coworkers.

Companies don't want to give workers sick time because they're afraid workers will abuse it. But that forces honest workers to stay on the job when they're sick. And the rest of America suffers from unnecessary exposure to contagious diseases: millions of decent folks get sick for fear that a few jerks will game the system.

The medical workers who go to Africa to help stem the tide of Ebola are heroes. They shouldn't be treated like pariahs, though they should severely restrict their travel and social contacts during the incubation period.

They should also be compensated monetarily for any losses they might suffer during this period of isolation. And everyone in America should have that same right when they're sick with any contagious disease.

That would make all of us healthier and happier.

Mitt Romney on the 2014 Elections

So, Mitt Romney was on Morning Joe this AM talking about the 2014 elections. His message?

If the Republicans win back the Senate, then gridlock will end in Washington and bills can start being passed again. What exactly is holding them back now? President Obama? He's still going to be president for the next two years so what will be different?

No More The Thinker

In Defense of Obama

Even on a bad day, Paul Krugman single-handedly blows out several bowels a day but his recent piece in Rolling Stone is guaranteed to cause much mouth foaming. The title, "In Defense of Obama," says it all. Here is the executive summary...

Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it's working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it's much more effective than you'd think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.  

Amen. Check out the full article, folks!

Before and After the Election

Good Words

As she has since she stepped onto the national stage six years ago, Palin is the ultimate avatar of base Republican culture since she views herself as an eternal victim, with all the grievance and resentment that entails. 

So now, liberals, the media, Democrats, apparently anyone who thinks Palin is a buffoon of almost world historic proportions (which gets you to something like 80% of the country) are all abominable hypocrites for 'laughing' at what is now fairly preposterously portrayed as a violent assault against a woman. If you listen to the police interviews, which occurred just as the brawl had barely ended, all the witnesses beside Bristol said she attacked the homeowner. Indeed, even Bristol's younger sister Willow backed up the these other witnesses' account. She just said Bristol missed with her punches.

--Josh Marshall 

Ultimate avatar indeed. This is exactly why conservatives blow a bowel about the so-called victim culture. They are the ultimate self-loathers.

Election 2014 Update

Today, I am wondering what percentage of Americans are unaware that there is an election in a week and half. I have a question out on Quora  about it so we'll see what kind of responses I get.

Meanwhile, Democrats are pulling out what remains of the hair at all of the latest polls. Colorado and Iowa are shifting to the R column with Arkansas, Alaska and Louisiana seemingly out of reach. The only good news for the Dems is Georgia is now shifting their way. David Perdue is running a really bad campaign so that's no surprise. And Greg Orman is now making noises that he will caucus with the Democrats or, at least, do things they like.

My prediction still stands: 51R, 49 D

Ouch!

How Is Ayn Rand Still A Thing?

The Ebola News the Right Is Ignoring

There's been a lot of shrill paranoid screeching about Ebola, particularly from the right. And it's a serious problem, to be sure. But here's some news that they seem to be ignoring:

• Four family members that Thomas Eric Duncan lived with for several days have finished their quarantine Ebola-free. 
• No one who flew on the plane with Duncan was infected.
• So far, all the Americans who have contracted Ebola have either pulled through completely, or are still alive and in stable condition. With proper and prompt care, it looks like your chance of survival is much better than it is in Africa, where the death rate is forbidding.
• The lab supervisor on the cruise ship who handled Duncan's Ebola samples tested negative.
• WHO declared Nigeria to be Ebola-free.

While Ebola is still dangerous, it's clear that those crying doom at every turn are opportunistic weasels trying to exploit a tragic situation for political advantage.

The people who are really in danger of Ebola infection are health care workers who must be in close contact with their patients, and people who handle the dead. The reason Ebola spread so quickly in Africa in the first place was the foolish practice of mourners kissing and touching dead bodies, instead of isolating and cremating them immediately.

Long-held religious traditions and beliefs are responsible for so much death, and not just in Africa...

The domestic mess started when a privately-run religious hospital screwed the pooch and failed to diagnose Thomas Duncan. This wasn't a government screw-up.

Where the CDC did screw up was in trusting that this Presbyterian Hospital in Texas was competent to do the job. The hospital clearly did not have the equipment or the training to handle an Ebola patient. It should have said so up front, instead of making its staff cobble together protective gear from layers of rubber gloves and masks.

How clueless Presbyterian was should have been obvious after hey sent Duncan home after failing to add 1 + 1 (guy from Liberia who carried a woman who died of Ebola + fever) and not getting 2 (Ebola).

Anyone who has watched television coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Africa knows that health care workers should be wearing full Hazmat suits and be sprayed down with formaldehyde and blasted with UV after any contact with Ebola patients.Why Presbyterian didn't get this is a total mystery.

The CDC also screwed up by not asking health care workers to quarantine themselves, and giving them the go-ahead to travel on airplanes and cruise ships. They have corrected this oversight, and it looks like no one was infected. So the it seems the CDC was actually correct in their estimation that the potential for infection was quite low. Allowing the nurses to travel was a PR failure, not serious lapse in judgment.

The Ebola panic is not over. But it's clear that if people just exhibit a little common sense and caution it would be as low-key as the CDC has been saying all along. But I guess expecting people to act rationally is too much.

What this episode has made abundantly clear is that the general public has no clue what real health risks are. You are far more likely to die of the flu than Ebola. Yet millions of Americans categorically refuse to get flu shots.

Children are far more likely to die of whooping cough or measles than Ebola, yet their parents insist that immunizations will give their kids autism.

The right wants to restrict the freedom to travel to Africa. Yet you are far more likely to die of a self-inflicted gun-shot wound or shot by your irate husband than die of Ebola, because of the insistence of the gun lobby that people be able to buy any kind of deadly firearm on demand.

Millions of people die of heart disease, stroke, and obesity- and diabetes-related diseases every year, yet every time someone in government encourages people to exercise more, discourages alcohol use or proposes taxes on sugary drinks, the right screams "Nanny state!"

Tens of thousands of Americans die every year in car accidents because they can't be bothered to wear seat belts.

Get a grip, people.

Ebola According To Fox

A Fusion Breakthrough?

Lockheed's Skunk Works has announced a breakthrough in fusion research. Fusion is what powers the sun. It has the potential to generate electricity from the hydrogen in seawater.

Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.

More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.

Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.

Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.

Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.

Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.

There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.

The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.

The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.

Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.

Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.

Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.

Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.

Hohmann Transfer Orbit

When current spacecraft go to other planets they fire a quick burst from their rocket engines to put themselves in an elliptical orbit (the yellow orbit in the diagram on the right) that starts at earth (the green orbit) and ends at Mars (the red orbit), where another burst of the engines is required to enter orbit around Mars. Chemical rockets cannot fire the whole time because they can't carry enough fuel to accelerate the whole way, because the engine has a low specific impulse.

Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.

"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.

A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.

It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.

Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.

With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc², after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)

If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.

To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.

A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.

Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.

Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.

For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.

Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?

I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.

Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.

Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.

That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.

And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.

Good Words

From a recent question on Quora...

The issue isn't Obama's performance. The issue is the effectiveness of conservative propaganda. Day in and day out they refuse to cooperate with him in government. I think the reason for this is that conservatives did everything they could to club Clinton in every illegitimate way. But they did their jobs as legislators. Clinton was still successful.

Then we had Bush. It may be that the conservative agenda is just so bad, so unworkable that it made Bush look like a guy attempting to put America in the dumper. Just from looking at its difficult to tell whether he was attempting to crash the economy in order to downsize it or was just completely lame. Certainly here in Kansas we're ready to call call conservative politics a failure.

Under Obama the question remains open whether its the conservative agenda to downsize government by creating economic catastrophe. They have certainly floated the idea during the debt ceiling debate.

Regardless, they needed to rehabilitate the Republican party after the Bush catastrophe. They couldn't repeat the mistake they made by cooperating with Clinton. The Republican party needed Obama to be a failure.

Their only chance at that was to refuse to cooperate with anything and mobilize the conservative propaganda machine to start criticising him. They have criticised him for their lack of cooperation. They have created issues both legislative and policy then criticised him for their lack of ability.

This continual... habitual... oppressive... Soviet like... spin and nonsense is simply taking its toll on the psychology of America. You are being co-opted by the bad guys that are corrupting our government if you pile on Obama repeating the nonsense of conservative propagandists. 

Look for the reasonable answer. Its not -Obama is dumb, inept and untalented. He is smart, educated, able and talented and if you start there, look at his accomplishments and ask what the problem is... you will conclude something different.

Amen.

A Job Killing Regulation or a Baby-Saving Law?

In 2013 Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers make reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers. This is exactly the kind of law that conservatives bitch about when they yammer on and on about job-killing regulation.

But Bloomberg didn't sign the law just to irritate conservatives. He did it to protect women like Angelica Valencia, who was fired in August from her job at a potato-packing plant when she was three months pregnant.

She had a miscarriage (a spontaneous abortion) last year, and her doctor said she was at high risk for another one if she worked more than eight hours a day. At age 39 Valencia doesn't have a whole lot of time to wait to have kids. It's now or never.

Valencia made $8.70 an hour. Her husband drives a bus. They needed the income from the job just to pay the rent, and with a kid on the way they needed it that much more.

But the company didn't give a damn. Valencia was unaware of the law that should have protected her, so she let the company fire her.

Conservatives say they value family above all else, but they clearly believe that corporate profits are more important than family values, the health of employees, and the lives of the unborn. Where's the anti-abortion crowd here? They should be blasting companies that force pregnant women to work long hours under severe conditions.

How can conservatives possibly defend a company that refuses to grant women light duty during a pregnancy, knowing that it will likely cause a spontaneous abortion?

And you can't blame the woman. She wanted to keep her job and pay her own way. The article doesn't say whether Valencia was fired and eligible for unemployment compensation. Did the company say her termination was "for cause" and weasel out of paying umemployment? Did they expect her to go on welfare?

Some might argue that the company had her safety at heart, and didn't want her to work out of concern for the life of the child. But their response to the doctor's letter was:

“Unfortunately, we as a company are not able to allow you to continue work,” wrote Mr. Ferla, who warned that her high-risk pregnancy could put her “at risk” in a work environment that was fast-paced, very physical and involves machinery.

“Please understand we need a ‘full duty release' from the doctor,” he added, if she wanted to continue to work.

No: the company clearly did not care about her or the baby. They just wanted that letter from the doctor to avoid legal responsibility should the baby die.

And it's not just overwork that causes miscarriage. Certain chemicals will cause spontaneous abortion, including heavy metals (such as mercury released into the air from burning coal -- this is why coal plants are shutting down), organic solvents (paint thinners, dry cleaning fluid), numerous petrochemicals, and various drugs and gases used in medicine and dentistry. Many of these chemicals cause birth defects and cancer as well. Research and regulation are required to protect pregnant women -- and everyone else -- from exposure to these dangerous substances.

Some companies treat their employees fairly and help them start families. They make accommodations for pregnant women, and help them once the children are born. But a lot of companies don't. Shouldn't the law level the playing field, and reward companies that do right by their employees and, incidentally, the taxpayers?

That's what regulations are for: to protect Americans from bad employers, polluters, incompetent doctors and lawyers, usurers and scam artists.

Sure, there are bad regulations. Some have become outdated due to technological and social changes. Some were written by companies themselves and passed by their cronies in government to make it harder for competitors. Some were enacted in ignorance or ideology. These should be revised free from political and business interference.

The government grants companies corporate charters to absolve corporate officers of personal responsibility for corporate activities. The government in turn has the responsibility to regulate those activities to provide a level playing field for all corporations and to ensure the safety and well-being of the American people. And their unborn children.

Conservatives claim to be all about responsibility. Well, companies need to take responsibility for their employees and their products. Those responsibilities need to be clearly stated.

That's all regulations are.

Bad Move, Alison

I'm perplexed by Alison Grimes' refusal to say who she voted for in 2012. It's petty, childish, and most cowardly. More importantly, it signals the end of her candidacy as a Senator in Kentucky.

What she should have done is say, "Yes, I voted for him and yes I support some of the policies for which he stands like raising the minimum wage. However, I do not support his continued attack on the coal industry and would like to go to Washington to convince him to cease and desist." Obviously, they would have tied her to Barack Obama but so what? As I have said many times, put him on the ballot and let him kick the GOP's ass a third time.

Speaking of Barack Obama, I'm pretty amused by the hysteria over his "low" approval ratings. RCP average has him at 42 percent which is 4 points above his lowest single rating (38 percent, Sept 2014). Compare this to the last 8 presidents and their lowest approval ratings.

• George W. Bush: 25 percent in October 2008.

• Bill Clinton: 37 percent in May 1993.

• George H.W. Bush: 29 percent in July 1992.

• Ronald Reagan: 35 percent in January 1983.

• Jimmy Carter: 28 percent in June 1979.

• Gerald Ford: 37 percent in March 1975.

• Richard Nixon: 24 percent in August 1974

• Lyndon Johnson: 35 percent in 1968.

Doesn't really look all that bad now, does it?

The Democrats Have Already Won

Even though the election is two and half weeks away, the Democrats have already won.

Consider for a moment what happens if the GOP takes back the Senate (which I think they will). They will have one of two options. They can continue to behave like 12 year old boys, be stubborn and immovable, have temper tantrums, and play to their base with Obama hating. Or they can compromise and take credit for doing things they didn't want to give the president a full win on. Either way, the Democrats win.

If Republicans take the first route, they are fucked in 2016. Higher voter turnout will erase any victories gained this year with the GOP having to defend 24 of the 34 seats up for reelection in two years. The House will see losses as well. And, with a likely Hillary Clinton candidacy, the Democrats will see even higher voter enthusiasm as we could potentially elect our first woman president.

If Republicans take the second route, the country benefits and we actually get some things done we needed to get done six years ago.

Sally Kohn echoes much of this sentiment in a recent piece over at CNN. The fact that the Senate is still a contest does not bode well for the future of the GOP. Republicans tap dancing around the ACA is fucking hilarious. Even more funny is how desperate they seem.

Wasn't this election supposed to be about Obamacare? No, that didn't work. So Republicans tried to make the midterms about Benghazi. No luck there either. Now they're just generally fear-mongering around ISIS and Ebola and hoping that would work. But the constantly shifting Republican shell game shows how little substantive traction conservatives have with average voters outside their highly gerrymandered House districts. 

Every time they open their mouths, Republican candidates show that they habitually bash President Obama to distract from the impression that they have neither the intention nor ability to help solve urgent problems facing the country.

Yep.

On the point of traction with average voters...

Economic equality and reproductive freedom are basic priorities for women voters, a group that Republicans already had a tough time winning over. The GOP even commissioned its own poll that found women voters are "barely receptive" to Republican ideas and think the party is "intolerant" and "stuck in the past." By their own deeds, not to mention rhetoric, Republicans just keep reinforcing their war on women and driving voters away.

With all of this, I say the GOP picks option two after they take back the Senate.

Media Hysteria