Last Call

It says volumes how easily Ron Paul can trick Sully into thinking that he doesn't despise minorities or especially President Obama.

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry's buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing. He would never take $1.8 million from Freddie Mac. He would never disown Reagan, as Romney once did. He would never speak of lynching Bernanke, as Perry threatened. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding - rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that's an adjective I don't use lightly. We need more decency among Republicans.

Let me again remind you of exactly what "decency" Ron Paul would bring to the table.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.

Oh yeah, he's a decent guy alright. No racially-motivated Obama Derangement Syndrome stuff at all.

There has been controversy over Ron Paul’s ties to racism for some time now. Many people have pointed to Ron Paul’s Newsletters as proof of his racism. Paul has previously admitted to writing the newsletters and defended the statements in 1996, then blamed them on an unnamed ghostwriter in 2001 and then denied any knowledge of them in 2008. He has given no explanation, for how the racism entered his newsletter. If we are to take Paul at his word, he is guilty of at least promoting racism on a large scale. Paul earned almost a million dollars a year from the racist, conspiracy theorist newsletters.

But you know, the hipsters love him. And so does Sully. Saying he's the best of the Republicans is like picking the most humane way to be tortured because it's not so bad.

Wyden Load Sign Ahead

By enlisting Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon to go along with the latest iteration of his plan to privatize Medicare, Paul Ryan has the Centrist Daleks in an absolute tizzy today.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is teaming up with Paul Ryan, the House’s top budget guy and the author of the GOP’s controversial budget which proposes phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with a private plan. The two announced via The Washington Post that they’ll be teaming up on a different version of that Medicare plan — one that closely mimics plans offered by leading GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and a proposal authored by former Sen. Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, which loomed large in the Super Committee’s failed negotiations.
 
The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and for Ryan represents a de facto admission that his own plan was too radical to ever gain bipartisan support. That’s bound to affect how congressional and presidential candidates approach the issue, which will feature prominently in next year’s elections. But it raises a number of other questions, both about the merits of the policy and of the political calculus behind it.

Two things here:  one, I don't want to hear how President Obama is the one "putting Medicare on the block" anymore with Wyden buying into this cockamamie scheme.  Backing a Paul Ryan plan -- any Paul Ryan plan -- is what the end of Medicare as we know it looks like.

Secondly, the plan is basically turning Medicare into the PPACA.

The policy itself allows insurers to compete with traditional Medicare turning Medicare essentially into a public option on a private insurance exchange. Wyden and Ryan would give patients subsidies that could be applied to either private insurance or fee for service Medicare. It has features of both a “defined contribution” and “defined benefit” program. All plans including Medicare would have to meet a high benefit standard. But if seniors were to choose plans that exceeded a benchmark cost they would be required to pay the difference out of pocket. If Medicare itself were to come in below the benchmark, it would function no differently than Medicare does right now. If Medicare were to exceed the benchmark, though, seniors would have to pay more out of pocket to enroll in it. 

And here's where we get into all kinds of ugly problems:  the odds of a for-profit insurer being able to provide something as good as or better than Medicare's benefit standard for less money is, well, a complete and utter fantasy.  That's going to leave Medicare as the only option to buy into for a huge percentage of seniors.

And it's a moot point anyway:  no Baby Boomer will ever have their Medicare or Social Security benefits touched.  My generation on the other hand, well, let's just say we're going to be told to accept this new plan or something like it or else.  There's not going to be any cost savings for the next twenty years or so out of the Medicare end of things, which means the only serious question is "What will await my generation when I'm supposedly ready to retire in 35 years?"

Most of us are convinced it will be "nothing".  The way the Tea Party is going, government itself will be outlawed by then and we'll all live in anarcho-capitalist city states like 21st century Spartans. 

Pit-kicking will be on Thursdays.

The Holder Doctrine: Register All Eligible Americans To Vote Automatically

And for such a brilliant,elegant, and simple idea, and being the logical endpoint of all the voter ID laws that Republicans are putting into place, they will scream FASCISM at any such efforts to make the following into law as Eric Holder's speech this week in Austin at the LBJ library will be ignored.

All eligible citizens can and should be automatically registered to vote. The ability to vote is a right — it is not a privilege. Under our current system, many voters must follow cumbersome and needlessly complex voter registration rules. And every election season, state and local officials have to manually process a crush of new applications – most of them handwritten – leaving the system riddled with errors, and, too often, creating chaos at the polls.

Fortunately, modern technology provides a straightforward fix for these problems – if we have the political will to bring our election systems into the 21st century. It should be the government’s responsibility to automatically register citizens to vote, by compiling – from databases that already exist – a list of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. Of course, these lists would be used solely to administer elections – and would protect essential privacy rights.

And so I look forward to the Republican Party, after having spent years saying that only government-issued IDs could possibly prevent fraud and protect the sacred rite of voting in America through databases and strict adherence to them, immediately tell us that the notion of the government collecting this information is part of Obama's police state and that the government has no right to register people to vote.  It'll be great.

17-Year-Old Designs Cancer Breakthrough

Younger than most high school graduates, Angela Zhang has won a $100,000 prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for a breakthrough that has several applications in medicine, but most notably in treatment of cancer.

Her creation is being heralded as a “Swiss army knife of cancer treatment.” Zhang managed to develop a nanoparticle that can be delivered to the site of a tumor through the drug salinomycin. Once there it kills the cancer stem cells. However, Zhang went further and included both gold and iron-oxide components, which allow for non-invasive imaging of the site through MRI and Photoacoustics.

As to why she chose this as her project, Zhang explains that she was surprised when looking at the survival rates of patients receiving cancer treatment. As cancer stem cells are resistant to many forms of cancer treatment, it seemed like an area worth focusing on. Her nanoparticle is award-winning due to the fact it has the potential to overcome cancer resistance while offering up the ability to monitor the effects of the treatment in real-time using existing imaging techniques.

Zhang’s achievement is impressive considering she is only 17 years old, but also due to the level of understanding required to create such a nanoparticle in the first place. She has spent over 1,000 hours since 2009 researching and developing the particle, and wants to go on to study chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, or physics. Her dream job is to be a research professor.

NASA Missing Several Samples

It's a little funny that when NASA finds out they are missing hundreds, if not thousands of samples and materials from space, they don't take the report seriously, including recommendations for better tracking and organization.

NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage said the agency will continue to lend out material to scientists and for educational display but will adopt the specific recommendations the inspector general made to improve its tracking.

"NASA does not consider these national treasure assets to be at high risk," he said.

Yet it was enough of a risk that a sting went down at a Denny's, where NASA shook up a 74-year-old woman so badly she was traumatized.  She was trying to sell a tiny bit of moon rock and heat shield that had been given to her late husband by Neil Armstrong.  NASA's inspector general was all over that one, yet we find out now untold treasures have walked out the door never to be seen again.

Maybe, just maybe, they should listen to those tips on tracking.

All-American Stupid

Travel discount website Kayak.com is the latest advertiser to pull all ads from TLC's All-American Muslim (neatly dodging the OUTRAGE of having Muslims in America on TV at all without the caption "Gitmo Detainee" underneath the video) using the "logic" of A) blaming TLC for having a show about Muslims on TV in the first place and B) the show sucks anyway, so it was a financial decision.

When we decided to give our money to TLC for this program, we deemed the show a worthy topic. When we received angry emails regarding our decision to advertise, I looked into the show more thoroughly.

The first thing I discovered was that TLC was not upfront with us about the nature of this show. As I said, it’s a worthy topic, but any reasonable person would know that this topic is a particular lightning rod. We believe TLC went out of their way to pick a fight on this, and they didn’t let us know their intentions. That’s not a business practice that generally gets repeat business from us. I also believe that it did this subject a grave disservice. Sadly, TLC is now enjoying the attention from this controversy.

Bonus Verbatim Stupid from Kayak's marketing head, Robert Birge:

Lastly, I watched the first two episodes. Mostly, I just thought the show sucked.

And just like that, Kayak gets to have it both ways. It didn't pull ads because they buy Michelle Malkin's idiotic claim that Muslims should all be rounded up and put in camps, the show is just bad, so you can't possibly give us any crap for this, people!  We win!

So by dumping all of this on TLC for "picking a fight" by daring to show Muslims in America being American and not blowing things up, Birge and Kayak show the world their uncommon courage in freely admitting that the company is run by douchebag weasels with the intellectual honesty of Vogon Constructor Fleets.

What a great company.  And by "company" I mean "colossal aggregation of assholes".

Back To The Drawing Board For Plan B, Part 2

Over a dozen Senate Dems have developed enough of a spine to call out HHS Secretary Sebelius's awful Plan B decision and want an explanation.  Now.  Greg Sargent:

This letter — which is signed by Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Kirsten Gillilbrand, Maria Cantwell and 10 male senators — is strongly worded stuff, particularly when directed at a Democratic president. It stops just short of accusing the Obama administration of deliberately ignoring science in making this decision. It also puts the administration in an awkward spot. Either it produces a scientific rationale that’s acceptable to these Senators, which will will be extremely difficult at best, or it will face more criticism for failing to justify its policy, reinforcing the sense that this Democratic administration abandoned science and put politics first.

It will also be interesting to see where these Dem Senators take this next. Hearings, anyone?

I don't think it will get that far, but it's pretty clear that a healthy chunk of Senate Dems think that America's women deserve a much better explanation for the Obama administration punting on Plan B than was given.

Unfortunately, there's not a better, more acceptable explanation than the truth:  Making Plan B available without a prescription to kids as young as eleven when the President has eleven and thirteen year old daughters in an election year risked making Sasha and Malia Obama into political lightning rods, and the wingers would have gleefully gone after them.  As K-Drum says in the link there, it was a policy decision.  Admit it, move on.

And yes, it was a lousy decision.  I don't support it.  I can understand why the President did it, but I do not agree with it.  I'm not a father of pre-teen girls, I'm not a woman, my perspective on this is limited as I've said before.  But it's still a policy decision.

I also don't think Dems in the Senate publicly calling out the President is a really smart idea either, but what's done is done.  We'll see what happens.

StupidiNews!

• After almost nine years, US troops have officially left Iraq and have turned over the last remaining US bases to Iraqi officials.
• Republicans want to make Michigan the latest state to drug test welfare recipients, mandating that they pay for the testing even if they pass.
• HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says 2.5 million more young Americans now have health coverage under their parents' insurance, a much larger figure than predicted.
• The estate collection of Elizabeth Taylor's wedding gowns and other couture fetched $2.6 million, a fashion auction record.
• The NTSB is raising more than eyebrows as the board is calling for a moratorium on all cell phone use while driving, even with hands-free use.

Last Call

Scientists at MIT's Media Lab have used old school technology -- a camera and mirrors -- to capture and piece together a "super slo-mo" movie of a single photon pulse moving at the speed of light.

MIT’s Camera Culture Group whipped up a “virtual slow-motion camera” that is an array of 500 sensors each triggered at a trillionth-of-a second delay.

The assembly, which cost $250,000, was created using a streak camera, a rotating mirror, several other mirrors, a pulsing laser and a series of algorithms to stitch together the streak camera’s still, one dimensional snapshots of the photon moving down the bottle.

A streak camera has an aperture that’s just a narrow slit, as opposed to the wide, circular aperture found in most consumer and professional cameras.

Streak cameras have been around since the 1970s, when they were created to record the movement of particles. But they are based on the high-speed rotating drum cameras of the 1930s, which recorded transient phenomena by imprinting “streaks” of reflected light onto film, as streak camera company Hamamatsu explains.

Still, the use of computer technology and lasers that weren’t around in the 1930s has lead MIT to the eye-popping (literally) breakthrough of today.

“Such a camera may be useful in medical imaging, industrial or scientific use, and the future, even for consumer photography,” said Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar in the video, “In medical imaging, now we can do ultrasound with light, because one we can analyze how light will scatter volumetrically within the body.”

Plus, it's pretty damn cool to watch in action.  The applications of this are pretty impressive, as the scientists explain.  I'm not sure how long it will take to get machines that can use this technology to image people and structures, but it'll happen in my lifetime for sure.

Very awesome.

Trump Dumps Chumps, Takes Lumps

The Ultimate Iowa Lightning Round Edition of the GOP Clown Car Debate Show has been shelved as The Donald takes the rodent on his head and goes home.

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will not moderate next month's GOP debate sponsored by Newsmax.

The reality televison show host's decision came after most Republican presidential candidates declined to participate in the debate, with only Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum agreeing to appear.

Trump said in his statement that Republicans were reluctant to appear at the debate because he was unwilling to rule out an Independent bid for the presidency.

"It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama administration, but if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am not willing to give up my right to run as an Independent candidate," Trump said in a statement. "Therefore, so that there is no conflict of interest within the Republican Party, I have decided not to be the moderator of the Newsmax debate."

But Trump could continue to play a role in the coming primary battle, promising to name his choice for the GOP nomination.

"I am going to be announcing an endorsement in some time," Trump said to Fox Business.

They're all afraid that The Donald might run.  Hell, if I'm a GOP strategist, I'm terrified of a third-party Trump run.  It's a guaranteed Obama second-term.   They know it.  Trump's debate was something of a shakedown, the GOP called him on it, and now we'll see if Trump is willing to lose millions more of his own money in an independent run.

His ego is that big, but I don't know if his checkbook is.  But there's a reason why Team Obama wants as much GOP primary drama as possible.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Hey look, in completely unsurprising news Dick Cheney wants to bomb Iran.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday that President Barack Obama should have ordered an “air strike” on Iran after they recently captured a U.S. drone.

Earlier on Monday, President Barack Obama had explained that U.S. officials asked Iran to return the RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone.

“The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick air strike, and in effect make it impossible for them to benefit from having captured that drone.”

“I was told that the president had three options on his desk. He rejected all of them,” the former vice president added.

“They all involved sending somebody in to try to recover it, or if you can’t do that, admittedly that would be a difficult operation, you certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an air strike.”

And of course when we destroyed the drone by air, we'd also have to go in and make sure that the Iranians didn't get any intel out of the explosion, so we'd have to send in troops, and of course we'd need air power to cover the troops, and naval backup to support the air power, and by accidentally leveling a couple thousand square miles of Iran along with that drone as unavoidable collateral damage,  we'd be at war and stuff.  No big deal.

Happens all the time.



Also, I guess without the soul, Dick Cheney has lost some weight.

Woman Beheaded For Practicing Witchcraft

I really thought even these guys were better than this.  I was wrong.

(CNN) -- A woman was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for practicing witchcraft and sorcery, the kingdom's Interior Ministry said, prompting Amnesty International to call for a halt in executions there.

Amina bint Abdel Halim Nassar was executed Monday for having "committed the practice of witchcraft and sorcery," according to an Interior Ministry statement. Nassar was investigated before her arrest and was "convicted of what she was accused of based on the law," the statement said. Her beheading took place in the Qariyat province of the region of Al-Jawf, the ministry said.

In a statement issued late Monday, the human rights group called the execution "deeply shocking" and said it "highlights the urgent need for a halt in executions in Saudi Arabia."

"While we don't know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's interim director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

She was supposedly selling potions for around $400 a bottle.  Due process is a joke, so any evidence could be fabricated or misplaced as they find convenient.  Regardless, a woman died and nobody is quite sure why.  Maybe all she did was show her face, or speak her mind.  We'll never know.  A search found books about sorcery and talismans, but any chance she had to explain is gone.  For all we know she collected or inherited some of those scary books.

Selfish? I Don't Think So!

I don't have kids, but I have spent most of my adult life taking care of someone's children ranging from live-in caretaker to weekend help.  I have seen moms run themselves into exhaustion thinking it was the only way to take care of their families.  Moms face incredible pressure to make everything run smoothly, even if it means they get no personal time or pleasure that is theirs alone.

That expectation has to stop.  So does teaching women that if you dare take time for yourself it is coming at the direct expense of someone else "more worthy" of the efforts.  The key is balance, not to overreact or throw a wrench in the works.  Every person is entitled to pursuit of happiness, and with a little planning everyone can benefit.  Please take heart from the snippet below, and click here to read the entire article.

I'm not judging moms that can do it all with little-to-no downtime. They are my heroes! I'm just not built that way. I did not acquire the selfless motherhood gene. I think my mom got it but failed to pass it onto me. Instead, I informed my husband, children, friends and family (anyone that pretended to listen) that I was changing my life (and by default theirs). I didn't have it all figured out in the beginning. I didn't know what type of self-care I really needed. I had to learn what boundary-setting meant and all of the rules of engagement when applying boundaries to people who prefer things to be as they were. I had to discover my voice and learn to value hearing myself think.

In the beginning, my husband supported me with gifts to the day spa and weekly consistent "Me Time." The consistent time alone allowed me to plan opportunities to include my self-care in the family schedule. (Yes, my self-care was on the same schedule with soccer.) What I discovered was that I became consistent at honoring me, my interests, completing the books that I wanted to read, getting my exercise in and learning so much more about the "Me" in Mommy. My family was the direct benefactor of me taking time to reflex, refuel and renew consistently.

I know that some people who read this article might think -- this sounds selfish. What about your family, you might ask? What about their needs? What about quality time with them? Well, first I have to admit that I am selfish and I have accepted this choice because it has made me the type of mother that has taught my children that balance is defined as "a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc."

Before self-care I had zero balance and I was tired, overwhelmed and exhausted most days. My family now has an opportunity to interact with a mom that is more connected, engaging, fulfilled and who has healthy outlets for stress. A survey for Mother's Day 2011 from Clinton Cards supports my feelings. Of the top 10 most-requested gifts, six of the 10 items involved self-care. Mothers are requesting a good nap, someone else to make dinner and clean up afterward, quality time with the family or significant other, and simply hearing their children write them a thoughtful note and say, "Thanks, Mom!"

It can be done. It should be done. And those who expect Mom/wife to carry the burden of making the machine run smooth, instead of flowers give the gift of attention and an overdue break.

Running Scared

Another chart for you this morning, this one from Gallup:



Yep, after the banks all but destroyed our economy, America's distrust of Big Business is now back to 2007 pre-crisis levels, and fear of Big Government is back to near all time highs of the Clinton impeachment circus days. The post 9/11 recession and the collapse of Enron was far more damaging to the credibility of Big Business than the multi-trillion dollar credit swaps disaster that has us heading into year four of a prolonged middle-class depression.

Gosh, what's different about where people get their news today than it was back then?

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Media Matters catches FOX News in yet another "oops" moment that just happens to make the President look bad with this unemployment chart.



Check that last entry for November. It's marked 8.6%, but it's physically charted at the 9.0% level, strongly intimating that President Obama has done nothing for unemployment. Stupid reality and its liberal bias!

Showing that drop in unemployment correctly on that chart would you know, intimate that President Obama is actually doing something about lowering unemployment, and in the world of FOX's strict anti-Obama propaganda policies, we simply make a mistake.

PS, it's not the first time even this month that FOX News's graphics department has "made a mistake" and called last month's unemployment 9% when it was really 8.6%.



And expect it to keep happening. There's an election coming.