Breathtaking

Yesterday, I visited with a high school science class in Virginia. The teacher told me that her husband - a first responder - had an insight that led him to develop a rapid and intuitive method for assessing risk at emergency HazMat sites in minutes instead of the hours it otherwise takes using traditional methods. An innovation that will have, is already having, worldwide impacts in the ability of first responders to quickly assess and contain sites with chemical spills. An innovation that led to a new small business as well. Stunning stuff.


And then there is this ...

Breathtaking in its simplicity - Geniuses at Play, on the Job

One of Google’s geniuses figured out that whenever people get sick, they use Google to search for more information. By collating these searches, Google has created an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in your area, with color-coded graphs. Google says that Flu Trends (google.org/flutrends) has recognized outbreaks two weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has.

• tristero adds: For some reason, I found the surprising elegance of this idea extremely satisfying, as in, "Of course! How incredibly stupid not to have thought of that!" to paraphrase Tom Huxley. And if you click on the link, you're taken to an incredibly simple graph and equally clear map that illustrates the flu trends and does so in a color-blind friendly fashion.

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TPM: Breathtaking in his stupidity, In New Column, Will Sticks To His Guns On Global Warming

We thought we were done with the topic of George Will and climate change. But now we've gotten an advanced look at Will's latest column, set to run tomorrow in the Washington Post and in syndication. And it amounts to a stubborn defense of the amazing global warming denialist column he published earlier this month, that was ripped apart by just about everyone and their mother -- including us. .... read on at the link

Blue Girl: About that 'liberal bias' in the media...

Oh, it exists, all right. It is very, very real. But it is the exact opposite of what the whining republicans and their enablers claim. The bias actually works in favor of Republicans.

That is the finding of two Indiana University professors who analyzed network coverage of the 1992-2004 presidential campaigns.

Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Bucy, both associate professors in the Department of Telecommunications of IU's College of Arts and Sciences, report their findings in their book, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford University Press).

"We don't think this is journalists conspiring to favor Republicans. We think they're just so beat up and tired of being accused of a liberal bias that they unknowingly give Republicans the benefit in coverage," said Grabe, who also is a research associate in political science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. "It's self-censorship that journalists might be imposing on themselves."

Breathtaking to see a msm pundit (Matt Lauer) push back against a RW operator. Rick Santelli says White House threatened him, then blames his wife as he backtracks
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LAUER: Let me take this a step further. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, commented, called you out in the briefing room, and after you heard his comments, you said that he was threatening you. Are you serious about that?

SANTELLI: Listen, let's put it this way. Matt, you're married, are you not?

LAUER: Yeah, I am.

SANTELLI: OK. This is more about the feelings my wife had when she watched the body language and listened to what he was saying, and I think you understand --

LAUER: But this is the White House press secretary. Do you think he's going to threaten you on national television?

...

LAUER: But the only thing I would say , Rick, is if you go out of your way to call out the president of the United States, you have to expect that his representative may go out of his way to call you out. Isn't that go -- doesn't that go with the territory?

SANTELLI: Well, what we're really saying is calling out -- as a member of the press, do I not get to ask a question or question the system? I understand that. I just --

LAUER: And as the press secretary, doesn't he have the right to ask you a question?

SANTELLI: He certainly does. It would be nice if he did it face to face, but I don't know that he needs to throw out my name. I just have an issue with that.

This was my hometown newspaper: The Rocky Mountain News will publish its final edition Friday.


QOTD, atrios - This Krugman post is worth reading to understand just how absurd Jindal's random attack against volcano monitoring was. It isn't simply that volcano monitoring might be a somewhat reasonable thing to do, it's also something that the private sector is not going to do because volcano monitoring is a public good, something with a precise definition in the world of economics (as opposed to a publicly provided good, which is just anything the government happens to fund).


Breathtaking ...

Speaking of Breathtaking, the This is reality.com folks have a new ad out, this one created by the Coen Brothers:

• Breathtaking chutzpah. Speaking of Republicans making stuff up, Rove is accusing Obama of using straw men to advance his arguments. The chutzpah is breathtaking, coming from the master of the straw man strategy. Remember: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Great articles by Greenwald and Steve Benen take Rove apart. I'll not try excerpting them - too good to read just a bite.

RW Smokescreens
atrios says: Revenue And Income Not actually the same thing. That knowledge makes me too intelligent to be a CNBC host.

• Apparently it also makes him too intelligent to be a Republican senator like Jim Demint who is out there blowing smoke by saying: "It looks like he’s gonna try to get a lot of that revenue from raising payroll taxes on upper income and that sounds good but basically that affects small businesses and their ability to hire people. So I just think it shows a lack of understanding of the private sector. A lot of people make — who are reporting a quarter million dollars — you know, I’ve done that before in my small business, and I was actually taking home like 50 or 40." Matt Ygleisais responds: "I don’t know why DeMint thinks people who are only taking home $40k or $50k would be filing as people who earn $250,000. I think he wants people to think that the government is taxing gross business receipts, so that if I spend $230,000 on my business to earn $300,000 in revenue, that I’m taxed on all $300,000. But that’s not how it works at all. You deduct business expenses and pay taxes on your net income. Any small businessman who’s earning a middle class income isn’t paying in the top two brackets, just as any salaried employee who’s earning a middle class income isn’t paying in the top two brackets."

Speaking of public good, here's Chris in Paris calling out CNBC: Obama's call for regulation 'spooked' market.

Where to start with this CNBC gem? If the market doesn't like the President calling for a new era of regulation and responsibility after one of the hardest falls in decades, tough. Anyone who is flustered by the words of Obama and wants to run because of a drop at the end of a day needs to get out of the business immediately. The market has benefited the elite and traders and has trashed the retirement investments for a few hundred million so apologies if I don't cry over Wall Street's drop on Wednesday. If CNBC and the cheerleaders are unable to see the necessity - yes, necessity - to improve the system for all Americans, too bad for them.

The AP has more.

I heard Grassley say the say thing as Hutshison, without challenge, on NPR yesterday.
Think Progress: Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Bizarro World: ‘Every Major Tax Cut In History Has Created More Revenue’

Predictably, the right wing is up in arms over the small tax increase for the richest businesses and families. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) complained to a friendly crowd at CNBC this morning that Obama’s tax increases would harm the economy, and insisted the best way to raise revenue is to cut taxes:

HUTCHISON: I think we get revenue the way we’ve done it in the past that has been so successful in the past and that is tax cuts…Every major tax cut we’ve had in history has created more revenue.

...

The notion that cutting taxes somehow — magically — increases government revenues is a myth that won’t die. “The claim that tax cuts pay for themselves…is contradicted by the historical record,” reported the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which showed that revenues grew twice as fast in the 1990s, when taxes were raised, than in the 1980s, when taxes were cut. FactCheck.org called a claim like Hutchison’s “highly misleading” and stated the obvious fact that “we can’t have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers.”

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TPM: Obama will lift the ban on photographing the returning American war dead at Dover Air Force Base, but will allow families of the fallen to prevent photographs on a case by case basis.


Benen on JOE THE AFTERTHOUGHT....

On the homepage of the Politico right now, there's a headline that reads, "Joe laughs at Obama speech," above a picture of Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher. The headline leads to a story -- and video -- in which we learn the former campaign prop didn't care for President Obama's address to Congress this week.

Apparently, the fact that Wurzelbacher "did not have many nice things to say about Obama's speech" is newsworthy.

...

Joe the Plumber (no longer a plumber; first name actually Samuel) popped into [Washington, D.C.] yesterday evening to sell his new book and to remind people that he's still a plain and simple guy. Mission accomplished, on at least one of his missions.

About 11 people wandered into the rows of seats ...

At least a few of the 11 didn't actually show up for Wurzelbacher, but were in the store anyway. One was reading "Dreams From My Father" upstairs and thought it was an amusing coincidence that "Joe the Plumber" was in Borders at the time.

Wurzelbacher was scheduled to speak and sign books for three hours. He left after 55 minutes when no one else showed up.

John McCain wasn't there. ...

So, why is his take on a presidential address worthy of a piece at the Politico? Your guess is as good as mine.

TPM Headline:Norm Coleman: Maybe We Need A Do-Over Election

Sudbay: Norm Coleman can't win and GOP Governor says not having another Senator is hurting Minnesota

The Minnesota recount has been very complicated. Norm Coleman has done his best to make sure of that. But, one thing is clear: Coleman cannot win. At this point, it's looking more and more obvious he's working at the behest of the Senate Republicans to keep Al Franken from becoming the 59th Democrat in the Senate. Coleman knows the political press corps can't deal with complicated issues so he's playing to that. Witness the idiotic comments by one of the Washington Post's top political writers, Shailagh Murray about a "re-vote." Idiotic. But, Norm Coleman is now saying the same thing. Thanks, Shailagh.

Big shot Republicans are raising money for Coleman to keep this battle going and to keep Franken out of the Senate.

...

The Republicans are using the Coleman lawsuit to obstruct the Obama agenda. That's what this is really about, not that any political reporter, like Shailagh Murray, could ever figure that out. The Republicans don't want the Democrats to have 59 Senators. It's a whole hell of a lot easier to get to 60 from 59 then it is from 58.

And, one last thing, if a Democrat was stringing this out, the Republicans would have raised holy hell. The pundits would have been calling for the Democrat to concede. Democrats would have been calling for the Democrat to concede "for the good of the country." And, the Democrat probably would have already conceded. It's time for Norm Coleman to concede for the good of the citizens of Minnesota. But, Norm Coleman would never think like that. No Republican would.

• Kurtz (TPM: For years, and certainly most loudly since the Florida debacle of 2000, Republicans have made ill-founded election hijinks charges against Democrats. But Norm Coleman, with the support of national Republicans (keep in mind that one of Coleman's lawyers is Ben Ginsberg, the Bush campaign's top lawyer in 2000) is now poised to try to pull off what would be perhaps a bigger election robbery than Bush v. Gore: toss out the nearly three million votes cast on one of the most-anticipated election days in this nation's history in favor of a much smaller special do-over election. It's breath-taking. Yet for some reason this story still seems to be flying below the national political radar.

• Beltway POST reporters seem to want a revote. DougJ caught this:
  

• Washington Post reporters do seem to like the idea in general for some reason (from today’s chat):

  Paul Kane: As for a do-over election, there is precedent for it. 1974, New Hampshire Senate race. The US Senate ultimately decided it could not seat anyone, it was unable to determine the winner, therefore a do-over election in the fall of ‘75 was held.

  [.....]

  N.H. Senate Race 1974: That race was much closer than the Franken/Coleman race—at some points in the process less than ten votes. There were a couple of recounts, and the leader changed back and forth in each recount. So finally a new election was held. The Minnesota gap is much wider and Coleman hasn’t come close to getting back in the lead since he lost it. No basis for following the NH example.

  Paul Kane: I remember emailing a bunch of coworkers at almost 4 am election night, er, morning. With a subject line of: Franken is trailing by 75—YES, SEVENTY-FIVE—votes out of nearly 3 million cast.

  Sorry, but this race has been incredibly close, and the lead has switched. The New Hampshire example does apply, get over it.

Journamalism: Swampland's Newton Small and Scherer concern troll The Earmark Debate
Here's a web story from Scherer and me on the furor over the earmarks in the 2009 omnibus bill passed by the House yesterday.
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in the comments, sgwhiteinfla says:

Now let me see here.
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"In the case of the current budget, Republicans — who themselves account for 40% of the earmark requests — are howling at what they view as Obama's blatant hypocrisy. "
...
First lets think about something, the Republicans inserted 40% of the earmarks which is pretty much how they compose the House and the Senate so how in the hell is this a Democratic problem JNS? Please explain how this proves ANYTHING about one party rule.
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Second of all lets look at the vote.
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http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll085.xml
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153 Republicans in the House who voted against the stimulus bill voted FOR the omnibus bill with all those silly earmarks. Anybody other than me smell that stench in the air? Its called hypocrisy. That JNS and Scherer decided to read the Republican talking points without even taking the time to see that those same ass holes voted for the bill is not even suprising anymore.