February 2012
57 posts
“Or you’ve got folks saying, well, the real problem is — what we...”
– President Barack Obama, taking issue with how Republicans have criticized the rescue of the auto industry before a United Auto Workers Conference in the District of Columbia.
State parks: Assessing their benefits →
Juha Siikamäki discusses the value that state parks provide to society in the latest issue of Resources magazine. Well worth a read.
Supreme Court won't let NOM keep its funding... →
Adam Bonin: The Supreme Court of the United States today denied the National Organization for Marriage’s petition for a writ of certiorari, which challenged the constitutionality of Maine’s campaign finance disclosure laws with regards to disclosures pertaining to their (successful) efforts in 2009 backing an anti-marriage equality referendum in the Pine Tree State (which in turn...
“It’s sort of astounding to me that somebody that has the responsibility of...”
– Warren Buffett, responding to Chris Christie’s demand that he should ‘just shut up’ about taxes. Is this any way for Republicans to treat one of America’s most successful capitalists?
“There appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments, and systems...”
– Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner Sue Akers, detailing Ruper Murdoch’s ‘culture of illegal payments’ to sources
American publishers were once enthusiastic pirate... →
Greg Sandoval discovers that the company that eventually became HarperCollins made fortune pirating the work of Charles Dickens and other British authors.
FBI turns off thousands of GPS devices after... →
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann. The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin has more.
“Last week, the lead story in one newspaper said, ‘Gasoline prices are on...”
– President Barack Obama, denouncing Republican attempts to turn gas prices into a bludgeon they can use against his administration on the campaign trail.
How would Republicans treat Jesus if he walked... →
Allen Clifton imagines the reaction Jesus might get were he to make an appearance at a Tea Party rally.
“But like all good ideas
(and quite a few bad)
Hollywood took an interest
In...”
– Two stanzas from The Lorax Endorses WHAT?? by Jason Bittel
Amtrak finds it hard to take citizens' help, even... →
A community effort built Olympia’s train station and, in the nearly twenty years since, volunteers have met every single train to help passengers. Amtrak is not entirely impressed: its literature tells travelers that the station is unstaffed. C.B. Hall has the tale.
“Once you’ve decided to hide your beliefs and say whatever you think will get you...”
– New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, discussing Mitt Romney’s pathological dishonesty in “Romney’s economic closet”
How the 2012 Republican primary has revealed a GOP... →
New York Magazine’s John Heilemann explores the transfiguration of the Republican Party, noting that “the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist.”
“In many ways, we ought to commend the courage of all those who step into...”
– Excerpt from Eugene Cho’s A conversation on prayer with President Obama.
Bloomberg: Stocks return more - way more - under... →
Now we have even more proof that the right wing agenda is bad for America’s economic security… and even for Wall Street. An analysis by Bloomberg has found that the stock market does much better under Democratic presidents (going all the way back to John F. Kennedy) than Republican presidents.
“Speculation is now part of the DNA of oil prices. You cannot separate the two...”
– Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Company who has watched energy markets for three decades. McClatchy is reporting that speculation is the reason for sharply rising oil and gas prices.
Bremerton third grader accidentally shot by... →
What is our world coming to? Police in Bremerton this afternoon were called to Armin Jahr Middle School to respond to a shooting, which may have been an accident. The injured eight-year old was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and rushed into surgery. She made it through, but may need to go under the knife again, doctors say. The student responsible for having brought the weapon...
Swedish man found alive after being trapped in a... →
A Swedish man has survived being trapped in his snow-covered car for two months without food, authorities tell the BBC.
“Our guys have been working sixty to seventy hours a week, and they’re dead....”
– Corey Carolla, vice president of operations at Mach Mold, a forty-man shop in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Mach Mold is among the many companies in the Rust Belt experiencing a labor shortage - a shortage of skilled factory workers.
How your cat is making you crazy →
Jaroslav Flegr is no kook, writes Kathleen McAuliffe. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?
Conservative Canadian government is 'muzzling its... →
Speakers at a major science meeting being held in Canada said communication of vital research on health and environment issues is being suppressed by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. The BBC has more.
Kodak name to disappear from Academy Awards... →
Kodak today was granted court approval to back out of its agreement with Los Angeles’ CIM/H&H Media to put its name on the theater that serves as the permanent home for the Academy Awards. The well-known imaging company recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and also announced that it is exiting the digital camera business.
“‘Our Catholic people’ … ‘our alarm’ …...”
– Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly, wondering whether Archbishop Sartain (the head of the Catholic Church in Western Washington) has bothered to ask the Catholic laity how they feel about the church taking positions against marriage equality and contraceptive coverage in health...
Mitt Romney is wrong: People tend to get more... →
The New York Times debunks Mitt Romney’s claim that “living live tends to make you more conservative.” In fact, the opposite is true. As with receiving a college education, people tend to become more liberal as they age - relative to themselves as young people.
Maybe Mitt Romney didn't win Maine, because... →
Markos Moulitsas writes: In case you ever wondered how Republicans could screw up so many budgets and get so many economic concepts wrong (e.g. tax cuts raise revenues!), all you’ve had to do is watch them try and perform simple arithmetic in caucuses this year.
TSA is OUT OF CONTROL: Agents reportedly thought... →
The Transportation Security (Theater) Administration (TSA) is coming under fire for allegedly doing “peep show” naked body scans of women who agents think are attractive.
“Americans don’t want this oil, they don’t want this risk, and they don’t want...”
– Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, pointing out Republican hypocrisy on the Keystone XL pipeline, which proponents claim would create a highly inflated number of jobs.
Santorum fights to be heard at a raucous Tacoma... →
Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly reports on Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s visit yesterday to Washington, with accompanying photos by P-I photographer Josh Trujillo. During his stop here, Santorum headlined a rally in Tacoma and met with opponents of marriage equality in Olympia.
“Someone made the comment that this is not about equality. Well yes, it is about...”
– Rep. Maureen Walsh, speaking in favor of marriage equality on the floor of the Washington State House last week. (Transcript courtesy of Laurel Ramseyer).
Facebook's first public filing reveals its plan to... →
Citizens for Tax Justice has discovered that Facebook’s upcoming initial public stock offering (IPO) paperwork reveals that it plans to wipe out all of the company’s federal and state income tax obligations for 2012 and actually generate a half billion dollar tax refund.
While digging up 1,235 acres for his holf course,... →
Real estate mogul and former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has outdone himself this time, says Joe Romm, who edits ClimateProgress.
Progressive pollster: Rick Santorum now leading... →
Thanks to a strong showing in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, Rick Santorum has climbed into the lead in Public Policy Polling’s newest national poll. He is viewed much more favorably than Mitt Romney by poll respondents, though his newfound support his not all that firm.
“There’s no good way out of it… If you put up your hand and say, ‘I’m going...”
– A former executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News International subsidiary, describing the predicament that Murdoch and his subordinates are in.
Rotten, through and through: Senior "journalists"... →
Rupert Murdoch is flying to London after five of the tabloid’s most senior staff were arrested in an ongoing inquiry into alleged bribery, which was triggered by revelations about invasion of privacy by News of the World employees last summer. The Guardian has more.
“The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant...”
– Excerpt from Justice Felix Frankfurter’s majority opinion in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis.
“The French, I found, seem to have a whole different framework for raising kids....”
– Excerpt from Pamela Druckerman’s “Why French parents are superior”, published by the Wall Street Journal.
“I have lost more money to creative accounting, and American workers have lost...”
– Actor Will Wheaton, slamming the MPAA for spreading misinformation in response to what its operatives say is misinformation.
Echoing MPAA, RIAA claims Internet strike was... →
Still reeling from last month’s successful online protests against the “Stop Online Piracy Act” and the “Protect IP Act”, the RIAA has taken to the pages of the New York Times to defend the bills and lash out at companies and nonprofits that participated in the protest. Ars Technica has a good takedown of their ludicrous op-ed.
Treasurer of fund for fallen Lakewood police... →
A police officer entrusted with serving as treasurer for the Lakewood police guild’s memorial fund has been charged in federal court with ten felony fraud counts relating to his theft of nearly $120,000 from the fund.
Department of State rethinking its grand plans for... →
The U.S. Department of State has finally reached the conclusion that trying to maintain embassy in Baghdad with a massive security and diplomatic presence is not a good idea.
“Where’s my cut? I helped build this thing, too. Facebook laid the foundation of...”
– The New York Times’ Nick Bilton suggests users should be able to cash in on Facebook’s initial public offering.
Rural Searchlight, Harry Reid, and the Nevada... →
Lindsey Meeks reports on the Republican caucus in rural Searchlight, Nevada for the University of Washington’s Election Eye 2012.