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(What a totally cool vase! - promoted by Something The Dog Said)
Good morning, and I'm getting impatient. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
We've had another week of calm weather here in Denver - highs in the 40s, lows in the 20s. The storm that's hitting you Easterners blew through here on Thursday. We got a bare trace of moisture, just enough to dampen the blacktop.
The snow is gradually retreating on the grass patch in the back yard, and I can see a bit of green around the edges. Because of the northern exposure, the area right next to the deck will likely remain snow-covered until mid-to-late March, unless we have extremely warm weather.
We may get a bit of snow, or rain/snow mix, over the weekend and early in the week, with lows going down into the single digits Monday night.
Rasmussen released the results of a new Colorado Senate poll Friday, and the news is particularly bad for incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet. According to the telephone survey, Bennet now trails likely Republican nominee Jane Norton by 14 points, 52%-37%. Norton's lead is up two points from January's Rasmussen poll, which showed her with a 49-37% lead.
Making matters worse for Bennet, his Democratic Challenger, former Speaker of the Colorado House Andrew Romanoff, seems to be making a push in the Rasmussen poll Romanoff trails Norton by just 7 points, 45%-38%.
If the Cons want to blame something for the loss of jobs, maybe they should look to the oil and gas corporations instead of the Democrat in the Governor's seat. If production was up in 2009 (to record levels for natural gas and near-record levels for oil) and workers were laid off, then aren't the corporations at fault?
There is a tendency in politics to see everything in a small time horizon. The fight in front of you is the one that is most important one there is. The problem with this approach is that it lets the clock run out on issues that you should be able to see coming and address before they become a catastrophe. In the late winter and early spring of 2008 everyone knew there was something very rotten in the housing market. Prices were falling and the number of loans in default or foreclosure was growing every month. This would have been a good time take action to address it, but there was a presidential primary race and a big election coming up, so it went on, basically ignored until the weakness in housing caused the financial system to collapse.
Best Western is the latest sponsor to drop Glenn Beck. Of note: they also dropped Glenn Beck in record time - less than 24 hours. Best Western ads first appeared yesterday (Feb. 4). After participants in the StopBeck effort reached out to them, Best Western sent along word this morning that they were pulling their ads.
Okay, this is short and sweet and it is a call to action. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, has placed a hold on All of the Presidents nominations. A hold is an archaic and anti-democratic way for Senators to hold up nominations. It is a kind of notice to filibuster. It is an informal practice which has held up nominations for long periods of time.
Why is Sen. Shelby placing a hold on all nominations? Does he have deep concerns about the qualifications of these candidates? Hardly. Sen. Shelby (Stickup Man, AL) wants money for his state,. Here are the projects which TMP is reporting he is to be insisting on in order to remove his hold:
A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.
- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."
By now you have probably seen the web ad from the Fiorina campaign. It was featured prominently on the Rachel Maddow Show yesterday as well as at Talking Points Memo. If you have not seen it, well you are in for a 3 minute 22 second treat! It is really, really bad in terms of production values as well as costuming, but that is not why the Dog wants to point it out.
First, take a minute to watch the video:
Sure, the whole demon-sheep thing is funny, but let's look at what the Fiorina campaign is hammering Mr. Campbell for. The gist of this attack is the man is not fiscally conservative enough. He is being pilloried for supporting raising taxes in a state have has a 20 billion dollar budget deficit.
Last week, Rep. Jared Polis (CO-02) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (ME-01) started circulating a letter to their House colleagues to drum up support to include a public option in the reconciliation process being considered by Democratic leadership. (This is what acting on behalf of your constituents looks like, if you were at all curious, Sens. Udall and Bennet.)
This week, we have a second example of bold, strategic planning on the part of House Democrats (again, take notes Senators - you're really messing things up right now). Rep. Betsy Markey (CO-04) is joining with Rep. Tom Perriello (VA-05) to introduce a bill repealing the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies!
One of the things which is often frustrating about working in politics is the ability of the public to be sure of "facts" that are just flatly wrong. The rise of Fox News and its all spun-facts or fact free reporting has exacerbated this trend on the Right. The level of real knowledge that the folks who watch those outlets have is shockingly low. The best examples of this are the persistent belief that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or the fact that 1/3 of Republicans really do believe the President was not born in the United States.
I wanted to know a little more about President Obama's proposed 2011 budget as it related to energy items. I'm wondering what priorities his administration has, for instance. I can't say that after taking a brief look around I'm totally pleased with what I found. There is too much of a budget boost to legacy energy systems and not enough emphasis, in my opinion, to the energy systems of the future. Those future systems are what I think the government should be funding. Without a doubt, the subsidies to the dirty energy industry need to be cut off completely. They're mature to the point of being nearly monopolistic, which means they can stand or fall on their own merits now. With that in mind, here is some of what I've found.
The recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court has caused a lot of consternation, to say the least. The main concern is that decision is so broad that, if they care to, any cooperation could spend unlimited amounts of its collective money to influence the election of a Senator, a Representative or even state level judges and elected officials.
Today the House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on the impact of this decision and where there might be legal curbs placed on the now unlimited money. There were four witnesses today, Professor Lawrence Tribe from the Harvard School of Law, Monica Youn from the Brennan Center for Justice, Sean Parnell the President of the Center for Competitive Politics (an anti-reform group) and Donald J. Simon of Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP, a law firm that specializes in representation of Native American interests. He is also General Council for Democracy 21.
All but Mr. Parnell testified to the expected negative impact of the Citizens United ruling. Mr. Parnell, of course, does not think that the Supreme Court stripping away all limits on corporate spending on elections is a problem, as his group tends to think that if you have the biggest stick you should get what you want.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little false knowledge is even worse. Which is why it is a good thing that the Lancet has finally and fully withdrawn the study which claimed a link between autism and MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella ) vaccine. In 1998 British physician Andrew Wakefield published a study which claimed a link between the onset of autism, the MMR vaccine and particular gastrointestinal disease.
31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" -- the description once adopted by Fox News's Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.
In the past few years, a TV weatherman, Anthony Watts, has attacked organizations such as NOAA of "fraud" and "acting in bad faith" with regard to long-term surface temperature records in the U.S., among other things. He runs a propagandist website where he says whatever his backers want him to say. He uses his designation as TV weatherman to pull the wool over climate change denialists' eyes - since he's a weatherman and he doesn't "believe in" climate change, any work he does to disprove it should count for more than the work of thousands of climate scientists worldwide. It's disingenuous and disgusting, but unfortunately not shocking.
I'm going to share a bit of history about some of his propaganda efforts to set the stage for a new study to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research which expanded on one of Watts' efforts and which resulted in exactly the opposite result as the one Watts came up with. The whole affair can be summarized by saying that peer-review is the accepted path to publishing scientific information for a very good reason. Propaganda doesn't make its way through the process. Just good, hard science.
The Dog is not a fan of anger. While it can motivate in the short-term, it can very easily become like a fire, which has to consume more and more fuel to keep burning hotly. This makes it a dangerous tool to use to motivated people. Not that this stops anyone from taking the plunge and lighting fires of discontent, especially in the Tea Party movement and the Religious Right who occupy the same section of a Venn diagram of the conservatives in this country.
Just finished watching the Denver Nuggets pull out an overtime victory over the Sacramento Kings. That's the Nuggets 10th victory in 11 games.
The Nuggets tied their largest comeback victory of the season, recovering from a 17-point deficit to win tonight.
The Nuggets are in 2nd place in the Western Conference, and 22-3 at home.
What's especially amazing about the Nuggets latest run is Carmello Anthony, the Nuggets all-star forward, has been benched with an ankle injury the past couple games. The bench--and especially Kenyon Martin--have stepped up.
I never really followed the NBA until last year's playoff run by the Nuggets. But all the players returned for this year, and the Nuggets are looking like Championship contenders.
My lord. I found this link via Atrios to the Denver Post:
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops - dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
Look on the bright side Springs residents. Fires do put themselves out eventually... once your whole house is burnt down.
Also, this has to be a helluva way to promote your city. Wonder if the Springs Chamber of Commerce put these paragraphs in their latest brochure. "Come for the high crime, stay for the brown grass and trash!"
Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog's letter writing campaign for torture accountability. This series is a small attempt to assure the issue of accountability under the law for the apparent Bush administration torture program is not forgotten by those responsible for the investigation and prosecution of such acts. The way this series works is as follows; every Monday the Dog writes a letter to one of the decision makers involved and send copies to the rest. You geat involved by either cutting and pasting the letter over your own signature or buy using it as inspiration for your own letter. The Dog even provides the e-mail links and where we are writing members of Congress who use filter the way to get past the filters.
Good morning, and a month to go! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
The weather has been pretty unexciting here in Denver - although one wouldn't know it from all the hype we got over a forecast for two to three inches of snow on Wednesday.
The snow was a no show - we got a bare trace. Temperatures did drop down to the high just at freezing on Thursday, but for the most part we've been normal, normal, normal with highs in the 40s and lows in the teens and twenties. The sun came out again yesterday and the radiant warmth makes me feel positively... sunny.
The forecast for the week ahead is for more of the same - and we're heading into February, when Denver starts to see the grip of winter slip. Meanwhile, more forced hyacinth are coming into bloom - I think this one is Delft Blue.
Budget Hawks every where should support it, and if they say thay don't for budgetary reasons they're lying.
It will undoubtedly help the budget, business, millions of families, and probably even the very insurance companies who are coming in for a bit of regulation.
So the next question is what gives?
And is there any doubt that a Republican Senate Majority would hesitate for one second to implement even a horrible policy against the wishes of the People?
Good morning, and I'm getting impatient. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Good morning, and a month to go! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
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