Month: March 2012

Does the exceptionally warm weather lately mean we should brace for an extremely hot summer?

When low temperatures are the same as previous record highs, "that's incredible — to me, that's just mind-boggling," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. However, he said, it's not necessarily a harbinger of things to come. …

Halpert pointed to the freak snowstorms that hit in fall 2011, which prompted a lot of questions about whether the coming winter would be unusually cold and snowy. "Clearly, the answer was no," he said. Yet, he said, there's a chance summer could be on the warm side. The most recent outlook for June, July and August, a big-picture projection based on large-scale climate phenomena such as La Niña, was published on March 15. "There's a tilt in the odds toward a warmer summer for the southern two-thirds of the country, but it's not a guarantee," Halpert told OurAmazingPlanet. "We don't give guarantees in the climate business."

Meanwhile, Suzy Khimm studies unseasonably warm weather as economic stimulus. 

Here's the latest:

I've decided that Andrew Sullivan is right, that I should provide Goldblog readers with the specific examples of where I think he has been so unfair to Israel and to Jews (and Christians, and everyone else) who support it. This requires me, for starters, to re-read, at many long sittings, everything he's written on the subject.

This is a total non-sequitur. What I asked Goldberg to do was to substantiate his claim that I deliberately and conciously misrepresented his views on this blog, viz:

[Sullivan] lied about what I have written, what I think, what I believe, and what I've reported …

Since he is referring to a specific post, and this is a very serious allegation of bad faith, he need spend no more time than to explain how, in that post, I lied about his views. I challenged him to name the alleged lies, or withdraw the accusation. He has done neither, and now wants to extend the smear into a magnum opus on my gesammelte Schriften on all things Israel-related. He's welcome to – but that wasn't my request. My request was for him to live up to basic ethical standards of journalism and when he calls someone a liar to prove it, or at least explain it. He won't. He can't.

But he did change one post a little, which I appreciate. He detached the Atlantic as a whole from his own personal assertion that I cannot be argued with (but, of course, never acknowledged the altered post or put the clarification in a separate post as is usual blogging procedure).

And what he means, by the way, by "will not be argued with" is, from my perspective, that I will not be bullied by a single colleague into not writing things I believe are true. And he is right about that. But argue? I argue till the cows come home. I live for it. With anyone on most anything.

But I won't be intimidated.

Why does the government hate tacos?

The U.S. government is single-handedly preventing you from ordering a taco and having it delivered to you by a totally sweet pilot-less helicopter. So get out your pitchforks, sign those petitions, start calling your local congressmen, and let them know: We want our tacos hurled at us by giant buzzing robotic helicopters, and we want them now.

The WSJ profiles Houston billionaire Harold Simmons, the 2012 election's biggest benefactor, who calls Obama "the most dangerous American alive … because he would eliminate free enterprise in this country." Simmons is also pro-choice. Alex Burns wonders if Republican business interests could hurt Christianism's grip on the party:

The Journal story is a good illustration of how the post-Citizens United campaign finance regime has changed the balance of power in the Republican coalition. Wealthy, business- and regulation-oriented conservatives like Simmons have always been influential. But in a time of unrestricted political contributions, a seven-figure donor who openly labels himself "pro-choice" is even more disproportionately powerful, compared to even most high-profile social conservative activists. If you're a presidential candidate, who would you rather have on your team: Paul Singer, the mega-donor and Romney supporter who helped legalize gay unions in New York, or the National Organization for Marriage?

That's Aaron Blake's suggestion: 

Republicans already hate the law, and if it gets struck down, there’s nothing to unite against. Obama may pay a price from his political capital for enacting a law that is eventually declared unconstitutional, but all of a sudden, the bogeyman disappears, and the GOP loses one of its top rallying cries. The Democratic base, meanwhile, would be incensed at the Supreme Court, which has generally tilted 5-to-4 in favor of conservatives on contentious issues, and could redouble its efforts to reelect Obama so that he could fill whatever Supreme Court vacancies may arise.

Ezra Klein makes a related argument. Will Wilkinson counters:

This sort of thinking is so wishful it's almost touching. Of course, one can always argue that even if Team Them wins, their policies are so boneheaded they will inevitably fail and therefore lead the public to demand the smart policies of Team Us. Perhaps it is so in this case. But the history of health-care policy in this country is a history of path-dependency and the accumulation of kludges. Team Us is most likely to capitalise on the failures of Team Them by adding new failures of their own. And vice versa.

Waukee, Iowa, 7.55 am

Yay, but only in the South: 

What most impressed me about the Louisiana event was how declining interest in the nominating contest produced a primary electorate sufficiently rarefied as to produce a fantasyland for Santorum. Half of those participating in the primary defined themselves as "very conservative." Half called themselves "strong supporters" of the Tea Party. Three-fourths were over the age of 45. Two-thirds claim to attend worship services every week. 

Indeed, Romney lost every demographic in the state, except among voters making more than $200,000 per year. Aaron Blake looks ahead: 

Next month’s contests will take place almost totally in the Northeast — a region where Romney is thus far undefeated. In addition, a few of those states award their delegates on a winner-take-all basis — something only two states have done so far — allowing Romney to expand his delegate lead more quickly than he has to this point. He leads by about 300 delegates overall, and that won’t change much based on Saturday’s results, because only 20 of Louisiana’s 46 delegates were at stake, and they will likely be split between Santorum and Romney. Santorum may get a little momentum off his win — as the media continue to question Romney’s appeal to conservatives — but Louisiana is one of the last states that will put a magnifying glass on that problem.

I had a great time in LA this weekend, both on and off Real Time. Here’s the online-only segment that wasn’t broadcast, and gets, well, check it out, on women in politics and, er, Tim Tebow:

Ep. 242: March 23, 2012 – Overtime On the show itself, Greenwald and I debated the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki:

 

David Axelrod attempts to reclaim the term: 

Can you imagine if the opposition called Social Security "Roosevelt Security"? Or if Medicare was "LBJ-Care"? Seriously, have these guys ever heard of the long view?

Finally, they're beginning to defend the president's core domestic achievement, after saving us from a potential economic depression. When the Dish debated the use of the word a couple years ago, a reader made a related point:

As a liberal who advocated for the PPACA and supports it, I have no problem with calling it "Obamacare." In fact, in my more optimistic moments, I hope that when it becomes as entrenched as Medicare, conservatives will end up regretting making Obama's name an integral part of the program. Can you imagine a Republican campaigning against a Democrat for having supported $500bn in "Obamacare cuts" in 20 years? I don't know about you, but the thought tickles me.

Kevin Drum shrugs:

We have Pell grants and Roth IRAs, so why not Obamacare? Like it or not, that's what everyone calls it, and it's the only widely recognized name that PPACA has. What's more, I never thought of it as an insult in the first place. The masses have spoken, and Obamacare it is.

In Britain, there's a charming tendency to put British figures of great achievement on the pound notes, i.e. dollar bills. One of the things that clearly separates Britain from the US, for example, is that Charles Darwin looks proudly out from the ten pound note. Check out the beard:

You think they'd use that as legal tender in Colorado Springs? Now, there's a campaign to put Alan Turing, a key founder of modern computer science, the man who broke the Enigma Code of the Nazis, and the homosexual who killed himself after being prosecuted and chemically castrated for being gay in 1954. There is surely some justice in this. No one diputes his genius; or the contribution he made to Britain's survival in the war against Hitler. But to partially right a horrific wrong against someone abused by his own government for his orientation makes it all the more poignant.

The UK government is open to suggestions for figures on the next ten pound note; and there's a petition to honor Turing in this fashion. You can sign it online here.