Month: August 2012

by Chas Danner

His campaign claims that Obama is the one seniors have to fear:

Of course the only problem is that the ad's implication is completely false. The number is correct – $716 billion is how much Obamacare cuts from Medicare spending – but the ad implies this is some kind of cut to Medicare recipient's benefits; it's not. Pema Levy explains:

Cuts made in the Affordable Care Act are to future growth and come from reimbursement reductions to hospitals, Medicaid prescription drugs and private insurance plans under Medicare Advantage. Ryan’s cuts come from shifting Medicare from its current form to subsidies for seniors to buy care themselves.

The Ryan plan also makes the same cuts, only by instituting a voucher program, all of which Romney is trying to murky-up by saying he'll put that $716 billion "back". The bottom line is they're spinning another whopper here, just like in the welfare ads. The Obama campaign hasn't released a Medicare TV ad of its own yet; they are instead targeting young voters with a new five-state ad about student loans:

Kevin Liptak explains how the Obama campaign is linking Romney to the Ryan budget:

In supporting the claim that Romney "could cut college aid for nearly ten million students," Obama's campaign points to analysis of the proposed House GOP budget that would cut funding for federally-subsidized Pell grants. Romney has not said whether or not he would support that aspect of the plan, which was proposed by his new running mate, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Team Obama also released a web video pushing back more on Romney's welfare attacks. Elsewhere, the RNC has a couple new TV ads up online, with the typical caveat that they said "the television ads would begin airing immediately, but did not indicate the size of the buy or where it would air." One retreads the "it worked" BS, while the other aims to disenchant voters with the president's job performance vs. the "hope" of his campaign:

In outside spending news, Koch-funded Super PAC Americans For Prosperity brings out some '08 Obama voters in a softer approach TV ad that seems to be another effort by the GOP to give people permission to not vote for Obama again. They are putting $7 million behind it in eleven states – and note the one minute length:

Lastly, Democratic Super PAC American Bridge put out a web video that has some fun with Congressman Ryan's tax shelter line from Sunday's 60 Minutes:

Ad War archive here.

Coal miners look on as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at American Energy Corportation on August 14, 2012 in Beallsville, Ohio. Romney is wrapping up his multi-state bus tour with campaign events in Ohio. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

– C.B.

by Gwynn Guilford

Journalist and (James K. Polk) historian Robert W. Merry's recent book Where They Stand attempts to democratize the parlor sport of ranking presidents by emphasizing input from the leader's contemporaries – particularly voters – instead of just historians. In an interview with Megan Gambino, he explains what FDR's and Reagan's popularity says about the American voter:

The voters hailed them both at the time…. Roosevelt was probably the most liberal president of the 20th century, and Reagan was probably the most conservative president of the 20th century. It indicates that the country is not particularly ideological. It is looking for the right solutions to the problems of the moment. The country is willing to turn left or to turn right.

Merry notes that "great presidents all did something that changed the political landscape of America and set the country on a new course." And, therefore, here's why Clinton will never be "great":

He crafted a center left mode of governing that was very effective…. Once he righted his mode of government and moved the country solidly forward, he was beginning to build up some significant political capital, and he never really felt the need or desire to invest that capital into anything very bold. So, he governed effectively as a status quo president and ended eight years as a very good steward of American polity, but not a great president. To be a great president, you have to take risks and make changes.

When John Coyne reviewed the book recently – more or less extolling Merry's populist, voter-referendum metric of presidential assessment – he also called attention to a leitmotif in Merry's latest book, the potentially dangerous influence of presidential advisers.

by Chas Danner

International Science Times explains how the web helped give the bug above its name:

Shaun Winterton, an insect biosystematist with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, was flipping through insect photos on Flickr when he happened across the photographic work of Hock Ping Guek. Guek, who lives in Malaysia, had posted images of an unidentified lacewing he'd come across in a nearby forest which Winterton soon realized was of an entirely new species.

However, in order for that to be confirmed, a specimen would have to be obtained:

He contacted Guek, who had let the star of his original photographs go. About a year later on January 27, 2012, Guek managed to catch another lacewing which he photographed and sent to Winterton. Though it may have never been previously recognized as a species, the Guek's lacewing wasn't entirely new to science. With the sample now in hand, Winterton writes that a second lacewing was found in the entomology collection at London's Natural History Museum. Apparently, passing completely unnoticed. With the specimens preserved and described, Winterton decided to name the lacewing after his daughter, Jade. Thus, Semachrysa jade.

Meanwhile in North Carolina, Angela Micol, a satellite archaeology researcher, might have made a discovery of her own using Google Earth: lost Egyptian pyramids:

One of the complex sites contains a distinct, four-sided, truncated, pyramidal shape that is approximately 140 feet in width. This site contains three smaller mounds in a very clear formation, similar to the diagonal alignment of the Giza Plateau pyramids. The second possible site [seen in the top half of the above image] contains four mounds with a larger, triangular-shaped plateau. The two larger mounds at this site are approximately 250 feet in width, with two smaller mounds approximately 100 feet in width. This site complex is arranged in a very clear formation with the large plateau, or butte, nearby in a triangular shape with a width of approximately 600 feet.

It is also possible the mounds were formed naturally, but it won't be clear until someone takes a closer look:

It's easy to read too much into Google Earth sightings, and people do it all the time. But in this case, egyptologist and pyramid expert Nabil Selim has confirmed that these may well be the real thing. Not even one percent of ancient Egypt has been excavated. And this isn't the first time a little virtual digging has recovered lost treasures in Egypt. Last year, egyptologist and UAB professor Sarah Parcak announced that she found 17 pyramids, 3,100 ancient settlements, and upwards of 1,000 tombs with the aid of infrared satellite images. That's a lot of mummies.

(Hat tip for the lacewing story: NPR Picture Show; Top photo: Semachrysa jade by Guek Hock Ping/ZooKeys via Wikimedia Commons; Bottom image by Angela Micol/Google Earth)

by Zoë Pollock

The classic metaphor has it all wrong:

Part of what makes you pee so much while boozing is that alcohol inhibits arginine vasopressin, also known as antidiuretic hormone or ADH. … Its job is to conserve water in the body by reducing its loss in urine. It binds to receptors on the kidneys and promotes water reabsorption, a decrease in the volume of urine sent to the bladder, and excretion of more concentrated urine. Alcohol throws a wrench into the works, though, and blocks certain nerve channels that help get ADH secreting out into your system. Without ADH carrying on about conserving water, the kidneys don’t reabsorb water as easily and excess water winds up getting dumped into urine to leave the body. With alcohol keeping ADH from doing its job, you produce a lot more water-diluted urine, which fills the bladder quickly and makes you have to pee more often.

by Gwynn Guilford and Patrick Appel

The way Romney's boxy jacket hung from the Boy Wonder's shoulders reminds one that there's more to a ticket than who's flogging the bigger tax cut. Jordan Carr surveys recent history, ranking the last 40 years of presidential tickets based on levels of sexual tension. Romney-Ryan only came in at 17th, but Google's recent search results suggest that they should be higher on the list: 

According to the good people at Google, the most common search term tied to Ryan was “vice president”. The second most common was “shirtless”. Some context helps explain the massive interest in seeing Ryan in a stage of undress. He is a workout fanatic and an acolyte of P90X, the rigorous core training regimen that has come into vogue in recent years. … Ryan is also a former personal trainer who prides himself on keeping his body fat in single digits.

by Zoë Pollock

Mexico plans to commemorate the victims of drug violence with a design by Ricardo Lopez. But who will be honored?

Innocent civilians, police officers on duty and soldiers fighting drug cartels are among the more than 50,000 dead in the government's crackdown on the cartels. But there are also huge numbers of bad guys: traffickers, their thuggish gunmen, their corrupt politician accomplices. Does the memorial speak for all of them? And if not, how do you winnow the memorialized?

And is it too soon?

Of even greater concern [than where to build it] is the fact that Calderón approved funding for the war-victims memorial while vetoing a law that would provide economic, medical, and legal aid to thousands of surviving victims of the war. The mixed gesture suggests, to some, that Mexico is not ready to commemorate the losses of a war that has yet to even end.

Newagen, Maine, 12 pm

by Patrick Appel

Alec MacGillis thinks so:

One of Brown’s great advantages is that he has lived in Massachusetts virtually his entire life, and he never lets you forget it. He can be seen at opening day at Fenway Park; he’ll buy time on the Red Sox network to bid farewell to retiring players. Andrea Nuciforo Jr., a former Democratic state senator from Pittsfield who is running for Congress, recalls seeing Brown in action at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Sturbridge: “He talked about the Patriots, the Red Sox, and the weather.”

Kornacki counters:

[I]t’s unfair to say that Warren is flailing, or even underperforming. This has been an even race for nearly a year, and all of the evidence we have says it still is. And if you’d told Democrats a year ago that their candidate would be tied with Brown three months before Election Day, they would have been ecstatic.

by Zoë Pollock

PBS is killing it lately:

Similiar Bob Ross tribute here. Mister Rogers here.