Beep's Purple Blog

Looking at the latest satellite imagery, an eye has now popped out of the clouds of Carlos and based on the structure it's certainly a 75-80mph hurricane now. It's sitting out in the open ocean, progressing westward and a low-latitude tropical cyclone moving just north of 10N. It's expected to continue to strengthen to possibly a Cat 2 in the coming days and is forecast to reach the Central Pacific Basin as a Cat 1 hurricane mid-week. It's definitely a system Hawaii should keep an eye on as there will be a gradual northward movement in the westward track over the next several days. But it's way too early to tell if the state will have to deal with anything from Carlos. Shear is expected to increase as it approaches the Basin (wind shear being a common feature of the basin). El Nino-toasted waters of 28-29C dominate the path of Carlos for the next few days, much warmer than the waters have been in the region for the past two years. Waters in the Central Pacific range in the 27-28C range with 26C waters extending north and east of Hawaii.

There's nothing else of consequence in the Eastern or Central Pacific so far. The remnant swirl of Tropical Storm Blanca is finally dying out several hundred miles southwest of Southern CA after days of producing minor showers and thunderstorms. There's also a new disorganized cluster of thunderstorms well to the east of Carlos that has a low-chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48hrs, but could become more organized during that time.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/22u00wkAI1U/-Band-of-House-Blue-Dogs-New-Dems-Support-Robust-Public-Option

The Blue Dog caucus, and their not so Republican-lite colleagues in the New Dems, seem to be splintering again over healthcare reform. You'll remember last month when they created their manifesto for a trigger on the public option, only to have a some prominent members in the group dissent, killing (for the time being, anyway, the trigger in the House).

It's happened again, in reaction to the New Dem leadership telling Pelosi last month that "many of our members remain concerned about any public option."

A band of 22 New Democrat and Blue Dog lawmakers say they support a "robust" government-run health plan, boosting chances of moving healthcare reform with a public insurance plan through the House.

Democratic centrists remain the biggest obstacle to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) ability to pass a healthcare bill with a public plan, and many conservative Democrats oppose a public option as unfair to private insurers.

But the letter from the 22 New Dems and Blue Dogs indicates opposition from this group is far from universal.

"We have a broader coalition to pass this than what was assumed before," said Rep. Lois Capps (Calif.), a New Democrat who circulated the letter supporting a public option with Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "While we may belong to a more moderate branch, we want it known that we support the public option."

Now will these 22 stand with the 120 some member progressive coalition who've drawn a line in the sand against any proposal that does not include a public option? That's the key question. Right now, it's enough to have their support for a public option to counter the kneejerk opposition to anything remotely progressive from their leadership. It bolsters the chances for a public option significantly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/cricket/womens_cricket/8146235.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/womens_cricket/8146235.stm

England's women reach 116-5 after a disastrous start in reply to Australia's 309 on the second day of their four-day Ashes encounter.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Wh-wnJeSUSY/-Midday-open-thread

• With the House proposing taxing the wealthy to pay for health care, Atrios warns we should brace ourselves for the following waves of crappy press coverage:

  Confusion between total and marginal tax rates.

  Confusion between small business revenue and small business profits.

  Stories about how in some places $350,000 isn't all that wealth.

• Via Balloon Juice, a couple of interesting posts. First, John Cole notes that while President Obama was pure enough to bask in the Pope's presence yesterday, he wasn't good enough for Notre Dame; and Cole finds a great piece on how dog therapy is being used for PTSD patients.
• President Obama has appointed Brendan Johnson, the 34-year-old son of Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) as U.S. attorney for South Dakota.
• More British troops have now been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
• General Motors is going to take to eBay to try to sell new cars.
• President Obama visits Ghana, only the third sitting president to do so.
• Karl Rove gets in a Twitter of a discussion about executive overreach when someone asks him about Obama and his appointments of "czars":

  
  Too bad Think Progress can name all the czars Rove's boss appointed while in office.

• A five-year prison term has been handed down in the case of a man convicted in September of having a gun outside the Obamas' home in Chicago.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asks North Korea to grant amnesty to the two American journalists being held there.
• A new report takes a look at neo-Nazis in the U.S. military and it's not pretty. But don't worry, by Monday someone will be apologizing for stating the truth, a la the DHS report walkback.
• Rep. George Miller is going to introduce legislation next week that will reflect President Obama's plan to restructure the student loan industry--a plan that's being fought tooth and nail by private banks, which will be cut out of a lot of interest-bearing action if it passes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8146226.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8146226.stm

England's Paul Collingwood urges his team-mates to each take responsibility for saving the first Ashes Test against Australia in Cardiff on Sunday.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/sXwxoZWT8ss/-Best-of-Saturday-hate-mail-apalooza

Time to take stock of the best hate mail gems from the last 13 weeks (has it been that long already?).

Well, 12 of those 13 weeks. The "Dear Socialist Fuckstick" email is the undisputed champ and was an instant classic. But putting that one aside, what's your next favorite hate mail?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8145811.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8145811.stm

England face a fight to save the first Ashes Test after being dominated by Australia on a rain-affected day four in Cardiff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/sport1/hi/cricket/counties/ireland/8146166.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/counties/ireland/8146166.stm

Ireland beat Kenya by 52 runs on the Duckworth-Lewis method in Saturday's second one-day international at Clontarf.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/V8Is5sOlA5c/-Palins-retirement-story-doesnt-add-up

To the extent that Sarah Palin has offered a rationale for her retirement, it is that her remaining in office would be a waste of Alaska tax dollars because she had been targeted by a series of frivolous ethics complaints since being tapped as John McCain's running mate.

As Alaska blogger Mel Green and The Plum Line's Greg Sargent took the lead in arguing, Palin's story doesn't hold up.

For starters, as Green notes, under Alaska law truly frivolous complaints can be dismissed, but thus far, only one complaint has been found to be frivolous.

Moreover, as Greg Sargent discovered, all of the money Palin claims was spent defending her from ethics investigations would have been spent anyway. The government lawyers who defended her weren't doing anything that hadn't already been budgeted. Put another way, they were just doing their job, and their job would have existed with or without the ethics complaints.

The icing on the cake comes from work conducted out by Green and the Anchorage Daily News showing that the figures provided by Palin to defend her claim don't add up.

In a nutshell, Sarah Palin claims that through June 23, 2009, the state had spent $1,963,840 defending her from ethics complaints. However, as Green and the ADN showed, there are several problems with that claim:

• The document is remarkably devoid of details. For example, three line items total just over $1 million without offering any explanation. One of those line items is for the "Personnel Reivew (sic) Board" at a comfortably round $560,800.
• In cases where it does offer detail, as Palin's own office admits, some of the numbers on the 2-page document are internally inconsistent.
• According to the document, less than 20 minutes of work was billed at an hourly rate of $30,000. In addition, one line item shows 119 hours of work costing $14,564, while a set of lines elsewhere total 13 hours of work at nearly identical cost of $14,565.

Perhaps the nail in the coffin of these numbers is that before Palin invented her retirement explanation, the state was reporting the cost of her ethics inquiries was $296.042. Green broke down those costs in this handy pie chart:

In addition to Greg Sargent's reporting that none of these costs were incremental (they would have been incurred with or without Palin's ethics inquiries), it's clear from this chart that Palin's claim that her ethics complaint problems stem from her spot on the GOP's national ticket -- almost all of the costs were allocated to investigations launched in 2008, before she became a national figure.

This is worth repeating: in all, 94% of these funds were allocated to investigations from 2008. Two-thirds of that was from troopergate, in which the state found she had abused her power as governor.

Meanwhile, just 6% were from 2009 investigations. Sarah Palin claimed her retirement was due to a flood of new ethics complaints that were costing the state hundreds of thousands.

According to the state's own numbers, however, Palin's claim was false. Only a nominal sum was spent defending her from new ethics complaints.

Still, Palin was undaunted by the truth, offering up her own fictional narrative, repeated ad nauseum by a credulous press corps when the story was "hot."

Now that the dust has settled and her lies have been revealed, the few media outlets that have documented them are finding themselves in lonely company.

U.S. Stocks Fall, S&P 500 Completes Fourth Straight Weekly Loss ``“We’re finding out that the economy is not recovering in any significant way at all,” said Christian Thwaites, president and chief executive officer of Sentinel Investments in Montpelier, Vermont, which manages $19 billion.''

Bank of Wyoming Seized; 53rd U.S. Failure This Year ``The FDIC estimates closing Bank of Wyoming will cost the agency’s deposit insurance fund $27 million.''

Town's Friendly Bank Left Nasty Mess ``New Frontier [Bank]'s failure is expected to set off a cascade of bankruptcies and foreclosures across several counties.'' [1]

Churches in Financial Distress ``Right now, most of the churches we’ve been working with, probably the past year or least, they are all pulling the reins in. They’re not spending anything outside of the hard fast debt they have to pay. Salaries are getting cut back. People are getting let go. A lot of churches are letting their staff go or reducing their pay, going to part time.''

Cabrini files for bankruptcy protection ``Cabrini Medical Center filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday, citing net assets of $46 million and liabilities of $167 million.''

Debt deadlines loom for Novare ``In its opinion on the company’s financials, Novare’s independent auditor, Deloitte, said defaults and $280 million in debt maturing this year “raise substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”''

Financial collapse of luxury-resort owners `` In one of the signature, fin de siecle moments of our passing Gilded Age, the Yellowstone Club filed for Chapter 11 protection last November; four months later, Blixseth followed suit - a club and its doyenne, sucked into a financial downdraft that has wounded even once-untouchable elites.''

Council of cardinals blames Vatican budget deficit on economic crisis ``The budget, which includes the Vatican Museums and the care of Vatican buildings, ended 2008 with a deficit of more than $21 million, the Vatican reported July 4.''

Proprietary Trading May Cause October Crash: Investor ``Global stock markets could crash in October, as by then it will be clear that the economic recovery many people pinned their hopes on will not materialize, the stimulus option will no longer be a viable one, and proprietary trading desks will decide to go short, economist and investor Enzio von Pfeil, CEO of EconomicClock.com, told CNBC.''

-----
[1] Entire text is available, run this search and click on the Jun 15, 2009‎ result.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/UadMEcb7NAk/-This-Week-in-Science

As the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 draws near, it's startling to imagine there are still creationists, faith healers, climate change deniers, and yes, even moon landing hoaxers aplenty in the US. In a few days the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter might be able to snap a timely pic of the first lunar landing site showing the lonely first stage of the Eagle and other debris. Will that shut them up?

No. Sitting there, in their bedroom or basement, surrounded by old pizza boxes, posters of Gillian Anderson and Xena and piles of musty smelling X-Files t-shirts, HBs’ minds are totally and completely closed, so closed, in fact, that if you picked them up, flew them to the Moon and actually dropped them onto Eagle’s dusty descent stage they’d STILL insist it was just a prop ...

One of the unfortunate spinoffs of antiscience crusades fueled by fundamentalism or ideology, or money, is that when contempt for science becomes a partisan badge of honor and rite of passage, members of the clan strike out into new, increasingly bizarre directions the creationists or global warming deniers did not intend. It's somewhere between funny and sad, until some of them hijack a major political party and inject their delusions into every facet of US policy, at which point it can turn deadly serious.

• Speaking of threats, positive reviews are coming out on Unscientific America (Along with some disagreement on at least one point). I've already posted a Q & A with the authors here and both will be available in comments on my review tomorrow morning.
• The public perception of science and its findings in the US may be poor, and it's no surprise that only 6% of scientists now identify themselves as Republicans, but the poll numbers on evolution for both the public and scientists in that article look suspiciously low to me.
• Geez Ed, when taking a fun shot at a state Senator who says the earth is 6,000 years old, on national television no less, it’s pretty damn important you get the age right, too.
• Gov. Rick Perry strikes again: The Texas Board of Education will be led by yet another die hard socially conservative lunatic with long history of foisting personal religious and political delusions on the K-12 students now at her mercy.
• Is it really possible that Galileo saw Neptune in his crude telescope, a whopping 234 years before it was officially discovered? Hard to believe, but given the material listed above, it's nice to have an actual science topic to ponder.

How do I get gloss paint (white) off clothes?

I dug out some clothes, and this one wonderful top of mine has the stain - it's polyester and nylon though..

Anyone got any tips, or is it lost? Thanks! x

So, our lease is about to be up. We've been here 3 years, plan to renew the lease, but would like to ask that our rent not increase, or at least not increase as much. Our building is owned by a company, but they've got a very nice and personable management team. What strategies have folks successfully used to ask for rent to NOT go up at a lease renewal? Pointing out comparable apartments that are cheaper? Our building has a pretty quick turnover rate, apartments never stay empty for long, so I can't really use that as a point in our favor.

I have created the group co_ownership. This group serves as a place to network people that are unemployed or underpaid, so as to pool their money and establish businesses that are co-owned by all of the participants, as opposed to begging employers for a job. Co-owned businesses are usually called a partnership in legal terminology. Well-employed people may also contribute to this network. They too, after all, may become unemployed soon.

The business owners want unemployment to be high, because the high ratio of job-seekers to job opennings gives the employers great power. The business owners therefore prefer to cut jobs rather than cut hours and workdays. The republicratic politicians refuse to illegalize this practice, because both parties are on their payroll. This group exists to circumvent the power of the business owners and their republicratic political puppets, via co-ownership. Furthermore, if many thousands of people do so, then the employers' power will be broken completely, because there will not be enough unemployed people left.

To use this group, just post your location, give an estimate of how much money you can put into a collective pool, and give one or more suggestions for the type of business that you want to create. Leave comments to people in your area (or people in an area that you may be willing to relocate to) so as to network with them. When pooling your money with others, use a legally-binding contract to prevent yourself from getting cheated.

Recommended co-owned businesses include those that produce the most basic necessities, especially farms, and retail stores that provide basics, such as grocery stores, general stores, hardware stores, and basic clothing stores. Such types of businesses are recommended because they are reliable, and are not too expensive to establish if one's plans are small enough.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/lrXbr0Obk4g/-Obama:-The-economys-back-from-the-brink.-Really.

After a week of international traveling and summits, President Obama took to the airwaves in his weekly address this morning to tout the economic recovery.

In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended. It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession.  It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and businesses.  Without the help the Recovery Act has provided to struggling states, its estimated that state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs – layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.

Claiming that the Recovery Act was designed not work in four months, but over a period of two years, the President took direct aim at critics from both the right and the left:

Now, I realize that when we passed this Recovery Act, there were those who felt that doing nothing was somehow an answer.  Today, some of those same critics are already judging the effort a failure although they have yet to offer a plausible alternative.  Others believed that the recovery plan should have been even larger, and are already calling for a second recovery plan.

Returning to his recurrent theme of building a "new foundation," Obama pointed to the need to have a serious revamping of the economy as we move ahead, and he lauded moves toward creating new jobs in the energy sector and emphasizing funding in education. Most importantly (and relevantly, for this past week) is the need for reforming health care--and most significantly for tea leaf readers, he insisted on pushing the public option:

One such choice would be a public option that would make health care more affordable through competition that keeps the insurance companies honest.

He finished off with his usual stirring rhetoric, taking a look at our past, tying it to the realities of the present and pointing to the challenges of the future:

I said when I took office that it would take many months to move our economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity.  We are not there yet, and I continue to believe that even one American out of work is one too many.  But we are moving in the right direction.  We are cleaning up the wreckage of this storm.  And we are laying a firmer, stronger foundation so that we may better weather whatever future storms may come.  This year has been and will continue to be a year of rescuing our economy from disaster.

But just as important will be the work of rebuilding a long term engine for economic growth. It won’t be easy, and there will continue to be those who argue that we have to put off hard decisions that we have already deferred for far too long. But earlier generations of Americans didn’t build this great country by fearing the future and shrinking our dreams.

The full address can be found beneath the fold, or on the White House website.

http://www.livejournal.com/~brazencareerist/

Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrazenCareerist

http://www.livejournal.com/~engrish_com/

Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Engrishdotcom

http://www.livejournal.com/~rss_thedailywtf/

Feed URL: http://syndication.thedailywtf.com/TheDailyWtf