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17 Feb 2011 23:53

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Politics: Obama vulnerable against imaginary candidate

  • good newsConservatives rejoice: The latest Public Policy Poll shows Obama running dead even against a generic Republican candidate in 2012.
  • bad newsRepublicans have to nominate an actual human being, not just a theoretical blank slate, and Obama leads against every one of them by several points. source
  • » Some more odd bits from the poll: PPP took the interesting step of asking respondents to rate the Brothers Bush, Jeb and George W. both, against Obama in a hypothetical 2012 race. The results? Jeb would get trounced by fourteen points (paging Rich Lowry!), while the Constitutionally-ineligible former President would only lose by four, meaning he’s actually a more formidable candidate than Mitt Romney. In addition, the GOP could defeat Obama by two points if they nominated a “moderate Republican candidate,” so all they’ve got to do now is set their time machine to 1952 and they’ll have a slew of strong contenders to choose from.
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 22:45

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Offbeat: Scientists inadvertently stumble upon possible baldness cure

Balding Man
Scientists accidentally isolated a compound that seems to cure baldness in mice. Frankly, we’re more impressed that they were able to find bald mice than in the cure itself. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 22:36

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Politics: Haley Barbour refuses to condemn tribute to KKK leader

  • No candidate can successfully run for president if he doesn’t understand you should rebuke efforts to honor the man most identified with the KKK.
  • The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin • On Mississippi governor and likely presidential candidate Haley Barbour’s latest racially-tinged blunder. After praising the racist, pro-segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens last year as “an organization of town leaders,” and insisting that that the civil rights battles of the 60s weren’t “that bad,” he’s now refusing to condemn an effort in Mississippi to make commemorative license plates honoring a leader of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest. For a while, members of the GOP establishment have been urging Barbour not to run for President. We think they’re onto something. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 22:32

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Politics: Is Scott Walker’s budget crusade a MacGuffin to hurt unions?

  • Is this whole Wisconsin budget mess ginned-up? That’s one of the threads flowing around the left end of the media spectrum, which suggests that Wisconsin’s budgetary problems have nothing to do with unions – and everything to do with stuff Scott Walker pushed through. They’ve been pointing to this report from the state’s fiscal bureau with this particular sentence: “More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).” To make it clear, these are all things that Walker pushed through. These have nothing to do with unions. They’re intended as stimulus through tax cuts and incentives, however, not special interest-focused spending as a few have suggested. The overall result still leads one to question Walker’s motives, however – because, based on this evidence, that the union collective bargaining cuts could be at the benefit of his own initiatives, not strictly “balancing the budget.” (thanks mgolladwine) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 20:14

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U.S.: Glenn Beck rips on Google because of Wael Ghonim. WTF?

  • And so it begins: “I’m really not sure I want my search engine involved in government overthrows,” says Glenn Beck, who did exactly what we pointed out might be the side effect of Wael Ghonim’s activism – that people would start ganging up on Google because of its employee’s side projects. “I’m not leading any boycott,” he said eventually. “I hate boycotts: you do with your time, your money, and your information what you want.  For me personally, I’m not feeling real comfortable about the current direction of Google, the more I find out.” He then goes into that kooky conspiracy theorist thing that he does. Shoot us now. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 19:55

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Politics: Wisconsin Dems: “We were left with no choice” but to leave state

  • We were left with no choice … The question is when are the Republicans going to sit down seriously with the other side on this issue and try to work something out.
  • Democrat Wisconsin state Sen. Jon Erpenbach • Explaining why he chose to leave the state, and what it will take to get him back. He and every other Democratic state senator in Wisconsin left in protest of a GOP-backed plan to limit public employees’ abilities to collectively bargain for better wages, in a push to stop a deficit crisis. As a result, the GOP doesn’t have quorum – because 20 state senators need to be there, and there are 19 Republicans. This is the first such incident were an entire party left a state to avoid a vote since Democratic members of the Texas state senate and state house left the state to avoid a vote on redistricting – the same vote, mind you, that led to Tom DeLay’s corruption conviction. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 19:27

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Tech: Huffington Post uses word “Google” 103 times in single article

  • The article of the moment on HuffPo: Personally, we prefer to Bing Google on Bing. What an obvious grab for SEO! The article says Google 103 times (by our count)! But seriously, folks, we Lycos this article and think it’s pretty Cuil. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

17 Feb 2011 15:31

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U.S.: Justice Department nabs Medicare fraud suspects in sweep

  • 111 people were charged with defrauding Medicare, a record bust
  • $225 million the amount defendants reportedly attempted to defraud source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 15:16

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World: And now in Libya, the beat goes on…

  • Today the Libyans broke the barrier of fear, it is a new dawn.
  • Faiz Jibril, exiled Libyan opposition figure • Commenting on the raucous protests which have recently turned violent, with reports of unarmed protesters being shot (at times shot dead) by the police. Reports are that hospitals are swamped, as well, with people needing treatment for critical gunshot wounds. A lot of ink was devoted after the Tunisian revolt, as to whether it would serve as a catalyst for other uprisings, whether the factors that existed in Tunisia could be sensibly said to exist in other dictatorial states in the region. Those factors, it seems, are no longer relevant. The uprisings themselves are the reason for more uprisings. What we’re witnessing is a geopolitical domino effect unlike anything we’ve seen before. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Feb 2011 14:09

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Culture: Science Channel nets rights to sci-fi cult classic “Firefly”

  • Firefly fans rejoice: The wonderful sci-fi series that lived far too short a life will be airing on the Science Channel, as they’ve acquired the rights for the show’s full run. They will be airing them in intended order (something Fox couldn’t manage), in high definition, and with supplemental scientific commentary from phyisicist Dr. Michio Kaku. Moreover, Nathan Fillion has reiterated that he’d like to play Mal Reynolds again, which may be a pipe dream, but hey! When you’re a fan of a long-canceled TV show, can you get hope for better news than this? source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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