Interesting analysis of the President's prospects in 2012...

Using computer models developed by Argonne National Laboratory, the [Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU)] researchers's goal was to find the optimal level of vehicle electrification that provided the most environmental benefit for the least dollars spent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They found that the smaller the battery pack, the greater the benefit when comparing the cost of vehicle acquisition and the amount and type of energy used to power it. That battery capacity "sweet spot" at the moment is sufficiently sized battery to propel a vehicle around 25 miles, and up to 50 miles, though the smaller the better, for now. This outcome is based on assumptions about the cost of battery technology and the price of petroleum; as the two converge, CMU's conclusions will also shift. The higher the price of a gallon of gasoline and the lower the cost of battery technology, the more larger battery-pack[s] make sense.

The Prius PHV plug-in hybrid with its 12 miles of pure EV range would be at the low end of the battery size range, the Volt at the higher end. Another critical, scenario altering factor is the composition of energy used to create electricity. The larger percentage of coal being used to generate electric power, the harder it is to make a purely environmental case for the Nissan LEAF, and other all-electric cars. For any electric-drive vehicle to make a meaningful contribution to solving the climate issue, the electric power grid needs to become dramatically less carbon intensive.
 

Rules proposed recently by New York State for regulating a controversial form of natural gas drilling are drawing expressions of guarded optimism from the natural gas industry but objections from some environmentalists, who say they do not go far enough in protecting water supplies.

Environmental groups say that the state has moved toward a safer plan in its latest draft rules, especially by banning the drilling, known as horizontal hydrofracking, in state parks, wildlife preserves, and watersheds and aquifers that supply drinking water to New York residents. But it is still coming up short, some say, on issues like mapping buffer zones where drilling would be banned.

Those zones may not be big enough to protect old water tunnels that carry water from the watersheds to New York City from drilling vibrations and drilling fluids, those groups argue. Hydrofracking involves blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand into rock to extract natural gas.

And while the state plans to go further than elsewhere in the country in terms of disclosure — companies will be required to specify the chemicals and formulas they use, even those considered proprietary, to state officials if not always to the public — environmentalists point out that the draft does not prohibit the most toxic chemicals used in fracking, like benzene.

“It’s disappointing,” said Katherine Nadeau, the water and natural resources program director for Environmental Advocates of New York. “New Yorkers have said repeatedly they don’t want their drinking water exposed to toxic chemicals.”

Bribery is dirty stuff. So is sneaking a peak at the private messages of murder victims. But there's something even dirtier: murder, murder on the largest scale, murder coldly calculated and played out from behind a desk, in other words: war.

Murdoch is a major crime boss being threatened with parking tickets.

I hope he's brought down, but wish it were for the right reasons.

From Rove, in the WSJ 14 hours ago.

Total bullshit.  Uh, Karl, you might want to try reading the US Constitution.  You see, only members of Congress have a vote on federal legislative proposals, of which raising the debt-ceiling is one.  But then again, Karl, you know this.  Your Republican Congress did it repeatedly, with no fuss, no shrill cries for urgent deficit-reduction, when Bush--you know, the Administration responsible for turning an annual surplus into a sea of red ink, with far less justification than now--was in the Oval Office.

Rove desperately needs to keep the focus on Obama, with his own caucus badly splintering.  McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor working like a well-oiled machine there.  Not.  This is just covering fire as McConnell and others grasp that they've badly overstepped and hold the inferior hand, backpedal furiously, and go into damage control mode.  Start by blaming the other guy.  Oh, and make sure that if it comes to this, you accuse him of playing blame-the-other-guy politics next year, when citizens' memories of this entirely, 100% Republican owned fiasco start to fade a little (a lot, they hope).

Excerpt:

If the debt limit is raised again and a default is avoided, the Aaa rating would likely be confirmed. Moody's did note the outlook assigned at that time to the government bond rating would very likely be changed to negative at the conclusion of the review unless "substantial and credible agreement is achieved on a budget that includes long-term deficit reduction."

That last coming from the agency whose utter recklessness and gross irresponsibility in giving AAA ratings to complete trash being sold by big Wall Street banks was so helpful in triggering the meltdown. 

With this statement they're giving the GOP a fig leaf to escape culpability for their outrageous stunt in playing fast-and-loose with the debt ceiling limit extension.  Not content to do a crappy job themselves, they mean to tell Congress what kind of economic policy the country needs right now--you guessed it, austerity. 

Actually, a budget that would lead to long-term deficit reduction would be a budget that reduces the unemployment rate dramatically from 9+ percent, the point destor has been making.  In short, that would be no budget today's GOP will give the time of day.  How much would you care to bet that if Congress actually did pass a jobs and demand-generating budget instead of a jobs and demand-shrinking budget, Moody's would say "that wasn't what we had in mind"? 

The inmates continue to fight hard to run the asylum.

speaks for itself

The repubs attempted to screw up the Dem Primaries in the Wisconsin Primaries...

The primaries were necessary in order to bring to the fore the real recall elections of the repub fascist Senators.

The repubs attempted to run pretend dems in those primaries.

They all lost. ha

Wisconsin is mad!

Good for them!

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday unveiled a “back-up plan” for raising the debt ceiling in case the ongoing negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House fail to produce a result by an Aug. 2 deadline.

At a Capitol news conference little over an hour before the latest round of negotiations was set to begin at the White House, McConnell described a plan that would allow the debt ceiling to be raised in three separate stages through the end of next year, for a total of $2.5 trillion. The plan would place the political burden of raising the debt limit on President Obama and congressional Democrats, rather than on Republicans.

“If the White House talks lead not to a conclusion that we can go forward together to reduce spending, which is our single biggest problem, then what is the alternative?” McConnell said. “So what I’ve told my members is that we will have available a back-up plan that would operate as follows.”

The first part of the plan would entail Obama submitting a request to Congress to raise the debt ceiling by $700 billion ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline. Then, Congress could pass a resolution of disapproval; the president could either sign it or veto it, McConnell said.

“Presumably, he would veto it,” McConnell continued. “If that were the case, that veto would be sustained by one-third-plus-one in either the House or the Senate.”

The second debt-limit request, for $900 billion, would then likely come in the fall of 2011 and would follow the same procedure, McConnell said. The third, another $900 billion increase, would come in the summer of 2012 and would lift the debt ceiling through the end of the year.

A little black cat lives in the crawl space under my house. Some weeks I see him every day, darting back into his burrow as I pull into the driveway. Then he'll disappear for weeks at a time, and just when I'm sure that he's found cushier digs, he comes back, like the cat in the old children's song. He's not much of a charmer—skinny, mangy, limping, and so feral that he bolts at the mere sight of people. But I can't help feeling sorry for him, so a few months ago I began leaving out cat food. I congratulated myself on this great solution: He'd get a square meal and maybe keep the mice away, too. But when I told an ecologist I know, she was horrified. "Basically," she said, "you're subsidizing a killer."

[The opposite of cat-blogging]