Want to participate in climate research while you sleep?  As of yesterday, you can.  “Crowdsourcing,” also known as “distributed computing,” has become an increasingly popular way to tackle challenges that require large volumes of complex computer modeling.  Climate modeling is one such challenge.

Haitian Venus

President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty (Start II) with Russia this year appeared to unravel on Tuesday as a Senate Republican leader (Senator Kyl-Republican-Arizona) moved to block a vote in what could be a devastating blow to the president’s most tangible foreign policy achievement..

McClatchy reports that to keep 'peace negotiations' alive the Obama administration has offered US $3 billion in military aid for Israel, including 20  F-35 Joint Strike fighter aircraft, capable of a 15,000 pound payload, and stealth equipped for missions like bombing Iran. F-35 specs.

I had expected the very worst from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, but I confess that I was impressed  and pleasantly surprised with  their draft proposal for shoring up Social Security.  So was Peter Orzsag, which gives me pause, but Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones likes it, too, so maybe I’m not on too far wrong.  None of this affects me directly that I know of because I am already a beneficiary of SS.  I am con

Welcome to the "Glenn Beck Program," where Jews are Nazis and those who exploit ancient anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives are friends of the Jews.  Michael Wolraich - CNN

“Soros' people called me to say I am an anti-Semite because I was going to air this," he says in one program.

So the "soldiers out of Afghanistan" date is now... 2014.  We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on this and we will continue to do so until at least 2014 and probably beyond.  This while I'm being told that Social Security benefits have to be cut because we're broke.

Economist James Kwak who writes at Baseline Scenario with Simon Johnson, explains why the House should allow them to die with no action.  I would offer that the members should pepper the media with his explanations and math; they could reduce the arguments to a paragraph.  And they should.  Dems need to draw some clear lines between the parties, and mean them.

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE