Reason #143: Thank You, Goodbye Now

Thanks to the news last night--coming in the midst of the Michigans/Arizona primaries, which must have some significance that's eluding me--that Olympia Snowe is choosing to step down from her Senate seat rather than run for re-election this year, I get to cheat a tiny bit and talk about real politics for a second.

I've had to explain to people a few times now why I'm rooting for Rick Santorum in the primaries. The thing is, the worse the eventual Republican candidate is, the lower the Republican turnout will be in November, which not only means a landfall for Obama, but better odds for Democratic candidates across the board. And with both the House and Senate potentially up for grabs this year, every little bit could help shift the balance between right and left.

So to Senator Olympia Snowe, who to be fair is one of the last remaining reasonable Republicans in Congress, I say thanks for your service, now take a hike.

A lot of people are focusing on what her timing suggests about the current climate of partisanship, in that it's hard to be a moderate anymore and be taken seriously (especially a moderate Republican). That's completely a fair point, and the broad strokes of Snowe's retirement are likely another signpost on the road to an even more paralyzed and impotent Congress than we have already.

But with that in mind, I'll never forgive her for holding health care reform hostage the way that she did--and ultimately voting against it anyway--so good riddance, I say.

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Reason #142: Horns

Because I haven't done a crime story in a while...

Last week, federal wildlife investigators arrested seven people, including at least one Chinese national, on charges of peddling the horns of endangered rhinoceros...es...in the United States.

Though allegedly part of one concerted smuggling ring, the arrests were split between the Los Angeles area on the West Coast and New York and New Jersey on the East Coast. In addition to decorative and "medicinal" uses, the horns are supposedly considered good luck charms - though perhaps less so after the arrests.

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Reason #141: Busy Work

I've mentioned already that Obama's recent budget plan was more an election-year road map than an actual policy proposal, as nothing is expected to get done budget-wise until after the election is over with.

Well, it seems that no one told Steny Hoyer.

The Democratic Minority Whip is right now hard at work whipping his fellow Democrats--and possibly even a Republican or two--into action on an assortment of deficit-cutting measures. Unusually, the goal here seems to be less one large, coherent piece of legislation (though it is being treated as such) but a broad assortment of initiatives, both higher taxes and spending cuts among them, that would theoretically reduce the deficit.

The point, as I take it, is to get as much of the leg work done as possible. A lot of these things may prove to be non-starters, or otherwise irrelevant in the actual budget debate that happens in the shadow of the impending Santorum administration (snicker), but getting them down on paper now, and in particular getting a sense of what kind of bipartisan support they can generate, will make putting together a passable budget at the end of the year that much more expedient.

What I fail to see it what's in it for the Republicans. Even if some could be coerced into agreeing with aspects of the bill now, do we really expect that to have any bearing on their positions post-election, when the real work will supposedly be happening?

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Reason #140: You Had Me At "Hot Ice"

It had to happen eventually.

Now that the existence of liquid water on other planets is known to be not that huge of a deal--and even looks to be evident within our own solar system--it was only a matter of time before someone (Hubble in this case) confirmed the existence of a world that's essentially nothing but water.

But something akin to Waterworld or Mon Calamari (Star Wars reference - deal with it) would be way too easy, right? The planet in question, thrillingly named GJ 1214b, is said to have an atmosphere around ten times as dense as ours, meaning that even conditions above water would be akin to those in the depths of Earth's oceans.

In addition to being so thick with water vapor that even light from its sun would barely be able to get in, such conditions would give rise to substances like "hot ice" (in other words, water turning solid at temperatures far above the 32 degrees it takes on Earth) and "superfluid water" (in other words...I have no freaking idea what that means).

Just imagine what this planet's life might be like.

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Reason #139: Lucky Number Eight

Oh, hell - I've talked enough about this lately. Just click.

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Reason #138: "I'm from the government, and this wand's a little cold."

The bill currently being debated in Virginia's General Assembly that would mandate a transvaginal ultrasound be performed on all women prior to undergoing an abortion is noteworthy for a handful of reasons. For one, it's forced me to listen to both Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton, among others, say the word "transvaginal" on television way more times than I ever wanted to.

For another, it's now forced Virginia's adamantly pro-life governor Bob McDonnell to go on record against it. This is especially interesting because McDonnell's representatives have been much more vague with regard to another current bill that defines a fetus as a person from the moment of conception--which seems to me to be much more extreme ideologically--and because McDonnell is a potential Vice Presidential pick for the eventual Republican nominee, and the last thing the current Republican electorate wants to hear is nuance, especially on something like abortion.

In any event, his statement today requested that the bill be amended to require only a non-invasive "surface" ultrasound, which I have a feeling people will still complain about, but the assembly went ahead and passed that version just a little while ago. I wonder what all this means for the personhood bill.

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Reason #137: Drill Baby Drill

*shudder*

Just saying that makes me queasy.

But look: at this point, it's a foregone conclusion that the US is the top oil-consuming nation on Earth. Hopefully one day we'll get into something better, but right now it makes sense to use what we've got, especially if the only other option is to be increasingly in hock to Saudia Arabia and other oil producers who can then take it out on us politically.

So that's why Obama needs to stop restraining the oil industry and open up more offshore drilling, and let them build the Keystone pipeline, right?

Well, apparently not. Apparently, after falling more or less consistently since the 60's, US crude oil production has been going up again for the last three years, and the total number of rigs in already-active oil fields has quadrulped in the same amount of time. All this has little to nothing to do with lessened regulations, increased regulations, UN climate change initiatives, or the price of gas (which experts say will keep going up anyway), and everything to do with improved technology - we're learning from the natural-gas and fracking industries, for better or worse, and applying that knowledge to more efficient oil wells.

Obama obviously didn't create this upsurge personally (and the graph above is a smidge unfair in that it leaves out just how far production had dropped from its earlier heights), but the recent turnaround is still a pretty definitive counterpoint to the notion that the current administration is in any way stifling the oil industry.

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Reason #136: Quick Fixes

Continuing the recent theme of focusing on things that don't require congressional approval, the Obama administration, via Hillary Clinton, announced last week its participation in a new United Nations-run program to reduce "short-lived" pollutants such as soot and methane.

While carbon dioxide emissions account for far more climate change than any other pollutant, curbing those emissions can take decades to produce noticeable results and is therefore harder to justify to short-sighted politicians; the current program therefore focuses on reducing pollutants that produce faster, more politically-expedient results, because god forbid we do something that doesn't relate to the current election cycle.

Also interesting is the list of partner nations in this bold new venture of ours: Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico and Sweden. I guess we'll take what we can get at this point, but it definitely has a kind of random "Coalition of the Willing" vibe to it.

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Reason #135: Helpful Graphics

Proving once again that the government must not have a high opinion of Americans' attention spans (and rightfully so), NASA has released a handy infographic detailing the various branches of manned spaceflight it plans on developing in the future - including plans for cooperation with existing commercial operations, which is certainly a big shift from ten or twenty years ago.

It would be nice to have something on there about rovers or the GRAIL and Kepler missions, but I guess the focus is more on stuff that's in development for later rather than programs that are already underway.

Then again, maybe Newt Gingrich will become president and next year's graphic will just be a blue-pen drawing on lined notebook paper of a sweet-ass moon base.

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Reason #134: Oh Hey, it's the First Lady

Feeling pretty sick at the moment, so we'll just do a quick grab bag for the day:

- Michelle Obama popped in on a bunch of tourists at the White House today, including some guy in a Ron Paul shirt.

- The whole payroll-tax thing is just about done. I've been a little ambivalent toward it lately, but it was nice to see the Republicans actually give in on something.

- The underpants bomber was at last sentenced today, and will now be imprisoned without the possibility of parole until roughly three months before the Earth crashes into the sun.

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Reason #133: Reckless Lunacy

The title of this post comes from a statement by Republican congressman Trent Franks, in response to rumors that there are "internal discussions" going on among the Joint Chiefs of Staff with regard to how many active nuclear warheads the United States needs to have going forward.

Some are reporting that, in advance of upcoming talks with Russia, a reduction of our nuclear arsenal of up to eighty percent is possible - though the Joint Chiefs are of course taking care to remind us that the only thing happening right now is discussions, and that the product of those discussions could just as easily be no reduction whatsoever.

Nevertheless, to even raise the subject of maybe not being able to destroy the world between five and fifty times is clearly too much for Rep. Franks to bear.

For the sake of perspective, I will point out that this has actually been a great decade for nuclear disarmament - at least compared to the utterly batshit stockpiles that were floating around in the 20th century. Here's to keeping it up.

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Reason #132: I Dare You

And now, just as Washington state gets gay marriage over and done with, New Jersey finds itself in the exact same position Washington was in when I commented on it a couple weeks ago - the state Senate has now easily passed its own gay-marriage bill, and it is expected to clear the state Assembly in another couple days. Unlike Washington, though, Governor Chris Christie not only won't sign it, he's pledging to veto it.

I spoke of Christie's position a couple weeks back as well, and actually defended it, after a fashion. Now that it seems clear he'll actually have to sit down and veto this thing, I'm very interested in seeing how he handles it.

Is he genuinely against gay marriage, personally, deep down in his heart? I couldn't begin to say, but he certainly claims to be. But one thing I'm much more sure of than his secret bleeding-heart liberalism is his political cunning. Consider...

New Jersey Democrats are still a handful of votes shy of being able to override his veto if it does in fact happen. But the legislature tried another gay-marriage bill two years ago, when Dem Jon Corzine was governor, and failed to even get it through the Senate. The fact that they went from 20 supporting votes to 24 in two years says a great deal about the direction (and speed) this matter is going in the state, and as it happens, the legislature also has a deadline to override the veto...of two years. So if need be, it's not out of the question that they could just table the bill for a while post-veto and spend a year or two working on a few more fence-sitters.

But even still; like I said - Christie is a crafty guy. Does he want gay marriage? I kinda doubt it. But given that the tide is turning that quickly in the legislature (and even the public appears to favor it, muddying somewhat Christie's call for a referendum), does he really want to go on record as actively striking down what would be otherwise a done deal?

There's a lot to be said for allowing something to happen that you're not crazy about in order to show people you're a reasonable guy. And with his own re-election also two years away (politics sure does love round numbers), that's something I think he does want.

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Reason #131: Rose-Colored Glasses

As essentially everyone is pointing out, the budget plan the Obama administration released today is not really a budget plan. In reality, it's been over one thousand days since Congress has been able to pass a budget (read: since Obama took over), and while this is not the ideal way to run a government, things are still functioning (by federal government standards) piece by piece.

Nothing Obama was going to put out there would have a dream of passing - even if it wasn't an election year. So because this is an election year, rather than trying to meet the GOP halfway on a bunch of issues and therefore allowing them to lurch even further to the right, he's released what is essentially his re-election platform.

This budget, as NPR put it this morning, is "a broad statement of governing philosophy" - it's Obama saying to his voting public "this is what I'd like to do if I had my way. Do you want this, or the opposite of this?"

Included in the "this" of which I speak:

- $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue from the wealthy (the Buffett Rule) and the closing of corporate tax loopholes.

- a 39.6% tax on dividend income, up from 20%, and a 20% tax on capital gains income (the kind someone like Mitt Romney lives off of), up from 15%. Treating them like any other income, in other words.

- an overall lowering of the Defense and Homeland Security budgets (among others) and an overall increase in the Education and Interior budgets (among others).

- and speaking of Defense - Iraq? Done. Afghanistan? Done.

Best-case scenario, the Democrats do great in November and maybe some of these things can become reality next year (indeed, Harry Reid has admitted that they're not even going to try and get a vote on the budget this year). But in the meantime, it's wallpaper. All we can do is hold it in the back of our minds as the campaign grinds on, and think - do we want that, or the opposite of that?

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Reason #130: Interplanetary Commerce

When geologists take photos in the field, a common practice is to add a well-known object into the image to retain a sense of scale - a rock hammer, perhaps, if it's a small area, or a person for large areas.

When NASA's new Mars rover Curiosity lands on Mars this August, after nine months in space, it will have on board a gen-u-wine 1909 "VDB" penny, one of the first Lincoln pennies, for the exact same reason. The penny will be part of a general calibration plaque, pictured above, to give scientists a sense of lighting conditions, relative shapes, etc.

While everything we send to Mars is obviously an Earthly object, I love the idea of such a mundane Earthly object being there as well. It will be cool to see how its appearance evolves after a couple years of Martian weather. Maybe oxidation works backwards over there, and we can send the Statue of Liberty next.

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Reason #129: No, Really - Free Contraception

I mentioned once before how important birth control has been to not just Western society, but the entire world, over the last half century. But supposedly this is the big new controversy now that Obama wants to make birth control a mandatory part of employer health insurance packages - even if they're run by religious institutions. I say "supposedly" because contraception is about as mainstream a social issue as Democrats have right now, with even majorities of Catholics supporting Obama's mandate in theory.

Let me take a moment to point out that "religious institutions" does not include actual churches. If you work in a literal church and you want birth control pills, you're still SOL. But if you work for a Catholic charity, school. or hospital--especially a school or a hospital--I'm sorry, yes, you have to give people birth control pills.

Regardless of the political implications of the mandate, I hope Obama continues to take a stand on this. A hospital is a hospital, and you cannot pick and choose what medication to give people based on your religious beliefs. I'm sure there are racists who could use the bible to justify their hatred of black people, but if one of them wanted to be a surgeon, he couldn't legally refuse to operate on one. The bible absolutely speaks about women in particular as being inferior, but you can't legally refuse treatment to them, either, and that's what this is - refusing treatment.

And denying contraception to Catholic school girls? Don't even get me started.

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Reason #128: Government Motors

You know shit is off the rails when Newt Gingrich and I are on the same side of an issue.

He, along with a fair chunk of other prominent GOPers, including the chairman of Michigan's Republican party, have come out in favor of the Clint Eastwood "Halftime in America" Super Bowl ad, despite others claiming it amounted to Detroit paying the Obama administration back for its bailout of the auto industry.

Both supporters and opponents are calling the ad a Rorshach Test of one's own political leanings, which would explain the fact that Clint Eastwood himself is a well-known conservative and actually served as a Republican mayor back in the 80's. But even if it were a dyed-in-the-wool pro-Obama spot, doesn't he kind of deserve it?

I mean, the ad is absolutely propaganda, and sappy propaganda at that--no matter which way it nudges people. But Obama made a hard call with the auto bailout, especially for someone who'd just taken office, and as much as Tea Partiers derided him for it at the time, and as much as liberals like me felt uneasy about it at the time...the stupid thing worked.

The car companies paid us back - with interest, even. You can debate the philosophical issue of the federal government essentially buying a private car company with taxpayer money, and even I can't say exactly where I'd fall in that debate, but you can't debate the strategy's success. And if said car companies want to spend millions of dollars gloating about their rebirth during the Super Bowl, isn't that what capitalism is for?

Republicans trying to criticise Obama keep bumping into this fascinating problem wherein they have to root against America - or at least minimize its recent successes. And maybe you have to make the case that we're still screwed in order to present a compelling case for change, but if it means constantly sneering at what few things we still have to be proud of...is it worth it?

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Reason #127: Semantics

I know I've beaten this drum a good bit now, but it's nice to be able to follow up on specific stories as they continue to pan out in a positive way - the federal appeals court to which California's Proposition 8 fight was bumped last November finally ruled on the matter today, and for the first time in over three years of messy legal shenanigans, the measure was officially deemed unconstitutional.

Though many in Cali are rightfully celebrating, if you're really paying attention, there are a couple important aspects to this ruling, neither of which involves gay couples in California actually being able to get married - because no matter how the ruling went down, there would almost certainly have been an appeal, in which case the matter would likely have been put on hold legislatively until it was entirely settled.

For one thing, the ruling just so happened to hinge on California's pre-existing civil union law, and the fact that gay couples already had the right to all the benefits of married couples, and were being denied only the term "marriage". In other words:

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for 'laws of this sort.'"

So while that kind of language sounds awesome on its face, it's actually a fairly narrow means of overturning Prop 8, in that even if the ruling magically applied to the entire nation already, it would only enable gay marriage in states that already have civil unions.

Likewise, because of the possibility that a Supreme Court ruling on the case could end up applying to the entire nation, there is a chance that Prop 8's attorneys might actually decide not to appeal - which would mean that gay marriage would be back in action in Cali, but the rest of us would have to keep doing things the old-fashioned way.

Aside from an extremely unlikely constitutional amendment, the only way to finish this fight off all at once is for the Supremes to rule in favor of gay marriage themselves--and not the way the appeals court did today, because even if Prop 8 does go to the Supreme Court, and even if they did rule against it, the ruling would have to be much broader in scope than today's is.

Nevertheless, the point of all this--and this is what I love about the judicial system--is that if gay couples in California want to win the day for everyone, they're in an odd position wherein they might actually want the ruling to be appealed (and this just in: as I was writing this, word came down that there will indeed be an appeal), even if it means another year or two (or three) of no marriage for themselves.

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Reason #126: On-the-Job Training

In a high-profile interview with Matt Lauer that was filmed to coincide with the Super Bowl yesterday (for some fucking reason), President Obama was asked how he felt about supporters who were hoping for more from him during his first term, and somewhat surprisingly, he admitted to Lauer that when you're president, "you get better as time goes on."

This is one of those things that are plainly, stupidly obvious when you think about them, yet still surprising to hear a president say, because the other side could theoretically turn that into an attack line - i.e., "we need a president who's ready on day one!"

I seem to recall Hillary Clinton trying that out once, actually; how did that work out again?

Speaking as one of the aforementioned early supporters, I definitely like that he's willing to admit that, even if he mostly goes on to blame Congress for the lack of transformational momentum over the last few years. It's one thing to not accomplish huge things, but it's another to not own up to the situation and try to hyper-inflate the significance of what you have done.

I'm sure he'd go on and on about how wonderful the health care reform package ended up being, for example, but simply by engaging with the question of liberals' disappointment, he's lending at least a little credence to the viewpoint that he could have done much better. Certainly more credence than Bush ever did.

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Reason #125: Meanwhile, in Space...

First off - the GRAIL mission that I first discussed in #100 has begun its laborious mapping of the moon, which included the first-ever video footage of its dark side, i.e. the side that never faces the Earth. Why exactly it took us this long to get back there, I can't imagine, but here you go. For the record, I think the light side is way more interesting, not least because it's got that big dark area that looks like a dude on a bicycle.

Secondly - nicely calling back to my discussion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) jobs programs last week, NASA has announced that the last few months have seen the second-largest influx ever of applications for its astronaut program. Out of more than 6,300 prospectives, nine to fifteen people will ultimately be selected as future moon men. Considering that said selection process doesn't even finish until over a year from now, it's not out of the question that among these individuals is the eventual first human being to set foot on Mars a couple decades from now - Neil Armstrong, after all, was almost 40 in 1969.

Lastly, following up on nothing I've mentioned previously in any way, here is a cool-ass high-definition photo of Earth taken by the satellite Suomi NPP. This particular image was taken with two goals in mind - to echo the famous "Blue Marble" shot taken by Apollo 17 in 1972, and to address grumblings that Suomi's first high-def image, released last week, was unfairly America-focused.

Reason #124: Lucky Number Seven

I almost waited to do this one, but since people are saying that the Washington state Senate has been considered the primary hurdle on the road to its current gay-marriage bill getting passed, I think it's safe to tout its passage in the aforementioned Senate last night as an unequivocal victory - and 28 - 21, at that. Four of those "yea" votes were even from Republicans, which means they actually could've defeated it if they'd all toed the line, which really shows you just how strong popular must be in the state.

The bill is expected to coast through the House next week, at which point Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire will enthusiastically sign it. To see the way this Seattle Times article characterizes it, as excited as proponents were as it was going down, no one was even especially nervous at the time. Which is exactly the kind of thing you want to hear at this point - we're not even up to ten states yet, and it's already being treated as a foregone conclusion.

Reason #123: Veterans for Weed

Though a name change appears to be imminent, "Veterans for Weed" is a thing that exists.

This rules for a few reasons, but what's most interesting is the reason I became aware of thie group at all - the original VFW organization (y'know, Veterans of Foreign Wars) sent them a Cease-and-Desist letter because of their acronym.

Proving to be as laid back as the stereotype suggests, the group didn't put up a fight, and quickly agreed to change their name. What's surprising is that the group doesn't seem to have attracted much controversy prior to this, except for some people irked at their repurposing of the ancient POW/MIA graphic (above). Since the original graphic isn't copyrighted, though, they declined to change that, saying that they "...did not alter the POW flag lightly, or because we were high. We take it very seriously.”

Sadly, the VFW rep who made that statement did not help his case by foregoing his real name in favor of the moniker "Hemp Solo".