Bright foliage expected after disappointing 2011

An optimistic forecast has inn owners expecting brisk business when leaf peepers visit the Northeast this fall, with some hoping to recoup losses from last year after images of Tropical Storm Irene swallowing up bridges and roads scared visitors away from Vermont and other affected areas.
The Woodstock Inn & Resort had to cancel reservations for all of September last year due to flood damage. After multimillion-dollar renovations, it's quickly filling up for the five-week season and nearly booked for Columbus Day weekend.
"There's almost pent-up demand from people that missed out last year and they're very excited to be here this year," said Courtney Lowe, the inn's marketing director.
After Irene tore through Vermont at the end of August 2011, national news showed images of floodwaters carrying away roads and bridges, including several of Vermont's iconic covered bridges. Some would-be tourists from Texas and California canceled last fall at the Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield, and the inn was down nearly 25 percent in September.
"When they saw the covered bridge go down the river, and in their world, from Oklahoma to California (to) Texas, every bridge in Vermont" was destroyed, even though only pockets of the state were battered, said Round Barn Farm co-owner Tim Piper.
The inn made up some of the business in October, though, Piper said, when visitors from other parts of New England and from New York made the trek, partly to see the foliage, partly out of curiosity, and partly to help the economy. Vermont reaps more than $300 million from the foliage season, and fall tourism brings in an estimated $1 billion in neighboring New Hampshire.
Now, the inn is nearly full for the foliage season.
"This year, our numbers are back on track to where they should be," he said.
Several couples who were stranded at the Notchland Inn in Hart's Location in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for two days during last year's storm are returning this fall.
"We should have a decent foliage season as long as Mother Nature cooperates," said co-owner Ed Butler.
Visitors should see the show they're expecting.
Dry spells this summer aren't likely to hamper the fall colors in forests and mountains, experts predicted, and could even heighten them in some spots.
Light and the length of days are the chief factors for when trees start revealing the yellows, oranges and reds of fall. The key to the deep reds are cold snaps that stimulate the development of another pigment, said Michael Snyder, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Visitors could see some brown patches where trees growing in thin soils are dry or where trees are under some other stress and have turned early.
But the dryness also could enhance the color in some spots.
"We've had nice dry, hot summer," said Maine's foliage spokeswoman, Gale Ross. "We're setting ourselves up for an ideal foliage season." She's already fielded numerous inquiries from potential leaf peepers, even one from China.
The bulk of Maine's trees will turn color within the next few weeks.
The season's first online foliage report Wednesday showed leaves still green in the lower two-thirds of Maine. But in the far northern and northwestern parts of the state, 10 to 30 percent of the leaves had changed, marking the start of the season.
Tourism officials in New York's Adirondacks and Catskills said the storms didn't deter visitors overall last year, especially after word spread that a key road in the Adirondacks was quickly repaired.
But there were pockets of disruption.
Christman's Windham House is in an area of the Catskills that was hit hard by Irene.
Owner Brian Christman said there was damage around the 49-room hotel and 27-hole golf course in the Greene County town of Windham, but he was ready to accommodate visitors during the foliage season.
"When they put it on CNN that Windham was devastated, that pretty much stopped business," he said. "We had people come. It was just a fraction of normal."
He figures about a quarter of his annual business comes from leaf-peepers and said this year's reservations are much better.
No matter what Mother Nature produces, it's still spectacular, particularly to guests who come from far away, said Piper, co-owner of the Round Barn Farm.
"In our worst foliage season that I've ever had, they've been in total awe of what Mother Nature gave them. We have variations on what is good, but for these people it's still remarkable thing of nature," he said.
 

Washington's copy of Constitution goes on display

After buying it at auction for nearly $10 million, George Washington's Mount Vernon estate is displaying the Founding Father's annotated copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
 

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Non Sequitur

Great Britain "united against Mitt Romney"

Who hasn't Mitt Romney offended recently? Film producer Harvey Weinstein's remarks won't do much to improve the tattered reputation of Mitt Romney.

Mr Weinstein told the BBC: “I witnessed Prime Minister saying to a group of people, myself included, that Mitt Romney had that unique distinction of uniting all of England against him with his various remarks. On behalf of my love of England, I have to support the President [Barack Obama] who is anything but making faux-pas.”

Mr Romney did not win many fans during his visit to Britain when he publicly cast doubt on whether Britain was prepared for the Olympics.

The repugican candidate said that because of concerns about security, it was “hard to know just how well it will turn out”.

The truth hurts

Guess what? Those lazy-a jobless victims are Romney voters.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post points to two fascinating maps from Patchwork Nation.
One shows counties that voted for Obama (the darker the purple the more Obama votes). Note the lack of Obama votes in the south.

And the other shows median household income (the darker the green the higher the income).  Note the extent of poverty in the south.

What you see in the maps is that the poorest parts of the country are mostly in the deep red repugican south.

So guess who doesn't pay taxes while they mooch off the government (to use Romney's sentiment)?  Yup.

Cillizza concludes:

Simply put: Romney’s assessment of an electorate motivated entirely by their relative economic status badly misses the impact that other issues — social ones in particular — have on the electorate. Assuming that anyone who doesn’t pay income taxes must, by necessity, be an Obama voter is a major strategic oversight by Romney that, if not corrected, will cost him the election.

Did you know ...

Hey there, Mr. Romney: misconceptions and realities about who pays taxes

That astronomers have found a real-universe version of Dr. Who's home planet, Gallifrey

That a new study finds high-income tax cuts don't stimulate the economy

About scammy scammers and the scams they pull

Ryan's lying about his "6 percent body fat" too

Is anything this guy says true?
For a "numbers guy" he sure gets a lot of numbers wrong.

Slate has more on exactly what it means to have six percent body fat:

Here’s who else maintains 6 to 8 percent body fat: Olympic 100-meter sprinters, that’s who. Also, world-class boxers, wrestlers, and marathoners, according to this study of elite American athletes. Top collegiate swimmers look pretty fit, right? Well, they average out at a plump 9.5 percent, at least according to another study. Positively porky, compared to Ryan. (For some perspective, the average man has body fat of 17 to 24 percent, and most women a bit more.)

If his claim is to be believed—a Ryan spokesman did not respond to questions—he’s more along the lines of Tour de France cyclists who also get down around 8 or 9 percent to prepare for major races. According to Iñigo San Millan, a veteran cycling physiologist who has worked with numerous Tour de France teams, the lowest body fat he’s ever measured on a cyclist was 8.3 percent. That’s at peak fitness, racing shape.

Ryan’s claim, in other words, puts him squarely in the company of elite athletes. (And also, freakily, with these guys.) But while Ryan is definitely skinny—he told Allen that he’s 6-foot-2 and weighs 163 pounds, and his suits flutter like a Christo project gone wrong—that might be a stretch. At anything less than 10 percent body fat, says Martin Rooney, a well-known trainer who works with NFL and MMA athletes, “a man with his shirt off is lean and shredded. Veins everywhere and really cut up. This is the model and bodybuilder look. So if he is saying he is 6 percent, he is shredded with a six-pack and should have no reason not to do photo shoots everywhere.”

So far, he hasn’t. The only topless Ryan photo to surface is this grainy vacation shot on TMZ, from before he started P90X.

The photo isn't that grainy. Ryan is clearly in good shape. But six percent good shape?

If he lies about the little things...

The truth be told

Feds: N.C. sheriff and deputies targeted Latinos

A two-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice has found that a North Carolina sheriff and his deputies routinely discriminated against Latinos by making unwarranted arrests with the intent of maximizing deportations.

More

Knowing these clowns as we do we wonder why it took two years. It was obvious the first second. 

Woman arrested after fight over parking space

A parking lot dispute goes way too far in Baltimore County. Two women were rammed with a car in the middle of a busy shopping center.
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Daily Funny

Tipping at the Blackjack Table

A blackjack dealer and a player with a thirteen count in his hand were arguing about whether or not it was appropriate to tip the dealer.
The player said, “When I get bad cards, it’s not the dealer’s fault. And, when I get good cards,the dealer obviously has nothing to do with it. So, why should I tip him?”
The dealer replied, “When you eat out, do you tip the waiter?”
“Yes, sure I do,” responded the player.
“Well then, he serves you food, and I’m serving you cards. So you see, you should tip me.”
“Okay, I see your point,” agreed the player. “But, the waiter gives me what I ask for … I’ll take an eight.”

On the road to art ...

This is What Happens When a Paint Truck Rolls Over

Truck accidents usually make a mess on the road, but this truck roll over in the Brazilian town of Manaus made a particularly colorful mess. The truck was carrying about 28,000 pounds of paint when it tipped over: More

Here's a Shocker ...

Neil Young: Piracy Is 'The New Radio,' Way To Get Your Music Heard Though his recent statements are unlikely to shock the many young music fans who grew up downloading albums and songs illegally, many were surprised when Neil Young said he didn't really mind piracy.

"It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio," Young said at a recent conference. "I look at the radio as gone ... Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around ... That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it."

Young also invoked Steve Jobs to illustrate his point, noting that while Jobs was pivotal in the digitization of music, the late Apple CEO would listen to vinyl at home.

Vigorous anti-piracy efforts in the United States and abroad continue to dominate tech headlines. The founder of Pirate Bay, one of the web's most popular torrent websites, was recently arrested in Cambodia and sent back to his native Sweden, where he's facing a one-year jail sentence.

It's worth noting that Young's new message is a slightly different tune than the one he was singing three years ago, when he blasted YouTube for not paying him and Warner Music Group for hosting their songs.

In January, Young defended both record companies and pirates, while appearing to be most concerned with the quality of the music being delivered to consumers, arguing that CDs and digital downloads offered a dismal listening experience.

Alternative Uses for Booze

10 Alternative Uses for Booze (That Don't Involve Getting Drunk)

Assuming you have any left over from your weekend debauchery, there are a few good ways to put your booze to use. Ways that won't result in arrest or texting your ex at 3am. (You really shouldn't do that.) From moisturizer to deodorizer, alcohol has at least ten alternative applications, all of which are arguably better than its intended use. More

The Starbucks Diet

 Losing weight may be as simple as going to your neighborhood coffee shop. At least, that's what worked for Christine Hall, who lost nearly 80 pounds by eating only Starbucks food:

A law librarian with two jobs, she gets her meals from the Starbucks right near work, where employees have cheered on the 5-foot, 4-inch Hall as she’s gone from weighing 190 to a trim 114 pounds.
As she tracked her calorie intake online, she started eating almost exclusive at Starbucks two years ago because it’s convenient and the products include calorie information. [...]
A daily menu could consist of oatmeal for breakfast and a 5-calorie cup of coffee, a “bistro box” with fruit and cheese for lunch, and, she said, “I love a panini for dinner because it fills me up.”

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Halliburton's Misplaced Radioactive Cylinder

Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder that Halliburton would like to find. Read more

The Great Seattle Windshield Epidemic

The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic is a phenomenon which affected Bellingham, Seattle, and other communities of Washington state in 1954. It is considered an example of a mass delusion. It was characterized by widespread observation of previously unnoticed windshield holes, pits and dings, leading residents to believe that a common causative agent was at work. It was originally thought to be the work of vandals but the rate of pitting was so great that residents began to attribute it to everything from sand flea eggs to nuclear bomb testing.

Originating in Bellingham in March, police initially believed the work to be vandals using BB guns. However the windshield pitting was soon observed in the nearby towns of Sedro Woolley and Mount Vernon and by mid April, appeared to have spread to the town of Anacortes on Fidalgo Island.

First tidal turbine in US goes live in Maine

How beneficial this will be still needs to be answered, but it's good to see new energy efforts being explored in the US. Tidal energy has been implemented in Europe and there have been some positive results in terms of generating new forms of energy. The issue of underwater damage is always going to be there so minimizing that impact is critical for the success of any of these programs.
Early days, but it's a big step.

Maine's Ocean Renewable Power Co. has started generating electricity for the power grid from its tidal energy turbine on the bottom of Cobscook Bay near Lubec, in easternmost Maine. It is the first commercial tidal energy project to do so in North America, beating larger rivals who have tested or plan to test devices of their own in the Bay of Fundy region.

Company spokeswoman Susy Kist confirmed Thursday that the turbine has been generating power for the grid.

She said power started flowing nearly two weeks ago, but the company had been waiting to announce the milestone until local utility Bangor Hydro had an opportunity to confirm it. The turbine can generate 180 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power 30 homes, according to The New York Times.

First Ever Etruscan Pyramids Found in Italy

The pyramids were spotted by a series of ancient stairs that had been carved into the wall of what is now a wine cellar. Read more

Roman Mosaic Found Under Farmer's Field

The mosaic, found in Turkey, once decorated the floor of an elaborate bath complex.
Read more

Eight Unusual Rock Islets Around the World

Usually, a rock islet is a landform composed of rock, lying offshore, uninhabited, and having a minimal vegetation. But sometimes, rock islets don't look exactly like this - some are naturally strange looking, and some of them people have adapted to their own needs and made them pretty unusual. Uniqueness makes these small islands very popular among local visitors, foreign tourists and photographers from around the world.

Random Photo

As space shuttle Endeavour retires in LA, 400 trees to be removed, four times as many to be planted

To make room for the space shuttle Endeavour as it is transported from Los Angeles International Airport to The California Science Center, some 400 trees must be removed from the city streets. The shuttle is just too damn wide. An agreement was today reached between the Science Center and South LA neighborhood groups to plant four times as many trees as will be removed.

Man, is it Hot in here

World has 3rd-warmest summer ever

Only the summers of 1998 and 2010 were warmer. Records go back to 1880
While the USA sweated through one of its warmest summers on record, so, too, did the rest of the globe, federal scientists from the National Climatic Data Center announced Monday.
The average summer temperature over global land and ocean surfaces tied with 2005 as the third-highest on record at 61.25 degrees F, or 1.15 degree F above the 20th century average of 60.1 degrees F.

Arctic ice disappearance should be 'wake-up call'

An ice-free Victoria Strait, shown on Aug. 27, eliminated any ice-related concerns that could have affected this year's search for Sir John Franklin's lost ships.
The ice covering the search area for the two lost ships of Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition suddenly disappeared more than three weeks ago, eliminating any ice-related issues that might have hampered technologies deployed in the search.

Ice is Hot right now

Arctic Seals At Risk From Disappearing Snow

It isn't just polar bears that are threatened by declining sea ice: their primary prey is too.
Read more

Huge Greenland Iceberg Blocking Traffic

A Manhattan-size chunk of ice is choking Nares Strait, between Greenland and Canada.
  Read more

Svalbard: Norway's 'Galapagos' in the North

French photographer Samuel Blanc provides a tour of Norway's archipelago in the Arctic. Read more

Ice expert foresees final collapse of arctic sea ice within four years

A leading expert on the science of ice predicts the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years, and describes a "global disaster" unfolding in northern latitudes "as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded." 

World's most powerful digital camera opens eye, records first images in hunt for dark energy

Zoomed-in image from the Dark Energy Camera of the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, which lies about 17,000 light years from Earth.

More

Rare 'Fire Devil' Caught on Film

While dust devils find their heat source in the sun, fire devils arise from hot spots in preexisting wildfires. Read more

Chris Tangey took this intense image of a tornado sucking a brushfire into the sky near Alice Springs, Australia. From The Australian:

"There was no wind where we were, and yet you had this tornado," Tangey says.
For him, it sounded "like a fighter jet"; for (firefighter Ashley) Severin, it was like "standing behind a 747". "I've never seen anything like it. I just thought the ground was going to start trembling," Severin says. "The noise it was making, the speed, the red flames in the centre of it. It was like a kaleidoscope show."

"Alice dust devils pack a gullet full of flames"

Awesome Pictures

Catchy vegetable names increase affinity for greens

Would you rather eat “carrots” or “crunchy yummy carrots”? Or, if you’re a youngster, “X-Ray Vision Carrots”? Kids seem to ...

Continue Reading

Culinary DeLites

Simultaneously cold and hot, Steve's popsicles will give you a delicious if confusing experience. They're made of just cucumbers, peppers, sugar and lime juice.
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Aww, ain't it cute

An adorable possum broke into an Australian bakery and ate so many pastries that he couldn't move. This is how they found him! Too many cakes. 

Lion, No Lyin'

In The 1930s, Daredevils Would Drive Up Walls With Lions For Passengers

The Wall of Death is a carnival sideshow featuring a silo- or barrel-shaped wooden cylinder inside of which motorcyclists, or the drivers of miniature automobiles, travel along the vertical wall and perform stunts, held in place by centripetal force.

Derived directly from United States motorcycle boardtrack racing in the early 1900s, in 1915 the first 'silodromes' with vertical walls appeared. Sometimes the riders drove alone, sometimes they had another performer as a passenger and sometimes the passenger was a lion.

Giant Viruses Are Ancient Living Organisms

Researchers are giving viruses, which have genes but no cellular structure, a place on the tree of life. Read more

Swapping Jobs Changes Honeybee DNA

Honeybees in a hive have fairly identical genes. The queen is the mother, a very few drones are the fathers, and those drones are closely related to each other anyway. But "epigenetic" changes in the DNA, those that switch genes on or off chemically, differ among bees that do different jobs. And bees can change those chemical switches themselves, when needed. Under normal circumstances, young worker bees are nurses in the hive, and turn into foragers as they age, when a chemical changes which genes are expressed. Scientists can track those changes by the amount and pattern of methyl (CH3) molecules in their DNA.

Led by Andrew Feinberg of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Gro Amdam of Arizona State University in Tempe, the researchers coaxed forager bees back into nursing roles by removing all the nurses from the hive while the foragers were out looking for pollen. When the foragers returned, they noticed the lack of nurses, and about half of them took on nursing roles. Examination of the methylation patterns in DNA from their brain cells showed that these too had switched back to the pattern associated with nurses.

“What is exciting is that the genes that change back are the same genes that changed in the other direction initially — and the same ones that would regulate epigenetic behaviour,” says Feinberg.

Gene Robinson, a bee researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the research, says that although the paper does not necessarily prove that epigenetic mechanisms cause behavioral differences, “it demonstrates for the first time that if behavior is reversible so is the methylation”.  

Further research may determine exactly what triggers the correllation. More

Re-grown lizard tails are cheap knock-offs of the original

 

A new study suggests that the "miracle" of re-growing a lost tail is less awesome than it might first appear. Sure, growing a new tail is cool and all. But the new tails have completely different anatomy — a tube of cartilage in place of vertebra, for instance — and are likely less flexible than the original model.

Glaucus atlanticus: For once, the Internet is not lying to you

For once, the Internet is not lying to you

This is actually a real life animal.

This is the Glaucus atlanticus. It is a type of nudibranch—shell-less mollusks known for their extravagant shapes and colors. It is venomous.

The London Natural History Museum has some good information about these creatures, including the drawing at left, which was made in the late 1700s by Sydney Parkinson, the official ship's illustrator for Captain Cook's second voyage to the Pacific.
You see all those pointy bits Glaucus atlanticus? According to the Natural History Museum, those are called cerata. They are the organs where G. atlanticus stores the stinging cells that it steals from the jellyfish it eats.
Because it eats jellyfish. And not just any jellyfish—but Portuguese Man o' War jellyfish. G. atlanticus eats the jellyfish tentacles and, as part of the process of digestion, stores stinging cells from those tentacles in the tips of its cerata. Then G. atlanticus gets to be venomous, too. Fun! Sharing!
Here's how the Smithsonian Magazine blog described the process last Spring:

A gas-filled sac in the stomach allows the small slug to float, and a muscular foot structure is used to cling to the surface. Then, if it floats by a man o’ war or other cnidarian, the blue dragon locks onto the larger creature’s tentacles and consumes the toxic nematocyst cells that the man o’ war uses to immobilize fish.
The slug is immune to the toxins and collects them in special sacs within the cerata—the finger-like branches at the end of its appendages—to deploy later on. Because the man o’ war’s venom is concentrated in the tiny fingers, blue dragons can actually have more powerful stings than the much larger creatures from which they took the poisons.

In conclusion, there are two lessons to take away from G. atlanticus.
First, the Internet isn't always lying to you. Just sometimes.
Second, don't touch things that look pretty. Because they will probably kill you.
More at The Encyclopedia of Life
A scientific paper documenting the presence of G. atlanticus in Andhra Pradesh.
The Sea Slug Forum has a description, photos, and sightings.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Look out the window once in a while ...

Some of our readers today have been in:

Ankara Turkey

Makati, Philippines

Cape Town, South Africa

Carthage, Tunisia

Warsaw, Poland

Slough, England

George Town, Malaysia

Addia Ababa, Ethiopia

Klang, Malaysia

Moscow, Russia

Centurion, South Africa

Belgrade, Serbia

Istanbul Turkey

Panama City, Panama

Athens, Greece

Abu Dhabi, United Arab, Emirates

Kulim, Malaysia

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Vancouver, Canada

Sampaloc, Philippines

Poznan, Poland

Lima, Peru

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Katowice, Poland

Bangi, Malaysia

Islamabad, Pakistan

Gdynia, Poland

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Tunis, Tunisia

Caracas, Venezuela

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1758		James Abercromby is replaced as supreme commander of British forces after his defeat by French commander the Marquis of Montcalm at Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War.
1759		Quebec surrenders to the British after a battle which sees the deaths of both James Wolfe and Louis Montcalm, the British and French commanders.
1793		George Washington lays the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol.
1830		Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in the United States, loses a nine-mile race in Maryland to a horse.
1850		Congress passes the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in 1793), requiring the return of escaped slaves to their owners.
1862		After waiting all day for a Union attack which never came at Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins a retreat out of Maryland and back to Virginia.
1863		Union cavalry troops clash with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.
1874		The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society is formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West.
1911		Russian Premier Piotr Stolypin dies four days after being shot at the Kiev opera house by socialist lawyer Dimitri Bogroff.
1914		The Irish Home Rule Bill becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I.
1929		Charles Lindbergh takes off on a 10,000 mile air tour of South America.
1934		The League of Nations admits the Soviet Union.
1939		A German U-boat sinks the British aircraft carrier Courageous, killing 500 people.
1948		Margaret Chase Smith becomes the first woman elected to the Senate without completing another senator's term when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten. Smith is also the only woman to be elected to and serve in both houses of Congress.
1960		Two thousand cheer Castro's arrival in New York for the United Nations session.
1964		U.S. destroyers fire on hostile targets in Vietnam.
1980		Cosmonaut Arnoldo Tamayo, a Cuban, becomes the first black to be sent on a mission in space.

Non Sequitur

Did you know ...

That Florida's voter purge caught exactly one non-citizen voter (a Canadian)

That $30 million in maple syrup was stolen from Canada's strategic maple reserves

That it's Occupy Wall Street's one year anniversary

Here Wal-Mart workers expose truth about working there

Here's a brief history of teachers' strikes in America

Here's 15 really strange movie credits

And I Quote

New 65 year study shows tax cuts do not lead to economic growth

This will be shocking news for the repugicans, though it shouldn't be. The US has had higher growth rates during times of much higher taxes but somehow that is always glossed over by the tax cut proponents.
Even Mitt Romney himself proves how little tax rates are connected to employment creation investments. The man hasn't worked in years and has paid no more than 14% in taxes yet we don't see him setting up new businesses with the extra income. He fails his own test on tax breaks.

Let the repugican tax spin begin.

Analysis of six decades of data found that top tax rates "have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth." However, the study found that reductions of capital gains taxes and top marginal rate taxes have led to greater income inequality. Past studies cited in the report have suggested that a broad-based tax rate reduction can have "a small to modest, positive effect on economic growth" or "no effect on economic growth."

Well into the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. Today it's 35%. But both real GDP and real per capita GDP were growing more than twice as fast in the 1950s as in the 2000s. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top tenth of a percent fell from about 50% to 25% in the last 60 years, while their share of income increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% before the recession.

Romney says his mere presence will bring back the American economy

The Bishop speaks.

The Daily Dish latches on to another part of the now infamous secret video of Mitt Romney telling rich donors earlier this year that the 47% of Americans who support Barack Obama are all welfare queens who don't have jobs, and don't want jobs.

"My own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see — without actually doing anything — we'll actually get a boost in the economy."

Not too full of ourselves, are we?

There's almost a religious self-importance to Romney's comments.  Capital will come back (does he mean business will start to invest more?) simply because the Great Romney has spoken.

This is why Mitt Romney doesn't have any specifics to his policies.  He doesn't think he needs specifics.  He quite seriously believes that he has some magical powerful to simply bring unemployment down to 4% again.

He doesn't need a plan. He's the messiah.

What a pathetically disturbing view of one's self.

What an idiot

Romney: Obama voters "pay no taxes," "believe they're victims," don't "care for their lives"

UPDATE: Romney campaign appears to stand by Romney's statement that half of America, and all Democrats, are welfare queens. In a statement just released by the Romney campaign, no clarification was given - they simply just reiterated their concerns that too many Americans are sucking at the federal teat.

"Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work. Mitt Romney's plan creates 12 million new jobs in four years, grows the economy and moves Americans off of government dependency and into jobs." – Gail Gitcho, Romney Campaign Communications Director

Actually, what Romney said was that half of Americans suck off the federal teat, and they like it because they're lazy, don't have jobs, and don't want jobs. And "my job is not to worry about those people."

Romney is basically standing by his incredibly offensive statement about half the country.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has weighed in:

"It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

And there's video of it (see below).

I've been noticing some folks on Twitter and Facebook not quite getting it. Romney wasn't talking about just "poor people." He was talking about every single Democrat in America. He specifically said he's talking about the 47% of Americans who would support the President no matter what - i.e., Democrats across the board. The only people he's excluding are independents and Republicans.

Romney was suggesting that all Democrats are poor, minority, don't have a job, and don't want one. It was racist, bigoted, and insulting to probably ten different groups of Americans in twenty different ways.  It's bad enough that he thinks minorities are lazy slobs, but to then suggest that the Democratic party is made up 100% of lazy slobs.  It's unbelievably contemptuous.

Great find from David Corn at Mother Jones, and there's video. This is from earlier this year, and was secretly recorded at a Romney big money fundraiser.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

I pay my taxes, you jerk.  Have you paid yours?  What an incredibly obnoxious thing to say by a man who refuses to release his own tax returns when insiders are claiming that he hasn't paid taxes in ten years.

What a pompous, arrogant, elitist, jerk.

And there's video.

UPDATE: Carl Kerstann comments:

I was supporting the Green Party but after coughing up a much higher tax rate than Romney pays this comment really ticked me off. This ass cannot be allowed to win, go Obama.

Romney stands by comments that half the country is worthless "victims"

Unless the President does something incredibly stupid, this campaign is over.
Mitt Romney tonight is standing by his comments, revealed earlier in a secretly recorded via taken at a high-dollar fundraiser, in which the repugican candidate said that half of America - Obama voters - pay no taxes, believe they are victims, don't care for their lives.

Here's a prime snippet from the press conference, above, in which Romney stands by his idiotic comments:

"It's a message which I'm gonna carry, and continue to carry, which is, look, the President's approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because frankly my discussion about lowering taxes isn't as attractive to them, and therefore I'm [not] likely to draw them into my campaign as effectively as those who were in the middle. This is really a discussion about, about the political process of winning the election."

So once again Mitt Romney reiterates that the reason voters don't like his policies is because they're not paying enough taxes (guess what he's doing to you after he's election, then) - well, actually, they're not paying any taxes at all, he claims.  What an astoundingly idiotic and offensive thing to claim.  That those of who don't like this man's candidacy simply aren't paying our fair share of taxes.

Romney's right, I'm paying less in taxes today than I did three years ago.  That's because I'm making a lot less money today than I did three years ago.  And it's 1130 at night and I'm still working, so I don't appreciate being called lazy by the repugican presidential candidate.

Mitt Romney really has a propensity, a predilection really, to double down on stupid.

Remember how, after issuing that insane press release trying to take partisan advantage of the death of a State Department official last week (at the time we didn't know it was the ambassador), Romney then went on national TV the next morning, with a back drop intended to look like the White House, and stuck his foot in it even more.

It's a dilemma of his own making.  One of Romney's chief attack points against the President is the lie that the President has apologized for America around the world.  The fact checkers say this isn't true.  But Romney has so cornered himself in on the "no apologies" meme that he can't now apologize himself.

And Romney's own "no apologies" tour is running smack into Romney's other propensity for arrogance, which usually leads to insult.  Whether it's your freshly baked cookies that Romney doesn't approve of, or your entire nation, that inner sphincter that tells someone to STFU just doesn't work in Mitt Romney's case.

And it's leading to a lot of fun, and embarrassment, and a presidential campaign going down in flames.

He does it again ...

It's Christmas in September!

Some people were expecting an October Surprise from the repugicans.  But we never thought Mitt Romney would give it to us in September!

By now you may have heard that Mitt Romney ended his race for the presidency last night.  Well, not officially.  But the race is all but over.  Anyone who gives this man a dime after last night's fiasco, truly doesn't care about a return on their investment.

You see, last night we learned, from a secret video, that Mitt Romney had told some high-paying donors that half of America is worthless, lazy people who don't pay taxes, don't have a job, and don't really want one.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Then, in case you didn't get the message the first time, Romney reiterated his key point, that Democrats don't pay taxes.

"It's a message which I'm gonna carry, and continue to carry, which is, look, the President's approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because frankly my discussion about lowering taxes isn't as attractive to them, and therefore I'm [not] likely to draw them into my campaign as effectively as those who were in the middle. This is really a discussion about, about the political process of winning the election."

And if that weren't clear enough, rnc Chair Reince Priebus, always good for adding insult to injury, said Romney's words were "on message." So the entire repugican cabal is now embracing Mitt Romney's claim that half of the American people are jobless and lazy and see themselves as victims.

Nice job, Reince. I think I see ripples of impact for the House and Senate races ("The chair of the Republican party says you're lazy and you don't pay enough in taxes...").

The reaction from the media was swift, and damning.

Josh Barro of Bloomberg, "Today Mitt Romney Lost the Election."

CNN's Jim Acosta ‏@jimacostacnn
Shorter Romney statement... no apologies.

AP's Kasie Hunt ‏@kasie
Category of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes: U.S. troops serving in combatzones.

TIME's Mark Halperin ‏@MarkHalperin
Many of us have seen pols pander to donors in closed events. I've heard my share Rs+Ds. Never anything this damaging however.

CNN/Daily Beast's @HowardKurtz
Romney on the 47 percent seems a stereotype of an unsympathetic venture capitalist--going to be hard to overcome among non-base voters.

CNBC/NYT's @JohnJHarwood
Ex-GWBush ad-maker McKinnon: Romney fund-raiser tape "potentially crippling"

@JohnJHarwood
Dem pollster Garin on Romney fund-raiser tape: "Reinforces impression he's mistake/prone & arrogant. would be better off if he apologized"

Things are getting so bad, this piece of satire by Andy Borowitz may not be so far off from the truth.

In what his campaign described today as a bold strategy to insure victory in the Presidential contest, repugican nominee Mitt Romney will undergo a procedure to have his mouth wired shut until Tuesday, November 6th.

Romney aide infighting begins, they're talking to the press!

And let the games begin. When the ship starts sinking, the rats start talking to the media (to mix my metaphors). The article reads like an election postmortem. I was waiting for these stories to begin - where insiders start talking about other insiders to deflect the blame for losing the election. I just didn't think they'd start this early.

This article is very good news for our side.

The Daily Beast's spin on this echoes mine:

Just eight days before the most important speech of Mitt Romney's campaign, his top strategist, Stuart Stevens, junked it and created a new one for the repugican national cabal. Politico reports on escalating instability within the Romney campaign that is pushing Obama into an early lead, especially after the disastrous rnc. "The hasty process resulted in a colossal oversight: Romney did not include a salute to troops serving in war zones, and did not mention Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, putting him on the defensive on national security just as the Middle East was about to erupt," Politico reports. Stevens seems to have taken on too much and the results could be disastrous for the campaign.

This is very bad for Romney. At some point, big donors are going to stop giving big bucks to a candidate who's going to lose. In any venture, you stop throwing good money after bad.

From Politico, first we learn of how they scrapped Romney's speech 8 days before the convention, and started anew, which totally screwed things up:

The hasty process resulted in a colossal oversight: Romney did not include a salute to troops serving in war zones, and did not mention Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, putting him on the defensive on national security just as the Middle East was about to erupt. It was also very light on policy specifics, much to the chagrin of conservatives who were certain the addition of Ryan and inclusion of Wehner meant a real battle of ideas was about to begin.

The damage had been compounded when, in compressing the program from four days to three because of a hurricane delay, convention organizers had scrapped a planned remote appearance by Romney and veterans that was to be fed live into the Tampa hall from a speech he was giving to an American Legion convention in Indiana. With the salute-the-troops tribute out, the assumption was Romney would pay tribute to them in the speech. He didn’t.

The convention finale was undermined even further by Eastwood’s rambling comedy routine, which became the only glimpse that many swing voters got of the repugican show. Eastwood had been added to the program after chatting with Romney at a fundraiser in Idaho just weeks before the convention.

Romney Campaign "Disastrous"

Says intern-killer Joe Scarborough

Add Joe Scarborough to the list of repugicans who are upset with how Romney is running his campaign.

“How can it be that this man who turned around countless businesses, saved the 2002 Olympics, and ran
Democratic Massachusetts like a pro is the head of such a disastrous campaign?” Scarborough writes.

He cites a litany of errors by the scum-sucking, bottom-dweller.

• Who was responsible for burying his convention video behind the bumbling bluster of Clint Eastwood?
• Who told Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander-in-chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
• And who decided that Romney would use his general election campaign to stand for absolutely nothing?  

As for the debt, “when it comes to balancing the budget, Mr. Romney has no plan,” Scarborough writes.
And as for defense spending, “all Mitt Romney can do is promise bigger budgets and longer wars.”

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Looking, Very Closely, for Voter Fraud

Wingnut Groups Focus on Registration in Swing States 

It might as well be Harry Potter’s invisible Knight Bus, because no one can prove it exists.

The bus has been repeatedly cited by True the Vote, a national group focused on voter fraud. Catherine Engelbrecht, the group’s leader, told a gathering in July about buses carrying dozens of voters showing up at polling places during the recent Wisconsin recall election.

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What is funny is that of the infinitesimal number of persons committing 'voter fraud' that has been found it has been a wingnut committing the fraud ... curious now isn't it?

That moment before the pain begins ...

... first you say it - then you do it!

Hey, repugicans you know that wooden log you nominated for your candidate ...

The Unknown Story Of The Black Cyclone

Marshall Taylor (1878 - 1932) was an American cyclist who won the world 1 mile track cycling championship in 1899 after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination. Taylor was the first African-American athlete to achieve the level of world champion.

Marshall Taylor was just a teenager when he turned professional and began winning races on the world stage, and President Theodore Roosevelt became one of his greatest admirers. Nicknamed 'the Black Cyclone,' he would burst to fame as the world champion of his sport.

But Taylor's crossing of the color line was not without complication, especially in the United States, where he often had no choice but to ride ahead of his white competitors to avoid being pulled or jostled from his bicycle at high speeds.

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150 Years Ago  

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Ghost Towns Of The Pacific Northwest

Bordeaux, Washington

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Mumby cedar shingles were prized in the Midwest as the best quality for homes and businesses. After 100 years or more, the warehouses of Seattle and Tacoma are now offices and upscale restaurants with the original, massive, open beams milled from forest giants that once were common, but now are protected.

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If Google yanks "Innocence of Muslims," will it lose its DMCA Safe Harbor?

Robert Cringely speculates on the reasoning behind Google's decision to continue hosting the controversial "Innocence of Muslims" clip despite a request from the State Department to remove it. Cringely believes that Google worries that if it were to begin removing videos, it would lose access to the "Safe Harbor" defense of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which exempts it from liability for copyright violations by its users, provided that it does not police the users' uploads (except to ensure compliance with its terms of service). Thus if Google were to begin removing videos from US view on non-copyright/non-terms-of-service grounds, it could be liable for $150,000 copyright fines for every infringing video in the YouTube collection.
Muhammad v. YouTube

Woman found alive after 5 days in freezer may have climbed in due to bad weather

An Oklahoma woman who was found alive in a chest-type deep freezer may have climbed in due to bad weather. Theresa Christian, 59, was last seen over the weekend. Her son found her on Wednesday morning in a large freezer at her Tulsa apartment and called police.

"Apparently family members had reported her missing since Saturday and they finally got her son in who recognized immediately that there was no way she could have left the residence willingly without her purse and other belongings and left her TV on."

"So they started searching the house and neighbours said possibly she thought maybe there was tornado coming but their sure why or how she got there but her son heard a moan coming from the area of the freezer and opened up and discovered her sitting inside," said Cpl. Daisy Vallely with the Tulsa Police Department.

YouTube link.

Family members say Christian is scared of storms and may have climbed into the freezer for safety. She was taken to the hospital in serious condition with frostbite. Police do not suspect foul play.

'Anonymous' Spokesman Barrett Brown Arrested After Bizarre Video Meltdown

"In an interview with Defense Technology International [March 1], prominent Anonymous front man Barrett Brown alluded to the significance of the HB Gary hacking in the movement." - Mandy Nagy , Breitbart.com, "FBI Bust, Aided by 'Anonymous' Snitch, Reveals Left-Hacker Alliance," March 9, 2012 "I got to find out, thanks to a hack - thanks to another ...

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