Saturday, April 16, 2011
Trump's poll surge underscores the insanity of the wingnuts
Donald Trump's recent surge to the front of repugican presidential primary polls has been confirmed by Public Policy Polling:
Arizona First To Pass 'Birther' Bill
Another milestone for the state of Arizona: Birther bill passes in Arizona legislature.
Both the Arizona House and Senate yesterday passed a bill requiring U.S. presidential candidates to prove their citizenship in order to get on the state ballot, making the Arizona legislature the first in the nation to approve "birther" legislation.Thirteen other states are considering similar bills. The ultimate goal, of course, is to have a presidential election in which the only candidate is a repugican.
repugican gov. Jan Brewer has five days to either sign the bill, veto it, or do nothing and allow it to become law.
If the bill becomes law, presidential and vice presidential candidates would have to show the Arizona secretary of state proof that they are natural-born citizens. This could be either a long-form birth certificate or at least two other forms of accepted proof, such as an early baptismal certificate, circumcision certificate or hospital birth record.
If the Arizona secretary of state doesn't think a candidate has provided sufficient proof, they can keep the candidate off the state's ballot or set up a committee to determine whether the documents of proof provided meet the requirements.
About that repugican plan to eliminate Medicare ...
Bill Maher just asked Michael Steele: When an elderly ill person in a nursing home runs out of their 15k voucher by this time of year under Ryan's plan, what do they do?
Steele's answer was shocking even for the repugicans ...
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Insurer denied needed medical tests, Senate finds
“I gotta tell you Kathy, I can’t keep living like this,” said Michael Fields, 46, who was experiencing tightness in his chest, numbness in an arm and light-headedness as he begged the voice at the other end of the line for help. “It’s been going on for weeks. I don’t know what else to do. I mean you know, I’m trapped here.
“Alright, let me put you back on hold,” came the reply.
Fields, who lives with his wife and son in Elkton, Md., was not speaking with a 911 operator. He was calling a representative from his insurance provider, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield of Delaware, and he was about to find out that for the third time he was being denied a crucial test to determine if he had coronary artery disease — a nuclear cardiac stress test.
A Senate investigation released Friday found a pattern of inappropriate denials for tests like the one Fields’ doctors say he should have received from the start.
Fields, who lives with his wife and son in Elkton, Md., was not speaking with a 911 operator. He was calling a representative from his insurance provider, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield of Delaware, and he was about to find out that for the third time he was being denied a crucial test to determine if he had coronary artery disease — a nuclear cardiac stress test.
A Senate investigation released Friday found a pattern of inappropriate denials for tests like the one Fields’ doctors say he should have received from the start.
Woman Ordered Lunch At McDonald's During Police Chase
I’m not sure whether the Hamburglar put her up to this, but a 64-year-old woman refused to stop when pulled over by police. Instead, she got herself into a McDonald’s drive-thru lane and ordered lunch:Officer Courtney Vassell pulled up behind Spen in the drive-thru lane, and got out of the patrol car. With police lights flashing behind him, he told her to pull out into the parking lot for a traffic stop, according to a police report.
Spen, though, completed her food order, paid the bill, and then drove her bronze 2001 Chevrolet out of the parking lot and onto Northwest Sixth Court, Vassell said.
Vassell again flipped on his siren and stopped Spen outside the McDonald’s, where he said she "rolled her window down one inch and said she was not speeding and she would not roll her window down."
Income drops as consumer prices increase
Both are going in the wrong direction. With the dollar taking a beating plus the unstable situation in the oil producing countries, oil is likely to be at an uncomfortably high rate for a while. (Remember all of the Washington promises about planning for the future the last time oil prices spiked? Ha!) And then there is the problem with food prices going up. Between the high oil prices plus traders making their money from the bellies of the world, this too is a problem that isn't improving and won't likely improve for a while.
There's also nothing that suggests any big changes with the economy any time soon so wages are likely to stagnate, at best. All of this means more financial trouble for the coming years. But at least the richest of the rich are paying less in taxes, because that's what it's all supposed to be about, right? Any Democrat that allows the repugicans to keep slamming the middle class really needs to change parties. If they can't see this problem, they ought to pack it in and quit as well. The country can't afford such stupidity any longer.
There's also nothing that suggests any big changes with the economy any time soon so wages are likely to stagnate, at best. All of this means more financial trouble for the coming years. But at least the richest of the rich are paying less in taxes, because that's what it's all supposed to be about, right? Any Democrat that allows the repugicans to keep slamming the middle class really needs to change parties. If they can't see this problem, they ought to pack it in and quit as well. The country can't afford such stupidity any longer.
Those trends came as real income dropped 0.5 percent for the month.
The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.5 percent after rising by the same margin in February. That was in line with economists expectations.
Core CPI is vindication for officials at the Federal Reserve who have viewed the recent energy price spike as having a temporary effect on inflation.
Food and gasoline rose 0.8 percent, the largest gain since July 2008, after increasing 0.6 percent in February.
Theft of Florida Vegetables by Hijackers Proves Produce Prices High
Thieves have stolen $250,000 worth of Florida tomatoes -- the most dramatic proof so far that inflation is sending commodity prices skyward.
Man Arrested For Fleeing Cops, Causing Fatal Accident
Police arrested a man who allegedly caused a fatal accident while fleeing police Friday night.
Man bites dog - then sues over police canine's chomp
A 33-year-old man who bit back after he was caught by a Phoenix police dog is suing police.
Dog teaches baby to crawl
Isabel gets lessons from an unlikely expert, while another kid is amused by his furry pal's trick.
Also: 
Ant Social Network is Just Like Facebook
We’ve known that ants are social animals like us, but a new study by Noa Pinter-Wollman of Stanford University and colleagues show just how similar they are to humans.Heck, they’ve even got the an social networking system similar to Facebook!
On average, each ant had around 40 interactions. However, around 10 percent of the ants made more than 100 contacts with other ants. Further research is examining just what makes these more social ants different than the others within the colonies.
The researchers compare this type of socialization to that seen on sites like Facebook. While most people have a relatively small number of Facebook friends, there are some with a friends list in the thousands. It is these friends that act as a sort of information hub, spreading information out to a large number of readers. These particular ants are functioning as a large social hub of information.
Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko
Talkin’ bout the devil – here’s a picture of the Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko:
The satanic leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus phantasticus) is the smallest of 12 species of bizarre-looking leaf-tailed geckos. The nocturnal creature has extremely cryptic camouflage so it can hide out in forests in Madagascar. This group of geckos is found only in primary, undisturbed forests, so their populations are very sensitive to habitat destruction. Large Uroplatus species have more teeth than any other living terrestrial vertebrate species.
The gecko species was discovered in Mantadia-Zahamena corridor of Madagascar in 1998 during one of the Conservation International (CI) "Rapid Assessment Program" (RAP) surveys.
Cookie the Penguin
Cookie is a penguin of the species known as Little Penguin {info}.
He is the mascot of the Zoo Bird House at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Primitive Sea Mollusc Has Eyes of Rock
"Turns out they can see objects, though probably not well," said study researcher Daniel Speiser, who recently became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [...]
The team realized in a lab experiment that the animal’s lenses were made of aragonite (calcium carbonate), rather than proteins like other biological lenses.
Farmer Dyed Sheep Orange to Defeat Rustlers
Tired of rustlers stealing his flock of sheep, English farmer John Heard decided to … dye his sheep orange!The 48-year-old has put his flock of 250 blackface ewes through a harmless dip of orange dye making them so highly visible wary thieves are giving them a wide berth.
Mr Heard, who runs his livestock farm near Okehampton, Devon had lost 200 sheep over the past few years but says the orange dye is working wonders.
He explained:"Sheep rustling has become a big problem with ewes worth around £140 each. My flock roams Dartmoor and I was getting mighty fed-up with losing so many.
"My son James suggested the orange dye and although it produces some strange looking sheep it has done the trick and I haven’t lost one this year.
"It works because they are so easy to distinguish making it easier for me and my neighbours to keep a wary eye out for them. Plus the rustlers are obviously nervouse about stealing such easily distinguished animals."
Whale "Pop Song" Sweeps the Ocean
Just like humans, whales also have "pop songs," complete with music mania that sweeps across the ocean:The findings are based on 11 years of recordings from underwater microphones slung over the sides of boats, which were collected by marine biologist Ellen Garland of the University of Queensland in Australia and colleagues. Picking out the patterns took a while; the team had to listen to 745 songs in total from six whale populations across the South Pacific over the 11-year period. The researchers identified 11 distinctly different styles (audio). Sometimes the "hit song" contained snippets from previous seasons, sometimes it was entirely revolutionary. But at any given time and place, there was only one song. What’s more, the popular song switched incredibly rapidly; it took only 2 to 3 months for whales in a given region to entirely change their tune, the team reports online today in Current Biology.Humpback Idol, anyone?
For male whales, singing is known to be a mating behavior, and Garland calls the results a "weird interaction of constrained novelty" where each whale wants to one-up the whale next to it but still feels pressure to conform enough that it doesn’t stand out as an oddball. But whether a whale primarily intends its song to impress females or to intimidate other males with its swanky style remains unclear.
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