[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Rand Paul is Just Saying Out Loud What Republicans Have Believed for Years
- Randy’s reluctance to embrace the [Civil Rights Act] stems from his sincere belief that government shouldn’t be able to regulate private businesses. This is news? No, it’s the central premise of the entire modern “government is the problem!” GOP.
- How Stupid Election Law Design Gave Republicans HI-01
- Republican candidate Charles Djou won the HI-01 special election with 39.5% of the vote because two Democrats, Colleen Hanabusa with 30.8% and Ed Case with 27.6%, split the Democratic vote almost down the middle. This is a great example of how the design of our election laws can greatly affect our government; a poorly-designed electoral system like Hawaii’s can result in winners that don’t best represent the will of the electorate. Using almost any other election system other than Hawaii’s, Djou would likely have lost. There is something very wrong with a democracy when political party A gets 58% of the vote, the political party B gets only 40% of the vote, yet political party B is the winner.
[I think that results like these suggest that we ARE a nation of men* (and not laws/principles).
* Sexist usage intentional.
-L]
- As Wall Street Demands Fealty, Progressives Can Learn From The FinReg Debate, Too
- The contributions have slid from Democrats to Republicans even as the bank execs remain confident that the derivatives title in question will get excised after Blanche Lincoln’s primary run-off on June 8. In other words, it’s not that Democrats aren’t doing the bidding of Wall Street, it’s that they’re not doing it fast enough that’s causing the problem. And also Democrats are mean to them in public, even while being generous in private. [...]
We learned during this months-long debate that the progressive space for economics and finance is perilously narrow. The institutional players either don’t know how to pitch this to their audiences, have been bought off from the beginning, or don’t view it as a problem. That’s unfortunate, but a newer class of activists have engaged with this problem, and now they have a coherent critique. It has not yet been successful, but it sets up very well for campaigns in the future.
- BP: We Have to Use Corexit Because No One Tests for Endocrine Disruptors
- As Scarecrow reported on Saturday, BP told EPA it would not switch from Corexit to another less toxic dispersant. BP admits that five approved dispersants are less toxic than Corexit; it dismisses four of those because the manufacturers cannot get enough product in place immediately.
- You Go, Grrls! (Shakesville)
- Five women tried qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 this weekend and four of them made it. Danica Patrick, Ana Beatriz of Brazil, Simona de Silvestro of Switzerland, and American Sarah Fisher will all race this year.
By my reckoning, this means auto racing will no longer be a real sport in 5… 4… 3… 2…
- Video: world's biggest airship inflated for the first time [Engineering]
- Airships of the future are getting a little closer to reality. A new time-lapse video shows the world's largest airship being inflated in an Alabama cattle barn, and the ship's manufacturer says it will be ready for test flights soon.
- What are white holes? [Mad Science]
- There are any number of jokes to be made here. All of them are inappropriate. Suffice it to say that white holes are a possible product of black holes, and they might show us what other universes look like.
- The mind-bending cartography of the TARDIS [Map]
- Congratulations! You're the proud new owner of a TARDIS! But how do you find your way around the blasted thing? This handy map will aid you in negotiating its shifting layout. If you become lost, "scream until help arrives!"
The Link(s): Mon, May 24th, 12pm by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.