Joe Barton would like to apologize to: England, again, for the war of 1812, and in particular, the battle of New Orleans. We should just have let you guys have north america. You obviously really wanted it.

There is plenty more at Joe Barton Would Like To Apologize.

Some reports in the media attempt to downplay the significance of the release of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident by arguing that natural oil seeps release large volumes of oil to the ocean, so why worry? Lets look at the numbers.

via The Oil Drum – Natural Oil Seeps and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Comparison of Magnitudes. Just in case you were crazy enough to listen to Rep. Young.

Ah, the American public. God love 'em. The Economist asked if they'd rather tackle the federal deficit by cutting spending or raising taxes, and the runaway winner was cutting spending, by a margin of 62% to 5%. So what are we willing to cut? Answer: pretty much nothing.

via Cutting the Deficit – Mother Jones. Add up everything that even a quarter of the population is willing to cut and you wind up with under 5% of the federal budget.

So what’s the answer? Americans overwhelmingly favor guaranteeing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions — but you can’t do that without pursuing broad-based reform. To make insurance affordable, you have to keep currently healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that everyone or almost everyone buy coverage. You can’t do that without financial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can pay the premiums. So you end up with a tripartite policy: elimination of medical discrimination, mandated coverage, and premium subsidies.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Closing Arguments on Health Care – NYTimes.com. Krugman making his “final” arguments for a national health care plan.

Take the question of helping the unemployed in the middle of a deep slump. What Democrats believe is what textbook economics says: that when the economy is deeply depressed, extending unemployment benefits not only helps those in need, it also reduces unemployment. That’s because the economy’s problem right now is lack of sufficient demand, and cash-strapped unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that aid to the unemployed is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, as measured by jobs created per dollar of outlay.

…

Now, the House has already passed a bill that, by exempting the assets of couples up to $7 million, would leave 99.75 percent of estates tax-free. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Mr. Kyl; he’s willing to hold up desperately needed aid to the unemployed on behalf of the remaining 0.25 percent. That’s a very clear statement of priorities.

…

Someday, somehow, we as a nation will once again find ourselves living on the same planet. But for now, we aren’t. And that’s just the way it is.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Senator Bunning’s Universe – NYTimes.com. Krugman taking it old school at the state of American politics.

Why is this important? The U.S. population has shifted in the last ten years. States like Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania (all states Obama won in 2008) have smaller populations, and states like Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina (all states that John McCain carried) have gained population.

The trend illustrates that urban strongholds, which favor Democrats, continue to lose population to more decentralized areas in states more likely to lean Republican.

If the Democrats and their friends at ACORN have their way, the Census will only “estimate” state populations and therefore be subject to political calculations. And surely their estimate will be far higher than the actual number of people, and voters, present.

So if to be believed by the RNC, Obama and the Democrats through ACORN will manipulate the state population estimates to swing in favor of Democrats as opposed to what the estimate should actually look like.

Let’s start with a few things, first off the email never lists any facts, never links to any hard evidence demonstrating any manner of truth in the email. The only links are to unsubscribe, to the main GOP site and to donate to “help the Republican Party’s effort to spread the word about the Obama Democrats’ misuse of power and plans to end free and fair elections”. Also note this is the sort of classical conspiracy style formatting, this evil organization is doing something behind your back and we aren’t able to get our message out, but you can help us expose the truth.

The funny thing about the whole thing is that the Census Buera’s own estimates don’t prove the central point of the email, which is “States like Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania (all states Obama won in 2008) have smaller populations, and states like Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina (all states that John McCain carried) have gained population.”

Specifically looking at the 2008 Census Bureau estimates found here: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-_box_head_nbr=GCT-T1-R&-ds_name=PEP_2008_EST&-format=US-40S

Let’s take a look at each state listed by the GOP in the email, comparing the 2000 Census results with the 2006 and 2008 estimates, shall we.

Notice every single state listed in the email is gaining population from 2000 to 2008, and the only state losing population from 2006 to 2008 is Michigan, which given the state of the economy there, I’m not entirely surprised.

Now I’m not entirely sure what the GOP is trying to argue at this point, because at this point the argument just really collapses amongst itself. They could be talking about percentage change, but the talk about the population not a percentage fall or even that the rate of the states gaining population is going up.

Or I guess the Republicans could claim that the estimate itself is wrong, and they have no proof for it, because the Census Bureau has been manipulating numbers for years in favor of Democrats?

The next question for me becomes, how does a community organization influence the population census, that I’m not sure, since the GOP doesn’t link to any article talking about it or go into specifics, also how do you manipulate the census. Personally, I thought the census was performed by Census employees, maybe the GOP is thinking that the Census with outsource the collection of data to ACORN?

That makes some sense though it still seems silly to blame an organization whose actions are very much blown out of porpition: “Both claims are breathtakingly inaccurate. There’s a huge difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud. And while ACORN, which hires part-time, $8-an-hour canvassers to go door-to-door and register people to vote, has had widespread problems with phony registrations invented by employees who don’t want to work, the problem has never been that it sent people to the polls using bogus identities or to vote in any other fraudulent manner.”

This winds up being my fundamental problem with political organizations, the media, and politicians, left, right and center. Wild accusations, conspiracy like talk with no real definitive proof or even an understanding of basic logic.

I will say though when MoveOn.org and some other organizations send out emails to pressure for something, they link to real authentic news articles to make a case for themselves. It helps so much it isn’t even funny. It’s almost sad to say that it is refreshing to get their emails which actually make a case for their point even if I disagree with them.

Also GOP, why do you always repeat yourself in the PS part of the email, it’s annoying and stupid. Learn from the Democrats and say something different. Seriously, I get really bored knowing that you are going to ask me for money in exactly the same way you did earlier.

In the newsletter Rep. Neugebaur talks about Pres. Obama’s recent decision to reverse a Pres. GW Bush era policy of restricting government funding on any new human embryonic stem cell lines created after Aug. 9th 2001. Quoting from the newsletter (emphasis mine):

Today, President Obama reversed the Bush Administration’s policy of banning federal funds from going to research that involves the destruction of human embryos.

I am disappointed in President Obama’s executive order. I strongly believe the rights of the unborn need to be protected from the point of conception, which is why I cannot support the use of tax dollars to fund research that millions of Americans, including myself, believe destroys human life.

The major advances in stem cell research have come from adult stem cells, not embryonic ones.  Several findings have recently been made that show stem cells found in umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, and bone marrow tissue have the same flexibility as embryonic stem cells.  Research using adult stem cells is being used to treat diseases, and taxpayer research dollars should go toward advances that are producing results.

Let’s discuss some of Rep. Neugebauer’s points, most importantly the “believe destroys human life”. Not that it does destroy human life, because well there is no evidence of such, just people’s belief that it does. There is no evidence of any such destruction of human life in those blog posts, articles or links presented by Google, in fact most of them talk about just the opposite, about how scientific research is making it less and less necessary for stem cells to be grown in the labs from human embryo’s.

Update: I made a mistake, but it actually works out favorably. According to Scientist and Engineers for America: “The Executive Order does not affect the prohibition on using federal funding for creating destroying, or discarding human embryos. This prohibition first became law in 1996 and is known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment. Subsequent laws appropriating money for the Department of Health and Human Services all carry this prohibition (shown here in H.$. 3043, the 2008 appropriations for HHS). After today, federal dollars can go toward research on hundreds of cell lines in existence, but not to creating new lines.” So Rep. Neugebauer can’t even claim that federal dollars are going towards destroying human embryos. Sorry about the mistake.

Which might make you ask, so what’s the big deal about the executive order then if it really isn’t needed? Two points here, first of all that science has yet to find a fully reliable source for stem cells as embryos grown in the lab. Second to quote PZ Myers: “You don’t get to hobble the horse and then complain that it hasn’t won any races!” So first of all to fully find a reliable source of stem cells that doesn’t involve growing embryos scientist need to study actual embryonic stem cells (embryonic stem cells have the unique characteristic of being the most adaptable and thus the best avenue for areas of stem cell research). Also Rep. Neugebauer wants to say that the research hasn’t presented anything of any value while at the same saying that science should somehow magically produce results with the main source of science funding cut off. Okay I have a business and decide to cut off 90% of their funding, let’s see the company produce something wonderful, sure.

My final point along this topic is that Rep. Neugebauer or more likely one of his staffers hasn’t linked to a single news article or scientific paper in any of his newsletters describing his actions or providng a more thought out reasoning for why he thinks the way he does. Though what’s to be expected when Obama is the first president “to speak about data in his inaugural address, and only the second to mention statistics.”

That to me is the absolute saddest state in American politics that our presidents aren’t more willing to use data and statistics to back up why they make decisions that they do.

My hope is that we can change this chart around at some point.

Chart Belief in Outrageous Statements

Okay, first off a couple of Twitter messages that might provide some background into this issue.

John Culberson, a House Republican from Texas, who uses Twitter has been broadcasting from Congress regarding this and other issues. First off I am happy that a member of Congress is using social media to communicate with people from across the nation on diverse issues. Second, he isn’t my representative so I don’t have a say in how he votes.

Rep. Culberson tweeted this “I will be back on House floor tomorrow at 10 am with others asking the Speaker to call the House back for a vote to drill here drill now”. To which I then responded “@johnculberson why does drilling here matter if it really won’t add any oil in the supply chain, this is just a stunt in my eye”. To his credit he answered, saying “@jtyost2 We can prove to you that it will make a huge diff – we will use our debate time onfloor to show the vast amount of oil in America”. Which I then responded with “@johnculberson http://bit.ly/3SRU1M http://bit.ly/4brs2a http://bit.ly/glNHw <sarcasm> of course you can </sarcasm> I have yet to read any real info on that side”.

Personally it just feels to me like a gimmick for Republicans to look important in this election. There isn’t a lot of oil in the US, that’s just the way it worked out. Yes, I do think we should be energy independent and it is a worthy cause for the government to spend money and time towards, but this isn’t a step in that direction. You are looking at an amount of oil that in the words of Rep. Culberson “@upadaria It takes years & epic big bucks to develop an offshore lease – must 1st survey, be CERTAIN its good, set rig, drill many holesetc”.

So even he acknowledges it isn’t a short term solution, nothing really is. I want Congress to focus on developing resources that are renewable and available in the US. So what if a bill was to pass even today for offshore drilling, it wouldn’t matter for years. Drilling in ANWAR isn’t wanted by the oil companies and won’t add anything to the bottom line for at least 10 years. The other thing is that oil companies currently aren’t using large chuncks of the oil leases that they have in place. What is the point of giving a company more land when they aren’t using the land they already have? That isn’t to say that the oil companies couldn’t have reasons for not using their current leases, but why haven’t they gone public with that information?

Politics is unfortunately politics, but please can it at least develop real solutions to problems rather than gimmicks that do nothing but waste my time oh and money?