It's Not Just Strange Weather

Yesterday, meteorologist Masters published a detailed statistical analysis that concluded, “It is highly unlikely the warmth of the current ‘Summer in March’ heat wave could have occurred unless the climate was warming.”

And, Stu Ostrow, meteorologist for the Weather Channel and former climate change skeptic, has come to believe that the most probable thing that explains what we're seeing (4000 record highs set!) is global warming.

(h/t Climate Progress)

ALEC Takes Up Florida's Vigilante Law

Here's the ALEC model legislation sponsored by the NRA for a law about the rights of gun owners to "stand their ground":

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Gosh, wonder where they got that language for ALEC's model bill?

Why, it must have come from Florida's law that is protecting David Zimmerman from charges in the death of Trayvon Martin:

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

And they didn't even change a period.

(h/t Center for Media and Democracy)

What happened to spring?

Today was the first day of spring, but for much of the upper mid-west, spring was skipped as summer showed up early. A friend of mine sent me a note from Madison, Wisconsin, on St. Patrick's day that Madison was looking forward to another day with high of at least 80 degrees after reaching a record high of 82 on March 16.

And Madison was not alone.

Jeff Masters has remarked these record highs, some that are 40 degrees higher than the average temperature for over 100 years for several mid-western cities, are extraordinary. In fact, he exclaimed, "this is not the atmosphere I grew up with."

The weather this late winter verging onto spring has been one that is exotically different than other springs we've known.

But don't worry. The Republican candidates for president know climate change is just a hoax and certainly nothing they need to worry their pretty little heads about. All we need to fix our problems is to drill more carbon-based energy resources. That will fix all our problems.

Economic Prospects

Mark Thoma has a post today highlighting a post by Calculated Risk about Public Sector Employment after the 2001 dot-com bust and the 2008 housing sector bust.

The key takeaway is that in this recession the public sector has been quite battered at the same time as the private sector is struggling to get back on its feet when under the Bush era, the public sector jobs grew.

Professor Thoma said that he believes the loss of the public sector jobs should be bottoming out by the middle of this year. But of course, that is only until 2013 rolls around and the massive cuts that were agreed to in the budget talks start haunting the economy. One wonders if we'll ever see brighter days again.

GOP Self Inflicted Wounds, Again

Two topics of interest among many this day:

Mitt Romney tells the media this morning that Barack Obama has mismanaged Afghanistan by setting definite withdrawal dates, and that a President Romney would fix everything by talking regularly to President Karzai and our military leaders. To Romney and his "expert" John McCain, setting departure dates was the problem, and not the fact that Karzai never supported the policy in the first place. Romney wants us to believe that he, the skilled CEO with impeccable communications skills can convince Karzai to let us stay there indefinitely. If Romney wants to tell America that we should stay in Afghanistan in an indefinite war while his sons stay at home, I'm willing to watch him try this fall.

Dana Milbank tells us today that several GOP senators want to convince us ahead of the election that Medicare needs to be blown up, because they know it in their bones that the public agrees with their approach. I expect this nuttery from Jim DeMint and Rand Paul among the others, but when I see Lindsay Graham tout this as well with assurance that they are right on this, then it also means that the Senate GOP leadership is quietly on board as well. The DSCC has just been handed the keys to keeping the Senate in 2012, and they should spend every day between now and November stalking all GOP Senate candidates and demanding that they reveal their position publicly on the DeMint/Paul/Graham kamikaze mission.