Video: Guy steals his bike repeatedly, all over NYC, to see if anyone cared

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AP: Increased US drilling didn’t decrease price of gas

AP's own analysis, confirmed by an outside expert, found no link between increased drilling and lower prices. This means that, yet again, the Republicans are proposing solutions (more oil production) to serious national problems (high gas prices), and the solutions have nothing to do with the problem at hand. They're simply proposals to pander to big business, which is what the GOP always does.

It's really quite scary that we have a party so bought off by big business. The Democratic party has its problems as well in this area - Big Pharma owns both parties, and Wall Street runs a pretty close second - but the Republicans raise pandering to an art form. They consistently propose sometimes-convincing-sounding solutions to problems, and the solutions have zero in common with solving the actual problem.

Abstinence education and banning birth control come to mind as ridiculous examples of ways to "decrease abortions."  Uh, no, quite the opposite in fact.  But it doesn't matter to the GOP if their solutions solve our problems as there's always an ulterior motive of sucking up to some fringe constituency.

AP:

When you put the inflation-adjusted price of gas on the same chart as U.S. oil production since 1976, the numbers sometimes go in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. If drilling for more oil meant lower prices, the lines on the chart would consistently go in opposite directions. A basic statistical measure of correlation found no link between the two, and outside statistical experts confirmed those calculations.

This sounded awfully familiar to me, so I searched around our archives, and voila.  The Republicans made a similar argument about federal regulations hurting the employment numbers, and how if we just get rid of the regulations, the jobs will come streaming back. The Associated Press says no:

Is regulation strangling the American entrepreneur? Several Republican presidential candidates say so. The numbers don't.

THE FACTS: Labor Department data show that only a tiny percentage of companies that experience large layoffs cite government regulation as the reason. Since Barack Obama took office, just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs have been due to government regulation, the data show.

Always remember, the Republicans aren't about solving problems for the the average American. They're about solving problems for the average corporate CEO. Read the rest of this post...

Roubini Global: EU in recession, Portugal the next Greece in 2012

Giving the banks cash works fine for the banks, but what about everyone else? And when does everyone else see the benefits? It's time governments stop making everything about the banks and their precious lifestyle and more about the broader population. Most can accept helping the banking system but outside of banking circles, everyone is fed up with protecting the bankers. CNBC:

Europe will see a recession this year and Portugal is likely to follow in Greece’s footsteps as the country struggles with high borrowing costs, according to the Managing Director of Market Research and Strategy at Roubini Global Economics.

“We’re going to get a recession this year but it will be milder than it would have been. The European Central Bank has done an awful lot without which we’d be in a banking crisis. It has bought banks a lot of time, between 18 months to three years,” Arnab Das told CNBC.

Das works alongside Nouriel Roubini, the renowned economist dubbed Dr Doom for predicting the financial crisis of 2008.

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Is "white pride" inherently racist?

Sure feels like it.

There's a growing college group, Youth for Western Civilization, that, rather than being proud of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, or the Renaissance, likes to focus instead on "white pride" and "straight pride."  In my opinion, yeah, that's kind of racist.  The group argues, hey, there's Black Pride and Gay Pride, why don't they get their "pride" too.  It strikes me as a racist question, but at the same time, it's an interesting one that deserves an answer.

Why is Black Pride and Gay Pride okay whereas the other ones clearly set off our alarm bells?  To some degree, you'd have to ask a black person what they're "proud" of, and then think as to whether there's a similar "white" counterpart that doesn't come off sounding white supremacist.  Part of the problem is that I'm not convinced that American, for example, has a "white community."  We have white people.  They often live in the same community as other white people, but we don't define our community as "white."  We might attend the same church and define our community by our faith, we might define our community by our ethnic background - and be proud of both of those.  But I've never really thought of myself as a member of a white "community," nor been proud of it.

For example, I'm a member of the gay community and the Greek community.  I'm proud of my membership in both.  I define myself by my membership in both.  But I just don't think of being white the same way.  Clearly these guys do.

Having said that, gays certainly perceive the existence of a "straight community," even though straight people may not fully realize they're part of a specific community for being straight.  And I suspect that African-Americans recognize the existence of a "white community" even though most white people don't see themselves as a community simply for being white.

It's a complicated issue.  And I don't like saying that something is bigoted simply because it's feels that way.  But it does.

Thoughts? Read the rest of this post...

Romney adviser describes 'Etch-A-Sketch' policies

Via Think Progress, Romney Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom on CNN

HOST: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?

FEHRNSTROM: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.

We all knew that Romney's politics were cynical, and he's flip-flopped on a number of important issues like choice, gay rights, health care reform,  but I didn't expect his own advisers to come out and admit it.

What would happen if Romney got elected? Does he plan to push another reset button, shake that Etch-a-Sketch and pull a George W. Bush -- claiming a mandate for policies he never mentioned during the election?


This is a brilliant Web site that someone put up to mock the comment. Once you go the page, keep refreshing it.

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Gingrich says nothing as man calls Obama a Muslim at campaign event

RT @SarahH_CBSNJ: Man just called Obama a Muslim at Newt's Lake Charles event...Newt does not address or correct claim.

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Komen update: Morale "in the toilet" and CEO Brinker in "meltdown" — but won't resign

I've said publicly that Komen may have skated, and allowing that was a mistake. The problem wasn't the Georgia GOP hack that the CEO hired; it's (1) the CEO that hired her, and (2) that Komen itself is only half a charity — and half an agent of Movement Conservativism.

Yet, after that week or so of terrible publicity, only the hack had resigned. Nancy Brinker, the CEO and loyal Bushie, remained, as did the organization in its current form. (Note: I don't advocate killing Komen; just cleaning its house, thoroughly, of MoveCon dirt and dustballs. That includes, especially, its CEO.)

Now it seems the organization is still teetering. Some data-bits from the Huffington Post (h/t Kalli Joy Gray; my emphasis and reparagraphing):

Komen has been struggling to repair its reputation since the public backlash over its decision, at the beginning of February, to pull cancer screening grants from Planned Parenthood because some of its clinics perform abortions.

Komen ultimately decided to restore Planned Parenthood's eligibility for grants, but the public had already soured on the charity for focusing on abortion politics rather than detecting and treating breast cancer.

Susan G. Komen Greater New York City recently decided to postpone its annual fundraising gala because executives "were not certain about our ability to fundraise in the near term," spokesperson Vern Calhoun said in a statement.

And:

A Komen insider told HuffPost that "employee morale is in the toilet" since Komen leadership made the controversial decision to defund Planned Parenthood[.]

And about that CEO:

"[CEO Nancy] Brinker [is] in complete meltdown," the source wrote to HuffPost. "People want her to resign but she won't." Brinker did not respond to a request for comment.

Let me be clear. Inside this organization there are a lot of people pushing Brinker to get out.

Can't we help them?

Seriously. An organized push now — ideally cored by a small cadre of activist women and supported by the rest of us — could restart the campaign and topple the teetering Brinker. She's ripe for a fall, according to this report.

By the way, there's a danger that Limbaugh will skate as well, and for the same reason. As soon as the news cycle chases the next missing blonde (as it were), he thinks we will let up. Just like with Komen.

Wouldn't it be nice to prove these people wrong for a change? It would, at least in my humble opinion.

Humbly yours,

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Buffet rule would generate $47 billion, GOP unimpressed

Of course they're unimpressed, because it generates a much more significant amount of money than the GOP plans to tax the poor and middle class. Forget all of the GOP talk about how there are so many Americans who don't pay taxes and ought to pay taxes even though taxing them would never come close to solving any financial problems. Here's a plan that actually delivers, so naturally the GOP hates it. Bloomberg:

Implementing a “Buffett rule” to require a minimum 30 percent tax rate for the highest U.S. earners would raise $47 billion over the next decade, according to a government projection.

The estimate for the proposal backed by President Barack Obama comes from the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s scorekeepers. Lawmakers updated the projection late today to reflect different assumptions about how taxpayers would adjust their capital gains realizations from an earlier $31 billion version.

“The president’s so-called Buffett rule is a dog that just won’t hunt,” Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a statement, adding that the proposal would have little effect on reducing the federal budget deficit. “It was designed for no other reason than politics. There is no economic rationale for it.”

Uh huh, the politics of raising $47 billion. Who needs it, right? Read the rest of this post...

Holding a gun makes you think others are, too

Researchers at Notre Dame and Purdue are set to release a study showing that a person holding a gun is more likely to perceive others as also holding a gun.

From Notre Dame:

In five experiments, subjects were shown multiple images of people on a computer screen and determined whether the person was holding a gun or a neutral object such as a soda can or cell phone. Subjects did this while holding either a toy gun or a neutral object such as a foam ball.

The researchers varied the situation in each experiment - such as having the people in the images sometimes wear ski masks, changing the race of the person in the image or changing the reaction subjects were to have when they perceived the person in the image to hold a gun. Regardless of the situation the observers found themselves in, the study showed that responding with a gun biased observers to report "gun present" more than did responding with a ball...

...The researchers showed that the ability to act is a key factor in the effects by showing that simply letting observers see a nearby gun did not influence their behavior; holding and using the gun was important.

In light of the recent events surrounding Trayvon Martin's shooting, this study could hold telling implications in the gun control debate. If George Zimmerman had not been in possession of a gun, not only would he have been unable to shoot Martin, he may not have felt threatened in the first place. Read the rest of this post...

Study: Exercise feeds the brain (plus more good news)

This is another story I've been meaning to get to, a health story this time.

It turns out that exercise feeds the brain, and does other good things as well that weren't understood before. It all has to do with discoveries in the relationship between exercise, the brain and glycogen.

Glycogen is one of the ways the body stores food — glucose — for ready use. (The other way is in "adipose tissue" — where you don't want it.) Unlike food stored as fat (which most bodies have to be trained to later access), glycogen is starch — like sugar, but longer molecules. Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscles, which means glycogen is easy to access.

To a lesser degree, glycogen is also stored and used in the brain (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

In petri dishes, when neurons, which do not have energy stores of their own, are starved of blood sugar, their neighboring astrocytes [support cells for neurons that store glycogen] undergo a complex physiological process that results in those cells’ stores of glycogen being broken down into a form easily burned by neurons. This substance is released into the space between the cells and the neurons swallow it, maintaining their energy levels.

But while they knew that glycogen was used in the brain, they didn't know when, until now.

■ Last year, scientists in Japan learned the following:

In the first of their new experiments, published last year in The Journal of Physiology, scientists at the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Neuroscience at the University of Tsukuba gathered two groups of adult male rats and had one group start a treadmill running program, while the other group sat for the same period of time each day on unmoving treadmills. The researchers’ aim was to determine how much the level of brain glycogen changed during and after exercise.

Using their [new] glycogen detection method [don't ask], they discovered that prolonged exercise significantly lowered the brain’s stores of energy, and that the losses were especially noticeable in certain areas of the brain, like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus, that are involved in thinking and memory, as well as in the mechanics of moving.

So during exercise, the brain "eats" its glycogen, plus any glycogen it gets from the rest of the body. When all the glycogen is all used up, marathoners call it "hitting the wall."

So far so good; comports with "what we know."

■ Now for what we don't know. A follow-up study by the same group, published this year, looked both at brain glucose levels after single, isolated exercise sessions, and also after exercise performed as part of a four-week exercise program.

First, the brain after an isolated exercise session:

After the single session on the treadmill, the animals were allowed to rest and feed, and then their brain glycogen levels were studied. The food, it appeared, had gone directly to their heads; their brain levels of glycogen not only had been restored to what they had been before the workout, but had soared past that point, increasing by as much as a 60 percent in the frontal cortex and hippocampus and slightly less in other parts of the brain. The astrocytes had “overcompensated,” resulting in a kind of brain carbo-loading. The levels, however, had dropped back to normal within about 24 hours.

Good news for sure. A 60% increase in food to the brain, especially the frontal cortex, after exercise can only aid the higher brain functions.

Now for the brain after exercise that's part of a program:

In those rats that ran for four weeks, the “supercompensation” became the new normal, with their baseline levels of glycogen showing substantial increases compared with the sedentary animals. The increases were especially notable in, again, those portions of the brain critical to learning and memory formation — the cortex and the hippocampus.

In other words, you can make your higher-performing brain "the new normal."

■ There's even better news from unpublished studies from the same lab. The lead scientist says that:

“glycogen supercompensation in some brain loci” is "enhanced in rats receiving carbohydrates immediately after exhaustive exercise."

All good reasons to exercise. And be sure to eat that banana (or add carbs to your protein shake) afterwards.

My recommendation — If you can't make yourself exercise for long periods (I get horribly bored myself), do something really hard for short stretches; but do it regularly, like 4-5 days per week, every week.

My personal favorite is stair-walking. There are 20 stories in my building. One round at a walking pace takes no more than 12 minutes, up and down. If you have a five-storey building, do four rounds; it's the same.

Once you get your calves (and wind) used to one round, just stick with it, 4–5 days a week, every week. Twelve minutes isn't that long. Then increase the rounds to the number you want to hold at, and you're done. (I worked up to five rounds, but one or two, done regularly, is enough to do you a whole lot of good. Just get to a level you can hold to and maintain it.)

The good news is that (1) you can take an iPod and listen to anything you want (I listen to lectures — feeds the brain that other food); and (2) you'll be dead-alone, since everyone else on the planet, not to mention your building, will be riding those elevators.

You can even bring a buddy and chat.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Even the Ryan budget can’t please conservatives

The Ryan budget should be a conservative dream: Slash all domestic spending except for the Pentagon, and cut the taxes of the 1%. Medicare and Medicaid as we know them will be gone, and our pensions will be used to give Mitt Romney another tax break. But Conservatives don't seem to be buying it, 'not enough' they cry. Ed Kilgore (and half the blogosphere) gives their side of the story.

A charitable interpretation of the conservative's dilemma is that they are genuinely concerned by the prospect of budget deficits till 2040 and want to forgo the planned tax cuts. But a more likely explanation is that anything Ryan puts on the table is a no-win proposition for them and there is nothing he can do to satisfy them.

Quite possibly the holdouts' real objection is the exact opposite, that they see the Ryan plan as electoral poison. Voting against the bill while denouncing it as 'too soft' allows the ultras the best of both worlds: They get to preen themselves as being the most conservative of the conservative, while denying their electoral opponents the chance of running effective attack ads tying them to the Ryan plan.

One of the pitfalls of a political philosophy that champions the self-interest above all else is that its exponents are likely to follow it in all things, and put their personal political interest above that of the party.

The win-win proposition will continue after November. If the GOP does well, the ultras will claim that the Tea Party deserves credit for the success. If the GOP does badly, they will be well positioned to pivot Romney-style, and present their vote against the Ryan budget as a vote against the now-discredited Tea Partyism.

What the ultras understand, but Ryan, Romney and the rest do not, is that their backers are not spending their millions to put them in office. The real goal is to crank the dial of public discourse as far as possible to the right and keep it there. Read the rest of this post...