The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.

The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar

2010/02/05

Round-up on the news

Following up on the Inky's piece on the scientist caught up in "Climategate" (Comments following the piece are FULL of right-wingers claiming Global Warming/Climate Change is a hoax), the blog Booman Tribune goes into further detail, it reproduces the "hockey stick" graph wherein the temperature follows a fairly steady, very gradual cooling (with an especially deep dip in the late 1400s) with a very sharp sustained upward movement starting around 1900. Yes, there have been rises and falls in temperatures over the millennia, but not this quick. The graphs I've seen usually have changes taking place over very long periods of time. For the temperature to go up this sharply, this quickly, is unprecedented.

Very interesting piece on the origins of the housing bubble. I've noticed that neither of the progressive economists that I read, Dean Baker or Paul Krugman (For the record, they're both Keynesians and yes, they've both "called" many economic issues correctly) have a whole lot to say about what really caused the housing crisis, they both focus on the lack of action by the Federal Reserve once it was clear that there was a bubble. The right-wingers are correct in blaming Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/the Community Reinvestment Act, but the two economists I cited and James Galbraith here make it clear that the crisis was a whole lot bigger than just those liberal institutions.

Democrats are convinced that the message of the Massachusetts special election to replace the late Senator Kennedy was "Jobs, jobs, jobs."
The only real point of dispute was that many of them feel that getting health care done and done right, is crucial to economic health

How IS health care going? Hard to say. Kudos to Speaker Pelosi for keeping up the good fight, and refusing to just pass the weaker Senate bill but there's so much behind-the-scenes stuff going on that we just don't know.

Media Matters has been having a huge amount of fun following the misadventure of James O'Keefe, who entered the office of Senator Mary Landreiu (D-LA) wearing the outfit of a telephone repairman and claiming he was there to fix her phone system.
And no, it's not the slightest bit believable that Andrew Breitbart, O'Keefe's employer, wasn't fully informed as to what O'Keefe was planning to do.
Very, very interestingly, Landreiu is the senior Democratic member of the Homeland Security Committee, which means her office receives all KINDS of VERY highly classified information.
Could this case be far more serious than it appears?

A blogger looks at that ol' question about political opponents who use blatantly bad arguments: "Stupid or evil?"

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