Rick Perry and the death penalty: Lethal Overconfidence - Yahoo! News

Lethal Overconfidence - Yahoo! News: "Asked at Wednesday night’s presidential debate if he ever worried that Texas had executed an innocent person on his watch, Perry answered, “I’ve never struggled with that at all.”

Certainty is cheap if one achieves it by ignoring the actual facts, and indeed, Perry’s answer to the death-penalty question asked of him Wednesday night reflected a staggering inattentiveness to the facts. As the founder of the Texas Innocence Project, I’ve had a couple of dozen clients executed during Perry’s tenure as governor. There are some I think could well have been innocent—Frances Newton, for example, who supposedly killed her husband and two children without getting even a spot of blood or speck of gunpowder on herself; or Charles Nealy, who did not remotely match the description of the person who killed the convenience store clerk. But there was no DNA in either case, and so I am left being unsure."

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No more mail? What would Ben Franklin think? - Yahoo! News

No more mail? What would Ben Franklin think? - Yahoo! News: "The letter carrier or clerk is the face of the mail. But hanging in the balance is a $1.1 trillion mailing industry that employs more than 8 million people in direct mail, periodicals, catalogs, financial services, charities and other businesses that depend on the post office.

Who would carry mail to the Hualapai Indian Reservation in the Grand Canyon? To islands off the coast of Maine? To rural villages in Alaska? Only the post office goes to those places and thousands of others in the United States, and all for 44 cents. And it's older than the United States itself."

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All of the 2012 Republican candidates on climate and evolution | Luke Scientiæ

These should be useful links...

All of the 2012 Republican candidates on climate and evolution | Luke Scientiæ: "...the full list of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates and their opinions on two key scientific issues: climate change and evolution."

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In Their Own Words: GOP Candidates And Science : NPR:"Jon Huntsman's recent tweet on science might not stand out in some crowds: "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," the former Utah governor wrote on Aug. 18. But among his fellow contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, Huntsman's declaration in support of both evolution and human-caused global warming made him an outlier. We compiled the Republican candidates' recent statements on climate change and evolution, and for comparison, included the consensus view among mainstream scientists and educators."

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Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine: "it was Rick Perry who is grabbing headlines.

Of course, that’s because what he said was outrageously awful. About climate science, he said, "…just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell." That analogy is so ridiculous it’s hard to know where to start; but a good place might be to simply say that Galileo had the advantage of being right. Just because a tiny fraction of people claim global warming isn’t real, or that humans aren’t responsible, doesn’t make them correct. Especially when going up against the overwhelming evidence compiled by a consensus of 97% of scientists who study climate as their career.

Also, the religiously conservative Perry should be a bit more circumspect on his analogies. It wasn’t scientists who were fighting Galileo, it was religious conservatives."

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America the Beautiful Slideshow featuring Ray Charles

This is very cool, posted by a friend on Facebook...

GOP candidates and science...

Stole this from a friend on Facebook...

"Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don't have a clue what it's actually about."

This is why I appreciate Huntsman's comment in Wednesday's debate so much: "When you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call to question evolution, all I'm saying is that in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science."

Many economists say Obama jobs plan will help – USATODAY.com

Many economists say Obama jobs plan will help – USATODAY.com:

Some predicted it would put hundreds of thousands of people back to work next year, mainly because a Social Security tax cut for workers would be deepened and extended to small businesses.

"Payroll tax cuts are very powerful," said Allen Sinai, chief economist of Decision Economics. "They provide a boost to direct income and, in turn, spending, which is important to growth."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, estimated that the president's plan would boost economic growth by 2 percentage points, add 2 million jobs and reduce unemployment by a full percentage point next year compared with existing law.

The heart of Obama's plan is an expansion of the Social Security tax cut, which took effect this year and is scheduled to expire by year's end. The tax cut now applies only to workers; it reduces their Social Security tax from 6.2% to 4.2%. Employers still pay the 6.2% rate.

Obama would renew the tax cut for a year and deepen it: He would drop workers' Social Security tax to 3.1%.

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