Today - Iowa Caucuses launch voting for US President

By



JOHN EYSTER









??Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - 4:38 a.m.

Today - Iowa Caucuses launch voting for US President.

Countdown starting today:

Our US GENERAL ELECTION DAY will be on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. We will elect our US President as well as all 435 members of our US House and 1/3 (this year it is 33 on rotation and may increase with retirements) of our US Senate.

In WI, we will elect ALL 99 members of our State Assembly and at least half of the 33 members our State Senators. This year that is 16. We elected 17 in November 2010. Retirements may increase the number of Senate seats up for election.

There are RECALL elections anticipated in 2012... those dates will depend on the filing of successful RECALL PETITIONS and then the setting of the RECALL ELECTION DATES. Time will tell...

If you are interested to follow the PUBLIC OPINION POLLS related to the elections, there is the "PollingReport.com" website which compiles various polls.

Right now, they have posted the most recent (Dec. 27-30, 2011) Des Moines Register Iowa Poll for the Republican Presidential Preference with comparison to the Nov. 27-30, 2011 poll. Very significant shift in the poll among the Republican candidates.

Surfing the website, I was amazed at the wide-range of polls. Take a look!

With the Iowa Caucuses today, it is valuable to understand how they work. The REPUBLICANS and the DEMOCRATS follow VERY different processes in the caucuses. I recommend the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel?s editorial posted yesterday which has a VERY helpful chart of the Iowa caucus process, ?Caucus critics miss point; retail politics really matter.?

The editorial makes a strong case for ?retail politics? clarifying disagreement with the general argument that caucuses are unreliable predictor of the presidential race (especially on the Republican side). Too few people participate. Iowa is not representative of the nation.

The editorial asserts, ?Today's Iowa caucuses and the coming contests in other small states provide a necessary and welcome close look at the candidates.?

Interesting perspective shared by the editorial from Democratic strategist Carter Eskew who wrote on The Washington Post's website the other day that the caucuses have three main functions: to winnow the field, to wake up complacent front-runners (recall the message sent to former President George H.W. Bush in 1988); and to serve as a catapult for candidacies (think Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).

The JSOnline editorial asserts, ?The extensive retail politicking required to prevail both in Iowa and New Hampshire counts for something in an era of glossy television ads and hands-free campaigns in which candidates seem to want as little actual contact with voters as possible.?

And then says, ?We'll go with what Craig Robinson wrote back in May on the website Iowarepublican.com: "?The proper role is not picking the candidate who will win, but instead, vetting the candidates, whittling the pack, and picking the candidate who has done the most to win the voters with his or her ideas.?"

The final conclusion of the editorial, ?That's what happens in Iowa every four years - much to the chagrin of other states and the usual coastal observers who wish it weren't so.?

What do YOU wish?

Here we go...

Mr. E.

Source: http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/we-people/2012/jan/03/today---iowa-caucuses-launch-voting-for-us-preside/

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10 Certified Fresh Crime Thrillers

Most crime thrillers climax with the bad guy getting caught. Since Zodiac is based upon a real unsolved crime (correction: series of crimes), it's no spoiler to say that justice doesn't completely prevail in the end. In fact, it's that lack of a tidy conclusion that makes Zodiac even more unsettling; it's a serial killer movie about a real serial killer who may still be on the loose. David Fincher's long-but-briskly-paced thriller is a tale of obsession, as political cartoonist-turned-amateur sleuth Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) whose life is consumed by the search for the Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least seven people in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With remarkable period details, an exceptional cast (which includes Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr., Brian Cox, and Chlo? Sevigny), and a nail-biting sense of dread throughout, Zodiac is one cold case that emits a white-hot intensity.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924183/news/1924183/

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kazilla: RT @_Allistair: R.I.P Heavy D, Steve Jobs, Joe Frazier, DJ Mehdi, Amy Winehouse, Ryan Dunn, Gil Scott Heron, Gadhafi, Elizabeth Taylor, ...

R.I.P Heavy D, Steve Jobs, Joe Frazier, DJ Mehdi, Amy Winehouse, Ryan Dunn, Gil Scott Heron, Gadhafi, Elizabeth Taylor, and Nate Dogg Il y a environ 8 heures via TweetDeck

Source: http://twitter.com/kazilla/statuses/153277778479939584

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cfnews13: A Leesburg church is getting ready to give away two cars tomorrow, an annual way to help congregation members in need: http://t.co/718eoGVW

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A Leesburg church is getting ready to give away two cars tomorrow, an annual way to help congregation members in need: goo.gl/VvHyR Il y a environ 10 heures via HootSuite

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Neutrino parents call into question faster-than-light results

Particles? precursor doesn?t have enough energy to produce such speeds

Web edition : 4:40 pm

Physicists have found yet another reason to doubt recent reports of neutrinos traveling faster than light. The existence of such speedy particles would screw up not only Einstein?s theory of special relativity, but also the laws of conservation of energy and momentum.?

In September, the OPERA experiment reported clocking neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, arriving 60 nanoseconds early on their 730-kilometer journey between the European laboratory CERN, near Geneva, and the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. To try to explain the result, two new studies examined the particles that give birth to neutrinos. Both found that these particles, called pions, could not possibly have had enough energy to give rise to the faster-than-light, or superluminal, speeds indicated by OPERA.?

?We give a clear constraint on the superluminality of neutrinos,? says Xiaojun Bi, a particle astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences? Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. His team reported its findings in the Dec. 6 Physical Review Letters.?

If neutrinos can travel faster than light, they should get heavier as their energy increases. So there?s a limit to how fast the particles can zip along, dictated by the energy of their unstable pion parents.?

OPERA?s pions, made at CERN, have about 3.5 times as much energy as their neutrino progeny. That sets a neutrino speed limit that?s lower than the speed measured by OPERA, physicist Ramanath Cowsik of Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues reported in the Dec. 16 Physical Review Letters. Bi suggests that OPERA?s highest-energy neutrinos push this speed limit even lower.?

Achieving the mind-boggling velocities measured by OPERA would have required pions with energies 20 times greater than their offspring, Cowsik?s team calculates. At such energies, though, the lifetimes of pions would be six times longer, which has been ruled out by measurements from OPERA and other experiments.?

The most stringent limit yet on neutrino speed comes from high-energy neutrinos born when cosmic rays strike the atmosphere. The IceCube detector at the South Pole has measured these neutrinos to energies more than 10,000 times as high as OPERA?s neutrinos. If the speeds measured by OPERA are correct, the cosmic-ray neutrinos should be far too heavy to have been produced by pions. IceCube thus throttles back the potential speed of any superluminal neutrinos to be a few ten billionths of a percent above the speed of light ? a far cry from the few thousandths of a percent reported by OPERA.

For Cowsik and other researchers, these problems and contradictions suggest that the laws of physics as currently understood are correct. But physicists will still be watching other neutrino experiments that can check OPERA?s result, which may be clouded by some unknown source of error.?

?No one is saying that the OPERA result is impossible, even though it would require extreme revisions to what we know about physics,? says Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist at Boston University. ?But if it turns out to be true, I would say to Nature, ?You win.? Then I?d give up, and I?d retire.?

Found in: Atom & Cosmos and Physics

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337289/title/Neutrino_parents_call_into_question_faster-than-light_results_

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Now it?s India: Mahindra Reportedly Sniffs Around Saab?s Carcass

While the bankruptcy curtain has finally fallen on Saab, the Swedish automaker?s saga continues, as Bloomberg reports that Indian car manufacturer Mahindra is interested in purchasing at least part of the brand and possibly the entire company. Seeing as Mahindra has its own fair share of troubles, namely its long-delayed entry into the U.S. market, the idea of the automaker purchasing anything ? let alone another car company ? seems like bad comedy.

Mahindra is reportedly in the process of setting up a meeting with Saab?s two court-appointed bankruptcy administrators in order to discuss the possibilities. The meeting has yet to take place, and it?s currently unknown what kind of deal will be discussed by the two parties. A Mahindra spokesperson declined to comment on the matter to Bloomberg.

As you may recall from our previous coverage, Mahindra has been trying to import its compact, diesel-powered pickup trucks into the U.S. for years now, and has also toyed with the idea of developing a manufacturing plant here as well, but its efforts have been thwarted at every turn. Saab, on the other hand, was recently denied a last-ditch Chinese lifeline by GM, who has veto power over any potential Saab-saving deal, and is now dead in the bankruptcy water.

Still, according to Bloomberg, Saab CEO Victor Muller has said the company still has a chance to emerge from bankruptcy in some form, as several parties have expressed interest in the now-defunct brand. While Mahindra may be one of those interested parties, we have our doubts that it will be the one to pull Saab from the ashes.

Source: Bloomberg

Source: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/now-it%E2%80%99s-india-mahindra-reportedly-sniffs-around-saab%E2%80%99s-carcass-97767.html

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Humbled, Worldly and Focused, Former NBA Star Ricky Davis Sets Sights on Comeback

A born (and some say one-dimensional) scorer, Davis used his time abroad to transform his game into a far more well-rounded one.

Over the past 15 months, the man who once scored 20 points a game in the NBA has called three continents and four countries home.

Ricky Davis' travels started after he was waived the Clippers in the 2009-10 season -- following an 12-year NBA career -- when he picked up with Turkish club T?rk Telekom B.K in March of 2010. He left Turkey for China that October, signing with the Jiangsu Dragons, then headed to France in the spring, joining up with Chorale Roanne. Fully recovered from a knee injury that hobbled him during his years in L.A., he felt, as he put it, that he was "back."

So he came home. Urged on by a compact season that's already opened the door for 11 players out of the NBA D-League, Davis signed with the Maine Red Claws -- affiliate of his former team, the Boston Celtics -- and starts his NBA comeback tour on Thursday against the Canton Charge -- affiliate of another one of his former teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers. NBADLeague.com caught up with him after Red Claws shootaround on Thursday.

Kevin Scheitrum, NBADLeague.com: You?ve had a busy year. How are the frequent flyer miles doing?

Davis: I?ve got ?em built up. I?ve been to China. Been to France. All over.

NBADLeague.com: You were playing some great ball overseas. What prompted you to come Stateside, to the NBA D-League?

Davis: I think it?s better for me to stay in the States and work my way up to get called-up. Overseas is fun -- with FIBA, it?s great. But I think I?m more toward the end of my career.

NBADLeague.com: So obviously the goal here is to get back to the NBA as soon as possible, but do you have a mental timeline? What are your goals?

Davis: To come in and have fun. To come in and have fun, to help the team I?m on and get some victories, then let everything take care of itself. Pretty much trying to take it one day at a time, one play at a time and go from there.

NBADLeague.com: When you played, you were the quickest guy on the court. How has your game changed since you left the NBA?

Davis: Not at all. It?s pretty much the same game. I?m probably about two inches lower in my vertical. I?ve still got the quickness, and I?m just getting smarter as a veteran

NBADLeague.com: Sometimes it takes stepping away to learn something about yourself. What did you learn about yourself, about your game, after you left the NBA?

Davis: I learned a lot, of course. I just grew. It was more or less staying focused and looking back on some of the stuff that wasn?t good for me early in my career.

It was all a learning experience. I had fun with it, and now it?s about becoming a better player overall. A better teammate.

NBADLeague.com: Is there anything in particular you look back on and say, ?I wish I didn?t do this or that??

Davis: Not really. I did some bad things, but the only thing I regret is my triple-double. But everything else comes with experience. People forget I got drafted when I was 17, so I had a lot of young ?myself-myself? attitude, and now it?s more about being part of a team, and more of what I can do to help the team.

NBADLeague.com: You were always known as a scorer, maybe at the cost of the other parts of your game. But back then, you were scoring 20 points a game in the NBA. How much have you focused on defense and rebounding over the past few years?

People forget I got drafted when I was 17, so I had a lot of young ?myself-myself? attitude, and now it?s more about being part of a team, and more of what I can do to help the team.

Davis: Defense has always been there, but when you?re the leading scorer on the team you kind of shy away from the defensive end. But over the years, as you get more experience on defense, you learn that defense definitely helps in offense. And it?s been great working on rebounding and working on my whole-all-around game.

I want to get other people involved. I can score the ball. It?s like riding a bike. You never forget it.

NBADLeague.com: If you got called-up, you wouldn?t be the marquee scorer ? at this point in your career, what?s your value to an NBA team?

Davis: Being an all-around player, and still being that scorer. Definitely being a scorer is one of my skills, and it helps that I can definitely dish the ball and cheer my other teammates on. Instead of me being focused on playing 48 minutes, I?ll be focused on playing 25 minutes and helping get everybody the ball.

NBADLeague.com: How much did playing around the world make you appreciate what it?s like to play in the NBA?

Davis: A whole lot. One-hundred percent. It really humbles you. It brings you back to reality, and how you got there. [The NBA] was a good experience for me. I played 12 years, I could?ve kept going, but I think it was good for me to get humbled and start Path Two.

NBADLeague.com: What made you stick with the game, instead of hanging it up?

Davis: Those last few years with the Clippers, my knee was kinda hurting, I wasn?t explosive, but I didn?t want to let people know what was going on. I lost my explosiveness, and I couldn?t score the ball like I could in those two years.

Then, after the Clippers, I got my knee right, went overseas and realized I?m back.

NBADLeague.com: Just in the past year, you were in Turkey, China and France. Did you set up Get Bucket Brigades all over the world?

Davis: I sure didn?t. I actually wanted to, but it was hard with the language barrier. I got a couple church kids coming out [Thursday night], though ? 10-12 of them.

NBADLeague.com: How?d the language-learning go? Did you pick up anything?

The NBA was a good experience for me. I played 12 years, I could?ve kept going, but I think it was good for me to get humbled and start Path Two.

Davis: I can talk a little in Turkish, and I know a little French. Chinese is a little tough, though.

NBADLeague.com: The NBA D-League is known as a place where you make your mark in rebounding, defense and ball control. Are you looking to really play up the rebounding angle of your game? Maybe go after more balls than you normally would, and put less of a focus on scoring?

Davis: I?m coming in to grab boards and do what I do best, and that?s scoring. I added in the getting-people-involved part, but you gotta do what you do best, and for me that?s scoring.

NBADLeague.com: How much did having a shortened, compact schedule ? with a lot of expected player movement ? have to do with your coming to the NBA D-League?

IDavis: That had a lot to do with it ? it was a big plus. With a short season and not knowing your whole roster, and a short training camp, I think it?ll be good for me as a veteran player, to sneak in there and make a roster.

NBADLeague.com: A lot of the veterans in the NBA D-League talk about how much they enjoy being able to teach the younger guys, in addition to their own quest for the NBA. What are you gonna try to get across to the young guys?

Davis: You tell them to stay focused. You can lose focus from game to game to game, and the thing is to go game to game, don?t get too cocky, stay humble and make others better. I think that?s when you become more successful and powerful, when you?re making others better.

NBADLeague.com: A lot of the Maine fans know you from your Celtics days. How excited are you to play in front of them?

Davis: Absolutely. I think that was a great place for me, in Maine, and Boston, where we got the Bucket Brigade still over there. It?ll be great for me to go back to where I had a great time playing. And I?m starting in a game where we?re playing Cleveland, I mean Canton, so those are two of my old places. I?m looking forward to contributing

Source: http://www.nba.com/dleague/news/ricky_davis_reclaws_q_and_a_2011_12_29.html

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