Author Archives: John Grit

National Briefing | Southwest: New Mexico: Toxic Waste Removal Will Miss Deadline

by John Grit Posted on May 30, 2014

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t

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White Dwarf Issue 18: 31 May 2014 – White Dwarf

There’s only one word for it: waaagh! The Orks return to war with the mighty Gorkanaut, a towering killing machine second only to the mighty Stompa. We’re proud to present full rules for it (and the mighty Morakanaut) for your games of Warhammer 40,000. There’s also a plethora of Orky features and a Bad Moons guide in Paint Splatter. About thi

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Dataslate: Space Marines Strike Force Ultra (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

The Terminators of Strike Force Ultra are all but unstoppable on the field of battle. Supported by the most heavily armoured fighting vehicles, led by the most experienced warriors, and equipped with the deadliest weapons their Chapter can provide, these veterans can crush despots, conquer worlds, or stop an invasion in its tracks.   About the Book: Dataslat

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The World According to Bob – James Bowen

Bob Fever has swept the globe, with A Street Cat Named Bob vaulting its way to #7 on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale. With rights sold to 27 countries around the globe and a top spot on the British bestseller list for more than a year, this book has been a smashing success around the world. Now, James Bowen and Bob are back in Th

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Warhammer 40,000 (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of extinction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man, beset on all sides by ravening aliens, foul traitors and Warp-spawned Daemons, looks once more to its greatest heroes to stave off the encroaching darkness. There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only wa

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Dataslate: Space Marines Strike Force Ultra (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Terminators of Strike Force Ultra are all but unstoppable on the field of battle. Supported by the most heavily armoured fighting vehicles, led by the most experienced warriors, and equipped with the deadliest weapons their Chapter can provide, these veterans can crush despots, conquer worlds, or stop an invasion in its tracks.   About the Book: Dataslat

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes,

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White Dwarf Issue 17: 24 May 2014 – White Dwarf

The Black Legion face off against the forces of the Imperium in a Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report, while Dan takes a look at allying armies in the far future. With the release of some new paint sets we also revisit the Citadel painting system. About this Series: White Dwarf is Games Workshop’s weekly magazine, and boasts a wealth of great content, from t

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Backyard Vegetable Gardening Guide – Larry Stebbins

This monthly organic vegetable gardening guide leads the beginner and veteran gardener through the seasons. It begins with how to plan and design a garden to many other tips and suggestions that will ensure a bountiful harvest. Although it was written primarily for the Colorado front range, it is widely applicable to most mid to northern states. 

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Warhammer 40,000 (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of extinction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man, beset on all sides by ravening aliens, foul traitors and Warp-spawned Daemons, looks once more to its greatest heroes to stave off the encroaching darkness. There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only wa

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National Briefing | Southwest: New Mexico: Toxic Waste Removal Will Miss Deadline

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The Trade Deficit Is Down, But There’s a Catch

by John Grit Posted on March 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest trade deficit numbers:

The U.S. current-account deficit sank to the lowest level in more than 14 years at the end of 2013, reflecting a smaller trade gap and better returns on assets Americans own abroad….The gap, which has narrowed 20% from a year earlier, now represents 1.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. That’s the smallest shortfall as a share of the U.S. economy since 1997.

That’s all good, but there’s a caveat: since 2009, the overall trade deficit has been flat while net imports of oil have decreased by about $50 billion per quarter. This means that net imports of all other goods have actually increased. The fracking boom is helping us out, but only temporarily. We still have a fairly chronic trade deficit problem everywhere else. More here on why this was probably inevitable.

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The Trade Deficit Is Down, But There’s a Catch

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Virginia Republicans Change Vote-Counting Rules While Counting Votes

by John Grit Posted on November 11, 2013

Mother Jones

The race to become Virginia’s next attorney general remains in flux nearly a week after Election Day. Republican Mark Obenshain led Democrat Mark Herring by a little over 1,000 votes the day after the election, but that advantage whittled away to a toss-up as more exact results came in over the following days. Obenshain leads Herring by a scant 17 votes—out of over 2 million total—as of Monday morning, according to results posted on Virginia’s Board of Elections website. A recount is a certainty.

Legal wrangling is a given during any recount, but Virginia Republicans got off to an early start over the weekend, potentially exploiting the state’s new voter ID law to cast aside likely Democratic votes.

The vast majority of Virginia’s votes had already been tabulated by the end of last week, but a swath remains outstanding in parts of Fairfax County, a string of DC suburbs in Northern Virginia. Fairfax is still tallying provisional ballots—disputed votes that were set aside on Election Day. Virginia introduced a new strict photo ID requirement for the 2014 election; voters who lacked proper identification on Election Day could cast a provisional ballot to be assessed later. Fairfax County had previously allowed a lawyer or authorized representative to advocate on behalf of counting a provisional ballot during hearings to assess those votes. But on Friday, the Republican-controlled state Board of Elections sent a memo to the county ordering an end to this practice, shifting the rules after the election and midway through counting the votes.

As local radio station WTOP put it:

The state Electoral Board decided Friday to change the rules that had been followed in Fairfax County and ban legal representatives from stepping in to help get the ballot counted, unless the voter him or herself is there.

County Electoral Board Secretary Brian Shoeneman says he and board chairman Seth Stark disagree with the ruling, but they have to comply. The board is voting on some provisional ballots later Saturday.

“The office of the Attorney General advised us that this was the correct reading of the statute,” State Board of Elections Secretary Don Palmer says.

That attorney general is Ken Cuccinelli, the conservative who lost Virginia’s gubernatorial election last week. As AG, Cuccinelli filed one of the first legal challenges to Obamacare and asked the Supreme Court to uphold Virginia’s anti-sodomy law. Now he’s telling Fairfax to change its election rules mid-count.

Election expert Rick Hasen questioned the motivations of this new order in a blog post on Sunday: “It appears the directive came out after most of the provisional ballots (outside of Democratic Fairfax and Arlington counties) have already been counted—and it is not clear if the other counties used uniform standards in counting provisional ballots,” he wrote. “Further, it seems that the rule goes against both Fairfax County practice (which allowed legal representatives to argue for the counting of ballots rather than the voter in person), as well as Virginia’s Board of Elections posted rules.”

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Virginia Republicans Change Vote-Counting Rules While Counting Votes

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8 Awesome Lou Reed Videos You Might Have Missed

by John Grit Posted on October 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s extremely difficult to overstate the importance that Lou Reed had on modern rock music. Reed—the Brooklyn-born singer/songwriter and guitarist who led the remarkably influential Velvet Underground—died on Sunday at his Long Island home. He was 71, and the cause of death was liver disease. During his time with the Velvet Underground and his lengthy solo career, Reed rewrote large chunks of the rock ‘n’ roll playbook, changing the rules about the use of everything from bleak, provocative lyrics to feedback.

“I’ve always believed that there’s an amazing number of things you can do through a rock ‘n’ roll song, and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat,” Reed said. “The things I’ve written about wouldn’t be considered a big deal if they appeared in a book or movie.”

Reed’s talents and contributions also won him many fans in the literary and political elite. He was famously adored by Václav Havel, the late Czech Republic president and human-rights hero, who had Bill Clinton invite Reed to perform at the White House in 1998. “My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song,” novelist Salman Rushdie tweeted on Sunday. “So very sad. But hey, Lou, you’ll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.” And the official feed of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent out the following:

And as you remember his life, work, and greatest hits, here are eight fantastic Lou Reed videos that you might have missed over the years:

1. Lou Reed unplugs and performs with Pete Townshend:

2. Lou Reed chats with Elvis Costello:

3. Lou Reed on how much he hates MP3s:

4. Lou Reed with Metallica:

5. Lou Reed on rock songs and great American literature:

6. Lou Reed on Charlie Rose, with a dog:

7. Lou Reed paying tribute to the deceased Amy Winehouse:

8. Lou Reed selling Honda scooters:

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8 Awesome Lou Reed Videos You Might Have Missed

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Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group

by John Grit Posted on October 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking “junk science.” It’s a controversial outfit—a “group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis,” it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City’s attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine. The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don’t influence its work and agenda.

Yet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape. The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues. ACSH’s financial links to corporations involved in hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the past, but these documents offer a more extensive accounting of ACSH’s reliance on industry money—giving a rare window into the operations of a prominent and frequent defender of industry in the science wars.

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Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group

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Today I Fired a Gun For the First Time in my Life

by John Grit Posted on October 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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Since I write periodically about gun issues, I’ve long had a vague feeling that I should learn how to shoot a gun someday. Not to become an expert or anything, but just so I have some idea of what’s involved in a tactile, rather than an academic, sense.

So today I did. A friend of mine hauled out his gun collection and showed it to me, and then we headed out to a small indoor range and shot a few rounds each. So how did I do? The first gun on our list was a .40 caliber Beretta semiautomatic. On my first try loading the clip, I put the rounds in backward, which didn’t work so well. So I reloaded, popped the clip in, flipped off the safety, and did my best to hold the gun the way I had been told to. As you can see below, none of my seven rounds managed to hit inside the target area, but five of them did hit the paper. Not bad for a city boy!

So that’s that: my first time ever firing a gun. I loaded another clip, and on my second try I started to get the hang of lining up the sight and adjusting for the recoil, and did a little better. One round even went into the black. Next, my friend got out a .22 caliber rifle, and we plinked away with that for a while. Those .22 clips are cute little things, aren’t they? Here’s a couple of clips worth in my next target:

The first set all landed to the left. Then I overcompensated and got the cluster on the right. Then I apparently got it about right, and the next five rounds all went into the black.

Finally, we fired a 1 ounce slug from a shotgun. That puppy has a bit of a kick, doesn’t it? Oddly enough, though, I managed to fire it fairly straight anyway. We were using a silhouette target at that point, and my single round hit it in the shoulder.

So now I know what a gun feels like and how to handle one. That’s about all I know, but I figure any day in which I learn something new is a pretty good day.

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Today I Fired a Gun For the First Time in my Life

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President Obama and the Washington Monument Strategy

by John Grit Posted on October 4, 2013

Mother Jones

I have a question about the shutdown. This is real. I don’t know the answer.

By far, the most visible aspect of the shutdown has been the closure of national parks. Republicans have been making endless hay out of this, especially the highly telegenic barrier crashing of the WWII Memorial by elderly vets a couple of days ago.

But it’s not just Republicans. I’ve read a few more moderate voices claiming that this is just another example of the “Washington Monument strategy.” That is, the Obama administration is deliberately shutting down high-profile government operations as a way of making the public mad. In turn, they hope that anger will be directed at Republicans who are making absurd demands as the price of re-opening the government.

During the sequester fight, this argument seemed at least plausible. Agencies didn’t have a lot of discretion when the sequester cut their budgets, but they did have some discretion. Did Obama really have to cancel White House tours? Or did he do it because it was something that people would notice and yell at their congressional representatives about? It was unclear. It’s certainly possible that there was enough discretion in the law to avoid this if anyone had wanted to.

But this time around, none of that is true. By law, the government is shut down. By law, only essential functions are allowed to continue operating. And by law, national parks aren’t essential functions. They aren’t being closed as part of a media strategy, they’re being closed because there’s no choice. Right? Or is there more to this?

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President Obama and the Washington Monument Strategy

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Government Releases Obamacare Premium Levels for 36 More States

by John Grit Posted on September 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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With the start of open enrollment in Obamacare a week away, HHS today released a report summarizing the cost of premiums in states where the exchanges will be run by the federal government. In general, the news was pretty good. As with most of the state exchanges, the premiums are coming in below the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office:

Individuals will have an average of 53 qualified health plan choices in states where HHS will fully or partially run the Marketplace.

….Premiums before tax credits will be more than 16 percent lower than projected. The weighted average second lowest cost silver plan for 48 states (including DC) is 16 percent below projections based on the ASPE-derived Congressional Budget Office premiums.

….Tax credits will make premiums even more affordable for individuals and families. For example, in Texas, an average 27-year-old with income of $25,000 could pay $145 per month for the second lowest cost silver plan, $133 for the lowest cost silver plan, and $83 for the lowest cost bronze plan after tax credits. For a family of four in Texas with income of $50,000, they could pay $282 per month for the second lowest cost silver plan, $239 for the lowest silver plan, and $57 per month for the lowest bronze plan after tax credits.

I don’t suppose Ted Cruz will be mentioning any of this in his speechifying on the Senate floor tonight. But it’s worth taking a look at those numbers. After tax credits, that family of four in Texas will pay $3,384 per year for the second lowest-cost silver plan. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average family with employer health coverage pays $4,565 per year in contributions. Those aren’t directly comparable, but they’re close. What it means is that although Obamacare is hardly free, it does allow individuals to buy coverage for roughly the same amount they’d have to pay with an employer plan. No one is shut out of the market any longer.

The entire report is here. An excerpt of one of the tables is below, showing how much coverage will cost for individuals and families in various states.

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Government Releases Obamacare Premium Levels for 36 More States

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Do Chicken Plant Chemicals Mask Salmonella?

by John Grit Posted on August 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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Remember that proposed US Department of Agriculture plan to speed up kill lines at factory-scale poultry slaughterhouses, and cut way back on the number of USDA inspectors to oversee them?

Part of the proposed plan involves allowing the poultry companies to ramp up the antimicrobial sprays they aim at bird carcasses as they zoom along the kill line—a chemical fix to the problem of the various pathogens, often antibiotic-resistant, that are commonly found on chicken, including salmonella and campylobacter. A recent Washington Post story by Kimberly Kindy delivers an ominous taste of what this chemical deluge could mean for both the safety of the chicken you eat and that of the workers who prep it for you.

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Do Chicken Plant Chemicals Mask Salmonella?

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Former Indiana Schools Superintendent Raised Grade of Charter School Run by Big GOP Donor

by John Grit Posted on July 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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I love this story. Apparently Christel DeHaan is a big Republican donor who runs a charter school in Indianapolis, and last year she became a big problem for Indiana schools superintendent Tony Bennett. Why? Because lousy 10th grade algebra scores meant that her school would receive an embarrassingly low official state grade. What to do?

Trouble loomed when Indiana’s then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.

….A weeklong behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top staff at the Indiana Department of Education. They examined ways to lift Christel House from a “C” to an “A,” including adjusting the presentation of color charts to make a high “B” look like an “A” and changing the grade just for Christel House.

Hmmm. That sounds about like the kind of lame plan that a desperate 10th grader who had failed algebra might come up with. In the end, though, Indiana’s public education brain trust came up with a more sophisticated plan from the John Lott school of statistical analysis: Just change the state ranking formula so that Christel House would get a better grade.

Sadly, AP’s Tom LoBianco, who rounded up the incriminating emails about this, couldn’t tell us just how the formula was changed:

It’s not clear from the emails exactly how Gubera changed the grading formula, but they do show DeHaan’s grade jumping twice….Indiana education experts consulted for this article said they weren’t aware the formula had been changed.

I sure hope we learn more about this. Did they decide to reduce the importance of all math tests? Just algebra tests? Or maybe raise the importance of some subject that Christel House did especially well in? Or perhaps just toss out 10th grade scores entirely since, really, who cares about 10th grade anyway? Inquiring minds want to know.

Via Atrios.

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Former Indiana Schools Superintendent Raised Grade of Charter School Run by Big GOP Donor

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