Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. It may be officially spring but winter wants to give us one more kick in the butt. Go away, winter! Let’s open this thread. What’s on your mind?

Another day, another poll showing buyer’s remorse for a new Republican Midwestern governor. This week it’s Michigan’s Rick Snyder, who won the governorship by an impressive 18% in November.

Think again. Snyder actually now has the worst numbers of this new trio of GOP Governors, with only 33% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. And despite his overwhelming victory last fall voters now say that if they could do it over they’d pick Virg Bernero over Snyder by a 47-45 margin. Snyder’s current status is definitely emblematic of the adage that the higher you climb the farther you fall.

…

Snyder’s ability to win big in a blue state was due to his successfully presenting himself to the voters as a centrist but he’s lost that image with a lot of folks over the last few months. In September we found 46% of voters in the state thought Snyder was ‘about right’ ideologically to only 26% who thought he was ‘too conservative.’ Now those numbers are basically tied with 37% judging him about right and 36% too conservative.

A few specific things are causing Snyder these problems. His signature Emergency Financial Act has been a giant thud with voters in the state. Only 32% of voters support it to 50% in opposition. Democrats are a lot more convinced that it’s a bad thing (71%) than Republicans are that it’s a good thing (53%), and independents split against it by a 45/36 margin as well.

Snyder’s also earned the ire of the voters because of the perception that he’s targeting collective bargaining rights. 59% of folks in Michigan think that public employees should have the right to collective bargaining while only 32% are opposed, and 49% of voters even favor a state constitutional amendment to guarantee collective bargaining rights while 37% are opposed to such a measure. While union households are obviously the most supportive of collective bargaining, nonunion households support it by a 53/39 margin as well so the voters Snyder is antagonizing on this issue go beyond who you might expect.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There will be a referendum on a bill to guarantee collective bargaining rights in 2012. Will this bring out the labor vote?

This next story is just weird. The founder of the “liberty dollar” is facing legal troubles.

After an eight-day trial and less than two hours of deliberation, von NotHaus, the founder and “monetary architect” of a currency known as the Liberty Dollar, was found guilty of making coins resembling and similar to United States coins; of issuing, passing, selling and possessing Liberty Dollar coins; of issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money; and of conspiracy against the United States.

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During the raid, about a dozen agents seized nearly two tons of coins that featured the image of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman. They also took about 500 pounds of silver and 40 to 50 ounces of gold, as was paper currency and other metals.

The 2007 raid was a development in a dispute between von NotHaus and the U.S. government. In a federal suit filed in March 2007 in U.S. District Court in Evansville, von NotHaus sought a permanent injunction against the federal government to force it to stop referring to the Liberty Dollar as an illegal currency and to require the removal of a warning from the U.S. Mint’s website stating that use of the Liberty Dollar violates federal law.

The coins had pictures of Ron Paul on them. Doesn’t it seem like there are a lot of really strange Ron Paul fans?

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. The thread is open, so c’mon in!

My husband is the chef in the house and he loves cooking shows (especially Top Chef). I don’t generally know who the famous chefs are but I do know one person I’m rooting for for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

Presented by Southern Wine & Spirits of New York

A winemaker, brewer or spirits professional who has had a significant impact on the wine and spirits industry nationwide. Candidates must have been in the profession for at least 5 years.

Sam Calagione
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Milton, DE

Merry Edwards
Merry Edwards Winery
Sebastopol, CA

Paul Grieco
Hearth
NYC

Rajat Parr
Mina Group
San Francisco

Julian P. Van Winkle, III
Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery
Louisville, KY

Delaware represent! Maybe our state can sweep some awards. We have an Oscar winner. It would be nice to have a JBF award winner too.

Donald Trump really is ridiculous. I don’t think he’s really serious about running for president but he’s entertaining in a weird way.

This morning, the hosts of Fox & Friends asked real estate mogul and presidential hopeful Donald Trump how he planned to gain the national security credentials necessary to sit in the Oval Office. An indignant Trump responded that “I probably have more experience than anybody” in the GOP field because of his international business dealings, and said that the way he “screwed” Col. Muammar Qaddafi on a land deal is a blueprint for how the United States should deal with foreign leaders:

TRUMP: I’ve been interacting with leaders of countries and leaders of business all over the world for all of my life. I think you guys probably know that better than anybody. I think I probably have more experience than anybody, whether I sell them real estate for tremendous amounts of money, I mean I’ve dealt with everybody. And by the way I could tell you something else — I dealt with Gaddafi. What’d I do with Gaddafi? I rented him a piece of land, he paid me more for one night than the land was worth for the whole year, two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land! That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed,’ but I screwed him!

Trump says he’ll be a good president because he’s done dirty deals. Well, at least he’s honest.

Welcome to your Monday open thread. It’s officially spring now! Today is the first full day of spring. Are you excited? What else is on your mind? Share it below in your open thread.

These Wisconsin Republicans are really classy. Judge Prosser (who is up for election in April) had some choice words for a fellow judge.

Madison – As the deeply divided state Supreme Court wrestled over whether to force one member off criminal cases last year, Justice David Prosser exploded at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson behind closed doors, calling her a “bitch” and threatening to “destroy” her.

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Prosser acknowledged the incident recently and said he thought it was becoming public now in an attempt to hurt him politically. Prosser faces Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election.

He said the outburst came after Abrahamson took steps to undermine him politically and to embarrass him and other court conservatives.

“In the context of this, I said, ‘You are a total bitch,’ ” Prosser said.

“I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted. . . . They (Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley) are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing.”

Gotta love that “apology.” He’s the victim! The chief judge is just sooooooo mean.

Is there ever a backlash against these guys who predict the end of the world which never happens? Now it’s Franklin Graham (son of Billy) predicting the rapture.

Graham said that Jesus told his followers that earthquakes were one of the signs of the second coming.

“Maybe this is, I don’t know. But regardless, all of us need to be prepared to stand before almighty God,” Graham said.

As he explained, an increase in natural disasters was just like how “as a woman gives birth to a child, those labor pains as they begin they start intensifying with more frequency.”

I don’t think he’s in the May 21st group (he’s not actually predicting a date). Has anyone else noticed the huge billboard on Kirkwood Highway? I wonder if their lease on the billboard lasts beyond May 21st?

Welcome to your weekend open thread. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend. I’m starting to give the house a long-overdue spring cleaning. What are your weekend plans?

Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher has died. He was 85 years old.

Warren M. Christopher, secretary of state in President Clinton’s first term and the chief negotiator for the 1981 release of American hostages in Iran, died Friday night in Los Angeles. He was 85 and had been ill with kidney and bladder cancer.

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Methodical and self-effacing, Mr. Christopher alternated for nearly five decades between top echelons of both the federal government and legal and political life in California. Among other things, he served as administration point man with Congress in winning ratification of Panama Canal treaties, presided over normalization of diplomatic relations with China and conducted repeated negotiations involving the Middle East and the Balkans.

At home, Mr. Christopher developed a reputation as a riot expert, investigating racial unrest in Detroit and in the Watts district of Los Angeles and later heading a 1991 commission that proposed major reforms of the Los Angeles Police Department following riots prompted by the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King.

He really had a varied and fascinating career. I urge you to go read the whole article. Goodbye, Secretary Christopher. Thank you for your service to the United States.

Ann Coulter is back. She had been dumped for younger, hotter mean girls but I guess Bill O’Reilly was feeling nostalgic. Here’s Ann Coulter telling Bill O’Reilly that radiation is good for you.

On The O’Reilly Factor last night, Coulter spoke about her recent column that cites a number of articles in the New York Times and “a stunning number of physicists” showing radiation has a positive effect on cancer patients.

A skeptical O’Reilly retorted Coulter’s evidence with this, “by your account we should all be heading for the nuclear reactor leaking and kind of sunbathing out there in front of — come on.”

Coulter responded by citing a study, mentioned by the Times , held in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population. “There may be some doses of radiation in the human body can ward off infection,” she said.

Joking aside, O’Reilly wanted Coulter to be “responsible” and admit that “some radiation will kill you.” Coulter refused.

I’d love to see the studies of those “stunning number of physicists.” I did here last night that most workers exposed to radiation have not had long term problems. The casualties of Chernobyl were mostly from the initial explosion. After 25 years, they no longer have an increased cancer risk except for thyroid cancer. The people living in the contaminated area do have more cancers and birth defects – just look at post-war Japan.

Welcome to your Friday open thread. How many of you are enjoying our very springlike day? Spring is almost officially here! The unofficial start of spring has started already, my crocuses have bloomed.

It’s Friday, Friday, working for the weekend…Welcome to the “world’s worst music video ever.”

Now you’re ready for the weekend! Did you know Sunday came after Saturday? Plus, Rebecca Black had to decide whether to sit in the front or back seat. Decisions!

I think perhaps Donald Trump is really running for president (major LULZ) because he’s trying to pander to the birthers.

Donald Trump got a little bit birther-curious in his interview with ABC News, saying of President Obama’s time growing up in Hawaii: “The reason I have a little doubt, just a little, is because he grew up and nobody knew him.”

Trump was speaking with Ashleigh Banfield in an interview that aired Thursday morning, and said “that anybody that even gives any hint” of not believing Obama was born in Hawaii, “they label them as an idiot.”

“Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy,” Trump said. “I was a really good student at the best school in the country. The reason I have a little doubt, just a little, is because he grew up and nobody knew him.”

I wonder what Donald Trump’s hair thinks? I’m pretty sure it must be sentient. The GOP presidential primary is going to be like a crazy reality show.

I’m sorry this next story is about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named but it’s really, really funny. Sarah Palin would beat Charlie Sheen for president, but she loses independents and Democrats. Charlie Sheen, BTW, is the most unpopular person ever polled by PPP.

We’ve found a lot of brutal poll numbers for Sarah Palin so far in 2011: down in South Dakota, down in South Carolina, down in Arizona, only up by 1 point in Texas, only up by 1 point in Nebraska to name a few. But this has to be the worst- independent voters say they would support Charlie Sheen over Palin for President by a 41/36 margin. Seriously.

Despite her deficit with independents Palin does lead Sheen 49-29 overall. We also tested Barack Obama against Sheen and the President leads 57-24.

Sheen is one of the most unpopular figures we’ve ever polled on. 10% of Americans rate him favorably to 67% with a negative opinion of him. The only people we’ve ever found worse numbers for are Rod Blagojevich in Illinois (an 8/83 favorability spread), Jesse Jackson Jr. in Illinois (a 10/73 favorability), and Levi Johnston in Alaska (a 6/72 favorability). Sheen’s -57 spread ties what we found for John Edwards in North Carolina the last time we polled him (15/72).

Bwahahahahaha. Run Sarah run! Please!

Welcome to your St. Patrick’s Day open thread. First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Who’s drinking green beer and eating corned beef and cabbage tonight? At my house, Free Radical made his own corned beef and we’re going celebrate home-cooked style. What are your plans?

By graymalkn (Flickr.com) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

One thing I find amazing right now is how many people from both the left and the right are talking about intervention in Libya. Supporting regime change in another country, what could possibly go wrong? That’s why this blog post from Tom Ricks (author of Fiasco) really resonated with me:

Contrary to many of this blog’s readers, I do think the United States should intervene to help Libya’s rebels. But I also think that invading Iraq in 2003 was a disastrous move for the United States, one that will cost us for decades to come. So it was with very mixed feelings that I read a letter urging President Obama to act, and saw it signed by so many of those people who urged us into Iraq:

Stephen E. Biegun     William Inboden     Danielle Pletka   Bruce Pitcairn Jackson        
John Podhoretz     Ellen Bork      Ash Jain     Randy Scheunemann     Paul Bremer              
Robert Kagan       Gary J. Schmitt     Scott Carpenter     David Kramer    Dan Senor
Elizabeth Cheney      Irina Krasovskaya     William Taft     Eliot Cohen        William Kristol 
Marc Thiessen     Seth Cropsey      Tod Lindberg      Daniel Twining   Thomas Donnelly         
Ann Marlowe      Ken Weinstein    Michele Dunne       Cliff May      Leon Wieseltier
Eric Edelman        Joshua Muravchik      Rich Williamson     Jamie Fly        Michael O’Hanlon
Damon Wilson     Reuel Marc Gerecht       Martin Peretz    

Yep, pretty much. If that group thinks it’s a good idea, it’s a terrible idea. I sympathize with the rebels in Libya but military intervention is not the answer.

I’m pretty amazed, but it appears that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is serious about running for president. He’ll have a lot of obstacles to overcome – he looks like Boss Hogg and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. He also has a Google problem.

A whopping seven of the nine results center on race-related flaps that Barbour has been involved in over the years. Google’s autocomplete feature draws on factors including the popularity of search terms. To explain what each of these searches refers to:

Haley Barbour racist: This one is self-explanatory

Haley Barbour civil rights: Ditto.

Haley Barbour citizens council: This is a reference to comments made by Barbour to a reporter last year praising the White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s. In Barbour’s account of his hometown of Yazoo City, they were actually a check on the KKK. Critics quickly pointed out that the groups were formed to push an ugly white supremacist platform, and Barbour had to issue a clarification.

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Haley Barbour license plate: Last month, Barbour was asked at a press conference about the proposal by a Confederate group to issue a state license plate commemorating Confederate hero and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. He responded: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen.” After another outcry, he subsequently promised he would veto the effort if it passed the Legislature.

Haley Barbour and watermelon: This refers to a recently resurfaced New York Times article from 1982 that reported:

But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ”coons” at a campaign stop at the state fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.

An old-time Southern governor against the first black president? Personally I think he’ll lose worse than Sarah Palin.

Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. It’s Wednesday of a really crappy week, especially if you’re in Japan. Does anyone have good news to share? I think we could all use some.

Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-Republican Jack Davis is running for Congress again. Jack Davis is the millionaire businessman who came so, so close to defeating Tom Reynolds in NY-26. I guess running for the seat is a hobby of his now. A new report shows why NY-26 is lucky that Davis didn’t squeak through in 2006:

A Republican candidate running for Rep. Chris “Craigslist” Lee’s seat in upstate New York isn’t doing his scandalized party any favors. Jack Davis, a local businessman vying for the seat, shocked local GOP leaders by suggesting that the area’s Hispanic farmworkers should be deported, and that inner city blacks should be bused in to pick the crops instead, as The Buffalo News reports. 

Davis made the comments during a February 20 endorsement interview with local Republican Party leaders—and it’s not the first time he’s floated the idea.  In 2008, Davis told another local paper:  “We have a huge unemployment problem with black youth in our cities. Put them on buses, take them out there [to the farms] and pay them a decent wage; they will work.”

*TWITCH* I think you can see why despite his name recognition and his money, Davis didn’t get the nomination.

I’ve never been a fan of the Huffington Post (too much celebrity gossip and pseudoscience) but they did feature a lot of good political reporters. Arianna Huffington has decided there’s more money on the other side of the aisle I guess.

Bloggers have been coming and going very rapidly over at Huffington Post since Arianna Huffington sold out to AOL last month. There has been mounting speculation about the death of the once liberal-leaning HuffPo in light of editorial changes. Well, we can now confirm that the old HuffPo is dead and something hideous is sprouting in its place. We know this because of the revelation today that right-wing extremist Andrew Breitbart is now blogging for Huffington.

And what has Breitbart chosen to write about in his premiere post? His friend James O’Keefe.

The latest James O’Keefe success story against NPR has taken a predictable pattern — panicked press releases and firings, followed by denunciation of O’Keefe in a belated attempt to discredit him. Naturally, conservatives are crowing about it, but I wanted to give a little perspective to those Huffington Post readers — whatever your political stripe — who share my passion for free speech, honest debate, and fairness in the media.

Fairness? Hahahahahaha. How many of you have a HuffPo habit? Try to break your addiction.

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Today is the 15th of March, or as its known more ominously, the Ides of March. I didn’t realize the Ides of March actually referred to a nuclear accident. I had trouble sleeping last night thinking about the Fukushima plant in Japan. There are 50 brave heroes left at the plant fighting to prevent a worse accident. There is a lot of false information out there about the accident and the radiation spread. I’m not trusting mainstream news sources, instead I’m looking at updates from the IAEA, All Things Nuclear, Scientific American and other science-based sources. They are generally slower with news than news sites but have accurate and verified information.

One channel you definitely shouldn’t watch for information on nuclear matters is Fox.

This map of nuclear power plants in Japan showed up on Fox News.

One name seems out of place on the graphic — that of “Shibuyaeggman.”

It doesn’t show up on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s list of Japanese nuclear power stations, and this map of Japanese nuclear installations from the Department of Energy’s International Nuclear Safety Center doesn’t have any listing for “Shibuyaeggman,” and doesn’t show a nuclear power plant anywhere near the location on the Fox News map. So I did a little research.

A quick Googling of “shibuyaeggman” turned up no meaningful results. A Nexis search was also fruitless. However, further inquiries revealed that Eggman is the name of a dance club in a trendy neighborhood of Tokyo called… Shibuya.

Perhaps the drinks are nuclear strength or maybe they serve hot wings. I wonder where Fox got this map because someone pulled a joke on them.

There are some signs of life from the non-crazy wing of the Republican party. A GOP freshman from NY criticized the debt/budget game of chicken being played by the GOP.

“The extreme wing of the Republican Party is making a big mistake with their flat-out opposition to a short-term continuing resolution,” Grimm said in a statement. “I know that there is some opposition to working with Senate Democrats from the extreme right of the tea party who would rather see a government shutdown than pass a short-term solution; however, as long as we continue to cut spending each time, we are keeping our promise to the American people to reduce the deficit and fix the economy.”

If more Republicans speak up like this, it should give Boehner some cover to deal with Democrats. Right now Boehner is chasing Teapublicans off the cliff.

Welcome to your Monday open thread. Welcome to daylight savings time, which I still don’t understand the point of. All I know is that I resent the time jump. It messes up my day (I hate resetting the clocks, too). Did anyone miss any appointments because of forgotten alarm clocks?

This just makes me mad. Michele Bachmann is considering running for President of the United States. Or should I say President of the United States except Massachusetts?

“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.”

— Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), quoted by the Boston Herald, while speaking in New Hampshire.

She later admitted her error saying, “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!”

Har har har, Republicans love America except parts of it. How is it o.k. for an elected official to talk this way? Why isn’t it scandalous, actually?

After the Sendai earthquake, there was some talk of a “supermoon” and that it was the cause of the earthquake. Bad Astronomer explains that the earthquake was not caused by the supermoon:

The idea of the Moon affecting us on Earth isn’t total nonsense, but it cannot be behind this earthquake, and almost certainly won’t have any actual, measurable effect on us on March 19, when the full Moon is at its closest.

So, how can I be so sure?

Here’s the deal. The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, so sometimes it’s closer to us and sometimes farther away. At perigee (closest point) it can be as close as 354,000 km (220,000 miles). At apogee, it can be as far as 410,000 km (254,000 miles). Since the Moon orbits the Earth every month or so, it goes between these two extremes every two weeks. So if, say, it’s at apogee on the first of the month, it’ll be at perigee in the middle of the month, two weeks later.

The strength of gravity depends on distance, so the gravitational effects of the Moon on the Earth are strongest at perigee.

However, the Moon is nowhere near perigee right now!

The Moon was at apogee on March 6, and will be at perigee on March 19. When the earthquake in Japan hit last night, the Moon was about 400,000 km (240,000 miles) away. So not only was it not at its closest point, it was actually farther away than it usually is on average.

So again, this earthquake in Japan had nothing to do with the Moon.

If you hear others talking about the supermoon and how it caused the earthquake, now you can set them straight.

Welcome to your weekend open thread. It’s a beautiful weekend and I hope you’re enjoying whether you’re at work or at play. Anything on your mind?

I’d never thought I’d write something like this, but go read this extensive analysis of the deceptive editing of the O’Keefe “sting” of NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller at Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze. You won’t be sorry. It’s a sad world when Glenn Beck’s crew is doing something that NPR won’t do – defend NPR employees.

You’ll just shake your head in amazement at this next story. I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn that far right legislators are just taking orders from other organizations and don’t know what the heck they are doing. Case in point – Tennessee state Senator Mae Beavers has introduced a “birther bill” in Tennessee but has no idea what it means.

It’s a far-fetched goal, and it turns out that Beavers, who recently discussed her bill on Reality Check, a radio show devoted to debunking birther legislation, still has some research to do. From the transcript:

RC: What are the specific requirements in the bill?

MB: That they have to have the long form birth certificate.

RC: What is the long form birth certificate?

MB: Now, you’re asking me to get into a lot of things that I haven’t really looked into yet.

The host then asked the obvious follow-up: why put a term into the bill, if you don’t know what it means? Beavers responded, “Well, we are following some of the bills that have been filed in lots of other states, and you know how it is, you file your bill and, you know, you prepare before you go to committee.”

File first, understand later?

Beavers went on to state more clearly, “I’m not entirely sure what long form means.” She seemed genuinely surprised by the news that not all states even print long-form birth certificates anymore. “I only know about Tennessee,” she explained. As for her motives for introducing the bill, Beavers didn’t declare herself as an outright birther, but she noted, “I think people have raised questions about [Obama’s birth] enough to make everybody wonder.” Although the state of Hawaii has produced a certificate of live birth for Obama that has been been widely distributed, Beavers said proof of Obama’s citizenship must have gotten buried in her inbox: “I get emails all the time with things in them, you know; I can’t honestly tell you that I read all of them, because I get so many.”

It’s odd to hear all these so-called experts in birth certificates who at the same time know nothing about birth certificates or different state requirements. Quick survey: how many of you have a long-form, hospital-issued birth certificate? I certainly don’t. I only have the certificate issued by the state in which I was born. It was good enough to get a U.S. passport.

Schadenfreude-alicious. A Wisconsin state senator, one of the Republicans up for recall has an angry soon-to-be-ex-wife.

Recall target, Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac), talks a good game about family values.

But protesters outside the Hopper house this week in Fond du Lac were met by his wife who reportedly came out and told them: Hopper no longer lives there, but with his 25-year-old mistress in Madison.

Update: Two sources in Fond du Lac close to the recall effort say the Hopper maid has signed the legal-sized recall sheet. The maid reportedly said it’s likely Hopper’s soon-to-be-ex wife will also sign the recall petition.

Oh my. Apparently the mistress is a lobbyist for a right wing organization.

Welcome to your Friday open thread. Friday is the best of the workdays, because the weekend is coming up. The weekend, brought to you by unions. Thanks, guys! If you have some extra money, think about sending some along to help the recall effort in

This is great news!

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords plans to attend the launch of the space shuttle endeavor on April 19, almost three months after she was shot in the head outside a Tucson, Arizona, supermarket, spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.

Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, is the shuttle mission’s commander.

Gabrielle Giffords is amazing and inspiring. I’ll look forward to the media feeding frenzy over her public appearance.

Wisconsin Republicans might have won the battle in Wisconsin, but they haven’t won the war. Now the focus shifts to legal challenges and to possible recall elections. A new poll shows that at least two of the Republican state senators who are eligible for recall are very vulnerable.

Here are the numbers, sent over by a MoveOn official, in the districts of GOP senators Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper.

When asked if they would vote for Hopper or someone else if a recall election were held right now, 54 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 43 percent they’d vote for Hopper.

In Kapanke’s district, the numbers were even worse: 57 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 41 percent who said they’d vote for Kapanke.

It gets even more interesting. The poll was taken yesterday, before last night’s events, and fifty-six percent of voters in Kapanke’s district, and 54% of voters in Hopper’s district, said if their Senator voted for Walker’s plan, it would make them more likely to vote for someone else. Last night, both Senators did vote for Walker’s rollback of bargaining rights.

Right now volunteers are collecting signatures for recall and they’ve reported they are ahead of schedule. I imagine the vote to end bargaining rights will make the recall efforts accelerate.

Welcome to your Thursday open thread. It’s Thursday and I’m ready to pack up and get on Noah’s Ark. Seriously. I guess we should be happy the rain means April flowers!

Illinois has released many wrongly convicted people thanks to the work of students at Northwestern University. A previous governor actually imposed a moratorium because so many people had been released. Now it’s official:

The governor of Illinois signed a law on Wednesday ending capital punishment, saying it was impossible to fix a system that wrongly condemned 20 men who were later found to be innocent.

When the law signed by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn takes effect on July 1, Illinois will become the fourth state in the past two years to dispense with the death penalty after New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.

“To have a consistent, perfect death penalty system … that’s impossible in our state,” Quinn told reporters. “I think it’s the right and just thing to abolish the death penalty and punish those who commit heinous crimes — evil people — with life in prison without parole and no chance of release.”

The ultimate punishment will remain an option in 34 states and for federal inmates. No other Western democracies carries out executions.

“It is naive to think that we haven’t executed an innocent person. We stop looking after they’re executed.” said Ron Safer, an attorney who has defended death penalty cases.

Good for Illinois. It’s the 13th state to outlaw the death penalty.

It’s a RWNJ fight! Karl Rove’s astroturf group American Crossroads started running ads based on a Cato Institute study saying that unionized public workers make 42% more than non-unionized workers. Cato says Rove is misrepresenting the study:

But the author of the study, Cato director of tax policy studies Chris Edwards, tells me the ad’s claim distorts his data in two key ways. The ad says that unionized government workers get paid 42 percent more than non-unionized workers in general, a charge that seems intended to turn non-unionized workers of all kinds against unionized public employees.

In fact, Edwards points out, Cato’s study compared unionized government workers only with non-unionized government workers, not with non-union workers overall, and found the first group doing better. In other words, even if the study’s overall thrust is critical of public unions, Cato’s actual finding on wages would be likely to persuade workers that unions are a good thing — if you’re unionized, you make more than those in the same sector who are not unionized. Instead, the ad misrepresented the finding.

That’s not all. Edwards points out that the ad rips the 42 percent figure out of context, further distorting what his study actually found in another way. The study did claim the 42 percent number, but it went on to state specifically that this difference can be partly explained by “general labor market variations across states,” because “states with generally higher wages tend to be more unionized.”

The study concluded that once you factor in that variable, public sector unions can be said to increase pay levels by approximately 10 percent — not 42 percent, as the ad claimed.

Someone explain to me again why we want people making less money. I don’t get it. Isn’t the fact that unionized workers make more money an advertisement for union membership?

Welcome to Wednesday open thread. How are you spending this delightful Wednesday? I’m doing the same-old, same-old. Anything new in your world?

If there’s not enough keeping you up at night — we may be about to return to the oil roller coaster.

Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs is pessimistic about world oil supplies. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph reports:

Assumptions that OPEC has added 1.9m bpd over the last two years are wishful thinking. These new fields have been “largely offset” by attrition in old fields.

“We believe that OPEC spare capacity has already dropped below 2m bpd. The question therefore arises how much spare capacity is left to absorb potential supply disruptions in other countries,” he said. If this picture is broadly correct, spare capacity is already close to the wafer-thin levels that led to wild price moves in mid-2008.

….Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, said the long-denied oil crunch is starting to bite. “We cling to the comfort blanket that spare capacity exists, but it is mostly fictional, or inoperable. If you take 2m bpd off the figure, the whole dynamic of global oil supply changes,” he said.

World oil prices are largely driven by spare capacity these days. When it gets down to around a million barrels a day, where it seems to be now, prices can gyrate wildly based on very small supply shocks. Libya isn’t a huge supplier of oil on the global market, but the loss of their production probably removes whatever small cushion we’ve been operating with. Even a very modest disruption in another OPEC country could send oil prices skyrocketing.

“Drill baby drill” isn’t going to get us 2 million barrels a day spare capacity. It sure would have been nice if we were trying to find alternatives to oil dependence but that’s something liberals want so it won’t be done.

Olympia Snowe looks like she’s on the road to defeat in a Republican primary in 2012. All she lacks is a well-known challenger, but that didn’t stop some Republicans from getting defeated in 2010.

It’s been clear for a long time now that Maine Republicans want to swap out Olympia Snowe for someone more conservative. Our newest poll in the state finds that hasn’t changed: only 33% of primary voters in the state say they would support Snowe next year to 58% who prefer a generic ‘more conservative candidate.’

The gripe with Snowe is pretty straight forward. 58% of primary voters think she’s too liberal to 37% who think she’s ideologically where she should be. Most GOP voters don’t really think Snowe belongs in their party- 34% think she ought to be an independent, 33% think she should be a Democrat, and only 27% feel that the GOP is indeed her rightful place.

Snowe’s approval rating with Republican primary voters is a narrowly positive 47/44 spread. It may seem surprising that her generic reelect numbers are so bad when she’s above ground on approval but to keep those numbers in perspective Lisa Murkowski’s approval with Republicans in January of 2010 was 77/13 and Mike Castle’s in March of 2009 at an identical point in the cycle was 69/24. Their far superior numbers didn’t prevent them from being taken out by the Tea Party.

Snowe is already in much worse shape than Murkowski and Castle were at equivalent times in 2009. It doesn’t look good for her right now, but in politics a year is a long time away.

This excerpt from Lillian McEwen’s memoir about Clarence Thomas is NSFW and it will want to make you gouge your eyes out. Don’t say you weren’t warned!