When will Minnesotans master winter driving conditions?

A snow scene from last winter. Hey, it happens at least once every year. Photo credits: Virginia Bergman.

Year after year Minnesotans, who should know better, continue to drive during winter storms as if they just immigrated here from the tropics. They were at it again within the past 24 hours and will probably continue throughout today and tomorrow. Paul Wash at the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:

After a day of drenching rain, Twin Cities commuters saw the slowest going of the winter season this morning as a snowfall of several inches took hold and lingered through midmorning.

The State Patrol reported many dozens of crashes and spinouts from Tuesday evening through the morning drive in the metro.

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Romney takes Michigan and Arizona

Okay. My curiosity about the battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the Mich. primary got the better of me. I went to bed early, but awoke later and couldn’t get back to sleep. So here I am posting Romney’s decisive win in Ariz. and his slim victory margin in Mich. – still, it was a victory margin sufficient to prevent Santorum from full-throated gloating over a win in the Romney family’s backyard. And in my opinion, the Republican Party lucked out as far as the odds in the general election are concerned.

Here’s the scoop from Politico's Alexander Burns:

TOLEDO, Ohio — Mitt Romney took a big step toward setting himself back on a path to the Republican presidential nomination, thumping Rick Santorum in the Arizona primary and fending off the potential nightmare scenario of a loss in his native state of Michigan.

Romney was the projected winner in Arizona as soon as the polls closed at 9 p.m. ET. Shortly after 10 p.m., The Associated Press and television networks called the tighter race in Michigan. With 67 percent of precincts reporting, Romney had 42 percent to Santorum’s 37 percent. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich trailed with 12 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

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Breaking: PBS NewsHour applauds Secretary Clinton! (video)

Secretary Clinton at the London Conference on Somalia.

I’ve noted time and again the obvious negative bias repeatedly shown on PBS toward Bill and Hillary Clinton. The recently aired, so-called documentary on Bill Clinton was just the latest anti-Clinton ugliness sponsored by the PBS network. 

Consequently, I was startled by Friday night's edition of the PBS NewsHour when first conservative David Brooks and then liberal Mark Shields praised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her response to the worsening situation in Syria:

Watch Shields, Brooks on Syria and Romney, Santorum Infighting on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Mitt Romney, the jokester?

Mitt Romney, official portrait.

Having lived in Michigan around the time (1963) that George Romney was elected governor, I continue to feel an affinity toward the Romney family, including Mitt. (It’s okay to like someone with whom you disagree.) So it was with some amusement and pleasure this morning that I read the Caucus (NY Times) report on the lighter side of the struggling GOP candidate. Michael Barbaro writes:

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — He riffed on the space program. He hammed it up over the housing market. He even cracked wise about burial plots.

Mitt Romney may be known as a hyper-scripted, ever-so-careful public speaker, but on Friday night, during an appearance at Western Michigan University, he was something else entirely: a deft and genuinely funny jokester.

Below, a sampling of his stabs at humor from the event:

On his father’s frugality:

“My parents’ grave sites are there in Brighton. My dad — trust my dad. My dad is a very frugal man. And he checked all over for where the best deal was on a grave site. And he found a place in Brighton — because we didn’t live in Brighton. It’s like, ‘how did you pick Brighton, Dad?’ ‘Well, best price I could find in the whole state.’ So if you’re looking for the best deal on a grave site, check Brighton, they got a good, got a good spot, and you’re near the former governor and the former first lady.”

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Standing with Planned Parenthood

Image courtesy of Planned Parenthood.

I had some firsthand experience a couple of years ago with the opponents of Planned Parenthood, and I possibly helped defuse a confrontation between a group of locals protesting the establishment of an area clinic by that venerable organization.

But feminist senatorial candidate Shelley Berkley is right. Today’s Republican Party has gone too far in its attacks on Planned Parenthood. I signed the petition linked to in the letter from Berkely, forwarded to me this morning by the Nation. 

I hope Katalusis readers will also take this opportunity to stand up for the rights of all women to adequate health care:

Dear Fellow Progressive,

The Republican Party wants to put Planned Parenthood out of business.

Already, the GOP’s witch hunt gave right-wingers at the Susan G. Komen Foundation cover to withdraw their support of Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings for low-income women, nearly ending hundreds of thousands of breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals for woman across the country.

It’s sick. It’s ugly. And if we don’t stop it, women are going to die.

Click here to sign my petition calling on Republicans to stop their witch hunt against Planned Parenthood.

 

Let’s be very clear: This isn’t about abortion. After all, just three percent of Planned Parenthood’s work is abortion-related.

This is about preventing low-income women from getting basic health services without permission from radical right-wing social conservatives. Ninety percent of what Planned Parenthood does is preventative care -- including 770,000 pap tests, 4 million tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and, yes, 750,000 breast exams just last year.

The bottom line: You know women who are alive today because of Planned Parenthood.

But it seems that the radical right-wingers behind this witch hunt care more about controlling women's bodies than they do about keeping those women healthy or even saving their lives.

We must take action right now to stop this sick and ugly attack on Planned Parenthood before it costs women their lives. Click here to sign the petition now.

It’s hard to believe that, in the year 2012, a group of right-wing men are out to stop women from getting breast exams because of their radical ideology.

It's hard to believe that, in the year 2012, elected officials care more about a political agenda than saving women's lives.

And I refuse to believe that we are going to let them get away with it.

Please sign my petition today -- and let’s stop this sick and ugly witch hunt.

Thank you for taking action to protect women in America.

Shelley

Paid for by Berkley for Senate

Contributions or gifts to Berkley for Senate are not tax deductible

Commercial drones for hire in the land of the free

The photo on the right shows an armed drone,

America’s current weapon of choice; 

so far, the recently authorized commercial drones are unarmed.

It had to happen, I guess. Once the Obama Administration embraced the hunt down and kill capacity of armed drones in the skies over Pakistan and elsewhere, commercial interests in America would seize on the unmanned aircraft for its own purposes. 

And it being an election year and our malleable president eager to please the people with the bucks, it's understandable that he would hasten to sign a law making it legal for your local real estate agent to check out your back yard without your knowledge, much less your permission.

The New York Times reports this morning:

A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue. 

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PBS continues its anti-Clinton diatribes

Alessandro Machi, Owner/Instructor at Myalexlogic.com, raised a good question in his comment posted in response to the Inquisitr’s report on the new PBS documentary on Bill Clinton’s relationship to Monica Lewinsky. Machi wrote:

I wonder if Soros is involved in some way in this "documentary" coming out. I bet this was planned just in case the media could not thwart the cry for Hillary Clinton to replace Barack Obama. Soros is tight with PBS, I bet they planned this documentary a couple of years ago, just in case.

Machi’s suspicions are well-founded. According to CNN, billionaire financier George Soros, a well-known Obama campaign donor, is now considering whether or not to create a super PAC to help the president win re-election.

Soros money also helps fund PBS, a network that boasts of its corporate sponsors, while self-righteously claiming “unbiased” news coverage. For example, in 2008 (a presidential election year), Soros’s Open Society Foundation gave NPR a $1.8 million grant.

And don't forget that during the 2008 Democratic primary, the NewsHour blatantly denigrated Hillary and Bill Clinton while fawning over Barack Obama. For example, Ann Taylor Fleming concluded one of her PBS NewsHour essays on Hillary Clinton by stating, “We want a woman president, but not this woman.”

The NewsHour staff has since continued to express its contemptuous attitude toward the Clintons at every opportunity. Machi is right. The PBS decision to run an anti-Clinton documentary during the 2012 presidential campaign is highly suspicious.