Midday open thread

To repeat:

• In addition to preparing to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, BP intends to drill in the Arctic Sea.
• Joan Walsh explains why Michele Bachmann should run for president (and it's not for the benefit of comedians and cartoonists): because as it races to the "moral, intellectual and political bottom," Bachmann perfectly represents the modern Republican Party.
• Radio Telescopes have captured the best images ever of a black hole's jets.
• At Scholars & Rogues, wufnik reports on the British Library's exciting new exhibit on science fiction.
• Kyle Boberg offers the 50 best sports one-liners. Too many bad movies, but still a lot of legitimate gems.
• Salon's Megan Cytron has a wonderful photo essay on the world's most inspiring bookstores. For me, it all starts with Powell's.
• The San Francisco Chronicle has some never-before-seen photos of Harvey Milk and George Moscone.
• Conservative economists once again show their genius. How to get out of debt? Sell national assets. Which forever impoverishes the nation and puts national heritage in the hands of the least scrupulous profiteers, all for quick one-time gains that don't solve any underlying problems.
• And speaking of unscrupulous profiteers:

  Pacific Gas and Electric Co. underspent its state-authorized budget for replacing aging natural gas pipelines by $183 million from 1987 to 1999, and the California Public Utilities Commission doesn't know what happened to the extra money, a member of Congress said Monday.

• And there can be a better way:

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel is anything but a left-wing greenie. The party she leads, the Christian Democratic Union, is the political equivalent of the Republicans in the U.S. Her coalition government is decidedly pro-business. Often described as Europe's most powerful politician, Merkel's top priority is job creation and economic growth.

  Yet if the chancellor succeeds with her new energy policy, she will become the first leader to transform an industrialized nation from nuclear and fossil fuel energy to renewable power.

  In mid-March, Merkel stunned the German public and other governments by announcing an accelerated phasing out of all 17 German nuclear reactors as an immediate reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The chancellor now says she wants to slash the use of coal, speed up approvals for renewable energy investments, and reduce CO2 emissions drastically. That means that the 81 million Germans living between the North Sea and the Alps are supposed to cover their huge energy needs from wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass within a few decades. Indeed, by 2030 green electricity could be the dominant source of power for German factories and households.

• It can't happen here. It can't happen here. It can't happen here.
• Things are improving. Really. They are. Really.

  A normally peaceful northern city erupted in violence on Wednesday, as thousands of protesters clashed with security forces after a NATO night raid that local officials claim killed four civilians. NATO defended the night operation and said the four people who were killed, two of them women, were armed insurgents who fired on its troops.

  At least a dozen people were killed Wednesday as protesters armed with Kalashnikov rifles, axes, grenades and gasoline bombs battled with the police on the streets of Taliqan, the capital of Takhar Province, in the northeast, and then assaulted a small NATO base on the city?s outskirts, local officials and witnesses said.

  The protesters chanted ?Death to Americans? and ?Death to Karzai,? referring to President Hamid Karzai, as they hurled firebombs and rocks at the German-run NATO outpost, officials said. Some also fired guns. Smoke rising from the base could be seen across the city.

• Jane Mayer's latest is required reading. As is pretty much everything she writes.
• Global weirding is the new normal:

  Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a "new normal" of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday.

  "It's a new normal and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we're seeing," climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University told reporters.

  "We are used to certain conditions and there's a lot going on these days that is not what we're used to, that is outside our current frame of reference," Hayhoe said on a conference call with other experts, organized by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/W2pcUGUshlo/-Midday-open-thread

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