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October 10, 2013
This Shutdown Is Officially the Worst Ever for Republicans
The shutdown has unambiguously backfired on the Republicans who started it, according to a pretty brutal new poll out from NBC and the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The results were released just as Republican leaders walked away without a deal from a White House meeting on increasing the debt limit. According to the result, 52 percent of Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown, while 31 percent blame President Obama. And that margin of blame for the GOP is even higher than it was in the 1995 shutdown.
The GOP currently has a 24 percent approval rating, according to the poll, while the Tea Party is even lower, at 21 percent. Both of those figures are all-time lows, similar to the results of a recent Gallup poll indicating that the party is at its lowest popularity for at least the past few decades.
Here are the rest of the approval tests in the poll, ranked from most to least favorable:
President Obama: 47 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable Democratic Party: 39 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas 14 percent favorable, 28 percent unfavorable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid 18 percent favorable, 32 percent unfavorable House Speaker John Boehner: 17 percent favorable, 42 percent unfavorable Tea Party: 21 percent favorable, 47 percent unfavorable Republican Party 24 percent favorable, 53 percent unfavorableBut wait, it gets worse for Republicans.
Remember a few weeks ago, when Republicans refused to pass a "clean" Continuing Resolution to fund the government without also doing some damage to Obamacare? Remember Ted Cruz's filibuster/thesis statement on why the American people would accept a shutdown for the sake of getting rid of an unpopular law? Since the shutdown, Obamacare has become more popular. Popularity of the law, still in a minority, jumped from 31 percent to 38 percent in a month according to their results. The percentage of those Americans who see the law as a bad idea declined by one point, from 44 percent to 43 percent.
Compared to a September CNBC poll, NBC notes, the percentage of Americans who oppose eliminating funding for Obamacare, even in the face of a partial government shut down, rose from 46 percent to 50 percent. And apparently, a slim majority of Americans now believe the government should do more to solve problems, not less. In June, Americans were split 48-to-48 percent on that question. Now? It's 52 percent for more, 44 percent for less.
Previous polls have had better results for Republicans, indicating that Obama isn't weathering his shutdown as cleanly as Bill Clinton did his. But even the NBC poll doesn't have good news there: according to their results, Obama's favorability rating has remained stable, compared to last month. The poll found one good result for Republicans, however. Americans slimly disapprove of Obama's stance against further negotiation until the government re-opens: 43 percent disapprove, while 40 percent approve.












October 9, 2013
Three Computer Whizzes Win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Three American professors won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today, for using computers to greatly expand the ability to forecast complex chemical processes. Martin Karplus of Harvard, Michael Levitt of Stanford, and Arieh Warshel of the University of Southern California, will share the $1.2 million prize, and the legendary honor of calling themselves Nobel Laureates.
Technically, the three men won for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems." That may not mean much to the non-scientifically inclined, but the dumbed down version is that they took something really hard and made it a lot easier. By creating some of the earliest and most powerful computer models in their field, their work has allowed chemists to run complex (and previously unworkable) calculations to simulate chemical reactions and predict how molecules and atoms will behave.
Here's the Nobel committee's announcement described their achievements:
The strength of classical physics was that calculations were simple and could be used to model really large molecules. Its weakness, it offered no way to simulate chemical reactions. For that purpose, chemists instead had to use quantum physics. But such calculations required enormous computing power and could therefore only be carried out for small molecules.
This year’s Nobel Laureates in chemistry took the best from both worlds and devised methods that use both classical and quantum physics. For instance, in simulations of how a drug couples to its target protein in the body, the computer performs quantum theoretical calculations on those atoms in the target protein that interact with the drug. The rest of the large protein is simulated using less demanding classical physics.
These advances in chemistry computing have saved researchers thousands of hours in costly trial-and-error experiments, allowing scientists to focus on new theories and concepts, instead of constant toiling in the lab. One committee member estimated that roughly 90 percent of experimentation can be avoided through computation.
While three of the winners are American citizens, none were born here, and all share dual citizenship another country. Karplus is Austrian, Warshel is Israeli, and Levitt is British, but was born in South Africa.
That's third Nobel Prize announcement this week, with two more big ones, Literature and Peace, to come on Thursday and Friday.
Monday, October 7
Physiology or Medicine: James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman, and Thomas C. Südhof
Tuesday, October 8
Physics: François Englert and Peter Higgs
Wednesday, October 9
Chemistry: Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel
Thursday, October 10
Literature: 1.00 p.m. CET (7:00 a.m. EDT)
Friday, October 11
Peace: 11:00 a.m. CET (7:00 a.m. EDT)
Monday, October 14
Economic Sciences: 1:00 p.m. CET at the earliest (7:00 a.m. EDT)












Nest Wants to Modernize the Smoke Alarm
Back in 2011, a company called Nest introduced a smarter thermostat, one that tracked heating habits, and had a touchscreen interface, and was WiFi-enabled so you could control it from your phone. By the start of 2013, they were shipping more than 40,000 per month. It was a high-tech update to a home appliance that nobody really thought needed an update. Sure thermostats are a hassle at times but they weren't unbearable.
Now, the company wants to update another appliance that sits in almost every household: the smoke detector. On Wednesday, the company unveiled its version of the sensor, the Nest Protect, which can be turned off by waving, and delivers notifications in a speaking voice rather than a blaring dissonance. It also gives a heads-up notification and small window to be shut off before going into full-blown alarm mode.
Trying to do for the smoke detector what they did for the thermostat makes sense for Nest as a company, but the case for upgrading isn't the same for both of them. For one, the thermostat is not an essential safety mechanism (although, those who have lived in New York City in the summer might disagree), while the smoke detector is. It leads to a few practical questions: When it comes to alerting someone to possible imminent danger, is it really better to ramp up the alerts than start at full blast? Are household smoke and carbon monoxide levels so unsteady that consumers need an app to monitor their levels? As Businessweek notes, the Nest lags behind smoke detectors wired directly to security companies that can alert the fire department.
Perhaps most puzzlingly, have smoke detectors really become such a nuisance that they are the new car alarm, and their alerts are mostly ignored? If statistics estimate that two-thirds of house fires occur in homes without working alarms or alarms without batteries, why is Nest even bothering to introduce a model that relies on batteries, just like older detectors?
Nest's thermostat is one of the most successful examples of what is commonly referred to as the "Internet of Things"—appliances that contain sensors and the ability to communicate their status digitally, often over a home network or the internet. In addition to Nest, Philips has a line of WiFi-enabled lightbulbs that can be controlled via a smartphone, and there are washers and dryers with similar functionality. But until the Nest smoke detector, the Internet of Things has largely been a luxury (again, "WiFi lightbulbs"). Smoke detectors are a necessity, and the proposition of compromising the rare time one needs a smoke detector for the hundreds of times the device can be oversensitive is one that might not fly.












October 8, 2013
Antarctic Research Put On Ice Due to Government Shutdown
The government shutdown has now reached every continent on the planet. Antarctic research stations have been shuttered into caretaker status, since the United States Antarctic Program—a department of the National Science Foundation—expects to run out of funds about a week from now. The caretaker operations allow operations that protect crew and property to remain active but any other research is put on hold.
"Under caretaker status," read a statement, "the USAP will be staffed at a minimal level to ensure human safety and preserve government property, including the three primary research stations, ships and associated research facilities. All field and research activities not essential to human safety and preservation of property will be suspended."
Lapses in research, especially in geographic locations as remote as Antarctica, can jeopardize decades of research. As one team described to the Associated Press:
A ship had been scheduled to arrive Wednesday with researchers, including those working on a long-term study that has tracked penguins and other creatures since 1990, said Brown University doctoral student Catherine Luria who was working with colleagues now there. That work, coordinated by Hugh Ducklow of Columbia University, relied on statistics and trend that need to be unbroken.
"If we miss a year, we'll never get it back again," said Ducklow, who has tracked a 95 percent drop in Adelie penguin population over the years. "It's pretty devastating for our project."
October, when the southern pole begins to warm up, is normally the beginning of research season on the continent, meaning that government gridlock could not have come at a worse time. In particular, researchers who have been their during the winter seasons are normally coming home around this time, and wrangling a flight out of the McMurdo Research Station is slightly tougher than buying a Delta boarding pass.












Wildcat Schoolbus Strike in Boston May Continue
A surprise strike by Boston school bus drivers on Tuesday left only 30 buses running, forcing school and parents to spontaneously rearrange their schedule to accommodate children left in the lurch. The union drivers on strike stated that they had stopped working because thy were unsatisfied with how the city's school transportation contractor, Veolia, were handling issues such as healthcare benefits and payroll.
The strike is being described as a wildcat strike, according to The Boston Globe, which is one that is not authorized by the union which is United Steelworkers in this case. John Shinn, a USW district director, released a statement that "The USW does not condone the current action, or any violation of our collective bargaining agreement, and has instructed all members of Local 8751 to immediately cease this strike ... and resume work as soon as possible." Some workers tried to do so at the end of the school day but were not locked out of the bus yards by Veolia.
The city reported current statistics that 33,000 of the city's 57,000 students use the bus system, and though they were alerted to the strike around 5 a.m., absenteeism in the school system tripled to around 9,600 students. About 82% of students made it to school on Tuesday. Mayor Menino announced plans to have school open an hour early on Wednesday to accommodate parents.
Other resources besides parents and teachers were stretched thin during the strike, including police officers:
Police officers working the overnight shift were ordered to continue working and to scour the streets for kids left in the lurch by the strike. Scores of officers patrolled the streets, some of them just advising children what had happened and others actually giving them a lift.
“Kids had a ball, thought it was fun,” said one police officer.












The 'Nuclear Option' Is Back as the Debt Deadline Approaches
The nuclear option — otherwise known as an arcane filibuster reform that would allow a bill to pass by a majority in the Senate, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to override a filibuster — is back in the wings of the Senate as the shutdown meets the debt limit in Congress this week. The proposal, this time from Senate liberals instead of from Reid himself, would in theory allow the Senate to raise the debt limit with a majority vote.
According to Politico, some Democrats would like to use the "nuke" as a threat in order to gain the six Republican votes needed to overcome an assumed filibuster on a vote to raise the limit. The measure, if passed, would throw the debt limit debate back into the hands of the House. The Senate is expected to vote on the limit hike on Saturday. Both houses of Congress need to pass something that raises the debt limit by October 17, or, the Treasury warns, we'll start defaulting on our loans.
The return of the filibuster reform idea is likely aimed in part at Senator Ted Cruz, who earlier this year called the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster the "traditional" threshold for raising the debt limit. But if Senate Democrats decided to go nuclear, instead of just strategically floating the idea as is the usual use of the "nuclear option," it's not clear whether they'd have enough votes to get it done. Here's the Washington Post:
It’s simple math. Lautenberg’s passing means Dems now only have 54 votes in the Senate. (His temporary Republican replacement can’t be expected to back rules reform.) Aides who are tracking the vote count tell me that Senator Carl Levin (a leading opponent of the “nuke option” when it was ruled out at the beginning of the year, leading to the watered down bipartisan filibuster reform compromise) is all but certain to oppose any rules change by simple majority. Senators Patrick Leahy and Mark Pryor remain question marks. And Senator Jack Reed is a Maybe. If Dems lose those four votes, that would bring them down to 50. And, aides note, that would mean Biden’s tie-breaking vote would be required to get back up to the 51 required for a simple Senate majority. That’s an awfully thin margin for error.
After yet another super exciting and productive day in Congress, the Republicans also have some new ideas: namely, that a debt default can't possibly be as bad as everyone says it is. Here's what they're thinking, according to the New York Times:
A surprisingly broad section of the Republican Party is convinced that a threat once taken as economic fact may not exist — or at least may not be so serious. Some question the Treasury’s drop-dead deadline of Oct. 17. Some government services might have to be curtailed, they concede. “But I think the real date, candidly, the date that’s highly problematic for our nation, is Nov. 1,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. Others say there is no deadline at all — that daily tax receipts would be more than enough to pay off Treasury bonds as they come due.
So, there you have it, the beginning of shutdown week two. The Senate Democrats are threatening to go nuclear and change the rules under an arcane process to try and pass something to avoid disaster, while many Republicans believe the disaster quickly approaching is about as real as the Loch Ness Monster.












The White House Pushes Back Against Report of Egypt Aid Suspension
Following a CNN report that the U.S. was about to suspend its aid to Egypt, the White House released a statement Tuesday night pushing back on those claims. The CNN report, citing an unnamed U.S. official, said that the U.S. would suspend all military aid to the country in the "coming days," but hadn't yet informed Egypt of its decision. The story, which was featured on Tuesday's Anderson Cooper 360 and briefly led CNN's site, follows months of speculation on the U.S.'s pending decision on its annual $1.5 billion in support to the country after Egypt's military deposed a democratically-elected Islamist government. Here's the White House statement from NSC Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden:
The reports that we are halting all military assistance to Egypt are false. We will announce the future of our assistance relationship with Egypt in the coming days, but as the President made clear at UNGA, that assistance relationship will continue.
It wasn't clear from CNN's first reports whether the rumored suspension would be across the board, a more limited suspension previously recommended by the president's national security advisors, or something even more limited than either of those options. Here's how CNN's national security reporter Jim Sciutto tweeted out the news on Tuesday:
US to suspend aid to #Egypt - "decision has been made...will take effect in coming days" - US official
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 8, 2013
That's in contrast to whatever an anonymous source told Reuters, who reported that the president was "leaning" towards suspending some aid to the country,"except to promote counterterrorism, security in the Sinai Peninsula and other such priorities." Later on Tuesday, the Washington Post published a separate anonymously-sourced story (with a curious dateline of Bali, Indonesia) on a partial suspension of Egypt aid, writing that the U.S. will "announce curbs on most nonessential military aid to Egypt" in a few days. That's led quite reasonably led some to focus in on the "all" in the White House's denial as a possible place for emphasis here:
My money is on this Egypt thing coming down to the word "all." Clearly an announcement coming that @jimsciutto got ahead of.
— Matt Apuzzo (@mattapuzzo) October 9, 2013
The Washington Post report cautions that "the announcement could be postponed."According to the paper's source, the reported suspension would cover "most" of the $1.2 billion in annual military aid provided to the country. Other reporters asking the White House for comment on the rumored aid suspension were told earlier this evening that there's no news to discuss:
Senior Admin official tells me directly #Egypt cut-off story is "not true." @blakehounshell
— Robert Satloff (@robsatloff) October 9, 2013
On cutting Egypt aid, WH says they have no new announcements to make at this time, FWIW
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) October 8, 2013
The U.S. still has about $584 million in aid remaining for Egypt in 2013. Last week, the administration reportedly deposited that amount in a federal bank for safekeeping while President Obama mulled over his options for suspending — or continuing — aid to Egypt.
The Obama administration has declined to determine whether the actions in Egypt constituted a coup or not, in part because calling the military overthrow of Mohammed Morsi's elected Islamist government a coup would automatically trigger a halt in U.S. aid to the country. The non-decision also allows the U.S. to turn aid on and off, in part or entirely, as the situation demands. The U.S. previously withheld some limited military aid to the country in August in response to an continued crackdown on supporters of Morsi's ousted government. While Egypt has been out of the headlines more or less ever since it looked like the U.S. was getting ready to bomb Syria, that's not because of any substantial improvement in the unrest in the country. Last weekend, at least 53 anti-military protesters died in Cairo clashes between pro-Morsi protesters and the military, who are backing the new, hand-picked government in the country. Nine members of the country's security forces were then killed, apparently in retaliation. Earlier on Tuesday, the White House expressed concern over the latest wave of violence.
The U.S. provides $1.5 billion in annual aid to Egypt, $1.2 billion of which is in military aid. Previously, the president was rumored to be considering a plan that would suspend only aid going directly to the Egyptian government (as opposed to other groups working in the country), and wouldn't include aid pertaining to security in the Sinai Peninsula.
This post has been updated with new information












Obama Will Nominate Janet Yellen for Fed Chair on Wednesday
The President will nominate Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen for her boss Ben Bernanke's job, according to the Wall Street Journal. That announcement, based on multiple reports, will happen on Wednesday. Bernanke is expected to leave the Fed Chairmanship in January at the end of his term. The announcement is not entirely unexpected: with Obama's favored Larry Summers officially out of the race, many believed it was only a matter of time before the president tapped Yellen for the job. Politico's Jennifer Epstein reports that the announcement is scheduled for Wednesday at 3 p.m.
Of course, Yellen's nomination is subject to Senate confirmation, and Congress is a bit preoccupied with the current government shutdown and impending debt limit deadline. In other words, it's not clear when her confirmation would make it to the top of the Senate's to-do list. The New York Times notes that Senate Republicans may decide to filibuster her nomination, requiring the Senate to pass it with 60 votes — but that's more or less typical at this point for major nominations and bills. Whenever her nomination is confirmed, the Journal reports, here's the short version of what a Yellen chair means:
Ms. Yellen has been the Fed's second-in-command since 2010. From that perch, she's been a close adviser to Mr. Bernanke as he devised new easy money programs aimed at supporting economic growth. Her nomination would mean the Fed is unlikely to make any unusual lurches in its interest-rate decisions in the near-term.
Until Summers dropped out of the running, Yellen was seen as an extremely-qualified underdog for the job. Summers, long believed to be Obama's top pick, withdrew his name from consideration in September in anticipation of an "acrimonious" confirmation process.
This post has been updated with new information.












The NFL Will Play Three Games in London Next Season
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has high hopes for the NFL's attempt to win over the U.K., a country that already has a popular sport called "football." The American league will play three games in London next season, with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons and Oakland Raiders hosting matches in Wembley Stadium. The games are a continuation of a years-long plan to introduce the country to American football: NFL started scheduling an annual game at the stadium in 2007, and plans to play two games there this season. And at today's announcement during the league's fall meetings, that schedule is expanding even further in 2014.
The NFL estimates that its own fan base in the country is about 12 million people. It's not clear how they got that estimate, but the league notes that the international games sell out quickly. It looks like the league is trying to build a strong connection between the Jaguars and London football fans in particular, thanks to its owner Shahid Khan (who also owns the Fulham Premier League club). As the BBC notes, the team will play one game a year in London until at least 2016, starting with its first London game later this season. The NFL's "Around the League" further stoked rumors that the league would like to send a franchise to London at some point by noting that "it's no coincidence that all three franchises are dissatisfied with their current stadium situations." Here's Goodell's Tuesday statement on the plan:
"Our fans in the UK have continued to demonstrate that they love football and want more. Both of this year's games in London sold out quickly. The fan enthusiasm for our sport continues to grow. By playing two games in the UK this year, we are creating more fans. We hope that with three games in London next year we will attract even more people to our game."
Next year's games will be the first U.K. games for the Atlanta Falcons and the Oakland Raiders. The dates and opponents for all three games will be determined later, when the league sets its 2014 schedule.












Conservatives Try to Get to the Bottom of This Anti-'Redskins' Movement
After President Obama added his voice to the growing calls to change the name of the Washington Redskins football team, several conservative commentators doubled down in support of the name, and tried to figure out the real reason the liberal media opposes it. Despite the racially offensive name, for these conservative pundits, the whole controversy is just a liberal ploy for their own ends. And they have plenty of theories on what those ends are.
The majority of people still do support the Redskins name, as an Associated Press poll this summer found 80 percent opposed to changing it. But Obama's position —
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