Sequester and public opinion? Advantage Obama

A batch of recent headlines gives an indication of where things stand in the Obama-Republican face-off over sequestration and the automatic government spending cuts that could kick in next Friday.

?GOP losing sequester blame game?

?Democrats' Economic Narrative Still Trumps GOP's?

?Poll: President Obama approval highest since '09?

?President Obama?s popularity surges to three-year high?

?Congress Approval Holding Steady at 15 percent.?

RECOMMENDED: Sequester 101: What happens if $85 billion in cuts hit on March 1

Polls and pundits aren?t everything, of course. Most Americans this weekend likely are far more interested in Sunday night?s Oscar extravaganza.

And most would likely agree with Atlantic associate editor Matthew O'Brien when he writes ? with as much truth as irony ? on the magazine?s web site: ?There is nothing more tedious in the world today than the sequester. The word itself sounds like a prescription sleeping aid.? There is, after all the gnashing of teeth over the ?fiscal cliff? last month, a bit of ?The Boy Who Cried Wolf? here for most people.

Still, if the sequester kicks in, thousands of federal workers could be furloughed, some national park programs could be curtailed, and things could be ?very painful for the flying public,? as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned Friday.

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The sequester no doubt will dominate the Sunday morning TV news shows as Republicans and Democrats angle for rhetorical advantage over the sequester?s $85 billion in budget cuts this fiscal year, split evenly between defense and non-defense programs.

At the moment, that advantage seems to be with President Obama and the White House. Just to flesh out those headlines cited above?.

Bloomberg News put it starkly this week: ?President Barack Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job-approval rating in three years and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents? popularity stands at a record low.?

Specifically, 55 percent of those polled by Bloomberg last week approve of Obama?s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009. But only 35 percent have a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating over the same period. The GOP?s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows.

Asked who is more to blame for ?what?s gone wrong? in Washington, those surveyed picked Republicans over Obama 43-34 percent.

Similarly, Gallup finds public approval of Congress ? just 15 percent ? is ?at the low end of the historical spectrum.? It?s not great news for either party, but Democrats have a slight edge in public approval ? 19 percent to 12 percent for the GOP.

Obama, meanwhile, enjoys ?his highest favorability ratings since his first year in office,? according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

?Fully 60 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama in the new poll, up slightly from October but a clear shift in opinion from an election year in which his ratings hovered in the mid-to-low 50s,? the Washington Post reported. ?And by 39 percent to 26 percent, the president now has more ?strongly? positive ratings than strongly negative reviews, breaking a two-year stretch in which intense opposition was on par with (or higher than) intense support.?

As a result, ?Obama holds the upper hand politically over congressional Republicans,? regarding deficit reduction and the sequester, the Pew Research Center and USA Today reported this week. ?If there is no deficit deal by March 1, 49 percent say congressional Republicans would be more to blame while just 31 percent would mostly blame President Obama.?

Much of this no doubt has to do with how the message is portrayed.

?One of the reasons Republicans are faring so badly these days is that the Democratic narrative, presented most persuasively and effectively by the White House, plays more easily into the national media?s preference for dramatic stories that evoke emotional responses,? writes Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call.

Thus, does Obama make his pitch in front of a group of first responders, asking if they ? or teachers, or Border Patrol agents, or air traffic controllers ? should be laid off ?to protect a special interest loophole.?

?Television covers this narrative better than it covers the Republican message, which is that the nation?s deficit and debt are at unsustainable levels and cannot go on increasing without profound economic consequences that will hurt all Americans eventually,? Mr. Rothenberg writes.

?We raised taxes last time, and we aren?t going to do it again? is not a compelling message, he writes. ?Until Republicans figure out a way to re-fashion the political debate and present their vision in a more compelling way ? which means telling stories that evoke strong emotions in average people ? the White House and Democrats in Congress will continue to have the advantage.?

On PBS?s The Newshour Friday evening, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks agreed.

?I personally think the likely loser in this is the Republicans,? he said. ?Unfortunately, when they embrace [the sequester], they are embracing a piece of legislation that makes no distinction between good government and bad government. It just cuts randomly across the board, and, worse, doesn't even cut the things that actually create the debt problem, which is the entitlement programs. So, to me, this is both a substantive and political serious problem for Republicans.?

RECOMMENDED: Sequester 101: What happens if $85 billion in cuts hit on March 1

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sequester-public-opinion-advantage-obama-141700720.html

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GOP Opposition To Hagel: Personal And Business

The fierce Republican opposition to President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary is personal and business.

The nasty fight long has been seen as a proxy for the never-ending scuffles between Obama and congressional Republicans. Barring any surprises, the drawn-out battle over the former Nebraska senator's nomination probably will end this coming week with his Senate confirmation. Still, his fellow Republicans have roughed him up. A vote is expected on Tuesday.

Senate Republicans also see Hagel as a political heretic for countering President George W. Bush on Iraq and backing a Democrat in last year's Nebraska Senate race.

The business is getting Republicans incumbents re-elected next year. Challenging Obama's nominees and policies has improved senators' standing with the conservative base as they fear tea party challenges.

Source: http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/GOP-Opposition-to-Hagel-Personal--Business-192708081.html

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Plants 'talk' to bees with electricity, say scientists

Bees use the weak electrical charge carried by plants to determine if they have nectar, a new study has found.?

By Marc Lallanilla,?LiveScience Assistant Editor / February 22, 2013

Bees can sense a flower's electrical charge, which tells them if the flower's worth visiting.

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Everyone knows that bees buzz around flowers in their quest for nectar. But scientists have now learned that flowers are buzzing right back ? with electricity.

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Plants generally have a negative electrical charge and emit a weak electrical signal, according to researchers at the University of Bristol in England. And scientists have known for years that bees' flapping wings create a positive electrical charge of up to 200 volts as they flit from flower to flower, according to a news release.

But can the bees detect flowers' electrical charge? While animals like?sharks are known to sense electrical fields, nobody had ever found that an insect could do the same,?ScientificAmerican?reports.

To test the bees' sensitivity, researchers filled a room with artificial flowers: Half of the flowers were electrically charged and carried a sugary reward, while the other half had no charge and a bitter solution of quinine.

The bees quickly learned to visit only the electrically charged flowers, and to not waste their energy visiting flowers with no electrical charge. But when the electrical charges were switched off, the bees once again visited flowers randomly, suggesting that they had been reacting to the electrical charges. [The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

"Animals are just constantly surprising us as to how good their senses are," Dominic Clarke, lead author of the study, published in journal?Science, told the?BBC. "More and more we're starting to see that nature's senses are almost as good as they could possibly be."

Bees and flowers, of course, co-evolved with a long-standing symbiotic relationship: The bees depend on flowers for nectar, which they use to produce honey, and flowers need bees to help pollinate other flowers.

Flowers use various means to attract bees and other pollinators. In addition to their electrical charge and alluring fragrance, flowers display bright colors ? and research has found that?bees see colors?three times faster than humans.

But bees ? busy as they famously are ? don't have time to waste visiting pretty flowers whose nectar has just been taken by another insect. "The last thing a flower wants is to attract a bee and then fail to provide nectar," said Daniel Robert, co-author of the study, in a statement. "Bees are good learners and would soon lose interest in such [an] unrewarding flower."

So flowers, the researchers confirmed, emit a different electrical signal after their nectar has been harvested. They found that petunias became slightly more positively charged after a bee visited them, according to ScientificAmerican.

That revised electrical charge acts as a kind of "No Vacancy" sign to other bees, which learn to trust the signals that the flowers emit.

"This is a magnificent interaction where you have an animal and a plant, and they both want this to go as well as possible," study co-author?Gregory Sutton told NPR. "The flowers are trying to make themselves look as different as possible. This is to establish the flower's brand."

How do bees sense an electrical charge? Researchers aren't sure, but they suspect the fuzzy hairs on bees' bodies "bristle up" under an electrostatic force, just like hair in front of a television screen.

Other scientists are excited about the possible implications this research may have for other nectar-gathering insects such as hoverflies and moths.

"We had no idea that this sense even existed," Thomas Seeley, a behavioral biologist at Cornell University, told ScientificAmerican. "Assuming we can replicate the findings, this is going to open up a whole new window on insect sensory systems."

Contact Marc Lallanilla at?mlallanilla@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter?@MarcLallanilla. Follow LiveScience on Twitter?@livescience. We're also on?Facebook?&?Google+.

Copyright 2013?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/zrTTMHP3NCM/Plants-talk-to-bees-with-electricity-say-scientists

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Make sure application & interview questions don't pry into health ...

Do your hiring managers know the law when it comes to asking medical or health-related questions during job interviews? Are your job applications toeing the legal line?

The ADA says an employer?s ability to ask disability-related questions (or require medical exams) is analyzed in three stages:

1. Prior to a job offer, the ADA prohibits all disability-related inquiries and medical examinations, even if they are related to the job.
2. After an applicant is given a conditional job offer, but before he or she starts work), an employer can make disability-related inquiries and conduct medical exams as long as you do so for all entering employees in the same job category.
3. After employment begins, employers can make disability-related inquiries and require medical examinations only if they are job-related and consistent with business necessity.

The most common mistake comes from hiring managers asking illegal questions during that first interview. But sometimes the mistakes are right there on paper.

Recent case: An investment company?s job application asked candidates to list ?all disabilities, procedures and operations.? One candidate refused, but did mention she was a cancer survivor. She didn?t get the job, then fired off an ADA lawsuit. The court sent the case to a jury trial, citing the disability-related inquiry. (Katz v. Adecco, SD NY)

Bottom line: Review your job application or have your attorney help. The document may be old and out of legal compliance. Maybe it makes illegal inquiries about things like disabilities, marital status or age. Read every question as if you were a member of a jury.

Online resource: Find an explanation of when and how to ask about medical issues in the EEOC?s Enforcement Guidance: Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees under the ADA.

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German: US to leave 8,000-12,000 troops in Afghan

BRUSSELS (AP) ? A German official is saying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has told NATO allies that the U.S. will leave between 8,000-12,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when combat ends.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters Friday that Panetta informed him of the numbers.

U.S. officials have yet to say publicly how many American troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-22-EU-Panetta-Afghanistan/id-cff27da14771462f99b764ef72c8499c

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Tweets reveal the happiest US cities

By Tia Ghose , LiveScience ? ? ? 3 hrs.

California wine country may be the happiest place in the United States, at least if its Twitter feed is any indication.

An analysis of the sentiments in 10 million location-tagged tweets has revealed that Napa, Calif., is the happiest U.S. city, while Hawaii is the happiest state. Beaumont, Texas, is the least happy, according to the findings published Tuesday (Feb. 19) in the preprint journal arXiv.org.

Many different organizations track happiness. The United Nations published a World Happiness Report ranking countries by well-being, while Gallup and Healthways collect polling data from the United States. But those surveys aren't measuring what people say in real-time instead relying on survey questions.

To see how tweets could reveal city-level happiness, University of Vermont mathematician Lewis Mitchell and his colleagues created a tool called the "hedonmeter." The hedonmeter collected 10 million tweets that had location data attached from 373 urban areas in the United States ? nearly 10 percent of all of Twitter's 2011 posts with location data. They then broke them into individual words.

To figure out which words were happy, sad or neutral, the team used ratings that came from 10,000 users of a website called Mechanical Turk, who assessed 5,000 common words. Curse words and words like "hate" or "wrong" tended to be rated as sad words, while words such as "lol," "sleep" and "funny" were rated as happy.

In general, the Bible Belt and the industrial Rust Belt, which straddles the Midwest and Northeast, rated as less happy than cities in the Western part of the country. Beaumont, Tex., an industrial city in the Gulf, rated as the least happy city, while Louisiana was the least happy state.

Not surprisingly, happiness correlated with income level in different geographic areas. In addition, happiness seemed to be inversely correlated with obesity rates in that area, but this could be due to chronic health problems that are more prevalent in obese people, the authors note.

The 10 happiest cities were:

1. Napa, Calif.
2. Longmont, Colo.
3. San Clemente, Calif.
4. Santa Fe, N.M.
5. Santa Cruz, Calif.
6. Green Bay, Wis.
7. Santa Rosa, Calif.
8. Simi Valley, Calif.
9. Lafayette, Colo.
10. Asheville, N.C.

The 10 least happy cities:

1. Beaumont, Texas
2. Albany, Ga.
3. Texas City, Texas
4. Shreveport, La.
5. Monroe, La.
6. Memphis, Tenn.
7. Battle Creek, Mich.
8. Flint, Mich.
9. Lima, Ohio
10. Houma, La.

(See List of happiest and saddest U.S. cities and states )

Of course, there are limitations to the methodology, like having a skewed sample of the population.

"Only 15 percent of online adults regularly use Twitter, and 18-29 year olds and minorities tend to be more highly represented on Twitter than in the general population," the authors write in the paper.

And as Alexis Madrigal notes at The Atlantic, it's possible these differences reflect regional or cultural differences in how people express their happiness, not underlying positive feelings.

Past research has found a variety of factors linked with happiness, including education levels, economic indicators and personality traits. For instance, a study published in 2009 found the happiest states tended to have more residents with advanced educations and jobs that were considered "super-creative." In addition, people living in the happiest states are more relaxed than their gloomy counterparts; States like West Virginia and Mississippi, which scored high on neuroticism also showed lower well-being scores, those researchers reported in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/tweets-reveal-happiest-u-s-cities-1C8502786

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Texas A&M Reveals First Look at Kyle Field Renovations

The Texas A&M?Aggies?proved in 2012 that they could hang with the best of the SEC on the scoreboard. Now, according to leaked pictures of the renovations to Kyle Field, it looks like Texas A&M is making real steps for its stadium to reflect that ascent.??

CBS Sports' Matt Hinton?was given a look at the initial renderings of the plans for Kyle Field, which will begin undergoing construction after the 2013 season.?First?announced?back in November, the?Aggies?embarked on a four-year plan to modernize the stadium that has housed the program since the 1920s.

If the renderings match the final product, Texas A&M's $400-plus million price tag may have been well spent. The changes include the addition of between 10,000 and 20,000 seats, which could wind up making Kyle Field have the highest capacity in the SEC.?

The school also has plans for a new state-of-the-art Champions Hall (pictured below), which will house all the trophies and banners accrued over the program's storied history. It's a massive expansion that marks Texas A&M's ever-growing commitment to making itself one of the?preeminent?college football teams in the country.?

One could even venture to say Kyle Field's expansion will only continue to do the work Johnny?Manziel?and Kevin?Sumlin?started last season. Expected to be a mid-tier team in their first season in the SEC, the?Aggies?went 11-2 en route to a Cotton Bowl victory over Oklahoma. Manziel, a redshirt freshman who had to battle for his starting job, won the Heisman Trophy after putting up one of the best individual seasons in history.?

It was a campaign that put Texas A&M on the map as one of the fastest-rising programs in the country. Once construction is finally complete in 2016?the work will be done in tiers over the next few?offseasons?to avoid disturbing the team?Kyle Field will exemplify the school's excellence.

?

Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1539203-texas-am-reveals-first-look-at-kyle-field-renovations

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