(Update: fixed the link to the online repository .... the link I used has been downloading one of the databases. This link should allow anyone to browse the reports online and has not demonstrated access problems that the main Wikileaks site has been experiencing)

This is just a quick post of links related to the recent Wikileaks Afghan War Diary release. Wanted to put these somewhere for my own use, figured others might like the information.

The Guardian highlighted 200-odd documents along with a spreadsheet and are advertising their site as "the place to come" to download the data. I'm not sure what criteria they used to select the incidents, but there is substantially more data available.

The main index to the entire war diary is located at: http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

This has all 70,000(ish) records sorted by Type, Category, Region, Affiliation, or Date. The entries are linked to a map with a groovy little pin showing right where it happened.

Also. If anyone is interested, here are links to the complete raw data from a mirror plus a few files containing various sorts and filtered results.

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary.csv.7z
CSV

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary.sql.7z
SQL

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary.7z
KML

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary-nato.7z
'All NATO entries, KML format'

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary_by-month.7z
'Entries by month, KML format'

http://leakmirror.wikileaks.org/file/straw-glass-and-bottle/afg-war-diary_scale1dot5.7z
'Entries with scale filter, KML format'

(Note: These are compressed databases in various formats and rather large. Don't bother downloading them unless you really know what to do with them is my advice).

Best counter protest EV-VAR! That is all.

File this one under cool stuff that it would be nice if the US had developed. This month in Italy, a new type of Concentrating Solar Power facility was brought online. To me, this is one of the more exciting advances on the solar front.

This report from the Guardian has a bunch of great details (my post just highlights one paragraph). In a nutshell, the advance uses molten salts in place of oil (the usual medium used in CSP power) to store the solar heat. There are many benefits to this process. Since it's inception, CSP technology has nominally answered one of the big complaints about solar generation based on photovoltaics, namely that such systems are only able to produce electricity when the sun is shining. This new system takes those benefits and multiplies them:

With the higher-temperature heat storage allowed by the direct use of salts, the plant can also extend its operating hours well further than an oil-operated CSP plant with molten salt storage, thus working 24 hours a day for several days in the absence of sun or during rainy days.

That in itself is exciting. But the higher operational temperatures also provide another key benefit.

Last but not least, the higher temperatures reached by the molten salts enable the use of steam turbines at the standard pressure/temperature parameters as used in most common gas-cycle fossil power plants. This means that conventional power plants can be integrated - or, in perspective, replaced - with this technology without expensive retrofits to the existing assets.

In my mind, that is huge. This could allow power companies to maximize their current investments while also moving to a sustainable future.

And, as a bonus. Instead of creating toxins, the salts used act as fertilizer if they ever end up in the environment.

This feature also enables a simplified plant design, as it avoids the need for oil-to-salts heat exchangers, and eliminates the safety and environmental concerns related to the use of oils (molten salts are cheap, non-toxic common fertilizers and do not catch fire, as opposed to synthetic oils currently used in CSP plants around the World)

What's not to love? So, while we in America putter around with inane slogans like "Drill Baby Drill" ... the inevitable march to a new sustainable future continues without us.

(h/t Gizmodo)

Hello. Meta-post here. Directed to the powers that be controlling the CSS, PHP and HTML that rule our blogging/commenting lives on the TPM Cafe site.

Sure, I could have just sent an email. And this email may or may not get read by someone who may or may not care and who may or may not have the power to grant my humble request. But! Then I can't encourage people to pile on and pay homage to the really impressive stylistic goodness that my request represents.

In a nutshell, the new blue link text scheme now in use across the rest of the site pretty much sucks. The color is so darn close to the normal black text that comment links don't stand out anymore when they are encoded.

Our red links at the Cafe rock in comparison. Can we keep them?


(P.S. It wouldn't hurt to put the red links back elsewhere, either, but I figure asking for action is a harder sell than asking for nothing to be done.)

Disclaimer: nazi stories are so not usually my cup of tea, but this is far too good to pass up - it's all over local front pages here in Coeur d'Alene. In fact, I've really gotta call "SCOOP" on Justin Elliott because this is sooo totally Muckraker these days. Anyhow. Get this. Someone tried to blow up the wife of an Attorney best known for defending hate groups such as the Aryan Nations ...  who was arrested last Friday for contracting someone to kill his wife.

Aaaaah Nazis. And the lawyers that represent them.



In this case, one Edgar Steele. You may recall him as the author of a little book entitled "Defensive Racism." No? Well, you'll be shocked to hear he describes himself as "exceedingly politically incorrect." He is best known for losing an historic case brought against the Aryan Nations that ended in the Nazis losing everything, their compound being destroyed and all sorts of lulz that gave the Aryan boys a big sad.  Before my time really (Fun Fact: an alternative local story holds that the original incident in the lawsuit involved egging the nazis - not looking for a wallet as claimed).

Last Friday, the politically incorrect Mr. Steele was arrested in Sagle for trying to hire someone to kill his wife. According to the Local Station KXLY:

The affidavit of probable cause in Steele's arrest shows that he was willing to pay $500 in cash for travel expenses and promised $25,000 plus an additional $100,000 if his wife's life insurance paid out.Steele, according to court documents, wanted his wife and mother-in-law killed in a car crash last Friday while his wife visited her mother in Oregon and wanted their deaths to look like an accident. Steele allegedly warned the hit man that he didn't want to be left taking care of a paraplegic if the accident was unsuccessful.

I think his compassion in wanting to be sure his wife didn't linger on as a burden is an extra special touch, because everyone knows how much it sucks to linger on as a burden. Anyway the nice thing about living in Couer d'Alene is that we have the federal court house and they bring all the idiots down here (or up, or maybe over ... you get the idea). Today was his arraignment.

That's where things start to get a bit strange. The short story; a pipe bomb was found attached to Mrs. Steele's car when she stopped in for an oil change, Mr. Steele doesn't get bail, Mrs. Steele freaks out over the restraining order and wants her $&*!~ car back, and to talk to her husband. Also. Now would be a good time to note, that while Alaska gets credit for her, Sarah Palin hails from just a few miles north of Sagle. Not really apropos of anything, just popped into my head.

Read more »

With all love showered on that attention whore of oily disaster, BP, some of her slippery compadres have been feeling a bit left out recently. Well, Chevron officials got together and came up with a plan to rectify the situation: Dump 500 barrels worth of the good stuff into the Salt Lake City watershed.



(via HuffPo)

At least 400 to 500 barrels of oil spewed into Red Butte Creek before crews capped the leak site. Nearly 50 gallons of crude oil per minute initially had spilled into the creek, according to Scott Freitag, a Salt Lake City Fire Department spokesman.

...officials said some oil had flowed as far as four miles to the Jordan River, and into a pond in the city's Liberty Park, near where residents reported dead fish in their ponds.

A crew was trying to collect and take birds to Hogle Zoo cleaning stations and other facilities, said Brad Park, zoo spokesman.

About 150 birds have been identified for rehabilitation, said Jane Larson, Hogle's animal care supervisor. About 75 percent are Canada geese.

"A lot of them are just coated from about the water line, but there are a number of birds that started preening and have oil completely covering their bodies," said Tom Aldridge, migratory bird coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Services.

Drill baby drill?

Or maybe it's about time we put this one to bed all together and try something new.




Blow baby Blow!

From the moment Specter became a Democrat it was no secret that the establishment wanted Sestak to defer his own candidacy. Progressives were rather irate pretty much from the instant it became apparent this would be the case. There were leaks and rumors of all natures, including that of  a job offer being floated. Sestak was asked a direct question about the rumors, and answered honestly.

Some have criticized Sestak for being honest. I wholeheartedly disagree. I appreciate the honesty. Actions taken from the White House are under scrutiny, that is a fact and a requirement. Those in the administration should not be engaging in anything that can't stand the light of day if revealed.

Thing is. Now that details have been revealed, the administration's actions seem to withstand the light of day just fine (unless there is more information forthcoming, which to me seems unlikely).

The current "case" as being presented by conservative blog warriors and nimrods seems to rely on a creatively edited reading of 18 USC-600. The preferred condensed version that seems to be the copy-pasta du jour appears like this:

Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit...to any person as consideration, favor, or reward...in connection with any primary election...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

OMGZ! Sure sounds like they've got 'em dead to rights. Call the prosecutor! Fine .... ummmm .... Clinton? Rham? I dunno. SOMEONE!

Well. Just simmer down there my scrappy Red-Stater friend. Just because Obama hasn't exactly lived up to some expectations does not make you any less of an idiot. Did you actually read the parts that go in the [...] spaces? Let's just check the work to be sure on this. The entire section reads thus:

Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The emphasis is mine. IANAL, but that seems a kind of important passage to omit. What act of congress is it that empowers the executive to take on an unpaid adviser? If he wasn't offered a paycheck, it can not even be argued that a congressional appropriation made it possible. In short. It seems clean to me. Hardballish? Yeah. Legal? Sure as heck seems to be.

Now, is the fact that Obama seems intent on turning the Democratic party into a flop-house for the flotsam and jetsam of an increasingly discredited corporatist ideology totally lame? Yes, indeed this is quite unfortunate. Not happy about it at all. I was glad to see Specter get his butt kicked. And I'm hoping to see the same happen to Lincoln. But good lord. This is just stupid.

In a bit of a surprise (to me), the Audit the Fed Amendment debate has been called to the floor.

CSPAN-Coverage here.

Sanders just introduced the bill with some amendments, and Dodd rose as a cosponsor to endorse it. Now Grassley is touting it.

Update: Now Brownback is arguing in favor of it. This is sort of surreal. His quote: "Congress created the Fed, the Fed didn't create congress". Calling BS on Bernake. Doesn't like the bill but loves the amendment. Loves him some bipartisanship on this and accountability ... and the GAO? Did I mention, surreal.

	Gee, never been so glad you tend to sleep with your clothes on ... eh kid?
Image of Blake Robinson in slumber captured by Pennsylvania's Lower Marion School District using his school-issued laptop.

When a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins accusing the school of having used the webcam in his school-issued laptop to remotely capture serriptious images of him in the privacy of his own home, the Lower Marion School district was emphatic. This was simply not true! They had never used a system designed to help recover stolen laptops for any other purpose.

The student's allegation told a story of being called in to the assistant principal's office one day in November, 2009. The administrator confronted him with images taken in his own home and accused him of possessing illegal drugs. The drugs in question turned out to be Mike and Ike candies. And the parents of the kid in question turned out to be pissed off. The original details were highlighted in a couple of posts previously made on this diary.

Right off the bat, something with the Lower Marion district's story just didn't add up. How could images taken by a system only used by IT professionals to track stolen equipment have come into the possession of a non-IT school administrator? If the system had not been used for anything but laptop recovery, why would the school have called the student in for a disciplinary discussion that was made a part of his permanent school record? And obviously, if Blake was being dishonest about the circumstances - how could he possibly have gained detailed knowledge of a secret school program?

But slowly a picture of the program is starting to emerge. Some of the key facts include:

• Two members of the district staff were authorized to activate the system on a laptop.
• Ten district employees were able to request that the system be activated for a laptop.
• The IT staff had made available a "secure website" allowing the data captured from tracked systems to be accessed by an undisclosed number of additional parties. Who had access to this data and what (if any) control capacities were built in is unclear. For instance, could the web system be used to change the picture frequency (which defaulted to 15 minutes)?
• Local police officers had been given access to the secure web site and reportedly used the data and images (collected without a warrant) to carry out laptop recovery. Unclear if any of the recovery operations involved charges being brought.
• Over 400 images were taken of Blake Robinson over a 15 day period of time the majority of which were taken in his home. These depicted Blake and other members of his family including pictures of him partially undressed and asleep.
• Additional images were taken in the Robinson home that were purged by IT staff.
• The monitoring of Blake Robinson's computer was justified by the school district because he had failed to pay a $55 insurance fee on the laptop.
  
• The school captured numerous shots of IM communications between Blake and his friends.
• The system was used on numerous other occasions which did not fall under the definition of "Lost or stolen". This is in direct conflict with statements made by the school district.
• At least 56,000 images have been recovered to date by the forensic analysis team hired by the school district to investigate.
• A federal magistrate judge is expected this week to begin the process of arranging for parents whose children were photographed to privately view the photos.

Interestingly, the whole thing could  likely have just blown over. Were it not for the district's inexplicable decision to write the incident up for Blake's school record.

Read more »

I have to admit, I'm none too fond of Blanche Lincoln. But it seems as things progress she is poised at the brink of becoming somewhat of a tragic figure - though not a particularly sympathetic one.  In addition to just plain not liking her, there are several factors that make me not entirely trust this recent announcement. One, of course, is my naturally suspicious nature (Hey! what are you looking at my keys while I'm typing for?!? Huh?).

First thing that raises my suspicion is this feels like a clumsy media set up. I woke this morning to the Huffington Post telling me 'ole Blanch was opposing Obama again! "Again?" thinks I, "When was the first time?" And I'm quite sure I typed such into a comment somewhere. The crux of her offense:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) said on Tuesday that her bipartisan Wall Street reform negotiations will continue, despite strong signals from the White House that exemptions in the bill for end users of derivatives are not up for discussion. End users are farmers, airlines, dairy producers or other companies that use derivatives as an integral part of their business, [...] Banks are seeking exemptions for end users, however, as a loophole to keep the derivatives market in the dark, as it is currently. Brokers and swaps dealers have been pressuring end users to lobby Congress for an exemption.

Then, hours later ... U-Turn! Josh Marshal proclaims, Blache Lincoln turns populist! While Greg Sergent observes that primaries have consequences and  "Lincoln is now tilting to the left on financial reg reform, possibly earning props from progressive groups". The Politico story causing all the hubbub dropped within hours the HuffPo one. A casual observer might think she made a full 180 in less than 12 hours. In fact, the opposite seems to be true (my emphasis):

Under Lincoln's proposal, manufacturers, agriculture companies and commodities producers would not be covered by this clearing requirement.

The merits of the exemptions and such are a different topic (that commodities thing bugs me), but it should be noted this announcement seems to conflict with Obama's desires. At least it represents a serious stand-down from the "all derivatives on an exchange" position. Push-back from the WH (or lack thereof) should be telling IMO.

Media nonsense aside, her statement itself kind of bugs me. Right off the bat, it bugs me because she proclaims her proposal's priority is to  "avoid future bailouts". Good Lord.  That's like saying your priority is to "avoid future rebuilding of New Orleans". There are many ways to fulfill this priority, some better than others. If one lets the city get flooded again and simply prohibits rebuilding, I'd argue it's not such a good plan. What we most desperately need is a serious plan to forestall another crash. In my opinion, I'm not sure we should explicitly remove any tool from the economic policy makers' toolbox, this hardly seems the problem. If we're worried about the misuse of tools, the most important thing is to realign the interest of policy implementers and regulators with the interest of the American people. I certainly hope this enters the political discussion at some point.

Another thing that bugs me is how absurdly broad the claims made are.

"It will include strong mandatory trading and clearing requirements as well as real-time price reporting that will bring 100 percent transparency and accountability to Wall Street. My bill will vigorously reform unregulated markets, close all loopholes, and protect jobs on Main Street," Lincoln said in a statement to POLITICO.

Ummmm. Really? Goodness, I was just hoping to catch a couple dozen of the worst loopholes and you got 'em ALL? Go GIRL!

Politico describes it as much like the house plan with less exemptions (which of course tend to reproduce like tribbles) with some sort of a plan to force the spin-off of derivatives. It's tough to discuss that part until we see what she really came up with. I have my suspicions, but I'd rather wait than speculate.

But this part, I think deserves a bit of deeper thought and was the point originally sparking this post:

Under Lincoln's plan, any "major swap dealer" would be barred from getting Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation backing, or funds from the Federal Reserve. That means that even if the big banks spin off their derivatives operations to separate subsidiaries -- as would be expected under Lincoln's bill -- those new commercial units would be allowed to fail if their derivatives trades go bad.

Implicit in Lincoln's announcement about trying to "avoid future bailouts" is that this proposal would prevent a situation such as TARP. I simply don't see how this is even possible without declaring TARP unconstitutional. TARP was it's own legislation which pretty much self-created the bailout. Having a provision as described would likely limit actions such as the first AIG bailout, but there simply is no way that a piece of legislation can prevent a future congress from passing another TARP type bill. Kind of misleading.

Might it be a good provision? Maybe. If such a bill had been in place when the economy collapsed in 2008, would it have prevented the TARP bailouts? I don't see how.

The administration's decision to implement an offshore drilling plan depressingly similar to one Democrats thwarted Bush from enacting for about a decade got me to thinking. What would candidate Obama think of all this?

Well, let's check in with the candidate and see:

I think this line by the good candidate sums up the current situation completely.

Well the politics may have changed. But the facts haven't. The accuracy of Senator McCain's [Candidate Obama's] original position has not changed. Offshore drilling would not lower gas prices today. It would not lower gas prices tomorrow. It would not lower gas prices this year. It would not lower gas prices 5 years from now.

Remember Obama's declaration last week that his HCR bill was pretty much lifted from Mitt Romney with a wealth of other republican doo-dads? Now this decision to follow the republican strategy of "drill here, drill now" ... with a new slogan. All of this adds up to one big question in the mind of an independent voter:

Have Democrats, deep down inside, believed Republican policy was right all this time? Were they fighting these policy prescriptions for the past 8 years when Bush tried to implement them, even though they secretly agreed, just to keep Republicans from achieving any goals? And if today's Democrats genuinely believe Republican policy prescriptions are preferable to progressive ones, why shouldn't America just cut out the middle man and elect Republicans? 

As more and more of Obama's policies can best be promoted with the phrase "This is exactly what the Republicans have been advocating for years", is increasingly untenable to argue "These guys have no plans." If these guys' plans are so bad, why do democrats keep using them?

Update: This is a pretty important quote from the video as well:

And when I am President, I plan to keep in place the morotorium here in Florida, and around the country, that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida's coasts. That's how we can protect our coastlines and still make the investments that reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce gas prices for good. That may not poll well. And I understand that Senator McCain may have looked at the polls and said, you know, that "people might buy drilling or they might buy a gas tax holiday". My job is not to go with the polls. My job is to tell the American people what is going to work when it comes to our long term energy future.

Ahhh Barack ... we barely knew ye.

Apparently a school district in PA decided to use the laptops they had issued to the students as a spy device to take images of whatever was going on in front of the web-cam. The news broke last week when a class-action lawsuit was filed by one a student who was reprimanded for "inappropriate behavior" (see below the scandalous behavior) and confronted with a picture of himself at home taken by his school issued laptop. Anyhow. It has grown to be a pretty big story on the tech blogs.

Ars Technica has a pretty good rundown of the new developments, and as usual they have links with great background. I'll just hit the highlights of what has emerged since Friday. From the article:

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating whether the school broke any federal wiretap laws
  
  
• A federal grand jury has also subpoenaed the school for records related to the so-called "security" measures implemented on the laptops. The district is being asked not to delete records or software from any laptops and to preserve records.
  
  
• The Lower Merion School District has issued a statement that they have activated the system 42 times in the last year and only to find stolen laptops(*).

Oh and, we now know what "inappropriate behavior" the kid was caught in:

Blake Robbins' attorney spoke to NBC Philadelphia (video link) and claims the school "caught" Robbins with two Mike & Ike candies in his hand, which look like pills. The student apparently eats the candies "religiously" and the school overreacted to the image.

One other unsettling tidbit from a local NBC affiliate:

The district claims they do have to right to access the webcams at any time, but say they only use the feature to locate lost computer.

WTF? I really hope they are totally off base on this.

The comments at Ars Technica highlight a blog posting at Stryde Hax who digs quite a lot deeper into what was going on. He tracks back the work of Mike Perbix who apparently has recorded at least one promotional video for a tracking software package called LANRev (Nicely blows my "Prey" theory out of the water, BTW). Anyhow, "Stryde" goes through a thorough examination of the software and of Mr Prebix's rather prolific online footprint discussing the use of laptops for surveillance. The whole post is pretty good even for a non-technically inclined person.

He also digs a bit deeper into student reports and comes up with kind of a creepy picture and highlights a few other points:

• Possession of a monitored Macbook was required for classes


• Possession of an unmonitored personal computer was forbidden and would be confiscated


• Disabling the camera was impossible


• Jailbreaking a school laptop in order to secure it or monitor it against intrusion was an offense which merited expulsion

The last one is obvious. No IT policy is going to allow the users to "jailbreak" the software configuration.  But in conjunction, the other policies are kind of unsettling.

(*)It is less than obvious what the exact monitoring policy was. It seems like there are a couple of gaping holes in the school district's story at this point. If they only used it for stolen laptops, how did the kid get captured eating candy? And if it was only used by the IT department for recovery purposes, how did the picture find it's way to the principal?

This keeps looking worse for the school district. Now the question will be if Mr Prebix has managed to "Cheney" all the records.

Ok, this is one of the most unsettling tech stories I've seen in a while .... from philly.com (h/t Geekology).

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
[...]
Fueled with state grants, the Lower Merion district issued laptops to all 2,300 high school students, starting last school year at Harriton and later at Lower Merion High, to promote more "engaged and active learning and enhanced student achievement," Superintendent Christopher W. McGinley said in a statement. [...] The district's Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a "security feature" that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen.
[...]
The suit says that in November, assistant principal Lynn Matsko called in sophomore Blake Robbins and told him that he had "engaged in improper behavior in his home," and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam in his school-issued laptop.

Matsko later told Robbins' father, Michael, that the district "could remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop . . . at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam" without the knowledge or approval of the laptop's users, the suit says.

I'm sort of at a loss for words. What could possibly go wrong with this feature? One parent states the obvious:

Parent Candace Chacona said she was "flabbergasted" by the allegations. "My first thought was that my daughter has her computer open almost around the clock in her bedroom. Has she been spied on?"

No kidding.

The school district appears to be taking it seriously (of course, I imagine a class action lawsuit has that effect on a school district).

While declining to comment on the specifics of the suit, spokesman Douglas Young said the district was investigating. "We're taking it very seriously," he said last night. [...] But he said "the district would never utilize that security feature for any other reason." The district said that the security system was "deactivated" yesterday, and that it would review when the system had been used.

Obviously, there are an awful lot of questions dangling. Widener University law professor Stephen Henderson said using a laptop camera for home surveillance would violate wiretap laws, even if done to catch a thief. So, it seems the whole policy might be illegal to start with. But even if there is some precedent that makes what they are doing legal, does the school system have a written policy on the security features? Have they ever done it before? How many times? Under what circumstances? Did the principle go beyond school regulations?

This just makes me so mad on so many levels. There is something seriously wrong with the attitudes of our schools today. The practice of penalizing students in school for behavior off school grounds and outside of school hours is egregious enough ... but this takes it to a whole new level. We are getting dangerously close to the state having more authority to raise our children than parents. But hey ... kids don't have rights, so it's all good I guess :-(

Just another depressing data point in a totally lame week.

There has been much talk, to the point of obsession, about getting rid of democrats who simply don't represent progressive goals. Some prefer primaries. Others prefer third parties. Still others prefer supporting a primary challenger and then voting third party if the process fails to result in a real progressive choice. And then there are the people who think anyone wanting to follow a course other than toe-the-party-line is a simpleton - they make their disdain for folks holding a different view of political self interest known far and wide (generally sprinkled liberally with insult. But hey, that's a form of liberalism, right?).

But there is another far less discussed aspect to improving government. And that is keeping the good ones in office. From a strategic standpoint this is a crucially important thing to accomplish. So, with this in mind I'd like to call attention to a grass roots project being spearheaded by the oft maligned Jane Hamsher over at Fire Dog Lake:

It's going to be a tough election year in 2010 so helping good incumbents keep their seats is going to be as important as supporting challengers was in 2006 and 2008.

You get to decide -- who should we help?  Which member of Congress gets to be an FDL Fire Dog?

Two thousand people who hailed from their districts nominated 180 members of Congress.   Voting is now open to the entire community.

Prizes:

1. The first, second and third place winner will be added to an FDL ActBlue fundraising page
2. Voter lists from the winners' districts will be purchased and entered into our Voter ID/GOTV tool
3. Members of the FDL community will call voters in these districts to identify and persuade constituent support, encourage voter registration and recruit volunteers.
4. Those voters will be called again by the FDL community to help turn out voters during the fall election
5. When $10,000 has been raised for each candidate on ActBlue and 500 Voter ID calls logged, we will rerun the contest and add 3 more candidates to the list.
6.  Those who are already on the list will receive the same incentives for another cycle, subject to a confirmation vote by the community so they remain accountable.
[...]
We have also listed candidates in reverse order of district PVI. PVI is a measure of how heavily the district leans to a particular party. In general, the higher the Republican PVI, the harder time the incumbent will have in the next election if Democratic turnout is low. If someone is in a heavily gerrymandered Democratic district they probably don't have much to fear from a Republican challenger.

To me, this is what a real progressive grassroots movement looks like. I encourage everyone to stop wasting your money on the DNC, DSCC, DCCC or any group that allows the democratic establishment to dictate what activities are allowed and when they must sit silent. Together we can make a difference. It's time for we the people to be in control of what our efforts and resources are used to accomplish. Say what you want about progressives, but they are building an impressive citizen-driven set of tools for democracy. A refreshing contrast to the STFU crowd.

This is a damn good project that is 100% positive. I encourage everyone to participate (even you Hamsher bashers) not only in contributing your local knowledge to help single out quality candidates for support, but also to follow up and contribute and participate in calls to get them reelected.

The whole heath care reform thing got me wanting a little more information on what "Actuarial Value" really means.  Generally, it's the percentage of medical expenses that the one can expect their policy to cover. But honestly, WTF does that mean exactly?

Anyhow. After a bit of poking around I came across a really helpful rundown(.pdf) on just this subject produced earlier this month by Consumers Union (the folks who publish Consumer Reports) through their "prescriptionforchange.org" web site. The report is 5 pages and written in a very accessible fashion with several interesting tables.

There's no real point to be made here, just figured it's a reasonably important topic and others might find the resource helpful as well. Well worth a quick read.