Phoenix Landing A Success!

I just got home from my local natural science museum’s efforts to bring NASA’s Phoenix probe landing into the public. It was a success – both the museum’s agenda for the evening and the good news that Phoenix is in good health and operating nominally from Mars.

The Museum had Dr. Steve Lee, Curator of Planetary Science at the museum and a Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute present a mission overview. Kris Walsh, Director of NASA and Commercial Programs for Delta Launch Vehicles, United Launch Alliance, followed by talking about the Delta II launch system. Tim Halbrook finished the first part of the evening (prior to landing). He is a Senior Engineer, Remote Sensing & Exploration Systems at Lockheed Martin. Mr. Halbrook has been involved with every U.S. mission to Mars over the past 20 years.

The landing activities at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were broadcast over NASA TV and shown in multiple locations within the museum. Just as the coverage of Spirit and Opportunity, the two rovers that landed in January 2004, the coverage of Phoenix was very thrilling to experience. A lot of hard work went into ensuring a success and this team very nearly pulled off a perfect landing. Every aspect was well within operational ranges. The planning and practice paid off as no last second corrections or adaptations had to be exercised. Relief and excitement were evident from the team as each stage of the EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing) was checked off.

Weekend Randomness

First up, there was some severe weather in Colorado on Thursday and Friday. A long-lived but relatively weak tornado (EF-2, preliminary) hit south of Greeley and traveled up east of Fort Collins. One death has been blamed on the storm, which did something like $200 million of damage. Other cells also produced tornadoes, but they weren’t as damaging.

I went storm chasing both days. I didn’t get out until after the big-news tornado, which touched down at 11:30A and traveled north-northwest. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much on Thursday. On Friday I went out to the far eastern plains and even poked into Kansas a little bit. I ended up backtracking north and west into Colorado. I think if I had kept going into Kansas, I would have seen more action. Tornadoes were reported pretty consistently with those storms. Oh, and while I was out, another tornado hit near Greeley. Some luck. This storm season is setting records for number of confirmed tornado reports and deaths.

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Remember that NASA’s Phoenix Lander is scheduled to land on Mars tonight. I’m going to my local museum to watch NASA’s live feed of the event. It’s a tricky landing, so I really hope everything goes well.

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Hillary Clinton Brings Up Assassination?!

Nothing excuses this. Hillary Clinton brought up the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy as some kind of sick excuse to stay in the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination race.

There is no reason any person anywhere in this country should be thinking about killing Barack Obama. Especially his opponent in the Democratic nomination race. Hillary Clinton is absolutely out of her freaking mind.

I don’t care how many people have voted for her so far this year. She just proved to everybody she is unfit to be President of the United States.

Good Chase Day

Today looks like a good setup to go storm chasing. A big surface low continues to spin up in eastern Colorado, the upper level trough is still off to the west and pulses of energy are going to rotate around it for a while. Surface dewpoints and low level moisture are prevalent (for Colorado standards, anyway).

If I end up going and catching anything cool on camera, I’ll be sure to share it. No blogging for the rest of the day, though.

More Polling: Udall leads Schaffer

Two good poll results in Colorado. Betsy Markey is doing well versus Marilyn Musgrave. A just released poll found that support for Mark Udall is widening over his opponent, the ethically challenged Bob Schaffer.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey [done on May 19th] shows Udall attracting 47% of the vote while Schaffer earns 41%. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Udall is now viewed favorably by 50% of the state’s voters, up two points from a month ago. For Schaffer the numbers are heading in the opposite direction. The Republican candidate is now viewed favorably by 44%, down three from a month ago and down nine points from two months ago.

A nine point drop in favorability for Schaffer in two months. Not standing up for human rights and getting more done for the Ukraine than for CO-04 must not be sitting well with Colorado voters. There are other factors too. Things like voters want someone who will go to work to get things done. A lot of what Schaffer’s campaign has done publicly has been to call Mark Udall names and blame everybody else for Schaffer’s ethical lapses.

I know this lesson will not be apparent to Republicans until after this election, and maybe not even then, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. Voters are ignoring the right-wing’s tired talking points. They want results and Republicans haven’t produced at any level in a long time. Voters don’t want business as usual, they want things to change. And Bob Schaffer can’t provide that. The question is how much money will Republicans waste trying to keep this seat?

Mark Udall will win this November.

Betsy Markey over Marilyn Musgrave in Poll (May 2008)

A poll done by Bennett, Petts & Normington has Democratic candidate Betsy Markey up over Marilyn Musgrave 43-36 with a 4.9% MOE. Yes it’s early, yes the sample size was fairly small (400 respondents). Yes a Musgrave campaign poll had Musgrave up 47-42 a couple months back. Although I must say that a three-term incumbent “showcasing” a poll where she only garnered 47% is pretty pathetic, especially considering the district’s voting pattern. Yes it’s only May and November is quite a ways off.What this poll results shows is that Marilyn Musgrave is in trouble again this year. She’s going to have to work her butt off raising money and actually spending time in the district if she hopes to stave off another challenger. And this time around, the NRCC will have limited funds to bail her out.

Two additional, important notes about the poll: Political affiliations for respondents were intended to match the GOP-leaning district: 40 percent Republican, 31 percent unaffiliated and 29 percent Democrats.A majority, 51 percent,of voters gave Musgrave a job rating of “not so good” or “poor” while only 40 percent rate the job she is doing in Congress as “excellent” or “good”. Combined with Musgrave’s lackluster polling results, the job rating results seem to me to signify an incumbent in trouble. More Republican-leaning districts have already fallen this year. Folks know which party started the Iraq occupation and led the economy into a recession. They know that party isn’t offering solutions to the problems they face. All they’re doing is name-calling and finger-pointing. Republicans have pointed out for numerous cycles how common-sensical rural voters in the West are. Those voters might just prove their point this year. As of March 31, the most recent date for which data are available, Musgrave had raised $1.38 million for her re-election and had $1 million on hand. Markey had raised $569,000 and had $376,000 available. Let’s help Betsy Markey close that financial gap. Let’s help Betsy win CO-04 this year and send a 5-2 (D-R) contingent to Congress next year.

Quick Hits 5/20/08

Gov. Bill Ritter yesterday marked the transition from a coal to a geo-exchange and woody biomass heating system for schools in Oak Creek, CO. The old coal heating system was one of the last of its kind in a school in Colorado. The woody biomass will be provided from wood pellets that came from trees killed by the mountain pine beetle epidemic. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs is providing $625,000 and the Colorado Department of Education is providing $1.5 million toward the overall project cost of $4.1 million. The project also includes the installation of additional energy efficiency and conservation components, such as new lighting. 977 fewer tons of carbon-dioxide will be emitted each year.

Gov. Ritter testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources regarding oil shale development last week. He renewed his call for continuing and completing the current research, development and demonstration process before the federal government issues commercial oil shale leases or publishes rules and regulations governing commercial oil shale development.

One barrel of light crude oil is now trading at $129.15, up $2.10 from yesterday.

As Colorado’s legislative session drew to a close, Gov. Ritter pointed out the following bills as noteworthy in the energy arena:

Homegrown Energy/ Net Metering – HB08-1160, cosponsored by Solano/Shaffer and Isgar

Utility Scale Solar Energy – HB08-1164, cosponsored by Solano/Schwartz

Go Green – HB08-1350, cosponsored by Buescher and Pommer/Keller and Morse

Low Income Energy Assistance – HB08-1387, cosponsored by Buescher/Veiga

Homeowner Association Energy Efficiency Measures – HB08-1270

Increase Energy Efficiency in State Buildings – SB08-147, cosponsored by Gordon/Hodge

Colorado Clean Energy Finance Program – SB08-184, cosponsored by Romer/Levy

Any of these are far better than what Republicans have accomplished recently: drilling more and issuing billions in corporate welfare hasn’t improved our energy portfolio or made this country safer. Thank goodness responsible adults have been in charge.

Planty of Pro-Republicanism From the Weekend’s Corporate Media

Karen Crummy has a rural voter poll article. It’s mostly ambiguous fluff. Something she spent some time on: a majority polled said McCain shares their values. Really: values? Rural voters support unauthorized torture as a value? Rural voters don’t support health care or education benefits for our troops? That’s a value worth holding? This value argument was torn apart after the 2004 election. It’s sad that the corporate media and ideologically driven pollsters still focus so much on it. A majority of adults in the U.S. support progressive policy positions. Due in no small part to the media’s narrative, those that vote don’t know they hold the same values as progressives across the board.

There is an important note about this poll: 682 people responded. Thousands of scientists’ work worldwide don’t add up to enough proof that humans are forcing the climate system. But 44% of respondents said McCain shares their values (versus 35% for Obama) and it’s written in stone that Obama can’t win the rural vote. That’s ridiculous.

Interestingly, that’s about the only subject that McCain does better than Obama. The economy, taxes, “being on your side” (WTF?!), and bringing change. McCain edged out Obama on the Iraq war also. And somehow, everybody comes to the conclusion that Obama is the one who needs to do better with rural voters. 4-2-1 (O-M-tied) and Obama is identified as needing to do something. Riiiight. Not only does McCain have work to do with rural voters, you’ll notice the poll didn’t do urban voters. McCain is going to get killed in the cities and the corporate stenographers keep trying to distract us with “maverick” talk. The “maverick” is going to be buried under a landslide in November.

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I just knew the headline from Chuck Plunkett would include a division within Democratic ranks (I would have bet on it, but nobody would put money down on a different headline). Sure enough, “Record crowd shows signs of rift”. No actual data was provided to support that headline, it was just something Chuck obviously “felt” at a gut level or something. No mention that they ran out of Obama ballots though. Isn’t that interesting.

I’m sure we’ll see similar headlines after the Republican Convention, right? I want Chuck and the Post to tell us what magic line is enough for Democrats and enough for Republicans. What kind of a lead would a Democratic nominee have to garner so that “rift” doesn’t show up in the headline? Similarly, what kind of a lead would a Republican nominee have to achieve? What measure is indicative of a rift, exactly?

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Terence Hunt is no better. There’s no alternative viewpoint in his article that should have read, “Saudis tell Bush who’s really in charge“. At the end, we get to read about Bush throwing a tantrum. Not at the Saudis that refuse to refine more oil (they’re not operating at full capacity, for the record), but at Democrats who want to withhold a $1.4 billion arms sale to a regime that supports terrorists while they put the squeeze on our economy. Somehow, it’s Democrats’ responsibility to force energy corporations to expand refineries. That’s funny, I thought Republicans were supposed to be against government involvement in areas that corporations can handle so much more efficiently. Another Republican lie laid bare.

Emissions to be reported to CO Governor

In an effort to flesh out additional details of the Colorado Climate Action Plan, Gov. Bill Ritter wants large polluters to report their greenhouse gas emissions as part of a larger goal of reducing overall state emissions by 20% by 2020.

He issued an executive order directing the state health department to start drafting the regulations in the next 24 months. The order also calls for an evaluation to determine whether additional coal-fired power plants should be allowed to be built. It also asks the department to make recommendations on alternatives within the next year.

CO Legislature Items

I’m a little behind on these. The session is over and Gov. Ritter has signed many bills into law. I will provide a synopsis of the session post in the next week, hopefully. For now, here are some things that have been sitting around.

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Sen. Gail Schwartz’s SB08-215 would direct Colorado’s Chief Information Officer to identify broadband telecommunications service areas within Colorado and develop a map of those areas. That map would later be used to plan the deployment of broadband service to unserved areas of the state. As Sen. Schwartz noted, rural access to broadband has fallen way behind access in the Front Range.

Which is interesting, because the telecom corporations were given billions of welfare dollars as long as they deployed high-speed broadband to everybody within the U.S. Hasn’t happened has it? Neither broadband nor high-speed is really all that available. The U.S. ranks 25th in the world in broadband penetration. Japan’s broadband delivers data at an average rate of 14176 kb/s, nearly twice as much as the second place country, Sweden. The U.S. doesn’t appear in the top 10. We do however, place high on the list of cost for access. We pay the most for slow service.

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Sen. Dan Gibbs HB08-1269, which would provide incentives for products that use timber killed by the mountain pine beetle infestation, passed the CO Senate unanimously. Good: wildfire is nonpartisan.

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Gov. Ritter did sign HB08-1270, which extended the types of energy efficiency items HOAs must allow in Colorado. Now, wind generators, awnings, shutters, attich fans, swamp coolers and retractable clothes lines will be permitted.

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More good energy news: HB08-1164 was sent to Gov. Ritter. This bill asks the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to consider purchasing utility-scale solar energy when it’s feasible to do so, and to take into account the future cost of carbon-based energy sources and the impace of greenhouse gases when purchasing energy. The local energy market will be opened to large scale solar energy production. To put “large” into perspective: one large scale solar plant could generate 250 new high-skilled jobs and $2 billion in private investment.