Rick Perry: Herman Cain ‘Has All The Characteristics’ For A Cabinet Post

By Ali Gharib on Dec 17, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Could Herman Cain become President Rick Perry’s Secretary of Defense? It sounds like it could be a headline from a satire rag, but, according to a new statement by the Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful, Secretary Cain could indeed be a serious possibility.

During his since-aborted campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Cain distinguished himself as a prominent voice on foreign policy in the race — but not so much for cogent ideas. Rather, he made himself famous for a long string of foreign policy gaffes and bizarre answers to questions. Before Cain dropped out of the presidential race, he’d already declared his willingness to serve as someone else’s Defense Secretary — a willingness he restated since suspending his run.

Now, it seems like Rick Perry might be ready to take Cain up on his offer. Responding to a question about whether he’d take on Cain in a cabinet position, Perry replied:

He has all the characteristics of the type of person I would bring forward.

Here’s a compilation video of highlights of Cain discussing his pizza-making approach to foreign policy and some of his other gaffes:

Perry’s had his own problems with foreign policy. Journalists pointed out that Perry distorted a key quote from a Texas historian in an oped on the Mideast in the Wall Street Journal and Jerusalem Post. Neoconservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin attacked Perry for having such an obviously ghost-written piece — with a “pretense of sophistication” — “because his own foreign policy views are rudimentary.” Among Perry’s top reported foreign policy advisers are top Bush administration officials Donald Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith, and he’s met to consult with deposed Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf. (HT Jonathan Martin)

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NEWS FLASH

Egypt: Government Denies Using Force As Nine Die At Protests | Nine people died and hundreds were injured at clashes outside the military-controlled parliament building in Cairo, Egypt, according to media accounts. The newly appointed civilian government, which advises the country’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces transitional rulers, denied that the military was using force against protesters, who it accused of setting fires. People both in uniform and not were throwing chunks of concrete down from the roof of the parliament building, reported the New York Times, which ran this Reuters photograph of a protester being beaten at the scene:

Update

Video of the demonstrations, including the beating pictured above, have now been posted to YouTube, starting about 30 seconds into the video. Warning: Some of the scenes contain graphic violence. (HT: Melissa Jeltsen)

Climate Progress

Our Extreme Weather: Is Arctic Sea Ice Loss Partly to Blame?

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 17, 2011 at 12:38 pm

– by Jeff Masters in a Wunderblog repost

“The question is not whether sea ice loss is affecting the large-scale atmospheric circulation…. It’s how can it not?” That was the take-home message from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, in her talk “Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes?”, presented at last week’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Dr. Francis presented new research in review for publication, which shows that Arctic sea ice loss may significantly affect the upper-level atmospheric circulation, slowing its winds and increasing its tendency to make contorted high-amplitude loops. High-amplitude loops in the upper level wind pattern (and associated jet stream) increases the probability of persistent weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially leading to extreme weather due to longer-duration cold spells, snow events, heat waves, flooding events, and drought conditions.

Figure 1. Arctic sea ice in September 2007 reached its lowest extent on record, approximately 40% lower than when satellite records began in 1979. Sea ice loss in 2011 was virtually tied with the ice loss in 2007, despite weather conditions that were not as unusual in the Arctic. Image credit: University of Illinois Cryosphere Today.

Summertime Arctic sea ice loss: 40% since 1980

The Arctic has seen a stunning amount of sea ice loss in recent years, due to melting and unfavorable winds that have pushed large amounts of ice out of the region. Forty percent of the sea ice was missing in September 2007, compared to September of 1980. This is an area equivalent to about 44% of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe. Such a large area of open water is bound to cause significant impacts on weather patterns, due to the huge amount of heat and moisture that escapes from the exposed ocean into the atmosphere over a multi-month period following the summer melt.

Figure 2. The extent of Arctic sea ice loss in the summer July – August – September period in 2007 was about 1.4 million square miles (3.6 million square kilometers) greater than in 1980, according to the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. For comparison, the lost ice coverage (orange colors) was equal to an area about 44% of the size of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe.

Arctic sea ice loss can slow down jet stream winds

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Climate Progress

Cities vs. Suburbs: Which are Thriving Now and What Will Climate Change Mean for Them?

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 17, 2011 at 9:55 am

by Greg Hanscom, cross-posted from Grist

If you Google the term “a scholar and a gentleman,” the first result to pop up is a picture of Witold Rybczynski — or it would be if there were any justice in the world. Rybczynski is an architect, author, and professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written a dozen or so books on technology, architecture, real estate — even a natural history of the screwdriver. He knows The City like it’s nobody’s business.

So it was notable when, in a blog post a few weeks back, Rybczynski opened a can of Jedi-style whoopass on writer Richard Florida for playing “fast and loose” with income numbers to make the case that dense, city-style living is the source of all that’s good in the world. Florida included a chart with a story in The Atlantic charting the average income in cities to show that the more people you pack into a small area, the richer they become. “There seems to be no limit, as yet, to the relationship between greater density and faster growth,” he wrote breathlessly.

Trouble was, the income stats Florida used were from metro areas, meaning that they included the suburbs — where most Americans live and work, Rybczynski points out. Take the ‘burbs out of the equation and the picture looks quite different. Florida’s chart puts the average income of Rybczynski’s hometown of Philadelphia at $46,230, for example. The median income of the city proper is closer to $30,000, Rybczynski says. The suburbs are apparently where most of the action is.

The so-called creative classes, [Florida] writes, “cluster and thrive in places where the conversation and culture are the most stimulating.” … I don’t know if these suburbs are the scenes of “stimulating conversation,” but they are definitely neither dense nor concentrated. Neither is San Jose, Marin, or Palo Alto, or, for that matter, the outer boroughs of New York City or northern New Jersey. So people are thriving, just not exactly in the places where we imagine — or would like to imagine.

NEWS FLASH

Bashing School Meal Programs, Limbaugh Calls Poor Children ‘Wanton Waifs And Serfs Dependent On The State’ | Crooks & Liars catches conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh being even more insulting to poor children than usual. Limbaugh, who once gladly accepted government welfare himself, went on a rant about school meal programs during the school year that “condition [children] to not feed themselves.” According to Limbaugh, getting used to being fed by schools turns children who would otherwise starve into “wanton waifs and serfs dependent on the state.” “If you feed them, if you feed the children, three square meals a day during the school year, how can you expect them to feed themselves in the summer?” he asked. Listen here, courtesy of Media Matters:

The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year as many parents have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis. The decades-old social safety net program reflects extensive research that students have a hard time learning when they’re hungry.