Last October, I wrote about freshman Senator Amy Klobuchar’s bill to regulate formaldehyde emissions from engineered wood panels. These are the panels used to build our homes, our desks and other furniture and that are ubiquitous throughout our lives, often unnoticed. Shop at any Office Max, Ikea, or discount furniture store and you’ll be surrounded by things made from medium […]

Last may I wrote about how the Tea Party movement in Michigan is terrified of becoming a full-fledged political party. Yesterday we found out that the “Tea Party” formation petitions have been successful and the “Tea Party” will very likely be on the ballot in Michigan in November. The “true” Teabaggers in Michigan are, of course, outragedItellzya. I, myself, had […]

How low does a candidate have to sink to get to the point where he crows about endorsements from people who not only do not live in the district he or she is running in but doesn’t even live in the same state? About this low, apparently. Joel Manby, a native of Battle Creek, Michigan, today announced his endorsement of […]

Here’s something that should give even the most ardent climate change denier pause: Lake Superior is currently 20°F warmer than normal for this time of year. In the spring, the sun warms the water fairly uniformly as deep and shallow water mix. Once it reaches about 39 degrees, however, the behavior of the water changes and warmer water starts to […]

Oh, ha, ha, ha. Michigan opponents of the federal health care overhaul said Tuesday they will keep fighting the plan, even though their grass-roots bid to allow voters to weigh in on the issue has failed. The campaign to ask Michigan voters if they wanted the option to not participate in the health care reform passed by Congress in March […]

Oh, lordy, lordy. This is some very good news. From the President’s Weekly Address. [T]oday, I’m announcing that the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments to two solar companies. The first is Abengoa Solar, a company that has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world right here in the United […]

Bush apologists tell us all they want that we “need to quit blaming Bush for everything”. But there’s a reason we blame him for the USA being in two wars, in what Paul Krugman this week called The Third Depression and that our unemployment levels are so high: George W. Bush and his administration put us here. More to the […]

Oy vey… Mike Rogers (MI-08) says dumb things pretty regularly but this is particularly absurd. Check out the video at about 0:49 in. But, I tell you, I think this is a huge symptom when a guy like General McChrystal feels so frustrated to express himself the way he did (or at least he allegedly did) in that article, it […]

The water cooler talk in my oh-so-conservative workplace this morning was about how “Obama is going to grant millions illegal immigrants amnesty by using and Executive Order so he has more voters in 2012”. Aye, aye, aye… So I whipped out my trusty Googles and searched and, sure enough, a bunch of GOPosaur senators, the usual list of suspects, has […]

I’m thrilled to say that next month I’ll be winging it to Las Vegas to attend the Netroots Nation conference. Netroots Nation is the biggest, most influential conference for progressive activists, bloggers and organizers in the country and I am totally thrilled to be going this year. From their website: The fifth annual gathering of the Netroots (formerly known as […]

It’s happening. Slowly but very, very surely, Michigan is shifting to a new energy economy and crawling out of its economic abyss. This past Friday we learned that we’re now no longer the state with the highest unemployment. Nevada is. We’re number TWO! We’re number TWO! Rah. And, today, Vice President Joe Biden attended the groundbreaking ceremony of a new […]