Midday Open Thread

• Liz Cheney thinks that perhaps her dad might be a good prospect for 2012 on a Cheney/Palin ticket.
• Twenty-seven states have banned texting while driving. But 25 offer traffic updates via Twitter.
• Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room writes:

  The Chamber claims that the “board’s membership is as diverse as the nation’s business community itself,” but this is false. A Wonk Room analysis of federal election contribution data compiled by the LittleSis project has found that the Chamber’s 116-member board of directors has given more than six times as much money to Republican candidates and committees ($4,741,747) as it has to Democrats ($778,282), with $1,074,697 flowing to corporate political action committees ...

  The top beneficiary of this outpouring of conservative cash is the Republican National Committee ...

  

• DarkSyde has written a nice review of a new dino fossil, from prosauropod to our own GOPosaur.
• Julia Whitty says:  "Freako-frakkin-nomics notwithstanding, climate change is a thing of violent swiftness. New research indicates it took only months for Europe to freeze solid 12,800 years ago."
• Afghanistan: The Fifty-Year War.
• Blogging moms wooed by food firms:

  "People have accused us of being corporate shills," said [Andrea] Deckard, a Monroe, Ohio, mother of three whose junkets have also included a free trip to Frito-Lay's Texas headquarters. Deckard, noting that she is up front with her readers about such trips, said they are educational for her and her fans, and "just fun."

  Besides, she added, "it's not like I sold my soul for a chocolate bar."

  Others aren't so sure. As food companies big and small scramble to woo parents-turned-bloggers, nutrition activists worry that the food industry is funding an advertising campaign for its products without consumers realizing it.

• More and more people are tuning into the real unemployment rate. The only problem being that even the "real" rate understates structural unemployment.
• The Golden State looks to the past for a silver lining:

  "I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status."
  ^{h/t to David Dayen}

• Hillary Clinton says she is willing to take Sarah Palin up on her offer to talk over coffee.
• Former McCain/Palin staffers are not only refuting 2008 campaign stories in Palin's new book, they are providing insider emails to back-up their claims.
• Meet an important progressive you probably never heard of: Ethan Nadelmann.