Basic Human Decency
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2008Certain political acts are beyond the pale, such as cutting a teen suicide hotline. Unless they're gay, then it's called positioning. In light of the Great Orange Satan's and others' calls for Michigan Democrats to muck up the Republican race by voting for Romney, I thought revisiting his cuts for a gay suicide teen hotline would be in order (be very, very careful, he just might win...). About the cuts, I wrote:
Let's leave aside decency and morality and try to forget that Romney eliminated funding for a gay teen suicide hotline to curry favor with the theopolitical Right. Let's not plumb…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2007Because nothing says compassionate conservatism like cutting funding for poor disabled children. From the Washington Post:
The Bush administration issued a new rule Friday that eliminates Medicaid reimbursement for certain transportation and administrative tasks undertaken by schools on behalf of students with disabilities.
A wide range of medical services are furnished to students in schools. Speech and physical therapy are typical examples. Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the poor, helps pay for those activities for low-income children. It will continue to pay.…
mikethemadbiologist | December 20, 2007Driftglass is organizing a letter writing campaign to the advertisers on Chicago's hate radio station WIND. If you live in the area, help him out. Here's why:
Remember, if you choose to contact any or all of the organizations on the list;
1. Polite but firm works best to accomplish what you are trying to do.
2. This is not a Free Speech issue. Like any other American, Michael Weiner Savage is free to vomit his lunacy in letters to the editor, or on his preferred street corner, or on a blog, or scrawled in his own shit on his bedroom walls.
Instead this is about Disinvestment. This is about…
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2007Since torture seems to be under discussion by the A-list bloggers, I want to follow up on a point Helmut made in his Congressional testimony about torture. Simply, it is this: if torture is truly used as an interrogation technique, and not to fulfill a psychological need or as terrorism, it can not be an isolated event--it must be systemic and routine.
Take the case the pro-torture advocates constantly raise, the Jack Bauer scenario, where if torture were not used then TEH EVIL TERRORIST will level Los Angeles in five minutes and twenty three seconds*. Oh, I forgot: BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
Are…
mikethemadbiologist | December 17, 2007John Aravosis, in a burst of rage, demonstrates why I can't stand 'progressives' (italics mine):
I don't claim to be an expert on health care policy, and admit that my eyes gloss over when trying to understand the differences between Hillary's, Obama's, and Edwards' health care plan. But I have a gut feeling that none of those plans are meant to help people like me, people in the middle, people who are neither rich nor poor. Just like the sub-prime bail-out, where our politicians are helping to artificially inflate real estate prices so first-time home buyers like me can pay tens of thousands…
mikethemadbiologist | December 1, 2007Until Katrina hit, it had become increasingly fashionable to talk about the U.S. as a 'post-racist' society (and that fashion continues, albeit in abated form). Unfortunately, forced marches of desperate black people have a way of putting the kabosh on that. By way of digby, comes this heartwarming story from Arkansas about 'post-racist' America (italics mine):
The chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas called Wednesday for state Sen. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, to apologize for e-mail comments attributed to the Senate GOP leader by a television station.
....In the e-mail on the…
mikethemadbiologist | November 22, 2007I thought today would be a good to thank of you who were able to donate to my Donors Choose challenge. There weren't so many of you, but those who donated really anted up and kicked in.
Thank you (and you can still give if you haven't already).
mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2007Instead of focusing on partial drowning interrogation during the hearings for the attorney general, John Dean tells us what Congress should be doing. From Talking Points Memo:
Nixon's Attorney General had been removed (and was later prosecuted for lying to Congress) - a situation not unlike Alberto Gonzales's leaving the job under such a cloud. Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2007I am in utter awe of the brilliant reframing of 'waterboarding' by the Kenosha Kid:
Waterboarding = Partial Drowning Interrogation
Fucking brilliant.
mikethemadbiologist | October 15, 2007In a great post, maha lays out what the consequences of an extraction-based economy--one that exploits humans--are for the U.S.:
And then there's the fatigue factor. Workers are worn out and stressed out. They've skipped vacations and worked way too much underpaid and unpaid overtime. They are not being rewarded. Their wages are stagnant, even as the cost of living rises. So workers subsidize their employer's profits by going deeper into personal debt, struggling to maintain a "normal" middle-class lifestyle.
...Back in the days of the Cold War we patriotic Americans were told, over and over…
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2007These are much cuter than Congressman Marshall
(from here)
I received an email from Jane Hamsher and Matt Stoller about S-CHIP:
Dear Mike,
Despite overwhelming bipartisan support and a near veto-proof majority in the House, eight Democrats voted against the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
That list includes Bush Dog Democrat Jim Marshall of Georgia's Eighth Congressional District.
Today, we can pressure Marshall to switch his vote and move the party an absolutely critical step forward towards overriding the President's veto.
We've created an ad to run next Tuesday, right…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2007In one of the more controversial posts I've written (or at least one that got me a lot of hate email), I described how "hatred is the Republican base":
The Washington Post recently reported about the failure of the anti-segregation amendment to pass in Alabama (it was essentially 50-50). According to the CNN exit poll, 73% of Alabama voters were white. Assuming that the vote to keep the segregationist amendment was negligible among non-whites, this means that 68.5% of whites voted against the anti-segregationist amendment (or for segregation).
One of the lame excuses given was that some…
mikethemadbiologist | October 8, 2007
At least Bush didn't tell the whole city to go screw itself, just the kids (from here)
ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford describes why a family making $83,000 per year needs S-CHIP despite Little Lord Pontchartrain's claims to the contrary:
After all of that [basic living expenses], the family of four has $17,550 left for insurance - assuming no unforeseen expenses, no savings, no college fund, etc.
The absolute, rock-bottom, cheapest HMO rate that NY State lists for Queens comes in at a bit over $17,640 per year. The average comes in at over $28,000 per year. Even the cheapest plan puts our…
mikethemadbiologist | October 7, 2007The Washington Post has an excellent story about the WWII interrogators of high level Nazis. Unlike the minions of Little Lord Pontchartrain, they managed to gather intelligence without torture:
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about…
mikethemadbiologist | October 4, 2007...and you listen. maha writes why the U.S. won't do anything to aid the saffron revolution in Burma (italics mine):
...the West flaps about, issuing statements and maybe sending an envoy or two. Please note I don't believe an armed invasion is the only option or even the most desirable option. But I believe the West is too compromised to exercise any option.
One of those compromises: the $420 billion of U.S. debt held by China. Don't the Chinese know that Republican Vice President Dick Cheney declared "Reagan proved deficits don't matter"? Maybe decifits do matter after all....
(and, boy…
mikethemadbiologist | October 3, 2007This year, once again, we ScienceBloggers are raising money to buy equipment for science classrooms. I decided to focus on microbiology and marine biology, because, well, microbiology is what I do now, and marine biology is what I started in. Also, if a new textbook in evolutionary biology is any indication, I think microbiology is going to be emphasized a lot more in college. Anyway, here's what I've put into my challenge:
Genetic Research For Immigrants This targets a school with a mostly immigrant population, and it would buy the equipment needed to do gel electrophoresis, so they can…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2007...or too much of anyway. One of the most eloquent speeches that I have ever heard was by Martin Luther King to striking sanitation workers. What's sad is that, while the particulars have changed somewhat, the overall picture remains the same. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine):
My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2007...but they don't need no stinkin' healthcare. From the Boston Globe:
American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory, or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.
They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a UN report that said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity." The report was released in Geneva today, which is Labor Day in the United States.
The average US worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2007One of the most shameful things about the destruction of New Orleans was the attempt to blame the victims.
Too many Americans--disproportionately Republican--could not rationalize two beliefs:
Americans and George Bush are good people.
These same good people deserted other Americans and left them to die.
So they blamed the victim, rather than accepting responsibility for electing what might be the most incompetent--often by design--administration in U.S. history.
Shameful.
mikethemadbiologist | August 23, 2007Maha does a great job of getting at the underlying issues in the Bush adminstration's opposition to expanding the S-CHIP children's health insurance program:
The most legitimate question that we have to ask, seems to me, is why is there government? In particular, what is representative, republican government good for? Do people really elect representatives to Congress so that their needs can be ignored in favor of special interests? Is the Constitution really all about limiting the power of people to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the…