revere | September 17, 2008Devilstower over at Daily Kos does what I think is an effective job of eviscerating John McCain (admittedly this doesn't take a lot of effort these days, but I still admire this take down). Poor Al Gore keeps getting tagged with saying he invented the internet (something he never said, by the way) but now we know it was actually John McCain who invented it and cell phones and wifi thrown in. Here are some excerpts from "McCain's" response (yeah, like he knows what's in it!) to the ScienceDebate2008 question answered weeks ago by Obama:
Take this reply to a question about maintaining America's…
revere | September 17, 2008We've discussed the component of plastics bisphenol A (BPA) here before (here, here) but yesterday the Journal of the American Medical Association published a significant paper with an accompanying editorial that deserves mention. A panel of the FDA was scheduled to meet the same day to review FDA's draft assessment that BPA was not a safety problem in the US food supply and environment. As a result of the JAMA article, the ranking member of the Committee on Finance, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has written to the Commissioner of the FDA asking for a clarification of the FDA's position on the…
revere | September 16, 2008It's those damn lefties at the Wall Street Journal again, nitpicking poor John McCain. Just because McCain said that the Governor hadn't sought any earmarks or special interest spending for her state:
Last week, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, hadn't sought earmarks or special-interest spending from Congress, presenting her as a fiscal conservative. But state records show Gov. Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years.
These projects include more than $130 million…
revere | September 16, 2008As blogger Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal wrote, some things you can't make up. Trying to compete with the Department of Veterans Affairs in the "can you imagine what they did" sweepstakes i fruitless, as I have cause to know. They are perhaps the most dysfunctional federal agency I have ever encountered, although admittedly my experiences working for them predated the Department of Homeland Security, which from all evidence is the all time champion in incompetence and dysfunctionality. Back to the VA:
U.S. House members on Tuesday admonished Veterans Affairs officials from Pittsburgh for…
revere | September 15, 2008That anyone would think -- much less say -- as John McCain did of Governor Palin that she "knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America" means either McCain is one of the stupidest people in America (doubtful, since the competition is too strong); or that he doesn't mind talking bullshit if he thinks it will help him and he thinks most Americans are stupid. You choose. But surely Governor Palin must know the basic data about energy, given it is Alaska's main source of support. "Don't call me Shirley":
Challenged by [ABC's Charlie] Gibson on her "national…
revere | September 15, 2008Two of my grandsons were here today. They are just babies (16 months and month and half) but one of them is a little colicky. He looks like he is having cramps after downing his formula. But compared to some babies in China, it's nothing. The formula they've been drinking was adulterated with melamine, the same adulterant responsible for pet deaths from tainted dog food not long ago (see here, here, here). Dozens of poor babies have kidney stones. One has died. If you've never had kidney stones, this might not mean that much. But I've had them. Twice. The pain is excruciating. It's been…
revere | September 14, 2008Suppose you were a cattle dealer and the US Food and Drug Administration, one of the federal agencies tasked with keep the food supply safe issued you a court order, twice, prohibiting you from putting your product into the food supply until you complied with a legally required record keeping system. The agency had their eye on you because the meat you produced had been found repeatedly to have illegal levels of antibiotics making it unfit for human consumption. But you didn't care and you violated the court orders. So the FDA went after you and you were found in criminal and civil contempt…
revere | September 14, 2008I'm getting tired of Governor Palin. Maybe I'll move on to her running mate, what's his name. The serial liar. McCain. But before we leave the Governor, this being Sunday Sermonette and all, here's Bill Maher on the subject:
Bill Maher aside, what do we know about Palin's religious views and how they might affect us in the real possibility she becomes President should the aging McCain die or become incapacitated, say by a fifth return of his cancer:
When asked directly about the "God's plan" comment by Charlie Gibson on the Nightline interview I must say she showed herself as a remarkably…
revere | September 13, 2008Brought to you without comment:
WALLACE: Senator McCain, if I may -- Senator McCain, you didn't like it much when Governor Romney said recently that he spoke for the Republican wing of the Republican party.
Who's more conservative: you or Mitt Romney?
MCCAIN: I think it's pretty obvious that that statement was a paraphrase of Howard Dean's statement about the Democrat party.
The fact is, I'm running on my record as a reliable conservative of 24 years. And the indicators of that, obviously, is that I've fought wasteful spending, I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security…
revere | September 13, 2008It's not like no one thought Galveston could ever be hit by a monster storm. The city was almost destroyed in The Great Storm of 1900 which struck on September 8 of that year and killed 6000 people. The Thomas Edison Company has historic film footage of the destruction. So it seems a bit odd (I understate) that the geniuses at the Department of Homeland Security and NIH decided that Galveston was a good place for one of the first two high containment biodefense laboratories to be built after 9/11 (the other is situated in a densely populated neighborhood in Boston, another sterling choice).…
revere | September 12, 2008This is another in our Daily Dose of Sarah Palin, because even if John McCain didn't think it was that important to learn a lot about the person who might be the next President should some medical event befall the 72 year old cancer survivor should he be elected, most people want more information. Previous installments here. So much material, so little time. Today, commanding the National Guard.
Sarah Palin's argument she is "ready on Day 1" to be Commander in Chief of the US military rests on her role as commander of Alaska's National Guard unit. Unfortunately the state's commander of that…
revere | September 12, 2008Bush has announced he will reduce the forces in Iraq by 8000 by early 2009. My first thought (after "that's it? I thought we were victorious"; and let's get all of them out now as fast as we can) was to wonder what condition they will be in and what's in store for them in the future? I thought about that particularly because of the emerging scientific literature on strange and rare diseases in Gulf region veterans. One of these diseases is Lou Gehrig's Disease (medical name, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS). ALS, while rare (about 1 - 2 cases per 100,000 population in the US each year),…
revere | September 11, 2008This is another in our Daily Dose of Sarah Palin, because even if John McCain didn't think it was that important to learn a lot about the person who might be the next President should some medical event befall the 72 year old cancer survivor should he be elected, most people want more information. Previous installments here. This story is all over the news today, so while I've had in in my back pocket for a few days, I decided to go with it along with everyone else: Palin and rape.
Joe Biden is the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President. One of Biden's many accomplishments was the…
revere | September 11, 2008I heard it again the other night. One of the TV chin strokers talking about this poll or that poll showing Obama (or McCain) ahead with a "statistically insignificant" lead, and I thought to myself, no one who knew much about statistics would use a phrase like that. Strictly speaking, while there may be something like statistical significance, there is no statistical insignificance. It is a nonsensical term that is becoming part of the language by use, so I know I can't stop it with a blog post. If I could, I would, because it invites serious misunderstanding in the speaker and listener alike…
revere | September 10, 2008This is another in our Daily Dose of Sarah Palin, because even if John McCain didn't think it was that important to learn a lot about the person who might be the next President should some medical event befall the 72 year old cancer survivor should he be elected, most people want more information. Previous installments here. Today we discuss Sarah Palin's true nature.
Let's be very clear about what Sarah Palin is. Whatever else bad she is -- and there's a lot of bad there -- she's mainly a politician and an exceptionally talented one. Very slick. As Sam Goldwyn once said, "If you can fake…
revere | September 10, 2008We're well into September and flu season is approaching. Seasonal likely won't peak for another four or five months in the US and Europe but we should expect to start seeing cases in the northern hemisphere soon. A pandemic strain could happen at any time. The 1918 flu's second wave started in late August, so the timing of the start of a pandemic is not so predictable. At least one things seems certain, however. We shouldn't expect to see it starting in the current hot spot for human bird flu, Indonesia. Because the Indonesian government, in the person of Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari,…
revere | September 9, 2008The newsmedia are being tested to see if a bald-faced lie in a McCain ad will pass without comment. So far they are acquitting themselves well. Sarah Palin's lie that "she said thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere (accompanied by the Road to Nowhere), a lie proudly repeated by John McCain although he knows it's a lie and then inserted into a McCain campaign commercial approved by John McCain, is now being called out by just about everyone, including the Wall Street Journal (not to mention Newsweek, the Washington Post, Associated Press, etc., etc.):
Despite significant evidence to…
revere | September 9, 2008This week CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) has a quick statistical snapshot of the percent of adults (over the age of 18) who used Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) by sex and selected conditions. CDC defines CAM as
A group of diverse health-care systems, practices, and products not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine. CAM includes acupuncture; ayurveda; homeopathic treatment; naturopathy; traditional healers; chelation therapy; nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products; diet-based therapies; chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation; massage…
revere | September 8, 2008We've come to expect politicians to shade the truth on occasion and we've seen some recent high profile examples of outright lying. For example, John McCain's repeated claim that Sarah Palin sold the previous governor's luxury jet on ebay and even "made a profit". Every part of that claim is a fiction and McCain had to know it. George Bush, of course, lied as a matter of policy, with deadly consequences. At least Clinton's lies were essentially harmless to lie and limb. Then there's Sarah Palin. She lies, too, principally about herself and her record. The list of her lies is getting pretty…
revere | September 8, 2008With all that's going on we sometimes forget about all that went on, even all that went on recently. Like "solving" the anthrax attacks case. Fortunately the New York Times reporters on the case are still on the case. And so is Congress:
A month after the F.B.I. declared that an Army scientist was the anthrax killer, leading members of Congress are demanding more information about the seven-year investigation, saying they do not think the bureau has proved its case.
In a letter sent Friday to Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Democratic leaders of…