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Medicine & Health Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Medicine & Health channel photo, a comment from a reader, and the best posts of the week. Gram-stained Bacilli and Cocci bacteria at 1000x magnification. From Flickr, by kaibara87 Reader comment of the week: You can't Live forever, says PalMD of denialism blog (who knew?), but some people persist in the mistaken notion that lifestyle choices—a healthy diet, regular exercise—can extend the lives of those living with chronic illnesses without the use of physician-prescribed drugs. Reader Suricou Raven has her own suggestion for living a long life: I…

Who won the Democratic Primaries in PA, CT, RI, DE, and MD?

Reports are just coming in, and as if often the case, Trump is already being declared winner in some states. But the Democratic primaries are different ... there are actually two candidates who get delegates instead of just one ... so it takes a little longer to count up the votes. As a reminder, these are my predictions for today's primaries. I predict a Clinton win in Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, but a Sanders win in Connecticut and Rhode Island. However, I have less confidence in these predictions than usual because I think something is happening in the campaign. I think, given…

Why is the White House silent on the Bloomington attack?

Is it because it wasn't a very big attack, and no one was killed or injured? The FBI has determined that it was an explosive device that blew up at the Bloomington Islamic Center. I'm reminded of the attacks on Secretary Clinton, by the likes of Congressman Nunes, about ambiguity in the identification of an attack as "terrorist" during the very throes of the event. Will Nunes hold Trump to the same standard over Bloomington? Will Nunes even give Bloomington a second thought? A first thought? Speaking of Nunes (who is the guy who tried to derail the House investigation of Trumpskygate), has…

Post-NECSS thanks

As you can see, I don't have a new post ready for today. I attribute that to having been so busy at NECSS over the weekend that, by the time my wife and I got back on Monday late afternoon, we were pretty much beat. So I decided to do the American thing and take July 4 completely off, which means no post today. I'd like to thank the NECSS staff for managing to put together a fantastic conference under very trying conditions. There was a fire in the basement of the building where the hall where NECSS was scheduled to be held is located, which caused some smoke damage to the air conditioning…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Huffington Post, Dave Jamieson reports that labor unions are stepping up to help protect increasingly vulnerable immigrant workers from deportation. In fact, Jamieson writes that in many instances, labor unions have become “de facto immigrants rights groups,” educating workers on their rights and teaching immigrants how to best handle encounters with immigration officials. Jamieson’s story begins: Yahaira Burgos was fearing the worst when her husband, Juan Vivares, reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in lower Manhattan in March. Vivares, who fled Colombia and…

The Beginning of the End of the Republican Congress: Chaffetz vs. Allen

In Health Care Insurance Reform We See The History of the Republican Party Very few American policy initiatives have been as popular as Obamacare. The fact that several years of Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act did not result in any alternative policies or specific revisions to the law suggest that Republicans were aware of that. Touting opposition and threatening to repeal worked with their base, but actually doing something would lead to widespread outrage and loss of votes, possibly loss of actual elections. The worst nightmare of Republican members of the House and…

A Question For Next Debate: How Will the US Catch Up With the Clean Power Plan?

The US is already behind in its agreed to commitment to clean power A study just out in Nature climate Change suggests that the US is already behind in its commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuel as an energy source, and the concomitant release of climate-warming greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The paper, by Jeffery Greenblatt and Max Wei, says: Current intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature change to between 1.5 and 2.0◦C above pre-industrial levels, so the effectiveness of existing INDCs will…

Manichean paranoia?

Ha. While I'm wasting my time on heat waves, ATTP is reaping the clicks with Manichean paranoia, a far more amusing topic. After all, everyone loves RP Jr [content advisory: talk given at the GWPF: may pollute your brain]. I'm not terribly interested in most of it, but I'll talk to "Engage with those with whom you disagree": which, nowadays, seems to be most of the readers of my blog. At least those who comment; I don't know about the lurkers. That is somewhat regrettable, but so it goes; I don't complain. Roger sets the stage with Senator James Inhofe versus Prof. Michael Mann. That's…

Science Communication FTW

Despite a greater percentage of people knowing about (and agreeing with) scientific issues, denialism remains a powerful political and psychological force that threatens to have its heyday under President Trump. As Peter Gleick writes on Significant Figures, "good policy without good science is difficult; good policy with bad science is impossible." Peter asks: what is the best way for scientists to engage the republic? Through testimony? Social media? Pop star status like Sagan, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or is the open letter an effective form of public outreach? Meanwhile, on…

States Can Lead the Way on Climate Change

True that. In the US, energy policy and regulation happens much more at the state level than the federal level, and our federal government went belly up last January anyway. Some states will not lead, they will go backwards, but others will lead, and show the way. So, here I want to highlight this new item in Scientific American by Rebecca Otto. States Can Lead the Way on Climate Change The Trump administration's threats to abandon Obama's Clean Power Plan and exit the Paris accords don't necessarily mean all is lost The word “corporation” does not appear in our Constitution or Bill of…

Sea spiders in the news

Pycnogonids really are fascinating animals and they deserve more attention. There's a short news article on sea spiders that mentions their odd life style and their taxonomic awkwardness. For over 100 years, scientists have been puzzling over how exactly to classify sea spiders or pycnogonids. They crawl along the bottom of the sea floor, sometimes more than 6000 to 7000 metres down, where they live in the dark, feeding on slow-moving soft-bodied sponges and sea slugs. The creatures are segmented and have an exoskeleton, which makes them an arthropod, the same grouping as crustaceans,…

Syphilis prevention vs. politics

Last week’s New York Times featured a great article on a syphilis outbreak in Oklahoma. Reporter Jan Hoffman documented some of the impressive work state health investigators are doing to contain the outbreak, from using Facebook to discern likely transmission routes to showing up at the homes of people with positive test results and offering them rides to treatment centers. CDC warned earlier this year that syphilis rates are on the rise throughout the US. Primary and secondary syphilis, the disease’s most infectious stages, rose 19% in a single year (2014-2015), and that trend appears to be…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Tampa Bay Times, Neil Bedi, Jonathan Capriel, Anastasia Dawson and Kathleen McGrory investigate a June 29 incident at Tampa Electric in which molten ash — commonly referred to as “slag” — escaped from a boiler and poured downed on workers below. Five workers died. A similar incident occurred at Tampa Electric two decades earlier. If the company had followed the guidelines it devised after that 1997 incident, the five men who died in June would still be alive, the newspaper reported. In particular, the five deaths could have been avoided if the boiler had been turned off before workers…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Toronto Star, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “lethal legacy” of a General Electric plant in the Canadian city of Peterborough, Ontario, where hundreds of compensation claims have been filed for illnesses that workers say were caused by occupational chemical exposures. In fact, one occupational health expert described the plant as a “cancer generator.” Mojtehedzadeh reports that a study commissioned by General Electric and that the Star obtained found that male workers at the plant were up to 57 percent more likely to die of lung cancer than the general population, while female…

Emergency Thanksgiving Help: Books for Uncle Bob

When I go to Thanksgiving, all the people there will be reasonable. Also, this will be in Minnesota where politics are not discussed. And if they are discussed, my Father-in-Law has well developed techniques to run interference, as is his responsibility as head of the hosting household. There will be chairs to get from the basement (always wait until the last second to ask Greg to help with the chairs, just in case he starts talking politics!). The dogs are trained to make a fuss when given secret hand signals. That sort of thing. But you may not be as fortunate as I am. Perhaps you will…

Worth reading: US healthcare, Iowa pollution, and Texas maternal mortality

A few of the recent pieces I recommend reading: Sarah Kliff & Ezra Klein at Vox: The Lessons of Obamacare Chris Ladd in Forbes: Unspeakable Realities Block Universal Health Coverage in the US Donelle Eller in the Des Moines Register: Iowa pollution enforcement could lose big under Trump EPA cuts, critics warn Teddy Wilson at Rewire: Texas Legislators "Ignore" Spiking Black Maternal Mortality Rates Linda-Gail Bekker & Anthony S. Fauci at STAT: Women are Leading the Way in HIV Research And because the House Republicans' healthcare bill is so consequential for public health and there's…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: March

Another month, another batch of blog posts at Forbes: -- In Physics, Infinity Is Easy But Ten Is Hard: Some thoughts on the odd fact that powerful math tricks make it easy to deal uncountably many interacting particles, while a smaller number would be a Really Hard Problem. -- New Experiment Explores The Origin Of Probabilities In Quantum Physics: A write-up of an experiment using a multi-path interferometer to look for departures from the Born rule for calculating probabilities from wavefunctions. -- The Most Important Science To Fund Is The Hardest To Explain: In light of the awful budget…

Puerto Rico, now's your chance!

Puerto Rico can become the first significant size polity to rebuild itself from the ground up to be totally Carbon free. Or at least, that seems like a good idea. If only the US Government wasn't so anti-Puerto Rico, owing to the president being, well, Trump. Anyway, there is now a pile of money and effort pouring int Puerto Rico and this can be used in part to give Puerto Rico sigificantly more economic and energy security in its future, if only energy-smart decisions are made now. So let's see what Get Energy Smart Now blog has to say about this! Puerto Rico’s electricity system, prior to…

Michele Bachmann: pseudo-scientist and anti-vaxxer

There was another Republican debate (I skipped it; there are limits to the horrors I can endure), and apparently, many people think Michele Bachmann trumped Rick Perry by jumping on his 'liberal' endorsement of using the HPV vaccine to prevent cancers in women. Bachmann ranted about the federal government forcing innocent little girls to get mental retardation injections, and the teabaggers loved it. They loved it almost as much as they loved Rick Perry's record of executions. Orac rips her apart. It's great fun, and informative, too. As I've pointed out time and time again, Gardasil is…

This is a game Obama cannot win

The president has announced that he has an American birth certificate, like this was really an issue. If he thought this would end the yammering inanity, he was mistaken. Donald Trump is preening. He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue. Playing the role of a prancing moron who promoted the issue is nothing to be proud of, Donny. Meanwhile, the Republicans are playing a game of pretending they didn't never call Obama's parentage into question, no how. In a statement after Obama spoke, Republican…

For Palin, Is it God-made Climate Change? Journalists Need to Ask the Question.

At the WPost, Juliet Eilperin pens a lengthy feature on the differences between Palin and McCain over the causes of global warming. Palin believes that the effects of climate change are impacting Alaska and has advocated for action, but continues to hedge on whether or not humans are a cause. McCain, on the other hand, believes that "the science of man made global warming has really been proven." Palin's rejection of scientific consensus may simply be politically strategic, playing to a conservative base, or she may be victim to the counter-framing of climate skeptics. Either way, Palin's…

74% of GOP Congress Members Reject Climate Science

The National Journal has released its annual survey of Congressional members on their views of climate science. When asked: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution?," of the 38 Democratic members of Congress interviewed, 98 percent answered "yes." But among the 39 Republican members of Congress surveyed, just 26% percent answered in the affirmative. Among the reasons from Republican members on why they continue to doubt the science, the National Journal quotes the following: "Reasonable people have doubts. For every Al…

Flash! Choir is Preached to; All Members Agree with Sermon!

After years of hoping and praying, my fondest wish has finally come true. I can hardly contain myself: New research on napping provides the perfect excuse for office slackers, finding that a little midday snooze seems to reduce risks for fatal heart problems, especially among men. This is like telling circus clowns to ride teensy unicycles, or Donald Trump to try out a combover, or delusional teenagers to try out for American Idol, or kettles to remind the pot what color it happens to be, or Lenin to open a couple of summer camps for dissidents, or peanut butter to run smack dab into a…

The Power of Expectations

I had an article in the Sunday Boston Globe Ideas section on the way our expectations of reality often trump reality itself: Expectations have long been a topic of psychological research, and it's well known that they affect how we react to events, or how we respond to medication. But in recent years, scientists have been intensively studying how expectations shape our direct experience of the world, what we taste, feel, and hear. The findings have been surprising - did you know that generic drugs can be less effective merely because they cost less? - and it's now becoming clear just how…

Labor Day yearbook: All workers deserve safety, dignity, respect and justice on the job

Typically, we like to end the annual “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety” on an uplifting note. But this time around — to be honest — that was a hard sell. Take a quick look through the 2017 yearbook and you’ll quickly glean that worker health and safety is very much at risk under the new administration and from lawmakers in the states. From the attempted rollback of a new federal beryllium exposure standard to state efforts to weaken workers’ compensation systems, the view from 2017 does not seem terribly promising. On the other hand, the fight for workers’ rights has never…

The President is not an Emperor: Don Kennedy on Science, Information, and Power

By David Michaels In the issue of Science Magazine on your virtual newsstand today, Don Kennedy has written a powerful editorial entitled âScience, Information, and Power.â (sub required) Dr. Kennedy observes that the confrontation between Congress and the White House over the production and control of science used in regulation is about an issue fundamental to both science and democracy â the presidentâs claims to exclusive power over knowledge. Drawing as examples the House Oversight Committeeâs hearings on politicization of federal science, along with the recent changes President Bush…

It is time to stop punching the hippies

The Republican line is this: Bring back coal, shut down development, subsidies, any encouragement at all, for solar and wind energy. There is absolutely no logic to this policy, but it is in fact the policy. The reason for it is generally thought to be that the big rich corporations and individuals that control coal and petroleum resources, and that are fully engaged in delivery of those energy sources (and other materials, such as plastic bags made of petroleum) pay off the politicians to support their businesses. And that is true, they do this. But that does not explain why regular…

I am an Arctic researcher. Donald Trump is deleting my citations?

So says Victoria Herrmann in the Graun; with subheading These politically motivated data deletions come at a time when the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. The alert will immeadiately wonder: do you mean citations, or data? Because they aren't the same thing. Those even more alert will wonder "did you even mean citations, or just hyperlinks?" Such folk will not be enlightened by the rest of the article, which continues with paragraphs like: At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic,…

He clearly recognizes that public service sometimes comes at a cost

Ha ha, fooled you. That's the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics talking about Rex Tillerson. In more detail: I’m especially proud of the ethics agreement we developed for the intended nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Mr. Tillerson is making a clean break from Exxon. He’s also forfeiting bonus payments worth millions. As a result of OGE’s work, he’s now free of financial conflicts of interest. His ethics agreement serves as a sterling model for what we’d like to see with other nominees. He clearly recognizes that public service sometimes comes at a cost. The…

Hillary Clinton Clinches the Nomination

The inevitable has now occurred. Barring something earth-shattering, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President. She is the first woman to become the nominee of a major political party. In fact, she is the first woman even to be a serious candidate for President. In her speech tonight, Hillary took time out to make a gracious mention of Bernie Sanders and all that he has accomplished in his campaign. Her audience cheered. Bernie, for his part, made only a brief, classless mention of Hillary (making hey of the fact that it was she who called him). His audience booed…

In the era of Donald Trump, will the states save us from antivaxers?

It seems hard to believe that the Disneyland measles outbreak occurred more than two years ago. It was during the Christmas holiday of 2014 that an measles outbreak occurred centered at—of course—Disneyland, thanks primarily to unvaccinated children facilitating the spread of the highly contagious disease at the "Happiest Place on Earth." What made this particular outbreak so important, though, was that it provided the impetus Senator Dr. Richard Pan and Senator Ben Allen to introduce a bill (SB 277) into the California legislature for consideration. What made SB 277 unique and its…

No, there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson's disease

Remember Vox Day? Vox Day is the pseudonym used by a truly vile man named Theodore Beale. I first encountered him 11 years ago on the precursor to this blog, thanks to his antivaccine stylings and outright misogyny. Later, I learned the depths of his wingnuttery, such as his accepting pseudoscientific claims that vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome, and several others. Hilariously, his anti-science rants are inevitably accompanied by smug posturing about how scientists are arrogant (pot, kettle, black) and how science is a corrupt system that is ideologically driven (talk about…

Around the Web: What About the Planet?, Partisan polarization on climate change and more on the science and politics of climate change

What About the Planet? Partisan polarization on climate change is worse than ever Three things Ottawa should do to fight climate change It’s Happening Now: Climate Change Is Killing Off the Yellow Cedar ‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’ Could Ontario's climate strategy trigger an industrial exodus? Why Obama’s top scientist just called keeping fossil fuels in the ground ‘unrealistic’ On Climate Change, Pence and Trump Are a Perfect Match As climate change worsens wildfires, smokejumpers fight blazes from the sky Why Trudeau’s Commitment to Harper’s Old Emissions…

Myron Ebell, Evil Arch Climate Uber Villain

It has been drawn to my attention that Myron Ebell will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy. Not everyone is entirely happy about this3 and doubtless Trump will be distressed by that, but he is unlikely to take this unexpected opposition too seriously. Scratching my head and trying to think of a contrarian way to approach the matter, I thought I'd try reading what he has actually said, instead of reading what other people who don't like him say. First of all, slightly to my…

Antivaxers marched on Washington last week. It was less than impressive.

Last week, I took note of something that antivaxers hadn't done in nine years, specifically a "march on Washington." Back in 2008, Jenny McCarthy and her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey led a rag tag rogues' gallery of antivaccine activists on a march and rally that they called "Green Our Vaccines." The name of the rally, of course, derived from a common trope beloved of antivaccine activists that I like to refer to as the "toxin gambit." It's basically a Food Babe-like fear of those "evil chemicals" writ large in a claim that vaccines are packed full of horrific chemicals that are Making Our…

Bizarre email from Trump's HHS spokesperson

Today, The Pump Handle had its own bizarre experience with the Trump Administration. It came via an email sent by HHS spokesperson Matt Lloyd to members of the Association for Health Care Journalists. Some of those professionals were reporting on the data released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on insurance enrollment on Healthcare.gov. The 90-day open enrollment period ended this week. CMS's plain-spoken news release indicates that 9.2 million individuals selected plans from the ACA marketplace, including three million new consumers. Many of these Americans…

Pootinism

Oh FFS, more politics? Still no science? Sorry, but yes. The Economist doesn't like Putin, or rather what he's doing to Russia, and who could disagree with them. Certainly not me. The Commies themselves do, as you'd hope. I think the Economist is basically right: Putin and Russia are weak and flailing and dangerous because of that; much like (as they don't say) North Korea. Foundation and Empire, part II refers as does Foundation and Empire. Vaguely connected to science, or at least the debate around it, it is nice to think that only two years ago I was vaguely relevant. And I liked Eli's…

links for 2008-08-20

slacktivist: Saddleback "The Democratic senator wasn't there to try to win evangelical votes by touting his support for abortion rights. Nor was he there hoping to persuade them to change their minds on that question. What he did instead was this: He disagreed with them." (tags: politics US society religion) Physics Today Campaign 2008 - Where do they stand on science? "This Physics Today site will track the candidates' positions and statements related to a broad range of science issues. Analysis from Physics Today magazine, reports from the political writers at the American Institute of…

The growing opposition to ACA “repeal and delay”

Republicans in Congress are pressing forward with a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act through a budget reconciliation process, which requires only 50 votes but can only eliminate the portions of the law that affect the federal budget. They don’t yet have a viable plan to replace it, so they’re pushing a “repeal and delay” strategy that would involve repealing the law now and asking voters to trust them that they’ll come up with something else in a few years (on top of the six they’ve already had). That something else would almost certainly involve skimpier coverage or the loss of…

What did the President know, and when did he Know it?

Below is a nice video from Move On Dot Org, as well as a link to a petition of theirs. I would like to take this opportunity to caution everyone who is trying to figure out what is going on in the White House to avoid being misled by confusion, ignorance, or intentional misdirection. I have five points. 1) Be prepared to hold multiple competing hypothesis in mind at once. I promise you this: Whatever you think now, or come to realize over the coming months, is not a good historical description of what happened (or is happening). We can look back to Watergate to understand this. For…

Photogenic teens sue US government

To be fair, only one of them is known to be photogenic1. Bizarrely, according to Slate, the young plaintiffs "range in age from 9 to 20"2. Brian reports but doesn't comment on the weirdness of having 9-year-olds suing in the courts. Are we really to believe that a 9-year-old has sufficient command of the issues? It seems utterly weird to me, more of a piece of performance art than a real thing, but the USA is a funny place. Apparently, climate change violates their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by causing direct harm and destroying so-called public trust assets such as…

The Pap smear is no panacea, Katie Couric

Regular readers keeping up on infectious disease issues might have seen Seth Mnookin's post yesterday, warning of an upcoming episode of the Katie Couric show  focusing on the HPV vaccine. Even though Mnookin previously spoke with a producer at length regarding this topic, the promo for the show certainly did not look promising: "The HPV vaccine is considered a life-saving cancer preventer … but is it a potentially deadly dose for girls? Meet a mom who claims her daughter died after getting the HPV vaccine, and hear all sides of the HPV vaccine controversy." And indeed, reviews thus far show…

Puerto Rico Disaster Implications: Migrations, Politics, Cholera

Two or three thoughts about the current crisis. When there is a major climate disaster in the US, people move. Since the US is big and has large gaps in population, it looks different than when a disaster happens in some other places. Five million (or more) Syrians leaving the Levant left a major mark across the globe. A half million leaving the Katrina hit zone was barely noticed on a global, or even national, scale, not just because it was one tenth the amount, but because of our size and space as well. Something close to half the 400K or so displaced by Katrina (over half of them from…

Questions

While I was away having fun in the mountains, I rudely ignored a number of comments on the blog that I'd normally answer. I could answer them in place, but if I did that now, no-one would notice, hence this post. Did I rudely ignore your fine comment here, too? Then tell me. But first, a picture: walking from La Berarde up towards the Pilatte hut. The rule of law Q: When will we see 'tailpipes' on cars as morally wrong? An Earth Day question http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1101015_when-will-we-start-to-see-t… The similarity to smoking ban in public places seems an obvious similarity to…

John Weeks accuses Orac of having "blood on his hands" for criticizing the Samuelis' $200 million gift to UC-Irvine. Orac responds.

John Weeks has long been an activist for what is now known as "integrative medicine," earlier known as "complementary and alternative medicine"(CAM). Basically, for many years Mr. Weeks has been at the forefront of encouraging the "integration" of quackery with real medicine and promoting what I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," a perfect term to describe the increasing encroachment of pseudoscience and quackery in medical academia in the form of—you guessed it—integrative medicine. Despite his having zero background in scientific research or the design and execution of experiments…

New yearbook recaps worker safety highs and lows at the federal level

Kim Krisberg and I published yesterday---Labor Day 2017---the sixth edition of "The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety."  It’s our effort to record the key events which advanced (or degraded) worker safety protections in the last 12 months. Kim's blog post yesterday provided an overview of the yearbook. I offer today a snapshot of the yearbook’s first section which addresses high points and low points of actions at the federal level. Last year the OHS community bid farewell to Joe Main and David Michaels, the assistant secretaries of labor for MSHA and OSHA, respectively. We…

CNN Projects PreacherMan Republican Winner of Iowa Caucus

tags: Iowa caucus news, politics, Huckabee, Republican Is this an indication of the deep chasm that separates Americans today? With 86% of precincts reporting; Mike Huckabee 34% Mitt Romney 25% Apparently, his former prochoice and "don't ask, don't tell" positions really hurt him. Fred Thompson 14% John McCain 13% Ron Paul 10% Rudy Guiliani 4% 112,000 Republicans turned out for the Iowa caucus tonight -- less than 10% of the state's registered voters (89,000 turned out in 2000). Huckabee had fairly even support across all groups, which included evangelicals, home schoolers and other…

Economist watch: Cruz denies climate change

The Economist, about Ted Cruz, in an article about his presidential hopes: Conversely his appeal to moderates is limited. He has had little to say to or about the poor, beyond his perpetual gratitude that, when his father was washing dishes for 50 cents an hour, no one was sent by the government to help him. His flagship economic policy is a regressive flat-rate income tax of 10%. Black Americans, anyone concerned about climate change (which he denies) and non-Christians should look elsewhere. Ditto homosexuals: “This shall not stand,” Mr Cruz declares of gay marriage. That grandiloquent but…

Sanders Campaign: The system is NOT rigged against us

We hear a lot about how the system is rigged against Sanders and in favor of Clinton. Such yammering is normal for a political campaign, but if you believe it, I'd love to sell you a nice bridge down near New York City. There are two things you need to know. First, the Sanders campaign, according to senior Sanders campaign advisor Ted Devine, does not regard the system as rigged against them. Here's what he said (see below for full video): I don't think there is. Unlike the Republicans Trump in particular, we are not going around saying everything is rigged. The rules are as the are. We may…

Lamar Smith: Nothing more than a hippie puncher

Congressman Lamar Smith is a well known science denier, especially a climate science denier. Recently, he admitted that the House committee he runs is a tool of the anti-science forces. At a recent conference at the pro-Tobacco anti-Science Koch (and others) funded fake think tank Heartland, this happened: Smith: Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists. Audience Member: I applaud you for saying you’ll be using the term climate…