Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2007...we might want to issue them rifles. From the NY Times:
"We're behind the power curve, and we can't piddle around," Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, "We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units."
...Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2007This is only 'petting' so it's OK
...Senator and Republican presidential candidate John "Snuggles" McCain do it? For that matter, evangelicals do it--even before getting married. This makes McCain's support for abstinence-only sex education even more ridiculous. But let's talk more about sex, baby.
What's always struck as ludicrous is that, as one study indicates, almost no one is a virgin when they get married. I don't think I know any married couple who were virginal on their wedding night because they were living together before they got hitched. Maybe they were sleeping with one foot…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2007If you thought Bernie Kerik was bad, wait until you hear about Republican presidential hopeful Rudi Giuliani's new best friend: Paul Singer, a long time Republican campaign contributor who has pledged to raise $15 million for Giuliani. The phrase "vulture capitalist" might sound trite, but when you hear how Singer made (and still makes) his fortune, you'll agree there's no other way to describe it.
Singer was the inventor of what are known as "vulture funds." A vulture fund buys discounted international loans from developing countries and then sues the country and forces it to repay the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 17, 2007Someone should tell Republican Congresscritter Don Young that if you're going to accuse Democrats of treason and call for their hanging, it would help if your own party does not accept campaign funds from backers of Afghan terrorists. From CBS News:
CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party, as he claims on his curriculum vitae. Alishtari gave $15,500 to the National Republican Campaign Committee between 2002 and 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. That amount includes $13,000 in 2003, a year when he claims to have been named NRCC New York…
mikethemadbiologist | February 16, 2007...and William Donohue of the Catholic League says nothing. The Family Research Council is a rightwing faith-tank and advocacy group. And at least one board member and blogger thinks it is also very Protestant. Here's what FRC board member Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote:
Nevertheless, the office he holds is an unbiblical institution based in a monarchial ministry that is incompatible with the New Testament's vision of the church. Furthermore, he claims also to be a head of state -- a situation that adds untold layers of additional confusion…
mikethemadbiologist | February 13, 2007You would think that the guys who brought you Iran-Contra would, of all people, know that governments and countries often have serious internal divisions. But I'm getting ahead of myself. By now, you may have read about the evidence presented by unidentified "senior defense officials" that Iran is supplying explosive devices to the Iraqi insurgents (the Shiite ones, anyway). The evidence is so poorly cooked that the senior military official in Iraq, General Pace, isn't buying it. Perhaps it might have something to do with the ordinance probably being Pakistanti in origin and lacking any…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2007I hate being right, but I knew the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer was going to slime Amanda and Shakes. Before I get to a detailed discussion of the NY Times article about the whole blogger kerfuffle, I have a very simple question.
What if Amanda and Shakes, rather than being campaign bloggers, had taken important administrative, behind-the-scenes jobs with the Edwards campaign?
Seriously, both parties have had all sorts of people as campaign workers. So why are bloggers a big deal? If they were doing a bad job, then they should be fired because of their shoddy work. But many campaign…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2007driftglass skewers NY Times columnist David Brooks' claim that young people don't want the politics of polarization:
Again, Brooks attempts to tack around the dead elephant in his Party's phone booth, so let me clarify this once again: Bobo, you people bred and perfected polarization as a means to your political ends.
This condition was not created by accident.
This is the world you built.
The water you poisoned.
The air you polluted.
And you are still doing it.
One GOP cadre dumps mercury into the milk, and then on-cue another begins to cry about how the milk's all done gone mysteriously…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2007Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero describes this conversation with a respected journalist about the manufactured smear of CBS reporter Lara Logan's coverage of the Haifa Street battle:
Well, recently, I was at dinner with a friend who is a major journalist at a major media outlet in New York City. (I will not identify the person further, including whether my friend is male or female, or what kind of media s/he works for - video, print, or online). In the course of the conversation, I brought up the Lara Logan video and s/he said, with certain authority, "I know about that. Y'know, there's a lot of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2007Never doubt the prognostication of the Mad Biology. A couple of days ago, I wondered if the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer would unleash its awesome fury against the Edwards campaign bloggers. Turned out I was right. First, there was some hardhitting investigative reporting from the National Review bloggysphere that yielded...nothing. But then Michele Malkin got in on the act.
For those of you who don't who Michele Malkin is, one of her claims to fame is authoring a book that defends the racially-motivated interment of Japanese-Americans during World War II (because if it's ok when FDR did…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2007I want to follow up on a point Amanda made in response to my post about the Texas plan to immune all girls against HPV. (Maybe between the two of us, we'll rub some good points together and come up with an idea...) Amanda writes (italics mine):
...it's true that the opt-out policy does mean that it's going to be a lot harder for vindictive, misogynist parents to refuse to protect their daughters from cervical cancer. It's the difference between neglect and active abuse, really. Without mandatory vaccinations, denying your daughter preventative treatment was easy, since you simply had to…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2007It should tell you just how loony the Christopath right is when a conservative Texas governor gains admission to the Coalition of the Sane (for the time being, anyway). How did Texas governor Rick Perry do it? By mandating that schoolgirls receive the HPV vaccine, and that the state subsidize the vaccinations. From the AP:
Some conservatives and parents' rights groups worry that requiring girls to get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children.
By using an executive order…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2007Bush is trying to do an end run around the newly elected Democratic Congress. Because we all know the American people spoke clearly in the last election, and they said, "We want to gut environmental and worker protection!" From the NY Times (italics mine):
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2007I recently posted about creationists who want their 'biology' courses to be taken seriously by universities. Josh takes to task a libertarian who states "if we chose to mandate what is taught about human origins, and we are true democrats, we should mandate equal time for creationism and evolution." So, I found on the internets a description of Biology for Christian Schools, a creationist textbook, written by the textbook's authors.
Creationism should never be viewed in the abstract, but as the mindless indoctrination that it is. Hold your breath and dive in; the passage destroys the…
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2007This is not George Bush
(image from here)
The Peter Pan syndrome is in full effect at the White House. After meeting with George Bush, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the meeting (italics mine):
In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.
"He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do…
mikethemadbiologist | January 24, 2007I compliment Sen. James Webb on his post-State of the Union speech, and he goes and votes against Sen. Dodd's amendment to require Congressional approval to increase troop numbers in Iraq. Also voting in surprising fashion were Democrats Casey, Cardin, and Nelson. Republican senator Hagel showed that he's another all-talk Republican: despite his blistering criticism of the Bush administration, he also voted against Dodd's resolution.
Biden also voted against the resolution, but at least he has a good reason:
I'm not for capping for a simple reason: It maintains the status quo. I don't want…
mikethemadbiologist | January 19, 2007A few weeks ago, climatologist and Weather Channel blogger Heidi Cullen suggested that:
I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming...
Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy.…
mikethemadbiologist | January 17, 2007It would appear that seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom are in the middle of investigating Republicans, have been sacked and replaced by Republican political appointees. Thanks to the Patriot Act, these appointees, regardless of their qualifications, don't have to be confirmed by the Senate (does Congress even read the legislation they sign? And if not, how do I get on that gravy train?). Josh Marshall describes one appointee, J. Timothy Griffin:
Well, top of the list seems to be his stint at the White House where he worked for Karl Rove doing opposition research on Democrats. That was…
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2007I grew up in Virginia, and unlike transplant George "Macacawitz" Allen, I've never been pollyanish about Virginians' attitudes on race and religion. But what VA Republican State Delegate Frank Hargrove said in a recent interview was shocking (italics mine):
There were furious denunciations in the General Assembly after a Virginia legislator stated that black people "should get over" slavery.
Hanover Delegate Frank Hargrove made the comment about slavery in an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.
In the same interview about whether the state should apologize…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2007The frustration of the soldiers in Afghanistan must have just 'surged'. Why? Because, as part of the Bush-McCain surge, soldiers in Afghanistan will be withdrawn and sent to Iraq just in time for a Taliban offensive:
A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.
Army Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata and other US commanders say that will happen as the Taliban is expected to unleash a campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar.
The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's…