Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2011I mean both the speech and the actual state. Amanda Marcotte wrote something that resonated with me:
But we're a nation that's given up. At the end of the day, we're a country where people will circle a parking lot for 15 minutes to avoid 2 more minutes of walking. Facing up to that sort of thing while making public policy requires spine, and that's something we've got on short supply. So, instead we concede the argument and let the worst instincts of the country take over, while kicking the hippies that have the nerve to want something better.
Sometimes I feel like America is just in a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 22, 2011Whenever some right-wing associated nut shoots someone, we always hear it described as the actions of a 'lone wolf.' Well, if that's the case then them wolves have formed themselves a pack:
-- July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how "liberals" are "destroying America," walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.
-- October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.
-- December 2008: A pair of "Patriot" movement…
mikethemadbiologist | January 19, 2011From, Robert Bentley, the Republican governor of Alabama:
"I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor ... I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind," Bentley said in a short speech given about an hour after he took the oath of office as governor.
Then Bentley, who for years has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, gave what sounded like an altar call.
"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said. ''But if you have been adopted in God's family like I…
mikethemadbiologist | January 19, 2011I've written many times that everything you need to know about movement conservatism can be understood by observing creationists (not surprising, since the theopolitical right is a major element of the conservative movement). I'm glad to see NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman has finally reached his 'creationist moment': the epiphany one realizes that, to creationists, words have no meaning, that they are not being honest.
Let's jump to the end of Krugman's recent op-ed "The War on Logic" (italics mine):
The key to understanding the G.O.P. analysis of health reform is that the…
mikethemadbiologist | January 15, 2011From the Great State of Arizona (not to pick on the sane people trapped there):
Then there was Sylvia Allen, a real estate broker from the town of Snowflake, who, in 2008, was appointed by the local Republican Party to finish the term of a respected conservative who had died in office. Allen, who retained her seat in an election that fall, has since gained minor notoriety after calling for more uranium mining, saying in a speech that "this earth has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn't been done away with." She also has complained that trees…
mikethemadbiologist | January 13, 2011If you haven't heard by now, Sarah Palin compared criticism of her to "blood libel", the disgusting medieval falsehood that Jews used Christian blood in religious rituals. While some have chalked this up to paranoia, I don't think that's correct (besides, Palin's paranoia stems from the bursting of her narcissistic bubble). Because there's an increasingly tendency among fundamentalists to view themselves as Jews. Now, this might sound odd, since they seem to have some difficulties with the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian. But they do see themselves as new and improved Jews. Some…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2011I would ask if movement conservatives have any decency or shame, but that has an obvious question. By way of Jamison Foer, we find that Erick Erickson, CNN contributor and rightwing conservative, has definitely discovered what ails this nation:
Through it all though, well meaning people on both sides of the ideological and partisan divide are not talking about the one thing that should be talked about -- a saving faith in Jesus Christ....
The topic of faith in Christ makes people cringe. But whether you believe it or not, here is the reality: beyond us is a world we cannot see with our eyes…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2011There are two sides to every story (at least), but often one of those sides is flat out stupid, if not immoral. Yet journalistic convention, in part, helps contribute to the tide of eliminationist rhetoric. That's a point I touched on yesterday, but RMuse fleshes it out much more:
...the main stream media is silent in reporting the connection between the shooter and comments' suggesting violence is an acceptable means of facilitating change in government. What the media is reporting are the offensive responses from Republican legislators that both sides need to dial back the violent…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2011We're now seeing all of the civility trolls coming out of the woodwork. If by civility, one means "not engaging in violent eliminationist rhetoric", well, then I'm all for it. But what I'm concerned about is that honest criticism will be silenced. While I'm not as sanguine about political rhetoric as, let's say, Jack Shafer, the fact is a lot of people in political life are habitually...counterfactual. That is, they're liars. Others are ideologically blinkered, while yet others, sadly, are either just kinda dim or else stone-cold ignorant.
We do ourselves a disservice when we treat these…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2011The NY Times' Matt Bai writes a predictable article about the Gifford shooting:
Within minutes of the first reports Saturday that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and a score of people with her had been shot in Tucson, pages began disappearing from the Web. One was Sarah Palin's infamous "cross hairs" map from last year, which showed a series of contested Congressional districts, including Ms. Giffords's, with gun targets trained on them. Another was from Daily Kos, the liberal blog, where one of the congresswoman's apparently liberal constituents declared her "dead to…
mikethemadbiologist | January 8, 2011I can't figure it, myself. By way of driftglass, we come across this report indicating massive employee dissatisfaction:
Workers can't wait to dump their employers: 84 percent of respondents to a survey say they plan to actively look for a new job this year.
That's up from 60 percent who said they planned to do so last year. Only 5 percent said they intend to stay in their current position.
The survey was done by Manpower subsidiary Right Management. "It's staggering," said Joanne Stroud of Right Management.
Senior leadership within organizations is largely to blame, Stroud said. While many…
mikethemadbiologist | January 1, 2011The largest political battle, barring something really stupid coming along, in the next few months will be over the attempt to raise the federal debt limit. While it sounds boring, it's critical to every budget item, including science funding. Without increasing the federal debt limit, the U.S. would default on its debt (as well as be unable to pay for all of the allocated federal spending). Keep in mind this federal debt limit is absolutely artificial: since the U.S. has a sovereign and fiat currency, this is a self-imposed constraint. We could set the debt limit to any amount or even…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2010So maybe NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't a centrist? 'Centrists', who seem to be beloved by the Washington political press corpse and few others, typically style themselves to be common-sense people who just solve problems--consider them the up-scale version of the "jus' folks" flapdoodle purveyed by America's Party. Well, Mayor and presidential aspirant Bloomberg didn't seem to be able to plow the snow very well. Writes the Krugman:
...he's supposedly non-ideological, competent, able to transcend partisan divisions with a single bound. There's a recurrent fantasy about a Bloomberg third…
mikethemadbiologist | December 26, 2010Because that's how Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was able to kill a provision that would have helped the State Department prevent child rape. No, really:
Non-governmental organizations, women's rights advocates, and lawmakers from both parties spent years developing and lobbying for the "International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010," which the House failed to pass in a vote Thursday....
Even still, supporters in both parties fully expected the bill to garner the 290 votes needed -- right up until the bill failed. After all, it passed the Senate…
mikethemadbiologist | December 17, 2010Driftglass makes an excellent observation:
What happened this week was that the GOP finally dropped its last fig-leaf and with it, any pretense of a conscience.
In 2004, the Cheney Administration offered the imbeciles, cowards and bigots who despised this country enough to re-elect the worst president in American history an ample supply of flags and bibles and "Boot in their ass"-themed country music behind which they could hide when called upon to justify their truly spectacular desecration of every American value they purported to admire.
Granted the rationalizations that the Party of…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2010Well, technically speaking, it's Fox News, but, really, what's the difference? Fox News has a website, Fox News Latino, that ran with this headline:
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Are Having an Anchor Baby.
It's like a nervous tic or something. They just can't help themselves.
And remember, as driftglass likes to say, no nation can endure, permanently half Fox News and half free.
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2010Amanda Marcotte makes a very interesting observation about the continued popularity of the movie Dirty Dancing:
I have to say that actually its popularity probably has little to do with its "innocence" and more to do with its lack of it. What immediately comes across is that this is an extremely sexy movie. But it's sexy in a way that you almost never see in movies---from a sex-positive, feminist-minded, heterosexual point of view.... Attention is lavished on Patrick Swayze's body, of course, but it's more than that. Most sex in most movies, at least dramas, is shown as deadly serious, but…
mikethemadbiologist | December 6, 2010I don't mean to get all Bob Somerby on you, but Frank Rich's Sunday op-ed is ridiculous. Obama isn't acquiescing to Republican demands because he's suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or some other deep-seated psychological malady. That's clearly overthinking the problem.
It's far more basic than that--Obama's gall can be divided into three parts:
1) He really believes that the country needs to be less partisan, and become more bipartisan. Without this, the country will be suffer. He would rather negotiate with the lunatic than be partisan.
2) He is a Rockefeller Republican. That is, he…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2010Someone tell me how Ian Welsh's assessment of Obama is incorrect (italics mine):
Nor is he a Nixonian or Eisenhower Republican, that would put him massively to the left of where he is and to the left of the majority of the Democratic party. Instead his a Reaganite, something he told people repeatedly....
That isn't to say Obama may or may not be a wimp, but he always compromises right, never left and his compromises are minor. He always wanted tax cuts. He gave away the public option in private negotiations near the beginning of the HCR fight, not the end. He never even proposed an…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2010Anyone who follows politics regularly is aware of the phenomenon of the voter who "wants the government to stay out of my Medicare" (Medicare is a government program). But a huge fraction of recipients of government aid do not believe they have received government aid. I'll get to why I think that's the case in a bit, but first consider this chart:
Like I mentioned, mind-boggling.
How can 43% of those who received a Pell Grant--college aid--not know that it came from the government? Not only is it all over the grant application forms, but, presumably, at least some of the recipients were…