elections
scientificactivist | May 28, 2008When I was a student at Texas A&M University and active in politics there, I spent a lot of time on voter registration. Much of this effort was devoted to the community outside of the university, but my primary focus was on students at the university. And, although some people would contend that college students should register to vote from their hometowns, I strongly disagree. At the very least, students should be allowed to choose which location they prefer, but beyond that I believe there's a strong case for students to register at their university location, unless they have a…
scientificactivist | May 14, 2008This just in: John Edwards has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. It's a little late (since Obama has had the nomination all but wrapped up for a couple of months now), and I'm not sure what kind of an impact this will have, but I still find this exciting.
Although I've been an Obama supporter for a while, John Edwards was still one of the most exciting candidates in the race this year (and that's saying a lot, considering how groundbreaking this presidential race has already become). I find him to be honest and genuine, particularly in his dedication to tackling poverty. He…
scientificactivist | May 4, 2008As the media circus over Jeremiah Wright continues, it should give us pause that the media hasn't decided to focus on John McCain and his embrace of a wide range of religious bigots. Although McCain once called these men "agents of intolerance" in 2000, he has since done a total flip-flop and openly embraced them in the 2008 campaign. Compare this to Barack Obama, who has now fully renounced his former pastor--as he rightfully should have. Whether this slanted coverage is due to racial bias, or just to the fact that these outrageous conservative white religious figures are so ingrained in…
scientificactivist | May 3, 2008This morning, I had to wake up to another article about John McCain's and Hillary Clinton's proposal to temporarily waive the gas tax this summer. That's it. I'm just going to have to come out and say it: this is a really, really, really stupid idea. Period.
I'm not an economist--far from it--but you don't have to be one to see the flaws in this plan. I'm not going to go into the details too much here, but for more check out this article from the Washington Post or this op-ed from Thomas Friedman. Also, Jake has a nice summary at Pure Pedantry. The intended purpose of this gas tax…
tqa | April 22, 2008
Senator Hillary Clinton has apparently decided to join John McCain in calling for a "gas tax" holiday for the summer. Their plan would suspend the 18.4 cent per gallon tax on gas (and the 24.4 cent tax on diesel fuel) from Memorial Day to Labor Day, giving consumers a temporary break from the high cost of fuel. If, that is, the companies that sell the fuel don't decide to raise their prices and erase the relief.
In a Presidential campaign season that's been marked by more than its fair share of stupid ideas, this one's still a standout. Nothing says "responsible leadership" (or, for that…
scientificactivist | March 29, 2008Scientists and Engineers for America has announced a workshop for scientists interested in running for office or working on a political campaign. The workshop will be held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on May 10th. Despite the focus of my blog, I would have still thought that training scientists to run for office would be quite a niche area--to say the least. However, considering how fundamental science and technology are to the issues that elected officials face today (from scientific funding to energy and the environment to agricultural policy), having more scientists in…
scientificactivist | March 5, 2008Back when I was at Texas A&M University, I knew plenty of Democrats who would vote in the Republican primary instead of the Democratic one. Although I refrained from such activity, their rationale was totally reasonable: in such a conservative area, the real contest was almost always the Republican primary. By the time the general election came around, the winner was already a foregone conclusion: it would be whichever candidate had the "R" beside his name. These crossover voters preferred a moderate Republican to a right-wing extremist. Fair enough. And, they probably helped keep…
scientificactivist | March 3, 2008Via the ABC News blog Political Punch comes news that senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain has taken a strong stance on the discredited link between vaccination and autism... a stance contrary to scientific consensus. Here's what Jake Tapper wrote:
At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. -- a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical…
tqa | March 1, 2008
By now, there's a good chance that you've read something or another about the whole "Is John McCain a "Natural Born" Citizen" thing - it's caught quite a lot of attention over the last few days. It's certainly caught mine - not because I'm concerned about the question of whether military brats born overseas can be president, but because so many people are acting like complete idiots.
If you're not familiar with the story, here's a quick rundown. The Constitution requires that the President be a "natural born" citizen. John McCain was not born in the United States. He was born in the Panama…
scientificactivist | February 25, 2008It's difficult to find too many substantive policy differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (especially considering the much larger gulf that exists between them and the Republican candidates), but one area that's brought up time and time again is health care. In light of this, it's worth taking a look at how much the two agree and disagree here, especially since health care policy is purportedly one of Clinton's selling points.
To look at the actual plans from each of the candidates, you can click here for Obama's and here for Clinton's. The most thorough--but still accessible…
scientificactivist | February 21, 2008Two weeks before what could be a decisive Texas primary, Barack Obama picked up the endorsement Monday of Congressman Chet Edwards, whose district includes Texas A&M University, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and George W. Bush's Crawford ranch. I'm not going to go so far as to say that I called this one, but I certainly pointed out last week that Edwards was saying some pretty favorable things about Obama (although his office said he hadn't taken an official position yet). I usually don't track endorsements too closely, but I think this one is significant because not only…
scientificactivist | February 13, 2008Yesterday, Barack Obama won all three contests (Maryland, Virginia, and DC) in the "Potomac Primary", all by sizable margins. This means that he has won all eight contests that have occurred since Super Tuesday. He now leads the delegate race--even when superdelegates are included--and he maintains an incredible amount of momentum going into the February 19th contests of Hawaii and Wisconsin, where he is expected to do quite well again. However, his delegate lead is still slim, and if he wants to become the true frontrunner, he'll have to have a strong showing on March 4th, particularly in…
tqa | February 13, 2008
There were three more Presidential primaries yesterday - Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. Turnout in all three of them was high yesterday, at least on the Democratic side. The numbers for all three areas are good, but I'm most excited by the Maryland numbers.
In 2004, Democratic candidates received a combined total of 481,476 votes in the Maryland presidential primary. As of right now, Barack Obama has 457,053 votes. That's the figure with 96% of precincts reporting. It doesn't include the absentee ballots, and it doesn't include the provisional ballots that were cast during the…
scientificactivist | February 10, 2008Barack Obama swept all three Democratic contests yesterday, winning the popular vote convincingly in Louisiana (57-36), Washington (68-31), and Nebraska (68-32). In case there were still any doubts about his broad appeal, for the record that's a largely African-American Southern state (Louisiana), a white progressive West Coast state (Washington), and a white conservative red state (Nebraska). This means that Obama and Hillary Clinton are virtually tied in delegate counts, with Clinton holding a small advantage if preliminary superdelegate counts are included, and Obama holding a larger…
tqa | February 6, 2008
Is the party. Again.
In every single state that had a primary on Super Tuesday, Democratic turnout was up from 2004. The details are below the fold, and they're pretty cool to look at.
(Update 1: I've started to look at the Republican numbers. There are some things I'm seeing that they're probably not going to like. Details can be found at the bottom of the post.)
I got the 2000 and 2004 data from Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections. The 2008 data comes from CNN's election page. Raw numbers of votes weren't available for the states that had caucuses yesterday, so I…
grrlscientist | February 5, 2008tags: presidential primaries, super tuesday, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democratic primaries
Image: NYTimes.
This picture represents my fantasy: I see a great presidency resulting from the combination of two intelligent and passionate minds together: two people who discuss things between themselves (and with others) before making important decisions -- unlike the typical relationship between a president and vice president in this country, where the president more or less ignores the vice president. But Hillary and Barack are not like all those others that came before them, so why…
tqa | February 5, 2008
It looks like there's definitely going to be a little bit of good political news for everyone tonight - a statement released by leading theocon James Dobson:
"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008Although Hillary Clinton has been the perceived favorite to win the Democratic nomination since the 2008 presidential race began, Barack Obama has been picking up momentum continuously for the last week and a half, starting with his unexpectedly large win in South Carolina and leading up to today's Super Tuesday vote. Twenty-two states will hold Democratic primary elections today (to decide the fate of about half of the Democrats' delegates), and the largest of these is California. Here, although Clinton was once favored, Obama has taken the lead in the polls. And, as of today, he leads…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008For one reason or another when I was a student at Texas A&M University, I seemed to find myself in the student paper, The Battalion, fairly frequently--whether I was writing a letter to the editor, being quoted in a story, or reporting science news (as I did during my last semester there). It's been a while, but in a throwback to the 2001-2005 era, I'm once again quoted in a story today about presidential candidates using social networking sites:
"A candidate who doesn't take advantage of this is clearly out of the loop and out of touch with young people," said Nick Antis, class of 2005…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008A few interesting items have recently come up in the news and in the scientific literature about various methods for preventing the transmission of HIV.
First up is a study (1) published in PLoS Medicine this week that demonstrated the effectiveness of a combination of antiretroviral drugs in preventing viral transmission in a monkey model of HIV. The researchers demonstrated that taking the antiretroviral drug emtricitabine (FTC) orally could reduce the chance that a macaque would become infected. Adding tenofovir-disoproxil fumarate (TDF) increased protection, and injecting both drugs (…