Flaming Small-Minded Stupidity
tqa | March 20, 2008
I'm not Zuska, but I suddenly find that I've got an almost uncontrollable urge to puke on someone's shoes. There's a new breaking story out about Hillary Clinton, junior senator from New York, and Democratic Presidential candidate. It's so shocking that over 1300 news articles have already appeared. Everyone seems to have gotten behind this one. The AP has several articles. The Washington Post made note of the story. CBS seems to think it's news. ABC apparently thinks that the story falls into the category of "investigative journalism". The Boston Herald's totally into this one.
The…
tqa | January 11, 2008
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of…
tqa | November 29, 2007
Apparently, the Virginia Republican Party has been getting nostalgic for the good old days at the end of the Cold War. You remember those days, right? Ronald Reagan was saying things like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" and "we begin bombing in five minutes" . Ollie North was sitting in front of Congress and claiming to have the memory of a repeatedly concussed goldfish. And the Republicans looked likely to hold onto the White House forever. Given present circumstances, it's easy to see why the Virginia GOP might be getting a wee bit nostalgic. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm to…
tqa | October 24, 2007
Several days ago, Senator (and longshot Presidential candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT) made some news by promising to do whatever he could to block any legislation that would retroactively grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with President Bush's warrentless wiretapping program. He started off by placing a hold on the bill - a procedural move that would normally block the legislation from being voted on. After hearing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to move the bill to the floor despite the hold, Dodd is now promising to go to the floor of the Senate…
tqa | October 22, 2007
Here are a few numbers from the latest Reuters-Zogby poll. See if you can find the one that's not like the others:
Rated President Bush's performance as excellent or good: 25%Rated Congress' performance as excellent or good: 11%Said the U.S. is heading in the right direction: 26%Rated the performance of U.S. foreign policy excellent or good: 18%
Rated the performance of U.S. economic policy excellent or good: 26%Said they were very or fairly proud of the U.S.: 88%
Those numbers remind me of a bit from Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment:
"...you might not like everything about your…
tqa | October 20, 2007
Google news is currently featuring a comment by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on the House of Representatives' failed attempt to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. The comment reads in part:
"I remain committed to working with my colleagues across the aisle to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program to protect underprivileged children who currently lack health insurance. However, I cannot support legislation that will expand the welfare state, provide government health care benefits to illegal immigrants, and irresponsibly draw-down the public purse…
tqa | October 12, 2007
(He didn't do it on purpose, of course.)
According to Bill-O, the world would be a scary, scary, scary place if Edwards is elected president:
Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant.
That sounds suspiciously like the vision of a world where the President of the United States actually preserves, protects, and defends the Constitution of the United States. And we all know that's the last thing that we can afford, right?
(Hat tips:…
tqa | October 12, 2007
As you are undoubtedly aware, this year's Nobel Peace Prize is being split between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, in recognition of "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Like almost everybody else here at Scienceblogs, I think this is absolutely fantastic. Gore has worked his butt off over the last few years. He's been tireless in his efforts to focus attention on climate change, and he's made a real difference. The…
tqa | October 8, 2007
One of the alleged facts that President Bush loves to point at when he's trying to justify his veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) expansion is that the new bill would have allowed New York to enroll children from families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that works out to an annual income of about $83,000. The President and his staff appear to find $83,000 to be a very impressive number. It's certainly one that they talk about a heck of a lot - as far as I can tell, everyone from the White House who has said anything about the…
tqa | October 4, 2007
I can't begin to thank the people who have donated to the DonorsChoose campaign enough. As of today - four days into the campaign - we've raised $1045. That's more than was contributed during all of last year's 15-day campaign. That's absolutely fantastic.
As of now, all four of the projects that I picked have been fully funded, but we haven't hit the goal yet. (Either someone donated to one of the projects through this campaign without receiving credit, or someone donated to one of the projects independently of the campaign.) At this point, we're still about $550 short of my goal for the…
tqa | October 2, 2007
Several Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled a revolutionary plan today that would radically change the way we are paying for the war in Iraq. Their shocking plan has been strongly condemned by Republicans around the country, and the Democratic leadership has responded - in classic fashion - by hiding under their desks and praying for it to go away. Their radical solution? We should do what we did during World War II and Vietnam, and add a surtax to the normal income tax to cover the (financial) costs.
Republicans were quick to attack the very concept of not making our…
tqa | September 20, 2007
Gotta love it. The Senate today took a break from being paralyzed by Republican "No Up-Or-Down-Vote For You" obstructionists. They had to. You see, it's important for people to understand that the Senate isn't going to stand still when big mean Democrat netroots activists call a general a mean name. So they took time away from their busy schedule to pass a "sense of the Senate" resolution that reads:
To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks…
tqa | September 17, 2007
Once again, John "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" McCain went and said something stupid at a campaign stop. And, once again, he got caught on video doing it. This time, he went just slightly overboard in his criticism of the now-infamous MoveOn.org "General Betray-us" ad. Holding a blown-up, laminated copy of the ad, McCain said:
"It's disgraceful, it's got to be retracted and condemned by the Democrats and MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country, my friends."
(And if you don't believe Time Magazine, CBS has the video footage.)
Unlike the "Bomb Iran" incident, this wasn't…