Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | August 4, 2007(from here by way of Mimus Pauly)
The Democrats rolled over on FISA legislation, giving Bush even more latitude in spying on his own citizens. As Josh Marshall put it:
Bush is getting practically everything he asked for.
He should have phrased that as a question because I can't figure out why they rolled over. Bush has a 25-30% percent approval rating. All the Democrats would have had to do is phrase their response as a question, "Do you trust George Bush with even more power?" and they win.
Still the most hapless political party in recorded history.
mikethemadbiologist | August 2, 2007Once again, Robert Samuelson tries to argue that Social Security is DOOOMMMEEDDD! one Samuelson Unit from now. Samuelson falls back on his old standby--lumping Social Security and Medicare together. Mark Thoma explains:
The main problem is rising medical costs, and unlike the misplaced emphasis on Social Security in the last election, there is a lot of focus on health care reform in the political debate this time around. Samuelson seems to have completely missed the connection between health care reform and his pet column peeve, hence his claim that the problem is being ignored in the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2007By way of Amanda, I found this great FAQ about libertarianism. My favorite part where he explains why he debunks libertarianism:
As I told creationists who wondered why I bothered, it's interesting to me to study unusual beliefs for the same reason it's interesting for doctors to study pathologies. You don't have to catch a disease to be able to understand it, fight it, or vaccinate against it.
Heh.
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2007Robert Farley takes on two of the major proponents of the Unified Theory of the Surge, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack:
O'Hanlon and Pollack insist that this is "a war that we just might win" without pausing to indicate what "victory" means in this context; at best, it seems, we could hope for some temporary stability. They seem to define stability as a reduction of civilian casualty rates by "roughly a third since the surge began". I've written before about the nonsensical efforts of surge advocates to claim success by pointing to Iraqi government casualty figures; no one believes that…
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2007The blogosphere is in a wee bit of a tizzy over a Vanity Fair article that hints Giuliani might be having an(other) affair, this time with advisor and motivational speaker, Starr Shephard. Personally, as long as he's not doing it in public, I don't care who Giuliani is or is not screwing, although the whole subject does generate some unappealing mental images. But the motivational guru part is disturbing.
A quick use of the Google found an advertisement placed in the Village Voice by Shephard:
Did You See or read "The Secret"? STARR is here to serve you in order for you to light the flame…
mikethemadbiologist | July 31, 2007Massachusetts, which has one of the highest rates of childhood vaccination, is facing an increase in parents claiming religious exemptions from having to vaccinate their children, even though the number of kindergarteners has decreased. But these exemptions aren't actually religious at all:
Barry Taylor practices naturopathic medicine, and defends these parents' right to choose. "The truth is, it's not about their religion," Taylor said. "It's about their values. And it would be a bit of a white lie to say it's religious."
Proponents of parental choice want Massachusetts to add a…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2007I've called those movement conservatives who think that successful policy execution--in peace or war--is about "will", as opposed to, let's say, execution, Peter Pan conservatives. Atrios has a very good explanation of why they believe so strongly in will--their own personal experience:
I've been thinking about about certain Bushies - Bush himself, obviously, and Condi Rice - who seem to honestly believe that "will" and "resolve" are the way one gets things done instead of, you know, actually getting stuff done. I've finally decided that they're basically people have always gotten where they…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2007Romney has been so good for Massachusetts. Imagine what he can do for the country. From the Boston Globe:
On all key labor market measures, the state not only lagged behind the country as a whole, but often ranked at or near the bottom of the state distribution. Formal payroll employment in the state in 2006 was still 16,000 or 0.5 percent below its average level in 2002, the year immediately prior to the start of the Romney administration. Massachusetts ranked third lowest on this key job generation measure and would have ranked second lowest if Hurricane Katrina had not devastated the…
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2007It's bad enough when the mainstream media engages in ersatz psychology and semiotics. It's even worse when this pseudoanalysis has a bias--it's like Colbert's truthiness, except that it's not funny (italics mine):
Consider, then, the cheesesteak.
While running for president, John Kerry ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese. The sane response to that fact is, of course, "who cares?" The media response was to mock Kerry for ordering the "wrong" cheese. Supposedly, it reinforced his "elitist" image. Kerry's cheesesteak order continues to draw media attention years later.
During that same…
mikethemadbiologist | July 13, 2007Sometimes a giant transforming robot isn't a Republican, it's just a giant transforming robot. A few years back, when Star Trek was all the rage, someone wrote a literary criticism of Star Trek, "The Literary Galaxy of Star Trek: An Analysis of References And Themes in the Television Series." It was interesting, but often wrong.
I remember two distinct errors. First, there was the claim that the transporters represented...hell, something. In fact, the reason the transporters were developed wasn't an attempt to make a subtle point, but because the original show couldn't afford the cost of…
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2007The headline in today's Boston Globe: "Colleges fear debt puts damper on donations." Gee, do ya think?
When universities are touting college as a personal, economic investment--and not an investment in society, why on earth did they think loyalty would still exist? Most students have been told that to gain access to or remain in the middle class, they need a college degree. When they rack up massive debt, and at the same time, are forced to take jobs they really don't want to pay off that debt, did it ever occur to the universities that this might happen?
Rising tuition rates aren't like…
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2007I'm all for more efficient bureaucracy, but, like it or not, governance requires bureaucracy, something those conservatives opposed to universal healthcare don't seem to get. From From the Archives:
In this climate, with this cabal leading our country, you somehow look around you and decide that what scares you, the real threat to our democracy is a bunch of civil servants? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE DO?
I am dead serious. What do you think we DO? We sit here, thousands of us, infiltrating the entire nation. Every day we come to work and do something that is scarier than making a mockery…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2007The FTC has released a report calling for the end of net neutrality (FTC's pdf report here*). What does that mean? Well:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.
The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.
This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2007Calling all woo-meisters (including ScienceBlogs Lord High Defender Against Woo). In this Slate article about the vaccines-cause-autism crowd, which describes how this is one idiot idea that will never go away, I came across this puzzling statement about antibiotics:
Another apparent benefit is the notion, espoused by a network of alternative-medical practitioners and supplement pushers, that if vaccines are the cause, the damage can be repaired, the child made whole. In the homes of autistic children it is not unusual to find cabinets filled with 40 different vitamins and supplements, along…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2007It's sad that the only way oversight can occur in our Excellent Iraqi Adventure is when one sleazebag contractor rats out another sleazebag contractor (italics mine):
A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world.
The main builder of the sprawling, 21-building embassy is First Kuwaiti…
mikethemadbiologist | July 3, 2007...and are you in any way, shape, or form surprised? Has anything in the last six years suggested to anyone in the Coalition of the Sane that the Bush/Cheney Administration has any sense of shame or propriety? Of course not.
It should be clear that this administration will do anything and everything it can get away with. Bush now appears to have 'accepted' his 28% approval ratings, and won't try to do anything to raise them.
The group that I'm truly disappointed in is the Democrats. They still seem to think that if they point out El Jefe Maximo's outrageous and illegal behavior that the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 28, 2007Jonathan Hari of TNR bravely went undercover and joined a cruise hosted by the National Review. That is a heroic sacrifice on behalf of the Coalition of the Sane, and no amount of satire could do that lunacy justice. But Norman "the blood of GIs is better than Viagra" Podhoretz brought up that tired canard of the Delusional Right (italics mine):
"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies…
mikethemadbiologist | June 28, 2007...and the psychological brickwalls they run into. With all of the talk about the Creationist Museum, I thought it would be worth discussing a museum that is trying to teach evolution. In the June 2007 issue of Evolution*, Diamond and Evans describe some of the responses to a revamped evolution exhibit, "Explore Evolution", at the Nebraska State Museum.
The authors conducted a survey of visitors to the Nebraska State Museum, asking them seven questions about the exhibit, with the goal of determining what cognitive biases existed among museumgoers (note: I've snipped the references):…
mikethemadbiologist | June 22, 2007With Massachusetts having prevented the attempt to de-legalize gay marriage, there is much discussion about the topic. But this story about a splinter Mormon group highlights the importance of outlawing one type of marriage: marriages between close relatives. By way of Lance Mannion, from Reuters (italics mine):
In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.
The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world…
mikethemadbiologist | June 21, 2007...help them win the election. Over at Thoughts from Kansas, ScienceBlogling Josh has a post about who and what are responsible for the current civil war in the West Bank and Gaza. In any discussion of the Middle East, all sorts of things will be claimed, but there is one awful historical fact: American and Israeli pressure on the Palestinian Authority to change their electoral system helped Hamas win the 2006 elections.
The original electoral system that Palestinians had was completely proportional. If a party won forty percent of the votes, it received forty percent of the seats in…