Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | December 1, 2006At various political blogs around the internets, there has been some discussion of revisiting the Equal Rights Amendment. I really don't think that's in the cards, but, in a very good post, Amanda discusses, among other things, one of Aspazia's students who opposes the ERA because it would mandate unisex toilets, thereby endangering the survival of his fraternity (I'm not joking). The canard of mandated unisex toilets canard was raised the last time the ERA was proposed in 1982 before these students were born. Who taught them this rubbish?
Amanda proposes that the politics of toilets will…
mikethemadbiologist | November 29, 2006There was a time when think tanks on occasion actually thought. Not so, at the conservative Hoover Institute, where Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer slimed Pelosi, claiming she had to explain why her family's vineyard does not use union employees. Schweizer claimed Pelosi was a hypocrite.
Two things to note:
1) Pelosi pays better wages than the union vineyards.
2) By law, Pelosi is not allowed to even suggest to her workers that they organize. She can only negotiate with a union once it is formed.
When confronted with this by a TV news station, Schweizer refused to return phone…
mikethemadbiologist | November 29, 2006The other title of this post could have been "The War on Christmas and the Politics of Failed Withdrawl." Regardless, Tuesday, the Catholic League launched the first salvo in its ongoing War Against the Jews On Christmas with a large ad on the op-ed page of the NY Times. Here's what the Catholic League had to say:
(larger version here)
I think the charge of "cultural facists" is more than a little overblown. I live in Boston, a bastion of liberalism, not to mention the dreaded 'Homofascist Hordes', and nobody is ripping down the Christmas lights on Newbury Street or Comm Ave. The Boston…
mikethemadbiologist | November 28, 2006Thank you, Dennis Prager for your anti-Muslim bigotry: at least we know where the modern conservatives really stand. Despite Article IV of the U.S. Constitution which states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States", Prager has his knickers in a twist over Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison's intention to use a copy of the Koran instead of a Christian Bible while being sworn into office. Prager spews:
Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not…
mikethemadbiologist | November 28, 2006Sounds like a civil war to me. And as civil wars go, it's pretty awful. A year ago, I was comparing it to Northern Ireland. Actually, comparison is the wrong word, since Iraq is far more brutal than Northern Ireland ever was.
This is not something 'that happened.' Those who supported the war, for whatever reason, are responsible for it. Many of us warned you this would happen, and instead of listening, we were derided as traitors and weaklings. We were not viewed as 'serious' people. Now, it's too late. I can see no way to fix this problem. So thank you for dragging our nation…
mikethemadbiologist | November 27, 2006
To avoid possible brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that Sebastian Mallaby's columns only be read using the StupidVu 9000
Someone needs to tell Bush that when I wrote a post titled "Democrats Crush GOP; Bush Declares 'Mandate'", I was joking. Now that El Jefe Maximo has psychologically disinvested from the Iraqi Occupation, he has decided that the message the American electorate sent in the 2006 elections was "You've done such a great job with foreign policy, FEMA, and the budget deficit, we would really like you to screw up Social Security."
Really, Bush is once again, after…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2006There are reports that the U.S. has cut a deal with Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, so he can negotiate with the Sunni insurgents:
According to the Iraqi newspaper Al- Quds al-Arabi, James Baker, the Bush family's Mr. Fixit, recently met with one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers in Amman, Jordan, and told him that the former deputy prime minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, would be released from detention by December in order to negotiate with the US on behalf of factions of the Iraqi resistance movement still controlled by old Ba'ath Party leaders. Sources in Jordan tell me that the…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2006As a part of the Carnival of the Liberals, I wrote a post about our failing political discourse. Here's something related from the archives.
In an excellent post on news reporting, Thoughts from Kansas writes (italics mine):
The same thing is a major part of the ongoing creationism battles. A good reporter with a background in science would not feel obliged to go to a scientist and get a quote to balance a story about creationists. Nor would such a reporter feel obliged to troll the waters for some bottom-feeding creationist to "balance" some claim about actual science.
But that's what many…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2006Ok, so after complaining about how no one reads my posts on antibiotic resistance, one reader read this post about the FDA overriding an expert panel that advised against using cefquinome in agriculture, and then went and read the recently released minutes of the hearing (all eight gajillion pages). Here's what the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the FDA said (p. 211; italics mine):
And so from the FDA standpoint, what we did was we said to the company after vetting it through the VMAC, that you will be judged -- the microbial safety of your product will be judged based on…
mikethemadbiologist | November 21, 2006Some brilliant Republican solons from the great state of Missouri have released an official state report that argues that abortion has led to illegal immigration. The 'argument?'
Abortion has eliminated U.S. workers, leading to a need for illegal immigrants.
Clearly, these brilliant minds have never heard of the meat-packing industry. The meat-packing industry used to be unionized, and, consequently, virtually all of its workers were either legal residents or citizens. Then the unions were busted, resulting in crappy pay and dangerous conditions, and many people--rightfully so--did not…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2006CNN describes Nancy Pelosi as "damaged goods", and she hasn't even had her chance to screw up the country yet. Digby sums it up nicely:
There are no honeymoons for Democrats. Remember that. And "moral authority" is about haircuts and Hollywood, not torture and illegal wars. It is not merely a fight against the Republicans or a fight over politics and policy. It is a non-stop battle with the press to cover events with seriousness and responsiblity. For some reason, when Democrats are in power the press corps immediately goes from being merely shallow to insufferable, sophomoric assholes....…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2006Actually, the post title is unfair: Romney is quite capable of screwing over thousands of people at once. In order to further his Republican presidential bonafides by cutting spending, any spending, MA Governor Mitt Romney playing bookkeeping games so he could declare a fiscal state of emergency and unilaterally cut budget items.
During the 2006 election, what with all the fuss about Republican Sen. George "Macacawitz" Allen, I never got around to describing what first tipped me off to his being a complete asshole. When Allen was governor of VA, he vetoed all spending for Meals on Wheels…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006A few weeks ago, an FDA expert panel by a vote of 6-4 decided against the approval of the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in cattle. Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that the political appointees at the FDA plan to overrule the expert panel and approve the use of cefquinome. The chairman of the panel is under pressure to alter the panel's findings, and the FDA has not posted the minutes of the meeting, which is apparently required by law.
About the post title: cefepime, like cefquinome, is what is known as a fourth-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. While cefquinome is…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006For you younguns, in the 80s, the USDA decided to define ketchup as a serving of vegetables so it could skimp on subsidized meals for needy schoolchildren. Well, the USDA has decided to stop using the word "hunger" and replace it with "very low food security." Here's some statistics on "very low food security":
Some are not happy with the Orwellian double speak:
Anti-hunger advocates say the new words sugarcoat a national shame. "The proposal to remove the word 'hunger' from our official reports is a huge disservice to the millions of Americans who struggle daily to feed themselves and…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006Matt Taibbi on politics in the era of television:
The thing that people should be concerned about isn't that the news networks are choosing to cover politics like a football game. It's the idea that both televised football games and televised politics might represent some idealized form of commercial television drama that both sports and politics evolved in the direction of organically, under the constant financial pressure brought to bear by TV advertisers. Both politics and sports turned into this shit because this format happens to sell the most Cheerios, regardless of what the content is…
mikethemadbiologist | November 14, 2006
I appreciate all of you (well, except for a couple of conservatroll assholes), but this comment by "The Teachers Union" in response to a rightwing screed left in the comments is brilliant. First, the rightwing screed:
Ha. You're full of shit. The gay baiting (Foster, Haggard, Mehlman), race baiting (Steele, Harry Belafonte Calls Black Republicans tyrants, Gov. Blackwell) and hyporcisy (e.g., Michael Moore and Al Gore not practicing what they teach) comes from the democrap side.
Special interests? How about Teachers Union, Abortion death mills and welfare frauds? Why should money that I have…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2006A while ago, I wrote about the effect that the rise of certain forms of Christianity was having on the military. To summarize: certain ideological or religious views mean that you might not be able to do your job very well. Bob Broughton carries the analysis over to the White House staff. His surprising finding?
The number one academic recruiting ground for the White House interns is Patrick Henry College (italics mine):
At about 35 minutes into this program, Harris said that the main source of White House interns is not Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Bush's alma mater Yale. Instead, they…
mikethemadbiologist | November 12, 2006Usually, I add good weekend posts to my weekend roundup, but Glenn Greenwald's post about the soulessness of the Mainstream Media Mandarins is so good, it deserves some special Mad Biologist commentary. Greenwald writes about how the Punditocracy has completely misread Sen. Russ Feingold because they are unable to comprehend how any politician could act on principle or belief (italics mine):
Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered --…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2006Whiskey Fire explains the 2006 election very cogently:
A lot has been said already about the '06 elections, and a lot more will be said. Most of this will be crap. So let me just be clear:
The Republicans lost the '06 elections because they are crazy people with shitty policies that have all failed.
Crucial to any analysis of yesterday's results must be the fact that they started a war based on bullshit, and then they quite literally made a bloody mess of it.
Also, they're completely corrupt and incompetent, self-righteously religious, willing to gay bait and race bait, and generally all they…