Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006Or as Lovecraft would have put it:
Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Iran R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii!!!!
Fareed Zakaria sums up the silliness of comparing Iran to Nazi Germany:
Can everyone please take a deep breath?
To review a bit of history: in 1938, Adolf Hitler launched what became a world war not merely because he was evil but because he was in complete control of the strongest country on the planet. At the time, Germany had the world's second largest industrial base and its mightiest army. (The American economy was bigger, but in 1938 its army was smaller than that of Finland.) This is…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes:
Good God, and they're sending a copy of the film and a letter to 100,000 American high school teachers written by - who? - the REPUBLICAN chair of the 9/11 Commission. Not the Democrat and the Republican, just the Republican. And a Republican whose son is running for the US Senate seat in New Jersey - oh yeah, no conflict…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006Brad DeLong is one of those really smart people who I would never want to be really angry at me when the facts don't support me. Why? Because he writes bits like this:
There is a certain horrifying fascination in watching the right wing's minions and useful idiots in the press attempt to attack Paul Krugman on matters of economic substance. The Mickey Kauses, the Andrew Sullivans, the Donald Luskins, the Danny Okrents--all seem unarmed men in a battle of wits, or perhaps an air assault by a circular firing squad of flying attack monkeys.
Ouch. Another pissed off expert.
mikethemadbiologist | August 31, 2006
A Republican political operative about to give the First Amendment a rectal exam
(photo from here)
...well, not exactly. From the BBC comes this heartwarming story of fear of everything Arab (italics mine):
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.
US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2006It's nice to see that the Alabama Democratic Party realized that a lesbian Democrat can be just as irrelevant as a straight Democrat to doings of the Republican controlled Alabama egislature.
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2006King Cranky and Shakes are right: if George Bush doesn't want us to dwell on New Orleans, then it's probably a good idea for us to do so. Regarding New Orleans, Publius asks a very simple question:
So why does no one care?
That's the essential question in a nutshell. Here's my short answer: people stopped caring about New Orleans when they realized that the institutions most capable of handling this crisis would not do a fucking thing about it. Looking back on my posts about the New Orleans disaster, I should have realized New Orleans would become a full-blown pandimensional clusterfuck…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2006OK, I'm kidding (legally, he's too young). S.R. Sidarth is the native born Virginian who was called a racist slur by Californian transplant Sen. George Allen (R-VA). Californian transplant Allen also welcomed Sidarth to "the real Virginia." When you look at what a total screw up Allen was when he was young, and compare it to Sidarth (athlete, top-notch student, involved in community causes), this native-born Virginian (that would be the Mad Biologist) doesn't want Allen's 'kind' fouling the Commonwealth.
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2006...and the Christopaths want to kill it anyway. There is a method that could be used to harvest embryonic stem cells that does not harm development of the embryo:
The new technique would be performed on a two-day-old embryo, after the fertilized egg has divided into eight cells, known as blastomeres. In fertility clinics, where the embryo is available outside the woman in the normal course of in vitro fertilization, one of these blastomeres can be removed for diagnostic tests, like for Down syndrome.
The embryo, now with seven cells, can be implanted in the woman if no defect is found. Many…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2006
(Michael Barone guarding his glass house from the Elitofacist hordes; photo from here)
...because you never know where they'll show up.
Conservative pundit Michael Barone writes about those who oppose the failed Bush Iraq policies (italics mine):
We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2006'Will-based' foreign policy making seems to have overcome the modern conservative movement (maybe it should be called 'realpolitik backlash'...). There is the constant belief--and it has to be called a belief since it doesn't appear to be evidence-based--that if we just wish hard enough, the tactics, strategy, and logistics will simply solve themselves. But reality doesn't work that way.
In 1944, the British 1st Paratroop Division dropped into and around the city of Arnhem, with the goal of taking and holding the Arnhem bridge until relief arrived. For many of reasons, the relief didn't…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2006This is a remarkable post, although it's not too surprising. Who needs Hizbollah when you have these assholes:
My parents raised my sisters and me in a small town in rural Wisconsin. Never mind exactly which one -- I have to maintain my anonymity here in order to keep my jobs for grad school. Suffice it to say it's a good distance away from Madison, and in terms of worldview, it might as well be on a different planet. You might recall the story of the Indian River School District in Delaware, which ran a Jewish family out of town with death threats and other harassment after the family…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2006About a week ago, Sen. George Allen (R-VA) referred to an American of Indian descent as a "macaca" which is a racist slur (derived from the French word for monkey). I'm pleased to see that this act of bigotry has hurt George Wallace Allen:
In an election for the United States Senate in Virginia today, 8/21/06, incumbent Republican George Allen edges Democrat challenger James Webb 48% to 45%, according to an exclusive SurveyUSA poll conducted for W*USA-TV in Washington, DC.
Since an identical SurveyUSA poll released 6/28/06, Allen has lost 8 points and Webb has gained 8 points. Allen's lead…
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2006The best description of George Walker Bush ever penned (or at least for the next 48 hours which is forever in internet time):
Dubya is a white-knuckling, emotionally dead dry-drunk halfwit with the attention span of a massively over-caffeinated mayfly who believes in all the fun, flight-suit-related bits about being Preznit and leaves the hard thinky stuff to Dick.
There is no one better who skewers the modern conservative than driftglass.
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2006...I might as well too. By some weird transcendental quirk of fate, I was planning on moving to this blog ">my skewering of Sally Jenkins' now-infamous column about ID next week. Afarensis has just reposted a very nice takedown of the silliness. Below are my thoughts at the time on Jenkins' idiocy.
I usually like Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, but today's column can only be described as sheer idiocy. Thankfully, the News Blog has dealt with most of the obvious criticisms, so I don't have to (it gets really old after a while). Before I address just how poorly Jenkins…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2006I've never thought of myself as a particularly brave or courageous person. Plenty of things make me a little bit nervous at the very least. But the overt fear many claim to have felt since Sept. 11, 2001 really hasn't been part of my thinking. Let me make it clear: I was angry and sad after the 9/11 massacres. But I didn't feel afraid or fearful; my attitude was always along the lines of "We have to find the people responsible, prevent them from doing this again, and let justice take its course." And I never wanted to gratutiously hurt someone. Related to this, Josh Marshall, whom I…
mikethemadbiologist | August 16, 2006
Juan Cole nails it:
It was such a stupid war. It was thick-as-two-blocks-of-wood strategy on all sides. It was moronic for the Israelis to plan it out last year. It was idiotic for Hizbullah to cross over into Israel, kill soldiers, and take two captive. It was brain dead for the Israeli officer corps and politicians to think they could get anything positive out of bombing Lebanon back to the stone age and making a million people homeless. It was dim-witted for Hasan Nasrallah to threaten Israelis with releasing poison gases from Haifa chemical plants on them. It was obtuse for the Israelis…
mikethemadbiologist | August 16, 2006So it turns out Mel Gibson was ranting about juice, not Jews. It must be the Coriolis Effect or something.... (hat tip: KAT)
mikethemadbiologist | August 14, 2006Here's some interesting articles I pulled off the internets for you:
Publius argues "The fact that Iraq was so incompetently executed is actually the least of its problems. The bigger problem is that the idea of it represented a staggering failure of vision and judgment in terms of anti-terrorism policy. It's simply not possible to devise an anti-terrorism policy more at odds with the nature of the threat facing us."
An interesting NY Times magazine article by Michael Young on how Hizbollah relates to the Lebanese political scene (as opposed to the War on Terra).
Neil the Ethical Werewolf…
mikethemadbiologist | August 14, 2006...and calls a dark-skinned man of Indian descent a monkey. When viewed with his other forms of sociopathy, I'll ask once again: can the Republicans please nominate a presidential candidate who isn't cracked in the head? (Just in case).
From a historical perspective, a VA congressman once referred to Chain Bridge which connects VA and DC as "the longest bridge in the world, since it goes from VA to Africa." That was a few decades ago though. George Allen: he wants to party like it's 1959.
Update: Atrios points out that "macaca" is a nasty slur directed at North Africans. Who knew…
mikethemadbiologist | August 13, 2006At this point, one has to wonder if there are any sane people left in the Bush Administration. In the New Yorker, Sy Hersh describes the run up to the next war:
A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later--the longer you wait, the less time we [the U.S.] have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "
And regarding intelligence, it's the same old song:
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by…