John McCain
lborkowski | July 31, 2017Like millions of others, I was hugely relieved to get the news early Friday morning that three Republican Senators had joined 48 of their Democratic and Independent colleagues to vote down the third Republican proposal to take healthcare away from millions of people. Now’s a good time to think about how we got here and what comes next.
The Affordable Care Act
For much of 2009, Democratic members of Congress spent months negotiating with Republican colleagues and one another on the legislation that would eventually become the Patient Protect and Affordable Care Act. Over many hours of debate…
oracknows | March 8, 2010If there's one law that (most) supporters of science-based medicine detest and would love to see repealed, it's the Dietary Supplement and Health Act of 1994 (DSHEA). The reason is that this law, arguably more than almost anything else, allowed for the proliferation of supplements and claims made for these supplements that aren't based in science. In essence, the DSHEA created a new class of regulated entity called dietary supplements. At the same time, it liberalized the rules for information and claims that the supplement manufacturers can transmit to the public and while at the same time…
grrlscientist | November 4, 2008tags: Sarah Palin, politics, satire, humor, streaming video
Sarah Palin has such a good idea to put the federal checkbook online -- it's such a good idea that Coburn (R), Obama (D) and McCain (R) already beat her to it .. in 2006. Like, duh! But I shouldn't criticize Sarah because she gives hope to all brain dead poodles that they too, may one day become vice president. [0:53]
scientificactivist | October 22, 2008Today we learned that the Republican Party spent an almost unfathomable $150,000 in the month of September alone on clothes and makeup for Sarah "Joe Sixpack" Palin. This is a breathtaking figure, and the irony is certainly delicious. However, I can't escape the feeling that something here is still missing.
Now, if only I could find some sort of aphorism to really get at the heart of this situation....
scientificactivist | October 9, 2008I was excited when I saw that The New England Journal of Medicine had today published summaries by Obama and McCain of their health care plans, expecting something quite detailed to appeal to a highly critical expert audience. However, their summaries were still as general and vague as ever. Regardless, these new write-ups are still a nice resource for people interested in the two candidates' plans. You can read Obama's plan here, McCain's here, or see a pdf of both side-by-side here.
On many aspects, both plans--at least as they're presented here--are quite similar. Both stress…
scientificactivist | October 8, 2008When I think back to the presidential debate last night, one moment stands out in my mind more than any other. And, no, it wasn't McCain calling Obama "that one". It was the discussion following Tom Brokaw's question "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?"
Health care came up several times throughout the debate, but here I thought the answers were most telling. This is in spite of the fact that I took issue with the way the question was phrased. Specifically, I felt that the third choice ("responsibility") was unnecessary and just gave the candidates an easy…
scientificactivist | October 5, 2008Recent polls have shown that voters trust Obama over McCain in addressing the economy by a margin of about 10-15%. But, what do the experts think?
The Economist conducted its own poll of economists (appropriately), and found that they agreed that Obama is the stronger candidate when it comes to the economy--but by a much wider margin. Eighty percent respondents agreed that Obama has a better grasp of economics (versus 8% for McCain), and 81% believed that Obama would pick the better economic team (versus 14% for McCain). On a scale of 1-5, respondents gave Obama's economic plan a 3.3 and…
scientificactivist | September 1, 2008On Saturday, ScienceDebate 2008 and Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) announced that Barack Obama answered a fourteen-part questionnaire that they put together along with several other scientifically oriented organizations. Major props to ScienceDebate, SEA, and these other organizations for making this happen and to Barack Obama for thoroughly answering these fourteen questions.
I'd encourage you to check out his answers for yourself, at either of the links above. My own analysis is that his answers overall are quite satisfactory. He says all of the right things for the most part…
scientificactivist | July 1, 2008Am I taking crazy pills, or do people honestly believe that saying that being a prisoner of war doesn't automatically qualify you to be president is the same as attacking someone's service record? Because, this latest media flare-up over Wesley Clark's remarks is getting exceedingly absurd.
John McCain went through hell in Vietnam, and he dealt with it in a way that demonstrated a tremendous amount of character. However, even if the sole responsibility of the President of the United States were to be commander-in-chief of the military, that experience alone would not qualify McCain to be…
scientificactivist | June 23, 2008I've been pretty open here about my support of Barack Obama's bid for the presidency, but one issue I certainly disagree with him on is his support of corn ethanol subsidies. Unfortunately, it looks like that this is one issue he's unlikely to improve on, as The New York Times reports today that ties to the corn ethanol industry permeate the highest levels of the Obama campaign:
Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic…
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…
grrlscientist | April 29, 2008tags: John McCain, testicles, humor, satire, politics, streaming video
This amusing streaming video is an interview with John McCain's urologist, who shows us a really nice graph revealing the size of his testicles. But his urologist refuses to confirm whether McCain is a real badass, saying that we have to interview his proctologist to learn if that's true [2:10].
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…
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 (…
scientificactivist | March 17, 2007Not that HIV/AIDS is an important issue or anything... but it appears that Republican presidential hopeful John McCain hasn't been thinking much--or at all--about HIV prevention. The New York Times blog The Caucus reports that when asked about the subject at a recent campaign rally in Iowa, McCain looked completely stumped:
Did he support the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of H.I.V.?
What followed was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain's aides, standing off to the back, urgently…
scientificactivist | February 13, 2007As 2008 approaches, many of the Republican contenders for the Presidency will try to paint themselves as moderates. An article in today's Washington Post, though, underlines why we should be weary of their empty rhetoric.
Romney, who is expected to formally enter the presidential race today in Dearborn, Mich., has been particularly aggressive. In October he held a casual gathering at his Boston home for a who's who of social conservative leaders. Falwell and evangelist Franklin Graham munched on sandwiches and sipped soup alongside former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and pastor Richard…