Pig Screwer
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2010Can we once and for all recognize that movement conservatives do not believe in the fair exchange of ideas?
A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.
"The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I'll continue to bury their…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2010The COMPETES Act renewal, which would provide additional funding for scientific research and education, and is targeted towards technological development and commercialization was dealt a blow yesterday as Republicans pulled more obstructionist crap. Before the Republican Party was completely taken over by the enraged Uruk-hai wing of their party, they would have not opposed this. But movement conservativism means party before country (italics mine):
House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., Thursday blasted what he described as a "cynical" motion to recommit…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2010Impeach Cuccinelli. Impeach him now (to steal Brad DeLong's phrase). Earlier this week, I discussed Virginia Attorney General Cucinelli's subpoena envy harassment of climatologist Michael Mann. ScienceBlogling Tim Lambert describes what this fishing expedition entails:
Cuccinelli isn't just asking for documents relating to his research grants but all correspondence Mann had with Caspar Ammann, Raymond Bradley, Keith Briffa, John Christy, Edward Cook, Thomas Crowley, Roseanne D'Arrigo, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, David Douglass, Jan Esper, Melissa Free, Chris de Freitas, Vincent Grey [sic],…
mikethemadbiologist | August 8, 2009
Yesterday, I raised the possible specter of violent intimidation breaking out at a health care townhall meeting. Turns out I was off by about twelve hours:
Tampa, Florida-- Fireworks were expected, but organizers of a town hall meeting on health care reform were caught off guard Thursday night by just how explosive the issue became.
Hundreds showed up for the 6:00 forum held at the Children's Board of Hillsborough County on Palm Avenue in Tampa. The auditorium which holds around 250 people, filled up so quickly eventually Tampa Police were ordered to begin turning people away.
Inside, U.S.…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2008By way of maha (and also Roger Ailes the Good), I came across this screed from the conservative National Review's website (italics mine):
... Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City--a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but…
mikethemadbiologist | January 31, 2008...and conservatives still don't like him. Boo fucking hoo. Here's how Straight-Talking, honest McCain is sliming the Mittster:
"I'm calling with an urgent Mitt Romney [unintelligible]"
"We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being.
"Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2008You might have heard of push polling. But is there now 'push focus grouping'? Push polling is where you call up voters, and ask faux-poll questions that are actually designed to smear a particular candidate. For instance: "If Candidate X were to have had sex with farm animals, would you be more or less inclined to vote for him?" A bit over the top (not by much), but you get the idea. Other push polls are designed to push a political agenda in the same way.
Onto focus groups. In focus groups, you recruit people and ask them questions, the goal being to elicit detailed, longer answers…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2007In one of the more controversial posts I've written (or at least one that got me a lot of hate email), I described how "hatred is the Republican base":
The Washington Post recently reported about the failure of the anti-segregation amendment to pass in Alabama (it was essentially 50-50). According to the CNN exit poll, 73% of Alabama voters were white. Assuming that the vote to keep the segregationist amendment was negligible among non-whites, this means that 68.5% of whites voted against the anti-segregationist amendment (or for segregation).
One of the lame excuses given was that some…
mikethemadbiologist | August 13, 2007Sometimes in blogging timing is everything. I had this post about Karl Rove all ready to go, and then he goes and resigns on me. Oh well. Anyway, this is a response to an excellent post by Maha about Karl Rove's vaunted political acumen not being so, erm, acumeney. Maha writes:
Another factor: I've thought many times that the Bush White House has a weird inability to respond to unexpected events. Whenever something happens that was not on the schedule -- like 9/11 or the tsunami or Hurricane Katrina or Dick Cheney's hunting "accident" -- they are flummoxed. Often they are slow to…
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2007I raise the question, which has rattled around in my head for a while, after reading two posts, one by ScienceBlogling Tim Lambert, and one by Scott Lemieux. Tim connects the dots of the Gore-Chilean sea bass non-story:
Allow me to connect some dots here. How did the story get from People into an Australian tabloid? And how did it get from there to Jake Tapper?
I did a Factiva search and found that this was the first time that the Daily Telegraph had ever printed an opinion piece from the Humane Society International, so I called Rebecca Keeble and asked her about the genesis of the piece.…
mikethemadbiologist | May 6, 2007Another disgusting turn in Attorneygate: only politically correct--that is right wing--federal prosecutors who are murdered are worth the Department of Justice's time and effort.
Just as the justice system can not function when witnesses are intimidated (or worse), the justice system also can not function when prosecutors' death are not given high priority. That's why this letter to Josh Marshall from a prosecutor is absolutely stunning (italics mine):
I email you because I read something today about the firing of John McKay that finally put me over the edge.
Apparently during Comey's…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2007The more you stare at this scandal, the more you feel like one of the proverbial blind men trying to figure out what the hell that elephant is. From ThinkProgress, here is what fired US Attorney Carol Lam might have been investigating:
To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier's check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.
That should raise questions about the White House…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2007Yesterday, I was a little miffed about the coverage of the growing US Attorney scandal. During said crankiness, I asked how we have reached the point where the legality of an action is the only criterion to use when judging if that action is ethical:
...is there any doubt that the reason these USAs were fired was that they either refused to prosecute politically-motivated cases that were unsubstantiated or that they were investigating Republicans? While it remains to be seen if the firing is illegal, you would have to be delusional to think that replacing competent USAs in the middle of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2007I hate being right, but I knew the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer was going to slime Amanda and Shakes. Before I get to a detailed discussion of the NY Times article about the whole blogger kerfuffle, I have a very simple question.
What if Amanda and Shakes, rather than being campaign bloggers, had taken important administrative, behind-the-scenes jobs with the Edwards campaign?
Seriously, both parties have had all sorts of people as campaign workers. So why are bloggers a big deal? If they were doing a bad job, then they should be fired because of their shoddy work. But many campaign…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2007Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero describes this conversation with a respected journalist about the manufactured smear of CBS reporter Lara Logan's coverage of the Haifa Street battle:
Well, recently, I was at dinner with a friend who is a major journalist at a major media outlet in New York City. (I will not identify the person further, including whether my friend is male or female, or what kind of media s/he works for - video, print, or online). In the course of the conversation, I brought up the Lara Logan video and s/he said, with certain authority, "I know about that. Y'know, there's a lot of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 17, 2007It would appear that seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom are in the middle of investigating Republicans, have been sacked and replaced by Republican political appointees. Thanks to the Patriot Act, these appointees, regardless of their qualifications, don't have to be confirmed by the Senate (does Congress even read the legislation they sign? And if not, how do I get on that gravy train?). Josh Marshall describes one appointee, J. Timothy Griffin:
Well, top of the list seems to be his stint at the White House where he worked for Karl Rove doing opposition research on Democrats. That was…
mikethemadbiologist | January 8, 2007Suppose you were a very large media corporation, and you found out that some of your radio subsidiaries were espousing specific acts of violence toward other people (last I checked, that's called terrorism). You would:
1) Fire the offending parties.
2) Offer some mealymouth bullshit explanation ("If anyone was offended...").
or...
3) File a lawsuit against the blogger who posted mp3s of the offensive clips.
Well, the Disney corporation picked option number three. Disney-owned California radio station KFSO, in its effort to capitalize on right-wing hate radio, gives a microphone to some…
mikethemadbiologist | January 7, 2007While Iraq was the national backdrop for the 2006 elections, individually many campaigns succeeded (or did better than they had any right to do) due to a desire to end corruption (e.g., the Ohio state elections). Yet Rahm Emanuel, head of the DCCC, and the Congressional Black Caucus ('CBC') just don't seem to get that. First, Rahm Emanuel.
In Mark Foley's old district (FL-16), David Lutrin, a progressive liberal, was poised to run against Mark Foley. He certainly wouldn't have been a favorite to win, but then again, many successful Democrats didn't look like winners in early 2005 either.…
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 6, 2006...because the only things they have left are voter intimidation and cheap tricks. As described by fellow ScienceBloglings coturnix and Josh, the Republicans are calling Democratic voters and either informing them that their polling place has changed or that they will be arrested if they vote illegally (the voters are accused of being out of state residents). These 'robocallers' are usually impersonating Democratic campaigns or election officials, the latter being a crime. The Republican crime wave has hit the following states:
Pennsylvania
Kansas
New Hampshire
New York
Connecticut
New…