Politics
ddobbs | August 19, 2009Well here you go. An 11-year-old interviews Obama -- and if I may say so, does quite a bit better than some of his journalistic elders.
Here's the vid, and some apt commentary from Tapped:
Hey, remember Damon Weaver, the 11-year-old who interviewed Joe Biden back in September? Well, he finally scored a sit-down session with Barack Obama yesterday.
Among the topics discussed: ways to improve school systems affected by budget cuts, Obama's attitude toward his critics, mangoes, basketball. Things not mentioned: the communist end of days, enchantment, swim trunks, death panels.
--Alexandra…
drorzel | August 19, 2009The results, however, are amusing for the rest of us:
It's nice to see somebody in a safe district taking advantage of essentially having tenure. We could use more of this.
grrlscientist | August 19, 2009tags: Obama, Bipolar Disorder, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, Onion News Network, ONN, streaming video
White House officials admit Obama's extreme confidence and total euphoria over "hope" and "change" were symptoms of a prolonged manic episode. He has since recovered and now is depressed -- just like the rest of the country. [2:30]
Not to split hairs, but a typical manic episode doesn't last three years.
emjohnson | August 18, 2009As I've been preparing my formal review of Unscientific America I've been struck by the question: who was this book intended for? Clearly it was a critique of science communicators to be sure (more on that later) but as I realized in going through my notes, Mooney and Kirshenbaum's strongest sections are those discussing the intersection between science and politics. This should have been perfectly obvious before even reading the book as it is just that intersection which is the focus of their long running blog (first here at ScienceBlogs and now at Discover).
Chapters 5 and 6 of their…
emjohnson | August 18, 2009Twenty companies have now pulled their advertising from the Glenn Beck Program (eight of them yesterday). The right wing outrage to the free market at work continues to grow.
The website DefendGlenn.com has today attacked Sargento as "the worst company in the world" because they sent the following response about why they pulled their advertising:
Dear Ms. Sorensen -- We appreciate your sharing your concerns about our advertising. Our organization remains true to its mid-western roots and values. Some would say that means we're conservative. In the end, we hold true to our nation's heritage…
drorzel | August 18, 2009The New York Times yesterday had a story with the dramatic headline DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show, explaining that, well, there are nefarious tricks you can pull to falsify DNA evidence, provided you have access to a high-quality biochemical laboratory. The story is a great boon to conspiracy theorists everywhere, especially with this sentence:
Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.
"See! They're selling fake DNA samples to…
emjohnson | August 17, 2009According to a press release put out today by the organization Color of Change, the campaign to encourage companies to pull their advertising revenue from Glenn Beck's FOXNews show earned some major new signatories:
Eight more Glenn Beck advertisers, including Wal-Mart - the world's largest retailer - have confirmed to ColorOfChange.org that they pulled their ads from the controversial Fox News Channel broadcaster's eponymous show. Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank (a unit of GMAC Financial Services), Best Buy, Broadview Security, CVS, Re-Bath, Travelocity and Wal-Mart join the dozen…
palmd | August 17, 2009I had a chance to watch the President take questions at town hall meetings this weekend. He sought out opposing views, and handled them brilliantly, responding to them rather than giving empty answers. He also didn't talk down to the audience. The pity is that the take home message in the news today is that he may abandon his push for a "public option". This would be a grave mistake.
This President is no dummy. He gets this issue. When a citizen asked how private insurers can possibly compete with a government plan, he responded in great detail, explaining how changes need to be phased…
drorzel | August 17, 2009I mentioned a few times that one of our physics graduates from 2008 was spending a year in rural Uganda, working at a clinic and school there as part of a college-run fellowship program (with Engeye Health Clinic. Steve is back in the US now, and headed to graduate school in Seattle in Atmospheric Sciences.
Steve's replacement in Uganda turns out to be another physics major, Tom Perry, who is now in Uganda and blogging about it. This is purely coincidence, by the way-- there's nothing physics-specific about the position, we just happened to have two really good physics majors in consecutive…
gregladen | August 15, 2009I'm calling all my friends, we're going to get on a bus, we're going to go to Michele Bachmann's health care town hall and SCREAM AT HER FOR AN HOUR and make sure no one else can talk. Because THAT'S HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS, BITCHES!!!!
Oh, no, wait, forget it. I read the head line at DMB wrong. It looks like Michele Bachmann is going to have one of those highly controlled events that allow in only her stepford-zombie Bachmann-symps with prepared softball questions. She doesn't really do the Town Hall thing. Why should she? She's a Republican. It's the Democrats that are into Democracy.…
emjohnson | August 14, 2009In light of the AstroTurf outrage promoted by right-wing organizations, media pundits and lobbying firms over the health care reform legislation, I thought it would be appropriate to remember the reason we need reform in the first place.
In this interview with Bill Moyers, Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, reveals how the current system works and how the insurance companies, drug manufacturers and hospital conglomerates want our health care system to remain exactly as it is. Business is booming and they want those dollars to keep rolling in.
oracknows | August 14, 2009No comment other than I'm not surprised at the hypocrisy:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
No comment here either. As they say in law, res ipsa loquitur.
I've been intentionally vague regarding my position on the Obama health care reform initiative because, well, mainly I haven't entirely made up my mind about it. However, what I have made up my mind about is that I'm tired of seeing such obvious lies about it.
terrasig | August 14, 2009
Here's the updated version of the group, Billionaires For Bush, doing their clever schtick prior to a healthcare town hall forum last evening in Durham, NC (Yes, they are standing in front of a Hummer H2).
A robust crowd of 850 people filled the B.N. Duke Auditorium on the campus of North Carolina Central University to hear from a panel led by Congressman David Price (D-NC4).
[N.B. - not well-known is that the Duke family purchased 25 acres of land to create the campus for this historically-black college four miles across town; hence, the university honored the gift by naming its central…
oracknows | August 13, 2009I've been ragging a lot on some of the right wing critics of President Obama's health care reform initiative. Without a doubt, with their talk of "death panels" and their likening the health care reform bill to the beginning of another Nazi-like euthanasia program, they deserve it. But I just saw something on YouTube that has been spreading virally among surgeons, and, depressingly, it's President Obama engaging in a bit of nonsense of his own in support of his agenda:
Yes, it's our President contrasting what primary care docs make treating diabetes with what docs can make if a diabetic…
pharyngula | August 13, 2009That's what I must conclude from Anna Falling's priorities. She's running for the office of mayor, and her #1 most important issue, the one she's made the centerpiece of her campaign, is to get creationist displays installed in the Tulsa Zoo.
For Anna Falling, the road to city hall runs through the Tulsa Zoo. She's made her Christianity central to her platform and now the exhibit depicting the Christian story of Creationism is her first campaign promise.
"Today we are announcing that God will be glorified in this city. He shall not be shunned. Upon our election, we hereby commit to…
pharyngula | August 13, 2009Right now, the US is in a political struggle to get better national health care. One of the chief tactics of the opposition is, in addition to simply lying and pretending it would be horrible for poor children to get medical treatment, is to tell us horror stories about all those wicked socialist countries and their miserable health care, without the wondrous benefits of raging capitalism. Investor's Business Daily, for instance, ran this interesting example of how bad the British health services are (it has since been corrected, with some acute embarrassment, I hope):
"The controlling of…
razib | August 12, 2009So says the data according to Andrew Gelman. I think there is some serious issues with self-reports of whether someone is a conservative or liberal which don't occur with political parties. People know whether they are Republican or Democrat in a more concrete manner because they have often realized their preferences through voting.
emjohnson | August 12, 2009Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein urges his employees not to engage in "conspicuous consumption" for image concerns after their "record second-quarter profit of $2.3 billion" thanks to a government bailout:
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has warned his employess to avoid making big-ticket, high-profile purchases as the gold-plated Wall Street firm hunkers down amid a firestorm of public and political anger over outsize bonus payments. . . "This is a sensitive time for us, and [Blankfein] wants to make sure that we're not being seen living high on the hog," said one Goldman exec.
Meanwhile…
oracknows | August 12, 2009I hadn't planned on writing about this topic again. Really, I hadn't. The reason is mainly that politics is usually not my bag. I've said it time and time again: political bloggers are a dime a dozen, and I have no reason to suspect that my pontifications and bloviations on politics would be any more valuable or worthy of your attention than anyone else's pontifications and bloviations on politics. Besides, I've made quite the little niche for myself in the blogosphere writing about skepticism, critical thinking, and science in medicine, in particular how unscientific or pseudoscientific…