Politics
gregladen | March 20, 2009Here it is:
Obama did very well, got repeated cheers for his policy related statements, told interesting stories about life in the White House (and Life in the Bubble).
He did make one goof that the conservative blogosphere is getting all juicy about. He made the link between his bowling abilities and the Special Olympics. He is being accused of "mocking the Special Olympics." Of course, he was actually mocking himself. At the expense of the Special Olympics.
(If you watch the video, I think at about -3:40 or so, you will see this moment, and you'll see how professional Leno and Obama…
oracknows | March 19, 2009I've been on a bit of a tear criticizing the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). One of the reasons is because, as I've said time and time again, there is no logical organizational or scientific reason why the potpourri of disparate, often unrelated, and often mutually contradictory therapies that fall under the rubric of CAM should have its own Center at the National Institutes of Health.
Yesterday, blog bud Abel Pharmboy posted a very good explanation on why. Money quote:
CAM is a terrible term. It is NOT medicine. Modalities proven to work are medicine.…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2009The recent war in Gaza, coupled with the rejection of Israel-critic Charles Freeman for an intelligence post in the Obama administration, has led to a renewed round of hand-wringing over America's relationship with Israel.
Let's kick things off with this delightful article from today's New York Times. It reports on Israel's growing isolation from the international community:
Israel, whose founding idea was branded as racism by the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 and which faced an Arab boycott for decades, is no stranger to isolation. But in the weeks since its Gaza war, and as it…
razib | March 19, 2009See the data over at The Audacious Epigone. This sort of finding shouldn't be super "counter-intuitive," there are a lot of variables which affect the opinions of a set of people on a disparate set of questions, and one shouldn't expect too much internal consistency. I may be that all things equal liberals don't exhibit this tendency, but in the real world all things are rarely equal.
The variable is TAXCHEAT. Below are the values for belief in God (left = atheist, right is = know God exists) and race.
illconsidered | March 19, 2009If tribal cultures could consider the seventh generation, we with our much greater power should be considering the seventieth. The thirty year horizon that economists and politicians consider very long range is just a blink in the geological history of our planet. Now that we dominate surface processes of the earth we have taken over the responsibility for its sustenance. Our obligation to our descendants and our world doesn't end when the discount rate kicks in.
That's Michel Tobis
Believe in something! Even if it's wrong, believe in it.
That's Glenn Beck.
Sometimes being ridiculed is…
pharyngula | March 19, 2009The Canadian science minister who first refused to answer a question about his support for religion because it was querying his personal religion has now flip-flopped and said that he does accept evolution. Only it's a very twisted version of evolution. What does it mean when he says something like this?
We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that's not relevant and…
gregladen | March 19, 2009This is interesting, if true, and it is mostly about legislation regulating access to reproductive services at the federal and state level.
I have a column written by conservative Charles Biggs that makes the claim that Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is "telling us that if the federal government tries to lift all restrictions on abortion, our only option is to disobey that law" as stated by Biggs. Coburn allegedly used the phrase "Civil Disobedience."
This is interesting because up to now the Republican position on "Civil Disobedience" has been that it is the same thing as…
drorzel | March 19, 2009Mike Dunford has a post up titled You Almost Have to Feel Sorry for Jim Tedisco, about the special election that's being held to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's House seat. The title alone is enough to tell you that Mike doesn't live in this area any more. Nobody who has to listen to the multi-media saturation bombing that's going on regarding this election could feel sorry for either of the participants.
Though, to be fair, the worst of the advertising is actually from the National Republican Congressional Committee, one of the groups that Tedisco is trying to distance himself from. They've got a…
jlynch | March 18, 2009As some here know, I have a daughter. If some idiot (like, for example, Laura Ingraham) made a comment about her, I'd stand up for her. That's what fathers do - especially if that comment had something to do about your daughter's body. Apparently this is not the case with John McCain. Quoting ThinkProgress:
Today, in his âTwitterviewâ with ABCâs George Stephanopoulos, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) shied away from condemning Ingrahamâs gratuitous attacks on his daughter. Stephanopoulos asked McCain, âWhat do you think of Meghanâs feud with Coulter and Ingraham?â McCain first said, âIâm proud of my…
evolvingthoughts | March 18, 2009I'm posting this on my American blog because the Australian government, through the Australian Communications and Media Authority is fining people on Australian sites who give the links below the fold $11,000/day. Pretty well everything I feared about censorship by the internet filter and heavy handed government action is coming true.
First of all, it transpires that only one bureaucrat at ACMA is required to block and ban a site, with no further oversight or redress. Second, it turns out that yes, ordinary and popular pornography sites are being blocked, so that if the filter becomes…
catdynamics | March 18, 2009there has been a lot going on in the world in recent year, and people are outraged,
sort of
actually, given the sheer outrageousness of the various finanicial and political misdeeds of the last few years, the level of outrage is surprisingly low
people are jaded, and this is reflected in many anecdotal interviews
why is that?
do the shenanigans at AIG leave a bad taste in your mouth?
do you feel nauseated by the bank bailout?
do you feel the bile rise when you read the headlines?
do you "taste a bit of vomit" when you read the latest breaking news?
well, you should: in a rather fascinating…
gregladen | March 18, 2009First, draw a circle. Then, assemble your most incompetent boobs and make sure anyone who is competent you undermine. Such as the case of RNC Chairman Tom Steele ... keep him in power only long enough to demonstrate (because you've totally undermined him) that his sort should be avoided in the future, once and for all.
The most amazing bit of news we've heard since the Party of Racism cynically and quite temporarily appointed a black man to lead them, is that Minnesota's Norm Coleman could be appointed to replace Steele. The reaction of one Democratic Party official when asked what the Dems…
grrlscientist | March 18, 2009Are you upset about the latest AIG scandal where millions of dollars of the American taxpayers' bailout money were misused to pay special bonuses to their corporate executives -- the very same executives who swindled thousands of their clients and ran the company -- and the world's economy -- into the ground?
Of course, at the same time that 73 AIG executives are receiving bonuses of one million dollars or more, tens of millions of American taxpayers are facing unemployment, crushing debt, and loss of their housing, health insurance, and even the ability to buy food!
If this makes you angry…
tqa | March 18, 2009
Update: My praise for Charlie Rangel in this post was, sadly, premature. Politico is now reporting that Rangel has gotten behind a 91% tax bracket for AIG bonuses.
When it comes to the AIG bonuses, I'm about as angry as any other taxpayer who has been paying attention. This morning, I was absolutely undelighted to read that quite a bit of the "retention" money is going to people who have, in fact, not been retained. The look I just took at AIG Chariman Edward Liddy's opening statement for today's Congressional hearing did absolutely nothing to improve my mood. When he says, "I share that…
ddobbs | March 18, 2009It didn't take long for my Scientific American story on PTSD to draw the sort of fire I expected. A doctor blogging as "egalwan" at Follow Me Here writes
[Dobbs] is critical of a culture which "seemed reflexively to view bad memories, nightmares and any other sign of distress as an indicator of PTSD." To critics like this, the overwhelming incidence of PTSD diagnoses in returning Iraqi veterans is not a reflection of the brutal meaningless horror to which many of the combatants were exposed but of a sissy culture that can no longer suck it up.
Doctor or not, he's seeing politics where my…
pharyngula | March 18, 2009The Australian government is trying to censor the internet. They have a blacklist of over 1300 sites — to be expanded to 10,000 — to which it is illegal to link, with violations costing you as much as $11,000 a day.
This doesn't work, except as part of a package of tools for oppressing citizens. I did not have the impression that that was a road Australians wanted to travel upon.
gregladen | March 18, 2009Illegal aliens are swarming across the border of Michele Bachmann's district. Which is on the border of .... nothing, actually, it is a 'landlocked' district.
Uffda. Take a breather. OK, ready? Let's keep going a minute more...
Can you handle more? Probably not, and that's OK. Nobody really can. But if you want, we've got it:
Who is the poor guy who has to stand there and listen to this crap?
catdynamics | March 17, 2009New York Attorney General Cuomo writes a letter to Congress.
He is not amused at American International Group.
Cuomo, in his capacity as overseer on NY insurance companies has been making enquiries, and kindly asked AIG not to distribute bonuses to its finance group last year out of the deferred compensation fund, which they agreed to, something to do with de facto bankrupt companies not being allowed to pay bonuses,
so they paid to bonuses out of the retention fund instead
duh.
Cuomo would like to know who and how much.
AIG is stalling.
NY State lawyers seem somewhat dubious about the…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2009I urge people to go read Russell Blackford's submission to the Human Rights consultative committee in Australia. It deals with the changes and challenges to civil liberties in the modern era and although Australia-focussed, it generalises well once you get past our odd spelling conventions and local events.