Politics
clock | February 6, 2009Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald, two of the shrapest bloggers ever, were on Bill Moyers's Journal on PBS tonight.
You SHOULD watch the video and read the transcript here.
gregladen | February 6, 2009This was at the Washington Press Club. A sample of her jokes:
"I'd like to make this as short as Bill Richardson's tenure as Commerce Secretary," she opened. "I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends -- true story! I know that is the record in the Senate, but in the House it's held by Barney Frank." Roars of laughter, even from Frank.
Then she turned to the "great reporters? in this room -- all of whom got scooped on the John Edwards story by the National Enquirer." She promised not to be too rough with them, though, since "I'm all about protecting endangered species."
Perhaps best of…
tqa | February 6, 2009
Unfortunately, it's Rachel Maddow. I say unfortunately not because I dislike Rachel (I don't), but because it would be really, really, really nice if the making sense thing was coming from one of our elected officials. I'll slap the clip up on this blog, with some of the juicier quotes, as soon as it's available (probably tomorrow morning).
tqa | February 6, 2009I'm about to say something that I very rarely say: good for Harry Reid. Every now and then he does something that threatens to threaten his well-earned reputation for spinelessness. Today seems to be one of those days. Apparently, he's informed Olympia Snowe that if she wants to see cuts on the spending side of the stimulus, she better be prepared to trim some of the "tax relief" side, too.
catdynamics | February 6, 2009when making sausage, you not only have to get the guts to stuff with ground up meat and grain, you also have to mix in some small lumps of fat and minced offal
From a "heads-up" e-mail from the ScienceDebate 2008 team:
"I am writing to alert you to efforts underway this morning to zero out a large portion of the science funding from the Senate American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a part of a $77.9B reduction effort led by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
As you know better than most, science and technology are responsible for half of the economic development of the…
pharyngula | February 6, 2009Read this: wherever Obama has proposed stimulus spending for science, conservative senators propose chopping back massively. The increase in support for NSF? Gone completely. NASA's boost? Cut in half. And on and on.
These cuts have not passed yet, but they will soon if you don't howl at your senators.
gregladen | February 6, 2009This is direct from Shawn Otto:
This is direct from Shawn Otto:
Several people have emailed suggestions I will share with everyone:
1. WHAT TO DO: call and email your two U.S. senators. Contact from a constituent on a wonky issue like this will have enormous influence. Calling is better than email, but do both if you can.
Go here to find your Senator, and select your state in the drop down box in the upper right hand corner.
Tell them in your own words to reject the reduction effort in the stimulus bill led by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) when it comes to science.
Note…
gregladen | February 6, 2009UPDATE HERE
I just received this note from Sean Otto of ScienceDebate 2008:
I am writing to alert you to efforts underway this morning to zero out a large portion of the science funding from the Senate American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a part of a $77.9B reduction effort led by Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
As you know better than most, science and technology are responsible for half of the economic development of the United States since WWII and yet, if current trends hold, some, such as the Business Roundtable, have predicted that 90% of all scientists and…
catdynamics | February 5, 2009So, Obama ought to now find himself in control of a remarkable and efficient surveillance apparatus, capable of tracking large numbers of electronic transactions and conversations.
All probably unconstitutional, and possibly still illegal, but the temptation to use them must be there.
But how...
First, clearly, I think all former Coalition Provisional Authority employees must be put under surveillance.
They could be the biggest threat facing the nation.
No telling how many might have "gone native", become aQ symps.
Bug them. Tape their calls, survey their homes, track their financial…
gregladen | February 5, 2009Those of us who have been following former Sen....So it is no surprise that Norm wants to sidestep campaign finance law and use his campaign funds to pay for his defense against the FBI investigation into the charges of not reporting the gifts totaling $75,000.
A must read post at MN PP.
catdynamics | February 5, 2009most people really only think in microeconomic terms
and most of the time that is fine, except when it is not
an example of this, is the meme that governments ought to cut expenditure when economic times are hard, by analogy with families, which react rationally to budget shortages and overexpenditure by cutting back on spending
but, as was famously elucidated by one of the few economist to become rather rich through application of his own macroeconomic theories, this only works in the linear perturbative limit
we are not in the linear perturbative limit right now
covariance terms are large…
catdynamics | February 5, 2009just had an occasion to zip about the country a bit, and feel a need to free-associate random bits of anecdotal impression
The US Senate has stopped vote on the stimulus package, for tonight.
In the process of bipartisan cutting the package seems to have grown by few tens of billions.
Couple of days ago I was in line at a university cafeteria.
A well dressed young woman was holding up the line while she asked for a custom pack of sushi be made up - not someone to eat a 20 minute old pack of california roll, her.
But, oops, she had no money, and no funds left in her pre-paid campus card.
No…
catdynamics | February 5, 2009Krugman worried that any prospects for the US avoiding depression would be scuppered by the collective action of the "fifty Herbert Hoovers" - the individual state governors acting to cut spending as the federal government tried to boost spending.
If the states deflate faster than the feds can inflate, then depression comes.
Apparently that is not the threat, but the 99 Herberts in the upper house of congress.
Some of the states are cutting brutally - my proximate indicator is from the cuts I hear passed down, planned for or rumoured in the university systems. Pay freezes and hiring…
clock | February 5, 2009Apparently, the Washington DC press corps is peeved at the Obama White House because Press Secretary Gibbs is stonewalling them. They thus equate Gibbs to Fleischer/Perino/McClellan and equate Obama to Bush.
But they are myopic and wrong. And Jay Rosen explains why.
Bush dissed the press by suppressing information. Obama disses the press by giving information directly to the people (just you wait, these are early days, but they are preparing for some serious two-way communication between the WH and the people).
From press' point of view - both are dissing them. From the point of view of…
clock | February 5, 2009That was last week, but I had no time to listen until now - check out the podcast (in the upper left corner of the page):
In 1989, Dr. Harold Varmus won a Nobel Prize for his cancer research. He was director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton administration, and now heads the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Recently, President Obama named him to co-chair his Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. And he's written a new book, "The Art and Politics of Science." In this segment, Ira talks with Harold Varmus about his work, biological research, and the…
oracknows | February 5, 2009I guess even the Vatican responds to public pressure, if it's intense enough.
Last week, I noted an extremely disturbing story, a story that outraged me, a story that I would have found even more disturbing were I still a practicing Catholic but that I found disturbing enough even though I no longer am one. I'm referring to the difficult to explain decision on the part of Pope Benedict XVI to rehabilitate four heretical bishops who had been ordained without the Vatican's permission and who all belonged to a conservative Catholic organization known as the the Society of Saint Pius X. This…
drorzel | February 4, 2009The big news of the day from the world of politics is that President Obama plans to cap executive pay at banks that take bailout money in the next round of emergency cash payments. This is not popular with the executive class:
"That is pretty draconian -- $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus," said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. "And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend."
Mr. Reda said only a handful of big companies pay chief…
evolvingthoughts | February 4, 2009So there's a rather livid article in the Independent by Johann Hari, titled "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?"
Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves…