Politics
jlynch | January 19, 2009
Amen, indeed.
Transcript below the fold
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will
Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and…
tqa | January 19, 2009
I was just looking at some poll numbers. In particular, I was just looking at Soon-to-be-Former-President George W. Bush's final job approval numbers. According to CBS, the final breakdown is:
Approve: 22%
Disapprove: 73%
Don't Know: 5%
"Don't Know"????
The man has been President for EIGHT friggin' years. EIGHT years. How the bloody hell do you not know if you approve of the job he's been doing by now? Were those people all in a coma the entire time? Good grief.
jlynch | January 19, 2009No doubt the boy in the bubble thinks heâs done a heckuva job. From here:
Toronto Star: âBush was an unmitigated disaster, failing on the big issues from the invasion of Iraq to global warming, Hurricane Katrina and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.â
Daily Mail: âHe leaves the world facing its biggest crisis since the Depression, the Middle East in flames and U.S. standing at an all-time low.â
Daily Record: âAmerica is now hated in many parts of the world. Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a…
j7uy5 | January 19, 2009If the only thing Obama does, is to not do the bad things that Bush did,
then he will be a success. A disappointment, yes, but also a
success.
Above is a clip of Olbermann, summarizing in about 9 minutes the worst
of the past eight years. Below the fold is one of the consequences. It is a
chart depicting the KBW Bank Index
performance over the past four years. The Index is a weighted
index comprised of the 24 largest national and regional banks. It
is now at a 13-year low -- and that is AFTER a gazillion dollars (actually $2.8 trillion) in bailouts.
The prospects are not good. …
catdynamics | January 18, 2009with the original verses put back in
ok, let's try the hispanic broadcast since HBO seems to think they own the other version
oh, and that Bruce fella ain't half bad neither
h/t kos
sa smith | January 18, 2009Gene Robinsons opening prayer at the inauguration festivities (go to Abels place to hear about the drama):
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...
Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort…
terrasig | January 18, 2009Just as I was starting to put together a few posts about my experiences at this weekend's ScienceOnline'09 soirée, I get a Tweet from Pam Spaulding that openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson didn't appear on HBO's inaugural coverage today and, at least for Kenny Yum of Canada's National Post and others in attendance, could not be heard.
As Pam says:
Remember, this was the supposed salve on the wound to the LGBT community for the upcoming high-profile appearance of Rick Warren at the actual inauguration on Tuesday, which will be seen by millions and will float out there on YouTube in…
drorzel | January 18, 2009Looking for a way to kill some time on a Sunday morning? You could do worse than yesterday's bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday conversation between Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer:
It's a wide-ranging conversation, covering what to expect from the Obama administration, artifical life, the possibility of life on Mars, Sanjay Gupta, and the future of science in the media. It's like a Sunday-morning talk show, only with smart people.
jlynch | January 17, 2009Frankly, it takes talent to suck this bad:
President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush's final approval rating at 22 percent.
Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.
Mr. Bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago.
Only 6 percent of Democrats approve of the job he has done as…
pharyngula | January 17, 2009I hope most of you are well past your lunch or breakfast now, because this story might ruin it. Never forget that our country is still ruled by a superstitious lot of kooks, a mob of witch doctors wearing suits and ties. This video, which is way too long and boring, shows a Georgia Republican and a pair of clerical loons chanting and nodding and praising each other while they daub a door with magic oil. Seriously.
It's the door Obama will walk through on his way to giving the oath of office. Apparently, a god will be especially pleased with him if a set of true believers grease the lintel…
drorzel | January 17, 2009I went to a meeting earlier this week with a bunch of other faculty members and students. Before the meeting proper got going, a few of the other faculty were discussing whether they should cancel their mid-day Tuesday classes because of the Inauguration.
This struck me as an obvious "No," but they seemed to be very fired up for it. Which I find kind of mystifying. I mean, yes, Obama is the first African-American to be elected President, but the exciting thing was the election, where there was actually some suspense about how things would turn out.
The Inauguration, on the other hand, is…
jlynch | January 16, 2009Let's face it: When George W. Bush claims he's "kept us safe," it's kind of like the babysitter who lets the toddler wander into traffic the first hour she's on the job, then herds all the remaining kids into the basement and locks them in to compensate. So when the parents get home, she says: "See, I kept them all safe after the toddler got run over." (source)
jlynch | January 16, 2009Apparently the Department of Defense’s claim this week that “61, in all, former Guantánamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight” is purely imaginary. States Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University:
They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo—much less were they released from there. They have counted people as 'returning to the fight' for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally…
oracknows | January 16, 2009I hate to see this. I really do.
I really hate it to see people who think they're doing a good thing, who think they're raising money for a worthy charity, totally clueless that what they are doing is supporting the rankest pseudoscience and quackery. Here's an example from my hometown of Detroit. It's a story about a woman who's going to raise money for what she thinks is autism awareness and research at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this coming week:
When it comes to dressing for the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview, attendee Val McFarland is…
evolvingthoughts | January 16, 2009Larry Moran points us to the following video on what science is and why pseudoscience is not to be taught or accepted without serious evidence (which makes it science). My only comment to add is that emotional appeals are information and evidence, but they are information and evidence about the speaker, and not about the things that are being spoken of.
There are a number of people trying to give short definitions of science on the blogs right now (see here). I have a one line definition that I think captures everything I want it to, and nothing else:
Science is the process of saying as much…
catdynamics | January 15, 2009The proposed economic stimulus package includes some funding for science.
Chunk for NSF, lot of facility funding.
NASA gets climate science.
DoE gets some toys.
Appropriations Stimulus 0115 (pdf)
The total package is somewhere in the $800+ billion range, as proposed.
With about 1/3 proposed as tax cuts, the rest short term supplemental funding.
$10 billion is for science, largely for facilities and refurbishment. Mostly NSF and NIH.
Looks like this is a two year (effectively 18 months since much of '08-09 fiscal year will be gone if-and-when it passes) package, and then we ramp to regular…
oracknows | January 15, 2009P.Z. Myers turned me on to a phenomenal proposal at Change.gov, the website of President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team:
Defund the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine:
Here's a way to increase the available funding to NIH without increasing the NIH budget: halt funding to NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This Center was created not by scientists, who never thought it was a good idea, but by Congress, and specifically by just two Congressmen in the 1990's who believed in particular "alternative" (but scientifically dubious)…
pharyngula | January 15, 2009Here's a phenomenal suggestion you can promote to the Obama administration: shut down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. It's a huge boondoggle, a fat earmark for low-quality pseudoscience, and it's money that would be better spent on real science and medicine. Sign up at change.gov and vote it up!
jlynch | January 14, 2009Physioprof may be declared illegal in South Carolina and subject to fines up to $5000 and up to five years imprisonment. Details here. And you can thank this guy.
jlynch | January 14, 2009Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4
Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4
Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000
Harper’s has more.