Politics
purepedantry | January 6, 2009Obama's transition team has approached CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the position of Surgeon General:
The Obama transition team approached Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, about becoming U.S. surgeon general, according to sources inside the transition and at CNN.
Gupta was in Chicago, Illinois, in November to meet with President-elect Barack Obama on the matter, sources said.
Gupta has declined comment.
The transition team is impressed with the combination of Gupta's past government experience, as a White House fellow in 1997 and a special adviser to then-first lady Hillary…
terrasig | January 6, 2009PharmGirl just sent me this tip after I got out of a meeting but I see that some bloggers have already weighed in about Obama's apparent selection of Dr Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General.
PalMD was briefly positive but PZ is concerned that Gupta is merely a talking head or placeholder and an apologist for the US health care system. However, I see two main advantages.
1. He knows firsthand the limitations of the US health care system, especially in poor rural and urban areas where access to care is a challenge even under normal circumstances. Gupta has also been on-site for several of the…
sb admin | January 6, 2009As my regular readers know, I recently lost my father-in-law. He was a terrific teacher and loved to brag about students who had done well. One of his favorite "brags" was Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and now, the Washington Post is reporting that Obama wants Sanjay to be the next Surgeon General.
Dick, I wish you were around to see it.
gregladen | January 6, 2009Details are just coming in now.
LIVEBLOGGED
They are suing regarding: the missing ballots from Minneapoilis (that won't go anywhere, already settled); Double counting (that issue was killed off already, it will go no where) and absentee ballots (they have a small chance that this may develop into something).
They state that they will win in state court but have federal level issues to argue as well.
The won't and the don't. But it looks like they will continue to press.
We are being told that several Coleman lawyers are not being dispersed around the state to depose, under oath,…
pharyngula | January 6, 2009It looks like Obama has picked Sanjay Gupta to be surgeon general. He seems a bit of a lightweight, to me — he's mainly known as a congenial talking head on television news. He's also an apologist for US health care, which does not give me any confidence that we can expect the slightest effort towards health care reform. I suspect Obama has just picked a pleasant smiling face to act as a placeholder, and that disappoints me.
We'll have to see how that ol' conservative, Orac, reacts to this news.
grrlscientist | January 6, 2009tags: Uncle Jay, humor, satire, parody, streaming video
It's been a whole year since Uncle Jay has SUNG an entire episode, and here's the reminder why! It's the year-end review of the news, and maybe it'll seem a little better with music. [3:21]
catdynamics | January 5, 2009Prof Buiter on Maverecon over at FT.
Looking at the trap that the US finds itself in, economically.
Then dash quickly over to Krugman for some light relief.
gregladen | January 5, 2009Heath and Deborah Campbell had three children. They named them:
JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell
Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell
Adolf Hitler Campbell
That, right there, would be child abuse. Do you not agree?
The story is making the rounds (h/t: McDuff) because it is little Adolph's third birthday and the local shop-rite (supermarket) refuses to provide the family with a cake enscribed "Happy Birthday Adolph Hitler."
The story can be found here and here.
gregladen | January 5, 2009This important story was broken by the Minnesota Independent.
The agency that runs the airport refused an apparently serious offer to buy the men's room stall made famous by Craig's 2007 conviction for disorderly conduct in a sex-solicitation sting operation by the airport police. The Metropolitan Airport Commission (MAC) spurned the $5,000 offer, which arrived by certified mail, according to MAC spokesperson Patrick Hogan.
Details are here.
And here is some related video content. Includes explicit demonstration of gay sex solicitation toe tapping.
pharyngula | January 5, 2009The state canvassing board certified the results this afternoon; Al Franken is our senator, by 225 votes. Also, the Minnesota supreme court has denied Coleman's request to reconsider some rejected ballots, but of course he's going to sue.
Forget all that, though, and welcome our new senator. Not many can do this:
gregladen | January 5, 2009As many of you have already heard, the recount process in Minnesota to determine the outcome of the Senatorial race is over, and Al Franken has been certified as winner.
There is now a review period of seven days during which any voter in the state of Minnesota. Including me, Al Franken, whomever, can sue for an Election Challenge. Although both Secretary of State Ritchie and I have expressed the opinion that Norm Coleman, who lost the race, is unlikely to issue such a challenge, the press and even Coleman's lawyers have suggested that a challenge will in fact be filed by three o'clock…
sheril | January 5, 2009Ocean champion Leon E. Panetta will take over the Central Intelligence Agency.
In disclosing the pick, officials pointed to Mr. Panetta's sharp managerial skills, his strong bipartisan standing on Capitol Hill, his significant foreign policy experience in the White House and his service on the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that examined the war and made recommendations on United States policy. The officials noted that he had a handle on intelligence spending from his days as director of the Office and Management and Budget.
Details at The Caucus Blog...
illconsidered | January 5, 2009I found this YouTube clip via Crooks and Liars of James Hansen on Democracy Now. It also contains some highlights of other Democracy Now interviews, including one of Science Blogs' own Chris Mooney.
He talks about the political muzzling he has experience under both parties during his time at NASA. (But don't the denialists tell us of collusion between scaremongering politicians and money grubbing scientists?
Funny how the denialists tell us of collusion between scaremongering politicians and money grubbing scientists and yet the reality is NASA's earth sciences budget being cut and…
pharyngula | January 5, 2009This is the day the Canvassing Board will announce their decision in the Minnesota senate race, and since he is ahead by 225 votes, that means Al Franken will be declared the victor.
Expect 5-alarm histrionics from the right wing, howls of outrage on talk radio, and the wing nut blogs to go ballistic. Also expect the Coleman campaign to charge the state supreme court and demand to be handed the office. It will be very entertaining. The freakout is only warming up.
oracknows | January 4, 2009When first I commented on the unfortunate death of HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore a few days ago, little did I expect to be descended upon by several of her fellow denialists, who promptly swelled the comment thread after the post to close to a couple of hundred comments. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. It's an emotional story, and whenever, for example, Tara Smith wrote about HIV/AIDS pseudoscience it was not uncommon for her posts to provoke well over a thousand comments. It also doesn't help that HIV/AIDS denialists tend to be among the most persistent of cranks.
In any…
gregladen | January 4, 2009... regarding the likely response by Coleman following the certification of the Minnesota Senatorial Race tomorrow (Monday) by the Canvassing Board.
No matter who wins, either party can lodge a legal challenge, potentially pushing the election results out quite a period of time from now. In 1969, Minnesota was unable to certify their Senator until well in to March.
But this isn't the 1960s, and Norm Coleman surely knows that.
Just because he challenges the election, which is something he's well poised himself to do, it doesn't mean the outcome will change. If he fights tooth and nail to…
evolvingthoughts | January 4, 2009Well, he admits that it was a theist diatribe from the beginning, and not the even handed interaction between science and faith doco he told Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers among others. Always nice to find out that those who assert that only with faith in God can we have morals behave as if morals were an optional extra. Not surprising, but there it is. You can lie for your religion, to nonbelievers who do happen to behave morally and ethically.
jrosenhouse | January 3, 2009In the Washington Post, Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi has a moving take on the conflict in Gaza. His nineteen year old son is in the Israeli army, you see.
A majority of Israelis emerged from the first intifada convinced that we need to do everything possible to end the occupation and ensure that our children don't serve as enforcers of Gaza's despair. That was why I initially supported the 1993 Oslo peace process that took a terrible gamble on Yasser Arafat's supposed transformation from terrorist to peacemaker. And even after it became clear that Arafat and other Palestinian leaders…
sb admin | January 3, 2009(note: i didn't go out except to the hospital, and had to rely on what my upset friends and family reported)
Dear Protesters,
As someone who loves our American democracy, I value your right to protest. I would even fight to protect it. Still, I wish you would exercise some common decency.
Today, when you came to my neighborhood, obstructing the busiest intersection, you caused a great deal of fear and confusion. While I understand that many of you are probably upset about the war in Gaza-Israel, there is no Israeli consulate here. There is no significant Israeli population at all in…
gregladen | January 3, 2009And the worst case scenario is that this lead could drop by far less then necessary to turn the race around.
Everyone assumes that the loser, in this case Coleman, will file a law suit. It would fit with how the game has been played so far. But what would such a law suit do? It is not the case that there is some 300 votes laying around that Coleman could have if he won a suit. The best he could probably do, and this is very unlikely, is to get about 130 votes that may or may not have been double counted thrown out. Not enough.
The other thing Coleman could do with a law suit is to…