Politics
gregladen | November 7, 2008
We took an informal survey of the PDN staff to determine our picks for the most influential still photographs of the 2008 election. Below are our top five, plus some runners up. What do you think? Your comments are welcome.
Go HERE to see these very interesting pictures.
gregladen | November 7, 2008Obama held his first press conference as PE, following a meeting with everybody who is anybody in finance. The conference itself is, indeed, about the economy, and comes on the heels of news about yet another major drop in employment rate in the US.
Obama pointed out the obvious fact that we have a government in place at the moment and we have only one government at a time. But he could give some indications of what he and Biden can do the moment Bush steps aside.
A significant purpose of this news conference is to show that they are meeting and talking about things, but Obama made a…
pharyngula | November 7, 2008So far, rumors of the first two appointments by Obama leave me worried. Rahm? No, please — after campaigning on a slogan of "change", buying into one of the most deeply imbedded beltway insiders is not encouraging. Maybe there's some virtue in working with the Democratic establishment, so I can forgive one concession to the status quo, but let's see some innovative thinking, too.
More worrisome is the idea that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could get a prominent appointment. Orac has torn that one apart, and I agree: we do not need another irrational purveyor of woo and fluffy substanceless hysteria…
denialism | November 7, 2008I would beg everyone who reads the scienceblogs and cares about science to contact the transition team in the Obama administration as Orac has requested.
It should be clear by now to readers of this blog that pseudoscience is not a problem of just the right. The left wing areas of pseudoscience are just as cranky, just as wrong-headed about science, just as likely to use the tactics of denialism to advance a non-scientific agenda. We have been dealing with the denialism of the right more because they've been in control. Now is the time to nip the denialism of the left in the bud so it…
jwilbanks | November 7, 2008Just a quick hat tip to our new president, who understands that Creative Commons is a nice way to be a good citizen on the Web. He's shared his election night candid set on Flickr under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. That means any of you who want to make copies or derivative works are free to do so, as long as you don't sell the works, give credit where credit is due, and release your own derivatives under the same license.
This is a small step, but an important one. The very fact that our president understands that 1) the existing copyright system and…
drorzel | November 7, 2008Looking over my scheduled posts for today, I see that there isn't anything stridently political. Not wanting to shock the systems of readers still coming down off the election, let me add my voice to the chorus of ScienceBloggers expressing concern over the idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is not a knock on his qualifications, or him as a person. As I understand it, he has done great work, and he spoke here a few years ago, and was very generous with his time considering he had a cold that made him sound like a duck.
The problem is, his…
pharyngula | November 7, 2008Here's a graphic illustration of how the presidential election turned out. These are the results by county, with color reflecting the percentage that voted Republican (red) and Democrat (blue).
Here's what it looks like when the counties are scaled by population size; the smear of reds is greatly diminished.
It's striking how the emptiest places in the country are enriched with fervent conservatives. People are always fretting over how conservatives are outbreeding liberals, but it seems to me that that actually works in liberals' favor — as communities become larger and more interdependent…
gregladen | November 7, 2008Both Norm Coleman (R, Incumbant) and Al Franken have set up legal oversight teams for the impending recount in the Minnesota Senatorial race. However, Coleman's lawyer is regisning from the team. Acorrding to the West Central Tribune Online, Coleman's campagin ...
... announced Wednesday evening that former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, a Republican, would oversee the recount for Coleman. But Heffelfinger removed himself Thursday morning, saying he had to focus on guiding a city of St. Paul review of law enforcement practices during the Republican National Convention.
"I have realized…
oracknows | November 6, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about a very disturbing development (disturbing, at least, to the science-based community) in the transition to an Obama Administration. That disturbing development is the multiple reports that antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being seriously considered to head the Environmental Protection Agency or even the Department of the Interior. Given RFK, Jr.'s conspiracy-mongering over vaccines, his utter failure to change his belief that mercury in vaccines causes autism in the face of overwhelming evidence that it does not. My argument was that appointing someone who is…
gregladen | November 6, 2008... of the geography game:
...Perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency," in part because she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent..
Apparently she thought it was a country. A lot of…
gregladen | November 6, 2008There is some nasty stuff happening in Minnesota. I'm thinking the Franken-Coleman election was rigged, and we may be able to prove this over the next few weeks. Meanwhile, in Winona county: Rocks thrown through Democratic Headquarters window: Local authorities are saying that this was revenge rocks being thrown through Obama posters.
Regarding the Franken/Coleman race: Yes, the number dropped from four hundred plus (Coleman over Franken) to three hundred plus (Coleman over Franken) when a "1" in the hundreds place was discovered. Was this a mistake or on purpose? A mistake? Of 400…
revere | November 6, 2008I wasn't in Grant Park the night Barack Obama won the election, which is a pity as it seemed like a joyous and life affirming event. But I've been in Grant Park with tens of thousands of others, the last time 40 years ago. There was tear gas everywhere, students and others being clubbed to the ground by berserker Chicago police and people running in terror and fury. Grant Park was full of anger and violence. So it was with wonder and a full heart that I looked on images of Grant Park Tuesday night:
"Look at these people -- old, young, black and white -- I've never seen anything like it, "…
ddobbs | November 6, 2008Wow. From Newsweek:
At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of "phishing," a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House…
choofnagle | November 6, 2008A group in San Francisco managed to get a measure on the city ballot that would rename our Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant."
I thought this a supremely bad idea. Such a move (like protesting the Marine Core in Berkeley) would invite a conservative reaction, possibly stripping the city of federal funds.
And as a local public utilities supervisor pointed out, our waste station is progressive, like much of the city: "The potential irony here is that this is a modern facility that protects the ocean and the environment every day," [Tony] Winnicker said…
clock | November 6, 2008There are rumors aplenty, but take them with caution, about potential members of the Obama Administration.
Despite understanding, on a cerebral level, what Obama is trying to do, on a visceral level my instinct is to use the majority to implement progressive policies fast and forcefully, to have enough time for those policies to take hold and demonstrate to the people that they are good - two years of gradual economic recovery, new jobs, affordable health-care, serious environmental programs and such can lead to further increase in Dem numbers in Congress instead of decline, and would ensure…
clock | November 6, 2008NC Press Asociation's front pages from Wednesday.
Due to narrow margin - about 12,000 in Obama's favor - the state has to count all the provisional ballots (which usually favor Dems) and all the mail-in ballots (mostly from the military personnel abroad - who knows who that favors any more!). There is little chance, though, officials and statisticians say, that the additional counting will reverse the order, but the official business has to be done in an orderly way. Unofficially, North Carolina went Blue this year. This will become official in a couple of days, I guess. How? Large influx…
cevans | November 6, 2008
Barack Obama's achievement of the American presidency is significant for an endless litany of reasons, but here's a few more.
The lives that will be saved due to his support of stem cell research. All those ideological, anti-science Bush cronies that are going to be booted off scientific advisory boards. The as-yet-unknown discoveries that will come from his promised investments in basic science research. The school kids that are going to get a huge boost in STEM education. No more wildly upsetting dismissals of science in policy speeches. No more censorship of climate change research. A…
grrlscientist | November 6, 2008tags: Ralph Nader, politics, Fox News, Barack Obama, Uncle+Tom, streaming video
Ralph Nader proves once again that he is nothing more than an immature, attention-seeking bully (something I was acutely aware of when I was in college since I knew people who worked in his political campaign), but now he knowingly portrays himself as a racist as well -- I am so glad that I never fell for his double-speak when he was playing spoiler to the 2000 election, and I wonder what my grad school colleagues think about their support for this racist pig? While it's true that Nader ONCE was a useful consumer…
drorzel | November 6, 2008I've seen several people linking to Andrew Gelman's analysis of voting in the election, which is generally good and interesting. I would like to quibble about one thing he says, though. After noting that young voters overwhelmingly went for Obama, he says:
But there was no massive turnout among young voters. According to the exit polls, 18% of the voters this time were under 30, as compared to 17% of voters in 2004. (By comparison, 22% of voting-age Americans are under 30.)
This is a little harsh on younger voters. Using his numbers and a bit of algebra, the turnout among young voters was 81…