Politics
pharyngula | October 12, 2008I'm hanging out in the airport in Springfield, Missouri, and of course CNN is blaring on all the televisions. As is typical, it's just one news story repeated and rehashed and gnawed over endlessly, but what is surprising is what the story is: John McCain is running a filthy, dirty, racist, hate-mongering campaign. Revere has a fine post pointing out the McCain Doctrine: all's fair if it gets him elected.
Heck, you ought to read all of Revere's posts in the Annals of McCain-Palin. And once you've felt enough disgust at this man, lighten it up with the latest Freethinker Sunday Sermonette,…
gregladen | October 12, 2008I know a man who is best friends with Huey Newton. I know a woman to who took a class from a professor who is suspected of building a bomb used to blow up (part of) a building in the 1960s. I am closely related to a person who shall remain nameless who was under investigation by the FBI for blowing up (part of) a building during the 1960s. I am part of a group of people who broke some government property at a Viet Nam War protest. Details withheld. When I was a young child I sent a threatenting letter to President Richard Nixon. I was once an active member of what in those days passed…
drorzel | October 12, 2008Some time back, I saw Brother Guy Consolmagno talk at Boskone, and said "You know, I should invite him to campus." For those who don't recognize the name, he's an SF fan and an astronomer (well, planetary scientist) who also happens to be a Jesuit brother. He works at the Vatican Observatory, where he is the curator of the Vatican's meteorite collection.
After we were on a panel together last year, I asked him if he'd be interested in giving us a colloquium talk sometime, and he said yes. We exchanged a few emails, and settled on October 9, namely, this past Thursday, when he was going to be…
evolvingthoughts | October 11, 2008
A while ago, almost exactly two years back, I asked Is the Bush Administration fascist? I think we can now safely say it is, at least in the style of Mussolini and Franco. Now Echidne of the Snakes has a series of articles up on whether the Republicans have so poisoned American politics that America itself is now fascist. Our hope, at least outside the US for those who like America, is that an Obama administration will roll back the worst excesses of the Rovian Extremists. But Echidne asks how the American republic can be protected from cronyism, profiteering and the corruption of the past…
clock | October 11, 2008Hmmm, I have not done one of these in a few weeks, so if you depend on me for your political information, check under the fold:
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama:
From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
The Fraud Of Fraud:
It looks right now as if the election might not be…
laelaps | October 11, 2008As has been pointed out by many over the past week, the current race to the White House between John McCain and Barack Obama is increasingly being punctuated by angry outbursts from conservative crowds. In the past, Democratic candidates were often mocked at Republican rallies (and vice versa), but there appears to be an increasing amount of anger permeating public appearances by McCain and his VP-pick, Sarah Palin.
It seems that many conservatives are upset that McCain hasn't really "let Obama have it," and lots of jeering and booing can be heard at these rallies when anything deemed "left-…
gregladen | October 11, 2008Son of Buckley is, in fact, also a Buckley. Christopher, to be exact, and pretty much as conservative as his dad.
"It's a good thing my dear old mum and pup [sic] are no longer alive. They'd cut off my allowance," Buckley, a columnist for the conservative National Review, wrote on the Web site The Daily Beast Friday.
They'd cut off more than your allowance, you traitor!!!!
"Obama has in him ... the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for," Buckley wrote.
aardvarchaeology | October 11, 2008
A timely must-read: Kevin Nguyen explains the financial crisis to his kid sister using Pokémon cards as an analogy.
Kevin: Imagine that I let you borrow $50, but in exchange for my generosity, you promise to pay me back the $50 with an extra $10 in interest. To make sure you pay me back, I take your Charizard Pokémon card as collateral.
Olivia: Kevin, I don't play Pokémon anymore.
Kevin: I'm getting to that. Let's say that the Charizard is worth $50, so in case you decide to not return my money, at least I'll have something that's worth what I loaned out.
Olivia: Okay.
Kevin: But one day,…
jrosenhouse | October 10, 2008Sorry for the sporadic blogging lately. I have a really good excuse though: haven't felt like blogging.
But this article got me thinking. It seems that Christopher Buckley, son of William F., is voting for Obama:
John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the…
gregladen | October 10, 2008"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,"
This according to an official Alaska state investigator's report.
Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was "likely a contributing factor" to Monegan's July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to fire him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states.
However, it states that her efforts to get Wooten fired broke a state…
evolvingthoughts | October 10, 2008
Ever wondered why it's "red states"? Because it's the "red right". And as one of my favourite Australian lyricists has it, this is because of the red right hand:
Take a little walk to the edge of town, go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms, like a bird of doom as it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires, in the humming wires
Hey man, you know you're never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge, past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with a red right hand
He'll wrap you in his arms, tell you that…
gregladen | October 10, 2008Thank you thank you thank you all Americans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Great White North to the Rio Grande. We accept your adoration, we revel in your awe. We, the Minnesotan. Yes. Sometimes we mess up. Like when we sent Norm Coleman instead of Walter Mondale to the Senate in a fit of Passive Aggressive Rage (PAR) stemming from the inhumility while we commemorated Paul Wellstone. But now, we make that all up and more. We, the Minnesotan, now hand you the very head of the Republican John McCain. Bow to us, as we have done this for you, for all of you.
I give you The…
j7uy5 | October 10, 2008In this video, Hannity
href="http://www.newshounds.us/2008/09/11/hannity_has_a_bullyboy_meltdown_at_suggestion_economy_is_in_trouble.php">tells
us the economy is in fine shape, wonders if it is reasonable
to think that people would really vote against the Republicans due to
the economy.
Granted, it was a month ago, at which time the market was only down by
20%. But he seriously believed that the
economy was in great shape.
I thought it was hilarious when I first saw it. It's even
funnier now. His guest,
href="http://www.squanderingofamerica.com/squandering.cfm">Robert
Kuttner,…
gregladen | October 10, 2008In case you have not heard, there is a stock market crash happening as we speak. Today, Friday October 10 2008 is going to be known as Black Friday, or something. I'm not sure if it is possible to put this into perspective in any sensible way, but I have two graphs to show you.
The first is a graph that puports to show cycles in the Dow Jones average after all kinds of adjustments are done. The main effects of these adjustment are to normalize secular (short term) variation by using a log scale, and the imposition of relative value lines, essentially adjusting for inflation. I've drawn the…
drorzel | October 10, 2008The 2008 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts."
Fortunately for uneducated boors like me, they provide a press release listing some of those efforts:
Throughout all his adult life, whether as a senior Finnish public servant and President or in an international capacity, often connected to the United Nations, Ahtisaari has worked for peace and reconciliation. For the past twenty years, he has figured prominently in endeavours to resolve several serious and…
evolvingthoughts | October 9, 2008
As some of you may have figured out by now, my overarching Evil Plan is to get people thinking about their basic assumptions. Even when those people are the "good guys" and free thinkers. So in service of that I am giving a public talk for the Secular Freethinkers society on Tuesday next (details below the fold) on why secularism does not require the end of religion, and in fact why the religious ought to support it to protect their future standing in society. Anyone who's in Brisbane is free to attend and heckle, and if anyone asks "What about the workers!?" I have a Sellarsian response…
sa smith | October 9, 2008I fell in love with Claire McCaskill my Junior year of high school. I 'got' to go to Girls State, which was hands down, one of the worst weeks of my life. It was death by boredom (well, we almost died by tornado). The only time I smiled that week was when I got to hear Claire speak. She really inspired me.
I supported her full throttle when she usurped Bob Holden for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2004. I was crushed when she lost to Matt Blunt (who rode the coattails of an anti-marriage amendment, and has an approval rating so low, hes not running for a second term this year…