Politics
clock | August 24, 2008Links by Myrna the Minx, something for you to bookmark and use. I'll probably use FriendFeed and visit some of my favourite blogs (including Pam and the Blenders who will be there - see the NYTimes article about the bloggers at the Convention).
jlynch | August 23, 2008Over the past day I have been running across folks in the progressive blogosphere grousing about Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden apparently is a "hawk", too centrist, too pro-Israel, too ... well, you get the picture. But I'm wondering, what did these individuals expect? Who else could perhaps deliver the White House with Obama? Clinton? Feingold?
Certain quarters on the progressive left are lacking pragmatism, lacking the realization that the goal at the moment should be to win the White House and work from there. Unrolling the "revolution" that Reagan started in the…
gregladen | August 23, 2008Joe Biden, as predicted on this blog! (and since I'm usually wrong about this sort of thing, this is impressive. Or random)
US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has announced that Joe Biden will be his running mate in November's election.
Mr Obama's choice, confirmed on his website and with a text message to supporters, comes ahead of next week's Democratic Party convention.
Mr Biden, a 65-year-old veteran lawmaker, is highly respected on foreign policy issues.
Republican contender John McCain could announce his choice next week.
BBC
pharyngula | August 23, 2008Since the DNC has chosen to not only ignore but outright spurn and reject the significant bloc of voters in their ranks who are not irrational people of faith, a demonstration is planned for 24 August at the Colorado Convention Center — you can RSVP if you want, but I'm sure you won't be turned away if you just show up. The Coalition of Secular Voters has also put together an open letter to the Democrats, and I've heard that the Boulder Atheists will be turning out, too.
Let your displeasure be known. The DNC has to be shown that they've made a great mistake by alienating an important part of…
sb admin | August 23, 2008A number of us in the blogosphere have been outraged by Bush's Department of Health and Human Services' desire to put the arbitrary wants of doctors before the needs of patients. At first it was just a draft proposal, but now Mike Leavitt is pushing to implement the changes. Soon, it may be legally acceptable to deny you a needed health service because the health care provider thinks your decisions are immoral.
I've already written several times about why there can be no "conscientious objectors" in health care. This law would essentially allow doctors to ignore the standard of care set by…
clock | August 22, 2008They (meaning: CNN) say it's Biden. Yuck! The old-school hawk whose only 'supposed strength' is foreign policy which he proceeded to show he is ignorant of every night on TV during the 1990s spouting nonsense about the Balkans.
jlynch | August 22, 2008I'm a little disappointed at Jim Lippard's recent post on "Obama resume-padding, a post which favorably quotes this Jerusalem Post blog.
Whatever about Obama's legislative record (and that is an argument for another day), the authors of this piece show that they know nothing about Law schools. They state:
Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty--singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship--and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself.
As anyone who has spent…
oracknows | August 22, 2008I was disappointed to find an approving link from a fellow ScienceBlogger to this sort of rant by Matt Stoller:
We all know that winning this election is not enough. It's just not. It's not even close. This is the most unpopular President we've ever had and our opponent is a crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman. Our nominee should crush this guy.
"Crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman"? Nice. I wonder if Matt spit out the term "cancer-ridden" with the same amount of contempt and venom while typing as he did when he spit out the terms "crazy," "dishonest," and "madman." I wonder if he…
pharyngula | August 22, 2008I just received this email from some communications group trying to publicize the virtues of the Democratic Party. It had the opposite effect on me — I am appalled. It's the usual Democratic strategic inanity of pushing to ape the Republicans instead of even trying to be a party of progressive ideas, so they're going to promote futile religious bullshit at their convention. This just makes me furious.
DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION TO HIGHLIGHT DIVERSE COMMUNITY OF FAITH LEADERS WORKING TOWARD COMMON GOOD
First-Ever Faith Caucus Meetings to be Held at Democratic Convention
Invocators and Benedictors…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008Speaking of art, Rodger Payne has a
href="http://rpayne.blogspot.com/2008/08/hypocrisy-watch-georgia-edition.html">beautiful
post highlighting the hypocrisy of the US Government's
responses to Russia's actions in Georgia.
drorzel | August 22, 2008For reasons that really aren't important, I found myself doing some Google Image searches for pictures of political leaders, and I was struck by how many of the top results were caricatures. It occurred to me that you could probably say something about the collective emotional age of the Internet by looking at the distribution of real and mocking pictures in these search results.
Some data (well, plural anecdotes, at least) for your consideration:
A search for George W. Bush yields 18 images, 5 of which are modified in some allegedly satirical way, and two of which appear to be real but…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2008Republicans see that they are losing on this issue, so they just make
the issue go away:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082100310.html">U.S.,
Iraqi Negotiators Agree on 2011 Withdrawal
Withdrawal from Iaq is one of Obama's stronger points. So it
is a smart move for the Administration to just make it into a
non-issue. Ok, whatever, just stop the
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/6/army_recruiter_suspended_for_threatening_high">illegal
coersion of kids to join the Army.
Follow the link to listen to the interview and the aurio…
clock | August 21, 2008The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) announced the winner of its 2008 "Science Idol: Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest," which draws attention to the growing problem of political interference in federal government science.
Justin Bilicki, of Brooklyn, New York has earned the title of America's "Science Idol" with his winning cartoon. It depicts a scientist presenting his research findings that conclude: "We are destroying the Earth." Two government officials look on. The official holding a briefcase with money spilling out of it, says, "Could you kindly rephrase that in…
edyong | August 21, 2008
Elections are weighing heavily on our minds. In three short months, America will see the race between Barack Obama and John McCain come to a head, while we in Britain will probably have a general election within the next few years. Some people, of course, will vote based on long-held loyalties to a specific political party, but many of us are more malleable in our choices. What affects the choices of these undecided voters?
People are given to viewing ourselves as rational beings and as such, we'd like to think that our choices are fuelled by objective and careful deliberation. So we pay…
drorzel | August 21, 2008The recent news about the Amethyst Initiative, in which a number of college and university presidents are calling for a lowering of the drinking age from 21, has sparked a bunch of discussion. Jake Young and Mark Kleiman have good contributions.
There are two main arguments against lowering the drinking age:
1) Raising the drinking age to 21 led to a decrease in drunk-driving fatalities
2) Lowering the age to 18 would mean a rampant increase in high school drunkenness, as there are a fair number of 18-year-old high school students.
Just in the interests of being provocative, let me throw…
gregladen | August 20, 2008
An Ossetian protester holds a poster parodying US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a rally outside Nato headquarters in Brussels.
pzminion | August 20, 2008Guest Blogger Danio, sneaking a few more posts in:
Remember that execrable HHS policy document that proposes an extension of the current protections for health care workers who refuse to provide or assist in treatments that they personally find morally objectionable? I did a little back-tracking on this issue, and followed the trail of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who requested this regulation after a "disappointing" interaction with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He has since been unwavering in his support of the proposal--which he claims is not about abortion OR…
clock | August 20, 2008Jessica reminds us that several scientists and geeks (i.e., Web designers and programmers) are running for various political offices this year. Some of them even got together on an ActBlue Geek Page.
Of them all, I particularly like the savvy campaign ways of Sean Tavis who is running for Kansas State House, trying to displace a Creationist, anti-woman Neanderthal from that seat. Both Kevin Z and Ed Cone noted his online savvy and ability to raise funds online by using the Web well. Listen to this NPR story about this and read his XKCD-style stick-figure cartoons.
And if you want to donate…
gregladen | August 19, 2008Or so says everybody who's anybody.
It might not be Biden, but it will be Saturday.
Am I right?
clock | August 19, 2008Support Beverly Purdue:
Bev and Pat McCrory will face each other tonight in the second televised debate of the general election. The debate will be broadcast live at 8pm on WTVD in the Triangle area and streamed live on ABC11.com. Tune in tonight as Bev continues to prove why she's the best candidate to move North Carolina forward.
New ad, including Charlotte
Click here to see Bev's new ad, which is also airing in the Charlotte media market -- the first ad by either side to air in Charlotte. It focuses on Bev's extraordinary record of accomplishment and her plans for North Carolina's future…