Politics
pharyngula | July 6, 2008…take a look at this opinion of Obama's stance on faith-based charities. I agree with it, except that I will be voting for Obama in November — and I will be carping at him for the next 4-8 years, too.
pharyngula | July 5, 2008My drive home last night was a bit weird — there were fireworks going off everywhere, and being a bit disconnected from the calendar with all my recent travel I was puzzled by it all. Was Minnesota celebrating my return?
I shouldn't be so self-centered. Of course they weren't. When I got home I saw the news: Jesse Helms is dead. That makes more sense as a reason to get out and celebrate patriotically — one less twisted, ignorant, bigoted pustule dots the face of America now.
j7uy5 | July 5, 2008The League
of Conservation Voters is half-way through the process of
selecting the dozen worst environmental offenders in elected office.
Each election year, they select approximately 12
politicians to target for their campaign, in an effort to unseat, or
deny seats to, the politicians with the worst voting records on
environmental issues.
Last time (2006), the "dozen" (actually 15)
href="http://lcv.org/newsroom/press-releases/2006-dirty-dozen.html">included:
Senators
George Allen (R-VA)
Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Jim Talent (R-MO)
Representatives
Bob Beauprez (R-CO)
Katherine Harris (R…
grrlscientist | July 4, 2008tags: Jesse Helms, politics, rethuglicans
Image: Orphaned (please contact me so I can properly attribute this image to its photographer).
This morning, I learned that America is celebrating its independence from one of the politicians whose goal was to ensure that this country was a colder, meaner-spirited place for millions of its citizens to live; a former senator of North Carolina, Jesse Helms. A lot of people called him "Senator No", although I (and no doubt others) thought of him as "Senator Hate."
How should we remember a right-wing religious control freak who has caused so much…
gregladen | July 4, 2008Ding dong.
The mo'fkr died on the Fourth of July. Probably on purpose.
Early on, his habit of blocking nominations and legislation won him a nickname of "Senator No." He delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues.
In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a…
clock | July 4, 2008Edwards, Rove to face off in UB debate:
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain might not burn up the campaign trail around Western New York this election year, but the University at Buffalo may have scheduled the next best thing.
GOP strategist Karl Rove and former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards will debate the issues of the presidential campaign Sept. 26 as part of the university's Distinguished Speakers Series, The Buffalo News has learned.
As surrogates for the parties' standard bearers, the two also could square off more than once at other locations around the nation.
[…
clock | July 4, 2008There is no need to say anything at this moment because it is not nice to say ugly stuff about the dead.
Before coming to the US, as a kid not interested in politics, and certainly not in US politics, Helms was one of the rare American politicians I have heard of - mostly as an example how the US electoral system sometimes enables utterly unfit people to reach high levels of power. We laughed.
Ten years ago, one of the questions I had to answer when becoming a US citizen, was "who are the current US senators representing NC?" I said "Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, hopefuly not for much…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2008tags: politics, pollution, hunger, global warming, environmental destruction, biofuels, overpopulation, birth control, soylent green
Image: Matt Groening (The Simpson's).
A friend sent a link to an interesting article that was published today in the Guardian. This article reveals that the increased reliance on biofuels by the US and the EU is driving a worldwide food crisis. The confidential World Bank report, researched and written by an unnamed but "internationally-respected economist," has not been published but was instead leaked to the Guardian. Among other things, this report claims…
clock | July 3, 2008Happy birthday to Elizabeth Edwards, the most inspiring person on the US political scene since I started paying attention a couple of decades ago....
j7uy5 | July 3, 2008At last, they are being honest with us: you
have no rights.
Attorney General said so. He admitted it.
So, at least he's honest. See his picture to the
right? Doesn't he look like an honest gentleman? He
is.
In a recent
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hngKSYm06_-CQxF9Afx1X9j1urdQD91LS2V00">interview
with reporters, Mukasey stated that it is "necessary to put
in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it
is transforming itself into an intelligence gathering organization."
Now, the AP is reporting some details of that transformation. …
razib | July 2, 2008The Political Mind, Part III (Chapter 2), Chris sayeth:
Anyway, now on to that part I promised you about how real conservatives don't exist, or at least not in great numbers. Towards the end of this chapter, Lakoff gives us the concept of "biconceptualism." This means that some people have both progressive and conservative thoughts -- that is, they dig obedience in some areas of politics, and empathy in others (the two are mutually contradictory, so they certainly can't go together in the same political policy!). Unfortunately for us progressives, most conservatives don't realize they're…
clock | July 2, 2008Check this out, from the ScienceDebate 2008 team: 14 Questions the candidates for President should answer about Science & America's Future.
Compare to my questions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
oracknows | July 2, 2008I've written extensively before about how advocates of non-science-based "medical" treatments, such as naturopathy, homeopathy, and all the woo that follows have been waging a war on all fronts against science- and evidence-based medicine in their effort to have their so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (or the newer, brighter, shinier name "integrative medicine") be perceived as co-equal with scientific medicine. They've infiltrated academia. They've insinuated their agenda into medical school curricula. They've even managed to have the teaching of woo become a mandatory part…
gregladen | July 2, 2008...Until recently, "waterboarding" was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict....
With this, Christopher Hitchens begins an article in Vanity Fair on…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2008tags: Just say Yes, humor, telemarketers, streaming video
Just a little fun for all those people who are tired of being tortured by telemarketers [1:20]
evolvingthoughts | July 1, 2008
Readers may be somewhat surprised that Evolving Thoughts hasn't made much of the Darwin bicentennial and the Origin sesquicentennial so far. Well, I haven't needed to, given the number of other folk making hay from this. In particular I recommend Carl Zimmer's piece, over at his new digs with Discover magazine. Carl points out John van Whye's paper that showed that Darwin didn't "sit on the theory for 20 years" but rather followed a preplanned sequence for backing up his ideas. However, when Charles planned this research, he greatly underestimated the time it would take him (the Cirripedia…
evolvingthoughts | July 1, 2008
This is me commenting on American politics again. Sorry.
I am somewhat amazed at the furore over Wesley Clark's comment that being a prisoner of war doesn't automatically make one qualified as Commander in Chief of the armed services, a position that the President fulfills. Not only is that true, it raises the matter of what it is that does make one qualified to be CiC. As I read American history and the Constitution, the answer is plain and simple: representing the popular will.
The president has advisors with military expertise, presumably those whose merit got them to that position in…