Politics
pharyngula | June 11, 2008I'm going to give you a choice today.
If you've only got a moment and want to click a button and be done with something fairly trivial, vote on whether to impeach Bush.
For a change, if you've got a half hour or so and would like to contribute data to serious research, take Elisabeth Cornwell's research survey. I think we could add a large dollop of godless attitudes to her work.
(Hmmm…I should do a poll on who would rather crash a poll vs. take a serious survey!)
oracknows | June 11, 2008I know I'm a bit late to this game, but those of you who read ERV, Denialism Blog, and Pharyngula didn't think that their prior mention of this story about how the State of Minnesota is going to allow naturopaths to claim the title of "doctor" would stop me from jumping right in even if I am a day late (which in the blogosphere might as well be a year), did you?
If you did, you don't know me very well, even after three years of blogging. This sort of thing is the raison d'être of this blog, and just because blogging about an antivaccine rally last week and about Abraham Cherrix yesterday…
jlynch | June 10, 2008Razib presents some interesting data on donations to the two main political parties by scientists. What struck me is that if you rank the professions from most Republican to most Democrat, you get the following:
Civil Engineering [0.75]
Chemical Engineering [0.79]
Geology [0.92]
Mechanical Engineering [0.96]
Electrical Engineering [1.17]
Chemistry [2.31]
Biochemistry [5.09]
Mathematics [5.44]
Physics [6.19]
Biology [10.3]
Now what I find interesting here is that if we use the Discovery Institute's 2007 list of 700 Dissenters against Darwinism, we see that the top five groups represented are…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2008
That graphic is only a teaser, it is only peripherally related to theis
post, and is not scientifically valid. Still, it is nice to
see. It is from an article on msnbc.com,
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10561966/">Spying,
the Constitution -- and the 'I-word'. The
article is from 2005. It used to link to an online poll.
The link in the article is gone, but
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904">the poll is
still live. Every once and a while some
pro-impeachment citizen links to it, so the results have gotten wildly
skewed.
This post is about an awful thing, that…
razib | June 10, 2008I was poking around Fund Race 2008 and was curious how different scientist professions were giving in regards to political parties in the USA. Below is what I found....
profession
Repub #
Dem #
Repub $
Dem $
Ratio #
Dem $
mathematician
18
98
13740
72837
5.44
5.3
physicist
86
532
65722
425105
6.19
6.47
chemist
172
397
111058
247742
2.31
2.23
biochemist
23
117
16567
100415
5.09
6.06
biologist
27
278
13809
156868
10.3
11.36
geologist
321
294
321835
195143
0.92
0.61
electrical engineer
321
374
184539
244717
1.17
1.33
mechanical engineer
155
149
109542
86466
0.96
0.79
civil…
illconsidered | June 10, 2008I haven't heard it from anyone else yet so let me go on the record as predicting McCain will choose Joe Lieberman as his vice-presidential running mate. Bipartisanship and all that blah blah balh (not that Joe is a Democrate in any non-technical sense)
Not something I would ever consider voting for....
gregladen | June 10, 2008Their proposals need to be subject to argument and amenable to reason. and so on.
Hat Tip: Pharyngula.
gregladen | June 10, 2008Check this out:
Obama's speech in Raleigh launching his economy tour is underway, and towards the end, during a discussion of health care, he drops a surprise aside that wasn't in the speech's prepared remarks:
"By the way, I'm going to be partnering with Elizabeth Edwards, we're going to be figuring all this out."
source
[Anybody know where I got this? It just was sitting there open on my computer ... I'd like to give a 'hat tip' .... Maybe Obama has been poking around in my basement again....]
This is interesting at so many levels. For one thing, this means that Obama will not be…
pharyngula | June 9, 2008I think this is his June 2006 speech — does anyone know if he has expressed similar sentiments now?
(via Atheist Media Blog)
jrosenhouse | June 9, 2008From Robert Novak's column in today's Washington Post:
Shortcomings by John McCain's campaign in the art of politics are alienating two organizations of Christian conservatives. James Dobson's Focus on the Family is estranged following the failure of Dobson and McCain to talk out their differences. Evangelicals who follow the Rev. John Hagee resent McCain's disavowal of him.
The evangelicals are not an isolated problem for the Arizona senator. Enthusiasm for McCain inside the Republican coalition is in short supply. During the four months since McCain clinched the nomination, he has not…
clock | June 9, 2008Earlier today, here in Raleigh (and yes, he will contest North Carolina, and perhaps all 50 states!) at an "invitation-only" event (so no liveblogging from me, sorry), Obama killed at least three birds with one stone. In one sentence, at the very end, he got himself endeared to the three key groups of voters who are still suspicious of him: women/Hillary fans, Edwards fans, and people who do not like Obama's health-care plan (which is obviously going to change now....).
voltagegate | June 9, 2008Critterthink, the blog of the Center for Native Ecosystems in Denver, CO has posted a guide to the 2008 Farm Bill from a conservation perspective, highlighting what they call the good, the bad and the ugly. If you haven't had time to review the bill yourself, take advantage of the hard work these folks put into breaking it down for us.
The Farm Bill is an omnibus bill passed every few years, setting a policy toolkit for agriculture in the US. It has massive implications for industry, food, foreign policy and, for our purposes, conservation and the environment.
Here are a few things that stuck…
j7uy5 | June 9, 2008This won't make much sense unless you watched at least part of the Bill
Moyers video of his speech at the National Conference for Media Reform.
(I posted the video on 7 June 2008.)
In this follow-up video, Moyers is confronted after the speech, by a
reporter from Fox News. Needless to say, Moyers gets the
upper hand.
Indeed, this video makes a fine example of the practice of appropriate
assertiveness.
In any situation that calls for a response,
the response can be placed on a continuum, from passive to aggressive.
It is a marvelous skill, to be able to find just the right
level of…
tqa | June 8, 2008
Senator John McCain, it appears, is not a fan of William Jennings Bryan. In a recent interview with USA Today, the Republican Party's nominee for President compared the three-time Democratic nominee for president from the turn of the last century to the Party's current nominee:
"I believe that people are interested very much in substance," McCain said. "If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president." (Bryan, a noted orator, lost three presidential elections as the Democratic nominee in 1896, 1900 and 1908.)
It would be easy for me to dismiss McCain's dislike of…
pharyngula | June 7, 2008I was very pleased to see Hillary Clinton's call for party unity today — that gives me some hope that we'll all pull together and win this important election in November. So…do you need another reason to despise John McCain?
j7uy5 | June 7, 2008Consolidation of media is but one step in the consolidation of power,
another brick in the wall.
It is a grave threat. Watch Bill Moyers, speaking
at the National
Conference for Media Reform, give an
impassioned speech about this topic.
Seriously, consolidation of media is more of a threat to "our freedoms"
than Osama even could be.
(HT: freepress)
gregladen | June 7, 2008The Minnesota Democratic Farm Labor Party has officially endorsed Al Franken as Candidate for Senate. The endorsement was made on the first ballot.
pharyngula | June 6, 2008Under the malign influence of the wicked and silly Sally Kern, some Oklahomans were trying to pass an awful religious viewpoints anti-discrimination act, which would have simply given further privileges to majority religious views in the state.
Fortunately, Governor Brad Henry has vetoed the legislation, saying
Under current state and federal law, Oklahoma public school students are already allowed to express their faith through voluntary prayer and other activities. While well intended, this legislation is vaguely written and may trigger a number of unintended consequences that actually…
oracknows | June 6, 2008
I never thought I'd be saying this, but Dan Olmsted has my profuse thanks. When yesterday I posted some signs carried by marchers at the "Green Our Vaccines" rally on Wednesday, I asked you to decide for yourself whether they are "pro-safe vaccine" or anti-vaccine. To me the answer is obvious. Thanks to Olmsted, however, I have a list of many of the slogans that he saw on signs at the rally, as well as a video of many of the signs:
So, once again, I ask you, my readers, the question: "Pro-safe vaccine" or antivaccine? You be the judge!
THE "GREEN OUR VACCINES" COLLECTION:
The Jenny…
gregladen | June 6, 2008It is being widely censored. The uncensored version is below the fold.
This is the most disturbing thing I've posted in a while. At least 12 hours or so.
The censored version leaves off the part about the President of the United States, George Bush. At the very very end.
Thank you and hat tip from The Skeptical Alchemist. Who also has this interesting post.