Politics
gregladen | May 29, 2008 Mark Madden ESPN shock jock jock Mark Madden made the following remarks on his radio show the other day:
I'm very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.
... and thus, got his own ugly ass fired. [source]
Sharon Stone Sharon Stone, famous actress, made some remarks too. She
suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over the government's treatment of Tibet...
"I'm not happy about the…
grrlscientist | May 29, 2008tags: Young Hillary Clinton, politics, humor, comedy, streaming video
This brilliantly funny streaming video is the result of a deviant comedic mind -- it's a portrait of the young Hillary Rodham (like, duh, she wasn't married yet, as one of the students will remind you). My favorite quote? "What's a superdelegate?" [3:05].
jrosenhouse | May 28, 2008According to former White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan, the Bush administration has been somewhat less than forthcoming:
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.
Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs…
evolvingthoughts | May 27, 2008
The Scientific Misconduct blog has identified a case of censorship based on fear:
Briefly, a postgraduate student (Rizwaan Sabir) was conducting research (into terrorism). He was arrested after downloading material (related to terrorism) from a US government website. I believe that the material is here - take a look. His Nottingham University supervisors insisted the materials were directly relevant to his research (which is on terrorism). A university administrator and previous student at Nottingham University (Hisham Yezza) printed some of the (publicly available) material for him. Both…
gregladen | May 27, 2008
This is one of the few times you'll see this large of a context provided for the famous "assassination" remarks. What do you think? Interestingly, both right and left in the media are jumping on a similar band wagon...
The Giddy Fox News Reaction:
Having this creepy broad suggest that Hillary was wrong about the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" is just plain strange.
The Keith Oberman Reaction (long):
Clinton's statement later on:
"Earlier today I was discussing the Democratic primary history, and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Senator…
gregladen | May 26, 2008An impromptu collection of sexist commentary or commentary about sexism related to the Democratic Primary race.
Unmasking Sexism In Media Coverage Of Hillary Clinton
Deeply rooted sexism in the US as seen in the campaign coverage of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "hurts us all," Bradley University professor emeritus Barbara Pendleton told the Peoria chapter of the National Organization for Women at a March 8 meeting to commemorate International Women's Day and Women's History Month.
Pendleton, an award winning professor, offered a hard hitting analysis of the sexism in the campaign coverage…
gregladen | May 26, 2008An impromptu collection of racist commentary or commentary about racism related to the Democratic Primary race.
Racist Attacks on Obama Growing More Heated
With the selection of Barack Obama as the first black Democratic nominee for president seeming more possible by the day, racists and white supremacists are posting increasingly ugly and even threatening remarks on the Internet.
...On traditional white supremacist and neo-Nazi sites (for instance, here and here), there are lengthy discussion threads about what would happen if Obama were elected president. Dozens of those posts are…
oracknows | May 26, 2008
Today is once again Memorial Day. On this day in the past I have posted photo montages of, for example, the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC and link roundups, as I did last year. This year, I thought I'd simply post a link to a list maintained by the Department of Veteran Affairs of the number of Americans who have died in every war fought thus far in this nation's history, excluding the current actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those figures can be found here.
As we go about our business today, some of us going to cemeteries, others having barbecues, going to baseball games, or…
drorzel | May 26, 2008Today is Memorial Day in the US, the official holiday for remembering the men and women killed in our various wars. It's also the traditional start of the summer season, which means that it's always an odd collision of the solemn and the raucous. Growing up, there was always a parade in town, which started downtown and made its way to the cemetery for an official ceremony and wreath-laying by the chaplain of the American Legion. He could never quite keep the words straight ("These flowers may wither, but the spirit of which they are a symbol will endure forever"), but he came close enough,…
grrlscientist | May 26, 2008tags: parrots, politics, humor, behavior, streaming video
This streaming video is a CNN report about a parrot that .. er, parrots .. Barack Obama's slogan, "Yes we can". But it also includes some other parrots .. the one that says "Whateverrrr" is my favorite [2:31].
j7uy5 | May 26, 2008I'm harping on the same string. A month ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/poisoning_ourselves.php">noted
how it was not necessary for terrorists to figure out how to poison us.
Our own companies are doing it for them. Now, our
government is doing a heck of a job to make it easier for companies to
poison us, and to get away with it.
As noted by the former WaPo reporter, Ed Bruske, the USDA is no longer
keeping track of pesticide use. Formerly, the USDA published
an annual report a chemical usage in agriculture. It was the
only comprehensive, reliable…
j7uy5 | May 25, 2008Despite a chorus among citizenry and punditry to end oil company
subsidies, it turns out that yet another has been foisted upon us.
What is worse, it was created under the guise of a populist
program:
Households will spend about $90 billion more this
year on gasoline if fuel prices remain at current levels, according to
a forecast by economists at Credit Suisse Holdings in New York. That
will consume about 80 percent of the more than $110 billion in rebate
checks the government is sending out.
So most of the rebate money will end up in the pockets of big oil.
It will not boost spending…
gregladen | May 25, 2008I've decided to respond to Ana, Larry, and others in a new post rather than in a comment. This is partly because it is easier and more reliable for me to post than to comment under the present conditions. Which in truth are not really conducive to any kind of writing, but here goes.
Ana, yes, I won't say that "feelings have passed" or that my mind has changed about anything. What I will say is that the whole purpose of that post (and this) was to explore what I see as some serious ambiguities. These ambiguities exist, I think, across the campaign process as well as in the minds of any one…
razib | May 23, 2008One of the truisms of American politics for the past generation has been the "gender gap" whereby women tend to lean toward the Democrats and men toward the Republicans. This gap has become part of the background assumptions of American political commentary to the point that right-wing polemicist Ann Coulter has proposed restricting the vote to men. Though Coulter's proposal is obviously ludicrous, there isn't that much objection to the assumption she makes that women support the Left party and men the Right. That's been empirically a valid judgment in the United States for the past…
gregladen | May 22, 2008The next step is that the Sargent of Arms of the House hunts him down and drags him to the United States Capitol. Apparently they have a room in the basement where they would keep him. (This sort of thing has happened before, but it's been quite a while.)
President Bush has already indirectly indicated that he will protect Rove with "executive privilege."
gregladen | May 22, 2008I'm starting to become a little unnerved by the situation with the Democratic party. I'd like to lay out a couple of questions and arguments for discussion. I'm hoping very much that certain people will chime in on this. You know who you are (like, when you get my email asking you to chime in).
From the beginning, this primary involved gender and race. Obviously. A democrat could actually win this year. So, the giddiness over having a viable female candidate and giddiness over having a viable African American candidate is palpable. But we can see that this giddiness has given way to a…
drorzel | May 22, 2008The pinhead filling in for Colin Cowherd (himself a pinhead of epic proportions) yesterday on ESPN radio was unduly proud of himself for coming up with the following hypothetical (paraphrased from memory):
Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having your favorite sports team win a championship. Which would you pick?
Even by the standards of hypotheticals on sports call-in shows, this is pretty stupid. After all, it's not really a fair comparison-- whatever psychological boost it may provide, your favorite sports team winning a…
gregladen | May 21, 2008That's the invitation list to a special party coming up in a couple of days where McCain will have a conversation with a few possible Veepers.
The absence of Pawlenty is a great disappointment to us Minnesotans.
We were really, really hoping that Tim Pawlenty would go away. Also, since he IS the Governor who let the bridge fall down...
And not just any bridge. He let Gods Bridge -- the I 35 God's Highway Bridge -- fall down. What a chump.
[source]