Politics
jrosenhouse | May 16, 2008Every once in a while Chris Matthews does a good deed. On last night's edition of Hardball he had conservative radio talk show host Kevin James on his show. James was keen to pontificate on the nature of appeasement. Matthews' other guest was Mark Green. What happened next was priceless:
MATTHEWS: I want to do a little history check on you because the president's referring to history. He attacked those who would imitate Senator William Boar of Idaho, who was a Republican isolationist back in the late '30s, who supported whatever, some notion of getting along with Hitler better. Let me…
pharyngula | May 16, 2008California may inspire a whole series of legislative actions. Minnesota has introduced a bill similar to California's.
The Marriage and Family Protection Act was introduced by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, and Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, on Friday. The bill would make marriage a gender-neutral proposition in Minnesota, allowing same-sex couples to marry. It would also protect religious institutions that have moral objections to same-sex marriage from being compelled to perform such ceremonies.
I love the title of the bill — that will have the wingnuts chewing their tongues in a…
drorzel | May 16, 2008Matthew Yglesias's first book arrives burdened with one of the longest subtitles in memory ("How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats"), which is a little off-putting. Of course, it also features a back-cover blurb from Ezra Klein calling it "A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care." So there's a little in-jokey blog reference to lighten the mood.
I'm not a big reader of political books-- I don't even care for excessively political SF novels-- but I enjoy Matt's blog a good deal, and met him…
gregladen | May 15, 2008In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.
jlynch | May 15, 2008No sooner had I read this today:
There is by now an entire book to be written about the way that "Munich," "appeasement," and "Churchill" have been ritually invoked, from Suez to Vietnam to Iraq, so often in false analogy, and so often with calamitous results.
than I saw this:
U.S. President George W. Bush stirred up the campaign to replace him on Thursday, suggesting Democratic front-runner Barack Obama’s pledge to meet Iran’s leader was akin to U.S. appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War Two.
Imagine that.
oracknows | May 15, 2008
Jake and Elwood hated Illinois Nazis. I hate Michigan Nazis. Actually, I hate all Nazis, but I especially detest Nazis from states I've lived in, such as Ohio, New Jersey, and Illinois. But worst of all are Michigan Nazis, because it's my home state, and even worse than that are Detroit Nazis, because that's my home town. I was born there and lived there until I was around 10. I will always have an affinity for the city, no matter how down and out it is.
And there's a Nazi in Detroit now trying to take advantage of the crappy economy to recruit to his hate cause:
On a dead-end street along…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2008Because it strikes me as somehow related to my last post, and because Memorial Day is the Monday after next, I'm recycling a post I wrote last year for WAAGNFNP:
On Memorial Day, because I really needed to do something beside grade papers for awhile, I decided to go to the nursery to buy some plants. First, though, because the kids (who had the day off from school) were actually entertaining themselves pretty well, I poured myself another coffee and decided to actually read some of the articles in The Nation issue on climate change.
Confronted with the news that jets are evil and carbon…
pharyngula | May 15, 2008Today is this semester's last final exam, and this is the last big push of the semester, so I'm going to be mired in work for most of the day…but once I level the administrative mountain, I've got some new squid science to share. Until then, you'll just have to chew over some of the usual American lunacy for a while.
Obama is gearing up to drape himself with Christian trappings. This will not make me happy. I'm planning to vote for him, but if he turns into yet another Christianist airhead, I will not be campaigning for him.
The reason Obama can't lose my vote but can lose my enthusiasm…
jlynch | May 14, 2008Keith Olberman on Bush’s sacrifice of his golf game:
"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq? "Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans - on our history. "It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as - to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Golf, Sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving…
gregladen | May 14, 2008...... OMG, did I say that out loud? Maybe this election has gotten a little too racialized.....
Anyway, yes, just this very moment, seconds ago, Edwards Endorses Obama.
What do you think? Was there a phone call? "John, hey, I've got an idea. You go in and help undo the damage Clinton has done with 'white voters' ... and that's how you earn your position on the ticket as VP?"
grrlscientist | May 14, 2008tags: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill), economy, politics, corporate welfare, David Cay Johnston, book review
America was built on the premise that hard work would be financially rewarded, but unfortunately, more than 37 million people are part of the growing ranks of the "working poor": people who work two or three jobs yet are unable to pay their living expenses. What's wrong with all these people that makes them unable to achieve even a modest level of comfort in this Land of Opportunity where the streets are…
evolvingthoughts | May 14, 2008
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V scene 1, Miranda says
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
The third line gave Aldous Huxley the title of his future dystopia, Brave New World. Somewhere between Miranda's naive optimism and Huxley's sardonic pessimism lies What sorts of people should there be? a venture by Canadian academics to investigate the effects of the modern world on our sense of self and "to address concerns around human variation, normalcy, and enhancement". They also have a blog. It is…
oracknows | May 14, 2008Regular readers here are probably most familiar with the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" therapy known as chelation therapy in the context of its use, or, more specifically, its misuse in "treating" autistic children, a misuse that has resulted in at least one death, a five-year-old autistic boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama. However, before the profit potential of chelating nonexistent mercury in autistic children was even a gleam in Dr. Roy Kerry's eye, there was another equally dubious use of chelation therapy: to treat atherosclerotic coronary artery and peripheral…
jrosenhouse | May 13, 2008What a charming President we have:
For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.
“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the…
jlynch | May 13, 2008
Some conservative nimrod by the name of Mike Norman in Marietta, Georgia is selling these t-shirts and what is more is claiming that he’s "not a racist". Quoth the nimrod: "Look at [Obama] . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George". There’s a poll over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution which has 6,509 people (51.27%) claiming that the t-shirt is "fine". No it’s not, you racist idiots, and irrespective of your party affiliation you should realize it’s not.
And I'm sure Houghton Mifflin's lawyers will want to have a word with someone ...
DrugMonkey and Kevin weigh in.
gregladen | May 13, 2008We all know torture is bogus. There is no scenario in which we will torture the guy with the launch codes for the missile aimed at the orphanage. That whole scenario is just a bunch of crap.
However, torture has been used, by American officials, and since we do have, despite BushCheney's best efforts, something left, even if tattered and torn, of our constitution, it is likely that captives who were heavily tortured at Gitmo (or elsewhere) will have to either be set free or to have important charges dropped against them.
That is likely to happen with what we presume are many inmates who…
pontiff | May 13, 2008Over at the Optimizer's place, the Optimizer compares libertarians and those who believe in the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. (Key Ron Paul apologists in three, two, one...) An amusing comparison. So if many worlders are the libertarians of interpretations of quantum theory, what political parties do the other interpretations of quantum theory fall under?
Copenhagen Interpretation: The standard interpretation before many-worlds became the standard. Key personality trait: worship of the founders of quantum theory. If Bohr said it, it must be true! Clearly these are…
aardvarchaeology | May 13, 2008My home municipality of Nacka is governed by a coalition of right-wing parties. (This, in Sweden, means that our local politics are somewhat to the left [!] of the US Democratic Party.) Aard regular Lennart Nilsson is the chairman of the Nacka section of the Liberal Party, Folkpartiet. I just received a fresh copy of the local newspaper, Nacka Värmdö Posten, whose main front-page headline reads "Folkpartiet politician: 'The Christian Democrats have Medieval moral views'". Interestingly, this is one of the governing coalition's members criticising another. And who is the Christian-bashing…
grrlscientist | May 13, 2008tags: fox news, subliminal suggestion, voting behavior, politics, streaming video
This streaming video shows a rather clumsy attempt by FauxSnooz to subliminally influence American voters. [1:15].
So .. do you think this might work by influencing innocent minds to vote against a person's best interests?