Politics
drorzel | December 7, 2007Brad DeLong gives his stamp of approval to Steven Pearlstein's explanation of the mortgage collapse now in progress. It is, indeed, a very clear explanation of what went wrong:
Stick with me now, because this is where it gets interesting. For it is at this point that the banks got the bright idea of buying up a bunch of mezzanine tranches from various pools. Then, using fancy computer models, they convinced themselves and the rating agencies that by repeating the same "tranching" process, they could use these mezzanine-rated assets to create a new set of securities -- some of them junk, some…
gregladen | December 6, 2007Do you live in the Twin Cities Area? Are you doing anything next Thursday, December 13th at about 7.30PM?
Come and see the film The Listening Project
Born in Philadephia, reared in the Bay Area and schooled by his lifelong addiction to world travel, Twin Cities-based filmmaker Dominic Howes has spent the last 10 years trying to get accustomed to Minnesota winters -- and says he's still trying.
But Howes admits that ice and cold are nothing compared to the dangers of "land mines and insurgent forces" in Afghanistan, one of 14 countries he and Rikshaw Films partner Joel Weber visited last…
gregladen | December 6, 2007But there is only room in it for Christians.
"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders.... In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'
Notice that Adams at least said "Moral and Religious" ... Romney, on the other hand, clearly implies that true morality comes only from religion. Don't…
pontiff | December 6, 2007Compare and contrast and compare and constrast.
John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007:…
katie glasrud | December 6, 2007We, the students of BIOL 4003: Neurobiology have a proposal. We will clean your lab for extra credit. Think about it. That tank with the yellow stagnant water and other unidentifiable bits of matter? GONE. Those countless bottles of fruit fly carcasses? Sparkling clean and ready for next semester's genetics class. We would also consider not having a final test an acceptable trade.
Respectfully awaiting your reply,
The Students
gregladen | December 6, 2007Conservative Radio Talk Show Host Michael Savage is suing the Council on American-Islamic Relations for using a 4-minute bit of his show "The Savage Nation" to raise awareness of his conservative politics among potential advertisers. Savaged called the Queran "a throwback document" and a "book of hate." I wonder what Savage things of, I don't know, the Old Testament, for instance?
"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate," Savage said during the portion of the…
pharyngula | December 6, 2007There is a certain creationist book that contains this infamous quote:
No matter what ideology they may espouse, those who perpetrate terror over the world are, in reality, Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy that places a value on-and thus encourages-conflict.
Kind of a common sentiment on the far right, I know. But you'd think a member of the far right would be reluctant to use it, because it's from an Islamic crackpot, Adnan Oktar AKA Haryun Yahya, in his massive plagiarized tome, The Atlas of Creation.
Yet this book is prominently displayed in the waiting room of Secretary of…
clock | December 6, 2007Workers in the Ivory Coast, producer of about 40% of world cocoa, are on strike! As chocolate is the Fifth Food Group, this may lead to global malnutrition of cataclismic proportions (how big are your hidden stashes?)
denialism | December 6, 2007You guys are so damn lucky. I want Al Franken to run in my state. That race is going to be a total blast. Not to say a showdown in Virginia between Mark Warner and one of the incompetent former Republican governors that bankrupted the state in the last decade won't be entertaining, but a Franken run raises it to a new level.
I was shocked by this one statement in the article however:
"To think of him as a United States senator almost boggles anyone's imagination," said Ron Carey, the chairman of the state's Republican Party. "So much of what he has said is vile and offensive -- you can't…
drorzel | December 6, 2007Kevin Drum looks at the latest story about American students lagging the world in science test scores, and notes that this has been going on at least since he was in school. This leads him to wonder whether it's really as bad as all that:
I still wonder about this. If American kids are getting mediocre educations, and if they've been getting these mediocre educations for several decades now, shouldn't this have long since shown up in the business world, the tech world, and the financial world? And yet, it hasn't. So what's the deal? Makes me wonder if maybe American kids don't actually suck…
tsmith | December 4, 2007I mentioned that the Discovery Institute was in Iowa yesterday, accusing Iowa State University (and specifically, professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy) of conspiring against assistant professor Guillermo Gonzalez, an intelligent design advocate and fellow of the Discovery Institute. I was unable to attend, but Evil Monkey headed to Des Moines to cover the event, and has his initial thoughts on the dog 'n' pony show up at Neurotopia.
clock | December 4, 2007I had to miss several of the past televised Dems presidential debates, though I read the post-mortems on them on blogs afterwards just to learn that the MSM is still not serious about doing their job. Thus, today's radio debate on NPR was quite refreshing - they had more-or-less equal time for each of them, and sufficient time for them to develop their ideas beyond the sound-bites. The questions, while not as good as they should have been, were miles ahead of the stuff CNN, for instance, decided to ask.
You can listen to the podcast of the entire debate here.
Here are some of the early…
gregladen | December 4, 2007The allegations against the Rev. Ted Haggard and Sen. Larry Craig have a common thread: A 50-year-old former prostitute from Denver named Mike Jones claims he had sex with both. *
What are the odds of that happening?
[hat tip: CMF]
drorzel | December 4, 2007Over at Inside Higher Ed, they have a piece looking at the state of college football as we enter bowl season. This is dominated by two large tables of numbers, one good, and one bad.
The first table is the good one, as it explains why the college football "championship" is so messed up. It lists the 32 bowl games that will be played over the next month, and the per-team payout for each. The five major BCS bowls pay each team $17 million, which neatly explains why the college football elite are unwilling to put in a playoff-- in any real championship system, they might end up having to share…
pharyngula | December 4, 2007After being imprisoned and facing a lynch mob, the teacher in Sudan whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammed" has finally been freed. She has a very positive attitude and says nothing but generous things about the people of Sudan, and thanks the Sudanese government for letting her have a bed while she was in prison.
I think she's a bit deranged, actually.
A bed is an exceptional gift to a prisoner? She was sentenced to prison for naming a teddy bear? Mobs were howling for her execution for that "crime"? And she says, "I wouldn't like to put anyone off going to Sudan."
Too late. I'm quite put…
jrosenhouse | December 3, 2007The subject of biblical literalism came up at last week's Republican / You Tube debate:
Joseph: I am Joseph. I am from Dallas, Texas, and how you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?
In case you were wondering, the book in question was the Bible. Here's what happened next:
Cooper: I think we've got a question. Mayor Giuliani?
Huckabee: Do I need to help you out, Mayor, on this one?
(Laughter) (Applause)
Giuliani: Wait a second, you're…
gregladen | December 3, 2007According to Think Progress
The Center for Constitutional Rights recently produced an ad called "Rescue the Constitution" that criticizes the Bush administration for "destroying the Constitution" through the use of tactics like renditions and torture. Fox News is refusing to air the ad,
terrasig | December 3, 2007With the help of the good people at Patients Against Lymphoma, we've been following the ruling by Medicare that costs of radioimmunotherapeutics for lymphoma would now only be reimbursed at less than the acquisition cost (CMS-1392-FC). So ridiculous is this proposition that Newsweek's Jonathan Alter weighed in with an article, "How Washington is Nixing a Cancer Cure."
We've now learned that two senators are modifying the language of the bill coming up for approval by the Senate Finance Committee tomorrow (4 Dec). However, there seems to be misinformation spreading regarding the affordability…
evolvingthoughts | December 3, 2007
Way back in the 1910s, when human evolution was poorly known, some trickster, probably Charles Dawson, its discoverer, set up a hoax: Piltdown man. This was enthusiastically accepted by many British experts because it made Britain, and in particular, England, a leading locale in human evolution. This was the era of Imperial honour and competition, shortly before these powers decided to compete more concretely. Nationalism has always been a factor in evolutionary hypotheses, ranging from Raymond Dart's southern ape, Australopithecus, in South Africa to objections to the discovery by Eugene…
gregladen | December 2, 2007This video Georg Bush is fun (because of its politics) but the main thing that makes it interesting is that it keeps getting yanked. By someone. Don't ask who, don't ask dangerous questions.