Politics
j7uy5 | October 6, 2007I wonder if he really believes this? If so, he dementia is
worse than I
thought:
href="http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/bush_never_really_thought_abou.html">Bush:
'Never really thought about' war
Posted by Mark Silva on
October 5, 2007
President Bush, interviewed “in the room where I make
decisions,’’ said that he “never really
thought about the decision to put men and women in harm’s
way’’ when he was running for president.
But the war in Iraq is necessary, Bush said, noting that he has
“made a pledge to the American people’’
to settle his dispute with…
stoat | October 6, 2007Broon bottles it says the BBC. Well no, they put it more politely: "Gordon Brown has said he will not call a general election this autumn". Jolly good, all the politico-types can go back to sleep again. Of course, the true Brown Bottle (scroll to the bottom) was in Viz, but it proven hard to find a picture online.
From the point of view of the smaller parties (Green :-) this is a relief and will make my personal autumn a bit easier. But where does it leave Brown?
Looking fairly stupid says Beeb blogoid, which is what I thought. As far as I can tell Broon only talked about the election to…
jlynch | October 6, 2007Quote: "It’s time to start taking seriously the proposition that the American economy under the Bush administration is the best in the nation’s history." (Source.)
Some representative data:
Creating future debt does not make for the best economy ever.
Discuss.
denialism | October 6, 2007A must-read from the Washington Post about how interrogations went in WWII.
For six decades, they held their silence.
The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
...
"We got more information…
clock | October 6, 2007That is one very interesting idea! This provision is usually used for getting medicines to 3rd world countries in times of emergency. So, why not research papers if the emergency warrants it? Gavin writes:
Imagine a scenario in which a developing country is facing a national health emergency, and there's a research article that contains information that is highly relevant to addressing that emergency. Let's say the emergency is an alarmingly high rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and a new study shows a major breakthrough in preventing such transmission. And let's say that…
jlynch | October 5, 2007Sean Hannity: "Why do we wear pins? Because our country is under attack." Apparently, the word "we" doesn’t include Hannity himself. Nice so see the idiot being hoisted on his own petard. Not that it will prevent him from mouthing off.
denialism | October 5, 2007Good news from the political front. Hillary Clinton plans to re-establish the OTA if elected.
Fifth, we're going to stop substituting ideology for science and evidence, and we're going to start giving the American people again the facts on the issues that matter to them and their families. Over the past six years, this Administration has tried to turn Washington into an evidence-free zone. Whether it's stem cell research or Plan B Contraception or pollution or global warming or the safety of our food or the quality of our air -- all too often, ideology has replaced facts, and truth has been…
pharyngula | October 5, 2007Hillary Clinton, that is. She's made some concrete statements about what she'd do for science as president: take steps to depoliticize science agencies, lift limits on stem cell research, invest in alternative energy and global warming research, subordinate manned space missions to earth science research (not entirely happy news there, but at least she's being realisitic), and she's pro-evolution! (That last is utterly shocking, I know.) She's also going to push to have congress restore the Office of Technology Assessment.
Of course, she also threw in a sop to the deluded: "I believe that our…
tqa | October 5, 2007
I've spent part of this morning doing some fairly serious research on health insurance in the United States, and who doesn't have it. My curiosity on the subject was stirred up by a couple of things: after looking at a lot of DonorsChoose proposals from schools with high poverty rates, poverty is on my mind; and the President's veto of the Children's Health Insurance Program expansion got me thinking about what it actually means to be poor in this country, and what (if any) relationship the official poverty threshold has to actually being able to afford to provide for your family.
I was…
evolvingthoughts | October 5, 2007
On Monday night last, Jason Grossman, a philosopher form the Australian National University rang me with an idea. He was coming to my university to give a talk entitled "How to Feyerabend", arguing that Feyerabend was a dadaist rather than an anarchist. I'd tell you more about his talk, but I can't, for reasons that will become obvious.
He wanted to do the talk as a dadaist performance. How can I help? I enquired. That was my mistake.
Well, he said, I want us to give a simultaneous presentation. What, in turn? I asked. No, at the same time. With music. And Allison (his partner) folding…
denialism | October 4, 2007Check out this fascinating new study from the Barna group that appears to show the damage that is being done to the Christian faith by the political actions of right wing fundamentalists. This should serve as a serious wake-up call for the culture warriors who are attempting to increase the role of religion in politics - they are alienating the next generation of believers and non-believers severely.
The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a…
denialism | October 4, 2007I'm thinking of lies from presidents and the resulting scandal. On the one hand we have the impeachment of Clinton for "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky." On the other we have "We do not torture" from George W. Bush combined with the news that we do indeed torture people.
It is an outright lie delivered multiple times by the president to the American people. Clinton got impeached for his deception, do the Democrats have the guts to do the same for Bush's far more serious lie which constitutes a real crime?
tqa | October 4, 2007
I can't begin to thank the people who have donated to the DonorsChoose campaign enough. As of today - four days into the campaign - we've raised $1045. That's more than was contributed during all of last year's 15-day campaign. That's absolutely fantastic.
As of now, all four of the projects that I picked have been fully funded, but we haven't hit the goal yet. (Either someone donated to one of the projects through this campaign without receiving credit, or someone donated to one of the projects independently of the campaign.) At this point, we're still about $550 short of my goal for the…
jstemwedel | October 4, 2007Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, Earth's first artificial satellite. I don't remember it (because I wouldn't be born for another decade), but the "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP" heard 'round the world left indelible traces on the fabric of life for my parents' generation, my generation, and for the subsequent generations, too.
Space was part of the terrain of our imagination for as long as I can remember -- after all, the sibling born right after me landed on Earth pretty much right before the Eagle landed on the moon, and my mom insisted on watching the moonwalk in the…
pharyngula | October 4, 2007Just watch the little suck-up grovel for the Religious Right. It isn't pretty.
McCain: I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'
Whenever I see these pious testimonies to "Judeo-Christian values", I always wonder…how many Jewish founding fathers were there? How many Jewish presidents have we had? I have no objection to electing a Jewish president, but it always seems to me that…
jlynch | October 3, 2007Apparently, fifty years after the ruling that Allen Ginsberg’s "Howl" cannot be held obscene, you cannot say "cock and endless balls" on public radio due to fear of the FCC fining your ass. Madness.
I had the pleasure of seeing Ginsberg perform "Howl" in Dublin in the early Nineties, I thus have two simple words for the FCC - fuck you.
tqa | October 3, 2007
There are times when I wish I was a right-wing hack. If I was, I could let the title of this post stand just as it is, and attack the President for his lack of support for military families. It is true, after all. He did just veto such an act. In fact, he did it twice! Our President, a man who uses the military as a backdrop for a photo op at least once a month, just vetoed both "The Support for Injured Servicemembers Act" and "The Military Family Job Protection Act."
If I was one of the many cogs in the Right-Wing Noise Machine, I would be able to take those facts - those incontrovertibly…
pharyngula | October 3, 2007Young America's Foundation is giving away a poster of the 'heroes' of the Conservative Movement — the usual roster of dunderheads shipped in to the photo shoot by way of the short bus — for nothing but the cost of shipping and handling. I guess they were having a tough time finding anyone who wanted to hang a picture of Dinesh, Michelle, Novakula, Ann, etc. anywhere in their home. But in case you want one for a dart board or something, just follow the link.
Myself, I don't need one. I already have many copies of pictures of my conservative heroes. They're all blank, white, and hanging from a…
pharyngula | October 3, 2007Alright, I want you people to school me real quick. I've been reading these stories about the Countrywide mortgage company getting mean and nasty with foreclosures, and the Countrywide CEO leeching huge personal profits from the company — Krugman even compares Countrywide to Enron.
Now normally, financial news just flies by my bleary eyes and is ignored, but the name in this case perked me up: the mortgage on my house is through Countrywide. Do I have to worry?
I wouldn't think so. We got our mortgage at a good, low fixed rate some years ago, we haven't had any problems keeping up on the…
pharyngula | October 3, 2007I had no idea that schools were now hiring security guards to enforce anti-crumb-spilling laws. The floors must really shine in Palmdale high schools — get a little sloppy with lunch, and the guards will break your arm and arrest you. And your mother. And the kid with the cell phone who catches it all on video.