Politics
drorzel | August 6, 2007This week has been declared International Blog Against Racism Week, so if you're looking for something serious and worthwhile to do with your blog, you might want to check out the many interesting things being posted, and even contribute something. Unless you post comments under the handle "Uncle Al," in which case, I'd really rather not hear your thoughts on the subject, if that's all right.
I really don't have anything to say about this at this time, but there are lots of people who don't have that problem. For example, Kate. Or Tobias Buckell, a bit early, not to mention Scalzi and his…
oracknows | August 6, 2007Seen on the road on my way into work this morning:
I passed a bus going the other way. I noticed that it had a prominent sign over its front window scrolling, "NOT IN SERVICE." We both stopped at the light, the bus on the other side going the other way from me. I then noticed that the sign switched to scrolling "GOD BLESS AMERICA." It kept alternating between those two messages.
Make of this observation what you will. Was it a message? Or was it just strangeness?
j7uy5 | August 6, 2007Donald
Rumsfeld
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm">revealed
the identity of the star witness in the Abu Grhaib case.
The guy who blew the whistle had been promised anonymity.
In
2004, the Bush Administration
href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html">blew
a Pakistani intelligence operation
by revealing sensitive intelligence information. In 2005, there was the
Libby-Plame Leak. In April 2006, the Bush Administration blew
rel="tag"
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2006/04/leaker-in-chief-reduxoffered-…
terrasig | August 6, 2007Back in June, we reported on several botanical/non-botanical supplement studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. One was a Mayo Clinic study of a proprietary Wisconsin-grown ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) extract showing positive effects of the preparation in relieving cancer-related fatigue. The study authors were very careful to note this study was conducted specifically with Wisconsin-sourced product.
From my own post:
Note that the extract can't be compared to anything on the market since it was made for the study from a single source of Wisconsin…
jlynch | August 6, 2007August 6, 2001, is the day that George W. Bush received the Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." The PDB stated that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure in the U.S. that could aid attacks, that one idea was to hijack U.S. airplanes, and that the FBI had detected "suspicious activity," including surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The memo also noted that the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates had received a warning that Al Qaeda was preparing an attack in the U.S. with explosives.
On August 6, 2001, Bush was at his ranch in the…
denialism | August 5, 2007Fighting the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance seemed like such a folly a year or so ago, but then Texas reminds us of just how pushy the religious can be.
Texas students will have four more words to remember when they head back to class this month and begin reciting the state's pledge of allegiance.
This year's Legislature added the phrase "one state under God" to the pledge, which is part of a required morning ritual in Texas public schools along with the pledge to the U.S. flag and a moment of silence.
State Rep. Debbie Riddle, who sponsored the bill, said it had always bothered her…
denialism | August 5, 2007Democrats, empowered by their victories last November and in response by a nation-wide desire to hold the presidency accountable vote to expand warrantless wiretapping.
Wait, what?
jlynch | August 5, 2007Bush’s attempt to temporarily amend the FISA law passed the House last night (227 to 183), with 41 Democrats voting with the Republicans to allow Bush & Gonzalez continue their attack on civil liberties. Only two Republicans voted against the measure.
The voting record of the Arizona representatives is as follows:
Republicans
Renzi, Franks, Shadegg, Flake - all "Yea"
Democrats
Pastor, Grijalva, Giffords - all "Nea"
Mitchell - "Yea"
Harry Mitchell should be ashamed of himself and certainly shouldn’t be supported by progressive voters in Arizona in 2008, those very same voters who…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2007Foreign
Policy magazine has released the results of their
second survey of 100 foreign policy experts, on the topic of national
security. The results are compiled into what they call the
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3700"
rel="tag">Terrorism Index. Their sample
is bipartisan, with about 40% of the
participants identify themselves as conservative. 80% have
worked in Government, 26% in the military, 18% in intelligence.
The results this year are
equally dismal.
Eighty-eight
percent of the experts believe that the war in Iraq is having a
negative…
j7uy5 | August 3, 2007That
is the conclusion of the most review review of the security of the
Dielbold voting machines in California. Most damning is the
finding that many of the previously-reported vulnerabilities have not
been fixed.
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">...Although we present
several previously unpublished vulnerabilities, many of the weaknesses
that we describe were first identified in previous studies of the
Diebold system (e. g., [26], [17], [18], [19], [33], [23], and
[14]). Our report confirms that many of the most serious flaws that
these studies uncovered have not been fixed in the…
denialism | August 3, 2007Slate has a story by John Dickerson about how Obama has rejected the weasel tactic invented, or at least perfected, by Bush for avoiding questions.
To hide the fact that they're hiding something, candidates elevate their refusal to a virtue. "One of the jobs of a president is being very reasoned in approaching these issues," Hillary Clinton said to a hypothetical question about sending ground troops to Darfur. "And I don't think it's useful to be talking in these kinds of abstract hypothetical terms." Two days later, Mitt Romney cried hypothetical when asked in a debate whether, in…
pharyngula | August 2, 2007News from the Wingnut Heartland! Brave Oklahoma is issuing a new license plate design:
Wouldn't that look perfect on the SUV decorated with yellow magnetic ribbons that you use to drive (alone) into work every day?
And how about Kansas? You know they're always going to be at the forefront of America's mad plunge backward. Now the Republican party in that fine state has decided they need loyalty oaths:
Over the weekend, Kansas Republican leaders formed what they're calling a "loyalty committee," a move that's ticking off moderates and conservatives alike.
It is never a sign of strength when…
pharyngula | August 2, 2007The place to go if you want to track the media responses to our Twin Cities bridge disaster is Minnesota Monitor. There are regular updates as new information comes in.
If you're looking to know where the responsibility is going to fall, Nick Coleman has the answers.
For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to…
pharyngula | August 2, 2007Tomorrow, I'm flying off to San Jose, California to hang out with a bunch of weirdos on Google's dime, and naturally I'm anticipating being pissed off at the experience of going through the airports again. I despise TSA, an organization of typical Bushpublican incompetence that will not accomplish their goals of suppressing terrorism, but is supremely efficient at being a nuisance to legitimate travelers. Actually, the one good thing about them is that they've replaced fear of flying with annoyance at bureaucratic idiots as the primary emotional vibe in modern American airports.
So naturally…
pharyngula | August 2, 2007Today, the YearlyKos event begins in Chicago, with Tara Smith handling the science events in which I would have been participating if I hadn't been tagged to play at Sci Foo. I wish I could be there!
j7uy5 | August 2, 2007HR 2102 IH -- Free Flow of Information Act of 2007
US Reps Rick
Boucher,
href="http://mikepence.house.gov/">Mike Pence,
rel="tag" href="http://www.house.gov/conyers/">John
Conyers,
rel="tag">Howard Coble,
href="http://yarmuth.house.gov/" rel="tag">John
Yarmuth, and
rel="tag">Greg Walden have introduced a bill that
would provide some protections to blogger-journalists.
HR 2102 IH, the
href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110%3AH.R.2102%3A">Free
Flow of Information Act of 2007, so far has only
been approved by the House
Judiciary Committee.
The…
terrasig | August 1, 2007Bear with me. I'm posting this on ScienceBlogs because many of us have had our own beefs with the US airline industry. Many readers also travel around to conferences and, as a result, must use a US airline. Hence, this really is a science-related post.
But pardon me if I am suspicious of anything represented by an airline that is purported to be in my best interest.
This came in today from Delta Airlines - you know, the one Janet pointed out has a breast-feeding aversion:
Providing the highest quality service to our customers is the guiding principle in everything we do at Delta. But it is…
pharyngula | August 1, 2007Rolling Stone has an excellent article on the ethanol boondoggle.
Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet…
pharyngula | August 1, 2007One of the weirdest issues to drive the religious right into frothing madness was the discovery of a vaccine against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which would effectively reduce rates of cervical cancer … and it was opposed because it blocked infection with a sexually transmitted disease, and thus would encourage licentiousness. Weird, I know. Their brains don't work right.
Anyway, here's a new twist: investigators have found other non-genital reservoirs of the virus: HPV strains that could cause severe forms of cancer have been found under people's fingernails. Ooooh, yuck, you filthy…
j7uy5 | August 1, 2007This
is the face the USA presents to the rest of the world:
href="http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003619296">Bush
Insults BBC Political Editor at Press Conference
By E&P Staff
Published: August 01, 2007 10:50 AM ET
NEW YORK At a recent press conference at Camp David,
President George
Bush insulted BBC political editor Nick Robinson, the Daily Mirror
reports.
Robinson, who has asked Bush pointed questions in the past such as
whetherthe president was “in denial” over the Iraq
war,
posed a question to Bush about whether he could trust…