Politics
pharyngula | July 14, 2007Did you know…
…that men never get abortions? If you aren't strong enough to have that baby, you've got no grounds to complain about male privilege.
…some of the instruments used in abortions are just like the ones used in transgender surgery?
…that every woman who gets an abortion would rather be taking a long romantic walk on the beach than be lying there with cold steel probing about in her nethers?
Pandagon has a whole collection of great arguments against abortion. Use them, and contribute your own!
And lest you think those are just too silly, here are some slogans from real…
pharyngula | July 14, 2007As Revere points out, Michael Moore gave Sanjay Gupta a whomping. What I missed in the Moore-Gupta match, though, was the big picture. Basically, they argued over details: Gupta put together a "fact check" that claimed Moore fudged various numbers, while Moore showed that his numbers were legitimate. What appalled me, though, was the spin put on it, the spin that Gupta did not acknowledge.
Here's the argument: Moore says the US spends something under $7000 per person per year on health care; Gupta says it's 'only' something over $6000. Moore says Cuba spends $251 for the same thing; Gupta…
oracknows | July 14, 2007The last couple of days have been a bit surreal, haven't they?
After all, how often does this box of blinking lights get into a blog altercation with a Libertarian comic over global warming? Actually, it was a commentary on bad reasoning, but global warming happened to be the topic. In the aftermath of my referring you, my readers, to comic Tim Slagle's blog piece "rebutting" me and to another piece by him in which he used some--shall we say?--creative chemistry and thermodynamics to support a political argument, I'm not sure if I should feel guilty or not. This guilt exists mainly because I…
aardvarchaeology | July 14, 2007Starting in 2004, the Department for Zionist Activities of the World Zionist Organization has given the annual Herzl Awards to "outstanding young men and women in recognition of their exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist cause". One of the prize-winners for 2006 is Swedish 26-y-o Ted Ekeroth, who was rewarded for his activities in Fidim, the Society for Israel and Democracy in the Middle East.
After giving the award to Ekeroth, the WZO realised that their net had caught a somewhat unusual breed of young political activist. Ekeroth turned out to be a core member of…
grrlscientist | July 12, 2007tags: George Bush, al-queda, politics, political opinion
George Bush, who loves to ignore the facts in favor of telling a good fairy tale, denied that al-Qaeda is as strong as it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Just as he does with science, Bush ignored recent media coverage of a US intelligence report entitled Al-Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West, which claimed that intelligence analysts told Congress on Wednesday that al-Qaeda had created a safe haven in remote parts of Pakistan.
In short, the report flatly stated that Al-Qaeda is "considerably operationally stronger than a…
drorzel | July 12, 2007Via Big Media Matt, a video that's too good not to share:
I have a lot more respect for Pat Leahy now. I wouldn't've been able to respond to that without a few F-bombs.
oracknows | July 12, 2007It looks as though I've been tagged by Drug Monkey, who apparently thinks that I might have something worth saying about the state of the NIH and its peer review system, about which the NIH is presently soliciting comments, as pointed out to me by Medical Writing, Editing, & Grantsmanship. Why Drugmonkey might think this to be the case, I have no idea, but presumably it has something to do with some previous posts that I've made about the NIH, how biomedical research is funded in this country, and the disconnect between vision and reality at the highest level of the NIH. Although I used…
clock | July 12, 2007Revere, Orac and PZ have an update on the fate of the Tripoli 6. Revere explains:
The final act in the drama of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor imprisoned for seven years and sentenced to death by firing squad in Libya after being accused of deliberately infecting over 400 chidren with HIV in a children's hospital in Bengazi ... is now being played out in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Affirming the death sentence is a (regrettably) necessary first step in resolving the issue and, paradoxically, saving the lives and obtaining the freedom of the accused, whose confessions…
grrlscientist | July 11, 2007tags: Richard Carmona, Surgeon General, Bush Administration, Henry Waxman , politics
Bush and his cronies have been caught at their old tricks yet again! This time, they have been weakening or suppressing important public health reports written by Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who served as the nation's Surgeon General from 2002-2006. Not only was their behavior anti-science, but limiting one's freedom of speech is against the constitution.
"The surgeon general has to be independent if the surgeon general is going to have any credibility," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the…
oracknows | July 11, 2007About a month and a half ago, I posted an update to the story of the plight of a group of medical professionals who have come to be known as the "Tripoli 6" or the "Benghazi 6." These are six foreign medical workers who were falsely accused by Libyan authorities intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV in a Libyan hospital and then unjustly imprisoned under horrific conditions, where they have remained for nearly eight years. Thanks to the need of the Libyan government to find scapegoats for unhygienic conditions in the hospital, leading to an ignorant bloodlust whipped up against…
pharyngula | July 11, 2007The six health care workers in Libya who were accused of intentionally infecting children with AIDS have had their death sentence confirmed. According to Revere, this is good news. It means the case now moves to the High Judicial Council, which has the power to commute the sentence, and which is also government controlled … and the government has just accepted (or, more accurately, "extorted") a deal for lifetime care of the affected kids. We may know as soon as next week that the falsely accused doctor and nurses will have been released to their home countries. We hope.
pharyngula | July 11, 2007That quote from Henry Waxman can't possibly be a surprise, can it?
Our former surgeon general, Richard Carmona, is speaking out against the anti-science policies of the Bush administration.
For example, he said he wasn't allowed to make a speech at the Special Olympics because it was viewed as benefiting a political opponent. However, he said was asked to speak at events designed to benefit Republican lawmakers.
"The reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan…
hrynyshyn | July 11, 2007"In public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds." So says former U.S. surgeon general Richard H. Carmona (2002-2006). Worth a read, if your day isn't already shot. Then there's NPR's All Things Considered, which has a beaut of a quote:
Carmona said when he first came to Washington in 2002, he was somewhat naïve.
He recalled a meeting where senior White House officials talked about global warming as a liberal cause with no merit.
"I remember thinking, 'I know why they want…
j7uy5 | July 10, 2007(RWOS=Republican War
on Science) In
case you haven't noticed (and why would you?), the USA is without a
Surgeon General. The old one, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carmona" rel="tag">Richard
Carmona, unhired himself for unclear reasons last July, as
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/10/the_surgeon_generals_new_gig.php">noted
on Effect Measure. The
candidate for the position, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Holsinger" rel="tag">James
Holsinger, has proven to be
href="http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=67035601">…
pharyngula | July 10, 2007Phil reveals his man-crushes, and I have to respond in kind. Fortunately, it's easy. I've just seen something that endears one particular gentleman to me…
Michael Moore.
He batters that smug silver-haired rodent, Wolf Blitzer. I wish he'd been given a chance to kick Lou Dobbs' ass. He rakes the entire American news media over white-hot coals for their continued failures to investigate and report honestly on the war as well as on health care. C'est magnifique.
evolvingthoughts | July 9, 2007
I probably agree with Christopher Hitchens on many substantive points. But I won't be reading his book. Instead, we can thank this reviewer for their critical, ascerbic, and I suspect in the end accurate review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
neurophilosophy | July 9, 2007 The Democratic presidential candidate answers questions about climate change, science education and health care, but there's no mention of stem cells or of evolution/creationism.
Nevertheless, it's well worth reading both the interview and the comments.
drorzel | July 9, 2007So, you may or may not recall that last week, Matt Nisbet posted about a study purporting to show that religious people were more generous in their charitable giving than atheists. One of his commenters opted to go for the "sour grapes" response, claiming that religious charities were all stupid, and asking rhetorically:
How many religious people will back programs for the poor that include sex education, birth control, access to low-cost abortions, health education, job training, home economics, how to eat better when money is tight, and so on?
This annoyed me, so I asked for…
pharyngula | July 9, 2007He doesn't ask the obvious question — "do you believe in evolution?" — even once! I guess when you interview the serious candidates, you don't need to ask the stupid baby questions.
It's not a bad interview; Edwards says all the pro-science and pro-education stuff, favoring increased investment in public education, respect for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, strict standards to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, increased funding for NIH, etc., but I confess to being suspicious and not at all won over. That's what you'd expect a candidate to say in an interview with a science…