Politics
grrlscientist | February 10, 2007Below the fold is an amusing video of what happened when Barbara Boxer tried to get an answer from Condoleezza Rice regarding how many casualties we can expect from the surge.
.
tags: streaming video, condoleezza rice,humor, satire, politics
clock | February 8, 2007Ah, why do I have to be so busy on a news-filled day (no, not Anna Nicole Smith)? I barely saw the computer today. I'd get home, have about 5 minutes before I have to go out again and so on. NPR did not mention Edwards until 4pm or so (that I heard in the car), so when I first got home I only had time to open e-mail, scan about 50 new messages, home in to the one that had the news, open it, get the links and quickly post without more than a quick skim of the statements by Edwards and others, let alone any time to add commentary (except for what the title implied I felt at the time). And…
j7uy5 | February 8, 2007This is a bizarre headline:
href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2861168">Pentagon
Says Pre-War Intel Not Illegal. I found this item on Google
News, and it is one of many headlines on the subject:
href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/16656221.htm"
id="r-1_1113380245">Pentagon office produced `alternative'
intelligence on Iraq;
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7289295"
id="r-6_1113380245">Pentagon: Pre-War Intelligence Was Legit; and
others. But some are more to the point:
href="http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/…
oracknows | February 8, 2007Here's more evidence.
Yeah, I know it's old, but Donohue's popping up again, and I had forgotten what a nutjob he can be.
End of rare political rant. You may return to your regularly scheduled medical and science blogging.
ADDENDUM:
More examples have shown up in my in-box of the "wit" and lack of wisdom of William Donohue:
On using Martin Luther King as an example (on YouTube here).
On sexual abuse by priests: ""[M]ost 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?"
clock | February 8, 2007John Edwards: Statement about Campaign Bloggers:
The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's
not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign…
pharyngula | February 8, 2007One sign that the fading Bush administration knows that they've been on the wrong side of reality is that they're now busy scrubbing the archives, trying to change what was said in the past. Chris Mooney catches a blatant attempt to rewrite the administration's history on global warming.
Man, the GW Bush Presidential Library is going to be a real work of art, isn't it? Maybe it should be called a "propaganda archive" rather than a "library".
clock | February 7, 2007[Placed on top for updates...]
I think that the whole brouhaha that the extreme wingers are raising about new Edwards bloggers will have a) no effect on Democratic primary voters a year from now, b) no effect on national voters two years from now, and c) negative effect on the wingnutosphere as they are getting more and more obviously unhinged, and thus marginalized.
Edwards did a fantastic scoop with these hires and the outcry from the extreme Right was surely expected. He has now positioned himself as more woman-friendly and more netroots-friendly than Hillary and Obama combined. And the…
evolvingthoughts | February 7, 2007
Leiter reports that ISU is downsizing, for no apparent reason, its philosophy and physics departments. This is not unique to ISU. I have seen it occur in a couple of Australian universities too. The odd thing is that this is not because student enrolments are low; teaching loads are large in some cases. It appears to be due to individual objections by powers-that-be to philosophy for various reasons. One such reason here is that humanities students attract a lot less funding per head than science students, leading to unreasonable teaching loads to break even. This reduces the research…
pharyngula | February 7, 2007If this is true—that the Edwards campaign has caved to pressure from the right wing—he has lost my vote.
The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps -- John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.
The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "anti-Catholic vulgar…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2007I grew up in the state of Washington, and always thought that the west side of the state was politically liberal, however, things are looking mighty strange in that state because of an intitiative that would require all married couples to have kids within three years of saying "I do" or their marriage would be automatically annulled.
Who filed this initiative? Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance (WA-DoMA), that's who. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage. Why did they file this initiative? Because they are trying to…
j7uy5 | February 6, 2007I will chip in a few thoughts about the President's proposed budget,
just to make a point. Based upon the following from
href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003254.html">DefenseTech.org,
a pro-military site:
...That'll include "the first significant funding" -- $3
billion -- in the next generation of aircraft carrier," the CVN-21. The
Joint Strike Fighter fleet will grow from two in FY07, to twelve the
following year -- including the first short take-off version. It'll
take $6 billion in 2008, the Pentagon projects. Despite major cost
inflation, the Defense Department budget…
clock | February 6, 2007If they think that something like this will endear them to anyone not certifiably insane (via PZ), or to think that WorldNutDaily is not satire... It's like when you catch your kid in a lie and he starts spinnikng and digging himself depeer and deeper. Exept that thse guys, like wounded beasts, can be dangerous.
drorzel | February 6, 2007President Bush's budget request for next year has been released. Surprising approximately no-one who has followed current events over the last seven years, it's a mixed bag for science:
President Bush rolled out a 2008 spending plan Monday that disappointed advocates for scientific research, even as it called for hefty increases for several key programs in the physical sciences aimed at continuing the president's drive to double such spending. While they applaud that goal, academic leaders are troubled by the fact that the administration's budget plan, if adopted, would result in a reduction…
clock | February 5, 2007Jeffrey Feldman write in Frameshop: Dem Who Reframes "War on Terror," Wins in '08:
The Democratic candidate who wins the 2008 nomination for President will not be the candidate who simply puts forward the best policy proposal on Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or any other individual military issue. The candidate who wins will be the candidate who reframes the entire debate on national security in progressive terms--the candidate who steps up and liberates the country from the destructive logic of the propaganda frame that President Bush calls "The War on Terror."
Read the whole thing. Also…
clock | February 5, 2007People ask me that question often. Many assume that it is because Obama constantly invokes God in his speeches, while Edwards never does. But I know that religiosity is important in American politics today. Hopefully one day it will not be, or even better, overt religosity will become a handicap, i.e, being viewed by voters with suspicion. But that is not the reason why I made my choice the way I did.
My response to people who ask me this question is to explain how the GOP over the past 20-30 years systematically moved the entire political discourse in the USA to the Right. What used to…
pharyngula | February 5, 2007Alan Sokal—who has a history of criticizing the irrational Left—and Chris Mooney—who has come down hard on the anti-science Right—have teamed up to write an op-ed that makes suggestions to keep both sides from falling into the same trap again.
I think the root cause of the problem is that we have a democracy in which education is an insufficiently high priority, and either party can succumb to the temptation of going for votes by appealing to the most uneducated segment of the electorate. The Republican party has thrived in the past by going the other way, and building its base in the wealthy…
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007Part eleven. Bears have the ball. They were doing OK until
their quarterback fell down.
Today has been proclaimed "Brian Urlacher Day," in New Mexico.
Governor
Bill Richardson Declares Super Bowl Sunday "Brian Urlacher Day" in New
Mexico
February 2, 2007
Jon Goldstein 505-476-2248
(Santa Fe, NM) - Governor Bill Richardson today declared Super Bowl
Sunday, this Sunday February 4, 2007, as "Brian Urlacher Day" in New
Mexico in honor of the Chicago Bears middle linebacker, Lovington, New
Mexico native and University of New Mexico football star...
Politics is sometimes referred to as…
drorzel | February 4, 2007I didn't actually plan for the site to go completely dark for the weekend, but Kate and I were off at a wedding for the weekend, and wound up not actually having regular Internet access, so I couldn't post any of the weekend things I didn't get around to scheduling before I left. I'm sure this ruined many a weekend...
The wedding and reception was in a VFW hall in New Hampshire, and when we got back to Kate's parents' afterwards, we all took showers and changed clothes to get rid of the cigarette smell. As I type, my good winter jacket is in the wash, along with Kate's, because they still…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2007Surprise, surprise! A school in Texas has made it a law that all 11 and 12 year old girls must have proof they have been vaccinated against cervical cancer. If someone had asked me which state would make this mandatory, I would never have chosen Texas would be the first to do it. Congratulations to the governor of Texas for making a courageous and life-saving stand on behalf of all female students who live in his state.
Texas on Friday became the first state to require all 11- and 12-year-old girls entering the sixth grade to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes…