Politics
evolvingthoughts | January 31, 2007
I didn't know my dad all that well. He died when I was 11, after a long illness that saw him in hospital for nearly 5 years, and he didn't show much evidence that he liked me much. All we ever shared was a love of science fiction.
I'm a father myself, of two wonderful kids, but I feel deeply the lack of a relationship, as a kid or as an adult, with my father. I have tried to be to my kids the father I wanted, and in so doing, made many mistakes. The lack of role models, of experience of father-ness, left me trying to work it out for myself.
The other night, I saw a documentary on…
pharyngula | January 31, 2007He must be a smart guy: he just picked Amanda Marcotte to run the John Edwards blog. And since Amanda will be slightly distracted, she's brought in five (it takes five people to take Amanda's place?) new people to keep Pandagon humming…and one of them is Chris Clarke. Everything's shuffling around! I'm getting confused! I think I'm willing to vote for Edwards so far, as long as Amanda keeps him in line and makes sure he doesn't start pumping up the war talk or professing for creationism.
jrosenhouse | January 31, 2007Keith Olbermann routinely declares Bill O'Reilly to be The Worst Person in the World, but I thought yesterday's edition was especially amusing:
And our winner? Oh, it's a two-for, Bill-O offering you this splendid deal, buy a copy of his book, “I'm Squinting While Wearing a Wind Breaker” -- no, I'm sorry, it's called “Culture Wart”--I will get it somewhere. You buy a copy of the book from him, and he will send a free copy to a U.S. soldier somewhere. So you've got copies to give away to the soldiers, but you only do that if I give you at least 26 bucks first? That's generosity. You…
clock | January 31, 2007How many such pieces of news can one survive in one day!
Now that Amanda has been welcomed by concern-troll-mysoginists who followed her from her blog to the Edwards campaign blog (where, frankly, nobody lets them stir the pot) there is another great piece of news!
Melissa McEwan, aka Shakespeare's Sister was also hired by the Edwards internet team. Go say Hello to her as well. Edwards certainly has great taste and good sense how to win over the netroots!
pharyngula | January 31, 2007James Trumm has a single issue, one that trumps all the others in the election booth, and I have to agree with him. It's a kind of signal flare that says the person advocating it is a total loon and not to be trusted on anything.
That issue is creationism.
I will never vote for anyone who favors creationism, no matter how commendable their position on other matters. Trumm makes a good case:
Evolution is the canary in the coal mine of enlightenment, of science, of reality itself. When it finds it hard to breathe, that is a clear sign that the atmosphere has become toxic. Again, Chris Hedges,…
clock | January 31, 2007You may have heard that Joe Biden announced today (or was it yesterday, who pays attention any more) that he is running for President. Just like he announced last week. And the week before. And several consecutive weeks before that. Still hoping someone - anyone - would notice.
But also, Joe Biden announced today that his Presidential campaign is over:
Biden
Biden?
Biden!
drorzel | January 31, 2007Mark Kleiman explains the problem of abortion in American politics (Bill Hicks: "Yeah, I'm gonna win you all back with this one") in two paragraphs of this post:
Jane Galt is right that the country would be better off if the abortion debate sparked less hatred on both sides. Moreover, she's right that one key to reducing the ferocity of the debate would be for the pro-choice folks to admit that ending a pregnancy does pose what can plausibly be considered a moral problem, and that therefore it's possible to support limits on abortion for reasons other than hateful or dim-witted anti-feminism…
hrynyshyn | January 31, 2007It's almost enough to restore your faith in freedom, democracy and the American way (whatever that is). Today in The New York Times appear a couple of paragraphs the likes of which I was beginning to despair I would never read in a leading American newspaper:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration's handling of climate change science yesterday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration's actions.
The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government…
oracknows | January 30, 2007At the risk of irritating a fellow ScienceBlogger again, I thought I'd point out this little post forwarded to me by Norm Jenson as yet another example of exactly the inflated hype for dichloroacetate as a "cure for cancer" that will "never see the light of day" because it has little profit potential (and, by the way, that pharmaceutical companies will "probably lobby against it with all their might") that I was talking about in my original post on the subject.
I should have taken a β-blocker before clicking on the link.
Given the level of silly rhetoric in the post above and even despite…
clock | January 30, 2007Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, the quickest draw of the Internets, the master of witty blog titles, and the scourge of mysoginists worldwide (like my regulars could avoid my almost-daily links to Pandagon and don't know who she is...), has just become the Blogmaster of the John Edwards campaign blog. Some of the bestest, snarkiest bloggers are joining Pandagon at the same time. And Amanda is moving to Chapel Hill so we finally get to meet! Waaaaay tooooo cooool!
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2007Via ThinkProgress comes this irritating story about a recent Congressional hearing on the political manipulation of climate change science. Tennessee Democratic representative Jim Cooper told the following story, about a dinner party he attended:
REP. JIM COOPER (D-TN): Second, let me mention a dinner party I attended about two months ago here in Washington. The honoree was John Negroponte. He was then the director of national intelligence. He was there to receive an environmental award.
It was very interesting because in anticipation of his remarks, word slipped through the crowd he was…
pharyngula | January 30, 2007Since I mentioned my fondness for Jane Fonda the other day, I think I have to respond to this insane wingnut rant I found via Atrios:
Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.
It's time to stand tall, speak loudly and defend America against these enemies like Hanoi Jane.
She's back. Are we going to…
jstemwedel | January 30, 2007There's been some blogospheric blowout (see here, here, and here for just a taste) about a recent PETA ad that many viewers find gratuitously sexist. To me, the ad and the reaction to it are most interesting because they raise a larger issue about how we promote our values and how we choose our allies. From Michael Specter's article on PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk in the April 14, 2003 issue of The New Yorker:
Newkirk seems openly to court the anger even of people who share her views. "I know feminists hate the naked displays," she told me. "I lose members every time I do it. But my job isn…
drorzel | January 29, 2007Something my sister pointed out, based on driving from San Francisco to southern California, and subsequently confirmed by local observations (for example, in the parking lot on my way back from basketball today):
When you see magnetic ribbons attached to cars, they invariably have right-leaning political slogans on them: "Support the Troops" and the like.
When you see left-leaning political slogans on cars ("Support the Troops: Impeach Bush"), they're invariably on bumper stickers.
Why is that? Are leftists just a bunch of cheap Luddites afraid of using new technologies? Are conservatives…
pharyngula | January 29, 2007That third-rate right-wing wanker, Dinesh D'Souza, had a article in the Washington Post, in which he attempted to defend himself from accusations of appalling stupidity in trying to blame radical Muslim attacks on the US on liberal culture. Of course, he failed. Instead, he just repeated his crazy claim that it's all godless Hollywood's fault.
The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality — and that the United States is leading that attack.
David Neiwert ably rips that apart on matters of fact—it's simply…
purepedantry | January 29, 2007Will we really be going Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton? Michael Barone had this story in the WSJ on the emerging tendency towards political dynasty in American politics:
Not that anyone assumes that family members are all alike. It would not do for candidate Bush in 2000 and for candidate Clinton today to claim to be clones of his father and her husband. Rather, candidate Bush made comments about his mother's fearsomeness, and candidate Clinton's "let's chat" suggests that she is more of a listener and less of a nonstop talker than her husband. So the trend to royalism may not be all bad. It does…
clock | January 29, 2007Kate Michelman, lifelong feminist and former head of NARAL, talks about why she's signed up to work for John Edwards (click through the ad to read the entire thing):
....I think that says a lot about his seriousness and commitment to addressing the experiences of women in society. I think it speaks very well of him. And while I've been a leader on women's liberties and equality, I'm known mostly for my work on reproductive rights, which could make a candidate feel somewhat reluctant or questioning. But it didn't with John and Elizabeth.
I have often felt that in the past, campaigns have paid…
pharyngula | January 29, 2007A Colorado state senator (a Republican from Colorado Springs, of course), Dave Schultheis, is pushing a draft of an absurd bill to open public schools wide to religious indoctrination, all in the name of the first amendment to the constitution. It's a demand to create a "Public School Religious Bill Of Rights", with a long list of religious privileges. Some of them are trivial: it ought to be OK for students to give each other holiday cards with religious sentiments (and of course, they already can), or greet each other with religious slogans (like, say, "Merry Christmas"…hasn't the war on…
oracknows | January 28, 2007I haven't seen a Broadway play in quite a while now, but it may be time for that to change. In the New York Times, I came across an ad for a revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee´s 1955 courtroom drama Inherit the Wind:
This revival of the play stars two great actors, Brian Dennehy as Matthew Harrison Brady and Christopher Plummer as Henry Drummond. For those who aren't familiar with the story, Inherit the Wind is a heavily fictionalized account of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, not to mention a great American play. Previews begin March 19, and the play opens on April 12. I think I…
clock | January 28, 2007...because I was not one of them. But now, thanks to Ed Cone, I know what the State of the Union address was all about.