Politics
evolvingthoughts | October 29, 2006The conservative government of John Howard is proposing to offer $20,000 to any school to employ a "religious person" as a chaplain for students. This isn't blurring the line of separation between church and state, he says. It's just "common sense". Right.
[Updated, so moved up to the top]
I wonder how well it would go if an unbeliever tried to apply for this funding? How would Howard feel about my being employed to give counsel to young kids, say, between 12 and 16, on how to live without requiring religion as a prop to cope with social pressures? If I would fail, and let's face it, I would…
jlynch | October 29, 2006Biggest Hassle -- High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.
Biggest Outrage -- Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to…
oracknows | October 29, 2006It seems to be the time of the year for this sort of thing.
Yes, I realize that the Harry Potter novels have come under attack from various fundamentalist Christians, who view them as somehow indoctrinating children into witchcraft, Wicca, demon worship, or whatever. I also realize that I may be a bit behind the times on this story. But, with Halloween coming up and all, I thought I'd mention it anyway, because this time one such parent, Laura Mallory, has taken her beef with Harry Potter all the way to her state Board of Education in Georgia, after having been slapped down before in her…
j7uy5 | October 28, 2006I knew the economic news was bad, but I did not know how bad, until I
saw
href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8079134">this
article in The Economist, thanks to a
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/10/the_economist_g.html">link
from Brad DeLong.
EVERYONE knows that America's economy is slowing.
Thanks to
the bursting of the housing bubble, overall GDP growth has fallen back
sharply. The biggest short-term uncertainty for the world economy is
whether American consumers stop spending and drag the country into
recession. But beyond the business…
clock | October 28, 2006Zeno has posted a nice, easy-to-understand primer on statistics and polling.
pharyngula | October 28, 2006I live in the 11th Minnesota senate district, and I'm represented by a Democratic incumbent, Dallas Sams. I am not a fan of Sams; he's one of those pro-life moderate Democrats, not particularly progressive (although he did make the effort to squelch an anti-gay marriage act), and if there'd been an alternative candidate at the Minnesota caucuses, I would have pushed for them over Sams. I will be voting for Sams on November 7th, though—I won't even hesitate.
His opposition is a Republican, Bill Ingebrigtsen. Ingebrigtsen has been sending ads—expensive-looking (he has raised twice as much money…
jlynch | October 27, 2006Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin write:
As right-wing politicians and pundits call us stooges for Osama bin Laden, Tony Judt charges, in a widely discussed and heatedly debated essay in the London Review of Books, that American liberals -- without distinction -- have "acquiesced in President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy." Both claims are nonsense on stilts.
Clearly this is a moment for liberals to define ourselves. The important truth is that most liberals, including the undersigned, have stayed our course throughout these grim five years. We have consistently and publicly repudiated the…
jlynch | October 27, 2006NBC is refusing to show ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing because they feel the the ads are "disparaging to President Bush." Apparently criticizing the President is un-American especially running up to the mid-term elections. Ironic, considering this is a film about censorship. This, of course, is the same NBC that has no problem running Republican smear ads to local markets.
Harvey Weinstein - the distributor - has the following to say:
It's a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted…
jrosenhouse | October 27, 2006My cute little house looked a lot better before my meager possessions were strewn aimlessly across every flat surface. It didn't help that this was an unusually busy week at work. I did, however, manage to catch this spot-on essay from Michael Kinsley, at Slate. He writes:
Here in Washington, we're all competing to see who can be more po-faced about Mark Foley and the congressional pages. Who can deplore Foley's behavior the most? Democrats, sensing a deeply wounded Republican Party, are going in for the kill. It's the final evidence that the GOP is terminally corrupt: A congressman was…
pharyngula | October 27, 2006I'm not usually a fan of country music, but I might have to make an exception for the Dixie Chicks.
pharyngula | October 27, 2006For any locals who are curious about that Mike Adams character who gave a talk on campus yesterday, Bartholomew's notes on religion has a good summary of his career as a professional victim. There's also a more complete account of the terrible oppression Adams faced after his response to the 9/11 emails, a story he told in part but at some length yesterday. Funny how he didn't mention that part of the story involving an undergraduate student he'd marry 18 months later…
jlynch | October 27, 2006How come we tax-payers have to pay for the President to fly around and stump for Republican candidates (and get their name wrong)? After all, the cost of security and Air Force One (five gallons of fuel a mile) are fairly substantial.
I'm conflicted - I want to imagine that Bush has real work to do, yet at the same time am happy that they are keeping him away from grown-up activities.
clock | October 27, 2006A follow-up on last week's repost (originally from April 06, 2005)...
-----------------------------------------------
I've been wavering in how to call the Right Wing. When I say "conservatives" I get attacked for equating conservatism with GOP (with implication that conservatism is good but GOP is not conservative any more). When I call them Regressives, I am told I miss the point, because they should be described as conservatives. Should I just call them Republicans? Not damning enough. People, make up your minds!
What follows is a mix of stuff I have already written before on this blog (…
tsmith | October 27, 2006Yesterday's Ames Tribune, the paper that originally carried Republican lieutenant governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats' comments supporting the teaching of intelligent design in schools contained an article noting Republican governor candidate Jim Nussle's dismissal of Vander Plaats' position:
Republican candidate for governor Jim Nussle and his running mate, Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, disagree on whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in Iowa's science classrooms.
***
On Wednesday Nussle broke with his running mate.
"While I believe and I have taught…
clock | October 26, 2006If you go here and copy and paste the code into your blog, you will get something that looks like this:
--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04…
pharyngula | October 26, 2006I did manage to get to Mike S. Adams' talk here at UMM. It was a packed room (not our biggest lecture room here, but it was filled to capacity) and I arrived late, so I had to stand outside the door to listen in. Kudos to our students, who were polite and attentive, and let him blather on without interruption.
Adams is a slick, fast-talking, folksy guy, and he made the audience laugh quite a bit. He had to talk fast, though, to keep his story from sinking beneath the weight of its improbabilities, and I do wonder how many of our students actually caught on to his inconsistencies.
To summarize…