Politics
tsmith | October 26, 2006I mentioned the situation with Lieutenant Governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats and his support of intelligent design last week (posts here and here). A group of us have put together an editorial discussing Vander Plaats' position and why it matters to Iowa voters (letter and signatories can be found here at the Iowa Citizens for Science site). Yesterday, a columnist for the Des Moines register also wrote up the story, and our response to it:
Town and gown are often mutual strangers when it comes to political involvement. But the Iowa governor's race this year is attracting the involvement…
goodmath | October 26, 2006Yesterday, Karl Rove was interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR. I just about passed out from shock when I heard the following exchange: (transcript via [raw story](http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Rove_dukes_it_out_with_NPR_1025.html))
>MR. SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though. And many might consider you on the optimistic end of >realism about --
>
>MR. ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that. You're just making a comment.
>
>MR. SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day.
>
>MR. ROVE: No you're not. No…
grrlscientist | October 26, 2006.
.
.
The petroleum giants were raking in money hand over fist while all of us were sweating blood over gasoline prices that had reached $4 per gallon in many parts of the country -- all during the so-called "gas shortage" caused by Gulf War 2.
Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday said its profit rose to $10.49 billion in the third quarter, making it the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.
The world's biggest oil company said its net income amounted to $1.77 per share for the July-September period, up from $9.92 billion, or $1.58 per share, a year ago…
evolvingthoughts | October 25, 2006I have often felt disgusted by the fact that homosexual partners can be excluded from sharing their SO's last minutes because they "aren't" family, and are unable to inherit, and all the other legal benefits that come along with marriage (here in Australia, but also elsewhere). And I thought, for a while, that civil unions was the solution. But as the conservative Christian opposition make perfectly clear, marriage is their domain and invention and nobody else's. So I suggest the following modest solution - let them have it.
Instead, recognise that adult human beings are entitled to make…
pharyngula | October 25, 2006My daughter had mentioned something a while back about some speaker named Mike Adams coming to UMM, and that she'd get extra credit for attending, but it didn't sink in until I saw the signs around campus. It's this Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase.
I'm very disappointed in our students. We're far off the beaten track and we don't get that many speakers…
oracknows | October 25, 2006This one's for you, Afarensis (all in good fun, of course--well, for the most part, anyway):
Here's Jeff Suppan, pitcher for the Cardinals (who, it just so happens, will be starting game four of the World Series tonight) appearing prominently along with Patricia Heaton, Jim Caviezel, and other celebrities in a predictably lame "response" ad to the ad that Michael J. Fox made supporting the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Claire McCaskill. Fox made the original ad because McCaskill supports removing the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that destroys embryos to…
grrlscientist | October 25, 2006... full-flail civil war .. blah blah!
I listened to Bush's speech this morning on TV. I felt like one of the characters from the Peanuts comic strip as they listened to their teacher talk. Basically, Bush's speech and the following question and answer period were such a tangled web of lies and "spin" that I hardly know where to start, except to say that Bush appears to be campaigning for the Democrats today.
Several questions that I want to know the answers to;
What constitutes "victory" in Iraq? What exactly are our objectives there? What are our strategies for obtaining our objectives?…
drorzel | October 25, 2006The recent discussion of reviews of The God Delusion has been interesting and remarkably civil, and I am grateful to the participants for both of those facts. In thinking a bit more about this, I thought of a good and relatively non-controversial analogy to explain the point I've been trying to make about the reviews (I thought of several nasty and inflammatory analogies without much effort, but I'm trying to be a Good Person...). Unfortunately it requires me to explain a bit of physics... Please, please, don't throw me into that briar patch.
Some people say that the last really significant…
clock | October 25, 2006Publius is on the roll again with two posts, each putting a novel angle to a well-known story:
DISTASTEFULLY CORRECT
GIMME FICTION
oracknows | October 24, 2006Yesterday, I wrote about a rather disgusting and ignorant tirade by Rush Limbaugh about Michael J. Fox, in which Limbaugh accused Fox of either faking Parkinsons's symptoms or purposely not taking his medications before taping an ad in which he supported a Democratic candidate because she supports stem cell research.
Advice Goddess gives us more perspective with an excerpt from Fox's autobiography that explains how difficult it is to balance the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease with the side effects from the medications necessary to treat it. Fox describes this as a "constant vexation for the…
oracknows | October 24, 2006Yesterday afternoon, while working on grants, I was flipping through radio channels, and I came across something that stopped my dial twiddling in its tracks. It was Rush Limbaugh, and he was trashing Michael J. Fox for making a commercial in support of stem cell research.
As you may recall, Michael J. Fox is the unfortunate sufferer of a virulent form of Parkinson's Disease, which he contracted at the very young age of around 30. He's now had it for 15 years, and, as Parkinson's is wont to do, it's slowly gotten worse. Indeed, Fox has more or less given up acting since 2000 because of the…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2006A 22 year-old pregnant woman, who was unable to afford an abortion, carried her fetus to the middle of the third trmester and then shot herself in the belly, killing the fetus.
The woman claims she did this because she was impoverished, she already has two children and because her boyfriend was mentally abusive to her. Basically, she felt trapped and diminished to the point where she felt that she had no other options available to her.
There is no doubt that this event is both serious and very tragic, but is this woman a criminal? Should she be prosecuted for murder or for illegal abortion…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2006In my opinion, Rush's comments only served to publically reconfirm that he is an enormous asshole. But you be the judge;
A political ad in which a Parkinson's-afflicted Michael J. Fox talks about stem cell research was criticized Monday by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who asserted that Fox was "either off his medication or acting" while filming the commercial. [cited story]
I think he qualifies for Ignoramus of the Year.
j7uy5 | October 24, 2006The British are famous for the clever turn of the phrase, and the
headline writers at the BBC are among the best.
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6062688.stm">
Search for least-worst option in Iraq
By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News
website
A "helluva mess" is how the former US Secretary of State James Baker is
said to have described the state of Iraq - and the search is on for the
least-worst option for US policy makers.
"The least-worst option." Can anyone come up with a more
descriptive phrase?
clock | October 23, 2006I had a delightful lunch today with my blog-sparring-partner Mike Munger of Mungovitz End (see how my blog is labeled on his blogroll: "Coturnix's nonsense"). We had great time discussing politics, academia, Horowitz, blogging and the life in the Triangle. Oh, Mike is also running for North Carolina governor in 2008 as a Libertarian candidate. Check his positions - how liberal!!!
pharyngula | October 23, 2006
There's my son, kicking Republican butts. The years of brainwashing must have paid off.