Politics
pharyngula | May 13, 2006This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney general of the state of Alabama, as a Democrat…with some very strange views.
Tyson said aside from his views on race [he wants to "reawaken white racial awareness"] and the Holocaust [he's a denier], Darby also has publicly advocated legalizing drugs and shooting all illegal immigrants.
I…
oracknows | May 13, 2006If you want to see how depressingly ignorant about science President Bush's new Press Secretary Tony Snow is, you need go no further than this rant at Bad Astronomy about Snow's assertions about evolution confidently made in obviously complete ignorance about science, what a theory is, what a hypothesis is, or what evolutionary theory actually says.
Depressing. The spokesperson for our President is clueless about science.
pharyngula | May 12, 2006Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism" by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time…
stcynic | May 12, 2006Jesse Walker has an essay at Reason that absolutely nails the emergence of political correctness on the right. It's titled Right-Wing P.C.: How conservatives learned to stop worrying and love political correctness. After long denouncing the sort of shallow identity politics so common on the left, conservatives have discovered that there is power in claiming the status of victim. After an amusing introduction in which he said that the right's hatred of political correctness was "a Sam-and-Diane sort of enmity, an animus that could only end with a lusty, guilty romp in the hay", Walker explains…
pharyngula | May 12, 2006Take heart, everyone, the magic number today is 29%—less than one third of our American compatriots are insane or stupid!
Now we just have to worry that that 29% will become increasingly desperate and vicious, like cornered weasels.
pharyngula | May 11, 2006I've been catching up with the blogs, and I'm seeing outrage over the revelation that the NSA has been carrying out wide-spectrum data mining of the American people…that it hasn't just been surveillance of suspected terrorists. You know, if everyone would just read Gary Farber, you'd have known this five months ago. That's how data mining works. Now people are trying to argue that we knew it all along, so it's OK—but this is exactly what the administration has spent the last several months denying.
It's not just the surveillance. It's the lying. Well, the obtuseness, too.
tlambert | May 9, 2006The fun never ends with Glenn Reynolds' "steal the oil" post. Tim Blair exclaims:
Warming alarmite Tim Lambert (current average daily visits: 3,577) is now demanding $520 per week for ad space at his rarely-viewed site; $3360 for three months! Guess that explains his recent graceless attempts to provoke an Instalanche. (By the way, ads presently displayed at Lambot's (sic) site are apparently shared throughout the ScienceBlogs network.)
I wrote my post because Reynolds was wrong: invading Iraq has reduced their oil production. I guess that since Blair is always angling for an Instalanche,…
pharyngula | May 9, 2006Need something to talk about while I'm on the road? I think Atrios's post on positive things for progressive bloggers to advocate (which is also echoed by Drum) is an excellent starting point. These are good things that set us apart from them; these are the kinds of ideas we should be talking about. Any right wing trolls want to oppose any of these proposals?
Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
Repeal the estate tax repeal
Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
Increase CAFE standards.…
pharyngula | May 9, 2006The poor man is inundated with hateful email. People don't like him, they're angry at George Bush, they accuse him of being Bush's lapdog (a charge he denies, but Digby provides the evidence—hatefully, no doubt), and he just can't understand why (at least I can answer that one: it's because he's not very bright).
Cohen can whine all he wants about the fact that people don't like him, but here's the charge to which I must take strong exception:
But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008…
jlynch | May 7, 2006On CNBC, Bush has claimed that actions of the passengers on UA 93 "was the first counter-attack to World War III."
World War III ... didn't he get the memo from Podhoretz. World War III is so 1980's.
pharyngula | May 7, 2006
Maybe he's just matching my cynicism, but Tom Tomorrow has been perfect lately.
oracknows | May 7, 2006You may not know this, but today has been designated Ten Commandments Day. It sounds pretty innocuous, right? After all, why would anyone object to a celebration of the Ten Commandments? And, of course, it's every American's right under the First Amendment to celebrate the precepts of his or her religion. Nothing wrong with that.
So why do I have misgivings about this Ten Commandments Day?
Could it have something to do with the rhetoric on the website? For example:
Is it possible that the mark of God-- the Ten Commandments was placed in America over 500 years ago?
Is it possible that God…
tlambert | May 7, 2006Folks are still having fun with Glenn Reynolds' "Let's invade Saudi Arabia and Iran and steal their oil" post. Sean Carroll reckons that the wrongness might be enough to form a singularity. But that can't be right, because the wrongness has escaped to form this post by Lubos Motl:
Prices would plummet
Sean thinks that they won't plummet because the oil fields are essentially running at full capacity. Sean has a naive idea about the driving forces behind these prices. In 2002, the oil price was $18 instead of $70. Does it mean that the oil fields were running at a much-higher-than-full…
pharyngula | May 6, 2006Bill O'Reilly is upset that little kids are using profanity, and he has a ludicrously sentimental vision of small town America.
OK. That happens every day, all day in the public schools here in New York City. And I know it happens in Chicago and Los Angeles and Boston and Washington, D.C. In any major urban center. It doesn't happen in the small towns; it happens in the cities. I live in New York. I'm not gonna have my 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-year-old go to a school where they're saying that stuff in the hallway and the teacher doesn't do anything about it. You know, private school, that does not…
jlynch | May 5, 2006"All foreign wars, I do proclaim, live on blood and a mother's pain."
Mrs McGrath - an old Irish song, recently covered by Springsteen.
jlynch | May 5, 2006
Steven Colbert claims the current administration is "soaring, not sinking. They are re-arranging the deck chairs - on the Hindenburg". Today, Porter Goss resigned as Director of the CIA. And today, in 1937, the Hindenburg was destroyed in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Apt.
tsmith | May 5, 2006 National Safe Kids week officially begins tomorrow, May 6th. This year they're highlighting pool and water safety--a good topic to brush up on if you have children that will be around pools or other swimming areas this summer. And it's not just swimming lessons and water wings that parents need to be concerned about. More after the jump.
When it comes to safety, most parents do not know that drowning is one of the top two causes of accidental death among children. National Safe Kids Week activities and communications will educate parents and children about the steps they can take to…
stcynic | May 5, 2006Okay, this tempest in a teapot over the national anthem being sung in English is absolutely killing me. A Spanish language version of the national anthem was released a few days ago by a British music producer. That sparks protests by right wing bloggers, for some bizarre reason. Seeking desperately to win the jingo vote back, President Bush bravely stands up and says that he is opposed to singing the national anthem in Spanish because, he says, "One of the important things here is that we not lose our national soul."
Then it comes out that, during his campaign for the presidency in 2000,…