Politics
pharyngula | April 19, 2006He's still being dodgy about whether he's going to run against our plastic stepford senator, Norm Coleman, in 2008…but the Al Franken interview in the City Pages is worth a read. Another thing he doesn't do is plug his Midwest Values PAC, which is a really interesting idea. It's a kind of bloggy platform for raising money and promoting the expression of progressive ideas, but it's seriously underutilized.
pharyngula | April 18, 2006I can't do it anymore. I can't possibly keep up with the competition, who are willing to sink to sick, perverse depths to which the real porn kings and queens willingly immerse themselves. And they're so close to me—just a few miles to the west, across that state line.
I'm talking about South Dakota.
They're sick puppies over there. I'm feeling a little tense sitting this close to them; maybe we should put up a razorwire fence or something.
Never in my rather exotic (I thought) imagination would I dream up a scenario like the Purity Ball, where daughters gaze deeply into their father's eyes…
pharyngula | April 18, 2006As an example of understatement, I could say that I'm no fan of Mark Steyn—he's another of those deeply confused and stupid far right pundits who is convinced that vigorous support for violent action by others will compensate for his intellectual deficiencies—so I'm not really surprised to learn of his new phrase for bombing the hell out of Iran: "de-nuking". We are going to nuke their nuclear facilities to de-nuke their potential to nuke. I guess it's a new way to jigger a sentence to insert more "nukes" and thereby bring the sad little man to his desired wargasm.
But don't think I actually…
pharyngula | April 17, 2006I don't quite understand this etiquette thing. So Maryscott O'Connor is angry about war and corruption and our incompetent administration, and that's bad. Naughty leftist, she should be better mannered and respectful to our president, no matter how badly he screws up.
Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin sics her mouth-breathing minions on some college-aged peace activists, and they get swamped with death threats from right wingers. And she does it twice, even after learning what kind of sewage her pals are spewing.
Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. Angry denunciations of political actions vs. vicious but…
pharyngula | April 17, 2006Modern digital technology allows us to see the unimaginable. George Bush sings Imagine.
(via Badgerings)
stcynic | April 17, 2006With President Bush's approval ratings below 40%, and the Congress' approval ratings in that neighborhood as well, Congressional Republicans are going back to the well they're always going to - pushing the emotional buttons of their followers over irrelevant issues that don't have any effect on them whatsoever. The AP reports that their plan is to go for votes on two constitutional amendments this summer, one on flag burning - *yawn*, stop me if you've heard this before - and one on gay marriage. Because God knows that stopping flag burning is an important issue. And all hell will break loose…
jlynch | April 16, 2006The Week in Review section of the New York Times had a piece on evangelicals in this country in which it details the tension between tradiationalist, centrists and modernists (available online here). The article appears to be prompted by the latest Pew Forum National Survey of Religion and Politcs.
In brief, 26.3% of Americans are evangelicals who can be broken down into traditionalists (12.6%), centrists (10.8%) and modernists (2.9%). Predictably, the traditionalists are Republican (70%), oppose evolution (93%), believe in Armageddon (77%), support "traditional marriage" exclusively (89%),…
razib | April 16, 2006I just read Ed Brayton's commentary about an attack on a pro-life display on the campus of the University of Northern Kentucky. The professor who seems to have encouraged this is quoted as saying:
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.
First, great job on on refuting the stereotype that women think with their hearts rather than their head Herr Professor! "Outrage" or "repugnance," Left or Right, it doesn't matter. Affairs of the heart have a role to play in…
jlynch | April 16, 2006An op-ed in the Orlando Centenial takes umbrage at the suggestion of Business for Diplomatic Action Inc., in their "World Citizens Guide", that Americans travelling abroad should not talk too much about American pride. They respond:
To be American is to be bold and outspoken. And that bravado is no small part of the American urge to help other nations suffering famine, disease and disaster.
Let's look at the actual advice given by the Guide:
Be Proud, not arrogant: People around the world are fascinated by the U.S. and the lives we Americans live. They admire our openness, our optimism, our…
pharyngula | April 16, 2006Everyone is writing about this WaPo story about angry liberal bloggers that focused on a site I rather like, My Left Wing. Hilzoy writes about the media laziness behind the story, and Norwegianity punctures the myth that anger is a property of the Left
I'm baffled by it all. Shouldn't we be angry about war and torture and tax breaks for the rich and incompetence and corruption? Isn't anger and opposition the appropriate response?
It seems to me that the real news story is all of those angry right wing blogs that are screeching in support of war and torture and tax breaks for the rich and…
tsmith | April 15, 2006I don't know how other bloggers decide what to post. For me, everytime I run across a "oh, that would be so cool to discuss" topic/link/story etc., I copy the topic/link/story etc. into a new entry here, hoping to have time to elaborate on it at a later date. Some of them I get to--some of them just drift slowly to the bottom of the pile, untouched. But they're still interesting topics, so here are a few more that I didn't have time to write about, and as new topics come up, probably won't be able to get to in the immediate future:
A recent CNN story referring to the hygiene hypothesis.…
pharyngula | April 15, 2006Here's another account from the "War on Christians" conference. These people are scary and weird.
Perhaps the most explicit call to arms came from Ron Luce, the president and founder of Teen Mania, a Christian revivalist youth ministry, and the author of Battle Cry for a Generation, a multimedia campaign that deploys military images and language to recruit soldiers in Christ's army. Toward the end of his speech, Luce invoked the biblical story of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19. (In the story, the Levite's concubine is gang-raped by men who wanted to do sexual violence to the Levite.…
razib | April 13, 2006By now most of you have read Online Journalism Review, which deigns to character moi as:
...And there are several blogs, such as Afarensis and Gene Expression, that tend to stay away from cultural and political commentary altogether.
Well, Mr. Science and Politics might have something to say about that! To be fair, this is an issue of sampling bias...I haven't posted too much on politics here on this weblog, so if you sampled on any given day one might surmise that this wasn't a particularly political blog. And I agree it isn't, at least explicitly, though we all have political opinions…
stcynic | April 12, 2006The AP has an article about emails that have been entered into evidence in the Jack Abramoff proceedings, emails that reveal with enormous clarity the bribery at the center of our political system. The emails show what amounts to bribery, plain and simple - if you don't vote the way we want you to vote, we're not going to give you money next time:
When Jack Abramoff's lobbying team wanted to press Republican leaders for help with a tribal client, they minced no words. The help was deserved because Abramoff's clients overwhelmingly donated to Republicans.
E-mails that have become important…
pharyngula | April 12, 2006
I received 45 submissions for this edition of The Carnival of the Liberals, and the carnival rules required me to select only a final ten. That was harsh; there were many excellent links sent in, and I struggled with the need to reject so many. Ultimately, I just had to let my own biases rule my decision, so if you sent in a submission and I didn't use it, it's nothing personal and it says nothing about a lack of quality in your work—it just means it didn't fit my narrow criteria for what I wanted to read this time around. As you'll see, I tend to promote godless secularism and grappling…
stcynic | April 12, 2006My father is not the only Republican who has lost his ability to be anything but contemptuous of the President. Here's George Conway writing in the National Review:
I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption -- and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true -- foreign and…
pharyngula | April 11, 2006…But they always get so much press. This morning's must-read smackdown is La Queen Sucia for her beautiful refutation of anti-immigrant bigotry.
(via Kung Fu Monkey)
pharyngula | April 10, 2006
It feels like cartoon day on Pharyngula, but this one is so good I had to mention it. Tom Tomorrow takes on Saint Thomas DeLay.