Politics
tsmith | October 31, 2005 As mentioned in the comments to this post, there is a brewing controversy over upcoming guidelines outlining who should receive the "cervical cancer vaccine," a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV). Briefly, the HPV vaccine is a highly effective (100% in a 2-year clinical trial) vaccine which is targeted against two specific serotypes of the human papilloma virus: HPV 16 and HPV 18. Together, these types cause about 70% of cervical cancers in the United States. Previously, Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group, has said this about the HPV…
stcynic | October 26, 2005Now that indictments are about to be handed down, let me take this opportunity to predict yet another of those epic partisan flip flops that so afflict our political system. Here are my predictions.
1. No one will be indicted for actually outing Plame, but one or more people, including Rove, Libby or both, will be indicted for perjury and/or obstruction of justice. At that point, the leadership of the two parties will meet on the steps of Capitol Hill and they will exchange the scripts they worked from back in the late 90s.
2. The White House and partisan Republicans will immediately call…
tsmith | October 19, 2005It's situations like this that really irk me.
I mentioned the tularemia detection in DC here almost 2 weeks ago, already annoyed that there hadn't been more information about it. There has been some discussion on the ProMed list, but it's hardly been a blip in the mainstream media. Yesterday, there was an article in Salon further discussing it.
The background:
On Sept. 24, 2005, tens of thousands of protesters marched past the White House and flooded the National Mall near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. They had arrived from all over the country for a day of speeches and concerts to…
stcynic | October 18, 2005Sen. Ted Kennedy apparently tried to rescue a group of guys trapped in the water. Fill in your own joke. The only thing Robert Bork has ever said that I liked was when, during his confirmation hearing in response to a question by Ted Kennedy, he said, "Senator, that's all water under the bridge."
tlambert | October 18, 2005If you are interested in serious discussion of the Australian government's proposed new "anti-terrorist" laws, you should read the posts by Senator Andrew Bartlett, Mark Bahnisch, Ken Parish and Tim Dunlop. One place where you won't find it is on channel 9's "Sunday" program who interviewed my friend and colleague Waleed Kadous for an hour. I think Waleed had some serious and thoughtful things to say, but "Sunday" edited the interview down to under a minute. And look at what they used:
ADAM SHAND: But there is also ambiguity and political orthodoxy inside the Muslim community on the…
stcynic | October 15, 2005An inspired bit from Bill Maher last night:
New Rule: For Halloween this year, President Bush has to dress up as either an Indian or a cop. This past week he dressed up as a construction worker for a photo op at a housebuilding project. We've seen him as the navy man landing on the ship. And of course we've seen his cowboy outfit. For a guy who's anti-gay, he sure spends a lot of time dressed up like the Village People.
Brilliant.
stcynic | October 14, 2005Okay, did anyone else see the White House's fake "conversation" between Bush and the troops? It was absolutely brutal. I know that all presidental appearances are well choreographed, but for crying out loud this thing was so badly done that it was embarrassing to watch. There needs to be a word for that embarrassment you feel for someone else when you watch them do something that is so bad that it makes you uncomfortable to watch it, and that's exactly how I felt watching this thing.
The fact that the President's press secretary gave a huffy, "What are you suggesting?" response when a…
tsmith | October 12, 2005On Monday, I mentioned a survey MSNBC and Zogby conducted regarding attitudes about sex and STDs. Today on MSNBC, they have another article on the rise of STDs in America, highlighting some depressing trends. Meanwhile, in what you'd think would be across-the-board good news, a vaccine has been tested against 2 types of human papilloma virus (HPV), an STD which is the most common cause of cervical cancer. Despite having a 100% effectiveness in preventing infection with these viruses (which together cause ~70% of all cervical cancers), there is organized resistance to the vaccine, on the…
stcynic | October 4, 2005In the face of criticism from the left and right, President Bush insisted Tuesday that Harriet Miers is the nation's best-qualified candidate for the Supreme Court and assured skeptical conservatives that his lawyer-turned-nominee shares his judicial philosophy -- and always will.
Folks, George W. Bush doesn't have a judicial philosophy. He has a set of catchphrases fed to him by his handlers and he thinks those catchphrases refer to a judicial philosophy, and that's as close as he gets to having one. I'd pay big money to see the President try and explain, without cue cards, the distinction…
stcynic | September 16, 2005A truly astonishing statement from someone alleged to be an advocate of smaller government:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.
Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.
"My answer to those that want to…
tsmith | September 16, 2005The Washington Post today reminds us that there has been little progress in uncovering the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks. [1]
First, a disclaimer. I'm not an "evolutionary biologist," per se. I have what is I swear the longest job title ever--molecular infectious disease epidemiologist. As such, I often get asked, "what's the relevance of evolution to your work?" Or, I'll read editorials such as Dr. Skell's recently in The Scientist [2] questioning the use of evolutionary theory in experimental biology, and be disheartened. Yet the method of investigating the anthrax attacks shows…
stcynic | September 10, 2005While the White House scrambles like mad to cover its butt and avoid any and all questions about what went wrong in the response to Katrina, at least some Republicans are breaking the party line talking points and saying what is obviously true, that the response at the Federal level was appalling and heads need to roll. Robert Novak has this column about those reactions. He writes:
Democrats have seized on the administration's performance in handling Katrina to bash George W. Bush, but Republicans are not much happier with him. The common complaint is that the President has let the lawyers…
stcynic | September 9, 2005Paul Campos has an article in the New Republic (registration required, but available on bugmenot) about FEMA director Mike Brown. I've written before, as have many others, about Brown's complete lack of qualifications for that position, which he got only because his former college roommate hired him as his assistant. But Campos reveals that, if anything, we've been too charitable to him:
To understand the Mike Brown saga, one has to know something about the intricacies of the legal profession, beginning with the status of the law school he attended. Brown's biography on fema's website reports…
stcynic | September 6, 2005Radley Balko has a devestating post documenting the massive failures of government at all levels to respond to the hurricane. I knew some people were complaining, but I've been too busy to really look at it until now. Even someone as cynical as I am about government can't help but be stunned at this kind of incompetence. Several states had offered to send National Guard troops to New Orleans to help out before the storm hit, but the paperwork didn't get through Washington until days after the storm. The Department of Homeland Security refuses to allow the Red Cross into the city to help…
stcynic | August 29, 2005Over the last few years, a bizarre situation has been going on here in Michigan. In 2003, a philanthropist named Robert Thompson offered to spend $200 million to build 15 charter schools in the city of Detroit, each serving 500 students, with a guarantee that each one would graduate at least 90% of its students. That plan required approval of the state legislature and in late 2003 they had reached a deal to pass a bill that allowed this to happen, but the Detroit teacher's union called a one-day strike and marched on the state capitol to protest this plan. As a result, the Detroit mayor and…
stcynic | August 26, 2005Today is an important anniversary. It's the 85th anniversary of the day the 19th amendment was ratified and became part of the Constitution, giving women the right to vote in this country. For sane people, it's the day that the nation made good on one of its founding ideals and extended the right to participate in the political life of the country to half the population who had been unjustly denied that right for a century and a half. For the Vox Days of the world....well, tough day. I'm sure being the manly man that you are, you'll survive the disappointment. Maybe to make yourself feel…
stcynic | August 26, 2005I'm not much of a Michael Moore fan, but I thought his movie Bowling for Columbine had some interesting and thought provoking segments in it. Yes, a lot of it was just pointless grandstanding, like taking the ammunition back to K-mart and his interview with Charlton Heston. But I thought the movie hit on something very important when discussing how the media's coverage of violent crime had gone up some 500% (I forget the exact figure) while actual violent crime had gone down significantly over the last two decades. With that in mind, take a look at this USA Today article about sex crimes…
stcynic | August 22, 2005I have pretty much ignored the whole Cindy Sheehan protest thing. I don't really care whether President Bush meets with her, I don't think the rightness or wrongness of the war rests on the fact of her personal loss (tragic as that is, obviously) and I couldn't possibly care any less which celebrities visited today. I don't doubt that the woman is sincere, nor do I doubt the sincerity of the many parents of fallen soldiers who have said that they disagree with her. But the sheer hypocrisy of some of her conservative critics has reached staggering proportions. Self-righteous gasbag Sean…
stcynic | August 11, 2005Over at In the Agora, today is a special issue. Ronald Reagan's famous 11th commandment was "thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican", and given that most of the writers there are Republicans they decided to break that commandment and devote a day to criticizing their own party. I'm not a Republican, of course, I'm a libertarian, but I gladly joined in on the bashing with a post about the laughable notion that Republicans are actually interested in "smaller government". Go and read all the entries.
stcynic | August 4, 2005Much has been written over the last couple days about President Bush's comments endorsing the teaching of ID in public schools. In his typical folksy (read: not terribly thoughtful) manner he said that students should be exposed to "different ideas" and "different schools of thought." One has to wonder, then, why he has been so adamant about funding abstinence-only sex education, where students are told solely about abstinence and are in fact scared off from ever using birth control. Apparently, exposing students to "different ideas" only counts when he agrees with those ideas. But that is…