We're Really Fucked
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2007...so we can fight among ourselves here? I don't think the Iraq War was supposed to work that way. The Sunday edition NY Times has a story about Sunni-Shiite conflict in... Dearborn, MI. Fortunately, it's only reached the level of vandalism. What adjective do you use when events surpass surreal?
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2007This is not George Bush
(image from here)
The Peter Pan syndrome is in full effect at the White House. After meeting with George Bush, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the meeting (italics mine):
In an interview, Pelosi also said she was puzzled by what she considered the president's minimalist explanation for his confidence in the new surge of 21,500 U.S. troops that he has presented as the crux of a new "way forward" for U.S. forces in Iraq.
"He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2007So those who oppose global warming are using the same strategy as the creationists: teach the 'controversy.'
This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2007White House spokesvermin Tony Snow yesterday just propelled us a little bit further down the path of either tyranny or impeachment:
"You know, Congress has the power of the purse," Snow said, then added: "The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way."
No, he doesn't. If Congress does not allocate funds for a troop increase, then the president is illegally using money appropriated for another purpose. It's that simple, although Senator Kennedy laid it out far more eloquently. Snow also said that he doesn't "want to play junior…
mikethemadbiologist | December 10, 2006Because said officials are even more ignorant than the Pundits of the Potomac. A few months ago, Jeff Stein published an op-ed about the many officials who are charged with anti-terrorism and who also know nothing about the Middle East--to the point where they don't know if Hezbollah is Sunni or Shiite. Stein has followed up with an interview with incoming House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes.
As far as I can tell, Reyes is marginally more informed than his Republican predecessors, which is damning with faint praise. Shakes and Ezra Klein both pile on Reyes, so I won't do that here…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2006I don't have an answer, but the picture asks the question quite nicely:
(from here)
mikethemadbiologist | December 3, 2006
Glenn Greenwald, in an excellent post about privacy in the computer database era, relates the following chillling story about the public release of his personal information (italics mine):
I had an ultimately inconsequential but nonetheless quite illustrative personal experience with this several months ago. Back in July, when right-wing blogs were obsessed with investigating my personal life, including where I spend my time, this comment was left at Wizbang, in response to a July 21 post by Wizbang's Kevin Aylward:
Kevin,
Glenn Greenwald departed the United States on June 22, 2006 and hasn'…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2006There are reports that the U.S. has cut a deal with Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, so he can negotiate with the Sunni insurgents:
According to the Iraqi newspaper Al- Quds al-Arabi, James Baker, the Bush family's Mr. Fixit, recently met with one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers in Amman, Jordan, and told him that the former deputy prime minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, would be released from detention by December in order to negotiate with the US on behalf of factions of the Iraqi resistance movement still controlled by old Ba'ath Party leaders. Sources in Jordan tell me that the…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2006Ok, so after complaining about how no one reads my posts on antibiotic resistance, one reader read this post about the FDA overriding an expert panel that advised against using cefquinome in agriculture, and then went and read the recently released minutes of the hearing (all eight gajillion pages). Here's what the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the FDA said (p. 211; italics mine):
And so from the FDA standpoint, what we did was we said to the company after vetting it through the VMAC, that you will be judged -- the microbial safety of your product will be judged based on…
mikethemadbiologist | November 20, 2006
This week, Democratic Senator Carl Levin proposed that the U.S. begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in four to six months. Granted this is vastly superior to the Bush 'plan' which seems to be 'change absolutely nothing 'cuz it's worked damn well so far.' But I have a question: why wait four to six months?
I'm leaving town for Thanksgiving, and as always, I'm running around, trying to finish things up, and do all those stupid little things you have to do before you go away for a while. It seems to me that's what that four to six months is for. Unfortunately, I haven't heard what exactly…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2006Actually, the post title is unfair: Romney is quite capable of screwing over thousands of people at once. In order to further his Republican presidential bonafides by cutting spending, any spending, MA Governor Mitt Romney playing bookkeeping games so he could declare a fiscal state of emergency and unilaterally cut budget items.
During the 2006 election, what with all the fuss about Republican Sen. George "Macacawitz" Allen, I never got around to describing what first tipped me off to his being a complete asshole. When Allen was governor of VA, he vetoed all spending for Meals on Wheels…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006Matt Taibbi on politics in the era of television:
The thing that people should be concerned about isn't that the news networks are choosing to cover politics like a football game. It's the idea that both televised football games and televised politics might represent some idealized form of commercial television drama that both sports and politics evolved in the direction of organically, under the constant financial pressure brought to bear by TV advertisers. Both politics and sports turned into this shit because this format happens to sell the most Cheerios, regardless of what the content is…
mikethemadbiologist | November 10, 2006Both the establishment centrists and the grassroots within the Democratic party are claiming the 2006 victory as their own. But what's really terrifying is that the group which pushed the Democrats over the top probably were the utterly clueless and indesicive voters. From CNN, comes this exit poll:
WHEN DID YOU DECIDE YOUR HOUSE VOTE?
TOTAL Democrat Republican
Today (10%) 61% 36%
Last Three Days (9%) 51% 47%
Last Week (9%) 52% 47%
Last Month (21%) 54% 44%
Before Then (50%) 54…
mikethemadbiologist | November 6, 2006...because the only things they have left are voter intimidation and cheap tricks. As described by fellow ScienceBloglings coturnix and Josh, the Republicans are calling Democratic voters and either informing them that their polling place has changed or that they will be arrested if they vote illegally (the voters are accused of being out of state residents). These 'robocallers' are usually impersonating Democratic campaigns or election officials, the latter being a crime. The Republican crime wave has hit the following states:
Pennsylvania
Kansas
New Hampshire
New York
Connecticut
New…
mikethemadbiologist | November 5, 2006There is absolutely nothing the Republicans won't politicize. Now, they have launched the War on Vaccination. For a decade, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a foundation dedicated to improving public health, particularly among the poor and the elderly, has funded a "Vote and Vax" program at early voting facilities that serve poor neighborhoods in 24 cities. Basically, if you're over 50, you can get a vaccination at the polling location.
Thursday, in Houston, the Republicans filed a lawsuit to stop this program.
Nevermind that the program has been running for ten years. When the program…
mikethemadbiologist | November 2, 2006Or for those of you who like more risque post titles, "Beware of the Reach Around." From the Brad Blog by way of Shakespeare's Sister:
It seems there's a little yellow button on the back of every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into "Manual Mode" allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.
Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2006While I don't think arguing for or against religious particulars is something any political party should adopt a few days before an election (or should be a political issue at all, for that matter), PZ is absolutely right when he says that Robertson and his ilk should be called out for the foolish bigots that they are. We wouldn't tolerate racially-based hatred (Got Macaca?), so why should we tolerate 'faith-based' hatred? O'Donnell was doing what was needed: staking out the flank.
If politicians won't do anything while El Jefe Maximo wipes his ass with the First, Fourth, Fifth Amendment,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2006Billmon has a superb post on the failures of journalism due to Compulsive Centrist Disorder:
But no one in the corporate media, to my knowledge, has even come close to putting an accurate lead on the story -- which would look something like this:
Faced with the likely loss of one if not both houses of Congress, the Republican Party has embarked on a massive, last-ditch effort to smear Democratic challengers in competitive districts across the country.
The resulting campaign has completely demolished whatever minor restraints remained on the use of lies and distortions in political attack ads…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2006From Billmon, comes this little factoid hidden in the latest Gallup poll:
That's right, 14% of Americans think the Republicans are too liberal. That's one in seven. This explains a lot of things...
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2006Did you ever think in 1999 that Congress would pass a bill, and that a President would sign a bill that eliminates habeas corpus at the whim of the president? I sure as hell didn't. This is why the utter warping of our political system by the mindless Christopath Uruk-hai, the anti-gay bigots, and the blastula liberationists is so devastating: because it allows other forms of extremism such as the Federalist Society and those who believe in the 'unitary executive' to flourish unchecked.
From Keith Olbermann:
OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping…