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Given that I'm in a kind of cranky mood, I might devote the next few posts to demonstrating the complete lack of intellectual integrity at the Discovery Institute. And, trust me, it won't be hard to do that. How about a single example to whet your appetite?
On this page, the DI folks want to draw your attention to the poor, martyred proponents of Intelligent Design who have been so shabbily treated by, well, people who actually know science. Consider this alleged example:
Chemistry professor Nancy Bryson lost her job at a state university after she gave a lecture on scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory to a group of honors students.
Wow, that sounds like a pretty severe punishment. What a shame it's total bullshit. Quick, Boy Wonder, to the videotape, where we find the transcript of Bryson's testimony at the recent Kansas evolution hearings. First, let's set the stage with an explanation of Bryson's academic position:
Q. And what was your position at Mississippi University then?
A. I was the head of the Division of Science and Mathematics.
OK, fair enough, she was not only an associate professor there, she was the head of that department. So ... what was the upshot of her presentation on ID? Once again, to the videotape:
Q. What happened the next day?
A. The next day was a Friday, and about five o'clock that afternoon I was in my office and my boss, the vice president of Academic Affairs came in and told me that I would not be serving as division head the next year. And he suggested that - he did not say directly - that I might not be on the campus at all the next year.
Q. Did he explain why?
A. He did not. And I asked repeatedly why he made this decision at this time. I never heard anything like that. And he just simply didn't answer. He said, "Well, I'm not required to give you any sort of an answer."
Oooooh ... that's not quite the same thing, is it? Bryson did not "lose her job" -- rather, she was told that she would not be re-appointed to the position of head of that department. And there was no mention of her being fired outright from her position as a professor. So (unless there are subsequent developments that I haven't noticed), the DI's claim is an outright lie. But wait -- it gets so much better during the cross-examination, where we learn that Bryson is a complete scientific illiterate:
Q. I have a few questions for you that I'd like to place on the record first, please. The first thing I'd like to ask you is what is your personal opinion as to what the age of the world is?
A. I'm undecided.
Q. What is your best guess?
A. I'm totally undecided.
Q. Give me your best range.
A. Anywhere from 4.5 billion years to ten thousand years.
Q. And, of course, you have reached that conclusion based on the best scientific evidence available?
A. Yes.
Delightful, isn't it? You have the former head of the Division of Science and Mathematics, unable to venture even a remote guess as to the age of the earth, despite the overwhelming evidence for its antiquity. To which one can justifiably respond, why was this moron hired in the first place? And why wasn't she truly fired much sooner?
AFTERSNARK: There's so much more to be said about this incident so why stop now? Recall that the claim from the DI was that Bryson "lost her job." I've already pointed out how this is an exaggeration but, hey, let's not take my word for it. How about this news report:
The day after Bryson spoke at the forum, MUW Vice President for Academic Affairs Vagn Hansen asked her to resign as head of science and mathematics but didn't give a reason.
Ooooooooh ... how about that? Again, Bryson wasn't "fired" from her job; rather, she was "asked" to resign as the head of that department. Yes, there's a significant difference, especially if you bother to read the very first paragraph of that article:
A Mississippi University for Women educator who believed she was removed as a division head after voicing alternative views on evolution is back at her post.
Well, isn't that special? Whatever happened in the early stages of this brouhaha, Bryson was in fact re-instated. And wouldn't it have served the truth for the DI to have mentioned that little detail in their dishonest little claim? But it gets so much better, oh, yes, it does.
Review once again the DI's claim that "Nancy Bryson lost her job at a state university after she gave a lecture on scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory to a group of honors students." This strongly suggests that she was fired simply for giving the lecture. As in, just for being fair, open-minded, wanting to present both sides of the argument, "teaching the controversy" and so on.
But let's again look at Bryson's testimony from the Kansas trial (emphasis added):
Q. Do you accept the general principle of common descent, that all of life was biologically related to the beginning of life, yes or no?
A. No.
Q. Do you accept that human beings are related by common descent to prehominid ancestors, yes or no?
A. No.
Q. What is your alternative explanation for how the human species came into being if not from a common descent from prehominids?
A. From science, I have no alternative explanation.
Q. In your personal opinion?
A. In my personal opinion, I believe there was an intelligent designer.
Q. And when did that intelligent designer create the human species?
A. I'm not sure.
Q. Now, that opinion that you have about intelligent design, that's not based on science, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. That's based upon your theistic views?
A. Correct.
Q. And you would agree with me that religion has no place in science?
A. Yes.
Q. And you would agree with me that in a science curriculum religion should not be included, correct?
A. Correct.
Make sure you appreciate what just happened here: Bryson, the former head of a math and science department, has just testified that she does not accept biological evolution. At all. If you think about it, it's quite possible that this is what got her removed from her position as head. While we can't know for sure, it's possible that Bryson wasn't just presenting both sides of the argument.
Rather, she may have very publicly expressed just these sentiments -- that she rejects biological evolution, the very underpinning of all of biology. In what reasonable sense can someone who dismisses biological evolution maintain the right to be the head of any half-assed science department at an American university? Puhleeze. But just when you think it can't get worse, of course it does.
Remember Bryson's earlier testimony?
Q. I have a few questions for you that I'd like to place on the record first, please. The first thing I'd like to ask you is what is your personal opinion as to what the age of the world is?
A. I'm undecided.
Q. What is your best guess?
A. I'm totally undecided.
Q. Give me your best range.
A. Anywhere from 4.5 billion years to ten thousand years.
Q. And, of course, you have reached that conclusion based on the best scientific evidence available?
A. Yes.
So, having established that Bryson is a total idiot when it comes to biological evolution, she then makes it clear that she's just as much of a moron with respect to geology and physics, the foundations for geological dating techniques. How in God's name can someone that fucking stupid think she's qualified to head a science department?
(It's a shame the cross-examiner didn't ask Bryson her opinion of the age of the universe, since we might now have on the record that Bryson also wholeheartedly rejects modern astronomy and cosmology. Pity.)
Seriously, it's a shame that MUW buckled and gave Bryson that headship back. With her unspeakable ignorance of basic scientific knowledge, she should not only have been terminated on the spot, but her alma mater should have started proceedings to revoke all of her degrees.
In short, Nancy Bryson is exactly the kind of academic who qualifies for PZ Myers' suggestion that some teachers should be publicly fired and humiliated for their stupidity. In Bryson's case, the firing would have been adequate. She had already sufficiently humiliated herself.
Oh, and the folks at the Discovery Institute are lying sacks of weasel crap. That, too.
DOUBLE PLUS AFTERSNARK: You know, Bryson's Kansas testimony really is the gift that keeps on giving. It just occurred to me what the cross-examiner could have done with this gem:
Q. I have a few questions for you that I'd like to place on the record first, please. The first thing I'd like to ask you is what is your personal opinion as to what the age of the world is?
A. I'm undecided.
Q. What is your best guess?
A. I'm totally undecided.
Q. Give me your best range.
A. Anywhere from 4.5 billion years to ten thousand years.
Q. And, of course, you have reached that conclusion based on the best scientific evidence available?
A. Yes.
Now, from where would Bryson have got those two limits on her age range for the earth? Well, that larger value is clearly the age accepted by mainstream science so she would have had no trouble defending that value scientifically.
But that smaller value? That value is so obviously the upper bound used by the strict scientific creationists. Why didn't the examiner ask her where that value came from, and how she defended it, as she claimed, "based on the best scientific evidence available"? What a glorious lost opportunity. Damn.
In the end, it's not a scandal that the university tried to remove Bryson from her position as division head. It's a scandal that someone that ignorant was ever hired in the first place.
AND THERE'S MORE: It's hard to believe you can keep teasing stupidity out of the same short exchange, but it's amusing how Bryson claims she is "totally" undecided on the age of the earth yet, in her very next sentence, she has somehow decided that she can at least put a bound on it.
Again, via PZ at Pharyngula, we have this delightful smackdown of ID. It's really quite entertaining to see the stunning difference in intellect between real scientists and those dingbats at "Ignorant Fundy Wankers 'r' Us."
Do not ask me how I happened across this. Just enjoy it.
Over at ProgressiveBloggers.ca, Scott is (to some extent justifiably) miffed that the Canadian wankersphere has started their own blog awards, thus taking the concept of a hermetically-sealed circle jerk to heretofore unprecedented heights.
How seriously you need to take those awards can be summed up in this single nomination in the comments section here:
Best Blog run by member of MSM: www.michellemalkin.com
Get over it and move on, folks. Nothing to see here, just wankers being wankers.
PZ over at Pharyngula describes a new meme in which one googles for the phrase "(my name) needs" to see just what it is that one needs, according to the Internets.
OK, so let's see what "canadian cynic needs". Oh, my. Take that, PZ.
(The first in a number of ID-related postings.)
One of the major right-wing arguments in favour of teaching Intelligent Design (or, as those of us with functioning brain stems like to call it, "Pig Ignorant Fundamentalist Swill") is that so many of the general public have said that that's what they want, as in here from back in 2002:
In fact, intelligent-design theorists have popular opinion on their side. Americans seem to overwhelmingly reject the Darwinian view of evolution, despite its scientific hegemony. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 45 percent of respondents said they believed in the biblical view that God "created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years."
An additional 37 percent believe that "humans have developed over millions of years from less-advanced forms of life, but God guided this process." A mere 12 percent believe that God has nothing to do with it.
You see, say the promoters of Pig Ignorant ... uh, Intelligent Design? The majority wants it and that should settle the issue. Sadly, there are two fundamental flaws with this argument.
The first is that scientific fact doesn't give a rat's behind about popular vote. Science is not a democracy and never has been. If you don't understand this, then think about applying the principle of majority rule to other aspects of nature.
The next time a hurricane is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, let the citizens hold a referendum and vote that the storm doesn't make landfall and plant their house somewhere in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. I'm sure the storm will care about the result of that vote.
Let the public get together and vote that global warming doesn't exist or that the avian flu isn't a looming health hazard, and see just what difference that makes. Are you starting to get the point? Science is not a democracy and, more to the point, science doesn't care how breathtakingly stupid you are. Regardless of what you think, global warming is still happening, the avian flu is a potential disaster in the making and evolution happened. Deal with it. All of it. But that's not all.
For people who keep pushing the idea of a majority deciding what to teach in public school science classes, those same folks can be thoroughly hypocritical when they're on the wrong side of the vote. Like when the Discovery Institute (or, as we who understand science like to call it, "Anti-Intellectualls 'r' Us") brags about the growing collection of "scientists" who now support ID -- all 400+ of them:
More than 400 scientists have signed onto a growing list from all disciplines who are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”
Whoo hoo! 400+ "scientists". With more on the way, perhaps even dozens! But, gosh, I'm willing to bet that, if you were to hold a vote among mainstream, actual working and competent scientists in the community, you'd easily get, say, 4,000 signatures that feel exactly the opposite. Maybe even 40,000. Probably more.
So, using their own logic against them, one can dismiss the yapping of ID supporters by pointing out that, if they really want to put this to a vote, then the only vote that counts ends up with their being taken out the woodshed and thoroughly thrashed. Just the way it should be.
Gee, even CNN can recognize hypocrisy when you club them over the head with it:
Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said on ABC last week that there was "a good chance" he would vote against Miers if she said that Roe v. Wade was "settled law."
But on CBS' "Face the Nation," he complained about the "litmus test on the left" that draws filibusters "if you don't support Roe, if you don't support abortion rights."
Nice catch, CNN. Good doggie.
... I gotta get me one of these. (The scarf, that is. Get your mind out of there right now.)
It's amusing when the lower forms of life over in Wankerville go into full attack poodle mode:
Another liberal media lie exposed:
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has denied an account by another Palestinian official of a meeting with US President George Bush in which Bush is cited as saying he believed that God told him to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A statement in Abbas's name released by his office said an excerpt from an interview with Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath due to be broadcast by the BBC in which Shaath described a meeting with Bush in June 2003 gave a "completely false" account.
Yeah, who could possibly imagine Commander Chimpy ever claiming that he was a personal conduit to the infinite wisdom of the Lord? Well, maybe these rabble-rousing, leftists over at FreeRepublic:
At the end of the session, Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’
Once is no big deal. Twice? Well, that's starting to be a pattern, isn't it?
Yes, other folks have mentioned it but it's enlightening to appreciate the differences here. First, we have a recollection of the more than ten months spent combing the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
For the workers at the Fresh Kills landfill who sifted through 1.62 million tons of rubble from the World Trade Center for remains of those killed on Sept. 11 and for clues about those responsible for the attack, the official end of their job yesterday seemed a sad graduation of sorts.
Politicians joined them, along with the family members of some of the victims, for a solemn ceremony at the landfill in Staten Island at the completion of an operation that had continued nearly nonstop since Sept. 12...
... That is left to the workers who came to this place, day after day, at their peak sorting through 7,000 tons of debris every 24 hours.
And if you're poor and black? Well, no round-the-clock, methodical sifting for you:
Five weeks after Katrina, New Orleans is calling off the house-to-house search for bodies. Teams have pulled 964 corpses from storm- ravaged areas across southeastern Louisiana. Authorities admit more bodies are probably out there. They'll be handled on a case-by-case basis. The count is far short of the 10,000 dead once predicted by New Orleans mayor. As of today, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at just under 1,200.
Searchers and residents insist there are still plenty of dead to find in New Orleans. Once again, they say the Ninth Ward is being ignored because it is poor and black.
At this point, you can't even work up the outrage anymore, can you?
Oh, man, this is getting just delightful:
The White House's handling of a potentially crucial e-mail sent by senior aide Karl Rove two years ago set off a chain of events that has led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to summon Rove for a fourth grand jury appearance this week. His return has created heightened concern among White House officials and their allies that Fitzgerald may be preparing to bring indictments when a federal grand jury that has been investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity expires at the end of October.
Oh, please, please, please. Maybe there is a God after all.
There's an old joke that a man asks a woman if she'll sleep with him for a million dollars. For sure, she gushes. Would she sleep with him for ten bucks then? Heck, no, she sputters, what kind of woman does he think she is?
"Madam," he replies, "we've already established what kind of woman you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
The point here is that that bit of dialogue was just trying to establish the line of demarcation -- what, in the woman's mind, represented that magic monetary value that suddenly crossed over into prostitution.
We can use that lesson in a number of places, such as with the unhappy rumblings from various quarters that Commander Chimpy's nomination of his personal counsel Harriet Miers represents nothing less than naked "cronyism." Sadly, such accusations are cavalierly dismissed by White House Press Lizard Scott McClellan, who will wave off even the most egregious sins with something like, "Well, I don't agree with your characterization, we think Ms. Miers is wonderfully qualified, ... blah blah blah ...". Which is, of course, avoiding the issue entirely.
The problem is that that same White House Press Corps(e) who try to pin Scottie down on this are all asking the wrong question. What they need to do is first ask if this administration even recognizes the basic concept of "cronyism," then take it from there. How about a question along the lines of:
"Scott, there have been a number of suggestions that the Miers nomination is nothing but 'cronyism' by this administration and this president. So I'd like to ask, does this administration even recognize the basic concept of cronyism and, if so, can you explain what constitutes cronyism and how the Miers nomination doesn't qualify?"
Now, what's going on in that question? Lots of stuff.
First, it asks a very relevant question -- does McClellan, or Bush, or the administration, even acknowledge the very existence of the concept of cronyism? Note that this is most assuredly not a hypothetical question so Scottie can't blow it off with that tired dodge. How could McClellan answer?
Could he possibly say "no"? I don't think that would work. In the first place, he'd be crucified by those reporters, who would have a field day with the admission that the Bushista junta doesn't believe that cronyism even exists. And it would be fairly easy, I think, to find numerous examples of Republicans accusing, say, the Clinton administration of it to prove that, yes, members of the GOP know exactly what it is. Ergo, I'm pretty sure McClellan couldn't take this approach.
However, if he admitted that, yes, there is such a thing as cronyism, he's walked into a trap. Once he admits that such a concept exists, he's kind of obligated to define what he means by it. And regardless of what definition he comes up with, he'd be hard-pressed to explain how the Miers nomination doesn't constitute an obvious example of that.
See how that works? If you ask whether something is "cronyism," you'll just be told "no" and that will be the end of it. So you have to word the question differently, something along the lines of "Can you explain how that doesn't represent an example of cronyism?" I think that's a much tougher question to avoid.
More along these lines shortly.
Well, this is an interesting development:
The Bush administration's choice for deputy attorney general has withdrawn his nomination amid mounting questions from Senate Democrats over his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and over his role in shaping controversial interrogation policies.
So much for Bush's "mandate" to do whatever the hell he wanted, including nominate completely incompetent, brazenly criminal cronies to positions of power. Could this be a portent of Harriet Miers taking a walk as well? It's not like there's a real parallel here but, who knows?
And I like this part of the article:
Many of the committee's Democrats had accused Flanigan of dodging questions and said his withdrawal should not be used to close off further inquiries.
"While Mr. Flanigan's nomination has been withdrawn, troubling questions remain about the Bush administration's torture policies and Abramoff's dealings with the administration and the Republican leadership of Congress," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).
Oooooh ... just walking away from the nomination doesn't mean Flanigan's in the clear. Apparently, there are some seriously pissed Democrats who don't want to let him go. Good Dems. Have a biscuit.
Cue America's Dumbest Wanker™, pompously pronouncing how this is all just a witch hunt, partisan politics and those fine conservatives should be viewed as innocent until proven guilty. And besides, it's all Clinton's fault, anyway. Or something.
No, it's not this part I find so attention-grabbing:
A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history.
No, it's this part:
On Friday, President Bush invited the leaders of the nation's top six vaccine producers to the White House to cajole them into increasing their domestic vaccine capacity, and the flu plan demonstrates just how monumental a task these companies have before them.
Sure, George, I bet they'd be delighted to sacrifice the vaccine production for their own citizens for the sake of Americans. You can use all that international good will you've built up to make a case. Go for it. Let me know how it turns out.
OOPS, MEA CULPA: Commenter "aweb" is right -- I totally pooched my reading of that paragraph above, interpreting it as "the top six vaccine-producing nations." Ack. I think I was mentally melding that information with what you can read here,
The United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and other countries are taking the threat seriously enough to make H5N1 vaccines and stockpile millions of doses of anti-viral drugs.
I'd read that paragraph just above and it was still in the back of my mind. My mistake. See, children? That's why you should never drink and blog. Apologies all around.
Linking through Matthew Good, we have a depressing piece in the Daily Mirror, which asks you to ponder things like this:
America, which has the world's costliest health care, had, it turned out, higher infant mortality rates than the broke and despised Cuba.
You're just noticing that now? Remember, Cuba offered to send 1500 doctors to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Couldn't have that, could we?
Tom De Lay, Republican enforcer in the House of Representatives, was indicted for conspiracy and money laundering. The leader of the Republicans in the Senate was under investigation for his stock dealings. And Osama bin Laden was still on the loose.
Well, sure, Osama's still out there. But Bush's crack team of military experts did catch his number three man. For the twenty-seventh time, if my arithmetic doesn't fail me.
The war costs $6billion a month, driving up a nose-bleed high $331billion budget deficit. In five years the conflict will have cost each American family $11,300, it is said.
Enjoy those vaunted tax cuts while you can, folks. That piper's going to need paying real soon now. And then there's this gem:
Mr Bush says blithely he'll cut existing programs to pay for the war and fund an estimated $200billion for hurricane damage. He won't, he says, rescind his tax cuts. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says Mr Bush is "disconnected from reality"
No. Shit.
First, we set the stage with the really bad news:
A global wave of death and disease may be gathering in Asia, and America’s only defense is 2.3 million doses of anti-influenza medication.
Although a flu pandemic is impossible to predict, the avian influenza virus festering in several Asian countries shows ominous warning signs, doctors, epidemiologists and other experts warn.
"Many people are worried about a pandemic and we would not have immunity. This is one of those situations in which it’s better to be safe than sorry," said Dr. Michael H. Merson, professor of public health and former dean of epidemiology and public health at the Yale School of Medicine.
"The bird flu has all the potential of an epidemic," he said.
The H5N1 avian strain has not been seen in 150 years, meaning no one has any residual resistance.
And the virus kills seven out of 10 people who become infected.
OK, now that I have your attention, let's verify that George "Only the Republican Party Can Keep You Safe" Bush is all over this, like Jonah Goldberg on a box of Krispy Kremes:
The United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and other countries are taking the threat seriously enough to make H5N1 vaccines and stockpile millions of doses of anti-viral drugs.
Unlike the catastrophic "Spanish flu" that killed 20 million people worldwide in 1918-19, "we’re getting a warning with this one," Merson said.
"We need to respond with all we have," he said.
All the United States has is an experimental H5N1 vaccine that was scheduled to start clinical testing this month and 2 million doses of anti-viral drugs.
Britain, in contrast, has procured 15 million doses, enough to treat about a quarter of its population.
Guess not. So what's his plan. He has a plan, right? Ah, here's his plan:
President Bush says the possibility of an avian flu pandemic is among the reasons he wants Congress to give him the power to use the nation's military in law enforcement roles in the United States...
"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."
And -- surprise, surprise -- it turns out to be a stupid idea:
A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law...
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil.
But Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press the president's suggestion was dangerous.
Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.
Your Commander Chimpy -- totally behind the curve yet again on issues of life-and-death public safety. But able to muster a "Ban gay marriage" rapid response team at a second's notice.
Cue boneheaded, right-wing wankers blaming it all on Clinton.
"Yeah, yeah, I know that George W. Bush is an immature, illiterate, inarticulate, party animal, cocaine-snorting, alcoholic who walked away from his military service, failed at every business venture he ever tried and lied his face off about every single thing related to 9/11, Iraq, Saddam Hussein and WMDs. But that John Kerry's such a flip-flopper, I just couldn't vote for him."
OK, what's fucked up with this picture? There's this:
The U.S. Senate voted Friday to give U.S. President George W. Bush $50-billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. military efforts against terrorism, money that would push total spending for the operations beyond $350-billion.
Then there's this:
And so it went on the floor of the United States Senate last Friday as those perennially heartless – but almost always smiling – Senate Republicans voted to gut the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) program...
By a vote of 53-39 and without a single Republican voting in favor, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin's CSBG-related amendment to a continuing resolution (to fund the government for the next seven weeks) was shot down on the Senate floor.
And how much money are we talking about?
Without Senate approval of Harkin's amendment, the House-passed bill for 2006 reduces CSBG spending to $320 million, half the $637 million level approved for 2005.
$320 million. That's less than one per cent of what was approved for war. Take the time to let that soak in.
CNN anchor Daryn Kagan's career is, like, so totally over:
On the October 6 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh read a "note" that, he said, came from his "mistress in Georgia," an apparent reference to CNN anchor Daryn Kagan.
I'm pretty sure that, even at CNN, it's not good for your career for viewers to be reminded that you're bonking an overweight, racist OxyContin addict and sleazebag. Now, Fox News ... that would be different.
UPDATE: Uh oh ... apparently, CNN's nose is a bit out of joint over that report:
Daryn Kagan did not send any notes to anyone about President Bush's speech yesterday. The item is factually incorrect. Whatever reference was made was apparently about somebody else.
You should know Rush Limbaugh has an ongoing bit referring to certain women emailing him as his mistresses. Whatever reference was made was certainly not about Daryn.
Ah, so when Rush refers to his "mistress," it doesn't necessarily mean the one he's porking at the moment. Yeah, I can see how that would put Daryn's mind at ease.
This is the kind of thing that makes you nostalgic for the late 90s, when the United States had a president that didn't sound like a mentally retarded chimpanzee on Valium.
FLASHBACK: As much of a drunken imbecile as Bush sounds these days, I doubt anything will ever again measure up the standard of his "tribal sovereignty" debacle. Definitely one for the ages.
(There's a pretty amusing followup here. Note how the Rev. Jesse Jackson shows himself to be about an order of magnitude smarter than Commander Chimpy. Not to mention just plain funnier.)
Shocked, shocked I am, at this latest development:
According to sources involved in the Judith Miller case, lawyers for Miller have turned over an additional, previously unreported batch of notes on the New York Times reporter's conversations with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The notes, a source said, could significantly change the time frame of Miller's involvement with Libby...
The existence of the additional notes may be behind the Times' report today that Fitzgerald may call Miller back for additional testimony October 11.
Please send her back to jail. Please, please, please. I don't care if there's no legal rationale for it anymore. It would just be so ... right.
Too lazy to write something original at the moment so I'll once again point readers at TBogg, in which he subjects one of Weasel Boy's intellectual mentors, Jay Tea over at WizBangBlog, to the merciless ridicule he so richly deserves.
Savour the thought that there are some folks for whom Jay Tea is actually a role model. Damn, I think I just wet myself.
And you can shut the hell up about that freakin' "mandate" any time now.
Shorter Weasel Boy: "Shut up!", he explained.
AFTERSNARK: No, WB, you can do better. "Hey, Mom, when I grow up, I wanna be just like Jonah Goldberg. Well, minus the gutless cowardice and the power to repel women."
First, America expressed its outrage with the fact that Spain was clearly appeasing the terrorists with the results of their election. On top of that, we have the American fury with Spain's approval of gay marriages.
But never turn your back on those sneaky foreigners, they know how to deal with criticism and get even when you least expect it. For instance, like this:
Four-time Vuelta a España winner [and Spaniard] Roberto Heras has put the golden bicycle he used for his triumphant ride into Madrid this year up for auction on eBay's Spanish web site with hopes of raising money to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S.
That sneaky, sneaky foreigner. Bastards, the lot of them.
Hahahahahahahaha!
None of Dallas’ gay City Council members served at the same time as Miers. But they all said they have met her and respect her abilities and accomplishments. All said they would be comfortable with her appointment to the Supreme Court.
Chris Luna, a Dallas attorney, worked with Miers more closely than any of the other gay council members. She chaired the city’s Judicial Nominating Commission when he was a council member, Luna said..
“She is judicious, she listens to people, gets all of the facts, doesn’t jump to conclusions. Then she makes a decision,” he said.
Oh, man. Judicious. A listener. A fact finder. And not a hateful, homophobic bigot. A conservative's worst nightmare.
BONUS TRACK: Oh, yes, that first commenter was definitely on to something.
It's hard to choose the stupidest claim in this op-ed piece by the aforementioned Charles Krauthammer, given the stunning variety of them to pick from. But I think this one deserves special recognition, if only for its breathtaking idiocy:
But constitutional jurisprudence is different. It is, by definition, an exercise of intellect steeped in scholarship. Otherwise it is nothing but raw politics. And is it not the conservative complaint that liberals have abused the courts by having them exercise raw super-legislative power, the most egregious example of which is the court's most intellectually bankrupt ruling, Roe v. Wade ?
I'm sorry ... the court's most "intellectually bankrupt" ruling is Roe v. Wade? Apparently, poor Charles has forgotten all about 2000's Bush v. Gore. That pretty much defined "raw politics," didn't it?
I have to admit, I'm sort of transfixed by the ongoing Harriet Miers debacle, the same way you just can't tear your eyes away from a horrific train wreck.
More and more folks are now suggesting that the only way out of this swamp for the Bush administration is for Miers to (apparently) withdraw her nomination. A week ago, that would have seemed unthinkable. Now ... who knows?
In light of all these breaking developments, I'm throwing out three questions:
- Do you think Miers will actually withdraw her nomination? (I'm not even going to quibble about whether it would be her own choice, or whether she would have been convinced behind the scenes. I'm just asking if you think it will happen.)
- If she withdraws her nomination, how will this be spun by the administration to not look like a total embarrassment for them?
- If the nomination is withdrawn and you were a member of the White House Press Corps, what scathing, insightful question would you have for Press Secretary Scott McClellan in terms of trying to get him to explain what happened?
The floor is open. (I'll have my own thoughts on this later.)
Charles Krauthammer's op-ed piece in today's WaPo contains this unintentionally hilarious excerpt:
There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous.
Gee, I'm betting the wankerhood never had any such reservations when former president George H. W. Bush overlooked numerous qualified candidates and nominated a completely unknown, unaccomplished, third-tier judge named Clarence Thomas to that same Supreme Court.
It's kind of late for Krauthammer's kind of outrage, no?
On the one hand:
Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog agency he heads, won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Peace today.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called ElBaradei "an unafraid advocate" for nuclear nonproliferation "at a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing."
ElBaradei, whose ouster was sought by the Bush administration led by controversial United Nations appointee John Bolton, is a longstanding critic of the president's decision to go to war in Iraq.
On the other hand (as we pointed out eariler):
President George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has reached the lowest ever measured in this poll, and evaluations of his handling of Iraq, the economy and even his signature issue, terrorism, are also at all-time lows.
I guess you really can't fool all of the people all of the time, can you?
Can the Republican party just stop wasting everyone's time pretending they give a fuck about poor people?
GOP Senators Cut Critical Aid To Children, Poor, Elderly
And so it went on the floor of the United States Senate last Friday as those perennially heartless – but almost always smiling – Senate Republicans voted to gut the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) program...
Bush signed the legislation without the critical amendment by Harkin, that would have kept funding stable for the CSBG program, which provides money to states to help low-income people with essential living expenses such as housing, food and heating costs.
Every Democrat on the floor – along with Independent Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont -- voted for the amendment while every Republican lined up behind George W. Bush and voted against it...
In totally unrelated (and old) news:
The value of Halliburton's Iraq contracts has crossed the $10 billion threshold. Halliburton has now received $8.3 billion in Iraq work under its LOGCAP troop support contract and $2.5 billion under its no-bid Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract, a total of $10.8 billion.
Nice to see not everyone's suffering under that administration.
I am not making this up:
Islamic extremists seek to "enslave whole nations" in a bid for global domination, U.S. President George W. Bush warned yesterday, explicitly raising the ghosts of Hitler and Stalin, as well as Soviet communism's nuclear arsenal, capable of extinguishing human civilization.
"The civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history -- from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot -- consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.
"Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply," Mr. Bush told a receptive audience at the National Endowment for Democracy, a mostly government-funded organization working to sow Western-style democracy around the world.
At which point several members of the audience spontaneously exploded from cynical disbelief.
Hmmmm ... apparently the American public is finally stirring into consciousness:
President George W. Bush's overall job approval rating has reached the lowest ever measured in this poll, and evaluations of his handling of Iraq, the economy and even his signature issue, terrorism, are also at all-time lows.
And why else might Commander Chimpy be so unpopular? Well, it could be that he's clinically insane:
US president George Bush has said that he was instructed by God to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new BBC series.
Or maybe it was just the cocaine talking.
You know, this is starting to get creepy. As in, a "Fatal Attraction" kind of creepy, when I recently referred to a new site for the first time and, lo and behold, who does one find shortly afterwards taking a steaming dump in the comments section but Weasel Boy himself:
Also, what's predictable about the left's response to the [Tom DeLay] indictment is that they are treating it as if it were an iron-clad conviction.
Actually, he has a point. It has to be the epitome of sleazy, classless hypocrisy to pre-judge someone who just might turn out to be totally innocent. What a relief that Weasel Boy's colleagues in the wankersphere would never stoop so low.
AFTERSNARK: About that whole Tom DeLay "Innocent until proven guilty" pile of manure ...
My, but it's been a while since the last puzzle so here's something to keep you occupied. You're travelling down a road in a foreign land, trying to reach the capital city and all you know is that, at some point, you're going to come to a fork in the road and the capital lies down one of those two forks but you have no idea which one.
In addition, you know that the land is occupied by two tribes -- one which always lies and one which always tells the truth. You also know that you can tell them apart since they dress very differently but you have no idea which clothing style matches which tribe.
Eventually, you come to that fork in the road and, lo and behold, there are two natives there just hanging out and dressed differently, so you know one is a liar and the other is a truth-teller -- you just have no idea which one is which.
By asking just a single yes-or-no question of only one of the natives, figure out which fork leads to the capital.
Comments section open for solutions Friday, Oct 7, 6 pm Eastern Time.
Apparently, my humble site is still getting the occasional hit from the intellectual sinkhole that is thepolitic.com, specifically from this article, "Who can denigrate New Orleans more?" where, according to the collective wankerhood over there, yours truly took the early lead.
Well, if that contest is still accepting submissions, let me suggest whoever decided to just stop looking for bodies in that city. How about that, guys? Is that "denigrating" enough for you?
Wankers.
Um ... say what?
The United States must be prepared to fight the war on terror for decades to bring peace to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday.
All of the previous statements are now inoperative. Black is white. Up is down. Have a nice day.
Say, about those Geneva Conventions: As some of you may be aware, Article 118 of the Geneva Conventions reads: "Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities."
But what does this mean when you're involved in a totally unofficial, nebulous, open-ended War on Terror™ that you've just admitted will most likely go on for decades? It would seem to mean that current detainees could conceivably be imprisoned for just that long.
What a cute trick -- quote the Geneva Conventions with respect to repatriation and the end of hostilities, then just never declare the hostilities ended. Somehow, that this administration would do something like this is so depressingly predictable.
Apparently, Bush's religious "base" is some kind of pissed off regarding the Miers Supreme Court nomination. See, George, this is what you get when you base your "mandate" on the reliable support of a bunch of sleazy, unprincipled, hypocritical, power-mad religious hacks.
And, yes, that was the punchline.
Picking up where we left off in Part 1 (below), we have America's Dumbest Wanker™ demonstrating that, for a rabid Christian, he knows virtually nothing about Christianity as he appears to take the position that there can't possibly be anything resembling an internal contradiction anywhere in Holy Scripture. According to Weasel Boy:
Ah, yes. The old "two different versions of Creation" canard that skeptics love. I won't go into detail here (esp. since others have done so elsewhere online), but the short-short explanation is that Genesis 1 contains a detailed account of the whole Creation while Genesis 2 concentrates on the creation of man.
The above refers to the painfully obvious observation that there are two accounts of creation in Genesis, and they contradict one another -- we shall return to this shortly.
Generally, the devout who disagree with the above take great umbrage with the thought that there could be anything resembling mistakes or contradictions in the Bible such as, say, these, from which we can pick some real Biblical howlers.
As a start, how many animals were taken on the Ark?
GEN 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
GEN 7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, GEN 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
Apparently, God has trouble counting to seven. Bummer, that. Or how many stalls did Solomon have for his horses?
CH2 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.
KI1 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
Darn. Poor God -- still the mathematical imbecile. Or one of my favourites, in which Christians are never quite sure whether they should strive to be intellectuals or not:
PRO 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
ECC 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
1 Cor.1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
Man, there's a conundrum, isn't there? To be or not to be a moron. Tough choice. But returning to WB's original carping about the creation stories in Genesis:
The old "two different versions of Creation" canard that skeptics love. I won't go into detail here (esp. since others have done so elsewhere online), but the short-short explanation is that Genesis 1 contains a detailed account of the whole Creation while Genesis 2 concentrates on the creation of man.
Once again, WB is so full of crap, it's a wonder he doesn't explode. It's well known by Biblical scholars (which WB most assuredly is not) that there are two distinct creation stories in Genesis, as you can read here. The first account begins with Genesis 1:1 and ends at Genesis 2:3. Then, for no apparent reason, God felt the need to repeat himself and started all over again with Genesis 2:4, changing the details in pretty significant ways and now going by the name "P. LORD God", except he eventually dropped the "P." 'cuz it was getting between him and his fans, ya know?
Rather than explain the mutual contradictions between those two accounts, I'm going to leave this as an exercise for the reader and I'm even going to make it worth your while. I will donate one hundred dollars to any charity of the choice of the first person who can come up with a rewording of the Genesis creation myth that a) incorporates all of the details given in both accounts above, and b) does so in an internally consistent way, particularly chronologically.
Go wild, and post submissions to the comments section. Only the first acceptable submission will be a prize winner, no friends or relatives of CC HQ are eligible and any submissions that incorporate shucking, jiving or tap-dancing of the form "Well, if you just mangle the English language and interpret it this way" will be held up to public scorn and ridicule, then disqualified. (Submissions that insist that one can reconcile the accounts only if one reads them with an "open heart" or some such rubbish will be printed, run through a shredder, set on fire and then held up to scorn and ridicule. Don't even think about it.)
Take it away.
You're just going to have to trust me on this one -- I really was all set to blog on this as part of my ongoing series on evolution, creationism, Intelligent Design and really, really stupid people, so the fact that Weasel Boy brought it up first is just a delightful bonus. (Well, OK, I was going to blog on the second part of this post -- the first part is just bonus idiocy. At no extra charge, I might add.)
Over here, we have ADW™ once again tracking my droppings around the Internets, getting all cranked up over a recent article on the Catholic Church and their passing acquaintance with fact. Whatever. Here's the entertaining bit, as Weasel Boy clarifies the terminology:
The "literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis" is Creationism ...
Fair enough, let's go with that definition, shall we? It makes sense. But then, how to make sense of this followup from the Weasel himself? (Emphasis added.)
Also, most Christians actually don't want the schools teaching students about what they think the Bible says. The schools have screwed up just about everything else they've been teaching, so why would we want them teaching our religion to kids?
Um ... huh? Most Christians don't want the schools teaching what the Bible says? That bizarre claim would no doubt come as a huge surprise to, say, the folks at the Pew Research Center who, in a recent survey, found that:
Nearly two-thirds of those in a Pew Research Center poll, 64 percent, say they believe “creationism” should be taught alongside “evolution” ...
So ... if we accept WB's definition of "creationism" as the literal interpretation of Genesis, and 64 per cent of the public wants creationism taught in the public schools, why ... that means that "most" Americans actually do want the schools teaching what the Bible says. Is that amazing or what? Weasel Boy turns out to be completely full of shit. Again.
(In all fairness, WB refers to most "Christians" while the Pew survey talks about the percentage of the general public, to which we can respond in two ways. First, it would be hard to believe that the percentage of Christians who want creationism taught in public schools would be somehow less than that same percentage of the general public. That just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. However, we don't even need to make that assumption.
According to this 2002 survey, a full 82% of Americans describe themselves as Christians. If we accept that value, then we can combine it with the above statistic so that, if 64% of the general public wants creationism (the Bible) taught in public schools, then we can use as a working hypothesis that 82% of that 64% per cent would be Christians who want the same thing. That number is 52.5% -- still a majority, making America's Dumbest Wanker™ look even dumber than usual. If that's even possible.
NOTE: What you just saw was the application of a pernicious, Godless, left-wing conspiracy known as "arithmetic." Children and wankers should not try this at home. Remember, I'm a professional.)
But that was only the warm-up. Part 2 coming shortly.
Better late then never, I guess:
THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.
“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
Gee, you think? It's kind of nice to see the Church finally recognizing what the sane among us have known for years:
But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.
And what about all those folks who insist on a strict, literal interpretation of Scripture? No problem, says the Church -- they'll just burn in Hell for eternity:
They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its “intransigent intolerance” and to warn of “significant dangers” involved in a fundamentalist approach.
“Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others.”
OK, so I exaggerated just a bit. So sue me.
Once upon a time, if you were a Democrat, you were supposed to show the proper "deference" to Commander Chimpy's nominees for the federal court:
President George W. Bush decries opposition to his nominees by Democratic senators, charging that their resistance derives, shamefully, from "politics."
In short, he was the prez so your job was to sit there, shut up and obligingly rubber-stamp every lunatic and wingnut that was paraded before you.
How ironic, then, that it's conservatives who are most outraged about Chimpy's latest pick for SCOTUS. So much for all that "deference" bullshit.
There's almost certainly going to be a lot of sanctimonious preaching from the residents of Wankerville about how con arti... uh, former House majority leader Tom DeLay should be considered innocent until proven guilty and so on. Nice thought, except why is it then that some Republicans are scrambling to return some of the tainted money they received from DeLay's political action committee?
It has to be embarrassing when even your own colleagues start to back away slowly.
Every self-respecting, lefty blogger needs a regular foil, a nemesis, a right-wing archenemy to whom one can reliably turn for guaranteed stupidity whenever one needs a topic on which to blog. Think of it as one-stop shopping -- all the boneheaded wankerishness you need in a single place that you can hold up to absolute scorn and richly-deserved ridicule.
Middle East authority Juan Cole has Jonah "Doughy Pantload" Goldberg; Holden over at First Draft regularly takes an axe handle to White House Press Weasel Scott McClellan and his gaggles; TBogg has, of course, America's Worst Mother™; every Canadian left-wing, liberal-leaning blogger has Pete Rempel.
And me? I'm making it official that I've adopted the sanctimonious pomposity that I've designated as America's Dumbest Wanker™ -- that would, of course, be none other than this complete prat, Weasel Boy, who can always be counted on to say the most breathtakingly inane things in the service of his master, George W. Bush. Or God. Whichever -- I'm pretty sure WB doesn't take the trouble to distinguish between the two a whole lot. And what has ADW™ done lately to distinguish himself? Oh, I'm so glad you asked.
As have many other denizens of Wankerville, Weasel Boy has jumped on the Bill Bennett defense bandwagon, expressing outrage -- shock and outrage, I say -- that anyone would consider gambling addict Bennett to be even remotely racist for having suggested one could reduce the crime rate by aborting all black fetuses. Not that Bennett was advocating such a harsh measure, of course, he was just, you know, sayin'.
What the above proves is that WB is as clueless as ever since Bennett's racism wasn't in the mention of abortion, oh no, not at all. The racism was tied inextricably to the claim (that WB openly embraces) that blacks are simply more criminal than the general population.
Note WB's reference to conservative blogger La Shawn Barber, who he quotes with much approval:
Third, Bennett’s hypothetical is based on fact. Blacks are 12.3 percent of the population, and about half are black men, which means black men are approximately 6 percent of the U.S. population. [Note: Until I remember where I got a certain statistic and link to the source, I’m deleting it. Look for an update tomorrow. In the meantime, the stats found at BJS are still alarming.] (see Bureau of Justice Statistics). Why aren’t you outraged over those shameful statistics?
Now, I'm going to take a wild guess at the certain statistic that's been redacted here, and suggest it shows that, while blacks make up only 12.3 per cent of the general U.S. population, they make up a far greater percentage of the American prison population. (This is, in fact, a well-known stat and almost certainly what Barber was going for.)
This would, naturally, lead Barber, Weasel Boy and numerous other imbeciles to conclude that blacks, proportionately, commit more crimes. It would never occur to them that one could also interpret this statistic to show that blacks are far more likely to receive harsh prison sentences for the same crimes that whites are allowed to walk from. I'm sorry, you asked for an example? How about this one, dealing with serial drug abuser and presidential niece Noelle Bush:
January 29, 2002: Noelle Bush was arrested at Walgreens on a charge of prescription fraud, attempting to obtain Xanax. She was sent to rehabilitation. If the woman involved in the Arizona shoplifting incident was this Noelle, the prior criminal record would have made her subject to harsh sentencing under Florida's drug laws.
September 9, 2002: The Orlando Police Department received an anonymous call from within the Center for Drug-Free Living, where Noelle Bush resided. The transcript reads:
"One of the women here was caught buying crack cocaine tonight. And a lot of the women are upset because she's been caught about five times. And we want something done because our children are here, and they just keep letting it slip under the counter and carpet... She does this all the time and she gets out of it because she's the governor's daughter. But we're sick of it here 'cause we have to do what's right, but she gets treated like some kind of princess. And everybody's tired of it, you know. We're just trying to get our lives together, and this girl's bringing drugs on property."
September 9, 2002: Employee Julia Elias discovers 0.2g crack cocaine hidden in Noelle Bush's shoe, while Bush is a patient at the Center for Drug-Free Living. Elias prepares a written statement to this effect, but supervisor Vilma Accison orders her to stop talking to police, and to destroy the document. Lacking the document or cooperation, police were unable to make an arrest.
September 16, 2002: "While Noelle has been given every break in the book -- and then some -- her father has made it harder for others in her position to get the help they need by cutting the budgets of drug treatment and drug court programs in his state. He has also actively opposed a proposed ballot initiative that would send an estimated 10,000 non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of jail." Arianna Huffington.
September 30, 2002: A judge blocks police from questioning employees that found the crack cocaine in Noelle's shoe earlier in the month, citing privacy laws. Father Jeb Bush expresses pleasure at the court's decision.
October 8, 2002: Noelle Bush asks that drug court records be closed on her case, citing a theory involving "expectation of privacy." One reason given was that her celebrity status was drawing attention to her.
October 15, 2002: A judge denied Bush's request to seal drug court records.
October 17, 2002: Noelle Bush was sentenced to ten days in Orange County jail for contempt, because of the crack cocaine.
August 8, 2003: Noelle Bush was released from rehabilitation to the custody of her parents. A judge dismissed the drug charges against her.
So here's a thought experiment -- does anyone seriously think that, if Ms. Bush had been a young, black man, she wouldn't now be languishing behind bars for the next several years for multiple drug violations? Luckily for ADW™, the extremely well-connected (and extremely white) Noelle has the drug charges against her ultimately dismissed, leaving him free to rail against the unnatural criminality of all dem darkies. Whew. Talk about lucky.
But all this talk about crime should inspire one to ask -- what exactly is Weasel Boy talking about when he uses the word "crime"? There's lots of different kinds of crime, but one gets the distinct impression that WB is most concerned with the kind of crime that makes him lock his doors at night, so that all those black criminals don't break in, terrify his family at gunpoint and have their way with his woman.
All right, then, just for the sake of argument, let's accept WB's premise -- that blacks proportionately commit more crimes along the lines of, say, drug-related offenses, vandalism, break-and-enter and even armed robbery. But what about all of those other violations of the criminal code?
I'm just guessing that, while blacks may be more likely to, say, smoke crack, they're probably a lot less likely to engage in corporate crime like, oh, insider trading. Or get caught up in charges of conspiracy and money laundering. And I'm pretty sure that, on a proportional basis, they're a lot less likely to commit numerous violations of the Geneva Conventions or international war crimes, know what I'm saying?
These are, of course, to folks like Weasel Boy just irrelevant details. See, when poor blacks are convicted of crime, that just proves that poor blacks are more likely to be criminals. On the other hand, when wealthy, well-connected, powerful (white) Republicans are indicted, well, in WB's mind, that just proves how nasty and partisan politics can be. And how all those blacks are still criminals.
See how that works?
AFTERSNARK: Using Weasel Boy's own logic, I could safely claim that you could reduce corporate crime in the United States by aborting all the children of rich, white conservatives. Not that I'm advocating such a position, Lord, no, I'm just making an observation.
And, while we're at it, is there any doubt that we could take a big bite out of narrow-minded, hate-filled intolerance and homophobia by aborting all children of fundamentalist Christians? Just sayin'.
Oh, Christ: Talk about exquisite timing, as TBogg brings us the the God-fearing Duggar family, no doubt soon to be a passel of fundamentalist, homo-bashing, money-laundering corporate criminals looking for a place to happen. Hey, as long as no crack smoking is involved, I guess it's all good.
I might have found me a new chew toy. How else to describe someone who, in all seriousness, writes something like this:
Tom DeLay has now been indicted on money laundering charges. More here.
Although it is too early to really understand if DeLay is guilty or innocent ...
Here, let me help you. He's guilty. See how easy that was?
Sometimes, you have to wonder what those ID-friendly folks at the Discovery Institute are thinking. Exhibit A would be this statement at the Institute's web page promoting "academic freedom" and research with regards to ID:
85 Scientists Join Together in Urging Court to Protect Academic Freedom and Not Limit Research into Intelligent Design Theory
Actually, that sounds good so far, I can't even argue with that. I think everyone should have the academic freedom to do research into whatever part of ID that they want. Go for it. More power to them. The statement continues:
Eighty-five scientists have filed an Amicus Brief in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial asking the Judge to “affirm the freedom of scientists to pursue scientific evidence wherever it may lead” and not limit research into the scientific theory of intelligent design. Not all the signers are proponents of intelligent design, but they do agree “that protecting the freedom to pursue scientific evidence for intelligent design stimulates the advance of scientific knowledge.”
Again, no problem here. I can't imagine any respectable scientist objecting to the freedom to do whatever research interested them. So far, it's not clear why the DI is so hyped about this statement. And on it goes:
The signers of the brief, identified as “Amici curiae” include such notable scientists as Dr. Philip Skell of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Lyle H. Jensen a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Dr. Russell W. Carlson Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Executive Technical Director, Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia.
“The advance of scientific knowledge depends on uninhibited, robust investigation seeking the best explanation,” said Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute. “Doubts as to whether a theory adequately explains the evidence should be resolved in the laboratory not in the court room. Scientists are concerned that a Court ruling limiting the nature of science would have far-reaching detrimental effects beyond the schoolhouse doors and into the laboratories and careers of many legitimate scientists.”
Perfect -- couldn't have said it better myself. And if you read the whole thing, it proposes a perfectly reasonable scenario where scientists are free to do whatever research appeals to them, without dragging the courts into it.
So ... I'm confused. The DI is clearly taking the position that ID should stand or fall on its scientific merits, not on whether it can win the battle in the courtroom. For once, the DI and me agree on something. Which is exactly why I'm confused.
The folks over at First Draft have a pretty compelling case for opposing recent SC nominee Harriet Miers. My, but she does appear to be a complete toady, doesn't she?
From this piece at Editor and Publisher:
The New York Times will carry what executive editor Bill Keller calls a full account of Judith Miller's involvement in the Plame case as early as this weekend, according to an article in the paper Tuesday.
"I know that you and our readers still have a lot of questions about how this drama unfolded," Keller told the staff members, who had gathered to greet Miller on her return to the newsroom on Monday.
Yeah, I have a question or two. How about clarifying this little snippet?
Miller was released from jail last Thursday after nearly three months and gave grand jury testimony in the Plame case on Friday. On Monday, she repeated that she felt she needed an explicit waiver from her source, whom she identified publicly for the first time as Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
But the rabbit hole goes deeper. Libby had initially offered only a blanket waiver to reporters to testify, she said, not the personal and specific waiver he offered last week. But Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, has said Libby was prepared all along to provide a personal waiver to Miller.
So if that last part's true, why did Miller remain in jail for as long as she did? Somebody's lying here. And the last paragraph only makes things more confusing:
According to the Times article, "Ms. Miller said her lawyers reopened negotiations not because she wanted to leave jail, although she did, but because if Mr. Fitzgerald extended the grand jury, everyone would dig deeper into their positions and she would have a more difficult time getting what she considered a voluntary waiver from Mr. Libby."
But why would this be true, if Libby was prepared to give her that waiver all along? This just gets curiouser and curiouser.
Make sure you always read far enough down to get to the good stuff:
At an extraordinary press conference outside the front doors of Toronto City Hall yesterday, the city official at the heart of a growing cronyism scandal admitted to a "special relationship" with a subordinate who rose quickly through the ranks of her department in recent months.
Ummm ... how special?
But Pamela Coburn, the $140,000-a-year executive-director of municipal licensing and standards, denied any wrongdoing, either over her "budding office romance" with Joseph Carnevale, director of investigations, or over allegations of questionable hiring practices.
OK, office romances happen. It's not like this would be the first time. So what now, Ms. Coburn?
"Joseph became a personal friend, and very recently, more than a friend," she said. "I came to care a lot for Joseph, and we described each other as soulmates in our e-mails. We discussed the possibility of a future together. I'm sure that is no longer possible."
Why not? Stranger things have happened, I'm sure.
Mr. Carnevale, a married father of three, did not appear to be at his home in the north end yesterday.
Oops.
Apparently, Canadian David Frum still has dreams of becoming one of the GOP in-crowd again someday, as he quickly sanitizes his blog after finding a Republican horse's head in his bed.
(Hat tip to e-mailer Mary H. for the pointer.)
The Hacktacular New York Times: From the NYT, this is pretty funny:
Writing for National Review Online, David Frum, a conservative commentator and former speechwriter for Mr. Bush, said the president's supporters had reason "to be disappointed and alarmed."
Yeah, you really have to respect a newspaper that, in a feature article, quotes a blogger who quietly sanitizes his online writings after the fact. Man, the death of that rag can't come too soon for me.
PZ reminds me, yet again, why I think the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby is a total dick.
What is it with conservative women and makeup? Did their parents never caution them against looking like cheap hookers? I mean, really, there's the classic Tammy Faye model:
Then there's the Katherine Harris, election-stealing model 2000:
And, finally, could you keep a straight face arguing a case before a Supreme Court with this as a sitting member?
OK, now I'm throughly creeped out. That was so not the post for this early in the morning.
Via TBogg, we have conservative uber-wanker Hugh Hewitt, almost certainly choosing his words carelessly:
These two, and many others, are conservative warriors. They don't shrink from a fight.
Unless that fight involves actual firearms. And a real enemy. And fighting, of course.
Everybody's picking on poor Bill. Seriously, is there anyone else so egotistically, sanctimoniously pompous? I mean, besides this guy, that is?
Go on ... tell me you didn't see this coming:
President Bush has chosen Harriet Miers, White House counsel and a loyal member of the president's inner circle, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, a senior administration official said Monday.
The Democrats have only one chance to stop this nomination, and that is to simply say, right this instant, "Sorry, no, not gonna happen. Try again."
If the Dems, on the other hand, let the hearings for Miers go forward, they're fucked. As the article says, Miers has never been a judge so she has no history to dissect. In short, once the hearings start, the Dems will have no foundation whatsoever to oppose her.
Give him credit, Bush played this brilliantly from the start, and the Dems have once again come up looking like total idiots. Colour me so totally unsurprised.
AFTERSNARK: Over at First Draft, Holden pokes fun at the Pod for thinking qualifications have anything to do with Bush's Supreme Court:
And something tells me John Podhoretz is in for a hell of a headache.
HARRIET MIERS [John Podhoretz]
I am going to assume that this is a classic Bush head-fake gambit. If I'm wrong, I will spend the weekend banging my head against a concrete wall. This is the Supreme Court we're talking about! It's not a job for a political functionary!
Yeah, that's rich -- someone over at the NRO's Kiddie Corner arguing that GOP nominees should actually be qualified for their positions. Whatever brought on that brief moment of lucidity?
Yup, Dems, you're fucked, given this thoroughly non-committal, vacuous "warning" from Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer:
"We know even less about Harriet Miers than we did about John Roberts and because this is the critical swing seat on the court, Americans will need to know a lot more about Mier's judicial philosophy and legal background before any vote for confirmation."
Attaboy, Chuck. Way to draw that line in the sand. Seriously, why do all of you allegedly progressive Americans put up with this appalling loser of a party? You might as well vote for Ralph Nader for all the good the Dems are doing you these days.
OK, maybe I'm totally off-base here. How bizarre. From over here at DK:
Several Democrats, including Reid, have already come out praising Miers, which ultimately will only fuel the right-wing meltdown on the decision.
Read the rest, including Harry Reid's statement. Go figure. Clearly, there are things happening here beyond my comprehension.
And for those of you in K-W and the vicinity, it might be worth blowing an hour or two at EinsteinFest. Sadly, I won't be in town for the Jeff Healey performance. Yes, it's eclectic, isn't it?
Tell me you're not surprised anymore:
The White House had long maintained that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak but reporters have since named them as sources.
Oh, man, if it ever comes out that there was a blowjob involved here ...
And the circus that is Intelligent Design rolls right along, with the following bit of uninspiring flatulence in this morning's letters section in the Globe:
University of Toronto -- Professor Kenneth Miller is right: creation and evolution are not incompatible (Does God Wear A Lab Coat? -- Oct.1). When He created space, time, matter and energy, the creator (God) also created the marvellous natural laws (the laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics) that govern them. These natural laws contain elements of randomness and probability that are just what is needed to produce natural selection and evolution. Evolution is provided for in the scientific view of creation: God created evolution. After the Big Bang, the universe unfolded according to God's laws. No further intervention on the creator's part need be postulated after the starting shot to account for the present state of the universe. Is that not the ultimate in intelligent design?
So what's so irritating about the above? It's not the actual content, which is simply a waffling, wishy-washy attempt to placate both sides. No problem there.
No, what's annoying is the writer, who is listed as "Bernard Etkin, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Aerospace Studies," as if Dr. Etkins' expertise in aerospace studies somehow gives him extra gravitas when expounding on topics theological. (And, make no mistake, the good doctor's letter is not making any scientific points -- it's purely a statement about the existence of the Christian God, of which Etkin has absolutely no doubt and, because of his technological background, he's hoping you'll agree with.)
Quite simply, whoever was in charge of that letters page fucked up badly. There was no reason to give Etkin's screed any more weight by mentioning his technical background, which had nothing to do with the subject. Let's hope this sort of subtle indoctrination and argument from authority doesn't happen again.
by Canadian Cynic
Blogger Emeritus
Southwestern Ontario Institute for Snarkiness Research
You have to admit, it's a good thing that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan when it did, sowing the seeds of Western-style democracy. I mean, if it hadn't, just think what kind of sordid, corrupt, drug-based society Afghanistan would have turned into. Whoops, hold on ...
Over dinner, [28-year-old smuggler] Abullah explained why he's not afraid to meet a foreign reporter, despite the fact that he makes his living by transporting illegal drugs. It's the same reason he doesn't fear the police, he said, and the reason Afghanistan remains the world's largest supplier of opium: corruption.
"Bribery is more and more common nowadays," he said, tearing into a chicken kebab.
"Business is good."
Smugglers, poppy farmers, addicts and anti-narcotics officials say precisely the same thing.
This week marks the start of early planting in Afghanistan, and the government is scrambling to persuade farmers that they should grow legitimate crops instead of opium poppies, which produce the main ingredient in heroin.
And how is that recommended career change going?
The efforts are undermined, however, by police and government officials who profit from what is Afghanistan's largest industry.
The United States and other donors, embarrassed by the idea that Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state, have been pushing President Hamid Karzai to remove governors and police chiefs who are complicit in the trade. Observers say Mr. Karzai wants to help his U.S. backers, but must tread cautiously because the government needs local strongmen to maintain control over rural areas.
Ah, about as well as every other U.S. foreign intervention. No problem, then. Carry on.
Pop quiz -- draw the appropriate logical conclusion from the following snippets. First, there's this:
Bush has said that creating Iraqi security forces able to defend their own country is a prerequisite to an eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
Followed shortly by this:
During congressional testimony on Thursday, Gen. George Casey, top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said the number of such battalions [that can go into combat with insurgents without the help of the U.S. military] had dropped since July to one from three, out of the roughly 100 Iraqi battalions.
Come on ... even Weasel Boy should be able to figure out the logical consequences of the above. OK, maybe not him, but everyone else.
Wesley knows snark, yes, he does. Do the constantly changing rules of ID debate remind you of anything from your distant past? Think hard, it'll come to you.
Via Pharyngula, we learn that The Man has no sense of humour. Or critical thinking ability, for that matter.
AFTERSNARK: And wouldn't it have been entertaining if Mr. 90% True had had with him a short list of right wing-based threats of intimidation or outright murder, sort of like this?
He could have countered by asking if the gentlemen in question had any intention of interrogating Rush Limbaugh for advocating killing almost all liberals, or Republican Rep. James Hansen for suggesting assassinating then-President Bill Clinton, or right wing screech harpy Ann Coulter for promoting the idea of blowing up the New York Times building, or ... well, you get the idea. I'll bet those folks never got dragged out of work and browbeaten.
Apparently, it really is all about having connections, isn't it?
To:
DJ Grothe,
Director,
Center for Inquiry
Mr. Grothe:
Mind if I call you DJ? I read with some interest the coverage of your recent seminar at the U of Toronto criticizing Intelligent Design and I have a couple of suggestions as to how to make your next presentation more effective. Forgive me for proferring uninvited advice but it's what I do best. (My friends can, sadly, attest to that.) So ... just a couple of points.
First, I like the way you dismiss the whole notion of "teaching the controversy" by saying, "There is no scientific controversy regarding the acceptance of evolution. The scientific evidence demands the verdict of evolution...."
That's perfectly accurate, of course, but it might be more effective to draw an analogy that most folks can understand. As an example, how about, "There are some people who deny that the Holocaust ever occurred, but does that mean we should 'teach the controversy' regarding the Holocaust just because some people don't accept its historical reality?" I suspect it's pretty easy to come up with other bogus "controversies" that could be used to good effect as examples here.
And, second, I think you dropped the ball rather badly based on this description of the question period:
During the question period, one vocal audience member stood up to challenge the audience's near-unanimous support for evolution. After a long introductory statement asking for tolerance and pleading to be allowed to go on without interruption, he asked four prepared questions and then read off a long statement that purported to prove the falsity of evolution. Most of his statements received chuckles from the audience but patient responses from Grothe. After presenting his point of view, the audience member advised attendees to visit the website www.evolutiondeceit.com for more evidence.
Now, it's not like I'm suggesting that you rudely cut off questioners but, well, actually, that's exactly what I'm suggesting here. As soon as it became obvious that the questioner above was launching into a lengthy, choreographed monologue, you should have immediately stopped him and pointed out that, this being an open question period, you wanted to limit each person to a single question or observation so that as many attendees as possible had a chance to make a point.
It doesn't matter that this attendee was "asking for tolerance and pleading to be allowed to go on without interruption." It was, in fact, exactly your responsibility to do just that -- cut him off. Again, since you were the speaker, it was your job to make sure everyone had a chance to participate and, quite simply, you let this wingnut run over you. Not good.
Naturally, he could have bitched and whined, going into poor victim/martyr mode about how you were somehow "censoring" his opinion, to which you could have instantly responded, "Censoring you? Not at all. Out of simple fairness to everyone here, I'm not allowing anyone to monopolize the question period. If you really do have that much you'd like to say, there's nothing to stop you from putting on your own seminar. I can even give you all the contact information you need to do just that, and best of luck. But this is not your seminar, it's mine and, because of that, you don't get any special privilege to take over the discussion period. That's just how it is."
In fact, DJ, as you can read in the very next paragraph of that news article:
"You can't go through life thinking you know everything," [the attendee] told The Varsity. "I don't know exactly what Intelligent Design is, but the debate is all about whether God exists," he said. "I think God should be taught in the classrooms." He met with hostility during and after the talk, mainly for taking up a lot of time.
But, truth be told, that wasn't his fault, was it? It's safe to say that, as long as you give a wanker free rein, they'll be happy to spew utter bullshit for as long as you let them. That he annoyed so many folks wasn't his fault, it was yours. You just need to learn how to nip that sort of thing in the bud so it doesn't happen again. (Trust me on this one -- I speak from personal experience.)
Other than that, DJ, good job. And let me know when you're in town next. We can do beers.
You're buying.
Jesus, Mary, Mother of God! Until I browsed, I never realized that the URL that attendee referred to, http://evolutiondeceit.com, was the work of total psycho and fruitcake Harun Yahya. This is a man who makes Weasel Boy look positively intellectual.
One doesn't dispassionately and meticulously dissect Yahya's claims. One simply points out that he is a complete lunatic. It saves a lot of time.
Does this qualify as a Freudian slip?
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, said [Roy] Blunt needs to prove he will stand with fiscal conservatives and turn back the growth in spending that has marked Republican rule for the past several years.
"The base is literally screaming, 'Stop the spending!' " Flake said.
Gee, and all this time, you thought it was the Dems who were such profligate spenders. Who knew?
