The fight over bilingual ballots is blowing up in Republicans' faces as they continue to dig their own graves. As Bush has been trying to recruit Latinos to the Republican party his own party has been undermining him by freaking out over the idea of a bilingual ballot.

Who would have thought that telling the much-desired Latino constituency that speaking any language other than English makes you un-American might piss off that constituency?

I also love it because this group in congress reminds me of the old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Why are they so threatened by the Spanish language? Would it be the end of the world if we became like most other countries and our kids learned to speak more than one language? After all, lots of people in other countries learn many languages to get by easier as they travel through their continent. It's not uncommon to meet Europeans who speak English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. What would be so terrible if we generally knew the two major languages spoken in this hemisphere? It really pisses off the 'get off my lawn' contingent though.

Leave it to the pro-lifers. In the aftermath of Warren Buffet's stunning charitable gift of somewhere between 30 and 40 billion dollars (the value depends on what Berkshire Hathaway is worth when the dough is turned over) the pro-lifers, led by some insane Catholic priest, are calling Buffet Dr. Mengele for supporting population control.

"The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world," said the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who is president of Human Life International.

Referring to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi death camp doctor, Euteneuer said Buffett "will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents."

I guess that means this priest thinks every woman who takes birth control is a "little Eichmann." Unlike Ward Churchill though, this guy is disguising his bigotry as religion so I doubt he'll experience any untoward effects from such an idiotic slur against the huge majority of Americans, including President Bush, who think that birth control should be accessible to all.

Does anyone else think that it's insane for the Catholics to send missionaries to areas of the world that are mired in poverty, largely due to a glut of unwanted children and over-population, and then preach to them that they shouldn't seek to control their problems by taking control of their fertility? Or how about telling people not to wear rubbers, because HIV will only kill you, but a rubber will rob you of your soul? Offer them bibles and hospitals to go to die in, but for the love of god, never suggest they actually do anything about the root causes of poverty in places like Calcutta, or attempt the minimum of prevention of a deadly sexually-transmitted disease.

They make it sound like Planned Parenthood is in charge of forced sterilization programs of the world's poor, when all they're doing is offering them the choices that exist in the first world. And notice, they don't attack us for using birth control by calling average men and women in America Nazis, their contributions just might dry right up if they did.

You too can contribute to Planned Parenthood. If you don't believe in giving up that is. I think once they start going after our birth control it really will be the end of the moral majority. We love our rubbers and our pills, and attempts to take them away will not go over well. So I say, let them attack birth control in the US, let them oppose the cancer vaccine that passed the scientific Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without trouble yesterday. They will dig their own grave.

Here's another winner for Dems, the net neutrality amendment that has failed in committee but might be the source of a filibuster.

I haven't blogged about net neutrality yet because I just couldn't believe that even our stupid congress could possibly allow a tiered internet. However, I underestimated Ted Stevens. The full account of the world's biggest fan of pork having one of his classic flip-outs is here.

Stevens is nuts. Also tainted are McCain and Allen.

Anyway, Democrats are unabashedly on the right side of this issue, although I'm sure Lieberman, whore that he is, might find a way to sell us all out. But anyone who actually learns anything about the issue sees that the telecom bill without a net neutrality amendment would be a disaster, and it's the right wing Republicans who are trying to sell us down the river in a disgusting payout to the telecom companies. Sounds like this bill is going to hit the floor with a bang, and might force Democrats to join together to block cloture.

It would be fun though, from a purely Give Up point of view, if the Republicans accidentally blew up the internet through their stupidity. That might be an unforgiveable sin, but I'd prefer to keep das interweb in its current state.

It's really refreshing to see papers like this one out in Science this week. Papers seem to always rely on more and more complex mechanisms and techniques, but every once in a while, someone gets a Science paper by putting ants on stilts.



Apparently desert ants figure out how far they traveled by counting their steps (pheromones apparently don't work as well in the heat and sand). If you increase or decrease the length of their legs, they get confused and over or underestimate the distance back to the nest. New Scientist has a lay report and video.

Ha! Can you imagine being the student who has to anesthetize these ants and attack the stilts to the thing's legs?

And you know those obnoxios pro-CO2 commercials that claim it's some kind of wonder fertilizer that plants love? Well not any more, the studies that suggested a benefit to higher CO2 in the atmosphere are debunked.

Finally, Science is just full of wacky stuff this week. Check out whale-sniffing dogs (the last story). Apparently drug-sniffing rottweilers can be trained to detect floating whale poop at great distances. Who would have thought?

In your face, Bushco! Gitmo tribunals illegal! Ha! HA!

Sorry, all I can really do with this news is dance around in a circle. Feel the mighty power of THE LAW, ya mooks.

Some points of sorrow:

Scalia, Scalito, and Sclarence . . . it there anything that you dudes would ever decide that the president can't do. How outrageous would it have to get?

Bit of a nose-counting case. Kennedy, don't be Skennedy! Roll off that fence you're straddling and hop on over to the happy side.

SCOTUSblog has commentary, as do Talkleft and Lawyers, Guns and Money.

It's hard as hell to figure out the real picture of divorce in this country. Overall, divorce rates are going down, as would be expected as the boomers have aged and finally decided who they plan to die with. But the most important thing to understand about divorce is that the whole "50% of marriages end in divorce" thing is a myth. Also see here, or here, or the Wiki

The problem is that the statistics that caused the concern were misread. In the 70s and 80s people were seeing twice as many people getting divorced as getting married and thought, holy shit the divorce rate is 50%! No one took into account the 15-20 year lag it takes many marriages to blow up, so as the boomers started getting divorced in the 70s-80s for the first time it looked like there was a major increase because of their population boom combined with their slightly higher rate of divorce. However, when one takes into account rates of divorce the boomers represent only a minor increase in divorce rates to about 40% throughout the 80s with the percentage of marriages ending in divorce these days at around 30%.

And despite the buzz that divorce is at epidemic proportions, the NCHS report shows that the divorce rate has, in fact, been slowly declining since its perilous peak in 1981, when it reached a rate of 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people.
...
according to the data currently available, in 2000 the divorce rate dropped to 4.1, the lowest since 1972, and lower than it was when the Greatest Generation returned from World War II in 1946.

The Wiki article has a similar statement:

In the United States, in 2003 there were 7.5 new marriages per 1000 people and 3.8 divorces per 1000, a ratio which has existed for many individual years since the 1960s. As many statisticians have pointed out, virtually none of the marriages taking place in a given year are the same couples divorcing that year, so there is in fact no predictive relationship between the two annual totals. Nonetheless the claim that "half of all marriages end in divorce" became widely accepted in the US in the 1970s, on the basis of this statistic, and has remained conventional wisdom. Pollster Lewis Harris in his 1987 book "Inside America" wrote that "the idea that half of American marriages are doomed is one of the most specious pieces of statistical nonsense ever perpetuated in modern times."

To establish an actual divorce rate requires tracking and analyzing significant samples of actual marriages through decades, not an easy task. Recent US scholarship based on such longterm tracking, reported for example in the New York Times on April 19, 2005, has found that about 60 percent of all marriages that result in divorce do so in the first decade, and more than 80 percent do so within the first 20 years; that the percentage of all marriages that eventually end in divorce peaked in the United States at about 41 percent around 1980 and has been slowly declining ever since, standing by 2002 at around 31 percent; and that while in the 1960s and 1970s there was little difference among socioeconomic groups in divorce rates, diverging trends appeared starting around 1980 (e.g. the rate of divorce among college graduates had by 2002 dropped to near 20 percent, roughly half that of non-college graduates).

So my friends, why do I care? Why do I bother mentioning this issue even though it hasn't really been in the news lately? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is jackasses like Rush Limbaugh who bitch about family values, and say stupid shit like marriage should only be for procreation when he is a childless three-time divorcee visiting prositutes in foreign countries with illegal Viagra prescriptions. The second reason is, some guy wrote me an email and asked me what a give up map of divorce would look like. Well, here's your answer.



This is a map of the states with divorce rates greater than 4 per thousand (excluding California, and Indiana and using 2002-2003 data for 2 other states that didn't report in 2004), the national average is somewhere between 3.7 and 4.1 depending on who you ask or whether you throw an estimate of California's rate in since they haven't reported a rate since 1990. The other key thing to remember is that divorce rates are falling in all states, by about 10% since the 90s. So, if California were included today based on its 1990 statistics it would probably now be well under 4, so don't let that worry you too much.

All the same, look at where divorce is actually a problem, in a nice band across the bible belt. The states with the lowest divorce rates? Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin have divorce rates that range from 1.8-3.0 per 1,000. The blue states included are in just barely at around 4.1-4.3 per 1,000. The highest two are Nevada at 6.3 and Arkansas at 6.1, over three times the rate of liberal Massachusetts. And even more interesting is the Barna survey done in 1999 showed that of all religious groups, Baptists and non-denominational Christians were the most likely to get divorced, surpassing all those evil heathen religions, Catholics and atheists. And where do the Baptists live? Well, largely in the areas highlighted in the above map.

So, while the moral majority might like spending all their time telling others how to live, and determining who should be allowed to get married while passing stupid-ass covenant marriage laws, let's keep an eye on who really has the problem making marriages work (not to mention every other damn thing). Further, while they rail on about the myth of the 50% divorce rate, and how evil divorce is, let's think about what a world would look like without divorce. Unlike our delusional conservative friends, I don't want go back to when women would have to stay married to cheating, emotionally distant, and/or abusive man or face economic ruin. I think things are going just fine with marriage these days, especially in the blue states.

Source:Munson ML, Sutton PD. Births, marriages, divorces, and deaths: Provisional data for 2004. National vital statistics reports; vol 53 no 21. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2005. Census data from 2004 was used for rates from www.census.gov.

Sad music news as Sleater-Kinney is breaking up.

Anyone hear of any good new bands lately? I've heard good things about the Weakerthans, and the Nice Jenkins.

First of all, Ehrlichman is in trouble. Now that Doug Duncan has dropped out of the Democratic race for depression of all things, O'Malley is positioned to rock the joint.


      Ehrlich      O'Malley
RV        40          51
LV        39          55

RV is registered voters (yeah wow) and LV are likely voters.

That and it looks like Jim Webb isn't going to be swiftboated by that noose-loving, confederate flag waving, boot-wearing, wannabe California cowboy George Allen. Check out this slap-down in response to the Allen campaign's charge that Webb was unpatriotic for opposing the flag-burning amendment.

"George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb's position on free speech and flag burning. Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. When he and his disrespectful campaign puppets attack Jim Webb they are attacking every man and woman who served. Their comments are nothing more than weak-kneed attacks by cowards. George Felix Allen Jr. needs to apologize to Jim Webb and to all men and women who have served our nation," Webb spokesman Steve Jarding said.
...
"While Jim Webb and others of George Felix Allen Jr.'s generation were fighting for our freedoms and for our symbols of freedom in Vietnam, George Felix Allen Jr. was playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada. "People who live in glass dude ranches should not question the patriotism of real soldiers who fought and bled for this country on a real battlefield," Jarding said.

I'm starting to really like this guy! And I also like how they always mention George Allen's middle name "Felix." I can just tell they're doing it because they know it will piss him off. They must have read in his sister's tell all book how he tortured her when she called him Felix or something. Who knows.

Anyway, now if only we could get Kos to pay some attention to Al Weed after all you'd think Virgil Goode would be more vulnerable considering all his ties to MZM and the Dukester scandal.

Well, we made Fark last week for the Hitler or Coulter quiz but didn't get many comments here on our site due to their misdirect. Either way, I think we topped out around 500k hits.

Some of the comments at Fark were golden though. My favorite? Calmamity's.

Ann Coulter: All the hate, none of the highways.

Ha!

Anyway, to those who are still confused about how the quiz scores things, when you go to the answer page it reports the correct answer and whether you were right or wrong, it does not tell you what your answer was.

Besides the domestic tracking apparently authorized by the Patriot act the Bush administrations super-secret terrorist financial tracking isn't a secret after all.

Apparently they've been talking about it, and bragging, for some time.

"There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. "The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."

Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. "A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.

"Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. "We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing."

Indeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into. The system, which handles trillions of dollars in worldwide transactions each day, serves as a main hub for banks and other financial institutions that move money around the world. According to The New York Times, SWIFT executives agreed to give the Treasury Department and the CIA broad access to its database.

So much for NYT and LA Times being traitors and what not. Apparently they didn't need leakers, just google.

So what is the Senate going to do with it's time? It's eliminated its two favorite non-problems already this year, gay marriage, and now the failed flag-burning amendment. Can people think of some new distractions for them to use to deflect attention from their years of failure and doing nothing?

The best has been reading Dana Milbank's coverage of this in the last two days. His first article was about the different estimates of actual flag burning occurring.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.
...
Fortunately, the Senate will have plenty of time to discuss that matter. The chamber has scheduled up to four days of debate on the flag-burning amendment this week. If that formula -- one day of Senate debate for each incident of flag burning this year -- were to be applied to other matters, the Senate would need to schedule 12 days of debate to contemplate the number of years before Medicare goes broke, 335 days of debate for each service member killed in Iraq this year and 11 million days of debate on the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country.

Unfortunately, the Senate has only 49 days left on its legislative calendar for the year.

Ha! It also sounds like the burnings are more instances of vandalism than protest, so all those liars claiming that they see flags being burned all the time can suck it.

Dana follows up today with the all important question posed to the politicians supporting the ban, "Is a ban important?"

"I don't think anybody would say it's the most important," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

"No, no, not even close," said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who, like Lott and 57 other senators, nevertheless signed on as a co-sponsor of the amendment.

"Ha, ha, ha," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), another co-sponsor, replied, before disappearing through an unmarked doorway.

Only Orrin Hatch actually thought it was an important issue.

It's like they're admitting they just use the issue to yank the chain of those poor suckers who actually do think this is a problem in this country. Liberals needs some good issues like this, you know, meaningless crap we can use to rile up our base every session without any real chance of success or progress. Instead all our issues actually are important, like the minimum wage and reproductive freedom.

Man was AAP dead on when he noted the inevitable progression of each intrusion into personal privacy from international to domestic.

MSNBC/Newseek reports that the governmenthas obtained tens of thousands of domestic banking records using a little-known provision of the patriot act. Yeah, that Patriot act? You know, the one that was supposed to be used to fight terror? Well, now it's just being used for law enforcement, as always happens in these cases. You give the police new powers for terror suspects and they use them on everybody they can. When will people wake up to this? They see no problem using anti-terror powers against the US citizenry at large.

Under a section of the USA Patriot Act passed by Congress in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, Treasury officials were given new powers to direct U.S. banks and other financial institutions to search their records for accounts or transactions involving any individuals or groups who come under scrutiny during investigations of terrorism and money laundering cases.
...
Once there is a positive "match" showing a suspect individual or company has conducted a financial transaction with a U.S. bank, FINCEN then notifies the law enforcement agencies, which can use the existence of a reported "match" as the basis for a grand jury or administrative subpoena. The Treasury records show that U.S. agencies have used the program to obtain 1,206 grand jury subpoenas and 328 administrative subpoenas. It has also led, according to the Treasury records, to 90 indictments, 79 arrests and 10 convictions.

An expansion of police power to fight terrorism inevitably becomes an expansion of police power against ordinary US citizens. Big surprise. At least this has a semblance of legality, but I don't think it was meant to prospectively investigate people for tax problems, lying to the IRS or whatever is setting off their red flags.

Rush Limbaugh, of addicted to painkillers fame, has now been found to be addicted to Dominican hookers.

It's a bit of a logical leap, but not too hard to figure out. Why else does someone get caught with an illegal prescription for Viagra on the way back from the Dominican Republic? If a single man who has been married three times (with no children), returns from a foreign country with an illegal prescription for penis pills, what else are we to think? The no children thing, if anything makes me worried he might be hooked on gay male hookers, I'm giving him credit for still assuming his viagra was used heterosexually.

Go family values!

Whenever a news report comes out regarding BushCo's dealings of dubious legality, they seem to run the exact same plays every single time:

1). Deny the program exists.

When overwhelming evidence shows that it exists,

2). Deny that it affects ordinary Americans

Between Step 2 and disclosure that ordinary Americans have been affected,

3). Claim that exposure of the program (be it torture, extraordinary rendition, wiretapping, etc.) hurts America.

4). Keep repeating steps 2 and 3

5). Wait for the next news report of another program of dubious legality to push this program out of the pages.

Did I forget anything between 2 and 4?

Not that bathtub boy isn't criminal for his idiotic ideas on tax reform, but TPM is reporting that his funneling of money for Abramoff was probably illegal. It is likely the schemes used to redirect money from casinos to Ralph Reed and others involved some form of lying to the IRS. Possibly it was a "Klein conspiracy" that could land him in jail for 5 years on each count.

Take that bathtub boy! Even if it wasn't illegal, it definitely doesn't pass the smell test, especially considering Norquist took a kick-back each time in payment for acting as Abramoff's bagman.

Who would have thought that throwing money at ruthless warlords would result in yet another Islamist government? Yes, Somalia is now under the control of an Islamofascist, nice job guys.

The sheik, Hassan Dahir Aweys, was appointed the leader of the Council of the Islamic Courts, the newly formed governing entity of the movement that ousted Mogadishu's secular warlords on June 5. Previously, the public face of the Islamists had been Sharif Ahmed, a more moderate sheik who had spoken of his desire to work with the West.

The emergence of Mr. Aweys may represent another setback for the Bush administration's policy in Somalia. Mr. Aweys, a former military colonel, was vice chairman of Al Itihaad, an Islamic group that Washington labeled a terrorist group in the weeks after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
...
Still, Mr. Aweys, of the powerful Ayr clan, has publicly told followers that God would forgive them for spilling the blood of any foreign peacekeepers who set foot on Somali soil. He has also said Somalis who hand over their countrymen to American operatives in exchange for cash are guilty of "selling us to the Jews."

Really, helluva job guys.

At the same time we hear Karzai is losing control of Afghanistan. Maybe if we had focused on where Al Qaeda actually was rather than pissing off the entire world we would have done better for the Afghanis, who really could use a real government after all this time.

WP reports Lieberman's pro-war votes last week may further damage his chances against Ned Lamont.

I think the thing that will damage him more are pictures like these.













And remember, when you kiss Bush, you're kissing everyone he's ever kissed.



And everyone he's ever kissed. And so on, and so on.

Kissing Bush is like making out with the Saudi royal family.

According to the MSM at least, John Stewart is an "Enemy of Democracy." Here's the justification:

To test for a "Daily Effect," Baumgartner and Morris showed video clips of coverage of the 2004 presidential candidates to one group of college students and campaign coverage from "The CBS Evening News" to another group. Then they measured the students' attitudes toward politics, President Bush and the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).

The results showed that the participants rated both candidates more negatively after watching Stewart's program. Participants also expressed less trust in the electoral system and more cynical views of the news media, according to the researchers' article, in the latest issue of American Politics Research.

"Ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls," they wrote.

Other studies have shown that Stewart's show leaves it's viewers more informed than watchers of cable or network news, so the logic here is (1) Stewart's viewers are more informed, (2) Stewart's viewers are more cynical about the political process, therefore (3) Stewart is an Enemy of Democracy.

Interesting. However, could it be that familiarity breeds contempt instead? update There has been a rapid response to this ridiculous charge, check out EnemyofDemocracy.com.

Also check out the story that follows. Apparently Dems gave more to charity than Republicans, but both groups tended to give less to blacks.

Earlier this month, La Boheme posted on this Glamour article about how conservatives have waged a campaign of lies that has adversely affected women's health. One of the key lies? Condoms don't protect against HPV.

A few years ago, several conservative congressional legislators asked King K. Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., how well condoms protected against STDs. "They asked whether condoms were effective against everything," says Dr. Holmes, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the world's leading experts on STDs. He told them yes, condoms were especially effective against HIV, and worked well against all STDs with one exception: human papillomavirus, or HPV, a few strains of which can cause cervical cancer. At that time, he said, researchers suspected that condoms did offer some HPV protection, but the data were incomplete.

"That is what they wanted to hear," says Dr. Holmes. "It was clear the goal was to discredit condom use, and this was what they were trying to hang their argument on."

...

"Condoms, whether used correctly and consistently or not, do not prevent the spread of HPV," the Family Research Council warns on its website, going on to note that "HPV has been linked to over 90 percent of all invasive cervical cancers and is the number-two cause of cancer deaths among women." In truth, cervical cancer is only the thirteenth-highest cancer killer of women in the U.S., behind bladder and kidney cancer. In the majority of cases, the immune system fights off HPV before people know they have it. Even when precancerous cells develop, they can be detected early by a Pap smear.
...
Despite condoms' proven effectiveness against many STDs, especially HIV, conservatives continued to suggest that they were more of a hazard than a help. Just last year, Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., (R-Okla.) went so far as to demand that the FDA place a warning label on every condom package saying condoms don't help protect against HPV. (He was unsuccessful.) The idea, contends Katharine O'Connell, M.D., an ob-gyn and assistant professor at Columbia University in New York City who studies contraception, is to hype the dangers of sex before marriage: Exaggerating condom failure and the risk of HPV "is simplifying the facts for the purposes of manipulating sexual practices," she says. "This is not about condoms. It's all about the sex."
...
Dr. McIlhaney told Glamour that in the early days of MISH, he was still working as a physician, not an academic, and did not have the same access to resources as the now-larger organization does today. Nevertheless, he continues to stress condom ineffectiveness against HPV. "I think our conclusions were right," he says. "I was right on almost all of it, and they were wrong." Yet science does not back him up: Last November the FDA reaffirmed that condoms reduce the risk of every major STD including HPV.

Man was he wrong, check out this week's NEJM article on condoms for prevention of HPV transmission.

In women reporting 100 percent condom use by their partners, no cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions were detected in 32 patient-years at risk, whereas 14 incident lesions were detected during 97 patient-years at risk among women whose partners did not use condoms or used them less consistently.
...
Our study demonstrates an inverse, temporal association between the frequency of condom use by male partners and the risk of HPV infection in women. The association was strong and increased with the increasing frequency of condom use, suggesting a causal, protective effect. Given that HPV is transmissible through nonpenetrative sexual contact with both male and female partners and that imperfect condom use does occur, it is not surprising that some infections were still detected among women reporting consistent use. It is encouraging, however, that the women in this cohort, who were new to sexual intercourse and condom use, were able to reduce their risk of HPV infection through the consistent use of condoms by male partners. Furthermore, our results suggest that consistent condom use offers similar protection against both high-risk and low-risk types of HPV. Even after the quadrivalent vaccine for HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 becomes available, consistent condom use by their partners may protect women against infection with other high-risk types of HPV that put them at risk for cervical cancer.

Do conservatives ever get tired of being wrong? It's so sad that anyone in this day and age would be so dead-set against birth control that they would mislead people about safe sexual practices that could save lives, prevent STDs and cancer, and reduce unwanted pregnancy. Even Bush supports birth control although he took a year to reply to the question of whether or not he does and only mentions that "adults" should have access to it.

Check out how freaked Bush looks in this pic.



Check out the video too.

Boing Boing points us to this NY Post article indicating Futurama will return, but to comedy central. All the original cast has been retained. This will be the one time I ever link to the NY Post I think.

But hooray! Futurama shall return! For real this time, no more false alarms from Billy West. And don't forget this weekend on Adult Swim, the second season of The Venture Brothers. If you're interested in some of the people behind the Venture Brothers, check out Jackson Publick's blog Publick Nuisance.

Hey Giveupers - head on over to Mark Warner's Mapchangers to vote for your favorite progressive candidate. Or don't. I couldn't care less either way.

CNN reports Norquist funneled money for Abramoff, keeping a cut for himself each time.

Apparently he was the "bridge" between the pro-gambling indians, and the anti-gambling Ralph Reed.

This was all in the report blogged about yesterday, but it's good to see the media is parsing it and finding some of the same goodies that TPM reported on.

I like these parts:

Moving money from a casino-operating Indian tribe to Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition founder and professed gambling opponent, was a problem. Lobbyist Abramoff turned to his longtime friend Norquist, apparently to provide a buffer for Reed.

The result, according to evidence gathered by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was that Norquist's Americans for Tax Relief became a conduit for more than a million dollars from the Mississippi Choctaw to Reed's operation, while Norquist, a close White House ally, took a cut.
...
Relying on an e-mail by Abramoff, the Senate report said "Norquist kept" $25,000 from each of two transfers from the Choctaw to Reed. The report provided evidence about four transfers for about $1.2 million in all.

Norquist is part of a large cast of characters in the scandal.

Another is Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who told Senate investigators he made no effort to help an Abramoff client, despite extensive evidence to the contrary. Ney was not even familiar with the Tigua tribe of El Paso, Texas, the congressman told the committee.

Yet the report says Ney assured tribal leaders of his support for legislation on two occasions in 2002, once in person and once via telephone. The legislation would have allowed the tribe to reopen its shuttered casino.

Yeeha. Take that bathtub boy.

Live Science reports on new studies linking the 2005 hurricane season to rising global temperatures.

I don't know if there is consensus yet on whether claims can be made about hurricanes and global warming. Not that global warming wouldn't increase their intensity, that's just thermodynamics, but that it has warmed enough that we should see a difference. I'll wait until real climate makes up it's mind. But it is worrisome.

Just think about it. The energy that would be required to, say, increase the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico by even one degree, and how that would impact a storm system the feeds on the thermal energy of the waters. The potential for contribution is obvious, the only question is, is it happening yet?

So I saw some of the coverage of the terror raid on CNN this morning and the press conference by Gonzales and the head of the FBI. A reporter asked a key question, did the NSA spying help? While not admitting the existence of such a program the director made it pretty clear that this group was discovered using pretty standard police work, namely a cooperating informant.

Now, with all these stories about wiretapping, police using pretexting "data brokers" (aka fraudsters) to obtain phone records, and now the NYT with reporting the government has been sifting through our bank records we have to wonder, beyond being illegal and violations of our civil rights, would any of these methods even be effective? Large scale screens will turn up more false positives that waste the time of the police and FBI, and this problem has been reported again and again. Not to mention the pain in the ass being on a no-fly list entails for a law-abiding citizen, just because you do something odd like pay off your credit cards in a lump sum.

Now we have homegrown terrorists being uncovered by what sounds like standard policing techniques and a willingness of average American citizens to be vigilant and patriotic. Is all the civil rights violations worth what probably amounts to mounds of worthless data?

Maybe it's my scientific background, but I'm very suspicious of big screens. They tend to turn up more junk than directed study, and the junk increases exponentially with the size of the data set. I really doubt attempts to enter a huge set of Americans into some database for a computer to analyze will generate anything but a shitload of false leads, when what we really need is directed police work and citizen vigilance. It's similar to profiling for terrorists in the airport in terms of doing what's effective, not necessarily obvious. If you look at the picture of these guys, nothing would necessarily say middle east terrorist. And as ask the pilot has noted a majority of the plane-based terror attacks or attempts would have been missed with screening based on profiling. After all, if they know what your bias is, then they can anticipate and bypass your security more easily, not less.

More details of the investigation will surely emerge. Right now it sounds like this was just a crazy cult, from the so-called "seas of David" that was uncovered when one of the members decided he wasn't in for Jihad against his own country. And I'm glad to see that it was just good old police work that seems to have uncovered it.

As per our discussion of Coulter's image of a biologist, our friend JE has sent us this.



Ha!

Now, my only worry is that is a violation of copyright because it is satire, not parody. Stupid copyright laws.

An Arkansas community has recently voted to ban individuals from raising more than four hens (no roosters) in a non-agricultural zone. They say it's because of the crowing and mess. One has to wonder, with the spreading. incidences. of. H5N1 if this isn't actually a smart move on the part of the town.

In other health news, "butchering [your dead relatives] with bamboo knives at mortuary feasts, eating them and ... smearing [yourself] with brain tissue" may not be the best idea. Who knew?

The world seems to have discovered the Hitler or Coulter quiz. Good for them. I've been enjoying reading a mixture of thoughtful responses to the maps, some totally schizophrenic rants (check out the guy who missed the point of the flag burning post) and a fair amount of sneering defensiveness.

So it might be a good time for a restatement of the principles of this blog.

1. We don't argue with conservatives, we will discuss data though.
2. We are not demeaning people who live in red states, people are people, wherever they live, and our contributors are a mixture of red and blue citizens. We are just making fun of them for voting for Republicans against their interests.
3. We do not represent a Democratic point of view either, we pretty much are ashamed of them too.
4. The entire point of "Giving Up" is that eventually, the failures of Republicans will become so obvious that even those in the red states will suffer to the point they will vote for Democrats. The first test is in November, but polling suggests the Give Up effect is underway. No one likes incompetence, and the current Republican ideology appears to be of lip service to the religious right wing combined with dangerous economic and social policies. The red states, as the main beneficiaries of liberal economic, tax and social policies suffer first.

So, we don't argue with crazy rants here. If you want to talk about how we came to our conclusions, our data analysis, maps etc.,fine, but the only thing crazier than irrational Bushtards are people who think that arguing with irrational Bushtards is productive.

"Nonprofit health care often better, study says" is the headline of yet another article refuting the idea that private enterprise is better than public or nonprofit industry.

For-profit nursing homes and hospitals on average provide an inferior quality of care compared with their nonprofit peers, according to an extensive review of studies published on Tuesday found.
...
Authors writing in the journal Health Affairs found that a systematic analysis of 162 studies of nonprofit versus for-profit health care providers supports the concept that a facility's ownership status makes a difference in outcomes and in the cost of health care.
...
In what they called the biggest review of the literature to date, authors reported that eight studies found nonprofit hospitals have lower mortality rates, versus one study finding for-profits have lower rates of death.

Nonprofit hospitals are also better at keeping costs down, the review found.

For nursing homes, the majority of studies find quality of care better at nonprofits, although for-profit nursing homes are superior at keeping costs down.
...
Nonprofits provide benefits that are not easy to quantify, the study argues. For example, there is evidence that for-profits are more likely to mark up prices to maximize revenue and to have complaints lodged against them.

There is also evidence that nonprofits have a "spillover effect" in markets where they co-exist with for-profits, the study said. That is, they "enhance the quality and trustworthiness" of for-profits in a given market.

So, where is the data showing that private industry is more efficient or cheaper than public industry again? It's an old saw of the conservatives that private industry is more efficient and innovative, however I think the data shows that private industry consistently fails to innovate and is more expensive. Only when government steps in with regulation to force innovation, consumer protection, and responsible business practices do we see improvements, then the industries in question usually put out commercials talking about the regulation-forced innovations as if it was their idea.

**cough** clean coal **cough** automotive safety **cough**

It's official, the NAS has released a report on global warming indicating that we are currently the warmest we've been for about 2000 years and humans are influencing global climate. It is a report verifying "controversial" results from a paper from 1999 showing a major upward trend in temperatures as recorded by proxies in the most recent decades. These results were only really controversial because they told people what they didn't want to hear.

While the results covered are limited, only covering the last 2000 years, this figure in particular is worth a look.



The good news is that the premier scientific agency in the world has officially recognized that the paper that originally presented this data 7 years ago was legit, and their conclusions about warming in the last 2 millenia are real.

So, to those who deny the existence of the obvious, shit on science, and make up false dissent from the consensus, suck it.

Anyway, visit Real Climate for a nice educated discussion of the results. Or check out the news coverage from NYT, or from science magazine.

The good reports just keep on coming. The McCain Report on the illegal lobbying by Abramoff on behalf of his casino clients has been released.

TPM Muckraker has the dish on Reed and Norquists unethical behavior and evidence of Bob Ney's malfeasance.

Ha! The best quote?

To Schwartz, Abramoff appeared to have the right credentials. Abramoff claimed to be a close friend of Congressman Tom DeLay. He also discussed his friendship with Reed, recounting some of their history together at College Republicans. When Schwartz observed that Reed was an ideologue, Schwartz recalled that Abramoff laughingly replied "as far as the cash goes."

I love TPM Muckraker, they paw through the filth so we don't have to.

This headline Episcopalians Firm on Gay Bishops" for some reason makes me think of this article.

I don't know why.

Oh wait, yes I do.

Ok, I admit it. I just wanted an excuse to link to an article about an "ex-gay" who tries to cure other gays by having them sit on his lap and cuddle.

Conservatives have published an encyclopedia of conservatism.

I'm calling for entries for the liberal version of the encyclopedia (or dictionary because, admit it, we're lazy). For example:

Persecution: A feeling conservatives feel when they are not in control of government, in control of government, or partially in control of government. See fibromyalgia, and Christian Persecution complex.

Or

Trickle down economics: Also known as Voodoo Economics. A failed economic theory. Put into place by two presidents. The first, Reagan, had to institute the largest tax increase in history after cutting taxes failed to create more revenue. A record deficit was nonetheless created followed by a major recession. The second, George W. Bush, used trickle-down economics to create an even larger deficit, but as yet has not realized he has to raise taxes to prevent economic collapse.

Or

Accountability: A quality required in one's political opponents, but not in one's own party.

You guys get the idea. Stephen Colbert had a great set for the encyclopedia tonight.

Small Government: Mentioning Jesus in political speeches.
Large Government: Actually doing what Jesus says.

Ha!

Let's just hope the bastards didn't film it for propaganda.

Also, I still miss the moral high ground. As do PZ Myer and the Rudepundit.

PZ is taking the "challenge Coulter's lies" route over at Pharyngula and has asked Coulter fans to take his Coulter Godless challenge. It's pretty simple. List one paragraph from her book dealing with evolution, science, etc., and defend it. He will reply.

No takers as yet. I doubt it's from lacking of right wing readership, I've seen his trolls, they're pretty bad.

I challenge Coulter fans to a different task. Try to tell her writings from those of Mein Kampf using our quiz.

Tell me your score.

Early polling may discourage Hillary from running in 2008.


If a near majority of people say they're going to vote against you, it might be a good idea to sit this one out. She's too divisive a figure, and she won't motivate the Democratic base. I, for one, hate her because she constantly jumps on these pathetic demagogue issues that piss me off. Like attacking Grand Theft Auto. I will never vote for any politician that threatens to take my GTA away. You will have to remove the controller from my cold dead hands.

WSJ reports corporate contributions are shifting left

Most companies say they give political donations to candidates who support their businesses, regardless of party affiliation. But corporations also tend to channel funds to politicians they think will hold power. So any shift in corporate campaign giving toward Democrats could signal that businesses believe Democrats will have more sway in Washington after the 2006 midterm elections or the 2008 presidential contest.

"The reality is beginning to set in here," says Greg Casey, the head of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, an organization of businesses dedicated to electing pro-industry candidates. Even if Republicans maintain control of Congress after the November election, their majorities in both chambers are expected to shrink. "What you couldn't get done in 2006 will be much more difficult in 2007," Mr. Casey says.
...
The change among some companies and trade groups is helping Democrats gain a more even footing with Republicans in the race for cash. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has, so far in this election cycle, raised more than its Republican counterpart for the first time since Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 election. In the House, Republicans have raised more money than the Democratic campaign arm, but the gap is narrower than in previous campaigns. "Democrats are realizing the importance of working closely with business leaders," says Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the top fund-raiser for Senate Democrats.

You'll notice in the article that many of these companies still aren't giving a majority to Democrats, but they are giving a larger proportion to Dems across the board.

This also signals bad news for Democrats though. It's this money that has contaminated the political process in the first place and is also responsible for the incompetence of Republicans in addressing problems that affect the American people. If the money does just follow whoever is in power (or favored to be) then all we get is a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" effect.

So, not only are boomers a worthless generation, but they also managed to contaminate their childrens' generation. Fear the millenial sissies.

At Florida State University, parents of graduating seniors haggle with job recruiters. They want to make sure Junior gets a good salary and work schedule.

University administrators have a name for these baby boomer moms and dads who hover over their offspring's college lives.

"Helicopter parents," says Patrick Heaton, FSU's assistant dean of student affairs.

The worst of them - those who do unethical things, like write their kid's term papers - are branded "Black Hawks," a nod to the souped-up military helicopters.

Wow.

Anyway, a somewhat unscientific article, and it by no means condemns the entire generation, but I knew kids with parents like this growing up, and they tend not to amount to much. Ultimately this is a self-defeating behavior, and what kind of recruiter would hire a candidate whose parents are still micromanaging their lives? Sounds like a crappy employee to me.

I can't help but see this article as a an example of Give Up.

Motorcycle fatalities involving riders without helmets have soared in the nearly six years since Gov. Jeb Bush repealed the state's mandatory helmet law, a newspaper reported Sunday.

A Florida Today analysis of federal motorcycle crash statistics found "unhelmeted" deaths in Florida rose from 22 in 1998 and 1999, the years before the helmet law repeal, to 250 in 2004, the most recent year of available data.

Total motorcycle deaths in the state have increased 67 percent, from 259 in 2000 to 432 in 2004, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics.

Makes me think of this map (from CDC data).



Motor Vehicle deaths per 100,000, states with rates higher than the national average. Yet another way Red states appear to be less safe to live in. Amazingly, only two Blue states make this map. The two states with the highest rates are Wyoming at 31.5 and Mississippi at 30.6. Compare that to the national average of 15.7 and the five lowest states: Massachusetts 8.8, New York 8.8, Rhode Island 8.9, New Jersey 9.1, and Hawaii 9.7.

Now, in this case you don't have a great deal of sympathy for motorcyclists who aren't bright enough to wear a freaking helmet, but just look at the data! These states are failing in a major area of public safety. Screw terrorism, motor vehicle accidents are what's going to kill you.

Source: Kochanek KD, Murphy SL, Anderson RN, Scott C. Deaths: Final data for 2002. National vital statistics reports; vol 53 no 5. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2004.

Here's a helpful Wiki Howto for Republicans, How to deal with prison.

No word on whether or not the Dukester was a contributor.

The NYT reports Al Qaeda is responsible for the capture of our 2 soldiers.

Scary, as this indicates a shift in tactics that will likely be a powerful weapon against the U.S. army. If only we had just kept this limited to Afghanistan, things just keep getting worse.

PZ Myers is having a blast tearing apart Coulter's book. But today's post is absolutely hysterical.

Apparently, the problem with Evolution, according to the creepy lady, is that it is the invention of a cult of biologists, who aren't real scientists because they're mostly women.

They're almost always biologists—the "science" with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT "scientist" who fled the room in response to Larry Summers's remarks was, of course, a biologist. While I'm sure there have been groundbreaking discoveries about the internal digestive system of the earthworm, biologists are barely even scientists anymore. They're classifiers, list-makers, like librarians with their Dewey decimal system. Except librarians don't claim the Dewey decimal system holds the Rosetta Stone to the universe. There were once great biologists, but the morally vacuous ones began to promote their own at the universities. It was sort of intelligently designed devolution. Like Marxists gradually dominating the comp lit department, biologists will only be given tenure today if they foreswear any doubts about the evolution pseudoscience. Consequently, "biologist" almost always means "evolutionary biologist," which is something like an "ESP biologist."

So what do you think of that my biologist friends? I'm actually kind of pissed that biology isn't that easy. If I could just publish things I observe without figuring out why they happen I would have so many papers. She seems to be operating on the idea that biologists are all 19th century naturalists wandering around with notebooks and pith helmets.

What a freak

Just hit CNN to see this disaster in the making. Apparently, insurgents have nabbed two of our soldiers.

"There are intelligence indicators [that] they may have been captured alive rather than killed," a senior military official told CNN on Saturday night.

One U.S. soldier was killed in the attack, and a massive search was under way Saturday for the two who are unaccounted for.

The paper cited Iraqis in the area, who were interviewed by telephone from Baghdad, as saying the attack appeared to have been intended to lure some soldiers away and separate the force.

Clearly a new tactic, and a nasty one. While I can't help thinking it would have been better if we were better custodians of our captives in Abu Ghraib, I doubt if it would have made any difference in how these two soldiers will be treated. After all, these Al Qaeda jackasses (if that's who is behind this) made their names beheading journalists on television. There is no question they will not show any form of decency with their captives just because they're soldiers.

I guess I just feel a loss of moral superiority considering the horrible things we've done in the name of fighting terror. We won't be able to point to our handling of prisoners and say we're angels and demand quarter for our troops, for a lot of the same reasons described in the post below about how people form perceptions of things. Abu Ghraib probably was an anomaly, but when people think of the US in Iraq they'll always remember an image of a pile of naked men with some idiot giving the thumbs up to the camera. I suppose if we had done better we would have enjoyed more sympathy from the world now that the insurgents have captured US soldiers. It's not like you're going to convince the sociopaths with better treatment of our prisoners, but we could have done a better job convincing the normals who support the sociopaths.

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, they still might find them before it's too late.

This seems like an odd thing for us to blog about, but boingboing has pointed us towards an interesting lecture on the psychology of probablistic thinking. Namely, how bad human brains are at thinking rationally about economic decisions, but more broadly, how we let things like terrorism frighten us, why we play lotto, and why we have all sorts of other stupid quirks of decision making that prevent us from doing the logical thing.

I can't help thinking as I listened to this lecture about how it also reflects why we make a lot of bad political decisions, and why a lot of people mistrust journalism, science, and politicians. Not that one should lose their scepticism of any institution, but why the complaints are often the wrong ones. Attention is often focused on the great failures and abuses rather than the consistent and excellent work that is often done, day after day, by all sorts of dedicated professionals. The result? A generalized mistrust that prevents people from making rational choices or taking intelligent political positions. After all, why believe any information that counters your political beliefs when you can dismiss politicians as corrupt, journalists as fabricators, and scientists as frauds?

Anyway, an interesting listen, I only wish you could see the slideshow at the same time or see video.

The Ten Commandments are a source of endless Give Up joy.

Fark pointed out Colbert's hysterical interview with Congressman Westmoreland from last night. In it he asks the guy who (co?)sponsored a bill to put the Ten Commandments in every public building in the universe two great questions. First, can you think of any better building than a public building to put in the Commandments? The reply, "no". Ha! Then the second question, can you name the Ten Commandments? He falters out about 5 of them I think.

Ahh, it's so pathetic when the atheists know your damn Commandments but you don't!

My favorite Commandment is the first one which, at least in my version, is the no idolatry/graven images one. It is my favorite for two great Give Up reasons. First, everyone, when asked, says there is nothing wrong with posting the Ten Commandments in schools, buses, theme parks, wherever because they're not really religious, they're just a code of conduct (even though the first few are, well, a little churchy if you ask me). Second, because when Roy Moore protested the removal of his big, honking granite sculpture in Alabama I remember seeing the news footage of people erecting their own cardboard and home-made Commandments, and then kneeling down and praying in front of them! Ha!

I love idolatry. The way I interpret the spirit of the 1st Commandment, all the 10 commandment granite block worshippers were guilty of violating the 1st freaking commandment. Here they create a big graven image, then kneel all around it praying!

This is proof we need a flag-burning amendment to the constitution.


From the Defeatists.

This is why libertarianism doesn't work. It just doesn't take into account how stupid people are.

Yes it is your property. No you cannot dig a 60 foot shaft in the suburbs. No, you can't do whatever you want on your own land, you will kill yourself or others.

Sheesh. And will anyone bother to tell him that metal detectors don't even detect things more than 1/2 a meter underground? Or that the more likely explanation is that his soil has a low level of conductive or magnetic material that is setting it off? After 60 feet this guy didn't check the owner's manual telling him that most objects detected will be less than 20cm underground? What a dumbass.

When we have a Dem who is clearly on the take, we respond. I'm glad the leadership and the CBC finally realized that people with 90k in the freezer are up to no good.

I just don't understand why Jefferson won't resign. He points out that he hasn't been indicted yet. Is this just wishful thinking? Does he really believe the FBI will realize they made a horrible mistake, and the 90k they gave him on camera, and later found in his freezer is the result of some alternate universe impinging on ours to the effect that he's incriminated wrongly? Are they going to find his evil twin brother and indict him instead?

What an idiot. The sooner he's gone the better.

My RSS feed has been dead since yesterday afternoon making me internet handicapable. Oh well, without my access to a hundred sites at once I'm too ineffecient to blog. All I can offer for now is this good news for Patty and Selma. A list of problems solved by MacGyver. I find it oddly fascinating.

Pandagon caught frothy mixture and erstwhile Senator Rick Santorum reclaiming the colors pink and purple for giant assholes everywhere. Way to go, Rick!

Isn't it amazing how consistently Bush plays right into Al Qaeda's game plans? Now we hear from these documents nabbed from the Zarqawi assault Al Qaeda wanted the US to go to war with Iran and was working to incite one.

Why bother? Bush is doing that all on his own? It's amazing that consistently he has done everything that Osama has wanted since 9/11. After all, what were Osama's goals? To start a holy war between the West and Islam that will weaken us, make us waste money, and make us fearful and terrified of terrorists. Now, Bush has attacked the Middle East, angered the entire world at our country, gotten the US bogged down fighting an insurgent guerilla war in two countries, wasted billions and soon trillions of dollars, restricted freedoms of Americans, used terror alerts to freak people out for political gain, killed Osama's main Al Qaeda rival, and most importantly, has failed to pursue Osama since Tora Bora and to this day failed to nab the bastard. Now they want Iran attacked? Well, Bush looks like he's doing everything he can to comply. It's like he's receiving orders from Afghanistan in how to run our country. It's like they're BFF, separated by circumstance but going on the same game plan.

Also, I don't know that Iraq is getting safer after Zarqawi's death, 10 people being pulled from a bus and shot suggests otherwise. Perhaps this latest turning point just requires more time to take.

Going through PZ's critique of Coulter's creationist arguments in Godless, and he links to Rudepundit's site showing Coulter plagiarized in her new book.

Now, it was one thing when she was just making things up, fudging citations and misreading source material, but now she's plagiarizing. Surely Random House cannot let this continue.

Whether or not you believe divorce is a bad thing, or a good thing, can we all agree that you've failed as parents if your son's penis becomes national news because you can't resolve a simple dispute over a circumcision. And I'm not talking about an infant, but rather an 8-year-old, who sounds like he's suffering from phimosis.

Sorry, it's a slow news night. And Carlin's appearance wasn't that exciting. Just another embarrassing moment for humanity as Coulter is once again given access to a national audience. Carlin also never appeared in frame so you couldn't even see his expressions, and Leno was just acting as an apologist for the freak.

Again, she had that strange look in her eyes when she was talking that I'm having trouble describing. She has this look like she's just been caught in the airport with a vibrator, fuzzy cuffs and a kilo of coke in her carryon and is trying to explain that it's someone else's bag. An odd bird, certainly.

Tonight, there is actually a reason to watch Jay Leno. As PZ has been excited about over at Pharyngula George Carlin and Anne Coulter have been coscheduled tonight and the potential for fireworks has a few people excited.

There's been lot's of talk lately about whether or not to ignore Coulter, indicating we are not alone in being unsure of how to deal with her brand of crazy. Kos seems to share the tinkerbell theory that she's kept alive by the attention lavished on her for being outrageous.

The left could've learned the same lesson regarding Coulter. The more we protest her and bitch about her, the more books she sells and TV appearances she books. There's no better way to kill an opponent in politics than to ignore him or her. If no one pays attention to you, you are no longer relevant.

Whereas PZ Myers believes in the boiling frog theory that the mounting conservative craziness needs to be opposed (and mocked) or else the heat gets turned up higher and higher and before you know it, you're completely surrounded by ignorance.

Lots of people have been telling me to ignore Ann Coulter: that she says outrageous things to get attention, that addressing her antics is exactly what she wants, that the best thing to do is to starve her of the publicity. I sympathize, I really do. It's giving her and her kind far too much credit.

However, I've been hearing the same argument applied to creationists for about 25 years. "Ignore them and they'll go away," or "Serious scientists don't pay attention to the lunatic fringe," they say. We tend our little gardens, and we don't worry about what the crackpot next door is growing in his. But hey, have you noticed something?

Neglect doesn't work.

Here's a counterargument: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I've watched good people do nothing about creeping lunacy and anti-intellectualism for decades. I watched appalled when that senile fool Reagan was elected. I was even more appalled when George W. Bush, airhead extraordinaire and utterly unqualified ignoramus, became president. The citizenry howls to destroy the science standards in our public schools, or complacently votes to lower property taxes at the expense of our children's minds. While we've quietly raised a rich crop in scattered little plots, we are about to be overwhelmed by the nightmarish weeds that overrun our neighbors'. We must stand up and shout, finally…and hope it's not too late.

Then again, PZ is of course particularly pissed off at her because her book attacks evolution. That's a good way to get his attention. Her arguments are a joke of course. She's really figured out a good niche, just write crazy conservative blather and people will buy your book. I really don't think I'm violating Godwin's law anymore when I compare her to a certain dictator whose name begins with H. She really does exist to just pander to the worst type of dehumanizing hatred towards vast swathes of the population for attention. It's bizarre though, all these Christians and right wingers getting behind a 44-year-old unmarried harpy who wears revealing miniskirts everywhere and bitches about immorality. Do they really believe her? Do they really think she's a virginal flower of Christian love and abstinence? Some have parodied this apparent masochism but I think it's just another funny aspect of the woman to mock.

Anyway, Scoobie, her long time nemesis, has a blog dedicated to debunking Godless. He had good luck showing the scholarship of Slander and Treason was fraudulent. It's getting towards the point where we're going to have to have a talk with Random House about their publishing authors who fabricate and lie under the guise of scholarship. Hopefully he'll find out about the Hitler or Coulter quiz and take a ride.

By the way, for some other good TV watching, watch Bush criticize a blind reporter for wearing sunglasses.

In response to all the hubbub from the NYT article and the federal government reporting that formula feeding is "risky," Slate has published a fascinating and accessible article on the immunology of breastfeeding. Apparently, most doctors have it wrong, humans do not absorb antibodies into their bloodstream through nursing as other mammals do. Apparently humans and other primates have a dedicated transport system for antibodies from the maternal supply.

When you ask a bunch of doctors about how breast-feeding prevents infection, they get it wrong—I know they do, because I've asked the question. Doctors tell you that colostrum (produced in the first three days or so after a baby is born) and breast milk are full of maternal antibodies. Next, doctors say that these maternal antibodies are absorbed into the infant's blood circulation and thus serve to protect infants from disease.

That's the correct description of the immunology of breast-feeding for most mammals. It's also true that human colostrum and milk are rich in maternal antibodies—colostrum is pretty much antibody soup. And babies take in these antibodies as they nurse. But human babies are never able to absorb maternal antibodies from milk or colostrum into the bloodstream, except perhaps in the minutest amounts. Maternal antibodies in milk and colostrum protect against infection—but only locally, working inside the baby's gastrointestinal tract.

This information will surprise farmers, veterinarians, and strongly invested proponents of breast-feeding. After all, if a newborn piglet is deprived of its mother's colostrum for the first eight hours of life, it is almost guaranteed to become sick and die. Similarly, newborn horses, cats, dogs, and most other mammals are not likely to survive long if they are deprived of colostrum. The reason is simple: Most mammals are born without any antibodies, or only the tiniest amounts, circulating in their blood. That leaves them defenseless at birth against viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. Fortunately, for a brief period after birth, the antibody molecules in colostrum can easily pass through the bowel walls of babies of each of these species.

But human newborns, it turns out, differ from most other mammals in the way they acquire maternal antibodies. (Before the creationists get too excited, I should point out that everything I am about to say applies to monkeys as well as to people.) Newborn infants get their maternal protection before birth, via an active transport system in the human placenta that carries maternal antibodies from the mother to the fetus. Unlike all those other animals, human babies are born with all the maternal antibodies they will ever have. That's why we don't need to absorb maternal antibodies from colostrum. And it's why formula-fed babies are not at a disadvantage, compared with breast-fed babies, in their supply of circulating maternal antibodies.

None of this is my discovery. It was well-known, even commonplace, in the immunological literature of 40 years ago. But as the field turned to other matters, these findings just sort of fell out of fashion (though I've certainly come upon plenty of modern papers whose authors understand the idea). Because of the modern aversion to looking at older research, a surprisingly large number of doctors, especially nonimmunologists, have either forgotten this aspect of human immunity or never knew about it.

He's right about that older research thing. If it was discovered before about 1990 (and doesn't have an abstract accessible to pubmed) most scientists will never know about it. It's just not efficient anymore to parse through decades worth of journals that aren't electronically catalogued when there might be a nice electronically available review article posted online.

Since the link below doesn't seem to go anywhere, here is the VA state board webpage, with all of the votes broken down all the way to individual precincts.

As for the Saramago write-in, I know that our precinct only had three options - Miller, Webb, or 'no vote'. I suppose the last of the three would be more in the spirit, but write ins just weren't allowed.

The trend continues. Data this week from the FBI (full report is still unpublished, this is preliminary data) shows that New York is the safest big city in America. Meanwhile, crime in the red states is increasing.

I wonder, does this mean that the Freakonomics people were right about legalized abortion leading to lower crime with a 30 year lag? New York was, after all, the first to truly legalize abortion on demand. Or, does this just mean that high levels of incarceration are not effective since it only delays the problem?



Interesting, those blue states just keep looking better and better.

The more you hear about this cult, the less appealing it becomes. LiveScience reports that scientologists are challenging newborn screening because they fear it interferes with their stupid "silent birth" ritual. Apparently, L. Ron also didn't believe in breastfeeding, even though the government is now saying bottle feeding is "risky".

I say, we let anyone who doesn't want the screening skip it. When their children die at a higher rate than other peoples, well, it will be a self-correcting problem. Yeah, yeah, the children are innocent and don't deserve this kind of crap, but what are you going to do? My advice is to stop caring.

Fafblog returned to the living last week, and is already back in the hysterical saddle.

Fafblog is a little hard to explain. But today's entry might give you an idea. It's awesome, if not a little surreal.

Run for your lives - America is under attack! Just days ago three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide in a savage assault on America's freedom to not care about prisoner suicides! Oh sure, the "Blame Atrocities First" crowd will tell you these prisoners were "driven to despair," that they "had no rights," that they were "held and tortured without due process or judicial oversight in a nightmarish mockery of justice." But what they won't tell you is that they only committed suicide as part of a diabolical ruse to trick the world into thinking our secret torture camp is the kind of secret torture camp that drives its prisoners to commit suicide! This fiendish attempt to slander the great American institution of the gulag is nothing less than an act of asymmetrical warfare against the United States - a noose is just a suicide bomb with a very small blast radius, people! - and when faced with a terrorist attack, America must respond. Giblets demands immediate retaliatory airstrikes on depressed Muslim torture victims throughout the mideast!

Read the rest.

Looks like Webb won pretty handily 53% to 46%.

You can look for AAP's Saramago tactics in the local results. I don't see any imbalances though indicating write-ins.

Sorry for the late entries, Blogger has been tempermental this morning.

Am I the only one that wishes Michael Newdow would just give up already? The good news is his latest case, against "In God we trust", has been tossed out of court. He's a one man wedge issue for the Republicans, and if he could just cram it, and go away, the whole left wing conspiracy against religion charge gets a lot weaker for the fundies. After all, there is no conspiracy, Newdow is the only person in the country who actually gives a shit about these silly minutiae.

It's official, Fitzmas is over. Sounds like Rove isn't going to be put in cuffs after all. They guy is pretty slippery, he's managed to wriggle out of a lifetime of borderline criminal political behavior.

Maybe next time.

The LA Times is reporting on the fracturing of the Kansas GOP amid defections from the Republican party to the Democrats and a growing dissatisfaction among voters for the wedge issues.

Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. The other two are targeting GOP incumbents in the attorney general's office and in the state House of Representatives.

Political observers say the fracture within the Kansas GOP may foreshadow the future for the national party. The division between moderates and social conservatives is expected to define the contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.

Kansas has been at the forefront of the culture wars that helped the Republican Party gain national dominance this decade. Twice in the last seven years, its Board of Education voted to teach alternatives to evolution in public schools. Voters in 2005 overwhelmingly approved a ban on gay marriage. The state's attorney general last year subpoenaed medical records of abortion patients.

"A lot of people in Kansas are feeling lost right now," said Parkinson, 48, who was invited onto the ticket by popular Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. "I decided I'd rather spend time building great universities than wondering if Charles Darwin was right."

That's great news, but it's not what drew my attention about the article. It's entitled, "In Kansas, a Troubling Fissure for GOP."

I just couldn't help wondering which Republican's fissure would be so vexing for an entire state's political party and how they found out about it, then I realized, oh, they're talking about a political disagreement. Duh.

According to CNN the FBI reports that crime rates are increasing for the first time in a decade, with the sharpest increases in midwestern cities.

Hmm. I look forward to the release of this info in October, it might be an interesting read, because it shows a continuing decrease in murders in the large bluer cities, even Detroit, with some redistributions of crime. They also cite what will soon be a major problem.

Some experts have cited an aging population and stiffer sentencing as key factors which contributed to the gradual reductions in crime throughout the '90s and into the start of the new century.

But several leading criminologists say those factors are changing, and that they're not surprised by the new numbers.

"There is an 'echo boom', with an increasing number of late adolescents, particularly blacks and Latinos," said criminal justice expert James Fox of Northeastern University.

"Also, more people incarcerated in the '80s are now being released to their neighborhoods, and some are back to their old ways and old gangs," Fox said.

The statistics for cities of 100,000 or more show the largest increase in overall violent crime occurred in the Midwest, where the total of murders, robberies, rapes, and aggravated assaults increased by 5.7 percent last year.

Think about this problem. If increased incarceration just buys you a 20-year lag in crime, which eventually reasserts itself because the prison system is defective and abusive and doesn't rehabilitate, then won't we be up shit creek again in about a decade? Or, maybe I should ask, won't these states really be up shit creek again?

Fark has brought us an even more evil picture of Dick Cheney than we could have thought possible.



Who could have thought it possible.

However, I still think the old Nixon picture represents a greater level of evil, because he has the Republican hair-part of death.



Beware the hair part! A true omen of evil.

It's like rain on your wedding day, CNN reports the added armor to Humvees makes them more dangerous. Now they believe the additional top-heavy armor makes them more likely to roll over and kill or injure soldiers.

"I believe the up-armoring has caused more deaths than it has saved," said Scott Badenoch, a former Delphi Corp. vehicle dynamics expert told the Dayton Daily News for Sunday editions.

Since the start of the war, Congress and the Army have spent tens of millions of dollars on armor for the Humvee fleet in Iraq, the newspaper reported Sunday.

That armor -- much of it installed on the M1114 Humvee built at the Armor Holdings Inc. plant north of Cincinnati, Ohio -- has shielded soldiers from harm.

But serious accidents involving the M1114 have increased as the war has progressed, and the accidents were much more likely to be rollovers than those of other Humvee models, the newspaper reported.

So, the attempts to make the vehicles safer are creating Patton-like deaths instead. How retarded.

The Democratic primary for the Virginia Senate race is this Tuesday. As the lucky residents of a battleground region, we've been getting fliers. Lots of fliers. At least 2-3 a day, for each of us, sometimes multiple different fliers a day for the same candidate. So many fliers that we have to have a separate trash bag just for the Senate candidate fliers.

The problem? Both guys seem like enormous douchebags. On one hand, there's the former corporate lobbyist who sends out vast quantities of negative attack ads, baseless pandering (my personal fave - "Which candidate can women count on" - I wish I could post the pictures on the front), meaningless endorsements, and no actual substansive proposals.

On the other hand, there's the former Republican who sends out vast quantities of negative attack ads, meaningless endorsements, and no actual substansive proposals.

Now, I have no problem with former Republicans. Many of us here were Republicans once. But we got our heads out of our asses long ago, in our early youth. This guy was actively campaigning for Bush, Allen, et al just a couple of years ago. So it seems more like opportunism than a genuine change of philosophy. I realize that Kos is endorsing him, but meaningless endorsements that aren't backed by any proposals of substance just leave me cold.

So what are our options? Hold our noses and vote? Then we're just perpetuating the problems of shitty candidates pulling shitty campaign tricks. Not show up? Again, I don't like that idea, either. What about go to the polls, sign in, then either leave the ballot blank or write in a clear protest (e.g. not "Micky Mouse").

It's kind of a tough call. This is a off-year election, and a primary at that. Poll turnout will be miserable, at best. Moreover, most of the contributors here are impossible to poll - we're young, educated, somewhat affluent, and totally off the radar of traditional polling (no landlines, don't respond to canvassing, etc.). Not showing up says that we don't care. Showing up and leaving it blank says that we want better candidates. And since it's going to be a low-turnout election, our voices have a real chance to be amplified.

Comments?

It's been an interesting week. The Republicans thought they were going to get a good base-riling fight going over gay marriage but their amendment failed to even get out of the gate. Then they thought they could secure support from the uber-rich but their attempts to eliminate the Paris Hilton Tax surprisingly failed. The Republicans can't seem to get their shit together in the senate. Poor bastards. Just wait until all the old people who can't figure out plan D get back into the polls. They're going to be so screwed.

Things continue to look worse and worse for them. Despite the military's capture of Zarqawi things still appear to worsen in both Iraq and Afghanistan where they are seeing a Taliban resurgence. Most people are doubting that the death of the one bastard is going to have a long term effect, especially considering all his crazy underlings are planning to retaliate in honor of his martyrdom.

Finally, Dow 10,000 anyone? This bodes poorly for these jackasses trying to convince Americans that tax cuts have been good for them financially. The only indicator they've been able to reliably point at has been the markets, but now the inflation damage from the weak dollar and huge debt is starting to sink in.

She won a national award for Mayport, a paean on growing up in a dysfunctional Florida (redundant?) community. Ok, maybe not a paean, maybe more of a dirge.

You can always read about her poetical and gardening adventures at st*rnosedmole.

Bush urges immigrants to learn English, history.

Only if you learn them first dude.

Apparently, this Layman jackass at ChristianCadre has been spreading the good word of the Left Behind Eternal Forces game, and explaining on many blogs including Give Up blog how the game isn't about Christians murdering non-Christians who they fail to convert.

It turns out, however, that Talk2Action, who originally published the story of the sick fundie backstory of the game, was totally right. Layman made a bunch of claims that talk2action over-hyped the story and that no secular reviewers had come to similar conclusions after playing the game. Now several reviews have come out confirming Talk2Actions take on the game, which if you remember is as follows:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

You got to wonder about the fundies, why don't they understand you can't just make shit up on the intarweb? People figure it out, they expose the bullshit. It's the beauty of the system. I've now added Talk2action to my RSS feed and will keep track of it, as the fundies are kind of scary. Which reminds me, I read Ebert's website for reviews of movies and his Answerman column where he talks about movies and tries to answer questions about them for readers. Apparently, he expressed the view after seeing a movie about a psycho fundamentalist that there probably are fundies out there who are nice caring people and people shouldn't judge all fundies by the representation in this film. The response he got to this seemingly innocuous statement is pretty funny.

Q. Read your review of "Hate Crime" and disagree when you say the movie presents a portrait of fundamentalists that does not reflect many of them. I live in Dallas and I know very few Southern Baptists who do not think gays are going straight to hell. Unfortunately, this includes some members of my family. I sadly do not think that the Pastor Boyd character was overplayed.

Mike Schermer, Dallas

A. In my review, I wrote in part: "Yes, there are plenty of fundamentalists who believe homosexuals are on the highway to hell. But there are other fundamentalists, a great many more, I believe, who are gentle and humane, positive and well-meaning, and although I may disagree with many of their beliefs, well, there are a lot of religious beliefs in the world and most people disagree with most of them."

I received dozens of letters telling me this statement was naive, and not a single letter in support of it. Here is Elaine Wood of Louisville, Ky.: "Having been raised in that fundamentalist 'we're right and everyone else is wrong,' hate-mongering environment, I was subjected to ministers like the 'Pastor Boyd' character repeatedly -- until I refused to return to church when he tried to molest me as a teenager. This character is an accurate composite of many 'God-fearing' (as opposed to God-loving) tyrants. Are there less-lethal fundamentalists? Sure, but I've yet to encounter one who wasn't determined to 'fix' me, regardless of my spiritual beliefs, faith and church membership. I saw the movie not as a statement about homosexuality (what other people do in the privacy of their homes is none of my business), but as a wake-up call for reducing judgment, bigotry and intolerance."

Well, I think that's why we have talk2action, to keep track of their crazy bigotry and shennanigans like the SPLC's Hatewatch.

This report takes some of the fun out of hearing about Zarqawi's death. It seems that they had him in their crosshairs since 2002, but Bush refused to pull the trigger for two years because they wanted him all alive and Al Qaeda-ey to make the case against Saddam.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

'People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of pre-emption against terrorists.'

"Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it," said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

No point killing an Al Qaeda member if it doesn't serve your partisan, war mongering bullshit I guess.

Ah Santorum. It appears that our frothy mix's website has markedly different Spanish and English language statements regarding his take on immigration.

This is dumb. Tonto, even. I'm just saying, whether you like immigrants or not, there are a whole heckuva lot o' people in the U.S. who speak both English and Spanish. I'm just a white girl from the suburbs, y aun yo puedo hablar la lengua mas bella. People younger than me are even more horrifyingly bilingual -- I mean, they learned "abierto" and "cerrado" from Sesame Street and never looked back. And contrary to popular opinion, a lot of people originally from foreign countries do end up speaking English. So, the fact that Santorum and Co. would try this obvious canard is clear proof that he obviously thinks we (as in everybody) are a bunch of idiots. You don't try something this stupid unless you think the other guy is stupider. And this is plenty stupid. Hoo boy. Or ay, carumba, as they might say.

This is just weird. Pro-abstinence lollipops. I'm not going to explain why it's weird. You already know.

BTW, have you seen how much these damn purity rings cost? Holy Bejeezus! I cannot see what is so pure about shelling out 300 bucks for one of these. Can't the kids of America just get their regular old class rings, but with a tiny chastity belt etched on the side? Jostens, the people turn their lonely eyes to you!

So the FDA has approved Merck's HPV vaccine. Huzzah. But now it has to go through the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Which apparently includes Dr. Reginald Finger, a shill for Focus on the Family.

Doctor people, why are these loons on high-level government committees? And how do they get to be doctors in the first place? I understand why loons become lawyers -- the profession is all about making stuff up -- but medicine is supposed to be based on actual facts and suchlike. But we get a dude working for CDC who would oppose not just an HPV vaccine, but an HIV vaccine because we would lose the "disinhibition" factor. The wha? Sir, I call shenanigans.

Anyway, follow the link above to the address where you can submit public comments on the vaccine. Let us whack Dr. Finger (ew, what a name) upside the head with the shovel of veritas.

Impeach for Peace offers us a plan for DIY impeachment.

Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.


After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.

Yeah, I'm sure it won't be ignored by the ruling party. They'll drop everything and say, "Wait a minute, the people want to impeach Bush, lets all shoot ourselves in the foot!"

I think this energy would be better expended giving up rather than generating more paper to be ignored by politicians who have no interest in these symbolic gestures. Conyers might get a kick out of it, but again, just more futile symbolism.

Delay is officially gone and you can read his farewell speech over at WaPo.

In it is this interesting little bit that seems to be a peace-gesture to liberals was played over and over again on the news yesterday that I was watching at least.

Had liberals not fought us tooth and nail over tax cuts and budget cuts and energy and Iraq, and partial-birth abortion, those of us on this side of the aisle could only imagine all the additional things we could have accomplished.

But the fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, they didn't agree with us. So to their credit, they stood up to us, they argued with us, and they did so honorably, on behalf of more than 100 million people, just like we did against President Clinton and they did against President Reagan.

But because this is Tom Delay and he is giving a speech on the benefits of partisanship and hatred he can't resist ruining it with snide remarks (not shown on the TV news I saw)

Now it goes without saying, Mr. Speaker, that by my count, our friends on the other side of the aisle lost every one of those arguments over the last 22 years, but that's beside the point.

Now in regards to the first statement, I think this is his last strategic move against the Democrats. As he exits he wants them to think the pathetic opposition they've represented over the last 12 years actually represents "tooth and nail" fighting. Let them pat themselves on the back for all that loyalty to ideals they've been showing over there on the Democratic side. Yeah right. If "tooth and nail" is voting with Republicans for 3 years nonstop after 9/11 for war and tax cuts then sure, that's a hell of an opposition party we've got here. Nice try Tom.

Answer: Scientologists sponsoring a third-tier NASCAR car.

The best part is about halfway through the third paragraph. Instead of racing around in suped-up Chevys and Ford muscle cars, the Scientologists' driver will be making frequent left turns in a late model Taurus. Wooo! Taurus! What a racer - running around in the same car your mom schlepped groceries with. Maybe he'll do the whole thing with a couple of kids in the back. Stupid, stupid, brainwashed kids.

Finally some good news out of Iraq as reports of Zarqawi's death seem to be legit.

However, given how many times we've been burned by so-called "turning points" in this war, I don't think any of us are ready to hope things will actually get better for the Iraqis yet. How many times have we had turning points that have only preceeded worse and worse news? But, if Zarqawi really was important for this movement it might have some impact, if only a demoralization of the insurgency. Given the nature of insurgency and guerilla warfare though, it likely they have a system capable of operating without a central leader, or have made contingency plans in case of his death. And don't forget the whole fanaticism problem. They won't be deterred by the loss of a single leader. We'll know in a couple months I guess.

The number 2 guy at the UN might be reading the Give Up goodness. Check this out:

In the speech, Malloch Brown said the United States relies on the United Nations as a diplomatic tool but doesn't defend it against criticism at home. That policy of "stealth diplomacy" is unsustainable, he said.

While praising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessors, Malloch Brown lamented that the good works of the U.N. are ignored.

"Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News," he said.

"The U.N.'s role is in effect a secret in Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world," Malloch Brown said.

Ha! Now, this guy's supposed to be a diplomat, and mocking the red states is best left to the experts, so he really should have known better. That being said, I know of a certain hastily-erected sign by the road about 60 miles north of C-Ville that demands "Get the U.S. out of the U.N." so deep down, we all know Malloch is right.

We all have to suffer under the burden of middle America (has anyone else been watching Wonder Showzen?), but if you're a diplomat at the UN you're not supposed to point it out so directly. Especially because it will just feed into the nasty Fox News/Rush Limbaugh circuit you hate so much. Instead, the UN should just have a "miniature US flag" initiative in which they spend a few million dollars planting little US flags everywhere around the world. That kind of sappy shit is the kind of thing that seems to work on the red states. None of that feeding orphans or fighting AIDS crap will change their minds.

Well, it looks like I'll be practicing medicine rather than pursuing science if this shit keeps up.

A House appropriations subcommittee today endorsed a flat budget of $28.3 billion next year for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The amount essentially matches President Bush's request for the agency and, if left unchanged by legislators, would mean the third straight year at that level.

Like President Bush's request, the House bill would give the NIH director's office a $140 million boost, mainly for biodefense countermeasures and the trans-NIH Roadmap. But it would cut most of NIH's 27 individual institutes and centers by about 0.5% to 0.8%. (One departure from the President's request is the elimination of a $100 million transfer from NIH to the Global AIDS fund.)

"No question, we're extremely disappointed," says Jon Retzlaff, director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. "To now shut off the pipeline is not only going to hurt how quickly we can make strides, but also harm our entire biomedical enterprise" by discouraging young investigators from pursuing research careers, he says. NIH officials expect success rates for grant applications to sink to 19% in 2007, from more than 30% just 5 years ago.

Hear that fellas? That's the sucking sound of no one starting out in research anymore because it's going to be impossible for young investigators to get RO1 grants. The translation of the bolded statement is the paylines are going down, probably the worst since the Reagan years. I've actually met researchers, who when things were really bad under Reagan, fled the country to places like Canada and Australia because grants were just too hard to get. Yes, the funding is staying flat for the entire NIH, but that diversion to the worthless roadmap and bioterror means giant cuts in RO1 grants. Looking to the near future when I've got to look towards getting funding I've got to say, the easy road would just be the practice of medicine. Why suffer because these people don't value science. And this stupid fucking roadmap? No one wants it! We want what works, the time-tested RO1 funded grant (as Andrew Marks pointed out in JCI not so long ago - and responded to critics last week as well). Very discouraging. All this money wasted on bioterror, stupid fences, and a roadmap that's about as successful as the one the Israelis are using.

Sounds like more and more people are smelling the shit sandwich, and nothing Republicans can do can cover the smell. Most telling, they fail to even gain a cloture vote in the senate for their stupid missionary-position only amendment. Wow, that's the most pathetic thing since Russ Feingold tried to get a censure resolution passed and no one in the senate would back him up (sorry, it was not a brave stand on his part, it's just stupid if you stick out your neck like that without first garnering support). They went ahead and tried to get it through without having a proper head count, and defections from key Republicans cost the amendment its continued debate.

Then I see this story from CNN.

"Assuring health care is a shared social responsibility," says the interim report of the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 14-member committee that went to 50 communities and heard from 23,000 people.

The committee describes its recommendations as a framework. The recommendations don't say who would pay for universal health coverage or how much it would cost.
...
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said he and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, came up with the idea for establishing a group that would work outside of Washington to find out what Americans want. He said they were tired of years of gridlock on health care issues.

"We decided, let's try something else. Let's go to the public and give them a chance, not in terms of writing a bill, but let them provide a kind of general roadmap where the country ought to head," Wyden said.

Isn't that interesting? You go to the public to ask what they want, rather than trying to cram idiot ideas like Medicare plan D down their throats, and they say they want universal coverage. It's just a matter of time anyway, our absence of health care coverage is a comparative disadvantage internationally, is providing us with poorer health than Canadians or Brits receive even when confounding variables are controlled for, and, in the end, the government pays when people don't have insurance. Might as well enroll everybody who falls through the cracks into a universal system so they get routine screening and cheap prevention rather than unpaid ER visits and outrageously expensive interventions when things get ugly and they have to see a doctor.

So, to summarize, what do Americans care about most? The war, gas, healthcare, immigration, and other domestic issues. What do they not care about? Gay marriage. That's just the wackos, and it sounds like the people have stopped listening to their craziness. They need to see the doctor, and the gay couple next door isn't preventing that.

Boingboing points us to a nut who's devoting a week of his life to eating monkey chow in an effort to prove a man can live without cooking, washing dishes, etc.

Sadly, it doesn't sound like he's enjoying it much. I'm disappointed, I've been hoping that the real-life equivalent of Bachelor Chow from Futurama would be invented so I'd no longer have to think about such things. Check out the monkey chow diaries.

Republicans are just melting out of Spitzers path as they see that his leads in New York polls are overwhelming.

In the wake of last week's Republican and Democratic political conventions, Spitzer would thrash all challengers by 50-point margins, according to the survey of 1,463 registered voters by Blum & Weprin Associates in Manhattan.

"Spitzer truly looks invincible against all candidates," pollster Mickey Blum said. "The other people are pretty much irrelevant."

Spitzer, the state's attorney general, would defeat Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi in a Democratic primary, 65 to 10 percent, if it were held today instead of September. He would beat Republican John Faso, 65 to 15 percent in a general election. William Weld, a Republican who dropped out yesterday, would lose to Spitzer, 66 to 15 percent.

Makes you wonder why they're even going to bother. It sounds like they realize it's just a waste of money opposing him. I'm thinking Spitzer takes NY governor in 2006 and 2010, then goes presidential in 2012. Corporate crooks are crapping their pants.

The NYT suggests that it's problematic for moderate Republicans while polling suggests voters are more interested in the Iraq war, oil, immigrants, the economy, etc. All of which are issues on which the administration is just a train wreck in slow motion in dealing with. Dow 10,000 anyone?

Hopefully Bush will keep up the good work and we'll see a nice failure of unadulturated conservatism. Picking on gays while the house is burning might just go down as the worst example of do-nothingness since Buchanan before the Civil War. I personally think he's trying to unseat Buchanan as worst president ever.

And did anyone hear about Anne Coulter attacking 9/11 widows on the Today Show? I think The Grit has it right, you lose just by inviting this insane woman on your show. Apparently her book is pro-creationism too as discussed by PZ at Pharyngula. The crazy bat is now coming out against Darwinism as anti-religious leftist propaganda. I guess no one told George Will (or we accidentally put him on our super-secret liberal conspiracy mailing list). I don't know, is even talking about this woman a mistake? Giving up would suggest she should be held up for mockery, but she's just too bizarre and over-the-top to even really be used to mock conservatives. That and she always has that weird look in her eyes. I can't quite put my finger on it, but she always looks a little panicked, like she's just been caught at a crime scene with a gun in her hands and is trying to explain to a cop why she's there and no she didn't kill that prostitute in her trunk. Then again, some people think she's witty. I fail to see the humor in someone who regularly proposes that I should be killed for my beliefs, and the only problem with Tim McVeigh is he didn't park his truck in front of the New York Times building. What is the proper give up solution to this woman? Does talking about her keep her alive like some pundit version of Tinkerbell?

So, mixed news on yesterdays primaries in various states.

Of interest, rightwing nutjob Roy Moore lost his primary bid in Alabama by a large margin but at the same time passed a gay marriage ban by a 4-1 margin.

Guess what Alabama, no one gay or straight, in their right minds, lives in your backwater state. You're the bottom of the barrel down there, sucking at just about everything. Just check the maps.

The Kossacks are excited about one of their Netroots candidates, John Tester, winning his primary challenge. Just check out this guy's haircut.



How could he lose in Montana with a haircut like that? Anyway, Conrad Burns is already pretty weak because he is one of the most compromised senators in the Abramhoff scandal.

Sadly, it looks like the Busby challenge in the Dukester's district might not win. Yet another symbolic victory for Democrats there. Keep an eye on it yourself I've gotta get some sleep.

Either way at Give Up we win. If we don't gain power in November we win because we won't share in the blame for the inevitable train wreck. If we win, well, we don't have to give up any more. The problem occurs if we slightly win, then we don't have any real power, but because of inevitable obstructionism, we'll get blamed for everything.

I ran across this hack today on boingboing.

It sounds kickass. Apparently the Linksys people built their firmware using GNU/Linux software then failed to abide by the open source license agreement. Once they were called on it they had to publish their firmware, and everyone realized something amazing, the cheap $60 routers were actually just crippled $600 routers.

Hack your Linksys! Increase your broadcast power safely by 200-300%! Free wireless for all!

Hey Buck, didn't you tell me once that this kind of crap is illegal? If it's not, it should be. People who know me have noticed I can't stand commercials because I lack that highly beneficial brain circuit that allows me to tune out while they're on. Instead I think about them, analyze them, and am slowly driven insane by their stupidity.

A Massachusetts company wants to beam commercial radio broadcasts into school buses every morning and afternoon, the latest mingling of education and commerce to spark outcry as the firm lobbies school districts across the state to sign contracts for the fall.

Needham-based Bus Radio said yesterday that it has signed up school systems with nearly 100,000 school children in Massachusetts and other states for the service next school year. The company says it is offering a cutting-edge service in which children select music online for their district's buses, drivers can finish their routes with their passengers quiet, and school districts get cash from the company. Bus Radio can sell advertising time to businesses trying to reach young consumers.
...
"What these corporations want to do is be in children's faces 24 hours a day, and they're getting close to that," said Susan Linn, a psychologist at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston.

Ack. That would drive me totally nuts. It reminds me of that story about Channel One, that supposedly "educational" TV segment with commercials some schools play before classes, that showed the kids remembered the ads, but not the news.

A whole bunch of things happened today in Iraq that certainly don't happen in Washington DC. For one, nine heads were found in fruit boxes. Wow. Then there were the gunmen who brazenly kidnapped 50 people in the middle of the day. Sheesh. Then the news that violent deaths in Baghdad have probably topped 6,000. This year. Wow, I wonder if this jackass at Newsmax is planning to retract. 6,000 this year alone with a record 1400 killed last month in Baghdad alone.

Wow, so if that keeps up that means Baghdad has a fatality rate of 257 per 100,000 per year so far (with 100k refugees and untold numbers of casualties) and the rate for the last month of 300 per 100,000 per year. Now, when you divide this new rate by the entire population of the country, you end up with about 20 per 100k per year. Hmmm, that makes me wonder, the Newsmax article suggested the death rate was about that, maybe, just maybe, those finks are dividing the Baghdad deaths by the population of the entire country? Interesting tactic.

Nothing like new statistics to show conservatives are totally full of shit. It should have been obvious to them not to propose such an obviously absurd statement as Iraq or Baghdad being safer than DC. It is prima facie bullshit, DC has no green zone, and you don't need a bullet-proof vest to walk around the city. I find it quite pleasant. Anyway, enough of this silly horseshit.

Glamour, of all possible outlets, on the new lies about women's health. Actually, these lies are starting to feel painfully old.

And watch out, all you 40 year-old married women on blood pressure medication! It's not just hypothetical sixteen-year-old hussies that are being protected from the "selfishness" inherent in emergency contraception. As it turns out, there's no plan B for you either!

Having solved all the other problems in his presidecy, Bush has announced he now must take on homersexshulls.

Oh wait. That should read "because of all the other problems in his presidency..."

It's official, time to scapegoat the gays and distract from all the miserable failures. I don't think it's working so hot these days, even the distracting thought of a gay couple moving in next door isn't enough to mask the smell coming from middle America's stinking shit sandwich. They're tasting it, that's for sure.

Those of us who are expecting new offspring in the coming month might benefit from Landover Baptists advice for avoiding birthing the antichrist.

There's a slim chance I might end up being an uncle to a little antichrist this month. If he's born on the sixth I'm going to call him lucifer no matter what. Ha!

So, here's the top ten signs conservatives are totally off their rocker when they say retarded shit like Iraq is less dangerous than DC. Besides dividing the death rates from the Baghdad morgues by the population of the entire country to get their figures, they make an argument that is just stupid.

1. In DC, 100,000 people have not had to flee the city due to a religious persecution and sectarian violence as has occurred in Iraq.
   
2. In DC, people are not pulled off of tourist busses, divided by religious affiliation, and assassinated 20 at a time in the street.
   
3. In DC, you are not likely to be blown up by an IED.
   
4. In DC, you are not likely to be killed by suicide bombers.
   
5. In DC, you are not likely to be killed by death squads.
   
6. In DC, it is unlikely that members of the US military will travel house to house killing the occupants.
   
7. In DC, if you are killed violently it is nonrandom, as studies of crime in american cities show people killed in violent crime are usually criminals, usually killed by people they know, and very rarely is violent crime anonymous or random.
   
8. In DC, when people do get killed, 50 other people don't end up in the hospital missing limbs or with shrapnel in their heads.
   
9. The crime rate in DC is disproportionate because it has a relatively low number of residents 550k, even though the city is usually occupied by about 3 million people each day.
   
10. Data from non-retards, like the AP shows the death rate in Baghdad is at least twice as high as in DC as of 2004, and is likely much higher now as most reports indicate accelerating violence.
    
    

    The death toll recorded by the Baghdad morgue was an average of 357 violent deaths each month from May through April [2004]. That contrasts with an average of 14 a month for 2002, Hassan's documents showed.
    
    The toll translates into an annual homicide rate of about 76 killings for every 100,000 people.
    
    By comparison, crime-ridden Bogota, Colombia, reported 39 homicides per 100,000 people in 2002, while New York City had about 7.5 per 100,000 last year. Iraq's neighbor Jordan, a country with a population a little less than Baghdad's, recorded about 2.4 homicides per 100,000 in 2003.
    ...
    Tikrit, a province of 650,000 people 90 miles north of Baghdad, recorded 205 people killed from May through April, or an average of 17 a month, said Najat Khorshid Sa'id, statistics director at the morgue in the provincial capital, Tikrit, which was Saddam's hometown. He said no one died from violence in 2002.
    
    In Kirkuk, a northern province of 1.5 million people, 401 people were killed from May through April, or an average of 34 a month, said Fadhillah Ahmed Rasheed, head of the morgue in the provincial capital, Kirkuk. The province averaged three violent deaths a month in 2002, he said.
    ...
    In Karbala, a province of 1.5 million people 60 miles south of Baghdad, 663 people were killed from May through April, or an average of 55 a month, said Ali Alardawi, deputy administrator of Alhuien Hospital, which runs the morgue in the provincial capital, Karbala. That compares with an average of one violent death a month in 2002, he said.
    

    
    

So, to summarize. These bizarre statements made by rightwingers are based on fudging the data, are just patently absurd to anyone who lives in or around DC, do not take into consideration casualties, and generally indicate a shameless suspension of rational thought. However, they persist in making them. This is why Giving Up is the only true path towards happiness and sanity. There is no rational debate to be had here, nothing will change their minds, only the painful lesson of experience seems to make any dent. You might as well argue with a raving lunatic on a street corner that the FBI doesn't truly have a chip implanted in his brain. There are no winners in such arguments.

Anyway, Jeff pointed me to an article making a similar point in the NYT this weekend. It is hysterical, basically, everyone in Utah loves Bush, but can't name a single policy they agree with. They just like him. It's not rational. And nothing will change it until they feel the negative effects of this presidency on a personal level (as seems to be happening even in Utah).

For instance ponder this statement.

All of the administration's perceived failures, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the budget deficit, go through a different filter in these Bush strongholds. Sounding a familiar theme, Mr. Craft said he was distrustful of news media portrayals of Mr. Bush because "they concentrate too much on the negative and certain small things."

Yeah, small things like Iraq, the largest national debt of any country in history, and the loss of an American city to a hurricane. Itsy-bitsy. Apparently just mouthing religious cliches works big time towards forgiveness of pretty big flaws.

Another student at Brigham Young, Danielle Pulsipher, a junior, offered blanket approval of the president. Asked to name which of his actions as president she liked most, she was hard-pressed to answer.

"I'm not sure of anything he's done, but I like that he's religious - that's really important," Ms. Pulsipher said.

Are we starting to see the problem here? The hard-core believers are just that, believers. You are trying to tamper with a religious belief here, that is, that George Bush is their lord and saviour and can do no wrong. He is the leader of a personality cult, he is their "dear leader" and nothing changes the minds of victims of this type of thinking. Just look at the quotes in this article. Katrina, the national debt and Iraq? Little problems. After all, Iraq is safer than DC and Katrina was no one's fault. Who could've known a horse fancier wouldn't make a good FEMA head? The largest national debt of all time is natural in a time of war. Surplus? What surplus? Tax cuts? Sure! They fix everything!

So, give up, protect yourself as best you can, buckle down and ride it out. Nothing else works, and only experience will set the true believers straight. People are starting to feel the pain though. Consider, Bush has lost 15 percentage points in Utah this year. If even the Utards are losing their faith, there is hope.

Well, in some of our discussions in the comments, an excellent link has been provided by Jim.

That is, to Statemaster.com which allows you to make maps of the US based on dozens of different criteria demonstrating all sorts of give up awesomeness. Some of my favorites based on an initial toying with the site (sorry, they don't make the maps copyable so you have to follow links):

Toothlessness per capita

lynchings per capita

Classics like the demonstration of the gonorrhea and Chlamydia belts (I still like my county maps from the CDC more). Also the infant mortality belt, firearm death rates, overall mortality, the health index, the obesity belt, motor vehicle deaths

Interesting new maps like teen death rate, child death rates, savings by state.

Basically, it's a treasure trove of data, representing an enormous amount of work showing that Red states just suck by almost every measure imaginable. Check out the bottom ten states in which to live. Based on the maps above, is anyone surprised? I have an idea, lets move to a state where more people are fat, have no teeth, the most people get shot, the most babies, children, and teens die, there are more motor vehicle accidents, no one saves money, nobody has a job, and everyone has VD.

I might convert some of these to Give Up maps, since I find it interesting to look at the bookends of the data with a more stark representation of the differences between the extremes in this country. But it's nice not to have to hunt down original sources and assemble maps from scratch all the damn time. Noticeably missing are toxic waste, driving distances, federal tax distributions, hospital quality, and bankruptcy. You still have to come to Give Up for those.

Apparently more Americans believe Bush is the worst president since WWII than any other president. 34% of Americans list Bush as the worst president of the last 61 years giving him a commanding lead even over Nixon at 17%.

It's interesting. I just finished reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin and it's really remarkable how great Lincoln was as a man and a president. In particular, the focus of the book was Lincoln's willingness to accept the opinions and help of political rivals, of differing political views and parties in order to reunite the union, win the Civil War and end slavery. It makes me think of how Bush had a similar opportunity to unite the country, bring his political opponents into his efforts to fight terrorism and lead us to make the sacrifices needed to make our country safe and economically viable into the next century. Instead, he blew it, he chose partisanship over unity, he alienated his political opponents, ignored the desire of Americans to sacrifice in the wake of 9/11, and instead started a pointless war while tax-cutting us into an unprecedented level of debt. I couldn't help thinking again and again, how if only we had a president who appreciated learning, intellectualism, history, reading etc., he might have taken some lessons from Lincoln, and done something really great with the outpouring of support after 9/11. Instead, we have arrogance, debt, the loss of a major city, unilateralism, unitary executive powers, no sacrifice from Americans, no energy policy and pointless war.

The good news is the Republicans are screwed. All they can come up with is xenophobia, flaming gays and burning flags. We have real problems in this country, and people are waking up to the obvious, Mexicans, gays, and burning flags are nothing compared to war, hurricanes, and debt.

Yep.

As it was put beautifully by Keith Olberman last night Bill O'Reilly is "the Sisyphus of morons." Ha!

Apparently O'Reilly keeps on blaming WWII American soldiers for a massacre of SS soldiers who surrendered to them at Malmedy as a justification for the latest Haditha massacre. O'Reilly's argument? Americans committ massacres in war, even in WWII, therefore we shouldn't sweat the massacre at Haditha.

One problem, O'Reilly has it backwards. At Malmedy the SS massacred American troops not the other way around.

It gets worse, he made a similar claim, in response to Abu Ghraib, to Wesley Clark, several months ago and still made this false claim.

It gets even worse. After being called on his false claim again, Fox scrubbed the transcripts to say "Normandy" after the fact to give the appearance he didn't make the claim, twice, incorrectly, to Wesley Clark.

Sisyphus of morons indeed. See Olberman's whole video and transcript here Thanks Jeff.

Two news articles, besides all the ones on the massacre and coverup, show Iraq is getting even worse despite our most recent "turning point."

50 people died today in insurgent attacks while the SFGate reports insurgent attacks have hit a record 600 a week.

To those tweakers of statistics that suggest that Washington D.C. is more dangerous than Iraq they are idiots. Sorry, they just are. First of all, they're dividing the killings that are concentrated in Baghdad by the population of the entire country. I could do the same thing for DC murders by taking their murder rate and dividing it by 300 million and get a similar appearance of decrease in murder rates. Yesterday, 50 people died in one day in a city of about 6 million people. If I were similarly guilty of dishonest statistical tweaking, I could say that would indicate a death rate of about 300 people per 100,000 a year (about 7-8 times higher than that in DC). Since it is a single timepoint, however, that would be unfair. More honest would be to base the death rate in Baghdad on the 300 people who have died this month in violence (we exclude the hundreds and hundreds of injuries on top of fatalities just to be extra nice) and the rate becomes 60 per 100,000 per year, still higher than any crime-ridden U.S. city (but sadly only about 50% more dangerous than D.C.). There is also the misrepresentation that D.C. crime is random, and that the people who die are just innocent schmoes walking down the street. That is rarely the case. In depth study of city crime rates indicate that most crimes are committed by criminals against other criminals, and random death from crime is pretty rare. However, the deaths in Baghdad are random suicide bombings and explosions from IEDs, in addition to death squads and insurgent executions of innocent civilians. An average Joe in DC has little to fear from the high homicide rate if they don't deal drugs or lack a criminal record. The average Joe in Baghdad risks execution by government death squads, execution by insurgents, death by suicide bomber, death by IED, death by US soldiers, and regular old death from criminals.

This type of statistical fudging is incredibly dishonest, and just goes to show how far the conservatives will stoop to protect their state of cognitive dissonance.

Many blogs yesterday were talking about the new video game based on the Left Behind series of books. I think I heard the books described as "Ficton for people who hate books" or some such criticism. Apparently the only thing worse than the writing is the bigotry and small-mindedness of the theme of the series (and the movies). The video game sounds just as bad. Here's the quote everyone is taking from talk2action.org.

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

The good news is the game also lets you play on the side of secularism (aka the devil) using your evil powers to fight for separation of church and state.

Again, I reiterate my request. If you really hate the unifying ideology of this country so much that you refuse to accept the fundamental rights built in by the founders, you're welcome to leave. Please, just leave.

Iraq is pretty bad, but the long term consequences of our lawmakers' poor economic choices and blatantly self-serving pork schemes is what will sink the Republicans for a long time.

Take, for starters, the news that New York City and Washington D.C. will enjoy cuts of about 40% in their homeland security funding while places like Nebraska and Kentucky, those landlocked states with nothing to attack but cornfields and horse farms, will enjoy vast spending increases.

Tell me how this map doesn't represent pork.



And that was with data from before these cuts.

Source: Homeland Security Department 2005 estimated total allocations to the individual states divided by the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 state population estimates.

Anyway, then we have Harold Meyerson writing for the post about more irresponsible tax cuts, in particular estate tax cuts.

A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists (brilliantly documented by Yale professors Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro in their book "Death by a Thousand Cuts") has convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense, and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats support -- raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5 million for an individual and $7 million for a couple -- it becomes more nonsensical still. Under the $3.5 million exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been just 94, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. The number of family farms that would have had to sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13.

On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million, according to the publicly available data on his net worth. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would pocket a cozy $164 million. As for the late Sam Walton's kids, whose company already makes taxpayers foot the bill for the medical expenses of thousands of its employees, the cost to the government for not taxing their estates would run into the multiple billions.

Wow, so we lose trillions in taxes for a tiny number of people who refuse to accept that the government taxes money whenever it changes hands. Sorry, that's the way it is you pussies. Deal with it. If you don't like it, why don't you just leave the damn country you sissies. Anyway, because rich people don't feel like they should be taxed on income they get from no work of their own, a tax that prevents the kind of awful class system that infected places like Britain for decades, they've managed to put together a PR campaign to change public opinion in their favor. Yes, public opinion is now against the estate tax, even though the tax doesn't even apply to the public. For that, we'll lose trillions in revenue, so the rich can make themselves a bunch of permanent, non-working, upper-class twits. I personally love the Jeeves and Wooster books, and Hugh Laurie is just a blast, but I really don't feel like we need to increase the numbers of Woosters in this country.

They call it the death tax, if liberals were smart, they'd call it what it is, the Paris Hilton tax. Personally, I'd like to avoid increasing the number of Paris Hiltons in the country.

Sounds dirty, but no, it's three papers being published in Nature this week (1, 2, 3 also Nature News and lay article) suggest that about 50 million years ago (about 50 years before the earth was formed by God) the polar regions were hot hot hot. Water temperatures may have been as high as 74 degrees and the climate represented Florida more than the polar tundra of today.

Very interesting, people tend to think the Earth will always be the way it is now, more or less, but the potential for extreme variation is actually pretty striking. Not suggesting this kind of change might happen any time soon, but it gives us an idea of the potential variation the earth can throw at as.

In related global warming news, Al Gore is being swiftboated for his new movie, and two new papers link global warming to hurricane strength. I've heard the guys arguing this point to death on NPR, the NOAA scientist being the opponent of this hypothesis and the MIT/Purdue people being the proponents of the link. But don't let the debate fool you, this is one of the areas of legitimate debate over global warming science, neither side is disputing the existence of warming, but they are arguing over the climate models indicating a direct effect on hurricanes from warming.