I love this article on a group that's starting to band together to form a real life SSCCATAGAPP (Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples And Teens And Gays Against Parasitic Parents).

Yay! Fight the power! And it's worth reading, really, because of lines like these.

Frost, the author, sees no light at the end of the birth canal.

"Mine's not a manifesto - I don't think my book can turn anything around," she says. "As long as George Bush calls stem cells 'little snowflakes,' we're going to have a problem."

I wanna join SSCCATAGAPP.

Since Mel was caught driving DWI driving 87 in a 45, and ranting against the Jews I was looking for the perfect Gibson with Saddam beard picture:



It looks crazier than the TMZ image, and I love how when people screw up the media immediately starts finding the images that fit the crazy. CNN is being a bit nicer than TMZ, but who needs nice?

Anyway, I say we have a caption competition for the above picture.

My entries?

"I can't drive 45...because of the Jews!"
or
"You know, the Jews invented the breathalyzer."

Also, does anyone else find it odd that it only took a BAC of .12 to get Mel disinhibited enough to go crazy? I would hope that wouldn't start until at least .15, or preferably, .18-.20.

I want to know where was Mel Gibson last Friday afternoon?

Yes, there is no more doubt as we predicted Chavez has gone and made a total ass of himself. We figured it would be some statement about how Iran is great, this is even worse. He hugs Ahmedinejad and says he will "stay by Iran at any time and under any condition."



This might be worse than Gibsons anti-semitic rant, you know, hugging a guy who says he wants Israel to be wiped off the map? It's one thing to hate us, I get it, it makes sense, we're a giant bully. But that doesn't mean you start smooching Ahmedinejad, one of the more evil people on the planet.

I'm not so sure about how good a source tmz is but it's also been confirmed by CNN that Mel Gibson during a DWI arrest went on an insane anti-semitic and sexist rant yelling at the cop and saying he "owned Malibu." From the officer's report:

Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-semitic (unintelligible) about "Fucking Jews" Gibson yelled out, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked [the deputy], "Are you a Jew?"

Charming. The report goes on to say when the officer searched the car he found a bottle of Tequila in a paper bag that Gibson was drinking while he was driving around. So, beyond having a 0.12 level, he was driving around while drinking the Tequila. What an asshole.

Anyway, doesn't that make you wonder a little bit more about that sanctimonious asshole's denials that The Passion of the Christ wasn't meant to be antisemitic? Let's all hope he never works again. I'll never see another of his films after this.

It's true, Lieberman is on the outs with the establishment-types at the NYT.

Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the "quaint" provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating how the administration misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons. There is no use having a senator famous for getting along with Republicans if he never challenges them on issues of profound importance.

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support. Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

I think they really nailed it. Joementum keeps on saying it's all about the war, but that's just not the case. It's everything. His complete and total capitulation to Republicans when it comes to Iraq, civil liberties, appointments, anything (except flag burning - big deal).

This is good news for Lamont who is leading in the polls. It's still worth contributing to his campaign though as well as all the other actblue candidates, because he'll probably face a nasty fight with Lieberman after Joementum goes the traitor route and runs as an independent.

Some Democrat. The voters in your party reject you and you're answer? No one but Joe gets to decide who will be the Democrat from Connecticut. What an asshole.

Fake Playstation video game covers. There were a few in there that I really want to play and should be made into video games. In particular this one that boing boing pointed out.



Although I think my favorite is:



Ha!

live blogging from the satellite ballroom. The nice Jenkins were killer even without their best hits from world famous, although a few were there. They were followed by Truman Sparks...

Now that I have an actual keyboard to type in I can finish.

Truman Sparks was also a good, tight band, but they need more lyrics. I realize that sounds like a kind of stupid criticism, but there it is. Got their CD though, will give it a shot. Good stuff last night, I like how the ballroom has a nice bar, easily accessible, and when the bands don't crank it up too loud it's a good place to catch a show. We'll need to have a talk with management about the small beer cups though. Definite negative.

For a while now, global warming skeptics have been heartened by the writings of professor Patrick J. Michaels at the University of Virginia. In addition to being a professor of environmental studies, a fellow at the Cato institute, and the Virginia State Climatologist, he's also a vehement denialist who says that global climate change isn't happening, and that humans don't really do much to the globe. He is, of course, mildly crackpot and completely wrong. Just a few days ago, it was reported that he's also on the take.

...a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

The utility, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, based in Sedalia, Colo., has given Dr. Michaels $100,000 of its own, said Stanley R. Lewandowski Jr., its general manager. Mr. Lewandowski said that one company planned to give $50,000 and that a third planned to contribute to Dr. Michaels next year.

“We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists,” Mr. Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to undertake a counterattack on “alarmist” scientists and specifically Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which lays much of the blame for global warming on heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

Mr. Lewandowski and Dr. Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin, have openly acknowledged the donations and say they see no problem.

No problem? Like conflict-of-interest? Perhaps one could argue there's a chicken-egg issue here (did they give him money because he espoused their views already?). But it's hard to argue that there's a definite COI when the guy who's supposed to coordinate the climate info for the entire state is taking bribe money from electrical utilities, one of the major players in global climate change.

You know it's bad when Republicans don't even mention their party in their ads, oh, and the Republican in this case is the head of the NRCC no less. Holy crap.

Now, they're pandering and trying to steal the Democrats issues, in a true ploy of desperation they are going to raise the minimum wage.

I think it's important to point out that the Republicans blocked this earlier this year and the Democrats actually have made it a promise that there will be no congressional pay raises until the minimum wage is increased.

There's no way they're stealing this one so late in the game. The Dems better make the point that this is a total capitulation to their will, in the face of complete and total dissatisfaction with the Republican party.

Science has a letter from Shane Smith, William Neaves and Steven Teitelbaum addressing the anti-ESC canard that adult stem cells have cured 64 diseases. It was published on Science Express earlier in July, but it's worth mentioning again.

Opponents of research with embryonic stem (ES) cells often claim that adult stem cells provide treatments for 65 human illnesses. The apparent origin of those claims is a list created by David A. Prentice, an employee of the Family Research Council who advises U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and other opponents of ES cell research (1).
...
In fact, adult stem cell treatments fully tested in all required phases of clinical trials and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are available to treat only nine of the conditions on the Prentice list, not 65 [or 72 (4)]. In particular, allogeneic stem cell therapy has proven useful in treating hematological malignancies and in ameliorating the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Contrary to what Prentice implies, however, most of his cited treatments remain unproven and await clinical validation. Other claims, such as those for Parkinson's or spinal cord injury, are simply untenable.

The references Prentice cites as the basis for his list include various case reports, a meeting abstract, a newspaper article, and anecdotal testimony before a Congressional committee. A review of those references reveals that Prentice not only misrepresents existing adult stem cell treatments, but also frequently distorts the nature and content of the references he cites (5).

For example, to support the inclusion of Parkinson's disease on his list, Prentice cites congressional testimony by a patient (6) and a physician (7), a meeting abstract by the same physician (8), and two publications that have nothing to do with stem cell therapy for Parkinson's (9, 10). In fact, there is currently no FDA-approved adult stem cell treatment--and no cure of any kind--for Parkinson's disease.

For spinal cord injury, Prentice cites personal opinions expressed in Congressional testimony by one physician and two patients (11). There is currently no FDA-approved adult stem cell treatment or cure for spinal cord injury.

The reference Prentice cites for testicular cancer on his list does not report patient response to adult stem cell therapy (12); it simply evaluates different methods of adult stem cell isolation.

The reference Prentice cites on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma does not assess the treatment value of adult stem cell transplantation (13); rather, it describes culture conditions for the laboratory growth of stem cells from lymphoma patients.

Prentice's listing of Sandhoff disease, a rare disease that affects the central nervous system, is based on a layperson's statement in a newspaper article (14). There is currently no cure of any kind for Sandhoff disease.

By promoting the falsehood that adult stem cell treatments are already in general use for 65 diseases and injuries, Prentice and those who repeat his claims mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients (15).

It was amazing though how rapidly idiots like Brownback, not to mention many a troll on PZ's blog, latched onto this false list, and refused to listen to anyone's assertion that it was nothing but gibberish. I wonder how long it will be before they come up with some new garbage about adult stem cells, but here's the fact. Right now, ES cells indisputably can be made to differentiate into any cell in the body. So far, studies on adult stem cells have shown they have limited transdifferentiation capacity, that is, the ability to make cells of a type other than those they make in an adult animal. They simply are not that powerful, and they are extremely difficult to access. The reason the 9 treatments that actually are real on this list all come from blood stem cells, is because those are the ones easy to access. We're not going to be getting stem cells from other tissues in a living adult any time soon.

One possible exception to the general failure of adult stem cells to perform are testicular stem cells, (as we've discussed)which have been shown to have ESC-like properties, however they can only be isolated from males, and except for an unconfirmed report from a private company, haven't been isolated from humans (besides most men aren't interested in an orchidectomy to get their stem cells out). These need a lot of work, need to be purified from humans and need to be generalizeable to the entire population (we have to find them in women) before we would even consider directing the research in this direction.

Yep, screwed them out of $500k for the sake of MZM, the defense contractor behind the Dukester scandal. TPM Muckraker reports.

The program -- the Virginia-based Foreign Supplier Assessment Center -- was created in 2003 by an earmark tucked into a classified appropriations bill by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), to be operated by MZM. He kept it alive with another earmark in 2005.

Before inserting the first earmark, Goode accepted many thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from MZM. Before the second earmark, he enjoyed the same largesse. In all, Goode took about $90,000 in campaign contributions from MZM president Mitchell Wade and other employees. Goode has since given the money to charity; Wade has pleaded guilty to bribing convicted congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham, of course, has gone to jail.

But here's the curious, and sad, thing: Goode didn't just fleece a few million bucks from U.S. taxpayers to give the military a facility they didn't want. He also screwed his own constituents -- the less-than-prosperous residents of Martinsville, Virginia.

In addition to his federal earmarking for MZM, Goode pushed the Commonwealth of Virginia and the town of Martinsville to give MZM incredibly favorable terms, as one blogger notes.

To be exact: the state of Virginia gave MZM $500,000 to locate in Martinsville, if they met certain criteria (which have they never completely met). But if the center didn't perform well -- as it appears, now, it never will -- the city of Martinsville is forced to repay that money from its own coffers, not MZM.

That cruel twist, reports say, was Goode's idea. Not that it's affecting Goode: the latest polls show him with a double-digit lead over his Democratic opponent in the midterm election.

It's true, the latest polling indicates Weed is trailing 35% to Goode's 59% in SUSA polling.

We can only hope he finally gets indicted before the election so people realize he's a crook before it's too late.

Blogger has been down for about 12 hours and a bunch of people with offsite hosting were having hell trying to post. Now we are fixed.

More good stuff to come, in the meantime check out Johnny carson busting "psychic" Uri Geller as a fraud. Apparently he and James Randi were pissed he was using a cheesy magic trick to proclaim himself a psychic, must be some kind of magician code. I heard about this for years but never actually saw it before now.

Also for the debunking files, Peter Doran, a climatologist who discovered counterintuitive patterns of cooling in the antarctic addresses claims that his research runs counter to global warming as suggested by Anne Coulter and Michael Crichton. Basically, it does, but only if you quote him out of context and then attribute statements to him that he never said.

In January 2002, a research paper about Antarctic temperatures, of which I was the lead author, appeared in the journal Nature. At the time, the Antarctic Peninsula was warming, and many people assumed that meant the climate on the entire continent was heating up, as the Arctic was. But the Antarctic Peninsula represents only about 15 percent of the continent’s land mass, so it could not tell the whole story of Antarctic climate. Our paper made the continental picture more clear.

My research colleagues and I found that from 1986 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. Our report also analyzed temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed. Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.

Newspaper and television reports focused on this part of the paper. And many news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research published that month, in Science, showing that part of Antarctica’s ice sheet had been thickening - and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming at all.
...
In a rebuttal in The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, the lead author of the Science paper and I explained that our studies offered no evidence that the earth was cooling. But the misinterpretation had already become legend, and in the four and half years since, it has only grown.

Our results have been misused as "evidence" against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel "State of Fear" and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents - all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have never said that "the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle." I have never thought such a thing either.
...
In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.

This reflects a problem that people have understanding global warming and a constant canard from the global warming deniers. Global warming is a measurement of Global Mean Surface Temperature. Lets think about each of these words now.

Global - meaning all over the earth.
Mean - meaning the average temperature
Surface - meaning they do not include the earth's molten core and what not
Temperature - you guys get it

Yes his paper showed a portion of a continent was cooling. But that has nothing to do with, say it with me, Global Mean Surface Temperature. Lots of areas vary year to year, and that's why scientists are slow to attribute the current heat wave to global warming, because cooling elsewhere or a steep drop in temperature might change the global average for the year. So far, in 2006, that doesn't appear to be the case, and we seem to be having one of the hottest years ever for the globe. I'm sure somewhere on earth it's colder than usual, but this does not have any bearing on the veracity of global warming.

Surprise surprise, when you distribute homeland security grants to states who don't have any realistic homeland security needs, it gets wasted.

WaPo reports on an analysis of the Homeland Security spending:

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

Some might say, "hey it's a new department, it will get better with time." However, that sadly does not seem to be the trend.

"We all assumed they would get better with age," said Keith Ashdown, vice president for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "But now the evidence is overwhelming that they've gotten much, much worse."

I'll have to read this when it comes out, I'm curious to see if there is a correlation between spending identified as wasteful, and distribution to landlocked, empty states with no terror targets. My hypothesis would be that states like New York and California won't waste it, because they actually need it, and are motivated to ensure the money is utilized well. However, that might just be naivete, people waste money in every state. But still, there is this (I still haven't updated it sorry, it's supposed to look even worse since they cut New Yorks funding in half and said they had no national landmarks).



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

The NEJM this week has an interesting article on the benefits of introducing economic incentives into medical practice. It's especially interesting because they overlayed these economic incentives on top of the British socialized medical system.

They created a set of metrics to determine the quality of care that physicians gave, like controlling blood pressure in hypertensive patients, keeping diabetics' hA1c levels low indicating good blood sugar control, and maintenance of low cholesterol levels in at-risk patients. Overall 146 quality indicators were tracked for 10 diseases, organization of the practice, and patient satisfaction. Based on scoring of the physician's ability to meet the needs of their patients, the docs were given financial rewards for providing a higher level of care, with the expectation that a profit-motive would lead to better care.

The doctors were also allowed to exclude patients from the scoring if they filed an exception report explaining why a different standard of care was needed. For instance, in a terminal cancer patient, you might not be as concerned with keeping their blood pressure controlled, that shouldn't count against the doctor that they didn't decide to overmedicate unnecessarily.

The researchers reported that the experiment, still in its first year granted, was a success. However, after looking at the results, I'm not so sure.

Here's the breakdown.

1. The most effective way for doctors to increase their scores was by increasing their exception reports to eliminate patients that would hurt their stats (although not many did this).
   
   

   For reported achievement (Table 4), the factor with the greatest effect was exception reporting. An increase of 1 percent in the estimated proportion of patients excluded was associated with an increase of 0.31 percent in reported achievement.

   
   
   
2. Decreases in score were caused by seeing more patients, poorer patients patients, older patients and less-educated patients.
   
   

   Achievement was lower in practices with a high proportion of patients who were living in single-parent or low-income households or were 65 years of age or older. Achievement was also lower in larger practices and in practices with a high proportion of family practitioners who received their medical education outside the United Kingdom or were 50 years of age or older.

   
   
   
3. In doctors seeing these disadvantaged populations, exception reporting was increased (even though these reports could not be filed for any of those reasons)
   
   

   The rates of exception reporting were higher in Primary Medical Services practices and lower in practices with larger populations of elderly patients, patients with good self-rated health, and patients without any formal educational qualifications

   
   
   
4. The program also cost far more than anticipated, but did not, at least in the first year, significantly improve medical provided.

Interesting no? So the conclusions are, introducing profit-incentives puts doctors seeing more patients, less-educated patients, older patients, or poorer patients at a disadvantage, it encourages filing of false reports to protect the doctors stats, it costs a great deal more, and failed, at least in the first year, to signficantly increase quality of care provided (probably because the care was already uniformly pretty good).

While it's early yet in this program, not exactly a stunning start for trying to force capitalism back into socialized medicine.

TPM muckraker is shocked as well, after another MZM employee pleaded guilty, this time to sending money illegally to Virgil Goode's campaign, he has managed to avoid direct investigation.

This defies common sense. MZM breaks the law to send tens of thousands of dollars to a member of the house appropriations committee, who manages to get them a sweet contract (and they happen to locate a major office in his district) and there isn't at least some presumption of impropriety?

If it quacks like a duck...

Speaking of quacks, frauds, and crooks, some prominent Baptists are going to jail. Is it just me or is it a law that the most self-righteous assholes are always the first to end up indicted by the feds? Maybe Virgil Goode just hasn't been enough of an self-righteous asshole. Wait, that can't be right.

I'll have to think about this awhile.

Now, we all thought it was hysterical when Hugo Chavez put on a Sombrero and made fun of Vincente Fox, and all those times he called Bush an asshole, we cheered because, hey, Bush is an asshole. It's nice to have leaders of other countries agree with this point. However, the problem with liberals blindly supporting crazies like this, as we've warned before, they are crazy (just look at George Galloway). You never know what they're going to do next, and then when they make asses of themselves, the fact you ever thought this guy was right about anything is a source of embarrassment. For example:

MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) -- Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday he had forged a strategic alliance to stand up to U.S. imperialism with fellow maverick Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

"Our countries must keep their hands at the ready on the sword," Chavez, in ex-Soviet Belarus as part of a world tour, said on a visit to a military academy.

"After a day of intensive work, we have created a strategic alliance between our countries," he said, speaking through an interpreter. "It is absolutely vital to protect our homeland, to guard against internal and external threats."

Sounds like the usual Chavez, throwing the crazy language around to rile up the Bush administration. However, this might be a bridge to far.

Lukashenko runs a Soviet-style command economy. Washington says he runs the last dictatorship in Europe. Belarus is subject to European Union and U.S. sanctions after Western observers accused him of rigging his own re-election in March.

It's just like with Galloway, once you identify someone as totally off the deep end, it's time to realize their support is not what you need for your cause. Yeah, he's outrageous, he's charismatic, and he hates the same people we do. Chavez is also freaking nuts, time to recognize that and say, if he wants to be crazy in Venezuala fine, let him, but don't pretend he's some kind of spokesman for the left. He's just a crazy opportunist who has figured out that attacking the Bush administration, an easy target, wins him popular opinion. He then uses that to support crazy stupid shit, like the government of Lukashenko in Belarus.

I've been feeling queasy about Chavez for a while. He is entertaining, and I admit, it was tempting to think he might be for real, but his world tour of Belarus, Iran, Qatar, Mali and Vietnam is yet another sign no one should hitch their ideology to this guy's wagon. He's just an opportunist demagogue and probably a crook. Just wait until he gets to Iran, I'm sure he'll say they're beacons of democracy or some bullshit.

Santorum said it it must be true. After all, if that fetus-fondling mixture of lube and excrement says something, you know it is true.

...most scientists unfortunately, those that certainly are advocating for this [embryonic stem cell research], and many others feel very little moral compulsion. It's a utilitarian, materialistic view of doing whatever they can do to pursue their desired goals.

All I can say, is that I'm a scientist and I need babies to live. It's part of my utilitarian worldview, babies must die so I can get grants, and they're also very tasty. Mmmmm, babies.

Feed me babies! I am an ES cell scientist, I have no moral compunction!

In fact, just yesterday, I killed a man, just to watch him die.

Science News is reporting on a rare cardiac side-effect of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor Gleevac, which was identified for its ability to inhibit the bcr-abl cancer mutation in CML (and cure CML with high efficacy).

This is an interesting science story, because this inhibitor was lauded for its specificity for this fusion protein created in a specific type of cancer, and its stunning ability to cure CML without serious side effects. But now that the drug has been studied in so many patients they're identifying a harmful side effect - heart failure in a rare subset of patients. I'm not pointing this out in a kneejerk attack against a drug, because this drug, despite this side-effect, is still about a billion times better than any chemotherapy regimen alternative. Instead I think this represents an opportunity for pharmacogenomics to enter into the picture of treatment of CML. Here you have a drug that is incredibly beneficial to a large number of patients who would otherwise have to undergo chemotherapy and dangerous treatment regimens, except for a rare, but potentially lethal side-effect.

This is the future of medicine. There is some genetic predisposition to cardiac failure on Gleevac, let's identify it, prospectively identify at-risk patients, and make sure each patient gets the ideal treatment based on their genomic profile.

There is no question Gleevac is an excellent drug. It was difficult initially to get it studied because it serves the relatively small population of CML sufferers (about 5k people get diagnosed with it per year) so it isn't necessarily a highly profitable drug. But it is so effective against a cancer that was essentially untreatable before this drug was discovered. We could continue to prescribe the drug universally for CML, but it would be better to identify the protein this supposedly specific inhibitor is interfering with, and figure out how to identify which patients should either be subjected to a lower dose, shorter time course of treatment, or possibly, alternate therapy to reduce the risk from this side-effect.

Granted there are many drugs that would benefit from pharmacogenomics determining exactly which people benefit from treatment. In particular, drugs that a larger number of people take would ideally be tailored to specific genotypes, but that will take an incredible amount of time, money and work. Here, with Gleevec, I see a great opportunity to nail a specific negative side-effect, tailor treatment to individual patients, and prove pharmacogenomics is a great solution to potentially dangerous side-effects in a small, easily-screened population.

Remember when spin was a criticism largely of Democrats? Either they just happened to be around when the press first noticed it, or they were just the ones to introduce it. Either way, it's the Republicans who are determined to make spin jump the shark.

Case in point, Fox news:

MORRIS: Yeah, well, that’s true. But you know in Iraq, the casualties are dropping, the U.S. casualties are dropping.

O’REILLY: U.S. casualties, right. Civilians - because it’s now a civil war. After Zarqawi was killed, the insurgency fell down.

MORRIS: What we don’t understand is in Iraq, a civil war is progress, because it means it’s no longer a war against us.

Thank you Think Progress for showing us this quote. It is clear, civil war is progress, because Fox knows how to make lemons into lemonade.

PLoS medicine has a great editorial challenging the stranglehold pharmaceutical companies have on medical journals. It's like they exist to pick this fight and I love them for it. They even take on the libertarian canard that advertisement should be protected as "free speech." Ha. The obvious problem being that if you lie as an average citizen, it's not against the law (unless under oath etc.) but when you lie to sell a product, that's called fraud. So, free speech doesn't exactly apply to advertisement, you can't just let them say anything. In fact, you probably shouldn't allow them to say anything that isn't objectively and empirically true (unlike the current practice of allowing puffery in the US).

Anyway, the PLoS editors have it out with the majority of medical journals.

In PLoS Medicine's launch issue in 2004, we declared that we would not be part of "the cycle of dependency that has formed between journals and the pharmaceutical industry" (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0010022). We set out three policies aimed at breaking this cycle. First, we would not publish adverts for drugs and devices. Second, we would not benefit from exclusive reprint sales to drug companies, since our open access license would let readers make unlimited copies themselves. Third, we would decline to publish studies aimed purely at increasing a drug's market share.

We adopted these policies out of a concern that medical journals have allowed their interests to become too closely aligned with those of the marketing departments of drug companies.
...
And in a recent policy paper in PLoS Medicine, Fugh-Berman and colleagues argued that other medical journals should follow our example and ban adverts for drugs and devices (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030130).

The idea of such a ban has, not surprisingly, angered some representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, which gets a return of investment of US$5 for every dollar it spends on advertising to doctors. John Kamp, executive director of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, a group of advertising agencies and public relations firms representing the pharmaceutical industry, called Fugh-Berman and colleagues' suggestion a "goofy idea" (MMM 23 June 2006). He also said that "PLoS Medicine needs to take a basic course in the First Amendment [the right of free speech in the US Constitution]."

The funny thing is that most lawyers will tell you there are grades of "free speech" the most free being political expression. The most restricted, and long accepted as ok to restrict in order to prevent fraud or misleading information is commercial speech. So, um, Kamp is full of shit, but PLoS doesn't need help proving this.

Drug companies regularly cry "free speech" whenever anyone suggests that their promotional efforts should be curtailed. Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America, went so far as to suggest that such curtailment would be a "human rights abuse". This is nonsense. Drug advertising is often misleading (Ann Intern Med 116: 912–919), and it can potentially distort clinical practice (Circulation 99: 2055–2057). The need to prevent another Vioxx tragedy, in which the "drug marketing got well ahead of the science" (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030145), requires us all to think carefully about the net effect upon society of drug adverts. Public health must always come before industry's unfettered "rights." Our recent theme issue on disease mongering has provoked what we believe is a useful debate about when marketing comes before science.

It's a sure sign that libertarians are infesting your society when a drug company can claim advertising is a "human right" and suggest their ability to committ fraud is protected by the constitution. Sorry, but lying to sell a product = fraud. Way to go PLoS, stick it to the man!

Now just go read their table of contents for this month. It reads like a combination of JCI and a turn of the century muckraking journal with titles ranging from, "Questionable Advertising of Psychotropic Medications and Disease Mongering" to A New Mouse Model to Study Acquired Lymphedema" to "The 'Ultimate Prize' for Big Tobacco: Opening the Chinese Cigarette Market by Cigarette Smuggling".

They're even good about publishing letters from their critics of the disease mongering issue. I felt they did come off a bit rabid, but they also pointed out a whole lot of bullshit that's going unchallenged, and I think that's some of the best science (as you may have noticed).

Give Up is on trial. At issue? Will the progressive blue state of California be able to force better environmental regulation through non-legislative action?

IN AN UNUSUAL BUT WELCOME intervention, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to wade into the global warming debate. In its next term, the court will hear a lawsuit brought by California and other [blue] states against the federal government for failing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Courts usually defer to the discretion of administrative agencies to implement the law, but in this case such deference is outweighed by the administration's glaring dereliction of duty.,

It will be interesting to see if the Give Up effect is allowed to persist. One major flaw of suggesting state-based regulation by emphasizing progressive regulation in the powerful blue economies (and suing states and the federal government to make them behave too) is that if the Bush Supreme Court overrules state authority (in a weird anti-states rights reversal I might add) then one of our main weapons for maintaining sanity disappears. We will have to actually care about this case, however, I fear I will not have the energy.

In good Give Up news, Blue states continue the brain drain and economic drain on the red states by passing measures encouraging embryonic stem cell R&D within their borders. It's even better news because the article describes multiple instances in which Dems are challenging Republicans on this issue, and Republicans being forced to the center by pro-science popular opinion. Can't fool them all the time I guess.

What is wrong with the following headlines:

Death squad crackdown in Iraq 'top priority' for U.S. and FEMA's aims for compassion without crookery.

I'm pulling those from my RSS feed and I notice they're not the same as the top of the articles, which is kind of interesting too. But what kind of government are we running here? Could we imagine 6 years ago at the end of Clin-ton's term that we'd be seeing headlines about the prioritization of death squad elimination and adjusting FEMA so we could get compassion without crookery? Only the Onion knew.

I usually think of BBC as a good source of news, but then they publish articles with headlines like, "Daily pill to 'cure Alzheimer's'" and " Smoking 'reduces alcohol effect'"> and the first lines of the articles read "Tests in mice have shown the drug, PBT2, prevents build up of the amyloid protein linked to the disease" and "Having a cigarette while drinking may reduce the effects of the alcohol, scientists suggest - but the tests have only been carried out on rats so far."

Hmmm, I fear for the poor reader who doesn't proceed past the headlines of articles, they will be horribly misinformed. What's up with that? When it's only been done in animals, it's not a cure or a result immediately generalizeable to humans. So, how about a little liss nuttiness BBC? Fire whoever is writing these headlines.

Leave it to the idiot libertarians at Reason to come up with some serious BS. The latest? Hybrids are more costly to the environment than H2s because of indirect costs. You can read the so called research here.

I've been bitching about this over at the scienceblogs like Uncertain Principles. My big beef with the guys over there republishing this claptrap is that I don't think they actually read the report (or at least not carefully) before blogging on it as if the data were valid. There are a couple reasons why I think this happened. One is, scientists like inversions. They think it's neat when a piece of information that is popularly held is challenged. I understand this, I'm the same way. The second is the tendency to treat data as true, even if conclusions might be wrong.

Here's the problem. The data aren't true in this case.

If you actually read the report, which is written with all the clarity of a high schooler's junior thesis by a marketing research firm, you see there are some big problems. For one, they don't publish their methods.

Ok scientists. When someone spits out a bunch of numbers saying crazy shit like a $60k H2 weighing several tons is more costly to society than a 1/2 ton $21k prius, despite the fuel savings, it's time to see how they came up with this. When they don't publish the methods, then it's time to take that report and use it for toilet paper. It's already over.

But, if you're feeling really charitable you might continue to give the report some credibility. Why not? Sometimes you can infer how people come up with stuff, maybe it will be obvious from the "data". Maybe not.

The researchers use a figure which is the cost of the car per mile it is driven, and use to calculate this number they supposedly take the costs of production, maintainance, recycling etc (no description of how they come up with these numbers and they keep their raw data hidden) and divide by the average miles each type of car gets (although they never actually show their equation).

Well, two obvious things come up. Hybrid production costs are higher because the cars represent new technology, and production hasn't geared up like it has for other cars yet. That's pretty easy. The second, issue is that they list the average lifetime miles for hybrid cars at around 100k miles, while all the SUVs get liftime miles around 200-300k.

I call bullshit! If your denominator is the number of lifetime miles and you're giving the SUVs 2-3x as many miles as all the hybrids, of course the differences in efficiency between the two is going to disappear. They've made the lifetime of the hybrids artificially low, either because the cars are new to the market, or again, they might just be lying. Hard to say since they don't publish their methods or raw data.

Finally, this simply shouldn't have even passed the smell test for these scientists. The first sign? The writing, it's terrible, it's disorganized, it makes no sense. Second sign? Methods aren't systematically described. Third, the argument makes no sense. If hybrids really represent that much of a cost to consumer and society, why are the cars so inexpensive? And if it's hidden costs, why aren't hybrid drivers complaining that their little cars are costing them as much as multi-ton SUVs? How much you want to bet the cost of insuring these things wasn't included? How much you want to bet that if these costs were so high, someone wouldn't be raising holy hell? These "costs" have to be getting paid somehow, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Where is the money coming from to pay for these costs that absorb the $40k difference between an Escalade or H2 and a Prius? I call shenanigans.

The British continue to comment over the weekend in the Guardian over how Bush treated blair like "his poodle" as they say. Do you think they're trying to say, "like his bitch" but don't want to sound anti-woman? Is it because the poodle is seen as a particularly girly looking dog, or is because a poodle is intelligent yet still subservient?

I can understand why they're pissed though:

When Tony Blair offers himself as a Middle East peace envoy, he is casually rebuffed by the American President between bites on a bread roll. Told by Bush that 'Condi is going', the normally fluent Blair is reduced to inarticulate jabbering. 'Well, it's only if, I mean, you know, if she's got a... or if she needs the ground prepared as it were... Because obviously if she goes out, she's got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.' Yeah, just talk.

It was awful for Tony Blair to be caught asking for permission to go to the Middle East. It was dire to hear George Bush saying he wouldn't let the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom go out - not even on a pointless trip. It looks even more humiliating when the French Foreign Minister is going.

I found a full transcript.

I have a question for the Brits though. Yes it's embarrassing that your Prime Minister is Bush's pet and all, but isn't it more embarrassing for us that Bush is our president? After all he talks about how he's just going to make up some speach on the spot (as if he has a talent for this) and everything else he says makes him sound like a simpleton. Or does that make it more embarrassing for the Brits because their PM is "poodle" to such a total and complete jackass?

NASA scientists are pissed because the Bush administration has oh-so-subtly changed NASA's mission statement so it doesn't include studying the earth anymore the NYT reports.

Anyway here's the before mission statement:

To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.

And here's the after mission statement:

to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

It sounds like George "Global Warming needs more study" Bush has decided one of the major scientific agencies capable of studying global climate should no longer study the earth. It's interesting because the first mission statement came from a Bush appointee in 2002 but only after consultation with scientists in the agency. This most recent change is more of a top-down executive decision without any consultation, probably having to do with Bush's idiotic idea of exploring Mars. As much as I like Nerd Trek, I'd much prefer NASA study ways to keep spaceship earth intact, rather than wasting billions on Bush's idiotic "man on Mars" idea.

The shift in language echoes a shift in the agency's budgets toward space projects and away from earth missions, a shift that began in 2004, the year Mr. Bush announced his vision of human missions to the Moon and beyond.

The "understand and protect" phrase was cited repeatedly by James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA who said publicly last winter that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

Didn't the NASA scientists get the memo that when Bush comes up with one of these idiotic ideas to distract people from the failure of his policies that he won't remember them a week later? Why did they even pay attention to his Mars babble? The guy has ADD, they should have just worked on it for a week, and shelved it once he forgot about it, like he forgot about hydrogen cars, caring about the poverty after Katrina, fixing our oil addiction, money for AIDS in Africa etc. In fact, a "Bush Promise" should become an expression synonmyous with a hollow or empty promise.

SusanG at Kos has a great article that hits on one of the basic underpinnings of the Give Up philosophy. One of our big arguments is that Republicans are fundamentally incapable of staying in power for long because they are incompetent. Why are they incompetent? Because they hate government, they expect nothing from it, and as a result get nothing from it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, they expect government to do nothing (except maybe enrich themselves and their friends in private enterprise) so it does nothing. That's why I like McJoan's post so much. It's more angry than we quitters usually subscribe to, but it hits the salient points.

Would you hire a babysitter who hates children and thinks they should be eliminated? Or who declares for years in your hearing that children are irritants who should be starved to be small, unseen and mute?

Would you hire cops who think laws are stupid and useless and should be abolished?

Would you hire a conductor for your orchestra who believes music itself an abomination?

Then why would you hire - and you did hire them, America; they are your employees, after all, not your rulers, despite their grandiose pretensions - members of a political party who think government is useless, ineffective, bloated and untrustworthy?

You've hired for your kitchen the chef who spits in your food because he despises preparing meals.

You've hired for your yardwork the gardener who sets out to kill your roses to demonstrate his assertion that they will die in your climate.

You've hired for your office the accountant who's staked his career on proving no accurate books can be kept.

In electing Republicans, America, you put people in charge of institutions they overtly, caustically loathe and proudly proclaim should not exist. Good thinking, USA, and stellar results: Katrina, Iraq, Medicare D, trade and budget deficits, mine disasters and on and on and on and ...

If you put people in charge of running a project they are ideologically committed to proving a failure, it will fail.

...

Here's a thought - just a thought, mind you, beloved America: Perhaps it's time to return to government the party that has an ideological stake in making it ... you know ... succeed. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to raise our sights a wee bit and elect people who think public service is more than an opportunity for the "Biggest! Fire Sale! Ever!" for their friends and loved ones. Perhaps it's time to insist on greater - if not great - expectations from the employees we decide to hire or fire every two years to carry out our will under the constitution.

The difference between a Give Uper and a Kossack is that we believe the change back to Democratic rule is virtually inevitable whereas they are all motivated and useful in accelerating the change. Either way, the Republicans can't hid their incompetence behind fearmongering forever, and SusanG has pointed out the fundamental truth. Modern "Starve the beast" conservatives are incompetent at government by definition. They don't accomplish their goal of shrinking government, but in the meantime make it totally ineffective at greater expense.

I found this interesting NYT article about a Maryland psychiatrist arrested by the feds for promoting off-label use of a prescription drug called Xyrem (aka the illegal drug GHB) while being paid by the manufacturer of the drug $100k a year.

Dr. Gleason, 53, was taken aback because he was arrested, and later charged, for doing something that has become common among doctors: promoting a drug for purposes other than those approved by the federal government.

But prosecutors say that Dr. Gleason went too far. At hundreds of speeches and seminars where he was rewarded with generous fees, Dr. Gleason advised other physicians that a powerful drug for narcolepsy could be prescribed for depression and pain relief. In doing so, he conspired with the drug’s manufacturer to recommend it for potentially dangerous uses, the prosecutors claim.

The case has put the spotlight on the murky financial relationships between drug companies and the physicians they use to promote their medicines. Companies cannot directly advertise drugs for purposes not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But getting drugs prescribed for unapproved uses can increase a drug's sales, so companies often skirt the rules by sponsoring seminars where doctors are paid to make presentations promoting their drugs, including the "off label" uses.

I tend to think this guy should be jailed. Personally, I don't think doctors should be receiving this kind of money, period. 100k for consulting? Bullshit. That's just bribery.

Despite the F.D.A.'s constraints on drug makers, though, the companies are allowed to hire independent doctors to talk to other physicians about their medicines. Companies can also sponsor "continuing medical education" sessions, ranging from lunches to weeklong conferences, where specialist doctors tell other physicians about the latest developments in their fields - including off-label uses for drugs already on the market. For such speaking engagements, doctors can receive $3,000 or more a day from the companies.

So it's illegal for a company to advertise off-label uses, but the doctors they pay to do the same thing are somehow "independent" and it becomes legal? Based on what this guy was doing, this sounds like a practice that needs to be made fully illegal. Off-label use should still be allowed, but not based on this word-of-mouth BS that's being paid for by drug companies.

The affidavit says that a cooperating witness repeatedly taped Dr. Gleason as he discussed Xyrem, including the Denver talk where he compared Xyrem to table salt and a meeting in November where he said Xyrem was safe for children.

The indictment also charges that Dr. Gleason committed fraud against insurance companies by advising doctors to leave blank an area on the Xyrem prescription form that asked for a disease diagnosis. Dr. Gleason acknowledges that he told doctors not to offer a diagnosis but says he never told them to lie if they were asked for one.

So, he's promoting off-label use of a drug, on the payroll of a the drug company that makes it, while telling doctors the drug is safer than it is and encouraging them to defraud the government to do so. How about some jail time for this guy?

I don't believe that it's just a coincidence that Virgil Goode happens to be on the appropriations committee and MZM employees broke the law to illegally donate huge amounts of money to his campaign. The ringleader in the scam has just pleaded guilty.

WASHINGTON — An ex-employee at a defense contractor pleaded guilty Friday to making illegal donations to the campaign of Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., marking the latest chapter in a congressional bribery probe.

Richard Berglund, who formerly supervised the Martinsville, Va., office of MZM Inc., faces up to a year in prison for engaging in a scheme with company owner Mitchell Wade to reimburse MZM employees for campaign donations. The scheme violates the Federal Election Campaign Act.

In February, Wade pleaded guilty to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, in exchange for help in getting $150 million in Defense Department contracts.
...
The Virginia congressman leads the list of those receiving contributions tied to the company, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending.

I'm sure that they weren't bribing Goode with this money. I'm sure it was really important to them that Goode got reelected because of his one vote in Congress rather than his influential position on the House Appropriations Committee from which they stood to gain millions in government contracts. Goode having his hands on our country's purse-strings I'm sure had nothing to do with this scam by MZM to send him tens of thousands of dollars.

What a crook.

Turns out Mike Leavitt has been using a charity as a front for personal enrichment.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and his relatives have claimed millions of dollars in tax deductions through a type of charitable foundation they created that until recently paid out very little in actual charity, tax records show.

Instead, much of the foundation's money has been invested or lent to the family's business interests and real estate holdings, or contributed to the Leavitt family genealogical society.

Another compassionate conservative I'm sure. Compassionate must mean selfish or hypocritical. Doesn't sound exactly like he's been donating his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does it?

Harry Reid has also acknowledged the situation in Iraq is a civil war.

This isn't just anti-Bush negativism. This needs to be acknowledged, sticking our heads in the sand about Iraq has helped nothing. Part of the reason this entire endeavor has been such a failure has been the failure of leadership to recognize problems and potential problems from the start.

Now, we acknowledge the problem is a civil war. The current model has failed. We can either move in more troops to stabilize the situation, but this would ultimately be futile since we are doing nothing to alleviate the underlying conditions leading to the violence. Ultimately we have to be considering more drastic ideas. Possibly the division of Iraq into more than one state, rather than trying to force arbitrary linear borders defined by imperialists a century ago. The downside being, whatever segment becomes Shiite will naturally ally with Iran, and the equitable division of natural resources. Alternatively, consider a longer transition to democracy, with international peacekeeping and executive management of government until peace is restored. Simply put, a parliamentary democracy will do nothing to stop a civil war, democracy doesn't work in such situations, it certainly didn't stop our own civil war.

No matter what, once the reality is acknowledged maybe we'll be able to take the drastic steps necessary to fix the mess we've made. I can't help but feel this is hopeless though, I think we lost the war in the first week when we sent the Iraqi army home and failed to prevent mass looting and lawlessness. We never recovered from that error. Ultimately we may have to withdraw and let them fight it out, it's certainly not going to be helped to having us stand in the crossfire, especially when we don't have to troops present to maintain peace between the factions.

Here's another example of Republicans showing their true face, and scaring away voters. Republicans are falling behind in polls of Spanish-speaking Americans.

This is a group of people that were evenly divided between Republican and Dem before, now they're pretty strongly on our side. And we didn't even have to do anything. The Republicans are their own worst enemy.

Bush had boosted the Republican share of the overall Hispanic vote to 40 percent in 2004, with almost all his gains coming among the Spanish-speaking voters. When the Spanish speakers were asked in this survey how they would now vote, John Kerry led Bush, 59 percent to 23 percent -- far better than the 52 percent to 48 percent showing Kerry achieved among Spanish speakers in 2004.

Bush, who had regularly received approval scores of 60 percent or more, now was trailing Kerry 38 percent to 58 percent on favorability ratings.

The poll takers attributed the falloff to opposition to the Iraq war and a higher profile for immigration issues, on which the Republican Party has appeared to be sharply divided. Bush's efforts for comprehensive reform, backed by many Hispanics, have been blocked so far by House Republicans.

With races so evenly divided, it's nice for the Republicans to send us more voters like that.

With only a little more than 2 weeks to go before the August Connecticut primary, Lieberman has fallen behind Lamont in Quinnipiac polling.

Anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont has surged to a razor-thin 51 - 47 percent lead over incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman among likely Democratic primary voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Here's the way the race would pan out with the possible primary outcomes:

1. Lieberman defeats Republican challenger Alan Schlesinger 68 - 15 percent;
2. Lamont beats Schlesinger 45 - 22 percent, with 24 percent undecided;
3. Running as an independent, Lieberman gets 51 percent, to 27 percent for Lamont and 9 percent for Schlesinger.

So, no matter what, a Democrat is getting this seat. Have no fear. The question is, will it be who the Democratic voters of Connecticut want?

If Lieberman loses the primary he should do the right thing and retire from politics, yes he might win in a three-way race, but, he wouldn't be much of a Democrat. The primary voters should decide who runs as a Democrat and who doesn't, Lieberman has become too self-centered to see this.

And has he come out against the Iraq war yet? Does he think it might just be a disaster yet? Nope, he remains delusional and on Bush's side. Even though conservative Republicans abandoned this untenable position good ol' Joementum keeps hanging on to his sweet lover Bush.


Via kos

Readers of Give Up will notice that I enabled Google ads. I did this for a good reason, I don't really expect to generate any revenue, but I am trying to get people to use Firefox. I've noticed from the usage stats that over 50% of the visitors to my site are using IE. I haven't gone as crazy as to install explorerdestroyer as it seems too obtrusive to me. But I was thinking about it when I saw so many people are using that worthless piece of crap browser.

Block unrequested popups automatically, block spyware automatically, use extensions like noscript to kill annoying and dangerous javascripts and Bugmenot to bypass obnoxious registration requirements.

And if you still need to use IE for some sites? There is always the IE tab extension.

Seriously, Firefox is the bomb people. It's faster, it's customizable, it's open source, it's safer, it's better! Click the button, download Firefox, you won't regret it. I won't be happy until I start seeing requests from less than 50% IE. You can do it!

It's about time RealClimate finally gets around to debunking the Wegmen critique of the Mann et al. paper showing the famous hockey stick graph. You know, this one.



So here's the history. Almost ten years ago now, Mann et al. published a paper documenting a sudden increase in global mean temperature in the last century determined by combining data from several temperature proxies. The data has since been expanded on and recently confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences as scientifically valid.

Not to be deterred, the global warming deniers, such as those at the Wall Street Journal, have latched on to a report and testimony by a George Mason statistician (ahem George Mason = industry's bitch) suggesting that the statistical methods in the original Mann paper were flawed.

Well, I'm hopeless on climate science, but I know who the experts are. For one, if the National Academies gathers a few dozen scientists together to evaluate a paper, and they give it thumbs up, I'm pretty satisfied. Then, if the experts at RealClimate show that the statistical criticisms don't even alter the data (the reconstructed data corrected for the statistical flaw is the green line above compared to the original red line) I'm convinced.

It's just like the denial of reality you get from WSJ on supply side economics. It doesn't matter how much data shows it's a completely intellectually bankrupt philosophy, they'll always latch on to some flawed piece of "hokum" so they never have to reevaluate their position. Their self-serving need to deny global warming and the failure of supply-side economics for the sake of near-sighted industrial concerns blocks any kind of rational discourse. They will see the coasts under 25m of water and the country lodged in economic depression before they admit they underestimated these problems. And even then I doubt they will say they're wrong. They'll find a way to blame Democrats, I'm just sure of it.

The LA Times declares Iraq is in "undeclared" civil war after 130 people were killed in two days.

Even those who hesitate to call Iraq's sectarian violence a civil war have begun saying that defusing the situation will require the international mechanisms used to mediate previous ethnic, religious and political conflicts in Central America, the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka.

"I start to feel the need to say that there is a civil war," said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a Sunni politician, "in order to borrow the tools and solutions of past civil wars to apply them here, and to call upon the international community to deal with Iraq's problems on this basis."

The first step towards stopping your civil war is admitting you have a problem.

Ack! Crappy science crappy science! Say it with me everybody, correlation does not equal causation!

The American Journal of Public Health reports that seniors who stop driving are four times more likely to require nursing hope care:

A new study finds that seniors who don't drive are four times as likely to enter assisted living centers compared to those who stay behind the wheel.

Researchers interviewed 1,593 people aged 65 to 84 over a 10-year period. All the study subjects lived in the semi-rural town of Salisbury, Md.

"We are not recommending continuation of driving for seniors who are a threat to themselves or others on the road," said study leader Ellen Freeman of the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute. "Instead, we hope that understanding the very real health impact that losing the ability to drive has on seniors will encourage families to plan contingencies to assist elderly members with transportation issues."

Ahh! No, no, no. We keep seeing stupid studies like this being misinterpreted. Whether it's kids who drink early are more likely to be alcoholic or seniors who don't drive more likely to need nursing care, these authors can not seem to figure out the basic flaw of their research, that correlation is not causation.

Maybe, just maybe, when people finally force their elderly relatives to stop driving it's because they already need the additional help and supervision of a nursing home. Did they consider that? Isn't it highly likely that not being able to drive, rather than the cause of institutionalization, is the the final nail in the coffin before people put their parents in the old folks' home?

It's official, Bush vetoed the stem cell bill.

His first veto, a big screw you to scientists, patients, humanity. Well, all the more reason not to vote for a Republican if you're in a Red state. They're enabling this guy to oppose research that 70% of people support, and a minority of people find immoral for idiotic reasons.

Hey, if you don't want ES cell research that's not the fault of the people who find no problem with this. Don't contribute embryos, don't get IVF and donate the spares, don't use the treatments that come as a result of this research. Leave the rest of us out of it, it doesn't hurt you for the rest of us to study ES cells so shove off. If every asshole with a small-minded moral bug up his ass could block research that bothered them we'd never get anything done.

We Must Preserve The Earth's Dwindling Resources For My Five Children.

There is no denying it, says Natalie Angier, the Pullitzer prize-winning science reporter for the NYT.

The link is worth checking out for several reasons. One is, I think she really debunks the idea that science is compatible with anything but the most un-dogmatic and vague of religious beliefs, which are essentially meaningless. She also, rightly I think, points out the hypocrisy of scientists attacking Uri Geller, astrologers, and creationists, while ignoring things like resurrection, virgin-birth etc.

In other words, the scientists wanted me to do my bit to help fix the terrible little statistic they keep hearing about, the one indicating that many more Americans believe in angels, devils, and poltergeists than in evolution. According to recent polls, about 82 percent are convinced of the reality of heaven (and 63 percent think they're headed there after death); 51 percent believe in ghosts; but only 28 percent are swayed by the theory of evolution.

Scientists think this is terrible—the public's bizarre underappreciation of one of science's great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they're right. Yet I can't help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America's religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned.

No, most scientists are not interested in taking on any of the mighty cornerstones of Christianity. They complain about irrational thinking, they despise creationist "science," they roll their eyes over America's infatuation with astrology, telekinesis, spoon bending, reincarnation, and UFOs, but toward the bulk of the magic acts that have won the imprimatur of inclusion in the Bible, they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent. Indeed, many are quick to point out that the Catholic Church has endorsed the theory of evolution and that it sees no conflict between a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus and the notion of evolution by natural selection. If the pope is buying it, the reason for most Americans' resistance to evolution must have less to do with religion than with a lousy advertising campaign.

...

Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University's "Ask an Astronomer" Web site. To the query, "Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?" the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, "modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions." He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of "God intervening every time a measurement occurs" before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn't—and shouldn't—"have anything to do with scientific reasoning."

How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. "No, astronomers do not believe in astrology," snarls Dave Kornreich. "It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary." Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science "one does not need a reason not to believe in something." Skepticism is "the default position" and "one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence."

In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is entirely on them, the poor gullible gits; while for the multitudes who believe that, in one way or another, a divine intelligence guides the path of every leaping lepton, there is no demand for evidence, no skepticism to surmount, no need to worry. You, the religious believer, may well find subtle support for your faith in recent discoveries—that is, if you're willing to upgrade your metaphors and definitions as the latest data demand, seek out new niches of ignorance or ambiguity to fill with the goose down of faith, and accept that, certain passages of the Old Testament notwithstanding, the world is very old, not everything in nature was made in a week, and (can you turn up the mike here, please?) Evolution Happens.

Second, you have to love the graphic at the top-right of the page. I might have to steal it.

Bush's escapades at G8 are just piling up. First he treats Tony Blair like his Bitch and cusses on an open mic, big deal. Then he tries to give the chancellor of Germany a massage which is rebuffed.

The pictures make me queasy.

Before:

After:


Ouch! Rejected!

The latest impeacheable offense by Bush? Obstruction of Justice. And it's actually being covered by the press including CNN and the NYT.

Turns out, Bush specifically denied classified clearance to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department so they couldn't investigate the lawfulness of his NSA wiretapping program. Can anyone else say, felony obstruction of justice?

Other Republicans are in trouble. My favorite description of our next criminal was offered up by Dispatches from the culture wars. They described Katherine Harris as a "Stepford Wife with a short in the wiring." That's about right. She's in trouble over bundled contributions from MZM, the same scandal that brought down the Dukester. TPM reports the Feds are on it and she's in the crosshairs. She's already trailing 30 points in the polls after dumping three consecutive campaign staffs, theres no salvaging that seat for the Republicans.

Looks like Republicans are going to play right into our hands once again. After failing to ban homersexshull marriage they've set Bush up to veto HR 801 which passed under the number of votes to override.

Now, over 70% of people in the country support ES cell research and this will allow Democrats to point out that every Republican is an enabler of Bush's anti-science agenda.

While I'd personally love to have this bill pass, I might like to see Republicans lose in November even more because the people see them as enemies of progress. This is a beautiful issue for Democrats, being served to them on a silver platter.

Finally there is one Republican's proposal I can get behind. death to the penny!

Iraq is total hell. NYT reports on this report indicating about 6,000 people have died in two months in Iraq, with an about an equal number of injuries/casualties, not to mention kidnappings, and organized crime. Over 100 people are dying a day in sectarian violence.

So, a rough calculation brings the death rate in Iraq to about 133 per 100,000 per year. Not to beat a long dead horse, but that's quite a bit more dangerous than DC. About 4x worse really. And that's taking the whole population of the country as the denominator. Since most of the violence occurs in the region of Baghdad and the Sunni triangle containing about 7 million people, the death rate for that area is more accurately described as about 4x that number, or about 500 per 100k per year, or, in DC terms, that's ten times worse than the so-called "murder capital" not that it has been for about a decade. Has Newsmax been informed? Will they run an article, "Baghdad 10 times more dangerous than DC?"

A few more turning points and the place will move from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome all the way to Dennis Costner's the Postman, both in level of post-apocalyptic hell and overall suckiness. The only reason it's not Waterworld is because it's a desert, it easily reaches that level of suckiness.

Is anyone else disappointed that the last turning point, the death of Zarqawi, has had no effect whatsoever on the violence?

Maybe it was the hypocritical lobbying for casinos, maybe it was Abramoff's pronouncement that Reed's morality was for sale, maybe it was his attempt to defraud old black people's life insurance, but for whatever reason, Reed's political career, or at least his public one, has reached an end. His bid for lieutenant Governor of Georgia is officially over.

Where's your messiah now?

Maybe it's just the way Rummy shakes hands but who else feels like they've seen this picture before?



It's Rumsfeld greeting China's General Guo Boxiong, let's just hope this time he's not handing off more WMDs.

Arghh. The Washington Post is clucking sympathetically at kooks in the medical profession who think they don't have to do their jobs because --gasp-- some people's legitimate medical choices don't mesh with their morality. We've moved on from grumpy pharmacists refusing to fill morning-after prescriptions -- now we've got ambulance drivers who won't drive you to your surgery, brain surgeons who won't pull the plug, the list goes on...

What is up with this? I mean, were they unaware that their jobs might include these things? When I went to law school, I knew I'd have to foreclose on orphanages and personally beat up homeless people. That was okay -- I'm evil! I know and accept it. That's why I didn't go into, you know, social work or something. There are tons of jobs out there -- why can't these goofs go into a profession that they can actually do?

When you contract people to lie to women seeking counseling for pregnancy, it turns out, they lie to women.

I'm shocked, shocked to find gambing is going on in here!

Can we call it a civil war yet? What the hell else could this be? This is freaking insane!

Masked attackers with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks slaughtered at least 40 people in a crowded market area south of Baghdad on Monday, hurling grenades to blow up merchants at their counters and shooting down mothers as they fled with their children, witnesses and authorities said.

The military-style assault on unarmed civilians in the mostly Shiite city of Mahmudiyah lasted 30 minutes and was vicious even for a country besieged daily by bombs and coldblooded attacks. At one point, the assailants entered a cafe and shot dead seven men -- most of them elderly -- while they were having tea, said Maythan Abdul Zahad, a police officer. He said the gunmen stepped on their victims' heads to keep them still.

"Only those who escaped and ran were able to survive," Zahad said in Najaf, where he later traveled to bury a cousin killed in the attack. "They did not spare anyone. Not the children. Not the elderly. The Iraqi army did not interfere."

Enough politics and ass-covering, we need to acknowledge this problem for what it is. Then dedicate the resources to fix it, or get the hell out. Most importantly, we need to vote out the bums who created this shitstorm in the first place. Morons!

TPM muckraker is reporting on how Ralph Reed and Abramoff conspired to use life insurance scams to cash in the deaths of old black people. I keep on looking at that last sentence to make sure I wrote it correctly, it's just too bizarre to believe, but then you read on.

We know how this scheme would have gone, because Abramoff pitched something similar to a cash-strapped Texas tribe, the Tigua. Basically, since the tribe couldn't pay Abramoff, he offered to arrange "a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older." When those elders died, the death benefits would have gone to Abramoff through one of his non-profits. The Tigua didn't take Abramoff up on the offer, but it was too good of an idea to let go.

So Abramoff apparently thought black churches were a good target. This would have been the same thing, according to GQ's Sean Flynn, except that it was African-Americans. Or as "a former associate of Reed's" told GQ, "Yeah... it sounds like Jack approached Reed about mortgaging old black people."

According to Abramoff's email exchange (under the subject line "Black Churches insurance program") with Reed in July of 2003 pitching the idea, it would have been huge:

Per our previous discussion, Abramoff wrote. Let me know how we can move forward to chat with folks who can set this up with African American elders. It can be huge. Thanks.

A file called "Charity Elder Program2.doc" was attached.

Three days later, Reed replied:

Yes, it looks interesting. I assume you’ll set up a meeting in DC as a next step, or whatever we should do next, let me know.

Wow, isn't that called insurance fraud? Beyond being racist and creepy, that should be outright illegal.

I'll let you decide. If you want to give up, you'll say, "to hell with federal ES research money, the blue states will do it and the red states can wallow in anti-science misery." If you don't want to give up you can pester your senator to vote for HR 801 if you don't want to wait for the consequences to bitch-slap the ignorant.

Either way, we win, but I think it might be time to take a stand.

Note one of the alternative bills is called the "Fetus Farming Prohibition Act" introduced by the fetus-fondler Santorum but oddly, it doesn't prohibit research on fetal tissue which has been ongoing for decades. Just on ES cells. Hypocritical much?

For no other reason than we support Jen Dziura in all her efforts we link to her response to the Amazing Randi Challenge.

I don't know if she'll win a million bucks, but she will generate some discussion.

The NYTimes today reports that CBS is planning on advertising their new shows on eggs across the country. They've contracted with a company that laser-etches the CBS logo, as well as a bad pun with the show info onto the shell before packaging and shipping to your local supermarket.

George Schweitzer, president of the CBS marketing group, said he was hoping to generate some laughter in American kitchens. "We've gone through every possible sad takeoff on shelling and scrambling and frying," he said, adding, "It's a great way to reach people in an unexpected form."

Newspapers, magazines and Web sites are so crowded with ads for entertainment programming that CBS was ready to try something different, Mr. Schweitzer said. The best thing about the egg concept was its intrusiveness.

"You can't avoid it," he said.

They love the intrusiveness? Why the hell do I want their ad on an egg? I understand ads in newspapers - they help offset the price of the printing, materials, etc, so that my local paper doesn't cost five bucks. Ads are the price you pay for a cheap paper. But on the eggs? Do I get a quarter back for every ad-laden egg I buy? And where will they stop at this?

Besides, it's really easy to avoid these ads. Find your local farmers' market. Go to the egg lady (or egg man) there. Buy a dozen eggs from her. Chances are, the eggs will be fresher and taste better, the chickens will be treated better, and you won't have to deal with some corporation's BS ad campaign. If this one fails, it might keep them from trying to do it again.

Not to pick too much on religion this morning, but PZ Myers has been talking about the exceptionally creepy joy the dominionists have been experiencing over troubles in the middle east.

Apparently those who frequent the rapture-ready blogs are exceedingly excited about the death and human misery currently being experienced in the middle east because it means Jebus might be coming.

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

Sounds like some teenager excited about the latest teen idol coming to town, except in this case it's Jebus' coming being heralded by human suffering and misery. Yay! Suffering!

Anyone else creeped out?

(I think rapture ready has taken down the discussion because of the contempt it caused, but that doesn't change that people are celebrating death, suffering and war because of a misguided belief it heralds the return of Jebus. Revelations was about Rome people! For the love of Jebus, it's already happened! Revelations is predictive of nothing!)

The National Center for Education Statistics has a new report that is of some interest. Previously readers of Give Up Blog have heard me bitch about how useless the NCES statistics are. Simply, they tend to aggregate such large groups that the data ends up being worthless, the data simply aren't useful for identifying problems as data for the entire nation ends up averaging out anything interesting.

However, this new report is a little bit different. In this case they specifically studied how individual groups of kids, sorted by socioeconomic background performed in different educational systems. Private vs Public, and different religious schools were compared. Much to the chagrin of advocates of voucher programs the data seem to indicate that when you normalize to background, kids perform almost equally well between private and public schools, and when you compare religious schools, those in conservative Christian schools do not do as well. Simply put, kids in private schools do better only because they're drawing from a rich, educated population, not because the schools are inherently better.

In grades 4 and 8 for both reading and mathematics, students in private schools achieved at higher levels than students in public schools. The average difference in school means ranged from almost 8 points for grade 4 mathematics, to about 18 points for grade 8 reading. The average differences were all statistically significant. Adjusting the comparisons for student characteristics resulted in reductions in all four average differences of approximately 11 to 14 points. Based on adjusted school means, the average for public schools was significantly higher than the average for private schools for grade 4 mathematics, while the average for private schools was significantly higher than the average for public schools for grade 8 reading. The average differences in adjusted school means for both grade 4 reading and grade 8 mathematics were not significantly different from zero.

Comparisons were also carried out with subsets of private schools categorized by sectarian affiliation. After adjusting for student characteristics, raw score average differences were reduced by about 11 to 15 points. In grade 4, Catholic and Lutheran schools were each compared to public schools. For both reading and mathematics, the results were generally similar to those based on all private schools. In grade 8, Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian schools were each compared to public schools. For Catholic and Lutheran schools for both reading and mathematics, the results were again similar to those based on all private schools. For Conservative Christian schools, the average adjusted school mean in reading was not significantly different from that of public schools. In mathematics, the average adjusted school mean for Conservative Christian schools was significantly lower than that of public schools.

So, to sum up, there isn't a large difference between public and private schools, except between public and private schools and conservative Christian schools which apparently aren't as good at math. Maybe because they confuse the kids by teaching them that the world is only 6,000 years old. That might alter their ability to understand numbers correctly.

Here's a fun story. Apparently people in Provincetown don't like it when gay people call them breeders.

Police say they logged numerous complaints of straight people being called "breeders" by gays over the July Fourth holiday weekend. Jamaican workers reported being the target of racial slurs. And a woman was verbally accosted after signing a petition that opposed same-sex marriage, they said.

The town, which prizes its reputation for openness and tolerance, is taking the concerns seriously, though police say they do not consider the incidents hate crimes.

"Hate language is usually the early-warning signal that could lead to hate-motivated violence," Town Manager Keith Bergman said. "And before that happens, we try to nip it in the bud."

Really? You're worried about violence from the gay guys calling you breeders?

What, are they forcibly going to make you fabulous? And since when was verbally accosting people a crime? I'd totally be in jail by now.

Out at the downtown mall, fridays after five etc., to see the Nice Jenkins, and what do I see?



Jackassery.

When will progressives learn to protest in a meaningful way? People wearing giant paper-mache caricature-heads of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice being led around in prison stripes in shackles. Yeah, that's going to convince the people whose minds you are trying to change. It may make you feel better, but it doesn't do a progressive cause any good.

While to be fair, these guys weren't ruining someone else's protest, they were free-lancing at a public event, it still is annoying and progressives should put the kabosh on it. Here's why.

Go to any major progressive protest in this country, anti-war, anti-Bush, civil rights whatever, and inevitably, a group of total jackasses will show up and ruin your message (as we have previously pointed out here and here and here. It will either the "I hate my conservative dad" anarchists wearing all black and asking for a beating, the "I want to be a 60s flower child" wannabe hippy there to smoke pot, or the "I want attention" crowd putting on puppet shows, wearing masks and generally turning the whole thing into a joke. Progressive protests should not just be an excuse for people to act out and be pretend hippies for a day, they are deadly serious things and we've forgotten that. And no matter how many people come that look respectable and wear a suit or look like an average working schmoe, who ends up on the news? The jackasses. That's who. Your message is officially lost, your opportunity to show your opponents that you're just like them, lost. Everything is subsumed into the needs of immature peons to have a vacation from their normal lives.

Dammit people! What good do you think these things do? Here's what these guys just don't get. The people whose minds you're trying to change? They hate hippies. They hate kids wearing all black with combat boots. And when you portray the people they thought were going to be good leaders as war criminals and monsters, they see it as an attack on them. We should be emphasizing that it was ok to make the mistake to vote for these assholes, let's all agree that they're failures and move on. Rather, actions like these entrench opinions, and make people less likely to rationally look at the truth and change their minds. You're attacking them too, don't you see? It's threatening, especially when it seems to be coming from some hippy-commune types.

Now here's how you protest.


The freedom marchers knew what they were doing. When the cops beat the crap out of a working man, or a guy in a suit, who looks like the asshole? These are marches that emphasized the humanity of the marchers, and that was the point, so they're a little different from the point of progressive marches of today. But people, if the people whose minds you are trying to change don't first see your humanity and your similarities to them, they aren't going to listen to you, ever. The Bush administration isn't listening either way, but their constituents, that's who you are trying to reach.

Anyway, time to republish the Give Up rules of protest. We've given up on marches until people start doing the following things.

1. No one may wear costumes, build puppets, or carry signs with dirty language. If these people show up, they are the ones who get the attention, and your message is immediately and totally destroyed. Tell them to leave and never come back.
   
2. People should wear their best clothing. No one is too upset when an anarchist gets the snot beaten out of them. They get very upset when cops beat up men and women that look like them. So, dress like the people whose minds you are trying to change. Wear suits, dresses, and put on your best face. This is like a job interview for your idea of changing the world.
   
3. Protesters should know why they are there, be respectful to the media, and if interviewed, be prepared to say something succinct and informed about why they are there. Do not give the finger to the cameras (and I'm someone who loves giving people the finger).

Until the progressives start enforcing these rules at their protests it's just going to be so much wasted energy. Until then, we're giving up, we don't waste energy.

...and I would just like to point out one of Minimalists' past comments on this phenomenon:

Hard to do that when some chucklehead is standing behind you, wearing a big papier-mache' Cheney head and screaming about legalizing hemp.

Ha! It's like he predicts the future.

Colbert knocked Lieberman tonight, referring to him as "his favorite Democrat" and while giving his standard monologue with the subtitles to the side he mentions Lieberman was our 2000 VP candidate (caption: an inconvenient truth). Ha!

I love Colbert.

Off topic, what's with Bush starting to believe in the constitution again? First he says he believes in our treaties again and will obey the Geneva Conventions. Now we hear he's actually going to allow judicial oversight over his supposedly nonexistent domesting spying program.

Anyone else think he's got an advisor telling him that if Democrats take power of one of the legislative wings in 2006 they have a lot to fear from oversight? This sounds like damage control, they thought they'd be out before someone had the political power to put the brakes on their shenanigans, now maybe not.

The Nice Jenkins will be playing Fridays After 5 today. I will be there! Let us drink and listen to good music.

I really like their stuff, which I've got to say is a relief. Often you know someone in a band and they suck, and every time you see them you have to explain why you're not interested in becoming their fucking groupie. It's so much easier when the music is good and you don't have to act like you're a fan of some screechy experimental crap. Or worse yet, they're in a jam band **shudders** Since I don't have a job that allows a recreational marijuana/LSD habit, I find jam bands' endless repetitive and boring lead guitar about as exciting as a root canal.

Anyway, join me! Time to drink and be merry.

This diatribe in the persona of Al Swearengen makes me happy for some reason. I hope this blogger provides us more commentary from this very special voice.

Yes, it's a bit old but I was watching an old Deadwood episode tonight and during one of Swearengen's mid-bj diatribes I was thinking about this freaking hysterical post. It really is beautifully in character:

That's the great unspoken truth about us, isn't it. We clothe order, routine, law, in the comforting veil of great ideals and beautiful words and Eternal Fuckin' Verities -- but you strip away the fuckin' gilding and gimcrackery and Corporate Vision Statements and you're left with the One True Freedom that is cherished above all others: the freedom of the Few to strip power from the Many. The only question that remains after that is how long the fuckin' Many will stand for it -- and, if experience is any guide, the cocksuckers'll stand it for a very long time indeed.

We mark in passing this day the departure from this life of fuckin' Ken Lay, the George Hearst of his day (you'll want to follow that link if you're interested in my life and times). We note further that Enron's fuckin' Mission Statement read in part, "We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here."

I rest my fuckin' case.

Anyone else a Deadwood fan?

Yep, too many turning points means you're going in circles. The fourth day of intense violence leaves 45 dead, 22 in a single incident.

What was the last turning point again? Was it the formation of the Iraqi parliament? Or was it when they finally convened? Or was it Zarqawi dying? There've been so many.

Before that I recall two turning points being the elections. If only someone had a list of all these BS turning points...like this one.

In a way, I think these quotes from Ken Lay's funeral are a sign of end times. Maybe it's just reading the BS from supply-siders, but I read crap like this and I want to start a class war.

Reverend Dr. William Lawson:
"Ken Lay was neither black nor poor, but I'm angry because Ken Lay was a victim of a lynching."

"The folks who don't like him have had their say. I'd like to have mine ... (Like Jesus Christ) he was crucified by a government that mistreated him."

Yeah, Ken Lay was lynched by a jury of his peers in a court of law. According to this total and complete jackass, punishing a rich man for stealing millions of dollars makes him a victim of a hate crime. The crime wasn't rolling blackouts in California, the loss of thousands of workers pensions, the defrauding of investors, energy traders saying "burn baby burn" or joking about stealing grandma's pension, no, the crime was apparently punishing a rich man for stealing.

I'm just fighting back the tears.

The WSJ has yet again published an editorial entitled soaking the rich, continuing their bizarre denial of math, common sense, and human decency as they declare tax cuts are making the wealthy pay too much taxes. There is simply too much stupidity in the article to bother taking it down point-by-point. Instead let's discuss supply side economics as what it is, a destructive and dangerous ideology.

It is not an economic theory anymore because it has been thoroughly discredited. The most recent claims that the tax cuts are creating a "surge" in revenue are easily disproven. Simply put, the tax-cutters are celebrating a decrease in deficit spending, not even a decrease in our debt, that's how intellectually bankrupt they are. They've added slightly less to their credit card bill this month (not including the credit card they're charging Iraq to) and are declaring this an economic victory. Sorry, that's just bullshit. We had a surplus in this country before this group of ideologues took over, no argument they make can account for the fact that they squandered it, and are only making the economic outlook of our country worse. I also find it interesting that the pre-supply side Goldwater conservatives, Nixonites like John Dean and Ben Stein are coming out against these policies because they haven't drank the Kool-aid.

So, what is supply side economics then? It's evolved into a kind of religion, in which the basic principles are tenets of faith, and any event, no matter how obviously irrelevant or not supportive of the belief ends up being incorporated as proof of its validity. This most recent pronouncement that the decrease in the deficit (not the debt, the deficit!) is proof that their policies work reminds me of Pat Robertson saying some hurricane is retribution by god for tolerance of gays or atheists or whatever. Such pronouncements are too stupid to be taken seriously by rational people, and are unproveable, but oddly, believed uncritically by the followers of the prophet.

Just look at whats happening. Bush has wrecked our economy. We have 8.6 trillion dollars of debt and deficits as far as the eye can see (including record deficits multiple years running) and they are claiming that this proves they are right? You begin to wonder, do they just hate this country? Do they want our economy to collapse? Clearly not. Rather the problem is they've fallen victim to a destructive ideology.

Now, such antisocial ideologies are very attractive and very difficult to dissuade people from. They allow groups of people to justify immoral, mob-like behavior, and mask it as altruism. Cutting taxes for the rich in the face of budget shortfalls isn't irresponsible or selfish according to supply-siders, instead it's the solution to the deficit. All sorts of magical things apparently are supposed to happen when you cut taxes, revenues increase (but never enough to cover the shortfalls), spending will decrease (which has never happened) the economy is stimulated (in 6 years the Dow still isn't back to pre-Bush levels and economic growth is at a near-stagnant rate), and everybody makes more money including the poor (the revenue increases are from capital gains and corporations, not individual filings so again, not true). Further, there is apparently, no bottom threshold for cutting taxes, they apparently can just go lower and lower, and magically this will generate more cash. Further, it incorporates their selfish belief that earnings from ownership should be somehow exempt from taxation. Taxes should only be paid if you perform some kind of labor and are paid wages, not if you just sit on your fat ass and collect dividends without lifting a finger, or become a millionaire because someone dies. They argue that it's good for the country for the rich, ownership class to hold onto every last penny pouring into their bank accounts because their money will somehow magically be reinjected into the economy leading to a "trickle-down" effect that helps everybody, but this never actually happens.

Reagan experimented with this same flawed economic belief, and after cutting taxes more than any president in history, had to raise taxes more than any president in history to make up for the record national debt he generated. After Reagan supply-side economics had seemingly been discredited (Bush Sr. even disparaged it as "Voodoo economics" and raised taxes further to make up for budget shortfalls) it's made a resurgence under the new administration and our ADD country has managed to put itself back into the exact same fix we were in in the late 80s. Too much debt, not enough revenue, and worse this time, a president that doesn't have the wherewithall to change course ever, for any reason, no matter what. That's the problem with a destructive ideology and the people who believe in it, unless the ideology causes a total unmitigated disaster, they persist and come back, again and again, until they lead to a catastrophe that people never forget.

So, I think it's time to realize that supply-side economics simply will not die until we allow it to cause a depression. It needs to be empirically disproven for the sake of all Americans, especially its adherents, because such ideologies will not be abandoned voluntarily. It takes a crisis to make people abandon such over-valued ideas. Supply side economics is a destructive ideology that needs to be exposed for what it is, a trick used by rich Americans to fool the rest of the country to indulge their unenlightened self interest. The only way that will happen? Well, first they need to wreck the economy, then we can hang them up by their toes.

Until then try Dick Cheney's strategy, bet against America economically. Protect yourself from the pending economic disaster. There is nothing else you can do in the face of irrational ideology except protect yourself and wait for it to blow over. Give up!

I think we may have given the MSM too hard a time. Harold Meyerson get's it.

No great mystery enshrouds the challenge to Lieberman, nor is the campaign of his challenger, Ned Lamont, a jihad of crazed nit-pickers. Lieberman has simply and rightly been caught up in the fundamental dynamics of Politics 2006, in which Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers in this year's elections. As well, Lieberman's broader politics are at odds with those of his fellow Northeastern Democrats. He is not being opposed because he doesn't reflect the views of his Democratic constituents 100 percent of the time. He is being opposed because he leads causes many of them find repugnant.

Meyerson gets it. We don't hate Lieberman because he's not with us 100% of the time. Were angry because he's with Bush 100% of the time.

Did anyone catch this Cell paper from early June about NIH funding levels? Yesterday pretty much all we talked about in lab meeting was how the shit has really hit the fan in terms of NIH funding, with some people having to close down for lack of funds (don't worry, we're ok). The cell paper has this figure, which I think is showing the relevant trend.



Hopefully this won't last until I have to apply for a major grant, by then maybe the Give Up effect will be complete and we'll have thrown the bums out. If not? Well, I don't know that I want to spend my life scratching by from grant to grant. Is that running from a challenge or just being sensible about the prospects for a career in science? I don't know, I'll make up my mind when I get there.

They discuss in the paper new structures for reviewing of grants that some feel are not working out well.

In 2000, the Panel on Scientific Boundaries for Review recommended a new organizational structure for IRGs, which would more accurately reflect the types of research applications that NIH receives. "The first study sections were established in 1946 and had not been revised since, despite the fact that science has changed dramatically. Reorganization was one option to address this issue," says Anthony Scarpa, who became CSR director in July 2005. Another issue the panel grappled with was that some of the most cutting edge research was assigned to too few study sections causing the best science to compete with itself, whereas relatively low impact work had little or no competition. The goal of the new IRG structure was to even out the playing field.
...
Another concern is that "in some cases, basic science expertise is not well-represented, so basic science grants are not getting expert review," says Heidi Hamm, a pharmacologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who is president-elect of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). "With the reorganization something like 5 to 6 basic biochemistry study sections are gone, and thus grants in a wide range of expertise are being funneled to just a few, much larger, study sections." Others echo the concern. "One of the big concerns before the reorganization was that translational science was not getting a fair review. Now we may have gone to the other extreme. The emphasis may have now swung to translational research to the detriment of outstanding basic science," says Judith Bond of Penn State University, ASBMB's current president.

I don't know about you guys but the last grant review we got back was downright retarded. It wasn't just about not understanding basic science, it showed a lack of understanding of science period. This is what happens when the joint is run by Republicans. You get underfunded and nothing works due to incompetent management. It's the double whammy. The article suggests that the incompetent management preceeded the Republicans and the lack of funding has just unmasked it. I think they're just being nice.

Thanks to the daily transcript. Everybody should subscribe to the scienceblogs group feed by the way.

Will bucindolol be the first widely used pharmacogenomic treatment? Very interesting. I'll read the study when it comes out. Until then, here's a little background from the author.

Bush said he'd fire whoever was responsible for the leak of Valerie Plame's identity?

NYT and WaPo report Novak's column today (not out yet) will divulge his sources. Not surprisingly, they were Karl Rove, Bill Harlow, and one still-unnamed source.

Hmmm. Think Bush is going to keep that promise? Of course not. Because he's a liar. No wonder no one thinks he has any integrity anymore. Too many bald-faced, obvious, well-documented lies. This is just the latest.

What is up with delusional leaders these days? Iraq continues to be more dangerous than Washington DC as 100 people are killed in three days in Baghdad. They New York times reporting strains credulity.

First:

...Wisam Jabir Abdullah, an Iraqi diplomat posted in Iran who was on vacation in Baghdad, was kidnapped from his home by gunmen, the Interior Ministry official said.

This is crazy, who vactions in Baghdad? Most people leave Baghdad whenever possible for vacation they don't vacation in Baghdad. Say he returned to see his family, but vacation?

Then:

The worsening security crisis in Baghdad and several neighboring provinces, which many Iraqis are saying feels like a low-grade civil war, prompted lawmakers on Tuesday to summon the interior and defense ministers to address Parliament on Thursday, according to Jalal Adin al-Sagheer, a senior official in the country's largest Shiite political bloc.

Look at this idiotic language. It "feels like" a "low-grade" civil war. As if they did polling on the streets and some guy named Mohammed says, "today feels like maybe 100 degree civil war, when it hit 103 that's when we go to hospital." Yeah, right, "low-grade" with 100 people killed in three days in what the article describes as "violence that included a double suicide bombing near busy entrances to the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, mortar attacks, a series of car bombs and the ambush of a bus with Shiite mourners returning from a burial." Hmm. Anyone lived through the civil war in El Salvador or Bosnia want to comment? Does this sound like a civil war to you guys? I'm not an expert, but it sounds like this meets several definitions of civil war.

Then the politicians unleash the stupid:

"I don't see the country falling into a civil war despite the regrettable activities of certain people who ignore that Iraq is united," the prime minister said, according to Agence France-Presse. "The security services are still in control of the situation."

He added, "We have the capacity, if necessary, to impose order and suppress those who rebel against the state."

Yeah, Iraq is united and the people killing eachother just forgot to check their day calenders. Oh, and they'd put a stop to it, really they would, they're just waiting for 150 people to get killed in three days, 100 doesn't break the threshold for action.

I really hope they succeed in the end, but I'm sick of this miserable news. I was amazed by the NYT's coverage of Mamoon Sami Rashid, the Anbar provincial governor who has survived 29 attempts on his life. Holy crap! Now that kind of tenacity gives you hope, but news stories like this, and the seemingly delusional state of our world leaders is disheartening.

Here's the proof.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

This is after they foiled a plot in Miami two weeks ago (albeit by retards) and one against the Holland tunnel last week (probably also by tards - they thought it would flood Manhattan).

Anyone remember this map?


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

I really have to update this, I'm sure it's much worse now that they've cut New York's funding in half. Hooray for the defeatists.

Well, it goes to show even Republicans like Bush and Lieberman can't do the wrong thing all the time, the Bush administration has announced they will obey the Geneva conventions in Guantanamo bay. It only took years of denunciations from civil rights activists, the world community and finally a rejection of their policies by the Supreme Court to bring it around.

Lieberman is also on the right (by which I mean correct) side of an issue for once. PLoS reports that Republicans Joe Lieberman and John Cornyn are pushing the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 which would force publicly funded research to be made public one year after being accepted.

I am all for public access to scientific information. As the article points out, there is no evidence it harms subscription revenue, and at the same time allows the public to view the research that they paid for.

Not for anything they've done wrong, other than invest in America that is. Macleans writes about the irresponsible economic course that Bush has taken and it's relation to the Canadian economy.

HOW DID THE U.S. GET INTO THIS MESS?
In January 2001, George W. Bush took over leadership of a nation that was on its most solid financial footing in decades, thanks to years of strong economic growth and a booming stock market. That very month, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal government could expect US$5.6 trillion in surpluses over the coming 10 years. The key political issue of the day was how to spend the windfall. Bush's team was determined to return the money to the voters in the form of massive and widespread tax relief. What the world didn't know was that this surplus cash was largely illusory, the result of faulty bookkeeping.

...

The CBO and other agencies have since gone back and found that a more realistic surplus projection would have been US$2.2 trillion -- over 60 per cent less than initially thought. And that cushion quickly disappeared as Bush whittled or eliminated one tax provision after another, from the marriage tax and personal income tax rates to capital gains, gifts and dividends. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, estimates that between 2001 and 2004, federal tax revenue dropped by some US$600 billion. Most of the tax cuts introduced so far are temporary, but the Republicans have made it clear they intend to make the reductions permanent before the end of the current term.

In the midst of this tax-relief bonanza, and nine months into the new President's first mandate, came Sept. 11. The horror of the terrorist attacks profoundly changed the American public's attitude toward security and defence almost overnight. Within months, the U.S. military was on the ground in Afghanistan attacking terrorist camps and overthrowing the Taliban regime. From there, the troops moved on to Iraq. Between 2001 and 2004, the annual budget for the Pentagon and domestic security rose by US$87.1 billion, an increase of 27.5 per cent in four years. In the process, a budget that had a surplus of US$128 billion in 2001 crumbled into a deficit of US$412 billion last year -- the biggest annual shortfall in United States history.

But that's just one symptom of a much deeper fiscal problem. The U.S. is heading for a massive demographic shift as baby boomers start retiring in three years. As they do, the costs of providing social programs and health care are going to soar. "It's not the deficits of today that are the big problem," says Josh Bivens, an economist with the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute in D.C. "It's that, if you make the Bush tax cuts permanent, you're going to have deficits as far as the eye can see."

It's nice to see Bush's economic victory (decreasing the increases on the national credit card bill slightly) in perspective. Oh, and Ben Stein, of all people, agrees. It's scary when all the old Nixonites are coming out of the woodwork to try to rein in the Republicans. If you've got those nutbags scared, we're awfully close to the edge of the cliff.

This is not surprising Bush claims that last years high tax returns from capital gains from the wealthy and corporate taxes are a vindication of his economic policies.

Nevermind that this is like bragging that you've only put an extra three hundred dollars on a $8600 credit card bill this month, rather than four hundred dollars as you expected (and meanwhile you're paying for a worthless eBay junk on an unmentioned second card - the Iraq war costs are not included). Only in Bush's delusional world is this an accomplishment.

This is just genius. Good find by PZ

Here's a must read from PLoS. It's essentially a replacement for PCR using a process called recombinase polymerase amplification.

RPA uses five main ingredients: a sample of the DNA to be amplified; a primer–recombinase complex, which initiates the copying process when it attaches to the template; nucleotides from which to form the new strands; a polymerase, which brings them together in the right order; and single-stranded DNA-binding proteins (SSBs), which help keep the original DNA from zipping back together while the new DNA is being made. The primer–recombinase complex is able to attach to the double-stranded DNA, eliminating the need to heat the mixture. After the complex is in place, it disassembles, allowing the DNA polymerase to begin synthesizing a new strand of DNA complementary to the template, while the SSBs attach to and stabilize the displaced strand. Under the right conditions—a precise milieu of process-regulating chemicals—the process automatically repeats, resulting in an exponential increase in the DNA sample.

The reason this process is so great is that it wouldn't require any specialized equipment for the amplification, unlike PCR which requires a thermal cycler and a prolonged process of heating and cooling the sample to amplify the target. Now these researchers have developed a method that could perform the same job at a constant low temperature, allowing the possibility for field PCR testing and impressively, created a dipstick test for rapid identification of MRSA without any specialized machinery.

Kickass!

Reading some of the comments from Pharyngula's link to our stem cell discussion I keep on seeing the same lie repeated over and over again. That is that adult stem cells, usually referring to hematopoietic stem cells, are equivalent to ES cells, or have equal or better potential for therapeutic treatments.

One thing is true, if you can find something that adult stem cells do well the therapies are more rapidly attained. After all, if you can purify the cells from the patient, or a relative, no major obstacles prevent you from putting them back into the same patient. However, this is missing the point. No one is saying there aren't some things adult stem cells would be good for, the problem is the lie that they are equivalent to ES cells. They simply are not. It is a simple fact, adult stem cells can not be differentiated into all tisses. ES cells, by definition are totipotent. That means they have the ability to make every single cell in the body. Adult stem cells are great at making one or several types of cells. Hematopoietic cells, for instance, are good at making all types of blood cells. However, they can't be made to make all other cell types. Now some reports have shown some transdifferentiation capacity, that is making cells of another lineage that they ordinarily wouldn't make, but it has been at low frequency, and in many cases was simply fusion of two different cells together.

Two papers of interest came out in the last week demonstrating this issue. One is a JCI editorial about the failure of adult stem cells from the bone marrow to treat myocardial infarction. Basically, the cells either did nothing and were eliminated within 72 hours, or worse, created new pacemakers, altering the conduction of the heart. These trials were rushed into, and appear to now be a flop. The other paper of interest comes to us from Developmental Cell in which the authors showed ES cells could make sperm that were capable of then fertilizing ova and generating mice. Now, the therapeutic implications of this are probably pretty limited, and the attempts so far haven't generated perfectly healthy, fertile offspring every time, but there is no question that this shows how much more powerful ES cells are than adult stem cells. There is no way you'd get hematopoietic stem cells to do this, or at least, never so easily. The ES cells made the sperm cells without any special treatment, they automatically differentiate into all cell types when aggregated (they added retinoic acid to push things more towards this lineage). The researchers purified out the cells of interest using a transfected reporter gene. It's that simple. The ES cells make everything automatically, it's just a matter of purifying out what you want. Adult stem cells have no where near this level of plasticity. The new cells purified from spermatogonial stem cells might be nearly as powerful, but that has yet to be proven (and only come from men).

All scientists who study stem cells would love to have a cell as powerful as ES cells that don't piss off the right wingers, it would make our lives easier for sure. It just hasn't happened yet. Maybe if the spermatogonial stem cells come through, but there needs to be years more study and success in finding a female equivalent before we should direct funding away from ES cells. Until then, the whole world will be ahead of the US in this field, which not only means we lose the best researchers, valuable patents, and potential cures. But also the US won't play a role in defining the ethical use of these cells. The scientists in other countries who develop these treatments will decide how they're used, and an unintentional side effect of the right-wingers ES cell ban will be they will lose all control over the ethical use of the cells.

I also hear that Bush might use his first veto ever to block the new Senate ES-Cell funding bill. Want proof that it is a lie to say adult stem cells have more potential than ES cell research? Here's Karl Rove:

"We were all an embryo at one point, and we ought to as a society be very careful about being callous about the wanton destruction of embryos, of life," Rove said. Recent research, he said, shows that researchers "have far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells."

Proof positive, biggest. lie. ever.

The NYT is reporting as "surprising" jump in tax revenues is decreasing the budget deficits. Just wait, we're going to start hearing how supply-side economics works again, even though this is as clear an example of failure of Voodoo economics as ever.

For instance, why are we celebrating a decrease in the deficit as a victory? This is not a surplus! This is a change from the largest deficit on record ($412 billion in 2004 to $315 billion in 2005, and now $300 billion). It's not even decreasing exponentially, nor are we improving our outrageous $8.3 trillion national debt, nor does this include the expense of the Iraq war! I remember when we thought Reagan's last experiment with supply side economics was an unmitigated disaster that screwed us into $4.5 trillion in debt. Now we've gone from a budget surplus to $8.3 trillion in debt with this intellectually and morally bankrupt tax structure and because the deficit has decreased slightly the supply-siders have declared victory? Not to mention, if the markets don't perform like they did last year (they certainly haven't this year) this revenue boost dries right up. Anyway, listen to these jackasses spout BS.

Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political fund-raising group, said: "The supply-siders were absolutely right. All the major sources of revenue have grown, especially in areas where we said they would."

How can they say this shit with a straight face? Sources of revenue have increased? So what! They still aren't covering costs, so your economic system is not viable. Also note this is an increase in corporate profits, not tax payments from individuals. These tax revenues are coming from the rich getting richer, and the Bush administration doesn't understand why the American people don't feel like their lives are improving? Sorry, a responsible tax structure would be paying our debts and not risking the economic stability of the country while actually benefiting those who need money, rather than those who have enough to make tons of money on stocks. Hell, even Dick Cheney is betting against our economy now. Maybe this kind of irresponsible economic policy is why.

TPM muckraker has published the instances of Coulter's plagiarism and it's generated an interesting discussion over at Kos.

Check them out, especially the last 3 or 4 that come from Godless and tell me what you think. I think some of the quotes, especially from Godless, are pretty damning and indicate she's a plagiarist while some of the ones from her articles are less convincing. Interstingly, Kos does not believe she plagiarized after read the list. I wonder, did he get to the end? Because those quotes are totally lifted.

I'm sorry, I should have blogged about this yesterday, but
Robert P. George and Eric Cohen wrote an anti-ES cell op-ed for the Washington Post yesterday. First of all, note that Eric Cohen writes for the New Atlantis journal of bioethics, which if you read their pubmed listings you see that it's just a Christian fundamentalist ethics journal (read how they cite the bible for bioethics arguments). Robert George is a member of Bush's sham of a bioethics council, which is comprised of a minority of scientists (I count 7 actual scientists out of 18 members, many are JD's, political scientists or MD's with nonexistent scientific background) and even includes the hack of all hacks, Charles Krauthammer, Dr. Strangelove himself. Beware the non-practicing MD who purports to tell you how to run medicine. Anyway, neither of these two guys are scientists, they're just religious blowhards trying to cram their morals down the throats of all Americans.

Now that I have finished attacking them Ad Hominem, let's talk about this BS paper. First of all, these asshats suggest that all ES cell scientists are crooked, because of Hwang Woo Suk. They actually make the argument that Hwang Woo Suk wasn't dishonest because he had fundamental problems with telling the truth and falsifying data, but because the field of ES cell research creates dishonesty in its researchers. I shit you not.

But this is exactly the wrong lesson to draw from the South Korean scandal. Cloning will always be morally corrupt because it requires deliberately creating and destroying thousands (or millions) of human embryos. At the same time, the current effort in Congress to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to include embryos left over in fertility clinics will never satisfy the scientists, because such stem cells will not give them the genetic control they want over the cells. The real lesson of the cloning scandal -- and the real opportunity now before us -- is to find a scientific alternative to research cloning, one that gives us the stem cells we desire without the ethical violations we abhor.

In South Korea, the buying and selling of eggs was done in the shadows, covered up by false documents and brazen lies. This would never happen in America, researchers assure us. But as time goes on, rather than calling research cloning itself into question, some will call the ethical limits into question: Why not pay women for their eggs? Why not induce poor women to profit by risking their health? Of course, no responsible doctor could advise his patient to undergo such a procedure. But perhaps we will simply "update" basic medical ethics as well, and decide that the "good of mankind" trumps the good of individual patients.

We have seen where this amoral logic leads us -- to shameful abuses of research subjects, which surely no one wants to repeat. But we have also seen, in the stem cell debate, how moral lines erode quickly -- from using only "spare" embryos left over in fertility clinics to creating human embryos solely for research to creating (or trying to create) cloned embryos solely for research. What will be next? Probably proposals for "fetal farming" -- the gestation of human embryos to later developmental stages, when potentially more useful stabilized stem cells can be obtained and organ primordia can be "harvested."

You see, Hwang Woo Suk was immoral and improperly forced his female employees to donate eggs, so it's just a matter of time before all ES scientists are holding women at knifepoint and demanding egg donations. Because we're fundamentally immoral because we destroy embryos, we can't do anything morally. We're just mad scientists here, demanding babies be fed into the furnace of science so our monstrous evil mill of knowledge can continue to turn. Feed me babies, I am a scientist, I need babies to live, muahahahah! Jackasses.

Then they introduce a new piece of hysterical language, "fetal farming." Now this is the biggest lie of all time. There is no other word for this but a rotten, stinking load of bullshit that smells from miles away. First of all, no one is talking about growing embryos to later time points. Why in the world would we? ES cells can only be derived from pre-implantation embryos. They can not be derived from later stages, and why would we try? For years research has been performed on fetal material from abortions and cells were never identified that had the plasticity or potential of ES cells.

They say this because when people learn about where ES cells actually come from, they have trouble staying upset. ES cells are pulled from an embryo that is microscopic (here's what it looks like), that hasn't even begun the most basic stages of development, like gastrulation or neural tube development. Embryos at these stage only have about a 50% survival rate anyway, with half of them failing to implant, so we create this type of life naturally all the time only for it to fall on the trash heap of stochastic biology. If god is implanting souls in all these things, limbo is full of human caviar. And when you see what is being destroyed, and learn that these embryos are not likely to survive half the time normally, then people grow less hysterical. Bring up the bullshit topic of "fetal farming" though, and now you're going to get everybody upset.

But back to the big lie. This is just a big freaking lie! Not only has this research already been done on tissue from aborted fetuses, there would be no value in repeating it with created embryos. It would be much easier to create the ES cell lines, then differentiate them into the relevant stem cells in a controlled manner (or uncontrolled in an embryoid body). This has already been done for several dozen cell types, including hematopoietic stem cells. The authors are purposefully creating an unrealistic and emotional hypothetical to rally up the crazies. Just think, we're going to start making babies in incubators just to kill them and harvest their organs! The horror! Oh brave new world! This assertion is stupid, stupid, stupid, and wrong, wrong, wrong. What liars!

Then they consider some bills being faced by congress now, and can't help continuing to mislead and lie.

Last week the Senate agreed to consider three bioethics bills: one that would permit federal funding for research on embryos left over in fertility clinics, one that would prohibit fetal farming and one that would fund various alternative methods of producing genetically controlled, pluripotent stem cells -- just the kind of stem cells we would get from cloning, but without the embryo destruction.

The first of these bills is misguided and unnecessary, and those senators who have pledged to support it should reconsider and change course. For the first time, it would use taxpayer dollars to encourage the destruction of embryos, and it would do so without giving researchers the genetically customized cells they desire. The second and third bills, however, would enable our country to explore the potential of stem cells without violating human dignity or taking human life.

The first bill is just permitting the use of embryos from fertility clinics that would be destroyed anyway, so federal tax dollars are not being used to destroy embryos. The embryos will be destroyed anyway, it's just allowing them to be used. Second they claim that creation of these lines destroys human life, as if that is a foregone conclusion. Sorry guys, but not everyone agrees with your stupid and uninformed belief that life begins at conception. Life does not begin it is continuous. Eggs are alive, sperm is alive, the fusion of the two is alive. There is no "dead" stage in reproduction. We don't care about the loss of skin cells, of sperm, or eggs for that matter. We don't seem to mind that we lose 50% of all fertilized embryos naturally. We don't even seem to mind that all these embryos are being created artificially for IVF. So why is using them for ES cells destruction of life? Why are these 4-day old embryos considered living on the order of other humans? Because some guy in a funny hat said so (even though the bible says otherwise). That doesn't mean that we all believe this claptrap, and we shouldn't have moral and ethical decisions for the nation being made based on the beliefs of a vocal minority. A majority of people support ES cell research being done, and if the minority doesn't want it, they don't have to receive it, or contribute embryos. But they can't decide for the entire country what is going to be researched based on their provincial morality, otherwise they could start opposing all sorts of science into HIV, STDs, homosexuality, fertility/reproductive research etc. If every minority could block research into what they considered immoral, eventually the only thing left for scientists to do would be filming puppies with a wide-angle lens. Science is offensive sometimes, deal with it. Hell, we have people from Focus on the Family who say we shouldn't develop an HPV or even HIV vaccine because these deadly diseases are a deterrent to sex! Are we going to let these crazies decide what kind of research is done? No thanks, I'd personally like to see an HIV vaccine.

Next, they impugn the morality of all ES cell researchers, even though they have no evidence that scientists in this country are doing anything but obeying the rules, and waiting for a more science-friendly administration take over.

In the end, the lesson of the cloning scandal is not simply that specific research guidelines were violated; it is that human cloning, even for research, is so morally problematic that its practitioners will always be covering their tracks, especially as they try to meet the false expectations of miraculous progress that they have helped create. If cloning is really so important for research, then overturning the Bush administration policy to fund research on "spare" IVF embryos is not very useful. But because cloning is so morally problematic, we need to find another way forward.

It is not morally problematic to me, and I feel no need to cover my tracks. I do not share their view of what human life is. Sorry, no moral problems here. Nor do I force women to donate eggs or falsify data just because I'm an ES cell researcher. What a shock, not everyone shares your backwards morality. Then notice they conflate research into human cloning to harvesting ES cells from IVF embryos. They try to say ES research without human cloning has no value. This is bullshit. They are completely separate. ES research can be done that is incredibly valuable without therapeutic cloning. They are not inextricably tied together by any stretch of the imagination and their attempt to do so is just dishonest and stupid.

Are they done being dishonest? Nope, they cite research that doesn't really support their claims to anything but the most cursory overview.

Instead of engaging in fraud and coverup, or conducting experiments that violate the moral principles of many citizens, we should look to scientific creativity for an answer. Since the cloning fraud, many scientists -- such as Markus Grompe at Oregon Health & Science University and Rudolf Jaenisch at MIT -- have been doing just that. And others, such as Kevin Eggan at Harvard, may have found a technique, called "cell fusion," that would create new, versatile, genetically controlled stem cell lines by fusing existing stem cells and ordinary DNA. Scientists in Japan just announced that they may have found a way to do this without even needing an existing stem cell line.

Check out Eggan's paper. It's a good paper, and it shows that you when you fuse an ES cell with a somatic cell you can reprogram the genome of that cell. However you end up with a tetraploid cell, and there is no evidence these cells can then replicate ES cell plasticity in a therapeutically relevant way because as long as they maintain the donor ES cell's genome, they will not be compatible with implantation into a human, as Cowan et al. acknowledge:

Eventually, this approach might lead to an alternative route for creating genetically tailored hES cell lines for use in the study and treatment of human disease. However, a substantial technical barrier remains before hES cells could be used for therapeutic purposes: specifically, the elimination of the ES cell chromosomes either before or after cell fusion

Sorry, I'm not going to bank all my chips on that unknown. As far as the Grompe (showed adult stem cells can transdifferentiate into or fuse with liver cells for correction of genetic liver diseases) and Jaenisch (showed creation of nonviable embryos that are crippled, so they don't technically have the potential to create a human embryo) papers go, nothing I've read leads me to believe they have a viable alternative to ES cell research or that in Jaenisch's case, the solution isn't just a clever sophistry. Grompe himself doesn't sound too sure that these "ethically formed" ES lines are a viable solution.

If they were smart, they would have cited this paper instead which we discussed here

Anyway, more lies, lies and damned lies from the people who always seem to think the most important thing is getting their way, rather than honestly engaging in debate. I also think they're more than happy to cite science that "supports" their view because they know 99.999% of people have not, and will not, read the science. I, for one, have, and I call shenanigans.

*update* Michael Kinsley has a stem cell article that isn't full of lies up at WaPo today. It's balanced, gets the facts right, and challenges the basic moral assumptions of our friends from New Atlantis.

President Bush says he'd rather be right than popular on CNN's Larry King Live.

Hmmm. Right now you're neither buddy.

How does his self-delusion continue? He's unpopular because he's wrong, not because he's doing the right thing and everyone else is just an idiot. If the American populace was a little smarter, and surely they're smarter than Bush, they'd be insulted by such a suggestion. Clearly we are all idiots, who don't know the difference between success and failure, and Bush has a monopoly on being correct. Who knew?

Federal District cour judge Sam Sparks today rejected Tom Delay's bid to remove his name from the TX District 22 congressional ballot.

Huzzah! If only the decision also said that Tom Delay is officially not a Virginian, I'd feel even better. But this is good news for Dems, the Republicans can't remove his name from the ballot after his fink attempt to change residency at the last minute. It is also good news for the country, because it's a rejection of a dirty political trick that could be used in the future to remove weak candidates from ballots in order to field another candidate after an initial campaign fails.

I've always hated Delaware, ever since I had to drive through it's stupid corner of 95 anyway, and it charged more per mile than any of the other states with tolls on the road. Delaware also won the race to the bottom for regulation of banks, in case you were wondering why tons of corporations and credit card companies are incorporated there. It's because they don't tax them, and let them get away with murder (at the expense of the consumers of every other state in the union). It also has a bad habit of appearing in my maps for all sorts of reasons, like incarcerations, Gonorrhea, driving and energy use, states likely to ban abortion, crappy hospitals, and infant mortality.

Now I hear that Delaware has a lovely community called Indian River that apparently has driven the one Jewish family out of town. Bartholomew's notes on religion, Kos and talk2action have good coverage, but the best might be Jesus' General who wrote this letter to the district's "Stop the ACLU" action group.

Dear Mr. Kareiva,

Please allow me to be the first to thank you and the staff of Stop The ACLU for all you did to make the Indian River Pogrom such a resounding success. It isn't easy to run a Jewish family out of town in these politically correct times. Usually, they just hunker down, hiding behind antiquated interpretations of the Constitution and the good will of those who wrongly believe that non-Christians are entitled to all of the benefits of citizenship.

But this time, the family fled, and I think you deserve partial credit for making that happen. After all, you did publish their name, address, and phone number on your web site (see screen cap below) as part of your "Expose ACLU Plaintiffs" project. It certainly wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that such information gave people the tools they needed to drive the Dobrich family from their home.

Of course, you didn't do it all by yourself. The good god-fearing Christians of the Indian River School District deserve most of the credit. They took to the task of ethnic cleansing with a vengeance , not sparing anyone discomfort, not even the Dobrich children:
...
Congratulations again for the success of your pogrom. I'm sure it's only the first of many more to come as we retake our great nation in Jesus' name.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

To which he got the reply

Pogrom? I'm not sure I want to call it that. That is not an appropriate term, however, I am pleased that we had an effect in this case. We have others we want to put up on the site to shame them but have not gotten around to it.

I've got to start signing my letters that way, "Heterosexually yours." Anyway, I think it's time to revoke Delaware's blue state status and give them honorary red state status. This shit sounds like the kind of crap you get in Mississippi, not the north. They can take their stupid little 3 electoral votes and go screw themselves.

Dick Cheney (or at least his financial managers) are not optimists. I've tried a similar approach to the market because I don't see this current situation of debt and deficit spending as sustainable with a likely ballooning of inflation in the future. Apparently the Cheney's financial advisors are betting on the same problems. Maybe I should mimic his investments?

Vice President Cheney's financial advisers are apparently betting on a rise in inflation and interest rates and on a decline in the value of the dollar against foreign currencies. That's the conclusion we draw after scouring the financial disclosure form released by Cheney this week.

As of the end of last year, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, held between $10 million and $25 million in Vanguard Short-Term Tax-Exempt fund (it's impossible to be more precise because the disclosure form lists holdings within ranges). The fund's holdings of tax-free municipal bonds mature, on average, in a little more than a year -- meaning that the fund should hold up well if rates rise. The Cheneys held another $1 million to $5 million in Vanguard Tax-Exempt Money Market fund, which is practically risk-free and could benefit from continued increases in short-term interest rates. And the couple had between $2 million and $10 million in Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities fund. The principal and interest payments of inflation-protected bonds rise along with consumer prices, making them good inflation hedges.

The Cheneys also had between $10 million and $25 million in American Century International Bond. The fund buys mainly high-quality foreign bonds (predominantly in Europe) and rarely hedges against possible increases in the value of the dollar. Indeed, its prospectus limits dollar exposure to 25% of assets and the fund currently has only 6% of assets in dollars, according to an American Century spokesman.

Financial advice from the Cheneys, invest in Euros, dump the dollars. Probably smart, who can blame them? Oh yeah, us.

It's gaining wider attention, even though it's been known for years that Coulter is a habitual plagiarist (her famous stalker Scooby has had the evidence for years). Now the NY Post has published an article about her less than honest citing of source material.

But that's not the funny thing. As TPM muckraker has been covering the story, I found this gem from the plagiarism expert (Barrie) who had to scan her book into the system.

It didn't take long to find evidence of plagiarism, Barrie said. "After we found three in the book, we called it quits. I think we found four of her syndicated columns that had problems." But the task proved draining, he said -- on himself, not his technology. "After combing through Ann Coulter for a while, it doesn't take long before you want to call it quits. I want to prove the technology, but I don't want to make my eyes bleed."

Ha! Well, we'll see if Universal Press Syndicate decides plagiarism is against their policy. TPM muckraker is on it!

This sounds absurd, but I hate the makers of Tylenol, McNeil and Co or whatever they're called. They have these commercials that say things like, "the one hospitals use most." Or they try to emphasize the safety of acetaminophen in one way or another as being easy one your stomach, and safe for kids.

What is not emphasized is what most doctors probably know (if they themselves don't believe the commercials), that Tylenol is probably the most dangerous over-the-counter medication sold.

The problem is people might be taking Tylenol for a few days for a headache (for which it's not that effective), or some other reason, and maybe they go out drinking and have maybe 2 or 3 glasses of wine. Then the next day, they're a little hungover, and they take more tylenol, and if they're real unfortunate, maybe they'll go out drinking again tonight. Then the next day, their liver has failed. It's called a "therapeutic misadventure" and it's really not difficult to do with the drug. It is also one of the most common drugs used for suicide. A study a few years back in Britain compared suicide numbers before and after Tylenol stopped being sold in bottles and instead was sold in smaller bubble packs (where you have to punch out each pill). Deaths from suicide dropped by about 30%, presumably because people couldn't just throw back a bottle of Tylenol pills anymore.

Now Jama reports that even the recommended maximum dose of 4g a day (which they have no business recommending) is dangerous. They stopped a study of some new acetaminophen/opiate mix because the patients liver enzymes were popping up under the so-called normal doses of tylenol.

None of the 39 participants assigned to placebo had a maximum ALT of more than 3 times the upper limit of normal. In contrast, the incidence of maximum ALT of more than 3 times the upper limits of normal was 31% to 44% in the 4 treatment groups receiving acetaminophen, including those participants treated with acetaminophen alone. Compared with placebo, treatment with acetaminophen was associated with a markedly higher median maximum ALT (ratio of medians, 2.78; 95% confidence interval, 1.47-4.09; P<.001). Trough acetaminophen concentrations did not exceed therapeutic limits in any participant and, after active treatment was discontinued, often decreased to undetectable levels before ALT elevations resolved.

3 times the upper limit of normal from the standard dose! Holy crap, how was this never seen before?

The lesson? The drug "Hospitals use most" isn't necessarily the safest drug to use. Hospitals use it because it not likely to cause stomach ulceration like NSAIDs (aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen etc.) and it's a good fever reducer. That doesn't mean it's safe, or good for your problem (it's not that good a pain reliever compared to NSAIDs. Tylenol should only be used at normal doses for fever reduction in adults, pain reduction if they have problems with their stomach, and fever and pain relief in children (who should not take aspirin due to Rye syndrome risk). It also should never be used when one has been drinking, even a little bit.

As Mexico repeats our 2000 election Mexico-style, who else hopes that the liberal, Obrador, wins? I hope he does, not because I think anyone can fix Mexico, and I think like most reckless populists, he's probably going to be a disaster.

No, I want him to win for one reason. It will piss off Bush. That's it. Some Chavez-like guy on our southern border, going nuts and mocking Bush would just be hysterical. We already lost our Northern border to conservatives because of the outrageous incompetence of the Canadian liberal parties, we should border at least one country that has a leader that opposes Bush.

Maybe I'm just being petty.

Who else feels a little bit robbed that he didn't manage to spend any time in jail before dying of a heart attack? And should "heart attack" appear in quotes like so?

Usually I group Hillary and Lieberman together as shrill demagogues who dump their party at a moment's notice for personal gain. However today, Hillary acted as a true Democrat and said she will support the Democratic nominee in November. In other words, if Lieberman loses the primary, she will not support him.

My estimation of Hillary on a 1 to 10 scale has increased from 0 to 1.

Lamont's blog is having a good time at Lieberman's expense as well.

In Other News

England loses to Portugal on penalites in the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup, but coach Sven-Goran Eriksson pledges that his team will play France on Wednesday anyway as a "petitioning semifinalist."

Andy Roddick loses in the third round at Wimbledon in straight sets to an upstart challenger, but reserves the right to play in the fourth round so that "all the Wimbledon fans can see him play."

The Kansas City Royals, 28 games out of first place in the American League Central, announced today that they are "taking out an insurance policy" to ensure that they will be able to play in the World Series if they happen to miss the playoffs.

Ha!

Anyway, contribute to Lamont to get rid of Lieberman's whiny Republican crap forever.

Speaking of independents, Kos is having a discussion of Lieberman's worst moments now that he's decided he'll run as an independent if he loses the Dem primary. He might as well just bite the bullet and run in the Republican primary since he's a Republican anyway. But all of his stupid crazy right-wing comments over the years are pretty horrendous. Like the time he said morality is impossible without religion (and was called out by the Anti-Defamation League), or when he suggested women who were raped should just toddle on to the next hospital if the first refuses them plan B saying, "In Connecticut, it shouldn't take more than a short ride to get to another hospital," (leading some to publish maps from catholic hospitals to real hospitals). Here are some more of my favorite worst Lieberman moments from the post (and a couple of my own).

"Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, brutal dictator, supporter of terrorism and enemy of the United States, and there should be no doubt that America and the world are safer with him captured."

And when he was first to turn on Clin-ton:

It's with great disappointment, but firm resolve, that I have concluded the President has not lived up to this high standard and that he should be removed from office. The House managers have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that, in addition to indefensible behavior with an intern, which was not illegal, the President engaged in the obstruction of justice and, as an element of that obstruction, committed perjury before a federal grand jury, which is.

Or how about when he supported congressional intervention in the Schiavo case?

"I believe that certainly in cases where there is not a living will...I feel very strongly that we ought to honor life and we ought not to create a system where people are being deprived of nutrition or hydration in a way that ends their lives,"

Or how about his stupid attacks on Grand Theft Auto.

"This relatively small but highly popular minority is not just pushing the envelope...They are shooting, torturing and napalming it beyond all recognition and beyond all decency."

Or his assertion that Democratic criticism of Bush and the Iraq war were treasonous?

"It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

Can anyone else think of some more terrible Lieberman moments? Other than this one of course.

Lieberman has indicated that if he loses his August primary he will run as an independent. Some Democrat. It's a perfect trifecta of no party loyalty, an obsession with staying in power no matter what the cost, and arrogance that the voters shouldn't decide who represents their party.

How could anyone have ever thought he was a Democrat? Why the hell did Gore choose this guy as his running mate? He was the first Democrat to turn on Clinton, the first to support Bush on every possible issue, and the first to sell out Democrats whenever they stood up to Republicans.

Now, when he loses the primary he'll show he's not a Democrat and refuse to support the candidate that Democrats decided to elect to the Senate, instead he's decided he's the only one who should represent Connecticut in the Senate, no matter what the Democratic voters decide. Lieberman is no longer even a Democrat in name only, he is officially a Republican.

All the net-neutrality advocates are having a good laugh today at Wired's account of Ted Stevens' understanding of the intarweb.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

...

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

...

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a violation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

This sounds like a combination of senile dementia and good old-fashioned stupidity. How could his staffers let him talk like this? They're young enough to understand the internets, why couldn't they do a better job explaining this to him?

It may be similar to Bush's problem though, as it has been said, the reason Bush explains things to people like they're three years old, is probably because that's how it was initially explained to him. This speech of Stevens' sounds like the same phenomenon but the 3-year-old's explanation clearly didn't take in his head.

I previously linked to a lecture by Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, on how human brains kind of suck when it comes to modern decision making. It was a good lecture, and provided an interesting hypothesis, based on evolutionary and functional reasoning that suggested why humans repeatedly make stupid decisions. Well, now he's written an editorial for the LATimes explaining how we'll never react to global warming because it's not as immediately threatening to us as gay sex. That will make more sense after you read the article. Anyway, here are the four reasons he cites people will never be able to wrap their brains around the problem of global warming.

First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to - what they know and want, what they are doing and planning - has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them.

That's why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.
...
The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are the brain's call to action.
...
The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we see it as a threat to our futures - not our afternoons. Like all animals, people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes speeding toward our eyes.
...
We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present it will soon become because we've only been practicing for a few million years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would regulate it into nonexistence.

There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser.

Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician they could get their hands on.

Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In fact, it isn't happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he'd return to the present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the problem..

I think he has a point, and it fits in nicely with his lecture we discussed before.

The second thinker I'd like to get peoples' opinions on is Daniel Easterly, a critic of international aid distribution from whom I've now read a few good articles. His thesis is pretty simple, and imminently reasonable to someone who likes the current structure of the NIH and the investigator-driven RO1 grant as the engine of science. I summarize as follows:

1. Aid distribution to foreign countries is ineffective a majority of the time
   
2. It is ineffective because the countries most in need are usually run by crooks and thieves who essentially steal everything from their people.
   
3. We do not require assessments of performance from our donations, therefore, little follow-up or adjustment of aid occurs when it all get stolen by these assholes. (assessments do come but usually from middle management types in the NGOs and UN who don't have high expectations to start with)
   
4. Even if the money isn't stolen, it is administered ineffectively from a top-down approach that often doesn't adequately address the needs of the recipient (see our current idiotic anti-HIV abstinence program)
   
5. The net result is a decrease in interest in foreign aid and donation because it is seen as fruitless.

I think he has a point, and I really like his solution. Basically, stop the top down initiatives (the equivalent to Elias Zerhouni's NIH roadmap) and get back to basics. He says, down with Utopianism, a word that appropriately connotates the mixture of naivete and failure that infects our current policies. Develop a system (as I see it) more like the NIH, that funds proposals, assessed results, then decides to continue to fund, or halt funding based on success. He cites numerous examples of effective programs that should be expanded and funded that instead disappear as the general funding is cut from generalized failure of aid. Overall, we are capable of helping and improving the lives of the world's poor, we're just going about it all wrong. Anyway, he comes across as a bit of a market fanatic, and you can even smell a stink of libertarianism in there, but I don't think he should be dismissed as such, because what I see most importantly in his ideas is that of an emphasis on empirical testing. Fund what works, cut what doesn't. Don't decrease aid, just demand more from it. Is that too simplistic as others have suggested? Or could it be the basis for a new system of distributing charity?

Finally, in what might be excellent news for the poor, especially in Malaria-infested areas of the world, some Johns Hopkins researchers may have found a new treatment in astemizole a cheap, off-patent antihistamine.

The last turning point was our fourth...fifth? Fifth turning point. Yeah, so that means we're now going right? Or left? I'm confused.

Either way, it's clear, we're ready for another turning point, because the last one didn't take. Baghdad is yet again showing itself to be shockingly more dangerous than DC as 77 are killed at once by a suicide car bomber and the struggling legislature is flying apart as Sunnis have started a boycot.

Osama certainly isn't helping, as he's now telling Sunnis to fight Shiites. And here I was thinking that we were the great Satan. Assholes. We either need to get our shit together and put the kabosh on terrorists like Osama or do the Machiavelli thing and make sure the Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are united against us.

We could learn a lesson from the Israelis as they go totally batshit over their abducted soldier. I think it's just totally amazing how they've got their shit together. They are proving they can outcrazy the crazies and, you know, it just might work.

I lost all respect for the free Palestine movement and anti-Israeli business after Palestinians elected Hamas to lead their government. It was the biggest loss of moderation, intelligence, sensibility, and what-not since we re-elected Bush in 2004. However, the Israelis turned this to their advantage in a stunning way. Hamas gains power, fills up the government with high ranking members of their terrorist organization, (so now Israel knows where all their leaders are) then, Hamas does something stupid, like kidnap an Israeli soldier, and what does Israel do? Why kidnap a big chunk of their entire freaking government! Genius!

I am just in awe of their capacity to get shit done. And they're really flying their crazy flag high too with strikes on the Palestinian Premier's house and a fly-by of the Syrian president's home just to remind their neighbors they're badass. Man, I'm getting jealous. Imagine if our leaders after 9/11 hadn't waited two months to invade Tora Bora, capture Osama, and while they're at it, harvest all those Taliban leaders so they couldn't wage an endless war in the countryside of Afghanistan. This is how you fight these assholes, invade fast, take them all prisoner, then set the terms. This makes our Shock and Awe look like a clunky fireworks show. It's just stunning. Probably illegal, but unlike our illegal behavior, it's competently executed. Even if you don't agree with it, you can give them that.