Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The words do not have to be perfect.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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Archives for 2009

Not the Onion

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This is amusing:

Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning its tarnished brand name as it tries to shake a reputation battered by oft-criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two dozen businesses under the name Xe.

The parent company’s new name is pronounced like the letter “z.” Blackwater Lodge & Training Center — the subsidiary that conducts much of the company’s overseas operations and domestic training — has been renamed U.S. Training Center Inc., the company said Friday.

But not as funny as this:

The term “Religious Right” pops up every election cycle, but leaders often identified with the political movement say that while their constituencies remain strong, the catchphrase deserves a proper burial.

After Election Day, the BBC declared that times are uncertain for the Religious Right. In September 2008, Newsweek declared a Religious-Right Revival after Sarah Palin was nominated vice president. Even after the election, the term “Religious Right” or “Christian Right” appeared in recent obituaries as journalists searched for words to describe Paul Weyrich, cofounder of the Moral Majority, and the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, founder of Catholic journal First Things.

However, several politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews that they do not want to be identified with the “Religious Right,” “Christian Right,” “Moral Majority,” or other phrases still thrown around in journalism and academia.

I propose we rename the disease cancer, and I am suggesting we call it Puppybreathrosepetalcoolsideofthepillowdipinthelakecoolbreezesunnyday. After we re-brand it, no one will care if they die from it, amirite?

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Moral Dilemma

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I see a little bit of chatter about the Fairness Doctrine bubbling up, and I have to admit I am conflicted on the issue. First, I just don’t like it. Second, I swore over and over again that no one on the Democratic side was interested in reviving it (and in truth, Obama won’t touch it, most likely), so if they did revive it, I would have a good bit of egg on my face.

Having said that, this:

And I’m sure Rush is apoplectic.

This is becoming a tough call, when opposition to the Doctine was a no-brainer. Anything that makes Malkin and Rush that mad can’t be all that bad. I’d oppose chocolate and puppy kisses if they endorsed them.

That’s just how I roll these days.

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TGIF

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I think I am gonna head out to get something to eat, basically because it is Friday and I am too lazy to cook something. Thought I would leave you a shiny new thread to play with.

*** Update ***

Here is something to think about:

If Mitch McConnell (or, say, Judd Gregg) were a Mensch…

…pigs would fly, I know, but if McConnell had any sense of decency he would do the following:

Vote for the stimulus package in the Senate.

Why? So that his colleague, Sherrod Brown, would not have to leave his mother’s wake (say that again, in all caps: HIS MOTHER’S WAKE) in Ohio, fly to DC, cast his vote, and then fly back to Ohio in time for his mother’s funeral (say that again, in all caps: HIS MOTHER’S FUNERAL) tomorrow.

I mean, there is no doubt that the bill will pass. There is no question that Brown’s vote will be the needed 60th to ensure passage. The only other option, the only other vote to provide the margin of those who voted at the last, procedural hurdle is Ted Kennedy, and he’s dealing with brain cancer (caps again: BRAIN CANCER), so it falls to Brown, trying to bury his mother, or some one Republican with a sense of decency sufficiently developed to switch his or her vote in Brown’s stead.

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Open to suggestions

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The GOP is looking for a sequel to last summer’s blockbuster “Drill Baby Drill”, which received mixed reviews:

“This year, everyone’s thinking maybe they’ll actually come up with grown-up things to say,” said Republican energy lobbyist Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ impeded the conversation. We energy guys hated it.”

[…]

“‘Drill, baby, drill’ is a great slogan, but it’s not enough,” he (Gov. Tim Pawlenty) said. “We need to identify with emerging issues and get ahead of them.”

All eyes are now turning to new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who coined the phrase, and some lawmakers hope he might crank out another infectious slogan.

I think we may be nearing the end of civilization.

In the meantime, any ideas for a new phrase? All that comes to mind for me, given Steele’s eerie likeness to that guy from Digital Underground, is “do the pumpty pump”. But I’m not sure that’s hip or infectious enough.

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Cool like that

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The Times (via Tom Tomorrow) find Jon Meacham trying to make Newsweek cool again:

Editorially, Newsweek’s plan calls for moving in the direction it was already headed — toward not just analysis and commentary, but an opinionated, prescriptive or offbeat take on events.

The current cover article argues that America’s involvement in Afghanistan parallels the Vietnam War, and a companion piece offers a plan for handling that country. Newsweek also plans to lean even more heavily on the appeal of big-name writers like Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria and George Will.

Starting in May, articles will be reorganized under four broad, new sections — one each for short takes, columnists and commentary, long reporting pieces like the cover articles, and culture — each with less compulsion to touch on the week’s biggest events. A new graphic feature on the last page, “The Bluffer’s Guide,” will tell readers how to sound as if they are knowledgeable on a current topic, whether they are or not.

Remember what happened last time Meacham tried to get the kids to read Newsweek:

After about an hour, there seemed to be no more questions for him, so Newsweek editor Jon Meacham turned to his audience—about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school—and said he had a question for them: Did anyone in the room read Newsweek or Time? There was a small, awkward rumbling before finally, a man shouted, “No!”

Mr. Meacham scanned the audience for his quarry and then asked the journalism student, clad in a black turtleneck, whether he read The Economist. Yes, he did.

“It’s the most talked about and least read magazine,” said Mr. Meacham. “Have you looked at Newsweek?”

“Sure,” said the J-schooler.

“And it’s not up to your standards?”

“I find less useful honestly. The news? I don’t get it from Newsweek. The Economist is more courageous,” he answered.

“The success of The Economist—the fact that you read it, a black-turtlenecked guy at Columbia,” Mr. Meacham began.

The whole thing reminds me of the Pat Boone heavy metal album. Meacham is a sociopathic dweeb and we’ll all be better off when his crappy magazine goes bankrupt. Sorry, but there’s no excuse for this kind of facile stupidity:

Digital TV

After years of warning, Americans still not ready to switch from analog. Wake up.

M. Phelps

Olympic’s human fish in hot water over pot shot. Look, he needs to keep his appetite up.

Sully

Hero Hudson pilot cool as a cuke on “Cactus” tape. Clint Eastwood in biopic?

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Dover Did Not Kill Creationism

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So Dr. Andrew Wakefield, poet laureate and Ghandi Gandhi figure of the anti-vaccination movement, faked his data. I doubt that any of the researchers who tried and failed to reproduce his 1998 Lancet paper will register much surprise. For the rest of us though, the news, along with the anti-vax movement’s recent Dover case, makes a fitting coda for the mainstream credibility of anti-vaccination “science.” As far as I know the evidence was only considered ‘mixed’ because it included the overwhelming studies showing no connection and Dr. Wakefield’s paper.

With the latest news Wakefield’s 1998 paper is dead, defunct, no longer with us. It is an ex-paper. Dr. Wakefield is also an ex-researcher as of now, though that may be moot given the beating his credibility took over the last ten years. Wakefield’s colleagues will now deal with an ironically fitting analogy.

Measles is highly contagious. Infected people are usually contagious from about 4 days before their rash starts to 4 days afterwards. The measles virus resides in the mucus in the nose and throat of infected people. When they sneeze or cough, droplets spray into the air and the droplets remain active and contagious on infected surfaces for up to 2 hours.

Colleagues who published with Dr. Wakefield will have to explain themselves to skeptical superiors and reviewers of their own grants and papers. Students whom he might have trained will carry his name like an anchor on their CV. For comparison, the late 2005 flameout of a Korean cloning specialist is still impacting major labs in three countries.

***

On a practical level the collective freakout over vaccines never made any sense to me. Off the top of my head I can think of far better founded research listing more serious threats from processed fast food and carbonated sugar drinks. Almost 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, versus a million or so autistics, and we know what causes diabetes.

Or what the heck, let’s freak out about mercury. We know enough about mercury and brain development to have some real concerns, and anyone who really wants to get their freak on can revisit the Minimata story. Antivaxxers cite the mercury-based preservative thimerosal when they cite anything at all (‘not natural’ or ‘not organic’ and similarly vague statements account for much of the rest). Set aside that thimerosal is far less dangerous than the bio-active, methylated form of mercury and that most vaccines no longer use it.

For some perspective, vaccines delivered at most 50 micrograms of relatively inert ethylmercury per dose. By contrast, most of the mercury that accumulates in seafood is the far more dangerous methylmercury. Let’s see what overprotective parents feed junior every time they make a tuna fish sandwich.

So exactly how much mercury a 45 lb. child would ingest by eating one 6 ounce can of tuna per week, and how does that compare to the EPA’s reference dose? Take a look at the following calculations:

Step 1 – DETERMINE EPA’s RECOMMENDED LEVEL FOR A 45 LB CHILD

* Multiply child’s body weight by EPA’s reference dose.
* Convert 45 pounds to kilograms = 20.45 kilograms
* 20.45 kilograms x .1 micrograms per kilogram per day

EPA RECOMMENDED LEVEL = 2.05 micrograms per day = 14.35 micrograms per week.

Step 2 – HOW MUCH MERCURY IS IN 6 OUNCES OF CHUNK WHITE TUNA?

* Multiply amount of fish by average mercury level for chunk white albacore.
* Convert 6 ounces to grams = 170 grams 170 grams X .31 ppm (or micrograms per gram)**

MERCURY INGESTED = 52.7 micrograms per gram

Step 3 – COMPARE MERCURY INGESTED WITH EPA’S RECOMMENDED LEVEL

* Divide 52.7 micrograms by 14.35 micrograms = 3.7

BY EATING 6 OUNCES OF CHUNK WHITE TUNA A WEEK, THE CHILD IS INGESTING ALMOST FOUR TIMES EPA’S RECOMMENDED DOSE.

Bear in mind that the above used mercury levels in albacore tuna. The levels in yellowfin and other sushi tuna can be much worse.

***

No rational reason exists to worry about vaccines as opposed to, say, half of the crap that we feed our kids every day. So how has this antivaxx issue ballooned into some sort of populist revolt? From one weak and rapidly discredited paper grew a movement that involves relatively well-educated parents actively putting their kids, their kids’ friends and strangers in danger of terrible diseases. It is baffling. You and I know that the court loss won’t kill the anti-vaxx movement and neither will Dr. Wakefield’s disgrace. The anti-vaxxers are creationists now. The movement clearly appeals to a subconscious need that comes from somewhere deep enough that ordinary logic cannot reach.

I have no idea what that might be, but Ira Glass made a respectable stab at the question on NPR a few months back. The expansion of school choices, Whole Foods, all-natural body products and whatnot lets parents ‘choose’ a better/healthier option for practically everything they consume (or make others very rich by choosing the illusion of it). One glaring exception, the one thing that the state gives parents practically zero leeway with regards to how, where or when is vaccines. Some must find that very galling.

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