Blue Jays or Tribe? I’m pulling for the Jays for this series, then the Cubbies all the way.
Also: MNF, Jets vs. Cards. Don’t really care one way or another. You?
Open thread!
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Blue Jays or Tribe? I’m pulling for the Jays for this series, then the Cubbies all the way.
Also: MNF, Jets vs. Cards. Don’t really care one way or another. You?
Open thread!
This post is in: Clown Shoes
This is what happens when you combine Jim Hoft, Drudge, and Limbauch.
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Walnuts has today’s dumbest unforced error and wins the Ted Cruz medal for negative political acumen. Attempting to fire up his base, he said the following:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) suggested Monday that the Republican party’s months-long refusal to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court could extend into the next administration if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
“I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up,” McCain said on WPHT Philadelphia radio in an interview first flagged by CNN. “I promise you. This is where we need the majority.”
Realizing that was absolutely insane, his staff quickly walked back the remarks:
McCain’s office walked his remarks back hours later, saying he would vote for individual nominees based on their record and experience.
“Senator McCain believes you can only judge people by their record and Hillary Clinton has a clear record of supporting liberal judicial nominees,” communications director Rachael Dean told TPM in a statement. “That being said, Senator McCain will, of course, thoroughly examine the record of any Supreme Court nominee put before the Senate and vote for or against that individual based on their qualifications as he has done throughout his career.”
So now, he’s said something insane, alienating moderates, and said something sane, alienating the Trump voters who already hate him and have threatened to not support down ballot candidates who aren’t with Trump. Considering Arizona is possibly in play, this might be the end of Walnuts. He’s up 15, but you never know in a wave election.
by Betty Cracker| 101 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Proud to Be A Democrat
Behold, a real-life WH press secretary worthy of fictional counterpart CJ Cregg:
In case you can’t watch, a reporter asked our hero about Trump’s ridiculous call for Hillary Clinton to take a drug test prior to the next debate because she was all “pumped up” during the last (presumably, “pumped up” being a euphemism for “kicked Trump’s ass”). Earnest replied:
You’re telling me that the candidate who snorted his way through the first two debates is accusing the other candidate of taking drugs? That’s a curious development in the campaign.
Boom. He clarified in the follow up that he was just kidding. But it seems the NFLTG virus is spreading…
by Tim F| 38 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Science & Technology
Science is f*cking rad.
Scientists Create Fully Functional Eggs from Skin Cells
Using skin cells extracted from mice, researchers in Japan have produced fully functional egg cells that were used to produce healthy mouse pups. Should the method work in humans, it could introduce powerful new ways of treating infertility—and even allow same-sex couples to produce biological offspring.
Although I have friends who routinely create muscle cells, bone and neurons out of stem cells, a viable egg is a major and possibly the holy grail of stem cell science. No we cannot have this tomorrow, although I would wager whichever private firm buys the license will work night and day to get approval for human tests.
However before getting too excited I want to throw out the usual caveat about medical breakthroughs and mice. It turns out that rodents make really, really great patients. We have can cure or treat almost anything in mice – diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, most cancers etc etc. Your pet mouse could almost literally live forever as long as you have enough money and a suitably equipped veterinary center / world class research institute nearby. Unfortunately we’re not mice. Human trials have too often been the cruel rocks against which promising medical breakthroughs get dashed. You could explain away some of that by pointing out that animal studies have a relatively low bar to meet. Human trials get intense oversight that makes it much harder to pull off the kind of sloppiness or flawed experimental design that you see in papers that don’t hold up when someone tries to repeat it later. But there is also a real biological difference between most mammals and us. The Korean guy who cloned dogs and sheep got himself in so much trouble precisely because he assumed that the techniques for cloning other large mammals would work in humans. He filled in a bunch of results based on what he expected to get and then published the filler data as if it was real, like giving a Powerpoint talk with that nonsense Latin filler still in every slide. To his dismay none of that stuff he learned from sheep and dogs did him any good. Another team finally reported success in 2007, two years after the UN banned growing any cloned humans to term.
With that in mind I would say that egg cells on demand is still far from guaranteed, and even if it does happen FDA approval will be a long time coming. But the odds of people alive today having a simple alternative to infertility just got a whole lot better.
by David Anderson| 114 Comments
This post is in: All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Both Sides Do It!, Bring On The Meteor
in which John McCain pledges Senate Rs will block *any* SCOTUS nominee Hillary Clinton puts up: https://t.co/R5fn7SU9aG pic.twitter.com/o1QyzHVSyo
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) October 17, 2016
And this is Good News for John McCain as it helps him consolidate his Teabagging base.
This is basically saying that any Democrat is fundamentally illegitimate and they are not allowed to do their job. A Senate that is split 51-49 in either direction with Clinton in the White House gives the Republicans plenty of space to haggle over nominees. They could make it clear that nominees X, Y, Z could easily get approved by eighty votes while nominees A,B,C would need either a party line vote (which is a tough vote for Plain state Democrats) or would fail completely.
But no, no to haggling, no to norms, no to anything other than control. This is a rolling Constitutional crisis.
But it is good news for John McCain.
by Betty Cracker| 157 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity
Well, battle plans are being drawn, anyway. Please forgive the Politico link:
As Democrats aim to capitalize on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group focused on redistricting reform—with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority far more difficult.
The new group, called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now identified the group—which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to state redistricting maps—as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office.
It’s hard to overestimate just how B a FD this could be if PBO and AG Holder put their considerable talents and influence behind it — and get the rest of us onboard, as a good community organizer will surely do. I know several of you have joined me in hoping that President Obama would choose something huge and truly change-making to focus on when he leaves the White House as a relatively young man with enormous popularity.
I was thinking voting rights, which could certainly fall under the purview of the initiative described above. What are these feels I’m feeling? Could it be…hope?