It doesn't matter to me whether the war on free speech, free thought, scholarship, and democracy, comes from Muslims, Hindus, Christians, or any other creed. It is always wrong, and a sign of people who grasp at faith ignorantly and without any concern for truth or morality. There seem to be Hindu extremists who have a list, like the Muslims in Bangladesh have a list.
I have a list of people I might like to light up, myself, but I would not ever use anything more dangerous than my blog to do it (I think). And since these extremists think so much of the danger of bloggers and scholars, maybe that is enough for me. Since words alone drive them to barbarism and murder. Maybe words alone can drive them into the daylight, and out of a society that protects them.
What's in a name? Would a mountain by any other name be quite as high?
The name "Denali" actually means "high" or "tall"--it's about as phonetically close as we get to what the peak has been called for centuries by the indigenous populations in Alaska, and it's the name the locals most commonly use. It's a name that is descriptive of the highest mountain in the US, as well as the name that the National Park in which it rests now goes by.
For some reason, President Obama agreeing with Alaskans that the mountain should go by the local name grates with those who feel that calling it "Mount McKinley" is somehow more seemly because it's a tribute to a former US President.
We can seriously name other stuff after President McKinley if you want, you guys. If Ohio has something that is already going by a dumb name, for heaven's sake, just change it to "McKinley" if it makes you feel better. But for crying out loud, this seems to me like this is more of an issue for Alaska, and Ohio, you put chili on spaghetti. So I can't even with you guys.
Alaska has been calling it "Denali" since before there even was a state of Alaska or a President McKinley. But I kind of notice so many of the people having little fits over this are GOP, so I'll just say Obama did it on purpose.
I don't invest a lot in whether I'm doing anything Bobby Jindal finds appropriate, so I am going to not only talk about climate change, but name this post in his honor. I'm funny that way. Because, among other wild things, the state of Louisiana is kind of disappearing because of sea level rise. The state loses as much as 50 square miles a year.
That's something former FEMA Director Michael Brown certainly doesn't think is necessarily real science. Or rather he prefers not to believe that human activity is exacerbating the effect. But real science finds that sea levels are definitely rising. As for the folks who think global warming isn't happening or that human activity isn't causing it, it turns out they are sciencing badly, and real scientists can't reproduce their stupid data. (Reproducibility is totally a real science metric about whether results of a test are valid. This demonstrates that climate denialism isn't appropriately "skepticism" as much as it is "total fail". )
Climate change is real. We need to ensure our infrastructure can support the worst case scenario (in 2005, for a minute, some observers thought New Orleans dodged a bullet, until the levees burst). We need to mitigate our carbon output. And we need to think about how climate change impacts especially the poor and less-mobile among us. We are foolish not to see this as a problem.
Sometimes, political rhetoric can get a little bit out of hand, and maybe needs to be pulled back from the ledge--that's what I think might be part of the problem with the immigration debate. I've noted in the past that some of the ideas about what to do with actual human beings who want to be in this country without all the legal hassle are either a futuristic civil liberties nightmare--like implanting RFID chips, or seem like the fantasies of a comic book villain, like an electric fence with a moat and alligators. I'm a silly old stick-in-the-mud. I want policies that are effective and actually can happen in the real world where the people are.
GOP presidential candidate and NJ Governor, Chris Christie made a bit of a stir by suggesting that people on a US visa be tracked in the way that FedEx tracks packages. I have to admit--I've very recently noted that something like 40% of illegal immigration stems from folks overstaying their visas, and I recommended they be tracked in some way. But I think this is probably better done by a voluntary self-reporting scheme of checking in with one's current address, and not the way packages are kept track of, because barcodes are actually used for package tracking. There's a lot of people who feel some kind of way about putting barcodes on people, and I would guess that the problems with a barcode scheme would go about as awkwardly as the RFID idea.
I have the feeling that there's a "political will" issue regarding immigration--politicians understand this is something citizens feel strongly about, but they also are very nervous about introducing a serious, comprehensive plan because of the emotional, amped-up rhetoric that goes into play. The immigration issue is more of a matter in the red-state stronghold south specifically because this is where Latin@ immigration and the low-wage agricultural/factory jobs come up and might be why Democrats don't really reference it in the same way. Donald Trump has managed to magnify the issue--but it results in WI Gov. Scott Walker talking about a Canadian border fence. Seriously? That's one long border, and one long fence.
If there's a wrong way to be talking about immigration, I have a feeling following the lead of Trump and getting more extreme is the wrong way. This is, essentially, the problem with an outsider candidate--they might have bold ideas, but no concept of process. And when they come up in the polls like Trump has, people who ought to know better, start acting like they don't. And that isn't good for the debate.
My reproductive organs are all actually on my inside. I am not really ok with a war on my inside-parts. I don't like where Dr. Carson is going regarding my inside-y parts. He is really unguarded though--am I right? Not a business-as-usual politician?
The gawking over the continued comeuppance of the Duggar clan by way of the revelations that the way in which these many children of the Quiverfull faithful aren't necessarily guaranteed to be exceptionally sexually continent, in the person of one Josh Duggar, is a little bit petty, I think.
But because I think, being a rationalist, I am not sure that we have any reason to expect someone raised in his worldview to behave better--we don't. He was raised to believe that sex outside of marriage--outside of straight, missionary, and vanilla, was a kind of damnable sin. Experiencing urges or temptations to act outside of the prescribed sexual roles, Josh Duggar figured he was damned enough and decided to roll with it. In a black and white view of morality, if you aren't simon-pure--what are you?
You're a perv. So that's the fitting role for old middle-aged before his time Josh Duggar. The first son--so if I understand the many pictures taken with so many of the GOP 2016 primary contestants, I would have to assume, the one the Duggar clan kind of thought might go into politics to spread the various odd ideas about family, homeschooling, and sexual continence...
And it turns out is exactly the example we've got for how traditional values go wrong. Because we learn a bit about how the fundamentalists find that incest is awfully common. And that for an aggrieved spouse, however humiliating the situation, leaving isn't socially permissible. So it kind of seems like an adulterous or incestuous individual can just do a smidgen of physical labor, get absolved by the powerful people in the same cult, and even hurt their family, ask for forgiveness, and be kind of okay, learning exactly nothing--especially how to regard their spouse as a human being and sexual partner who needs to be respected, consulted, and considered in all one's doings.
Lately, it feels like commenting on the news means never being removed from images of violence. The deaths of the young local reporter, Alison Parker, and cameraman Adam Ward, were caught on video twice--first by Ward's own camera, and then by the "selfie" video taken by the killer, Vester Lee Flanagan II, which was posted to social media, who went on to fatally shoot himself.
These people were so young and promising, and the newsroom they worked from seemed like such a tight-knit working family, that I am certain their loss is keenly felt. As for the shooter, his history and 23-page long suicide note definitely straddle some areas of concern regarding his mental health, and how in the hell he had more access to a weapon than to psychiatric counseling (he basically seems to me to have become paranoid--every setback was personal, his ideas about what to do in response became more grandiose). And yet, for a person who has developed an idea that people were out to get him, the idea of getting counseling was probably especially appalling to him. To a person with paranoid ideas, one's self-image is invested in the idea that "I'm alright, it's the bastards who have it in for me who are the problem!" This kind of resentful outlook is the basis of a lot of workplace-related slayings.
I don't know how it is that Jeb Bush doesn't recognize pap smears, breast exams, pregnancy tests, prenatal care, and a host of other medical services Planned Parenthood does as falling under the umbrella of well-woman care, even though my insurance considers these examinations as a part of my annual well-woman examination coverage. There's quite a lot that can go into women's health screening. Us lady-folks are complicated. It's possible that he doesn't actually realize that we little uterus-having angels are also physically human with all the likelihood of being susceptible to disease and all that. But I think it's far more likely that he realizes we can have sickness in even our lady parts and have complications from being, among other things, all the way with child in those lady parts, and does not give a damn .
Jeb Bush is a loser candidate for all the possible reasons going, including embracing his brothers' disastrous foreign policy team and taking the time to give another "Attaboy" to the useless "Brownie", to tout his disaster management skills .
There is no bottom to the Jeb Bush campaign. Every dollar sunk into it only prolongs the stupidity of it. And Great Cthulhu is it stupid.
I guess the takeaway there is, don't start asking Donald Trump questions he isn't looking for, and if you happen to be Jorge Ramos, uh, well, "Go back to Univision." The ethnic media island of Univision, where your "asking-questions" activism regarding things actually in the US Constitution that don't line up with the Donald Trump mission can go stand in the shame corner with "that bimbo", Megyn Kelly, I guess.
Like a lot of reality tv, I kind of have the feeling that this particular show wants to stay more or less on script for fear of actually encountering, you know, reality. I'm not sure if Trump acknowledges that being president is not a reality show. You can be on tv and you do press and people watch you. But the reality bits are, as folks say in wrestling, shoot, not work.
He works the mic on script and his heel act seems shoot--not just totally kayfabe. But I don't think anyone knows how he'd hack the ring. Especially where he wouldn't have the luxury of booking himself against convenient foils.
I'd tell Trump to go back to "The Apprentice", but they wouldn't have him back.
(The Trump presence on WWE, anyway, was totes steady. I still can't say if he isn't completely straight-up having us all on.)
A minor Photoshop error created some speculation that Jeb Bush's head was 'Shopped onto an African-American person's body for the graphic on a recent mailer, but that's not what happened, exactly. The picture is all Jeb, it's only that the artist failed to correct the coloring of his left hand, which was in shadow in the original picture. It's a little sloppy, but not really some kind of disastrous goof.
Actually, my impression is that the somewhat less-excusable goof is asking "Why Jeb?" It invites the answer: "Yeah, why him, anyway?" The speculation that Bush is not at all a Happy Warrior only makes this question a little more obvious. He keeps saying things that suggest his head isn't in the game.
As for the "toothy grin" I've given the candidate--well, I do kid. But his expression does seem at times that of a man whose family has vetoed his preferred vacation plans, and is doing his gosh-darndest to give the impression that he's having a great time. Just great. Stop asking, why don't you?
1.) The blonde woman holding the baby is quite possibly more excited about meeting Donald Trump than I think I've been about anything in my whole life. I don't believe I'm the only person who can say they have never been that literally enthused.
2.) The baby's facial expression is perhaps, the most understandable.
3.) If shown the picture for the very first time, and asked my humble opinion, I'd have thought that the "Thank you Lord Jesus for President Trump" sign was itself an over-the-top Photoshop addition, but no, it is not.
So, we all know that Governor Bobby Jindal resides in the Governor's mansion there in Louisiana, right? Well, he used the lawn of his residence to counter a protest of about fifty Planned Parenthood supporters with a big screen showing the Planned Parenthood hoax videos--which I think sounds like one hell of a stunt.
Wait a minute, you might say, hoax videos? Why would he be showing those on the lawn of the Governor's mansion in Louisiana which is paid for by the taxpayers there?
Well, it's a funny old thing. It looks to me like people who knew very well what the fetal tissue donation situation was, set up false companies to try and tip-toe representatives from Planned Parenthood into saying things that sounded incriminating for the skullguggerous purpose of killing it. That's how it looks to anyone who really looked into it.
A former employee of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has filed suit against the Office for being fired for not attended church services enough. That kind of firing is pretty unusual for a government office, I would think, it's just that, where Kansas is concerned...I tend to believe it.
It's not just that KS Governor, Sam Brownback, is a pretty notorious hardcore Christian with a disregard for notions of separation of church and state. It's that using religion as a litmus test for establishing that one is the right kind of people goes with some of the voter discrimination nonsense that Kris Kobach has become known for (he calls it anti-fraud--I'm pretty sure making sure the "right people" are voting comes with very definite ideas about who the "right people" are).
Kris Kobach has "scare quoted" religious organizations that have opposite views than his about his particular crusade--as if he doesn't think they're quite Christian enough if they don't share his views. So why not show employment discrimination as well?
The Leader brothers didn't need a whole lot of provocation to, first, urinate on, and then grossly assault a Latino homeless person--they were already violent jerks each with a criminal record. But it does stand out that they name-checked presidential candidate Donald Trump in their answer for why they beat this poor guy so badly:
Police said Scott Leader, 38, told them it was OK to assault the man because he was Hispanic and homeless.
“Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” he allegedly told the police.
(You know, I'm pretty sure they didn't ask for the man's "papers" before they started whomping on him--and I'm also pretty sure you can't really call a homeless guy sleeping on the street guilty of stealing opportunities from natural-born US citizens, anyway. Not that that seems to be the actual point of their brutality.)
Here's what Donald Trump said when told about the alleged assault (according to the Boston Globe) at a press conference in New Hampshire: "I haven't heard about that. It would be a shame, but I haven't heard about that." Then the crowd buzzed, and Trump added: "I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate. I will say that, and everybody here has reported it."
"Passionate." "They love this country and want it to be great again." People who piss on a homeless guy and then pound him into the cement are not doing that because they love their country and want it to be great. They do it because they are sick thugs. I give Trump credit for staying on message, but he has to understand he has an awful lot of "sick thug" appeal.
Sometimes, the signifying political candidates will do is absolutely astonishing. It's forced, calculated, ad-worthy, forgettable, and possibly forgivable when you consider that rude salesperson-techniques are sometimes necessary for a politician to get heard. And sometimes, you just understand that such and such a person is venting their hot ignorance again before their cranium blows from the steam pressure of the rotting garbage that is their thought processes.
The sulfurous bloviations of Mike Huckabee seem to provide a case in point:
Because effective civil rights agitation would mean something like never actually pointing out that people are somehow treated differently? Um, Gov.? Have you ever even read the man's work?
In the linked video, FOX pundit Bill O'Reilly raises some pretty strong points about why Donald Trump's anti-immigration scheme doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. (Climb the hell down folks, I don't say O'Reilly did a good job everyday, but this was that day.) There's a certain logistical issue practical people will end up making with the idea that Trump means to round up and deport 11 million people (not all of whom are even Mexican). How do you locate them? Are you rousting families from settled homes and sending them out into homelessness? Are you having undocumented families living in attics in the US afraid of being picked up and maybe placed in La Migra's detention areas--which will be a real problem, because the government will need to sort where they are sending folks back to. And for US-born people, this means trying to find a way to deport them to a place they have never known.
How is that detention area going to look? When it's swelled by an order of magnitude or so? O'Reilly suggested these people would be rounded up in buses, but maybe, because of the scale, trains might be more appropriate? Will those additional temporary detention housing spaces be in modular barracks or open air--tents, like Sheriff Arpaio keeps some of his prisoners? And how will you keep the US-born children of immigrants from being citizens when the earliest challenge to the 14th Amendment on just this note (as Yastreblansky points out) supported the idea that the 14th Amendment absolutely means the children of immigrants are citizens. The dilution of the 14th Amendment does away with the idea of equal treatment under the law of individuals based on any classification. Following that kind of ecstasy of douchebaggery , why not make plausible a trail of tears and forced labor for undocumented people and their US-born children? (I will not the hell use "illegal alien" or "anchor baby" because these, friends, are classifications of entire human beings based on a legal status that does not in any way diminish their value or dignity as human beings. Even if Jeb Bush thinks these terms are A-ok.)
There is a real difference, maybe in part a generational one, looking at this as mostly a dialog between Baby Boomer-era politicians and Millennial-era protesters, but also as Betty Cracker explains it at Balloon Juice, a conflict between how idealists and pragmatists look at the problem--but I think I can kind of define the dialog here as: they are both right.
Some of Hillary Clinton's language is probably jarring--"I don't believe you change hearts" is actually sensible when you realize she is saying you can't actually make total racists shut up and love black people--all you can do is change the paradigm in which they operate and make it less acceptable for them to wantonly destroy black lives. Many of her suggestions about racial inequality still shake out along a different argument than the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to make--yes it would be better if there were better schools, better access to jobs, better housing opportunities, and de-segregating neighborhoods would be really awesome--and those are perfectly good 60's and 70's answers that totally didn't happen.
Now the message of today's protestors is a little more distinct: Black people would highly prefer that their being killed is recognized as a problem. Whether it's from police brutality or just negligence, or whether civilians think they can go vigilante justice on black people without any real basis and get away with it, there actually needs to be an awareness shift that killing black people is wrong and leaving aside all "change the subject" stuff about black-on-black violence, we just agree that if something is killing black people in society a lot, it is bad and we shouldn't have it.
The illegal immigrants don't get birthright citizenship. Kids born here do. If they are born here, they aren't immigrants, because they did not come from somewhere else. Sure, you can say "But, we know what he meant."
Yeah. I know what he meant. My husband's parents were documented legal residents, but not citizens, but my spouse is a citizen. And Bobby Jindal, Donald Trump, and Scott Walker aren't probably talking about him, anyway, because his parents were coming from a European country (although there are some Birthers who actually have an issue with Sen. Santorum's immigrant father, so who even knows?)
I think we can understand what these candidates are saying very well. Every now and again, people say gays, liberals and atheists should be deported, too. If any of those ideas got a bandwagon going, I almost think you could count on Gov. Jindal to hop on so hard his ankles would hurt.
Julian Bond was an extraordinary figure who, in his lifetime, was a motivational activist for the rights of African-Americans, but also spoke out on behalf of gay rights, linking these two struggles. This was a man who had baby pictures with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois, but influenced so many young activists like a human bridge from what we have been, to a realization of what we could be.
He was a man with wit and style--motivated to try politics but not the kind of person who fits naturally in the political scene. He boycotted the funeral of Coretta Scott King because it was held at a church that disrespected gay people.
He was a great gentleman and a person who believed in the greatness of people. We are better for having had him in our lifetime. He was true and just and had courage. He wasn't afraid to let people hear hard truths. He was a person who had the back of everyone as his concern. He made a difference. And that difference was good.
But anyway, did you know we hit Earth Overshoot Day just recently? We're taking more from the planet then it can afford to give. When we get the bill for the overdraft fees, it's gonna be a headache.
Air pollution in China is determined to be the cause of over 4,000 deaths a day. That's 1.6 million people a year. That's worse than a war. A lot of that problem is coal--there is no tech that makes burning that stuff 100% clean.
Rolling Stone has a pretty good article on the abundant evidence that global warming is totally a thing, which is a lot of what I've been talking about on this humble surfactant container. The title has the scariest words: The Point of No Return.
What do we have to do about this? Change everything. When do we have to do this? Yesterday. But I'll settle for more coalmines going bankrupt, more solar power everywhere, and a drive to treat conservation sort of how people dealt with sweetless, wheatless and meatless days during WWI and the recycling drives of WWII. We can lick climate change! Win the global war on US with Us-Power! And let's get it done with the help of the Sun!
So long as there is someone who knows your name, they say in folklore circles, you still have a vital afterlife. These are the names of people deprived of their natural lives. They deserve to live on our lips and in our thoughts.
I hide it pretty well, but I am a big old animal lover and sometime-science freak. I find the ocean especially fascinating because there is so much to be explored, and because of the extremes of temperature and pressure at which we find sea life. (I also find there to be a kind of race-against-time aspect in oceanic zoology in that we are in the midst of a great anthropogenic extinction--but the realization that creatures can and have adapted to conditions we would consider bizarre is somewhat heartening.)
So bear with my geeking out over a handful of stories I came across this week--like, what on earth is up with the octopus genome? Some scientists have declared that the octopus is like an alien, having great genetic complexity (something like 10K more genes than your humble homo sapiens has), a fairly clever brain and remarkable camouflage skills. I remember Paul the octopus, who predicted soccer games, which is not even something you'd think an octopus would be especially informed about. Frankly, it makes me feel a little guilty about how much I like eating the buggers. (I'm also a fan of calamari fritti, although I don't think a plate of architeuthis would go down well, even with breading and marinara!)
Sort of speaking of my Italian accented eating habits--a flying (swimming?) spaghetti monster has been spotted. A bundle of rhyzophysid siphoniphores (say that five times real fast, I dare you!) might look like an organized pot of vermicelli, but I don't think I'm eating them--once again, not even with marinara and bread crumbs. These guys were found at 4K feet under the ocean. They don't seem like a likely pasta-substitute for paleo peeps anyway. I'm reasonably sure cavemen never, uh, fathomed they existed.
Here's another sea-science tidbit--it seems like some marine animals might be adapting to ocean acidification by taking more time to nurture their young. This is kind of fascinating, because we actually have a changing environment and it gives us ample opportunity to view how species do adapt, or don't and might die. But there is an interesting turn here--as mammals ourselves, we take nurturing of young for granted, but it is the basis for transmission of a kind of culture. Imagine how it might work out for clever animals like octopi to transmit acquired knowledge from generation to generation. One thing we have seen over time is that some animals respond evolutionarily by breeding larger, with an understood increase in brain weight and complexity.
I'm not exactly saying "Hail our new giant octopus overlords!", but I'm not exactly not saying it. If this goes as I'm modeling, I just want to say I am all the sorry emotionally possible about enjoying my niece-in-law's tuna and octopus salad so much that I ate three plates of it. If I do get to Italy this year, I probably will still eat all the damn fish (there may be a hiccup in my intended travel plans--which I trust means at least I don't have an undue hiatus in my bloggery), but I guess I'll do it mindfully? Our life aquatic could also be sentient-adjacent. Which is wild and troubling to contemplate.
The flag of the United States of America flew in Cuba, and a US Secretary of State visited for the first time in a long time. Sec. Kerry spoke in favor of a genuine democracy and human rights. He would not have been able to sow that seed there except for what Obama's Administration has tried to do--but anyway, here's to a new try.
"Shade balls" kind of sounds like the slang the kids would use these days, as in "When that girl talked shit about my outfit, I was casting shade balls at her at night."
But, no! This is a thing where plastic balls absorb the sunlight instead of the water in a reservoir which should reduce evaporation. It also should cut down on bacteria growth in the water (some aquaculturists working in gardens with koi ponds add a kind of ink to reduce algae blooms, so I get that principle) and nothing from the plastic itself should leak into the water. At first I wasn't 100% on how this would work because it seemed to me that if dark-colored balls absorbed solar heat, that heat would redistribute along the surface area of each ball transferring it to the water causing more of an evaporation effect. But smarter people than me apparently worked out that the surface absorbs the heat, but the water-side is protected. If this works how the smart folks say, call me impressed!
I'm not terribly impressed by some arguments of some people, which seem to hinge on the idea that California should have built more reservoirs to catch the water that the state is currently not getting. I prefer to believe that if people accept that climate change is real, they can deal with it using real solutions, instead of bitching about what might have been without actually presenting any solutions at all. I really don't see professional blame-redistributors as innovative in that necessary sense.
"Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston,' " Mrs Bush said late on Monday after visiting evacuees at the Astrodome with her husband, former president George Bush.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."
It's the same kind of insensitivity--a family resemblance, you could say. Sure, over four thousand US service members lost their lives, tens of thousands were maimed, over three thousand military contractors were killed, and so on, the country of Iraq was completely destabilized and not only was al Qaeda brought there and ISIS born there in what many people have called the worst foreign policy decision ever, but hey, the war got rid of Saddam Hussein so, that's one thing!
The economic justice campaign of former Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders and the social justice movement, Black Lives Matter, are both progressive movements worthy of anyone's time and consideration. I believe that economic justice matters--it matters whether anyone actually has bootstraps in the first damn place to whether they are ever able to pull themselves up by them. People gaining access to the various means of economic security--whether that means good jobs or a good and fair environment to attempt entrepreneurship, need some kind of security that what they are doing will be profitable to them according to their labor, and that their effort will not be robbed from them by rent-seekers.
Sen. Ted Cruz will prosecute and defund Planned Parenthood--a non-profit organization that sometimes performs abortions which are legal per Roe v. Wade and also prepares tissue for donation, which is also legal, but Cruz will prosecute them to the fullest extent of: he's really grossed out, you guys. As everyone, but let's pick Gawker, has pointed out, the polio thing, since the development of the vaccines uses fetal cells, was probably the most inapt use of a thing that involves science in a political ad ever. This is what we might call an "unforced error", but the audience Cruz was aiming for would probably be completely unimpressed by little old scientific facts. (See also--would fail like a very fail-hard thing in the general election.)
Now, I know my toe is 100% human, but that does not make it a person. So I am not sure why Marco Rubio thinks that the inability of a fetus to become a donkey should mean anything but Duh, science. But hell, I don't even know what Mike Huckabee means when he refers to a "DNA schedule"--although scientists don't either, so...)
Women really do sometimes require an abortion to live. As in the case of Savita Halappanvar.
The ignorance of these candidates about how women's bodies work should be disqualifying--they are ideology-based and fueled by an angry ignorance about how women's bodies work to even make other people. Which is what we do. With difficulty, in an actual medical process that is fraught with potential complications. They demand we produce children whether we want them or not--but deny that we bear them with any difficulty or stigma or even pain or trauma. It simply isn't the case.
I think one of the weakest of all possible arguments against climate change is, "Well, maybe human activity does influence it, but we don't know by how much and anyhow, what are you gonna do?" That's the sort of gambit OH Governor John Kasich has tried on, with my favorite "not-a-scientist" add-on: "It's just a theory."
My stars and garters how that "just a theory" thing does get around! The Big Bang--just a theory. Evolution--just a theory. Oh, and gravity--it's just a theory, too. (That's from Ellery Schempp, a local physicist who has tangled with the idiotarian types before, and whose piece is intended as a send-up of how "just a theory" is used with gravity in the way it has commonly been used with evolution. Or, as I've said before, if the "just a theory" argument persuades you that man doesn't have a common ancestor with apes, maybe the "just a theory" argument regarding gravity should lead you to an appropriate experiment with an upper-story window? )
Donald Trump is obviously unhappy with the Fox News handling of his appearance at Thursday night's debate, and was, predictably, pretty vocal about it. There was that one comment though, where he went, as Erick Erickson from RedState.com put it--"a bridge too far", when he basically implied that debate moderator Megyn Kelly was hard on him because she was having her period. (Trump insists he was referring to bleeding out the "nose" and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a "deviant". As a grown person, I certainly don't believe he meant "nose" and am pretty sure he's calling an awful lot of grown people "deviants" right now.)
But the result is, Trump gets talked about incessantly--again. He's, as the Charlie Sheen Hashtag put it #winning. Or maybe, a little bit more appropriately, as the old journalism saw says--"If it bleeds, it leads." I wonder if, anticipating that this is what Trump-style means to political news, it was this, and not Trump's prompting, that made former Mayor Giuliani (allegedly)contact Fox to request gentler treatment for The Donald.
It also makes me wonder a little bit about that call that was supposed to have taken place between Trump and Bill Clinton. I wasn't sure what to think about that before. I still don't exactly know. But I wonder if ol' Bill didn't tell him, "You may not be the leader that the GOP needs right now, but you sure are the leader they deserve." And then he hung up. Then he laughed.
Sen. Chuck Schumer has come out against the Iran deal. I think the Iran deal is the best deal we could ever get. I like Chuck Schumer a little less for not seeing things the same as I do. He might have a reason for it, but I still think he's all wrong on this one.
I don't see how a plan for reduction in nuclear strength with regular inspections, results in anything like a stronger hand for Iran. I think that idea is paranoid. I think Iran might be reasonably persuaded by the obviously superior nuclear strength of the US and the not obvious but implied nuclear capability of Israel that any thought of an arms race is already failed. We literally don't have much to kick about in re: the Persian Bomb.
War is a failure to communicate. Diplomacy is a form of successful communication. Why would Sen. Schumer hate success?
A Bangladeshi blogger known for his atheist views has been hacked to death by a gang armed with machetes in the capital Dhaka, police say. Niloy Neel was attacked at his home in the city's Goran area. He is the fourth secularist blogger to have been killed this year by suspected Islamist militants in Bangladesh. Imran H Sarkar, head of the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, told the Daily News Videonel that Mr Neel had been an anti-extremist voice of reason. "He was the voice against fundamentalism and extremism and was even a voice for minority rights - especially women's rights and the rights of indigenous people," he said.
I despise the fundamentalists who willfully murder such intelligent voices, and feel even more strongly that I should speak out against fundamentalism in my own country. Any impulse that views dissident voices as in need of being extinguished is an impulse of tyranny. Wherever the argument is silenced by force of arms--we have a true failure to communicate. But the failure is on the end of those who use force to silence--not those who use their voice for reason. One more voice was silenced--let a thousand others rise.
UPDATED: Bangladesh Home Minister Kamal in response has made a very strong statement: Don't go writing things that hurt religious sentiment. So the priorities here are clear. You can maybe have people hacked to death in the street, but let's not hurt those religious sentiments.
There were in actual fact no winners here. Every one of these people in some way or another expressed a kind of disqualifying factor that removed themselves from being mainstream presidential competitors--especially Trump, but also Carson, Christie, Rubio. So many fails, so little time to explain why they represent so much fail.
I think a lot of people believe that Marco Rubio did some kind of well-he didn't.
He isn't exactly articulate about immigration and he really isn't knowledgeable about foreign policy. My opinion wasn't changed. I still think Jeb Bush doesn't want the job and that Trump is a privileged a-hole. But it was great to know that Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz are all pretty much in favor of making women carry the children of their rapists, or carrying children even if they are liable to be physically harmed or even die doing so. Good to know--to avoid thinking they will be successful candidates.
I've been a little irreverent regarding the ACORN-hoax-like "Big Scoop" of the several videos that seem to be negotiations for the sale of itty-bitty baby body parts, but are actually a fake organization revealing, boringly enough, that Planned Parenthood, which does do abortions, also collects tissue donated by the parent(s) to be used in fetal tissue research for a variety of things. Which is entirely legal. What does anyone actually believe the itty-bitty baby body parts in question (the people on Twitter most belligerent about the hoax enjoy saying "baby body parts"--I believe this is best enhanced with the phrase "itty-bitty" for both aesthetic and factual reasons, as these "baby body parts" are, in fact, from fetuses, and your fetus prior to, say, the 20th week is definitely under a pound in total weight and most abortions are first trimester) are used for fascinates me. Because clearly, the people who have wholeheartedly adopted this claim believe there is a brisk market in itty-bitty baby body parts. An itty-bitty baby body part marketplace--an Itty-Bitty Baby Body Part 'R'Us sort of establishment? Do they believe these itty-bitty baby body parts are whisked into protein smoothies or dried out to be sprinkled on salads? For folk art? Is there an Itty-Bitty Baby Body Part Auction House where organs are sold to be used in frightful rites that would make liberals pray that these weirdos just used endangered rhino horn next time? What, just what, do these hyperventilators think is going on?
Now, admittedly, this is coming from the folks who believe that there is an Obama Weather Machine. But do people really think this thing makes sense? Why in the world would we want to make mice smarter? Build a better mousetrap--the world beats a path to your door. Build a better mouse--bupkis!
Of course, I'm mostly kidding--the real research is like this. Mice are marginally smarter for having stem cells from humans. They aren't having human baby-brain transplants. But we might isolate why humans have the kind of unique intelligence we do. It's legitimate research, because I really can't think of a super villain way to capitalize on really smart mice. Really smart mouse circus?
It's all so breathtakingly stupid. Of course we're not Frankensteining mice into sentient beings. Of course itty-bitty-baby body parts aren't for sale. How weird a line of thought is all that?
Former FL Gov. Jeb Bush is probably exceptionally known for making one woman's health care decision a priority for his administration--Terri Schiavo. Her end-of-life care, which could have simply meant death with dignity, was turned into a three ring circus for--not the patient, who was too far gone to experience any interruption of normalcy--but for the people who also resided in the hospice where her last days were spent. Dying people, and their families. He also persecuted the spouse of the dying woman, Michael Schiavo. For all the fucking good that did.
But he is not so sure about the value of the federal government funding "women's health care issues", because of some garbled statement that shows he cares so deeply about the issue he knows pretty much nothing about it.
Leaving alone the idea the he believes that government funds pay for abortions although anyone even remotely concerned with the Hyde amendment know they certainly can not, he seems actually confused about the way in which agencies like Planned Parenthood actually are "funded" by government--are you sitting down? Ready? It's mostly Medicaid payments for low-income people to receive basic-non-abortion-related care. Which means they treat stuff like UTI's and STD's. They screen for cancer and guess what else? They have saved lives, and screwing with their getting paid screws with their ability to save lives, and improve lives by giving women control over their fertility, and giving women and men tests and knowledge about not getting STD's.
This does have the makings of a viral video because it has two of the things Americans really love--guns and bacon! But I just don't really know about the fit here. I mean, I think of bacon as mostly a breakfast food, and firing guns is really loud, so...that won't work in the morning. (You might get return-fire!) And how sanitary is that, really? Gun oil on my bacon, bacon grease on my rifle. Ick. Oh Ted Cruz! You rise above your Ivy League education and lawyerly reputation like a circus clown shot out of a cannon!
(I'll note that Gov. Bobby Jindal manages to stunt and front in a more low-key, signifying way, that will neither help himself in the race and will probably just actually harm some low-income Louisianans for whom Planned Parenthood is the most available point of medical access. Neither of the LA PP clinics do abortions. Cruz and Paul for sure are also for defunding Planned Parenthood all over--but they can't do it by executive fiat.)
I think it helps to know that I was born in Philadelphia and my accent is like an insect trapped in amber and my outlook is always hooded by a feeling that expectations should be responsibly lowered to get to the nut of why nothing is actually sacred to me--
For some reason, our signature sandwich is supposedly a political barometer: I'm not sure why John Kerry was supposed to have failed a sandwich test by ordering swiss on a cheesesteak (his wife, a quasi-Pennsylvanian, probably could have warned him) but seriously, this cheese thing, is not a thing. I like provolone and mushrooms on mine. American is perfectly cromulent, although cutting in line and wasting food are looked down on. (Frankly, I think Cheez Wiz tastes like cat piss smells. So "Wiz wit" proponents can, well, eat that stuff if that's how they like it, but for me, no.)
But our most recent "being Philly" outrage is what we did to a poor little Canadian robot (no not Drake, and Meek, you just live with yourself, because unless you drop brilliance and quickly you aren't right on time, you need a time machine). Yes, we manhandled an experiment in human kindness, because no, we aren't a kind people in Philadelphia.
I've been remiss in not doing more "Climate Sunday" pieces, but just recently 2016 Presidential Primary Candidate, Senator Ted Cruz explained at the Koch brothers' Freedom Partners' forum that "the facts and data don't support" climate change. He dismissed it as a hoax and also probably worked that "not a scientist" thing in there, too. Cruz isn't uneducated and he isn't stupid--but the only bit of that I'll agree with is, well, no, he certainly isn't a scientist.
So in honor of Ted Cruz and the other politicians hewing to basically that same line--this post's for you!
With no further ado:
Climate models are proving to be deadly accurate. We can joke about the accuracy of weather people, but in the broader sense of being accurate about overall climate, we've seen conditions shape up pretty much as climatologists have predicted. They may have actually understated the case on ocean level rising, but it certainly has happened that, while pockets like the US east coast haven't been unusually warm, most of the planet has had successively warmer years. (The impact on oceans from the melting of ice can have impacts well beyond mere water-level rises, as well.)
Basically, the facts and data from news stories that are pretty current actually very well support the idea that the planet is warming and lots of weird stuff is going on as a result. But I'm sure the comments of Cruz and his denialist coterie sounded awfully nice to the billionaire campaign donors who were likely in attendance at that forum. And the fact that they can buy an awful lot of air time for the candidates that they favor certainly contributes something to the cause--more hot air.
Regarding the above quote, I note that Byron York nudged back in 2007 at the claim (made by Huckabee) that Huckabee's theology degree set him apart from the pack in understanding the issues because, well, theology is what Huckabee's got and it isn't properly a theology degree anyway. Back in 2007/2008, Governor Huckabee had been a proponent of containment of Iran, even while considering the "war" between the West and the Islamic world a theocratic one--apparently, his position has "evolved" (or devolved, depending upon where you stand). The reason I bring this up is because Mike Huckabee let his chief criticism of the containment plan produced by President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and the rest of the P5+1group (the P5+1 group having actually assembled with this thing in mind since 2006) rest on a Godwinning metaphor, one might be tempted to believe, is because he doesn't mind using the Nazi metaphor and uses it often--
