I expect to see t-shirts for genre shows on Big Bang Theory. (There is even a web site that sells the types of shirts worn on the show.) I didn’t expect to see Salma Hayek wearing a Battlestar Galactica shirt on 30 Rock last night (picture above).
Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
Steve Schmidt’s Straight Talk On John McCain
April 24, 2009 — Ron ChusidNow that the election is over Steve Schmidt can admit to what he was really thinking during the 2008 campaign. Schmidt and David Plouffe spoke at the University of Delaware. Neither could admit it, but both knew that the election was over well before election day.
“When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall, I knew pretty much straight away the campaign was finished,” Schmidt confessed to an auditorium full of college students. When the number of people who thought the country was on the right track “dropped to 5 percent and the economy collapsed, I knew that was not going to be survivable for us.”
If McCain ever had a chance, it could have been destroyed the first night of the convention. The one lucky break McCain got was an excuse to cancel the first night.
On the Bush-Cheney drag: “The first night of our convention was President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I literally thought by the second night of our convention we could be down 25 points.”
I continue to get comments and email from Palin supporters who deny the fact that Palin’s interviews were a disaster. Schmidt realized how bad they were:
“That is one of the two most consequential interviews that a candidate for national office has given, in a negative way, the other being Roger Mudd’s interview of Ted Kennedy . . . when he couldn’t answer the question of why he wanted to be president.”
Not only did McCain lose, but the entire Republican Party is in serious trouble:
“It is near-extinct in many ways in the Northeast, it is extinct in many ways on the West Coast, and it is endangered in the Mountain West, increasingly endangered in the Southwest . . . and if you look at the state of the party, it is a shrinking entity.”
Even Scientists Working For Energy Industry Realized Risk Of Global Warming
April 24, 2009 — Ron ChusidThere is a strong scientific consensus as to the role of human activity in promoting climate change. Apparently the consensus is so strong that it even included the scientists working for the energy industry. The New York Times reports:
For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.
“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995…
Environmentalists have long maintained that industry knew early on that the scientific evidence supported a human influence on rising temperatures, but that the evidence was ignored for the sake of companies’ fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain. By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.
Webb Believes Marijuana Legalization Should Be On The Table
April 24, 2009 — Ron ChusidJim Webb is open to considering decriminalization or legalization of marijuana as a part of prison reform:
“Well, I think what we need to do is to put all of the issues on the table,” Webb said this morning on CNN if asked if marijuana legalization would be part of his criminal justice reform efforts.
“If you go back to 1980 as a starting point, I think we had 40,000 people in prison on drug charges, and today, we have about 500,000 of them,” the first-term Virginia lawmaker said. “And the great majority of those are nonviolent crimes — possession crimes or minor sales.”
Webb joins several other lawmakers who have called for the exploration of legalized pot, amidst a drug war in Mexico fueled by revenues from American drug sales.
“I think they should examine every aspect of drugs policy to see what’s working and what’s not working, and where the consistencies are and, quite frankly, where the inconsistencies are in terms of how people end up in the system with similar activities,” Webb explained, reiterating his call for a high-level blue ribbon commission to reform the criminal justice system.
“Nothing should be off the table,” he said.
Why Do Texas Republicans Hate America? Half Want Out of US
April 23, 2009 — Ron ChusidA Daily Kos/Research 2000 Texas Poll finds that an equal number of Texas Republicans think that Texas would be better off as an independent country. In the poll 48 percent of Republicans chose independence while 48% would remain as part of the United States of America. As majorities of both Democrats and Independents prefer to remain as part of the United States the overall result was 35 percent for independence and 61 percent for remaining in the United States.
Times Change
April 23, 2009 — Ron ChusidGeorge Bush in 2003 via The Plank (emphasis added):
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
June 26, 2003STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.
Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice….
The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims’ treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.
No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.
I won’t argue with Bush on this. Let’s begin the investigations and the prosecutions for the torture committed by the Bush administration.
Pseudoscience From The Left
April 23, 2009 — Ron ChusidWhile denial of modern science has become commonplace on the right, unfortunately we still have examples of pseudoscience from the left blogosophere. Now Jim Carrey, blogging at Huffington Post, is suddenly an expert on vaccines as he repeats the debunked claims connecting them to autism.
While conservatives often stick together in their promotion of views contrary to science, liberal bloggers are frequently willing to condemn the pseudoscience of people such as Jim Carrey, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Deepak Chopra. PZ Myers criticizes both those who promote pseudoscience along with the Huffington Post for posting material from celebrities without knowlege of the topics they write about:
I know how much Orac dislikes the Huffington Post — I despise it myself as the doman of airheaded woo of the type represented by Deepak Chopra, and the only time I glance at it is to remind myself that the left can also sink into sloppy stupidity as deeply as the right. But poor Orac — his head might just explode into flames when he reads this simperingly stupid piece on vaccines from Jim Carrey.
The Huffpo is a little island of pampered fluff, where celebrities are asked to ‘blog’ (it really isn’t, though—they tend to drop these little turds of pseudo-wisdom, and then never hang around to interact with their readers) simply because they are celebrities, and we are expected to pay attention despite their lack of substantive authority. It’s the People magazine of the lefty blogosphere, and I’m really ashamed to see that as one of the showpieces of my political affiliation.
