Month: October 2008

Proposition Hate: Father Knows Best

by tristero

By now, nearly everyone knows that Proposition 8 (hereafter, Prop Hate), the anti-marriage iniitiative in California is in serious danger of passing. The true extent of the extremism of the people behind this idiocy, however, may not be apparent. This is one of a series of a posts that will highlight that extremism.

If you make the mistake of clicking on the Yes On 8 website, you come across this weird image of a typical happy family at the top (the pictures up there rotate so you may have to refresh a few times):

Father towering over and protecting his charges, including the mother and two children. The chauvinism is unmistakeable and deeply ugly. But it’s par for the course for this crew of creepy donors opposed to marriage rights. Notice Howard Ahmanson’s name, for example. This BFF of extreme christianist R. J. Rushdoony – who called for gays to be killed – was also one of the early supporters of “intelligent design” creationism and a lot more rightwing nuttiness. He tossed in nearly a million bucks to prevent people who love each other from marrying. (Future posts will profile other Prop Hate donors.)

There has been some highlevel financial pushback on Prop Hate, including Apple and Google who have rightly defined this as a civil rights issue more than a political one. I”d also like to suggest that this is a church/state issue, that this is an attempt by christianists and Mormons to establish a religious definition for marriage as California law.

It is important that all Californians who care about civil rights support marriage equality and vote NO on Prop Hate.

How To Negotiate With The Bush Administration

by dday

What you do is this. You set up a deadline and force the White House to negotiate with you as it nears. You ask for major concessions and never stop asking for them. When the White House demurs, you say loudly to the press that there is likely to be no deal. Eventually, the White House will concede to your demands, but try to structure it in such a way that they can still get what they want. At that point, you agree to the deal, then take it back to your constituents, listen to their concerns, and turn right around and reject the terms.

Fearing political division in the parliament and in his country, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki won’t sign the just-completed agreement on the status of U.S. forces in Iraq, a leading lawmaker said Friday.

The new accord’s demise would be a major setback for the Bush administration, which has been seeking to establish a legal basis for the extended presence of the 151,000 U.S. troops in this country, and for Iraq, which won notable concessions in the draft accord reached a week ago.

“No, he will not” submit the agreement to the parliament, Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, told McClatchy. “For this matter, we need national consensus.”

I don’t think Maliki is some kind of genius – signing this or really any agreement with the United States at this point would be political suicide. But the idea of “listening to constituents” is something that nobody in this country has bothered to consider when dealing with the Bush Administration for the past 8 years.

They might want to give Baghdad a ring.

…as for the impact of this on the occupation, I would imagine the US will seek to extend the UN mandate by six months. No country on the Security Council will attempt to block that – why not let the American military degrade further and lay out even more of its depleted treasury? But this would be much better for an Obama Administration because it wouldn’t be constrained by an already-existing agreement that has a consensus in Iraq. It’s ridiculous that Baghdad is ultimately forcing an end to this mistake, but there we are.

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McCain’s Hope

by digby

Although I’m not sure about Stoller’s prediction of a landslide (I’m superstitious about such things) I’m pretty sanguine about Obama’s lead. I’ve been pretty positive all year that the Democrats would win except for the scary period in the late summer and early fall when McCain’s character assassination seemed to be gaining traction. (That little economic hiccup in late September seems to have sobered everyone up.)

However, it’s important to keep focused and not lose sight of just how divided this country actually is. There are still some people out there who could be swayed the wrong way at the last minute if certain things happen.

Anonymous Liberal gives a clear eyed rundown on what could go wrong in this post. It will make you sit up a little bit straighter. It probably won’t happen. But it could and that should make all of us work a little bit harder to make sure it doesn’t:

First, I don’t think the early voting numbers are nearly as favorable to Obama as various stories have made them out to be. The most comprehensive data on early voting that I’ve seen comes from the Obama campaign itself. If you look through the numbers, Democrats appear to be voting at a higher rate than they did in 2004 in North Carolina, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, but not by ridiculous margins. We’re talking 5-10 percentage points. Given that Bush won Colorado by 5 and North Carolina by 12, that may not be enough. And in Florida (where Bush won by 5 in 2004) the ratio of Democrat to Republican early voting is unchanged from 2004 levels. Moreover, the increased Democratic numbers could just be the result of increased emphasis on banking votes, i.e., the Obama campaign using its resources to convince its strongest supporters to vote early.

So while there are some potentially encouraging signs on the early voting front, the data is somewhat ambiguous and not uniformly in Obama’s favor.

Secondly, while the blue states are looking increasingly safe, the overall electoral map is starting to look a lot like it did in 2000. Obama has a solid lead in most national polls and has leads at or above his national lead in nearly every blue state (except New Hampshire, which has closed a little lately). He also looks likely to bring Iowa and New Mexico (states which Gore won but Kerry lost) back into the Democratic fold.

But that’s not enough.

Read the whole thing. It isn’t pessimistic. Anonymous Liberal is an enthusiastic Obama supporter from Illinois who believes this is going to be a major win. But he’s not willing to ignore the possibility that if things all break a certain way this last week we could find ourselves in an electoral college situation close to what we had in 2000. It’s unlikely but possible and where Republicans are involved, it pays to watch your back and be prepared for anything.

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The Materialism Pun

by tristero

This is about as good as it gets in terms of defining the scientific/philosophical nature of “materialism,” “methodological naturalism,” and the fundamental worldview of science. Unfortunately, like most such descriptions, it all but ignores the rhetorical sleight-of-hand that underlies much of the advocacy for anti-materialism. Steven Novella comes close to understanding it here:

Therefore, the broader “anti-materialist” movement of ID, dualism, and various healing pseudosciences is more accurately defined as anti-naturalism. But I guess for propaganda purposes it is better to be against “materialism” than against nature.

This is the heart of the issue.

Scientifically, and philosophically, materialism is non-controversial. Science can’t say, as Steven puts, “and then there’s a miracle.” Philosophically, dualism creates enormous problems.

But, colloquially – and lets face it, these arguments are aimed at the general public, not at anyone with any knowledge of philosophy or science – “materialism” equals greed, selfishness, vulgarity, the everyday, the ordinary. Being against materialism, therefore, aligns oneself with “higher aspirations” than the accumulation of wealth, a bigger car, even social status. It is hard, even in a society as warped as this one towards rewarding the rich and greedy, to be openly “for” owning a third SUV.

What is going on is a kind of pun. The Wedge Strategy conflates the colloquial understanding of materialism with the technical. A scientific worldview then can be portrayed as a crass, vapid, incomplete, and unsatisfying view of life. It is for that reason that, as Steve says, they are against “materialism” rather than nature.

Accordingly, elegant, even eloquent, defenses of the technical sense of materialism miss their target. The Wedge Strategy is not about reason but about appeals to unreason. The pun between materialism (greed) and materialism (naturalism) is what this confrontation is about and needs to be very clearly acknowledged when trying to refute the Wedge Strategy.

h/t PZ

UPDATE: Please don’t get me wrong. What Steven wrote is terrific. I simply believe the real issue is not materialism versus dualism, say, but the Wedge Strategy’s rhetorical exploitation of a pun.

Beware The Lame Duck

by digby

You’ll recall that the Republican Party took the Ohio secretary of state to the state Supreme Court over minor mismatches in voter registration. After the lawsuit was dropped, John Boehner and his Republican cronies sent a letter to the Bush administration asking that the Department of justice intervene.

It seemed insane that Bush would actually do anything like that. After all, one of their most infamous scandals was the US Attorney firings, which were proven to have been political in nature but never actually proved presidential involvement. This would lay it right at Bush’s feet.

Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog writes:

Roll Call offers this important report ($), which begins: “President Bush is asking the Justice Department to look into whether 200,000 Buckeye State poll-goers must use provisional ballots on Election Day because their names do not match state databases.”

Wow. Here is what I said earlier this week: “The idea that the DOJ would get involved in the Ohio election now to force Sec. Brunner to produce the mismatch list on voter fraud grounds seems remote. The political uproar would be deafening.” See also this AlterNet report.

There should be a political uproar but in the blaring noise of the last few days of the election campaign people may not hear about it.

The president ordering the Department of Justice to look into this is a stunning violation of DOJ guidelines and ethics. But why should he care? He’s out the door and the worst thing that happens is that somebody accuses him of doing something after the fact. He didn’t care about it when he was still pretending to be a president. He certainly doesn’t care about it now.

Republicans tend to lose their moorings when they have nothing left to lose. Unpopular lame duck Republicans are downright dangerous.

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Proud To Be An American

by digby

Here are some lovely McCain voters participating in the electoral process:

You’ll note that they have already begun to morph from socialist to communist. I’m surprised it took so long.

These people are obviously in a minority and they are not going to carry the day. But they represent a rather alarming number of people — and they are really pissed.

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Republicans vs. Science

by tristero

Sarah Palin isn’t the issue here. Sure, I’ll concede that this illustrates Palin’s breathtaking ignorance AND her stupidity. After all, she agreed to repeat it. But what it really demonstrates is how unqualified the upper echelons of the Republican party are to run this country. She certainly didn’t write this speech: John McCain’s advisers did and approved every appalling word.

The subject is government funding of scientific research:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

If you know anything at all about science in the 21st century, then you know that the study of fruit flies (aka Drosophilia melanogaster) has led to some of the most important discoveries in biology, genetics, and related topics. Why is that?

Embryogenesis in Drosophila has been extensively studied, as its small size, short generation time, and large brood size makes it ideal for genetic studies.

The fruit fly’s utility in genetic research, in and of itself, is enough to justify its study. Basic science, like the arts, is a worthy end that deserves federal support. But those “genetic studies” also have considerable ramifications:

About 75% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies (Reiter et al (2001) Genome Research: 11(6):1114-25), and 50% of fly protein sequences have mammalian analogues. An online database called Homophila [1] is available to search for human disease gene homologues in flies and vice versa. Drosophila is being used as a genetic model for several human diseases including the neurodegenerative disorders Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, spinocerebellar ataxia and Alzheimer’s disease. The fly is also being used to study mechanisms underlying aging and oxidative stress, immunity, diabetes, and cancer, as well as drug abuse.

In other words, “fruit fly research in Paris, France” – as if the location of the research has anything to do with anything beyond access to appropriate tech and personnel – is part of a long, extensive, and successful effort to find better treatments for some of the most intractable and horrible diseases that afflict us all.

Words fail me. The people who elevated Palin to national prominence, who approved those words, belong nowhere near the power of the presidency. For a country like the United States to have this kind of garbage spewing from the mouth of a major party candidate is, quite simply, beyond shameful. It’s actively destructive.

UPDATE: Here’s a charming video called A Fruit Fly In New York

UPDATE: Given the subject matter of her talk, Palin and her speechwriters should have known that Fruit fly research has led to advances in understanding autism

UPDATE: Mike the Mad Biologist has tracked down a description of the research , which is applied, not basic:

“The Olive Fruit Fly has infested thousands of California olive groves and is the single largest threat to the U.S. olive and olive oil industries,” he said. “I secured $748,000 for olive fruit fly research and irradiation in the (fiscal year 2008) appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA will use some of that funding for their research facility in France. This USDA research facility is located in France because Mediterranean countries like France have dealt with the Olive Fruit Fly for decades, while California has only been exposed since the late 1990s. This is not uncommon; the USDA has several international research facilities throughout the world, including Australia, China and Argentina.”

Thompson’s office said Citizens Against Government Waste did not contact the congressman before it issued the award.

“Had the CAGW spent any time even talking to the USDA, they would have learned that our government does research in multiple USDA facilities around the world and that none of this money goes to other governments or for other government projects,” Thompson said.

Olives are the second-largest cash crop in Napa County, running a very distant second to wine grapes.

Dave Whitmer, Napa County Agricultural Commissioner said, Napa County had more than 220 acres of olive groves, and that the olives mostly go into olive oil production.

“(For) most of the coastal counties and a lot of the valley counties and the foothill counties that have olive producers, this olive fly is really turning out to be a really significant pest for olive producers to got a handle on,” he said. “Particularly for people who do fresh olives or olive oil production.”

Ugly

by digby

Proposition 8 here in California is starting to get hot. Here’s a report from oakland:

This is the reality of Prop 8, though. A woman on her way home saw a bunch of pro-Prop 8 types and a few counterdemonstrators, so she got out her phone and started taking video. Having turned off her phone to approach after a particularly ugly confrontation between an angry pro-8 woman and a man who was against it (and who stayed calm while the woman got in his face), she was approaching when the pro-Prop 8 types threatened her (”Get that shit out of here. I’ll knock it out of your hand.”).

Conservatives are starting to feel very, very freaked out. And they tend to be the type of people who believe violence is the best answer for everything. You do the math.

You can see the video at the link. Ugh. The sheer rage in the voices of the anti-gay marriage people is chilling.

Update: You can’t blame them, really. Their own leaders are going postal and psaying that you will die if Obama wins. Here’s the latest McCain robocall:

“Democrats attempt to cut off crucial troop funding,” goes the script. “They accuse our troops of war crimes. And Senator Biden predicts Senator Obama will be tested. A weak president will indeed be tested. Obama and Democrat’s politics endanger American lives. They are not qualified to lead our military and our country. When you vote, vote for the team that puts leadership, character and country first. John McCain.”

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Killer Button

by digby

There are innumerable things about Sarah Palin that annoy me. And mostly she depresses me because she validates the worst biases people have about women in politics. But this latest affectation of hers is so reprehensibly wrong that it makes me want to scream. Check out this picture:

Notice the polar bear pin? This is the woman who, as governor, refused to acknowledge that the polar bears are drowning and fought their designation as an endangered species.

I can only assume that her wearing of that pin is a signal to her fellow animal haters that if she’s elected she’ll open up aerial hunting for polar bears too. After all, this came out of her administration:

The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs

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The Myth Of A Maverick

by dday

Matt Stoller has scored an incredible interview with a staffer from John McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign. It might not surprise you, given the sludge that his campaign is currently running, that the style is virtually unchanged from those days, when he was this supposed straight-talking honorable maverick. John McCain hasn’t changed a bit.

McCain 2000 staffer: Yes, in South Carolina he had the Quinn’s running his campaign out of their office. McCain did very well with establishment Republicans in NH… they helped him get his big win there along with independents. The Quinn’s (Rick and Richard) are notorious.

Matt Stoller: For what?

McCain 2000 staffer: Well, they are probably one of the few consultants in SC that everyone would want. But… They also publish the Southern Partisan magazine. Which is extremely racist.

McCain 2000 staffer: McCain had their support and they were our consultants there. A good get for a Republican in the primary.

Matt Stoller: Wow

McCain 2000 staffer: He also had the support of some state officials and legislators that were important. Not to mention Graham and Sanford who at the time were both US Reps. Now one is a Senator and the other is Governor

Matt Stoller: The general consensus among pundits is that McCain in 2000 was destroyed by George Bush’s dirty tricks (masterminded by Karl Rove). These tricks included claims he fathered a black child and attacks on his record in Vietnam.

McCain 2000 staffer: Had the Quinn’s won SC for McCain he would have been the nominee in 2000.

Matt Stoller: But that McCain himself ran an honorable campaign.

McCain 2000 staffer: Ha! Again, the story is more detailed than that. Rove ran a Rove campaign. So yes, they were dirty. But we were too. I remember the week after NH, we surged in SC polls from something like 10pts behind Bush to 10pts ahead. After a little slipping because Bush was letting surrogates go after McCain’s military history, we went up with an ad that said Bush twisted the truth just like Clinton. The ad aired for one day. The press said McCain was going negative, the Bush people screamed bloody murder, and our campaign went into a tail spin. Had that ad not run, I’m convinced, and if you spoke to people from the SC campaign or Weaver or Davis and they were honest with you they would agree, that ad sank the campaign.

Matt Stoller: What were some of the rumors the campaign was pushing about Bush?

McCain 2000 staffer: I remember talking with reporters after events about Bush’s DUI. I remember senior press staff doing that. I remember them talking about Laura Bush’s horrible car accident, saying that she may have been drunk when it happened. On a funny side note, during a debate Bush held up this flyer we were handing out door to door and at events that said Bush would hurt seniors… it was a really nasty flyer aimed at scaring the elderly. So Bush holds it up and asks McCain about it. McCain looks at Bush and says it isn’t from his campaign. Bush points out that it says McCain’s campaign paid for it. McCain then says well we have stopped doing that. Keep in mind, McCain swore off negative TV ads after the Clinton one failed so badly. So I’m watching the debate and I’m like… is he crazy? We have people in the field handing that out TONIGHT. He blew up at the staff that night over the flyer. Vintage McCain. He doesn’t mind getting deep in the mud when it works for him. But if he gets caught? Hell-to-pay. And then he plays the straight-talking martyr.

Matt Stoller: Was he responsible for the flyer, or was it some sort of rogue operation within the campaign? What kind of tone did he and his senior advisors set?

McCain 2000 staffer: Ultimately McCain signed off on everything. That’s how he operated. Very military minded, chain of command so to speak. The tone? Well, I think a story illustrates that better. On the campaign we had this right of passage called being WOW’d. It stood for Wrath of Weaver. If you ever experienced his wrath you essentially made it to the in-team. McCain on the other hand, being on the receiving end of his temper was NEVER a good thing. It wasn’t something you bragged about over drinks with co-workers like you did with Weaver. It could be brutal. It’s sort of funny in retrospect. At the end of ads these days, candidates have to say ‘I’m so and so, and I approve this message.” McCain is the guy who made that law. To see the filth he’s been approving is pretty sick, but not unexpected.

This would be a nice story to fax to David Broder and Chris Matthews and Joe Klein, these pundits who did somersaults any time McCain was in their general orbit for years, and who think that this dive into the muck is only of recent vintage. McCain has been saying and doing anything to get elected for a long, long time. The gasbags became so impressed by this military man and his presumed honor that they made up a story about him, created an image basically out of nothing, an image that until this year made him the most respected Republican politician in America. Now a few of them are seeing the error of their ways, but they’re replacing it with another story – John McCain’s changed. He had to go to the dark side in this election. He didn’t even want to, it’s those Rove protégés around him that are pushing this noble warrior into it.

Wrong. All wrong. McCain lives for knifing his political enemies. He just wants deniability for it, which so many in the media are willing to give him thanks to this carefully cultivated image. The great axiom of modern politics is that if someone on television is telling you how honorable a politician is, well, just turn the sound off, because it’s nothing but inauthentic flattery. Cocktail parties don’t have this much gladhanding at them.

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