Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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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Down To The Wire

by digby

Everyone has heard about Michelle Bachmann’s outburst on Hardball and the ensuing outpouring of donations for her opponent. But there was another “macaca moment” that was so bad Keith Olbermann even named the perpetrator The Worst Person In The World.

Here’s Howie:

It’s taken him a while but he’s finally gotten around to Robin “Weepy” Hayes, a kind of feudal type who represents a sprawling district that stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville (NC-08). Apparently he had either just lost control of himself or he was trying to compete with Michele Bachmann for the GOP crazee du jour, when he introduced John McCain to an audience in North Carolina by saying “Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and believe in God.” Forgetting that we’re in a different kind of media age, where things are easy recorded and checked, he flatly denied saying it.The next day witnesses came forward to say they heard him. He denied it some more…

If any member of Congress personifies a willingness to sell out his constituents’ economic interests for the sake of special interests, it is Robin Hayes. Few districts anywhere have been as hard hit by unfair trade policies as NC-08. And yet Hayes was the deciding vote– twice– on trade agreements his party was pushing that he himself said he knew was bad for North Carolina! Once he actually voted NO and then, weeping like a little girl, changed his vote to YES when Tom Delay threatened him on the floor of the House.

Hayes’ opponent, Larry Kissell, is one of the best candidates running for Congress anywhere. A laid off mill worker, Larry became a social studies teacher and later came within 325 votes of ousting Hayes from Congress in 2006. This year polls say he will complete the job. Blue America has endorsed him and I’m very nervous about this race because Hayes and his corporate allies are flooding the district with negative campaign ads– and Larry’s pretty much out of money. According to Open Secrets, on September 30 Hayes still had $1,113,272 left to spend and Larry was down to $250,134. The most recent polling shows Larry at 49% and Hayes at 41% but the NRCC is blasting away with $882,000 in television smears.

Kissel is one of the good guys. Not only would he be unseating a wingnut jackass, he’s a real progressive. You can help him by donating through ACT Blue, but the most direct way to help right now is by doing this:

Place your own ad buy in the Charlotte cable market through SaysMe.tv. Just pick which ad you want to run, which network you want to run it on and what time of the day. An ad on MSNBC in the late afternoon, for example, costs $60, while a late night ad on MTV or the SciFi channel costs $31; ESPN 2 charges $60 for a spot late night or early morning.

Howie is getting some amazing feedback about this SaysMe campaign. Political gurus are totally wowed by the idea and are telling Howie that this is where the next wave of internet politics is heading. It’s an amazing concept and could make the difference in some of these races in the last few days. But you have to act quickly. The ads have to be bought by Monday.

This is a really cheap and easy thing to do and it’s so much fun. (You don’t have to do it just with Kissel — you can use it for other Blue American candidates as well. Check the site.) In these late days it’s the best way for you to affect congressional races and get the message out in these districts.

Click below and you’ll go to the Blue America SaysMe site:

Also: Down With Tyranny and Crooks and Liars have been running a $10,000 matching fund raising drive for Debbie Cook, another great Blue America candidate, who just might beat that Taliban loving jackass, Dana Rohrabacher. She would be a huge asset in the House:

Debbie doesn’t mince words about women’s issues, marriage equality, getting out of Iraq, or the need for single payer health. But her passion is energy and the need to act now to leave fossil fuels before they leave us. We’re riding a wave of change here in Surf City, and Republicans panicked when they finally did internal polling and showed the race within the margin of error. We’ve gotten great response to our ads on cable, and we can still increase our buy for the last week. We’re on track to knock on almost every door in the district before the election more than once, and we’re getting tremendous support for GOTV from every environmental group, the unions, the nurses, PDA, and DFA. We have targeted mail ready to go to hit the low-propensity voters and remind younger voters, women, seniors, veterans, Latinos, and Vietnamese that Rohrabacher is a ZERO while Debbie is a HERO. Every dollar you give today goes out the door to communicate to voters. A series of donors have made a $10,000 matching dollar for dollar pledge.

You can buy ads for her too, here.

Update: And now the Republicans (and the allegedly liberal media) are smearing Darcy Burner, saying she lied about her degree from Harvard, (which is complete bullshit.) Meanwhile, Dave Reichert, the smear artist, is caught lying about his degree from Concordia Lutheran College, inflating it from an AA degree to a BA.

Where does this chutzpah come from?

Donate here to stop the insanity. Or buy some ads for Darcy on behalf of the latte sipping, intellectual elite.

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It Ain’t Us

by digby

David Swanson at After Downing Street indicts the liberal blogosphere for failing to hold McCain accountable for his hypocrisy on torture. Speaking of the Pinochet meeting revealed on Huffington Post today, he writes:

First, it’s an opening to talk about McCain’s more recent support for torture, a topic Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and other liberal blogs have been no more open to than the New York Times or Fox News. In 2005 John McCain championed the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005, which passed the Congress and was signed into law by Bush, adding one more redundant ban on torture to existing U.S. law, despite Vice President Cheney having lobbied hard against it. But McCain allowed a major loophole for the CIA and then kept quiet when Bush threw out the whole thing with a “signing statement.” Bush and Cheney’s administration continued to torture without pause or slowdown.

In 2006 Time Magazine recognized McCain’s efforts to supposedly ban torture in naming him one of America’s 10 Best Senators. Time made no mention of the fact that torture had always been illegal, the fact that Bush had thrown out the new law with a “signing statement,” or the fact that the United States was continuing to torture people on a large scale.

Also in 2006 McCain voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act which supposedly left torture decisions up to the president. And in February 2008, McCain voted against a bill that would supposedly ban torture, and then applauded Bush for vetoing the bill. I’ve talked to plenty of torture fans at McCain-Palin rallies. They know they’re backing the torture ticket. Why won’t even the independent progressive media admit it?

I’m on his mailing list and he sent this to me. But obviously, he doesn’t read my blog or any number of others who have been railing about McCain’s deplorable record on torture for years. It’s as great a mystery and frustration to me as it is him that the mainstream media have refused to look at this story, but it’s not because I the blogosphere hasn’t tried to get it out there.

I don’t mean to pick on Swanson. I get emails all the time from people excoriating me for failing to write about things I have been writing about for years. I normally just ignore it, assuming they don’t read my blog, but in this case, I wrote about it just last week, so I’m a little bit irritated.

And aside from own fevered meanderings, it is useful to point out that Glenzilla wrote a whole book about conservative hypocrisy and devoted substantial ink to this very topic:

The mirage-like nature of McCain’s alleged convictions can be seen most clearly, and most depressingly, with his public posturing over the issue of torture. Time and again, McCain has made a dramatic showing of standing firm against the use of torture by the United States, only to reveal that his so-called principles are confined to the realm of rhetoric and theater, but never action that follows through on that rhetoric.

In 2005, McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which made the use of torture illegal. While claiming that he had succeeded in passing a categorical ban on torture, however, McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted his legislation to the point of meaningless: (1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the U.S. military, but not to the intelligence community, which was exempt, thus ensuring that the C.I.A.–the principal torture agent for the United States — could continue to torture legally; and (2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate by a vote of 90-9, President Bush issued one of his first controversial “signing statements” in which he, in essence, declared that, as president, he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed by McCain’s law.

McCain never once objected to Bush’s open, explicit defiance of his cherished anti-torture legislation, preferring to bask in the media’s glory while choosing to ignore the fact that his legislative accomplishment would amount to nothing. Put another way, McCain opted for the political rewards of grandstanding on the issue while knowing that he had accomplished little, if anything, in the way of actually promoting his “principles.”

A virtual repeat of that sleight-of-hand occurred in 2006, when McCain first pretended to lead opposition to the Military Commissions Act (MCA), only thereafter to endorse this most radical, torture-enabling legislation, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. After insisting that compelled adherence to the anti-torture ban of the Geneva Conventions was a nonnegotiable item for him, McCain ultimately blessed the MCA despite the fact that it left it to the president to determine, in his sole discretion, which interrogation methods did or did not comply with the Conventions’ provisions.

Thus, once again, McCain created a self-image as a principled torture opponent with one hand, and with the other, ensured a legal framework that would not merely fail to ban, but would actively enable, the president’s ability to continue using interrogation methods widely considered to be torture.

more at the link…

That was excerpted from Huffington Post, btw.

Swanson is correct that the mainstream media have allowed McCain’s reputation as a moral agent on the subject of torture to stand. Even Obama unfortunately granted him that in the last debate. But those of us who follow civil liberties issues in the blogosphere have not and it’s galling to be accused of it.

I won’t link to all the posts on this subject from bloggers such as Kagro X at DKos, Christie Hardin Smith, Emptywheel, Think Progress, Crooks and Liars etc. Mr Google will take you there. We’ve done our best to expose McCain’s outrageous cowardice on this. Perhaps it’s such an enormous betrayal of principle that the political establishment can’t wrap their minds around it, I don’t know. But it’s out there if anyone wants to find it.

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Eating Their Own

by digby

… legs off.

In response to this morning’s post about an anti-Palin faction developing with the McCain campaign and among Republicans, Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, e-mails:

Just read your post. This is on the record. This is cleared by HQ. It is a fact that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists. It was a fact before Governor Palin said it in a fully vetted speech and it is fact today. It is bullshit to claim or write anything else.

I guess we can see why McCain likes this guy so much. The guy is just as intemperate and impulsive as he is.

It’s kind of funny, though, that Randy Scheunman is accusing people of palling around with terrorists. He’s got quite a history himself and it’s a lot more recent that Ayres’ ancient activities:

Remember, US intelligence later found evidence that Chalabi, in addition to foisting a bunch of bogus intelligence and lying informers on the US and pocketing a lot of US taxpayer dollars, had provided highly classified US intelligence to Iran. Scheunemann worked closely with Chalabi for years in his efforts to get the US into war with Iraq. He was also a go-between between Chalabi and McCain. Now that he’s taking such a high-profile role on the Iraq issue in the 2008, Scheunemann’s history with Chalabi and the use of bogus intelligence to get the nation into war is unquestionably highly newsworthy.

It is a fact that just like his friend Chalabi, Randy Scheunemann is a loser conman. It is bullshit to claim or write anything else.

Update: There’s palling around and then there’s palling around:

In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile’s military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world’s most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.

At least he wasn’t a socialist.

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The Scarlet ‘B”

by digby

I’m sure most of you have heard about the alleged attack of a McCain campaign worker by a crazed black man. It’s been all over the internets and apparently the McCain campaign has been pushing it like crazy. There are many questions as to the story’s veracity, but that will sort itself out in due course.

But someone sent me this blog post from John Moody, president of Fox, that is has to be read to be believed:

Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Senator Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination. That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

So, according to Moody, if a black man assaults someone in Pittsburgh, people can justifiably be suspicious of another black man who happens to be running for president. And that’s not racist.

Recall that this is a very,very important man in American broadcasting. He directs the news of a major cable network every day with a memo that gives the parameters for the coverage. He’s clearly a right winger, but I never thought he was an idiot. Until now.

Update:

Yeah…

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter “B” in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

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This Is Not Funny

by tristero

Seriously, this is sick. None of us would be snickering if Obama was down in the polls:

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staff member. It was Amy Strozzi, who was identified by the Washington Post this week as Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night.

If ever there was a perfect indicator of the priorities of modern Republicanism, this is it.

(Actually, in a Strangelovian way, it’s also pretty funny.)

Jews For Obama

by tristero

Despite the hype from the right, it’s more than 3 to 1.

Heh. Looks like the good Sarah’s Great Schlep may not be that necessary, even if it is very funny.