I get no respect

Here’s the difference between me and Michael Bérubé: he gets labeled a dangerous radical and profiled in David Horowitz’s new book, while all I get is a
mild squeak in our weekly campus newspaper and our local conservative rag.

While perusing the UMM main page, I happened upon the website http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula which belongs to UMM’s own Professor of Biology Dr. Meyers. Upon closer inspection I found content relating to my religious beliefs that offended me beyond belief. Not only was this speech sacrilegious and offensive, but it was readily available to anyone who happens across the UMM main page. The portion of content which I found most offensive was written under the label “humor,” and his blog is in fact up for an online award. Yet despite my outrage I must defend Dr. Meyers. He has the right to state his opinions and it is not my place to try to stop him. I may suggest the administration take the link off the campus website, but that has more to do with the fact that the website speaks for the University as a whole.

He is a bit of a junior Horowitz—I kind of like how he’s bending over backwards to insist I have a right to free speech while calling for the university to censor me—but you know, he put this up almost two weeks ago and the only reason I noticed at all is that my wife ran across it. It’s just sad. I mean, if what I wrote was really sacrilegious and outrageous and offensive beyond belief, couldn’t they get a condemnatory petition going, or a protest march, or even get one of Horowitz’s junior sub-alterns to come out and give a talk in which he complains about not being allowed to give a talk, while my kidneys threaten Western Civilization?

Man, I’d even be satisfied if they just spelled my name right.

That’s what I’m wondering, too

Chris Mooney sets up an interesting dilemma:

It’s hard to decide what’s the bigger outrage here: 1) That Bush didn’t tell the public his real “dissenter” view on global warming; or 2) that Karl Rove set up a secret science advisory session for the president with a novelist.

Hmmm. Lying and misrepresenting his views, vs. wallowing stupidly in ignorance…which is more damning? Fortunately, since he’s guilty of both, we don’t have to make a decision and can just spit and curse with a little extra disgust.

Aggie gossip

I feel like Wonkette: a reader sent along a bit of personal commentary about Deutsch, from someone who knew him at Texas A&M. It’s gossip, nothing more, so take it or leave it.

Well, of course, the Batt [the Aggie school paper, The Battalion] is not the Times, so there was nothing in
today’s issue. However — you will love this! talk about your “Aggie
Network”… — sitting across the hall from me even as I write is a
former editor of said rag.

According to XXXXX this guy “gives Republicans a bad name”. A
friend of hers used to date him. XXXXX called him “a stereotype
Young Republican”, and described him as very over the top; very
“histrionic” in all his reactions. He objected once to a joke told
by a female coworker at the Batt; his reaction was “if you weren’t a
girl, I would smash your face in”.

XXXXX also knows the Nick Anthis mentioned in the article. He is a
Rhodes scholar who also used to work on the Batt. She said she was
not surprised that he would be the one to ferret out this information.

XXXXX can’t believe this. She was invited to, but did not attend,
the Deutsch’s graduation party, which he apparently threw for
himself. She started an email to the current Batt editor as I left
her office.

George Deutsch may have been a jerk, but he was loyal to George W. Bush. That’s got to count for something, right?

(I won’t post just any random scurrilous factoid sent to me, but in this case I know the source and consider it reliable.)

These guys at the top are despicable characters, aren’t they?

I know, everyone’s making a big deal of this, but I honestly don’t care that Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter. People do make mistakes, and hunting is a risky sport with dangerous devices—I simply don’t see it as saying much about his character or capability that he made a potentially tragic error on a hunting trip. At best, it says that maybe he’s getting too old and careless to be armed and in public.

On the other hand, this says volumes about Cheney’s character.

Monday’s hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney’s 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

What the hell…?

I’m not some knee-jerk bleeding-heart animal lover; I think living things should be respected and treated honorably, but that killing is part of the pattern of life. I don’t hunt myself, and I don’t think it is an unquestionable privilege, but I can respect the skill and intentions of someone who does a little game hunting.

But this…it’s simply sickening. Blowing away a horde of pen-raised animals, released in front of you to scurry into your gunsights, is not a sport. It’s disgusting bloody-mindedness, a lazy, cowardly, vicious sort of abuse.

They say that torturing and killing helpless animals is one of the signs of a sadistic sociopath. Somehow, it’s fitting that our vice-president is the kind of guy who takes glee in unfeeling butchery.

Since people are commenting on it, I have to clarify that I don’t think shooting a fellow hunter is excusable—but it’s more a matter of incompetence than malicious intent. We already know this administration is incompetent.

Gary Farber has mentioned the strange lag in reporting the accident (and he has a darned thorough roundup of stories on the matter). That’s also troubling, and it really means they’ve hit a triple on this one: dumb bloody-minded malice, incompetence, and disregard for the law. That’s our Dick.

Self-loathing Coulter

I’ve been hearing about the usual despicable performances of Republicans at CPAC, and in particular the heinous stylings of Ann Coulter, and I have to ‘fess up to considerable outrage fatigue. Then I learned that she was picking on me.

That said, she [Ann Coulter] did not disappoint her fans, coming to the stage under the thumping dance house beats to deliver a string of punch lines. Democrats: “Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts.” College professors: “sissified, pussified.” Harvard: “the Soviet Union.” John Kerry: the other “dominant woman in Democratic politics.” Her post-9/11 motto: “Rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences.” For good measure, she threw in a joke about having Muslims burn down the Supreme Court—with the liberal justices inside.

That’s all extraordinarily vile, but college professors? “Sissified,” of course, is derived from “sister” and means “Of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a sissy; timid, cowardly, or effeminate”. “Pussified” is referring to the female genitalia. She’s trying to insult college professors and Democrats by calling them a bunch of females, but her terms are attempts to insult women.

I don’t get it. Isn’t there a rumor going around that Coulter is actually a woman herself?

P.S. I just had a horrible thought, an idea that would give the Republicans a lock on their base forevermore. If I didn’t know that no right-wingers ever read this site, I wouldn’t even mention it.

CPAC should have Armstrong Williams and LaShawn Barber up on the podium, denouncing the Democrats as a bunch of shiftless Negroes. Oh, how the crowd would roar and eat it up.

Deutsch speaks!

…and makes a total ass of himself.

In the interview, Mr. Deutsch said that Dr. Hansen had partisan ties “all the way up to the top of the Democratic Party,” and that he was “using those ties and using his media connections to push an agenda, a worst-case-scenario agenda of global warming.” He said that anyone who disagrees with Dr. Hansen “is labeled a censor and is demonized and vilified in the media — and the media of course is a willing accomplice here.”

And how does he know Hansen was a mere partisan flack peddling bad science? Because Deutsch almost has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M.

A good day to get a day pass

There are several items of note at Salon today, so if you don’t subscribe, watch the little commercial, you’ll get some good bang for the buck.

We gave Deutsch too much credit

This political hack who was dictating the interpretation of science to scientists was a college dropout.

His sole qualification for his job was his enthusiasm for George W. Bush—where have we heard that before?

The story has been confirmed in the most emphatic way: Deutsch has resigned. It’s not quite over, though, and it’s clear that James Hansen is going to keep pushing.

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch’s credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

“He’s only a bit player,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. ” The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That’s what I’m really concerned about.”

“On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed,” he said. “The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.”