Make a smart decision, Illinois

In the governor’s race in Illinois, just the fact that he’s Republican is sufficient that I would discourage you from voting for Bill Brady. There’s also this video in which he claims to believe in both creation and evolution, but I have to say I found the interviewer more annoying than the wanna-be governor.

There’s a point where he’s hectoring Brady, telling him there are only two sides, he’s either got to be in favor of some garbled version of young earth creationism/intelligent design creationism, or he’s in favor of evolution. The interviewer insists on this despite Brady stating that he’s a theistic evolutionist, that his god created the world and evolution was the tool that he used to create humans.

It’s a very silly notion, but it’s still a real and commonly held position that is not synonymous with fundamentalist Biblical literalism. It’s wrong, but you aren’t going to show that it’s wrong by falsely pigeonholing a proponent into another, wronger position. It was very annoying to listen to someone who didn’t understand creationism trying to use his ignorance to bludgeon the dope.

So please do vote against Bill Brady. But do so for the right reasons, OK?

For people who worship the constitution, they sure don’t know what is in it

Video is not Christine O’Donnell’s friend — every time she opens her mouth she exposes her ugly, ignorant side. The latest faux pas comes from here performance in a debate with her opponent in which she reveals she hasn’t read the first amendment, and is surprised by what’s in it.

Here’s the relevant part:

“Let me just clarify,” O’Donnell pressed. “You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?”

“The government shall make no establishment of religion,” Coons said, summarizing the gist of the specific words in the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

“That’s in the First Amendment?” O’Donnell asked again, eliciting further laughter from the room.

This is a fairly common talking point among lunatics of the far right. It is literally true that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the constitution, but the first amendment is still quite clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” means you don’t get to use the influence of government to help promote your cult. It also promises not to get in the way of your evangelizing, but that the state itself is going to be neutral.

We also have a lunatic running for secretary of state in Minnesota who has been saying the same thing as O’Donnell.

Quite often you hear people say, ‘What about separation of church and state?’ There is no such thing. I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation. We are a nation based on Christian principles and ideals, and those are the things that guarantee our liberties. It is one of those things that is so fundamental to the freedoms that we have that when you begin to restrict our belief and our attestation to our Christian values you begin to restrict our liberties. You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty.

It seems rather obvious to me. The constitution saying that no state religion shall be established is in direct contradiction with anyone claiming that Christianity is our state religion.

I doubt that, Douthat

Ross Douthat proposes an explanation for why Republicans are so wacky on climate change. He points out that there’s a strong strain of climate change denial in the American public, one that’s also present in other countries.

What’s interesting, though, is that if you look at public opinion on climate change, the U.S. isn’t actually that much of an outlier among the wealthier Western nations. In a 2007-2008 Gallup survey on global views of climate change, for instance, just 49 percent of American told pollsters that human beings are responsible for global warming. But the same figure for Britain (where Rush Limbaugh has relatively few listeners, I believe) was 48 percent, and belief in human-caused climate change was only slightly higher across northern Europe: 52 percent in the Czech Republic, 59 percent in Germany, 49 percent in Denmark, 51 percent in Austria, just 44 percent in the Netherlands, with highs of 63 percent in France and 64 percent in Sweden.

OK, let’s provisionally accept that. Where Douthat goes next, though, is weird; he argues that it is an advantage of our political leaders in the US that they are more representative of the electorate, and that our politicians are simply tracking polls to win votes.

It’s all nonsense. Kooky right-wingers like Inhofe and Angle and Miller and Rubio and on and on are not canny, cunning politicians who are cynically following the wishes of the people — they are True Believers, ideologues who promote, rather than merely follow. What it really indicates is that Republican voters are willing to put morons into office, while voters in all those other Western nations retain some dignity and insist on a louder hint of credibility in their representatives.

It’s also not true that the Republican leadership better reflects the popular consensus. “97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming, but 97% of GOP Senate candidates disagree.” What it actually tells us is that Republicans are more willing to charge off into the fringe than the general electorate.

And most importantly, climate change is a scientific issue, one that has an evidence-based answer, not something that can be swayed by popular opinion. It is not a virtue to to obey the whims of an ignorant populace to pursue a position contrary to fact.

The wild loons are calling in Canada

The insanity is continent wide, my fellow North Americans. A fringe group in Canada is calling for Christian Governance, and you know you can’t believe them when they make claims like this:

Judeo-Christian political theory is unique in its hostility to totalitarianism. Christian governance, and Christian governance alone, is anti-tyrannical.

But if they’re so opposed to tyranny, why is Christian Governance dismissing gay rights, women’s right to choose, and insisting that non-Christians shouldn’t be allowed representation in government? They sound like a gang of tyrannical control freaks, if you ask me. We don’t even need to get into the evidence of history that shows that Christian monarchs were quite willing to enslave, kill, burn, and destroy to maintain their power. Was the rule of good King Leopold of Belgium in the Congo an example of Christian anti-tyranny?

So that’s why Koch funded a major evolution exhibit

I was mystified why Chief Teabagger David Koch would invest so much in a Smithsonian exhibit on human evolution — usually those knuckledraggers object to people putting their ancestry on display. An explanation is at hand, though: his big issue is denying the significance of global climate change, and the exhibit is tailored to make climate change look like a universal good.

There are some convincing examples of the subterfuge being perpetrated. There is a big emphasis on how evolutionary changes were accompanied by (or even caused by) climate shifts, which evolutionary biologists would see as almost certainly true, and so it slides right past us. But, for instance, what they do is illustrate the temperature changes in a graph covering the last 10 million years, which makes it easy to hide the very abrupt and rapid rise in the last few centuries. They also elide over an obvious fact: we’d rather not experience natural selection. Climate change may have shaped our species, but it did so by killing us, by pushing populations around on the map, by famine and disease, by conflict and chaos. Evolution happened. That doesn’t mean we liked it.

I suppose it wouldn’t leap out at an evolutionary biologist because it is true: there have been temperature fluctuations and long term changes that have hit our species hard, and nobody is denying it. However, it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that we should therefore look forward to melting icecaps and flooding seaboards and intensified storms. It’s probably also worth pointing out that our technological civilization is certainly more fragile than anything we’ve had before. The fact that we could be knocked back to a stone age level of technology without going extinct is not a point in favor of welcoming global warming.

Now we have a new question: how did this devious agenda get past the directors of the Smithsonian?

New Mexico: Don’t vote for Steve Pearce

It’s so easy to find candidates who are unqualified for office. I wish it were easier to find good candidates. I was sent the campaign page for this Republican bozo in New Mexico, and one of the important issues he addresses is the atheist effort to outlaw prayer.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.

God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.

The silent majority has been silent too long. It’s time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn’t care what they want. It is time that the majority rules! It’s time we tell them, “You don’t have to pray; you don’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don’t have to believe in God or attend services that honour Him. That is your right, and we will honour your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away. We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!”

God bless us one and all…Especially those who denounce Him, God bless America and Canada, despite all our faults We are still the greatest nations of all. God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.

I almost hate to break the news to him. There are no godless laws criminalizing prayer. There aren’t even any atheists trying or hoping to make prayer illegal. Go ahead — you want to pray before a football game, no one is stopping you. You want to pray before eating and sleeping, and you want to teach your kids to do that, too, then you may.

All we plan to take away is your privilege of being able to seize a bullhorn as a public official, and in your official capacity order everyone else to pray. If Pearce were actually sincere in his claim that he wants to tell us that we don’t have to pray, then there is no issue here. But of course, he’s not sincere. He wants to win a secular public office so he can bray that this is a Christian nation, and put his superstitions about God into our government.

So that makes him a lying sack of soggy sewage and an idiot, which ought to disqualify him for office if it weren’t for the fact that too often those seem to be prerequisites for getting elected.

Isn’t this an abuse of power?

Do something, Virginia. Your attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, is on an absurd crusade against Michael Mann and the University of Virginia. His previous attempt to defame Mann with accusations of fraud was recently shot down in the courts, but now he has thrown another pile of accusations at him, all just as pointless.

The attorney general’s logic is so tenuous as to leave only one plausible explanation: that he is on a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research and the free exchange of ideas upon which science and academia both depend — all because he does not like what science says about climate change. Among other things, the attorney general demands that U-Va. turn over any correspondence it may have between Mr. Mann and 39 other scientists. Mr. Mann points out that among those Mr. Cuccinelli did not list by name are the two other researchers on the African savannah research grant that the attorney general is supposedly investigating.

What is this farce costing? To defend itself from Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation into the distribution of a $214,700 research grant, the University of Virginia has spent $350,000, with more to come, and that doesn’t count the taxpayer funds Mr. Cuccinelli is devoting to this cause. Sadly, though, that’s the smallest of the costs. The damage to Virginia’s reputation, and to its universities’ ability to attract and retain top-notch faculty and students, will not be easily undone.

It seems to me that a recall is long past due, and that someone ought to sic an army of lawyers on the real phony here: Ken Cuccinelli.

Illinois governor race simplified

Now you know who not to vote for: Bill Brady. Brady favors teaching creationism in the schools.

It’s always helpful when the ninnies declare themselves like that. Although, it’s also true that he declares himself a Republican, which nowadays is also grounds for voting against him.

However, I also take exception to the newspaper article. This is not right:

“My knowledge and my faith leads me to believe in both evolution and creationism,” he said. “I believe God created the earth, and it evolved.”

Creationism generally teaches that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate, and the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

There are many flavors of creationism, and they don’t all teach that the earth is that young; this young earth nonsense has only relatively recently (since the 1960s) come to dominate the discussion. All this kind of misinformation does is give the guilty ones an out — Brady is probably an old earth creationist from the quotes I read, and now he can protest that he isn’t a creationist, as defined by the Chicago Sun Times.

A surprising Nobel

I would never have guessed this one. The Nobel Prize in Medicine has gone to Robert G. Edwards for his pioneering work in in vitro fertilization. It surprises me because it’s almost ancient history — he is being rewarded for work done over 30 years ago. It’s also very applied research — this was not work that greatly advanced our understanding of basic phenomena in biology, because IVF was already being done in animals. This was just the extension of a technique to one peculiar species, ours.

I don’t begrudge him the award, though, because the other special property of his research was that it was extremely controversial. These were procedures that simply burned through scores (or hundreds, if you count the ones with such little viability that they weren’t implanted) of human zygotes in order to work out reliable protocols, and throughout faced serious ethical risks — these were procedures that had a chance of producing the worst possible result, a viable embryo that came to full term, but had serious birth defects. The public opposition to the work was tremendous, funding was tenuous, and even many in the scientific community opposed the work and ostracized Edwards and his colleague, Steptoe (who did not live to see this day, and so did not receive the award).

Nowadays, IVF is practically routine and about 4 million people were ‘test tube babies’. It’s still controversial, though, with extremist anti-abortion groups, such as the Catholic church, still fighting it, and the redundant, unused zygotes from the procedure still being a point of major contention (ever heard of ‘snowflake babies’? That’s what they’re talking about).

I’m reading a couple of messages in this award. One is simply acknowledging a hard-working scientist, but the other is a signal that we should soldier on through all of the opposition to reproductive health technologies, that science will be rewarded and the Luddites will find themselves in the dustbin of history. I can’t help but see this as, in part, the Nobel committee making an unmistakeably rude gesture at the anti-science, anti-choice fanatics of the religious right.

(For those who are unfamilar with the IVF procedure that Edwards and Steptoe developed, here’s a lovely summary diagram from the Nobel Foundation.)

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Our students aren’t children, but Republicans apparently are

So I’ve just told you to avoid underestimating college students, but I guess you shouldn’t do the same with Republicans, especially Breitbart-style Republicans. Their latest embarrassment is yet another piece of work from James O’Keefe, the young mastermind who dressed up as a pimp and dishonestly edited a videotape to make ACORN look like it supported prostitution, and then also bungled a break-in to bug Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana office, and is now continuing his career as a professional idiot and thug with a flopped attempt to catch a CNN reporter using her sexual wiles to bamboozle him.

It’s unbelievably stupid. The reporter gave no indication of flirting for information, but O’Keefe apparently assumed that any blonde reporter was a bimbo. He invited her to come to his boat for an interview, and then stocked it with all the paraphernalia a misogynist might imagine a woman would find irresistible: porn mags, dildos, handcuffs, mirrors on the ceiling, that sort of thing, and hidden cameras. The plan was to have Abbie Boudreau show up, wave a dildo seductively at her, and when she succumbed to his charms to get top secret Republican operative information from him, catch it all on tape.

It’s just astonishing. Where did O’Keefe get his ideas about how to seduce a woman, from men’s wank magazines? He must have had some delusion that his scheme would actually work, rather than ending with him writhing on the ground cradling his bruised privates while the CNN reporter stormed off of the Love Boat with a juicy story about sleazy Republicans.

Fortunately for all concerned, one of the organizers of this tasteless charade had a scrap of a conscience and told all, sparing O’Keefe a pair of splattered testicles but still giving CNN a great story (the conscientious person has apparently been fired…unsurprisingly).

Boudreau herself has written up the full story.

I have to ask…why does Breitbart and his little acolytes still get air time on the news networks? Why isn’t O’Keefe in jail for his criminal attempted wire-tapping stunt? Why aren’t we seeing a takedown of his prior video staging to falsely indict ACORN? Why aren’t small children breaking into tears and adults spitting on these people when they walk down the street?