Thursday, August 11, 2005

Do as we say not as we do....

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official - Yahoo! News

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 11, 3:08 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.


This is a story that the lefty blogosphere has been talking about for a long time. There is a lot of coverage at Kos and TPM where Josh is on the warpath today about this. I think it's finally getting legs. It is, in my opinion, well past time that the regular media gets into this story. Let's see where it leads.

More Boy Scout Tragedy...

CBS News | Tree Kills Girl At Boy Scout Camp | August 11, 2005 11:00:17

(AP) An 8-year-old girl died and three others were injured Wednesday when a tree fell on them during a first-aid class at a Boy Scout camp, authorities said.

The girls were participating in the class at an overnight camp when the 31-foot tree suddenly snapped, crashing through a tarp over a picnic table at which they were sitting, Police Chief Kenneth Flatt said.

"It was an accident. There was no warning. There wasn't a whole lot anybody could do," said Flatt.

The tree landed on the 8-year-old girl's head. She was pronounced dead at Southern Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin.

The other girls, ages 9, 10 and 16, suffered minor injuries and were treated and released from the hospital. Their identities weren't immediately released. One girl suffered a broken ankle; the others had bruises and scrapes.


I feel so sorry for the parents of these kids. The stastical improbabilities are staggering....

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Making the US dumber one state at a time.

CORRECTED-Kansas moves to stem role of evolution - Yahoo! News

By Carey Gillam

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (Reuters) - After months of debate over science and religion, the Kansas Board of Education has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life.

The 10-member board must still take a final vote, expected in either September or October, but a 6-4 vote on Tuesday that approved a draft of the standards essentially cemented a victory for conservative Christian board members who say evolution is largely unproven and can undermine religious teachings about the origins of life on earth.

"We think this is a great development ... for the academic freedom of students," said John West, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design theory.


I want my kid to go to school in Kansas. That way He'll be the smartest kid in school by the time he's 15. Kidding! Just kidding... Why would I want to make my son into as much of a stupid arrogant ass as Kansas seems to be churning out?

Think about it Kansas is basically saying "We don't care for our children to learn what science really believes and to prepare our kids for a future at a university that doesn't have an ID department. We just want to insulate ourselves and have a great little theocracy all on our own." Well, I guess if I were a parent in a system like that I'd start screaming bloody murder to anyone who would listen.

WTF?!

CBS News | Lt. Col. Eyed As Anti-Bush Vandal | August 10, 2005 12:00:54

(AP) An Air Force Reserve officer could face criminal charges for allegedly vandalizing cars at Denver International Airport bearing pro-Bush bumper stickers.

Lt. Col. Alexis Fecteau, director of operations for reserve forces at the National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, is believed responsible for defacing at least 10 parked vehicles between December and June, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Tuesday.

A bait car left by a police detective was also defaced and the detective tracked down Fecteau, who turned himself in Friday. He was released on bond.


Man! How bad does it have to get that you have a Lieutenant Colonel defacing civilian cars to protest his commander in chief?!

Holy crap!

Friday, August 05, 2005

Welcome to the 30s, Iraq!

Poll: Bush's Approval Rating on Iraq Drops - Yahoo! News

It's official! The polling now suggests that the Iraq war is now approved by only 38 percent of those polled.

Who couldn't see this coming...

Get ready to see the troops come back and victory being declared.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Does God hate the Boy Scouts...?

CBS News | Lightning Kills Sleeping Boy Scout | August 4, 2005 05:00:18

This is the third incedent in as many weeks involving natural and manmade electrical and weather disasters that have involved Boy Scouts. I am beginning to think that there is something going on here.

First you have a random electrocution of four scout leaders at Jamboree.

Then in the aftermath of the Jamboree electrocution there was a mass sickening of the scouts due to heatstroke.

Next, a scout leader is struck by lightning

Now this. This poor kid was inside a wooden building at a campsite when he was struck while sleeping. What are the chances of that?

I feel sad for all of the folks who have lost loved ones. This is a very wierd staistical anomoly.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

What housing bubble?!

For sale: Trailer w/ocean vu, $1 million obo - Yahoo! News

So wonderfully Californian, Marsha Weidman's home has it all--along the beach, far from noisy traffic, with a Jacuzzi used to watch sunsets over the Pacific.

For this, she and her husband recently paid $1.05 million.

For that, they got a trailer, built in 1971, without any land.

Plus, the family must pay "space rent," which at two Malibu parks dotted with seven-figure trailers ranges from $800 to $2,500 monthly.


I figure that it's all relative but still... IT'S A TRAILER!

A shift of rhetoric. The signs of things to come.

Inspiration for Doubters of Darwin

Following the link above takes you to an article in the LA Times that covers the President's comments yesterday to a group of Texas newspaper reporters in which he gave tacit approval for teaching Intelligent Design in public schools.

I have a terrific problem with the softening of science that has gone on during this administration. This degradation of science has been endemic with the spinning of reports on global warming, fossil fuel emissions, the efficacy of abstinance, the ficticious link between birth controll pills and cancer and much more.

I cannot stress enough the importance of these changes in policies regarding scientific fact. By calling into question the basic fundamentals of science you allow for a "rebranding" of reality. The Bush administration is at best setting the United States back educationally with this move. At worst they are actively trying to gain control of all intelectual discourse.

One of the most important things for a despotic regieme to do is to stifle informed opposition. It has been done in many ways. One of the most extreme examples was Pol Pot who exterminated intellectuals and even went so far as to murder anyone with glasses as they were a symbol of intelligence. This is of course an extreme example, but the process of discrediting science and any form of intellectual discourse can lead to the same type of stifling of freedoms.

Having the ability to say "See, there are doubts about all of this so-called science" diminishes the importance of science in public debate. This has been happening throuout this administration. The Bush administration has been slowly and steadily changing the rhetoric of the debate over what have been, up to now, scientifically determined processes and policies. They are playing up the pathos and emotion, playing down the logic and direct observation. This mindset undermines efforts to alter behaviors that are seen as detrimental to health or environment. the administration is effectively reframing the debate or "rebranding" the debate to make science and reason a much smaller part of the entire public argument for or against certain technologies. The debate is being more and more driven by conservative christian religeous belief instead of actual data and observation. This is a frightening shift in the national conversation.

I have been finding myself more and more often outraged by the statements of the administration but I am only just now discovering the nature of those statements. They are not for nothing. They are being used to reframe the whole worldview of our country. By reframing the worldview the Bushies are contorting the "Truth" to fit their needs. Creating new reality. Removing generations of rationality in favor of religeous zealotry. They are installing a backdoor of doubt so that they can, in future, remove checks on technologies that can damage the environment or to ban things that can be used for what they consider "immoral" activities.

We, as thinking people need to be aware of the devisive use of this type of argument. The signs are that this type of rhetorical shift is accelerating and that we will need to push back against it as hard as we can.