Conservatives
mikethemadbiologist | July 1, 2009Nobody could have predicted this (italics mine):
As the White House readies its plan for finding "common ground" on reproductive health issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan's two major components: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion.
Many abortion rights advocates and some Democrats who want to dial down the culture wars want the White House to package the two parts of the plan together, as a single piece of legislation. The plan would seek to reduce unwanted pregnancies by funding comprehensive sex…
mikethemadbiologist | June 27, 2009I think some people don't realize the extent to which movement conservativism is not about policy, but an existential sense of self. I realize that I come across as pretty partisan, but, for me, it's ultimately about objectives: if I want a public option for healthcare, it's because I think it will improve healthcare. If there were compelling data that wearing pink mumus and whirling rubber chickens around our heads would improve healthcare, then pink mumus and rubber chickens it is. But what strikes about movement conservativism (which is very different than a conservative impulse--there…
mikethemadbiologist | June 26, 2009During the battle over the stimulus package, Republican Senator John McCain tweeted:
$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver?
I argued at the time that it's quite possible that $650,000 to better understand how to stop the economic damage that beavers cause is a good use of money. Well, a couple of weeks ago, The NY Times published an article about the damage that beavers do:
The dozens of public works officials, municipal engineers, conservation agents and others who crowded into a meeting room here one recent morning needed help.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 20, 2009I've posted many times about how the theopolitical right and movement conservatives use words as weapons. They are not supposed to be taken at face value, but rather are meant to manipulate others. A good, although old, example is "evolution is just a theory." Any professional creationist who says that knows this is false--in fact, he is probably so familiar with the rebuttal, he could repeat it for you. The Slacktivist, a former anti-abortion activist, notes the same phenomenon regarding the rhetoric surrounding abortion:
If you're confronted with an evil equal in magnitude to that of…
mikethemadbiologist | June 15, 2009A few months ago, Dday started to sound the alarm about "burrowing" by Bush administration appointees:
This is about getting civil service protections for hardcore conservative loyalists. In past transitions, this has been done to protect new rules or regulations that the outgoing President would like to see maintained, and that's true here as well. Recent rule changes in the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service will be harder to reverse with a champion inside the agency. But I hardly think it ends there. The same with all those career Justice Department officials whose…
mikethemadbiologist | June 14, 2009Oops, there's been another GOP bigot eruption. This time, it's Michelle Obama who has been called an ape:
A state Republican activist has admitted to and apologized for calling a gorilla that escaped from the Riverbanks Zoo Friday an "ancestor" of First Lady Michelle Obama....
Longtime SCGOP activist and former state Senate candidate Rusty DePass responded with the comment, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."
DePass told WIS News 10 he was talking about First Lady Michelle Obama....
DePass took his apology a bit further. He also said, "The comment was hers.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 13, 2009So asks Dave Neiwert (italics mine):
If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get the America you want is to negate a fair election, shred the Constitution, and violently cleanse the country of everyone who doesn't agree with you, then man up and get on with it. If it's a shooting war you want, do not doubt that there are plenty of progressives who will oblige you. If this goal…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2009http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/27/735707/-Ronald-Reagan,-the-…
With the Sotomayor nomination, many conservatives have been shrieking about 'reverse racism'--you know, how the white man is being kept down, in this case by TEH LATINAZ!! AAAIEEE!! Well, wouldn't you know, but conservative icon Ronald Reagan was a big supporter of reverse sexism (video and transcript):
Partial transcript:
As I said during the campaign, I've long believed that the time has come for the highest court in our land to include not only distinguished men, but distinguished women as well. ... I had the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2009By now, you have probably heard of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, an ob/gyn who performed late-term abortions. Lots of other people have commented on this, but make no mistake about it: this will stem from demonizing abortion. It's really not that far from Republican presidential candidate John McCain's sneering about the 'health of the mother' exemption to pulling the trigger. As Digby puts it:
If you think that women should have to endanger their lives in order to give birth to a fetus with no brain, then you probably think this man was a murderer.
Or maybe it should be '…
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2009Friends, this is compassionate conservatism we can believe in:
Heh.
mikethemadbiologist | May 11, 2009Having been at Genome Camp (a.k.a. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories Biology of Genomes meeting) last week, I didn't have time to blog about the latest movement conservative idiocy of getting all het up about Obama asking for Dijon mustard at a restaurant. It's clearly another instance of attempting to place Democrats in cultural opposition to 'real' Americans, as Jesse Taylor notes:
But perhaps the strangest part of all this is that when Democrats get hit for elitism (Kerry's cheesesteak, Obama's mustard), they're asking for things that the places in question had in stock to sell to customers…
mikethemadbiologist | April 27, 2009Republican Senator Susan Collins went along with Karl Rove and cut or eliminated funding from the stimulus package for pandemic influenza spending. While Democratic Congressman Obey was able to restore $50 million for infection reporting, all state and local funding was eliminated. Nicely done, 'moderate' Senator Collins (italics mine):
Did Rove, Collins and their compatriots want a pandemic?
Of course not.
They were just playing politics, in the exceptionally narrow and irresponsible manner that characterized the Republican response to the stimulus debate - and that, because of Democratic…
mikethemadbiologist | April 18, 2009(from here)
...they would support statehood for the District of Columbia, right? From Jameson Foser:
Every major news organization in the country covered Wednesday's tea parties. And, in doing so, they all ignored the fact that residents of Washington, D.C., are subject to the very conditions that led to the Boston Tea Party.
It's not like this is some big secret. On their way to work on Wednesday, reporters who are based in Washington would have passed countless cars bearing license plates that offer the reminder "Taxation Without Representation." Many of them probably have such a license…
mikethemadbiologist | April 14, 2009While I'm away on vacation, here's a blast from the past:
Once again, the science framing wars have flared up. While I'm not allergic to the concept of framing as some are, one of the major reasons why I'm not a big fan of dwelling on the topic is that obsessing over language reminds me of the late 80s and 90s when the Left won the battle of words, and the fundamentalist Uruk-hai took over the damn country.
I've been doing some thinking about the 'progressive' concern with media communication (including my own)--and it is important, no doubt about it. But, as the 2006 elections have shown,…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2009A recent post about the idiocy in Fairfax County regarding a student who was expelled for two weeks because she took birth control pills during school received some great comments. But as you might expect, with enough comments, one of the 'contraception is abortion' morons showed up (can't you morons leave me alone during my vacation?). Ordinarily, I would have let the commentors administer an ass kicking (which they did very well). But when the commenter wrote:
I just wanted to remind readers that some believe life begins at conception (and that it doesn't get a postmodernist exemption to…
mikethemadbiologist | April 2, 2009Isn't that like "Pedophiles for Childrens' Welfare?" From The Nation, your healthcare has a new special friend:
....Rick Scott is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition. The name may not exactly be a household word, or it may ring a faint bell, but Politico recently reported that the millionaire Republican would be heading up Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to spend around $20 million to kill President Obama's efforts at healthcare reform.
Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2009The GOP has officially entered a self-parody feedback loop. Case in point, House Minority leader Rep. Boehner's spokescritter on Obama's tax reform commission (italics mine):
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered tepid support for the concept of tax reform but was leery of what he sees as a chance for more tax increases.
"Obviously, the tax code needs reform, but I hope that when the administration talks about generating more revenue that isn't code for raising taxes," Boehner spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier said.
The people who collect all of the taxes? They're called the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2009Can we please stop claiming that prices and wages are determined by the invisible hand? This supposed inscrutable force is often quite scrutable and goes by the name power. Consider this hate email liberal activist David Sirota received after a TV appearance (boldface original):
I made a simple point that America is now more economically unequal than it was just before the Great Depression. I subsequently received a wave of very angry hate mail...[one such email]:
I think I am in the majority of Americans who are sick and tired of the unproductive living off of the government. They have…
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2009I know I make the point a lot that much of movement conservatism/Modern Republicanism operates in a intellectuallycognitively similar manner to the creationist movement. But the reason the comparison is instructive is that creationism (whether young earth or intelligent design) is so obviously stupid that it forces you to confront what is actually going on. For many people, economics or foreign policy (or at least subtopics in these areas) are difficult enough that you are tempted to cede that they might have a legitimate point of view, but one that is nonetheless very different than yours…
mikethemadbiologist | March 8, 2009One of things I never got around to blogging about after the 2008 election was how lower-income whites do vote Democratic, even in the South, despite misperceptions on both the left and right to the contrary. In that vein, Amanda, commenting on Alexandra Pelosi's campaign documentary, clarifies a phenomenon that I couldn't quite jibe with the polling data (and the long history of lower income whites voting for Democrats at higher rates than other white economic groups). What we're witnessing is the transformation of a class-based term into a culture-based one:
But please look past the…