Celebrating Reason

A couple of bright spots in the effort to see reason valued as a keystone in any decision making.

First, today is Darwin's' birthday; Observation and the application of reason led him to one of the great scientific discoveries. It defines most of modern biological science today, including much of what is done in the medical field.

And in the Medical field, the anti-vaccine forces have suffered a major defeat.

Vaccines didn't cause autism, court rules

special court ruled Thursday that parents of autistic children are not entitled to compensation in their contention that certain vaccines caused autism in their children.

"I must decide this case not on sentiment, but by analyzing the evidence," one of the "special masters" hearing the case said in denying the families' claims, ruling that the families had not presented sufficient evidence to prove their allegations.

Something to celebrate on Darwin's day
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Science

B106 and a Trillion Dollars

My morning commute is fairly short and fairly regimented. One of the habits that has been refined to an automatic behavior is my radio listening.

I start with SC-ETV radio until the local programing starts at about 749, then I move over to B-106 (Pop music, local traffic, quick news, weather) until I get to work just before 8am.

Today during their 'humor' portion of the morning news they started talking about the economic recovery act and just how much a trillion dollars is. They mentioned the twelve zeros, the lay 100 dollar bills side by side and circle the earth 30+ time, the number of years a trillion seconds is (30,000+) and other fun facts.

The one they didn't mention in their subtle efforts to discredit the bailout.

A trillion dollars is about how much we have spent on the US military, every year for the last for years (including the war effort costs).

I wonder how and why they missed that 'fun fact'?


Tags
Economics, Iraq

Not At All Surprised

Haggard faces more gay-sex accusations

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay-sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard

This man's faith taught him that homosexuality is a vile sin and then he, as a leader of his faith, spreads that gospel of hate. At the same time he speaks against our gay population, a very weak kneed Haggard is engaging in gays sexual acts (with prostitutes and young members of his congregation). Haggard denounced gays from his pulpit, on the political battle fields he fought to deprive gays of most civil rights all the while he was working very hard to keep the truth about his own sexuality buried, from America, his church, his family and maybe even himself.

Nothing new, it is common, seen among many christian sects but it is a vile behavior none the less.

What is most disgusting, both on the part of Haggard and his old church, is the on going effort to 'rehabilitate' his image. Haggard seems claim that he was the hurt party and has been made to suffer, at the same time he and his old church are still aggressively covering up his homosexual and predatory behavior. He has preached hate toward homosexuals, he has made claims that gays were involved in disgusting sinful actions and they they where not worthy of being full members of our society. At the same time he engaged in the very activity he claimed was a great wrong. When discovered he first lied, then when presented with overwhelming evidence of his actions, he fled; leaving behind him a vaguely worded confession and an ongoing cover-up at his old church.

Just another indicator that homosexuality is a natural part of the spectrum of human sexuality, and that any damage done to society on this issue comes not from the out gays, but from those who preach that homosexuality is wrong.


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Sexuality

1/4 Inch of Snow

It's time for the whole of the midlands to freak out.

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Weather

Our House Is Burning Down

And we are offered stale failed old ideas.

Governor pushes budget cap, ending corporate income tax, proposes truce with Legislature

...

Gov. Mark Sanford outlined a mix of new and old ideas in his annual State of the State address he felt would improve the state economy, improve education and streamline state government.

Lets see what our leadership has offered. He wants more tax cuts, school choice, a budget cap and more power for the executive branch. That sounds a whole lot like it Stanfords plan when things were working well. This is an amazing one size fits all solution, no matter what it happen in our state, nation or world, these are the steps we need to take to advance. The economy is going great, cut taxes and give us state paid access to private schools, economy is tanking, well, lets see, lets cut taxes and give us state paid access to private schools.

In addition, these ideas sounds a lot like what we have been doing in DC for the last few years, and we all see how well that worked out.

What I find most interesting is the insistence on more tax cuts. In light of the impact of last years tax cuts, they were the direct cause of our current budget crisis,.

Economists suggest that worst effects of national economic downturn have yet to hit state

The hundreds of millions of dollars that have been cut thus far this year from the state budget have more to do with recently approved tax cuts than the faltering economy, state economists say.

Ominously, they think the worst of the nation’s economic problems have not yet hit South Carolina.

it takes great courage (or a firm adherence to dogma over reality) to continue to push this idea when considering the national economic situation.

I guess they think that our the last tax cuts were so successful that another is obviously a great idea. Of course you have to understand the goal of those who want these cuts, they do not like government, they want to kill government, and the surest way to do that is to keep it so poor it is impotent that it is useless.

and it appears to be working.


Tags
South Carolina, Tax

Evolution, In Action

Creationist and the rest of the anti-science crowd are a funny bunch. They denounce evolution as a lie, as imposable, as never occurring. Then we see something like this.

Tamiflu, the Roche Holding AG drug for influenza, can’t fight most infections that have been diagnosed in the U.S. flu season so far, health experts said.

More than half of the flu viruses that have been analyzed in the U.S. this season are of the H1N1 strain, said Joseph Bresee, chief of influenza epidemiology and prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Virtually all the H1N1 viruses the agency has tested, 72 of 73, are Tamiflu-resistant, he said.

The emergence of Tamiflu-resistant strains that can spread easily from one person to another makes it more difficult for doctors to use drugs to treat people who are at high risk of severe flu complications, such as pneumonia, he said.

Yep, that's evolution. The environment changes (Tamiflu is created) and the species (the H1N1 virus) has to adapt. The members of the species that can change and resist the new threat (Tamiflu) continue on, those who don't die off.

These changes occurred over the time frame of just a few years, imagine the changes that can be seen over millions (hundreds of millions) of years. It is quite simply evolution, the same forces that enabled the virus to change to survive exposure to Tamiflu have, over the eons, created the great diversity of life that we see on out planet.

I am left wondering just how ill-informed or downright dishonest all the evolution deniers are. How can you ignore all the evidence to pretend something so obvious is not occuring?



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Evolution, Science

Fantastic Judicial News

Enron’s Skilling loses appeal

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld former Enron Corp. CEO Jeff Skilling's convictions for his role in the once-mighty energy giant's collapse

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Enron

Al Franken Beats Coleman

The votes have been counted, the counts have been checked and the disputed ballets reviewed. Now that it is all done it is clear that Al Franken (D-Saturday Night Live) wins by 225 votes.

Now it's off to court we go, since Coleman has made it clear that if he lost he would sue to overturn the result.

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Senate

They Lie Like Rugs

Since the moment that the Discovery Institute lost its Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case ( the lawsuit that beat back the efforts to force a scientific lie onto the children of the Dover area ) the fine folks behind the effort to sell Intelligent Design to the schools of the United States have been trying to spin their defeat as the result of anything but it's base cause; The idea they are trying to sell (Intelligent Design) is a silly fantasy with no scientific basis.

Their most current effort has been an attack on one of the expert witnesses. As is the normal case when dealing with these people, the attack is BS and is quickly debunked.

The scientific reality, of course, is entirely different. First, there’s a perfectly good reason why I compared the clotting treatment in Pandas to Darwin’s Black Box (DBB). They are indeed nearly identical, and that’s because Behe himself wrote both of them. Second, Behe actually did state that the entire pathway is irreducibly complex in DBB. Casey might have skipped over those pages, but I didn’t. Third, as a result, the absence of any components of the cascade in any organism is indeed a direct contradiction of Behe’s formulation of ID. And finally, even Luskin’s “irreducible core” has fallen apart as the result of the most recent research findings on the system.

Casey seems to forget — or to ignore — the fact that Behe has never even attempted to do any scientific research to show that he is right. He ignores the fact that ID’s critics have produced a boatload of research showing Behe to be wrong while Behe himself has done no research on the system that might support Luskin. As a result, his attempts at rehabilitating the clotting cascade as an “icon” of ID are a complete failure. So, for the umpteenth time, let’s go through this again

.

Read the whole bit, it is quite good.




Tags
Intelligent Design, Lies

A Measured Response?

Hamas has been lobbing an occasional small rocket into Israel, a rare few of these rockets actually hit something and a few civilians have been injured or killed. Hamas claims that these rocket firings are in response to Israels past actions, using this as a very thin justification to excuse their actions.

Israel has been bombing Gaza in retaliation to Hamas' retaliation of past Israeli retaliations. So far Israel has killed almost 500 people in Gaza, the vast majority civilians. The exchange of fire is clearly not balanced, and even the Israeli defense ministry has indicated that they do not think this action will stop the missile fire.

All this blood is being spilled for very little gain. In the end I suspect that all Israel has actually done is create a few thousand more very angry people, some of who will eventually seek to retaliate against Israel for the attacks they have had to endure over the last week.

And in reply Israel will again overreact and create a few thousand more radicals for Hamas (or Hezbollah or some other group) to use to keep their cycle of violence going.

Maybe one day someone will notice that this type of behavior has a history of limited success.

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Israel, Palestine

Happy New Year

After a long break to re-charge the batteries, vacation, attend to family issues, hold thanksgiving and Christmas and time to do nothing, it is time to get back to work.

Let 2008 rest in peace and lets us all welcome 2009, praying for a far better and more equitable future for all of mankind.


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Holiday

A Civics Test

Another sigh of what is wrong with our country, our leaders are fundelmentally clueless.

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

If you are curious, the test is here, and it isn't that hard.

You answered 32 out of 33 correctly — 96.97 %

Average score for this quiz during November: 78.0%
Average score: 78.0%

So you have to wonder how our leaders did so poorly.

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Leadership

Bailing Out CitiBank

Well it seems that we (as a nation) are bailing out another bank, this time to the tune of 325 billion dollars plus (in investment and loan guarantees). One of the justifications made for this huge outlay of taxpayer money is " they are to big to let fail".

It should now be crystal clear to all that mega corporations are a a huge risk to our nation. Once they gain a certain size they can no longer be held accountable to the rules of capitalism and put or economy at risk. We, as a nation should never allow companies to get to big to fail.

But, if this is the case, why did we (as in the US Government) approve the merger of Delta and NorthWest, and why does our government actively support the merger of Wells Fargo and Wachovia? Are we not creating other companies that are going to be to big to fail? And when they hit hard times will they not simply get in line for their taxpayer funded multi-billion dollar payout.


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Capitalism

Some Friday Blog Links

Since I still have not found the time to write much

Band of Butters notes numbers don't lie.


When considering the bail-out of the auto companies, Badtux reminds us to consider the unemployment impact when making decisions.


Crooks and Liars teaches us an important lesson, if you want to get a standing ovation from the US Senate, all you have to do is get convicted of multiple felonies.



an early and incredibly stupid shot in the war on Christmas is dissected at No More Mr. Nice Blog.





Tags
Blogs

A Center Path

The early appointments in the Obama administration seem to come from the more from the center than the left.

I find this a bit confusing since, according to so many on the right, Obama is a socialist (if not a flat out communist) and is working to create a socialist America, why is he selecting people who are centrist for so many post, does this mean that the center is socialist?

Just a stray thought.


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Obama Administration

Good Friday Morning

Still here, still busy, I hope to have a real post up later today (work willing)

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Work

I Am Alive And Well

(well, at least as well as I ever am)

But overloaded at work, and catching my breath from the last 6-8 weeks. So this is about all I will get done here today.

Everyone have a great Monday.




Tags
Blogs

Prediction Review

I said

Democrats Gain 8 in the Senate (with no losses)

Right now they are up 6 with three races still being counted or contested. I think I will have been off by 1 or 2 when all is said and done.

Democrats Gain 25 in the House (losing 3 seats)

Well we have gained 23 so far, but lost 4 (1 more than I expected). There are a number of races still in the mix, but I think I will be off by 3 or so when the dust settles.

Obama gets 52% of the popular vote and 364 electoral votes.

Dead on perfect.

Over all not a bad performance overall.


Tags
Election 2008

More Elections Stats (with Maps)

And these should scare the heck out of Republicans

First the map showing where Republican strength is Growing.


Now, where Democratic Parties strength is moving up.





The Republican party saw growth in the Appalachian Mountains through Tennessee, Arkansas and into Oklahoma. The rest of the US is very blue, including almost the whole of South Carolina.

Tags
Election 2008

Another Nice Stat About The Vote

America's youth are not real happy with Republicans.

Young voters diverged sharply from the population as a whole, preferring Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin by 66% to 32% in the NEP. This is by far the highest share of the youth vote obtained by any candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age categories in 1976. In past elections from 1976 through 2004, young voters diverged by an average of only 1.8 percentage points from the popular vote as a whole. 2004 had set the previous record for an age gap

A 2 to 1 preference is astounding.



Tags
Election 2008

A Great Day

A Democrat in the White House, nice gains in the Senate and House and a fresh start for the country.

Obama has been left an absolute mess but this isn't all bad. When you are rebuilding something you also have the opportunity to make needed changes. Since Obama now is faced with rebuilding our economy, our military, our infrastructure our balance sheet and so much more, he will have the opportunity to make the needed changes to grow our country.

Two of the early keys that will indicate if the Obama administration will be a positive one are governance and accountability.

Obama need to run the country with an eye to running the country well. Bush viewed his administrations first job as getting more republicans elected and appointed and hired into government. He did not care if this was good or bad for the nation, only if it benefited his party. Obama can not allow this to happen on his watch. The second issue is, holding those who have misused their authority accountable for their actions. This will be an first step in righting past wrongs and will provide an example to those now holding power and those who will hold power in the future, that violations of the law will not be forgotten or forgiven once the administration changes.

God bless America and God bless Obama, we have a lot of work to do, and we will need all the help we can get.




Tags
Election 2008, Obama

Prediction Time

Democrats Gain 8 in the Senate (with no losses)
Democrats Gain 25 in the House (losing 3 seats)
Obama gets 52% of the popular vote and 364 electoral votes.

I hope I am right


Tags
Election 2008

South Carolina May Not Be A Competive State

But early this morning the turnout at a few of the precincts in my area was astounding. 3 or 4 time the normal amount of voters queued up at just after 7am.

So, join the in crowd and go out and vote today.


Tags
Election 2008, Vote

Absolutely Situationaly Unaware

This is a perfect example of one of the many problems with the modern Republican party. To many of their thinkers are as dump as posts. One of the standard questions in polling is the 'is the country moving in the right direction'. In the last month a number of polls have presented us with the response.

Wall St Journal - Wrong Direction 76%
Bloomberg - Wrong Direction 84%
Newsweek - Wrong Direction 86%
Pew - Wrong Direction 86%

AP, CBS, CNN and other have similar numbers. It is clear that the American public, by an overwhelming percentage, are very dissatisfied with the direction our nation is headed.

Now listen to what online editor of the National Review had to say.

We're One Day Away from Changing America

[Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Obama said that a few ago in Florida. Am I the only one who doesn't want to change America in any fundamental way? Does that make me crazy? And alone?

Crazy? well based on much of her work, maybe; Alone, not at all, about 15% of the population are happy with the direction of the country. So she is not alone, but seeing a statement like this from a person who is supposed to be intimately involved in the daily public discourse is astounding.

How stupid and detached from reality do you have to be to say this? Even the Republican candidate try to run on a platform based on change. Yet she apparently is totally unaware of the massive dissatisfaction of the people of Americia with our Republican leadership.

Someone buy this lady a subscription to some media outlet other than Faux News, she needs to be exposed to truth and not dogma based fantasy.



Tags
Election 2008, Republicans, Stupidity

McCain's Camp, A Stray Thought

Has anyone running for President ever given people fewer reasons to vote for them than John McCain?

He has given us countless number of reasons to vote against Obama (at least a never ending stream of half truths, smears and attacks), but in the last one to two months I do not remember seeing his camp giving a single reason why he should be president.



Tags
Election 2008, McCain

GOPs America ?

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Cartoons

Last Minute Moves

It appears that with only 4 days to go until the election that both campaigns are making late media purchases in new areas.

Obama is buying time in Georgia, North Dakota and believe it or not Arizona.

And McCain is adding a state to his media efforts, also Arizona.

You know it isn't going well for McCain when he is having to by add time in his home state with only 4 days to go.

Tags
Election 2008

GOP Ticket's Appalling Contempt for Knowledge

Christopher Hitchens has a little to say about Sarah.

it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."

It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.


...

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

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Palin

Palin Knifes McCain

I hope John can get a little help getting that knife out of his back.

I am not real sure, but I don't think that it is proper etiquette to announce your intent to run for an office in the next election cycle while you are still supposed to be helping your candidate get elected to that position this year.

But, that is what McCain's lipsticked pitbull just did.

However, based on her past behavior, this should surprise no one. She did this on every step of her rise to the Governor House.


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Palin

An Important Fact, Expressed Well

Could it be that Americans are rejecting the far-right Culture War? Could it be that they see through the tactical misinformation and manipulation of the "Culture of Life" and recognize it instead as a Culture of Lies? Even with a McCain victory the trend lines are obvious, the Culture War issues no longer resonate, especially with younger voters.

Let's be clear. I don't know anyone who would take away the right for a person to believe what they choose, to follow their faith, however they interpret it. The Culture of Lies is not about what the far-right believes or their right to believe it. The lies are about how they distort facts trying to impose what they believe on everyone else, taking away other Americans' rights in the process.

If you want to believe dinosaurs and man walked the Earth together 6,000 years ago, when the Earth allegedly began, go right ahead -- but let's not teach that in public schools. If you hold, as a matter of faith, that pregnancy begins at an unknowable moment of conception, most people I know will fight for your right to believe that, but will oppose any effort to impose that ideology over basic medical facts in public policy. If you believe that teens really will remain abstinent and thus need no knowledge of prevention methods, that may work for you, but to continue wasting $1.5 billion dollars on programs that don't achieve that goal, and actually put teens at risk, seems odd to many taxpayers. You believe that gay people "choose" to live a "lifestyle" that subjects them to discrimination, fine. You believe that women should not be allowed to make their own personal life decisions -- that's your choice -- no one is forcing you to use contraception, plan your family, have an abortion, or work outside the home. And at death, should you suffer from a terminal illness and want every possible technology and treatment to keep you alive, no one -- other than your insurance company -- would deny you your belief that only God can end life, no matter how much science you use to keep yourself alive. The question on the table is whether your personal, individual beliefs should apply to everyone else, regardless of their personal, individual and deeply held beliefs.

For a generation, the far-right has promoted the biggest lie of all -- that they are the ones fighting for individual rights, the ones whose values are threatened.

I am not sure I agree that the culture war is being rejected, but the divers behind the war are getting old and dying and as the writer noted, the youth of America, for the most part, reject this silliness.

Overall this article ask for our society to return to using reason not dogma to craft out national policies.

An argument that is one I eagerly embrace.

Tags
Government, religious right