ScienceBlogs Channel : Politics

They aren't just racist [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:07:23 -0500

Here's a little chat with the president of the Montana tea party, Tim Ravndal:

Dennis Scranton: "I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions."

Tim Ravndal: "@Kieth, OOPS I forgot this aint(sic) America no more! @ Dennis, Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?"

Ravndal has since been ousted. Don't joke about murdering gays where the liberals might notice!

Read the comments on this post...

[Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:17:59 -0500

What are they thinking? The protesters complaining about that violent, militant religion of Islam building a mosque/community center in New York are now towing about a pair of deactivated missiles at their rallies. I guess Christians are trying to send a message that they're friendly and non-threatening.

I've been doing it wrong for so many years. When I was protesting the Iraq war, maybe it would have been a more effective demonstration if we'd rented a tank and put a sign on it, "Honk if you hate war". When we protested that biological warfare work going on at the Dugway Proving Grounds, maybe we should have put talcum powder in envelopes and mailed them to the local newspapers. It's so much more reassuring to the other side when you couch your message of respectful coexistence in military gear.

The guy who donated the missiles to the protest has a poll. He's just clueless on so many levels.

Do you want the Mosque @ Ground Zero?

Sure, why not 66%
Hell no! 34%

Read the comments on this post...

My Esteem for Calvin Coolidge Just Went Up [EvolutionBlog]

Jason Rosenhouse none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:55:43 -0500

Recently i have been browsing through a book called What About Darwin?, which is a collection of quotations from various worthies regarding -- surprise! -- Charles Darwin. One that jumped out at me was a statement from Calvin Coolidge. This is from a letter he wrote to his father:

I see [Oliver Wendell] Holmes [Sr] is dead, the Autocrat of the Breakfast table on whom the years sat so lightly and who had only just declared that he was 85 years young. No one but [William] Gladstone is left of those great men that were born in 1809. Darwin is gone, the great expounder of evolution, a scientist equal to Newton. Our own [Abraham] Lincoln finished he life's work when he struck the shackles from four millions of slaves and saw the surrender of General Lee.

Incredible that this did not become an issue in the 1924 Presidential election! It seems Republicans didn't used to be crazy.

Read the comments on this post...

Johan Rockstrom TED talk: "Let the environment guide our development" [A Few Things Ill Considered]

coby none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:44:49 -0800

Here is a very good TED talk by Johan Rockstrom about human pressures, environmental constraints and possible futures.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Free Gregory Koger [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:06:16 -0500

Gregory Koger is an ex-con and a revolutionary communist…and none of that should matter in the slightest. He's also a person who was beat up, handcuffed, maced, arrested, and now faces the prospect of a three year jail sentence for the crime of holding up his iPhone to take pictures of police harrassment. Koger is the young man who was documenting Sunsara Taylor's protest of the behavior of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago (which, by the way, ought to change their name to drop the first word), and who, oddly, was manhandled and arrested for taking videos of the event, while Taylor herself, who was doing all the talking, got away relatively unhassled.

Koger has now been convicted of trespassing, and will be sentenced on Wednesday. The whole thing has been Kafkaesque — it's the most hysterical, overblown response to a guy taking a picture of a public event that I've ever heard of, and it's a slap against everyone's personal freedoms.

Here is the statement from Sunsara Taylor:

There is no justice in the outrageous conviction of Gregory Koger on charges of trespass, resisting arrest, and battery for the "crime" of videotaping a statement I gave at the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago after they dis-invited me from a long scheduled presentation I was to give on November 1st, 2009. Gregory Koger is not only innocent of all charges he has now been convicted of, he is a righteous and beautiful human being who all people seeking to live an ethical life should support as well as learn deeply from.

How is it that Gregory Koger came to be my videographer last November at the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago?

Gregory's struggle to understand the source of his own long and bitter experiences of injustice and dehumanization as a young man led him to conclusions that were about much more than himself.

How many young men these days put their bodies on the line to defend the doctors who provide the right to abortion women need to even have a chance at a decent and equal life?

Gregory traveled to Kansas to defend Dr. Leroy Carhart when Carhart was declared "Enemy #1" by the same forces who had long-persecuted the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller.

How many Americans these days take responsibility for stopping the torture committed by the U.S. government in our names, not only under Bush, but also under Obama? How many who claim to oppose the wars and occupations by the U.S. government of Iraq and Afghanistan do more than complain under their breath and then change the channel or turn the page?

Gregory donned the orange jumpsuit of Guantanamo detainees in public protests and he marched against these wars, determined to make his opposition felt by people everywhere, including our sisters and brothers across the globe.

How many white people even notice, let alone stand up against, the systematic police terror and brutality that is a fact of life for youth, especially Black and Latino youth, in the inner cities everywhere?

Gregory went to the Southside of Chicago to speak out against a spate of police shootings of young Black men. He has consistently exposed the disproportionate incarceration and violence experienced by Black people in the criminal justice system.

It is through his activity in these realms, as well as his work with the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund to get revolutionary literature into the U.S. prison system that now holds more than 2.3 million human beings, that I came to know Gregory. It was his interest in morality and ethics, in philosophy and revolution, as well as his passion for film that led him to volunteer for me the weekend I was scheduled to give a talk titled, "Morality Without Gods," at the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago.

The themes of my talk, which drew on the theoretical framework developed by Bob Avakian in his book, AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, examined the basis for a morality that is rooted neither in the brutality and ignorance of Biblical times nor the narrow-minded individualism and relativism of modern U.S. capitalism. I posed the need for a morality that both reflects and serves the struggle to bring into being a world free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, a communist world, a world where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings.

The irony is bitter; when it comes to "morality without gods," it is difficult to think of a starker living contrast than that between Gregory Koger and the conduct of the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago.

I recount all this not only to demonstrate how deeply immoral it is that the "Ethical" Humanist Society of Chicago, spearheaded by their president Matt Cole, has viciously and vengefully persecuted Gregory Koger. I recount this to make clear that it is not only Gregory who will suffer due to this outrageous and unjust verdict, but that all those who are victims of the many injustices and oppression that Gregory fought against will also suffer.

It is incumbent upon all who care about the truth, who care about justice and the human spirit, who care about freedom and rights of the most oppressed and exploited in this country and worldwide, to not only join in insisting that Gregory be immediately released on bail and his conviction overturned, but to learn from Gregory's example and step up their own involvement in the struggle for human emancipation.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Immediately send statements of support for Gregory to the defense committee AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

Donate money for the appeal. Go to the defense committee website for more information

Show your support at the sentencing hearing on September 8.

More information will be coming; keep in touch with the Ad Hoc Committee at AdHoc4Reason@gmail.com

The conviction was insane to begin with, but imprisoning a social activist for the crime of photography is simply beyond the pale.

Drop the charges and free Gregory Koger.

Read the comments on this post...

Tancredo Repeats Urban Myth [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:31:45 -0500

Uber-wingnut Tom Tancredo continues to bring the crazy, this time repeating yet another of those urban myths passed along in emails from one right wing loon to another.

"I remember a little thing, like Ms. Obama saying she didn't want any Christian artifacts in the White House during Christmas time," Tancredo said.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Dumbass Quote of the Day [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:08:52 -0500

From our old pal Joseph Farah:

Legally speaking, though, even in an increasingly secular society like ours, there is a reason same-sex marriages could never be recognized. A marriage that is not consummated has long been considered incomplete, not deserving of any legal recognition whatsoever. A marriage union that remains unconsummated never happened in the eyes of the law. So please tell me how a same-sex couple consummates one of these make-believe marriages? Acts of sodomy were never considered consummation in the eyes of the law. Again, this suggests that whatever it is the homosexual activists are trying to achieve through their relentless campaign, it is not marriage.

Read the comments on this post...

One Weekend After Glenn Beck and the Tea Buggers Misappropriate King, Let's Remember This Speech [Mike the Mad Biologist]

Mike none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:08:45 -0500

(from here)

Last weekend, Glenn Beck and his Tea Party dupes decided to 'reclaim' Martin Luther King's legacy. In light of that, this speech King gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis seems appropriate--and puts the lie to Beck's propaganda:

My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be in Memphis tonight, to see you here in such large and enthusiastic numbers...

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Why Democrats Always Lose the Rhetoric War: The "Amerian Taliban" Kerfuffle [Mike the Mad Biologist]

Mike none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:02:08 -0500

I'm no great fan of DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, but I'm on his side over his calling his book about movement conservatives "American Taliban." According to progressives such as Matt Yglesias, this title is unwarranted hyperbole*. Tristero explains to boychick Yglesias why the title works:

Matt has described a dismaying number of ways in which the right wing sounds terribly Taliban-ish. Rhetorically speaking, simply by engaging the notion that radical Islamists can be compared to the right wing GOP, the creepy similarities between their worldviews and values simply can't be avoided. Not reason, not logic, but the rhetorical structure of the argument creates a deep association which lingers on even after Matt goes through the exercise of explaining it away....

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

A Colbert Rally to Restore Truthiness [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:35:43 -0500

A poster at Reddit named mrsammercer has a brilliant idea: Stephen Colbert should hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial to restore truthiness to America. It came to her in a vision:

I was woken in the middle of the night by this(along with the sound of my cat getting ready to pee on the rug).
Think about it. It'll be just like Colbert's mockery of GW Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Dinner, but 500,000 people will be able to participate with him. We'll all stay totally in character as teabaggers. The kid with the microphone that interviews all the idiots at these things can come by and we'll ramble into his microphone.

This would be the high water mark of American satire. Half a million people pretending to suspend all rational thought in unison. Perfect harmony. It'll feel like San Francisco in the late 60s, only we won't be able to get any acid.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Beck Declares Himself the Savior [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:08:09 -0500

With all of the talk from conservatives about Obama being viewed as the messiah in mind, take a look at this video of Glenn Beck declaring that his rally and the movement he's trying to lead is on par with the American revolution and the end of slavery. Seriously:

Beck: This is the third Great American Awakening. There have been two. One started by George Whitfield, and it led to the American Revolution. The second one happened in the 1840s and '50s, and it started with people of faith, of all faiths, and it led to the freeing of the slaves. This one is going to restore our Constitution. It's going to restore individual responsibility. It's going to restore faith, hope, and charity.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

A Nagoya primer: with references to Star Wars, Kevin Bacon, LOL Cats, and Twitter [The World's Fair]

David Ng none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:42:25 -0500

Image: Nagoya Congress Center plus Millenium Falcon reworked from original photo by Paula Pedrosa. link.

Originally made for a series of Nagoya COP10 primers at Boing Boing (1 | 2 | SB | 3 | 4)

I: SORTING OUT THE VERNACULAR

So what is up with this Nagoya thing? Well, it's a big international meeting that is happening in Nagoya's Congress Centre (see the picture above), starting on October 18th and lasting until the 29th. No doubt, you weren't necessarily lured into finding out more by the conference's bouncy theme song. You certainly weren't intrigued by the reams of official documents, frequently released, yet all stoically written.

The problem is, is that there is a lot of jargon in how all these meetings go down. You have a "Conference of the Parties" (or COP), you have "Conventions," and you have "Secretariats." I chose not to mention the "Subsidiary Body" part, because I believe that would have formally made the previous sentence the most boring in the universe. And as if that wasn't bad enough, a lot of these documents have been written in a painful policy speak/legalese type of language, seemingly in an effort to make readers endorse the extinction of the writers responsible. Worse still, Nagoya isn't getting a ton of media coverage, and that means you don't tend to have needed public commentary like you did with similar recent outings (for instance, Copenhagen comes to mind).

Lucky for us, there seems to be a lot of similarities between these United Nations' affairs and how planetary politics appear to be run in the world of Star Wars. In any event, the similarities are good enough to warrant having a go at bridging the two. This might be simplifying things a bit, but the analogy would basically work a little like this:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Tarryl Clark is not Michele Bachmann [Greg Laden's Blog]

Greg Laden none@example.com — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:29:49 -0500

I just thought I'd put this up on Jaf's recommendation as an example of a non-dirty campaign ad. Substance free, perhaps, but at least it's not smear. Read Jaf's update on the Minnesota Campaigns and their ads.

As Jaf points out, Bruce Kennedy was such a nice guy, and Minnesotans are so nice, that Kennedy, when running for office, had to make his own attack ads against himself. Like this one:

And this one:

Read the comments on this post...

Brewer Freezes in the Headlights [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:09:41 -0500

Here's one of the most embarrassing bits of video you will ever see from a major politician. This is Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer giving her opening statement during a debate with her opponents in the upcoming election, explaining to voters why they should vote for her. A mildly confident 4th grader could have appeared more composed and intelligent.

By the way, she also claimed during this debate that God put her in place to save the state. Any time you hear anyone declare that God put them in place for a purpose, your only response should be to point and laugh.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Fun Answers from the Beck Rally [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:42:24 -0500

Here's a very amusing interview with a woman from the Glenn Beck rally last weekend, trying to answer the question of when American lost its honor. She starts by complaining about Rev. Wright, then declares him a Muslim. Then she claims that his whole life was preparing to run for president and that's why he's covering up his Muslim faith. But if that was the case, why would he have chosen to go to Rev. Wright's church rather than a more mainstream church that would not be controversial? The mind boggles.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Insane Quote of the Day [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:03:29 -0500

This one, from uber-wingnut Gary Bauer, goes way beyond being merely dumbass. It's downright insane.

"Progressives and Islamists are indeed on the same side. Their common disdain for Christianity explains why left-wing judges in America find any inkling of Christianity in the public square unconstitutional, while Islamist judges in the Middle East deem it executable. Their common view that life is expendable explains the left's embrace abortion-on-demand and why the Islamists don't hesitate to deploy their own children for homicide bombings."

Read the comments on this post...

David Cross on the Tea Parties [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:31:43 -0500

The hilarious David Cross riffing on the Tea Baggers and their bizarre, hypocritical sense of nationalism.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

ICR Drops Texas Education Suit [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:06:13 -0500

The Institute for Creation Research has apparently decided not to appeal their losing court case challenging the state of Texas for denying them the authority to grant graduate degrees in science.

It was not until the September 2010 issue of the ICR's Acts & Facts, however, that the ICR seems to have publicly commented on the decision, with Henry Morris III, the ICR's chief executive officer, writing, "ICR's legal battle is over."

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Maggie Gallagher Meets St. Peter [Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Ed Brayton none@example.com — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 09:05:18 -0500

The brilliant Rob Tisinai has produced another informative and amusing video exposing the anti-gay marriage crowd. This one is a cartoon that has bigot Maggie Gallagher meeting St. Peter at the gates of heaven.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Rarely have I been so thoroughly misconstrued [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:56:41 -0500

A while back, Larry Arnhart wrote an article claiming that evolution supported libertarianism. I was invited to write a reaction essay, which I did, and I argued that evolution supported diversity, and that it was silly and inappropriate to claim it for a single narrow human political movement.

I'd suggest that my criticisms must have stung, because Arnhart has now written a rebuttal to my rebuttal, except that he seems to comprehend neither what I said nor the basics of evolution, so I think everything I wrote sailed right past him on a cloud of confusion. Especially since his response was to accuse me of being a creationist.

Stop laughing. He's serious. He repeats this bizarre claim several times.

But I was surprised when I saw his argument that evolutionary science cannot explain morality and politics at all. He conceded that Charles Darwin himself was a classical liberal. But he insisted that this had nothing at all to do with his evolutionary science, because science cannot explain the moral life of human beings, which is completely unconstrained by natural evolution.

When, of course, my essay said nothing of the kind. I said that Darwin's personal political preferences did not privilege his favored views as somehow having the blessing of four billion years of evolution, because there have been many contributors to evolutionary theory — and I named Kropotkin, Dobzhansky, Lewontin, and Crick — with different views. Nowhere do I claim that biology makes no contribution to morality and politics, or that our moral history has been unconstrained by evolution. There's a difference between saying, "your political philosophy is not the ultimate goal of evolution" and "your political philosophy is independent of history, experience, and biology". I said the former, not the latter.

It gets crazier. Apparently, now I'm in the pocket of the Pope.

Pope John Paul II agreed with Wallace in his claim (in a 1996 statement) that evolution could account for the human body but not for the human soul as expresed in morality, politics, and religion. To explain that, John Paul insisted, we needed an "ontological leap"--some kind of miraculous transformation that could not be explained by science.
Oddly enough, it seems, Myers agrees with Wallace and Pope John Paul about this "ontological leap," because Myers seems to believe that human beings have moral and intellectual powers that are expressed in political life that are completely unconstrained by evolutionary nature. As he says: "To suggest that the science of evolution supports a specific view of the narrowly human domain of politics is meaningless. Evolutionary theory supports the existence of ants and eagles, lichens and redwood trees, and finding an evolutionary basis for any human activity is trivial."

No, there was no magic leap. Our natures are not independent of our biological properties. I'm saying that libertarianism is as much a necessary outcome of evolution as petticoats. That does not imply that petticoats are independent of biology.

Ah, libertarians. They're the crazy, deaf, bellowing uncle of the great family of political perspectives.

Read the comments on this post...