Monthly Archives: July 2007
Politics 4, Science 1
Radley Balko calls Carmona out on his own tendency to distort science:
One issue Carmona didn’t address is medical marijuana. Last year, the FDA put out a baldly political press release claming that “no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States.”
This is flatly wrong. A wide-ranging 1999 Institute of Medicine report actually did show medical benefits from smoked marijuana while also finding minimal harmful side effects. The FDA press release was right in one respect: There have been no conclusive studies since. But there’s a good reason for that: The federal government won’t allow them.
Carmona didn’t mention medical marijuana in his list of grievances because Carmona isn’t any more interested in actual science on the medical marijuana issue than the Bush administration is. When the New York Times asked him his position on the issue, he gave the odd reply that he was against medical marijuana because, “Smoking is bad for you.”
In other interviews, Carmona has said medical marijuana is a “science issue, not a political issue,” which would be a great answer had Carmona actually looked at the science during his tenure and not merely at the political landscape.
And this:
Last year, for example, Carmona boldly claimed that America’s weight problem was a “terror within,” and that the threat posed by obesity would “dwarf 9/11, or any other terrorist event.”
Carmona trumpeted claims from the Centers for Disease Control that obesity kills 400,000 Americans each year to support his bizarre and completely out-of-context comparison, despite claims from critics that the 400,000 was exaggerated and flawed by poor methodology.
The CDC later admitted its obesity mortality estimate was off by a factor of 15.
Read the whole thing. Don’t expect the left to have hamsters over this they way they do about global warming. Because distorting the facts and politicizing science is only an issue for Republicans. It’s fine when Democrats and nanny-staters do it.
Vick
As a Falcons fan, I suppose I should say something about Mike Vick’s indictment. But Balko says what I want to say:
According to the indictment, losing dogs were drowned, hanged, or covered in water, then electrocuted.
Guess we’ll wait for the trial to see the extent of Vick’s involvement. But if he was? The hell with him. And no, I don’t think there’s anything unlibertarian about laws against animal cruelty.
If this is true, I’m very happy to throw Mike Vick under a bus. What a waste. I was so excited when the Falcons signed him. I was at UVa when he was clobbering us from VT and watched him bring the Hokies to within a trace of a championship (Peter Warrick shouldn’t have been playing anyway).
I really thought he’d be something. Just not . . . this.
The Law
Lawsuits are still gobbling up $865 billion a year from our nation. So when is Congress going to step in and socialize legal care?
Remember Kids
Corruptly slashing the budget of regulatory agencies to let your political allies and campaign donors get away with murder is only a crime when you’re a Republican.
When Democrats do it, it’s OK.
Pot-Kettle
Just a reminder of what was going on four years ago, when it was the Democrats deriding an all-night debate session as political theater while the GOP insisted that they were doing the right thing.
And then, back to today, where the positions are reversed.
Seriously, folks, why do we take these lunkheads so seriously? It’s clear that they think this whole political thing is a great big joke. The only issues they have a consistent stance on from one year to another is that they are in favor of getting elected.
ITMFA?
Lee at Right-Thinking — a conservative, BTW — has a great post on impeaching the President. He’s getting the usual “you’re just a Leftist; you want to impeach him for invading Iraq” non-sequitur responses from the Right. And I’m not sure he actually supports impeachement. Nor do I.
But it’s worth a read.
Yessir Yassir
Did Arafat die of AIDS? Color me skeptical. This is appearing in an Israeli newspaper and is fairly unsourced. Still, if true, it will be a bombshell in the muslim world. Imagine if one of their “greatest leaders” was also engaged in evil practices. Methinks some heads in the middle east are ‘sploding right now.
Wednesday Linkorama
Feinstein said she wants to change a law used by Sutton that required the agents receive at least 10 years for firing their weapons.
Um, Di? You’re gun-grabbing party was the one that passed those fucking laws.
a) all our politicans will claim credit for this;
b) they will all claim our children are in danger and need more government programs.
Shoe On Other Foot
So, I wonder what the GOP think of the filibuster rule now? Remember when they had power and the filibuster was pure unadulterated evil that was destroying our country? Remember how the Gang of 14 were evil monsters for working out a compromise?
Real conservatives like me were warning that the filibuster needed to be preserved in case the Dems got power. And we were mocked. Now we’re warning about the need to restrain Presidential power. Will we be ignored again?
Ellison == Stalin
Seems in our haste to get our britches in a bunch over the first Muslim in Congress, we forgot to ask whether or not he was nut.
Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler’s later seizure of emergency powers.
“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Mr Ellison said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box – dismiss you”.
See, here’s the thing. Jerks like Ellison are poisoning the well for everyone. Now if I say that I think the Bush Administration used 9/11 to empower themselves, I’m in that nutbag group. It provides the Right an easy response: “So you think Bush is Hitler? You think 9/11 was the Reichstag?”
Memo to the left: cut it out. As Jon Stewart said, the comparisons to Hitler are demeaning to Hitler – he worked too hard being a psychotic murdering monster to be used as the comparison for every Tom, Dick and Harriet Myers that comes down the pipe. What are we going to compare someone to when he’s a real Hitler? For Chrissake, we have genocides going on in Darfur and Congo. What do we say about them?
And try to learn something of history beyond World War II movies. For example, read about the Zimmerman Telegram, which would make an excellent discussion point for Iraq.
The Plural of Anecdote
One of the things that drives me berzerk about the global warming debate is the use of anecdotal evidence. Global warming supporters will cite Hurricane Katrina or a hot summer as evidence that global warming exists. Global warming detractors will cite a cold winter as evidence that it’s false.
In science, this is known as “cherry picking” — taking only the data that support your view instead of analyzing all the data. Global warming is a slow process, one that’s much more subtle than the natural year to year variations in global temperature. It doesn’t just show up in July all of the sudden.
Imagine that you were listening to the radio. Sometimes the music is loud, sometimes the music is soft. But the volume is being turned up slowly — so slowly you can hardly notice. But after a while, you have a headache.
A graph of the planet’s temperature will look very spikey as we have cold years and warm years — literally noise. But slowly, the spikes are moving upward.
Whatever you think of global warming, the plural of anecdote is not data (hat tip, Robert). A hurricane or a heat wave do not prove global warming any more than a cold snap disproves it. It’s the slow steady accumulation of planet-wide data that reveals the process.
Monday Morning Linkorama
Things that amuse while I ponder my potential pending unemployment.
Finally, on BBTN, Phillips and Kruk debate the “Worst Franchise in Sports.” Phillips chooses the Phillies because their next loss will be their 10,000th. This is problematic for several reasons: first, because that says as much about the longevity of the franchise (starting in 1890) as anything else. Second, the team is only 4 games out this year and has a lot of good players. Third, the team has been in the WS as recently as 1993. The Phils aren’t close to being the worst franchise in baseball, much less all of pro sports.
Not to be outdone, Kruk chose the New Orleans Saints.
Who played in the NFC Championship Game.
Last year.
Nice work, everybody.
Then I took my first sip. Nothing in this world could have prepared me for that. The initial thought that came rushing into my mind was from a deep, dark place: Oh, that’s bad.
I didn’t know quite what I had just tasted, but my mind immediately painted a picture of someone going into a supermarket, opening every can in the canned fruit aisle, pouring all the various syrups into one 16-oz container, and hoping for the best. It was like an evil punch made from fruits that had no business ever knowing each other.
The second sip was even worse. This was when I first noticed the awful aftertaste. Initially, it reminded me of rancid peaches, but it quickly went downhill from there.
The Libertarian Center
Brink Lindsey argues that it is our destiny. I would agree, but only when our government is divided so that Democrats can block stupid GOP social meddling and Republicans can block stupid Dem economic meddling.