Palin Dismisses Climate Change as “Snake Oil Science”

Ex-Governor Sarah Palin at a logging conference in Northern California on Monday with regards to why she sued to repeal the Endangered Species Act in Alaska:

“We knew the bottom line … was ultimately to shut down a lot of our development … And it didn’t make any sense because it was based on these global warming studies that now we’re seeing (is) a bunch of snake oil science.”

Right.  Because she’s such a trusted authority on all things science.  This coming from a person who favors having creationism taught in public schools and believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

(H/T LAist)

“Who Cares?” of the Day: Sarah Palin Uses Notes

During Sarah Palin’s speech to the Tea Party Convention, it became clear that she was using notes scribbled on the palm of her hand much like an 8th-grader cheating on a test.  Despite her rudimentary method (note cards would’ve been cleaner), the only reason this is receiving such news coverage is because Palin herself lambasted Obama on Fox News over his use of a TelePrompter.  Apparently one cannot be an effective leader if one uses notes or a typed out speech to address the nation; but, reading notes from your own hand is okay.  Her hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Regardless, I think both sides are ridiculous for even giving this issue any weight.  The Republicans really have no room to talk to defend Palin on this issue, even though they will and they have.  Of course the Democrats are going to slam Palin for her palm notes.  Why wouldn’t they after having to defend Obama’s TelePrompter usage?  But when it comes down to it, it’s such a non-issue.  The fact that Obama and Palin both use crutches for their speeches or Q-and-A sessions is irrelevant.

What people should be more focused on instead is the content of what they’re saying.  It’s a waste of energy to be diverted into this back-and-forth argument over whose use of notes was more unbecoming of a politician when the real issue is what policies they are promoting and what their plans are for our nation.  Once again, both parties and the MSM play into this political theater and the substance of Palin’s speech and answers get lost in the din.  And, to me, that’s what will really affect America if she ends up being the GOP nominee for president in 2012.  Not if she happens to keep notes for her talking points.

Another Misleading Rasmussen Poll

According to the latest Rasmussen Poll, “75% Are Angry At Government’s Current Policies.”  Upon first glance, it implies that an overwhelming majority of Americans are angry at President Obama and Democrats.  It’s written just to rally the Republican base because simply stating that you’re angry with the current policies couldn’t be a more vague response to an even vaguer question.  It doesn’t tell us anything that really would be worthwhile to know: like, why one is angry with which policies.  Just like the disapproval ratings for the Health Care Bill are used to assume that because people aren’t happy with it, it means they don’t want reform, ignoring the fact that a lot of people dislike the reform because it doesn’t do enough.

This poll just offers a question of emotion – not policy – and shouldn’t be misconstrued as anything else.

GOP Doesn’t Want Bipartisan Health Care Bill – They Want Nothing

Republicans keep crying about how the Democrats didn’t even allow them to participate in the drafting of the health care bills, trying to undermine Obama’s push for bipartisanship and make it look like the Democrats are the ones who aren’t team players.

Republicans claim that the health care bill is socialist, a government takeover of the health care industry.

So, what do they propose in return?  According to their website, the GOP lists what they would like in the health care bill:

• Number one: let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines.
• Number two: allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do.
• Number three: give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs.
• Number four: end junk lawsuits that contribute to higher health care costs by increasing the number of tests and procedures that physicians sometimes order not because they think it’s good medicine, but because they are afraid of being sued.

Ezra Klein points out that all of these are already in the bill that every single Republican Senator voted against and continues to rally against today.

The Republican Party has no interest in any type of health care reform despite what they might say or type up on their website.  They have nothing at all to gain from it passing even if their constituency would, which is why they are the Party of No and are only in the business of self-perpetuation rather than governing or representing the real needs and interests of Americans.

Let’s go Democrats.  Grow some stones and make history.

Waterboarding is the New Spanking

U.S. soldier Joshua Tabor waterboarded his own 4-year-old daughter because she couldn’t recite the alphabet.

Waterboarding, you might remember, was one of the staple techniques of the Bush/Cheney “enhanced interrogation” methods also known as torture.  It involves the simulated drowning of a victim by elevating one’s legs and then pouring water over her rag-covered face, stopping just short of drowning.  It had previously been reserved for totalitarian regimes like the Khmer Rouge, but then became part of America’s way of treating both foreign and domestic terror suspects, and now apparently, has been co-opted by one man as a method of reprimanding toddlers.

This is what happens when torture becomes legalized and mainstream.  It’s not even called torture by the mainstream media and is defended and approved by federal appellate court Judge Jay Bybee and former Department of Justice official and current law professor John Yoo, who believes that it’s in the president’s powers to crush the testicles of an innocent child if he believes that the child’s father could provide sensitive information.

The brave men and women who serve our country are bound by their duty to follow orders.  They didn’t torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammad because they just came up with it on their own; they waterboarded him 183 times because they were ordered to do so by the highest powers of government.  And those very people are getting away with it completely scot-free. (Notice how in Newsweek they only write the word “torture” with quotes around it, as if it’s not really torture at all.)

And while these men who turned America into a nation that tortures its own citizens (Notice how Time magazine uses the phrase “equivalent to torture” instead of just saying “torture,” suggesting that even though these techniques might be equivalent to torture they might not actually be torture necessarily.) manage to ascend in their legal professions with nary a charge against them, GI Joshua Tabor gets arrested for assault.

Now, Tabor should be arrested for assault.  It’s unconscionable to think of a father torturing his own daughter for any transgression, let alone something as small as not having memorized her ABCs.  He should be charged for this crime and, if found guilty, given a lengthy prison sentence.  I just don’t understand how, when in the context of a man and his daughter, this torture technique is immediately greeted with appalling and repulsive reactions and formal charges, yet when it’s done 183 times to terror suspect, it’s legal, promoted, and encouraged.

Torture is torture.  It should always, always be illegal and those who condone and conduct it must be held accountable in a court of law.

(H/T Memeorandum)

FOX Nation: Not Fair, Not Balanced (Just Like Fox News)

Many of you probably have seen the unedited clips from Jon Stewart’s recent visit to Bill O’Reilly’s show, The O’Reilly Factor, where he contends that Fox News is essentially the media arm of the Republican Party.  O’Reilly disagrees.

Fox News posted the unaired segments from the interview on their Fox Nation website, where I went to watch.  Here’s a screen capture of what I saw when I first got there:

Out of all the possible related advertisements from the multitude of companies that pay for ad space on Fox, the one that appears next to Jon Stewart is a smear campaign run by politician Dana Walsh – who opposes health care reform and favors the War on Terror, even going so far as to call it “Islamic terror” – and who is looking to oust Nancy Pelosi from her seat in Congress in this fall’s election.

Before you even get that far, you can take a look at the items on the banner called Hot Topics.  I know it’s probably pretty small to read in the image so I’ll write them out for you: National Budget, 9/11 Terror Trial, Detroit Airliner Terror Plot, tea parties, Sarah Palin, Tim Tebow, The Constitution and Freedom.

Yes, one of the hot topics of February 4th, 2010 is the Constitution and Freedom, which if you click, will take you to a page with 8th-grade-history level videos that shows President Ronald Reagan (twice) as it talks about how the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and then when it asks the question about what would happen if a president or legislature passed a law that ran contrary to the Constitution, it of course shows President Barack Obama signing what looks like a bill into law.  Really subtle, Fox.  Really subtle.  I’m sure no one picked up on that.

You can guess that the rest of the Hot Topics all have a very Republican slant on them.  I clicked on the Tim Tebow link and was greeted with this at the top of the page:

Really? That was the screen capture of the Planned Parenthood ad that they chose?  Nothing riles up the base quite like a half-asleep-at-best-looking black man complaining about the ad from white, virgin, Christian athlete posterboy Tim Tebow (who happens to be a quarterback, a predominantly white position in football).  C’mon, Fox.  Every single article on the page is about liberal groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) bashing both Tebow AND Sarah Palin.  Because of course she’s involved in this.  Why wouldn’t she be?

After doing a little research, it seems that while Fox Nation is owned and run by Fox News Channel, it’s a slightly different entity.  When Fox News launched it on March 30th, 2009, they ran this introduction on their site:

Here at FOX Nation, the American people will be the stars. FOX News Channel, and Foxnews.com, will continue, of course, to provide fair and balanced news coverage, but FOX Nation is different. It is about you, what you care about, what you care about enough to post and comment upon. nything [sic] you want–just keep it decent and legal!

Of course, that’s not really true since it ends up being a forum where Fox editors compile Republican slanted articles from other political websites like NewsBusters.org – whose stated goal is to neutralize the liberal media bias with its own GOP bias apparently – and post them to the Fox Nation site, and then open up comments for people to post their bile and ignorance for other like-minded ilk to feed on and repeat as if simply agreeing with each other gave credibility to their views.

At least Fox News got it right in their own description of their new site: “Foxnews.com will continue to provide fair and balanced coverage, but FOX Nation is different.”  If by different you mean not fair or balanced and is a blatant news-sponsored propaganda machine for the GOP, then actually no, it’s just like Fox News.

Unintentional Racism of the Day

Courtesty of Facebook Ads:Are you Asian?! Perfect! Because YouTube is looking for engineers.  Apply today!

Emanuel Not Forgiven for Using the “R”-Word

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to the Special Olympics after it came to light that called the plan of a group of liberals looking to run an ad against Democrats “fucking retarded” during a closed-door strategy session back in August.

Special Olympics chairperson Tim Shriver wouldn’t accept at first.  Sarah Palin called for his termination, who likened his slur to that of the N-word. Rush Limbaugh countered Emanuel’s snafu by calling all liberals “retards.”

Classic Washington drama ensued.

Now, I think everyone can agree that there is a scale of intensity and vulgar associated with certain slurs.  Here in America, I think it’s safe to say that there are a few words that truly pack the most disdain, the most hideousness: nigger, faggot, and cunt.  You call someone those names and you’ve turned a corner from which there is no return.  Other than edgy comedy or for the purposes of transparency as in this blog, using those words is always offensive and inflammatory.  (And even in the comic sense, the comedy is derived from the words offensive and inflammatory nature.) For the use of those slurs, it would immediately peg the offender as a racist, a bigot, or a misogynist, and would require more than a simply “I apologize” to clear the air.

I just don’t see the same in the case of Emanuel’s use of “retarded.”  While it sure was inappropriate, childish, and counter-productive, I hardly believe it warrants his firing.  Granted, I don’t think many people are on the same bandwagon as Palin (who vocally opposed Limbaugh’s use of the term, as well, but came short of calling for his termination) but it does bring up the issue of political correctness.  It seems that our culture goes through phases where certain taboo words lose their stigma.  Growing up, you never heard the words shit, douchebag, or dick on regular television or even standard cable.  I distinctly remember the one episode of The Simpsons where one character calls their beloved dog, Santa’s Little Helper, a bitch – which technically was correct since she is a female dog – but my mother promptly turned off the set and forbade us kids from watching that show anymore.  Now?  You can hear just about everything on network TV, for better or worse.

(I digress – this isn’t about the vulgarity heard on television.  That’s for another day.)

Emanuel’s management and leadership style is notably abrasive.  This is nothing new; it’s essentially his well-known modus operandi.  I don’t personally know enough about how he handles other co-workers and staff but I imagine this whole “retarded” business wasn’t an isolated incident.  And based on the comments sections of many political blogs, I don’t see his words being all that egregious in this line of work.  Not that it excuses his behavior.  My first instinct was to dismiss his transgression as being not worthy of even mentioning, but then I thought about how I would feel if my boss were to use that term to describe an idea from a group of us employees and there’s no way that would fly with me.  I’d be very insulted.  He would lose some of my respect.  You expect someone, especially one in the highest levels of management, to adhere to a certain level of professionalism at all times.

It’s one thing to need a thick skin to handle criticism and the demands of a high-stress, high-profile job. It’s quite another to just call people and their ideas derogatory names.

Not All Atheists Against Mother Theresa Stamp

An atheist organization called the Freedom From Religion Foundation has come out against the US Postal Service’s new stamp commemorating the late Mother Teresa, because she is a religious figure.  Naturally, an uproar on the blogosphere has ensued and rightly so.  This type of inflammatory event is precisely what many bloggers – on both sides of the political divide – live for.

I have no real interest in treading the same territory that has already been well covered.  My issue is with the leap that many bloggers have taken in suggesting that one atheist group speaks for all atheists everywhere.

The main news article breaking the story that I found was from Fox News, which bore the title: “Atheist Group Blasts Postal Service for Mother Teresa Stamp.”  From what I’ve read about the event, this is true.  Unfortunately, many in the blogosphere have neglected to include the word “group,” suggesting that all atheists are in fact against this new, postage-related development:

Patrick Madrid: “Atheists ‘go postal’ over new Mother Teresa stamp”

Right Pundits: “Mother Teresa Stamps Spark Controversy with Atheists”

Belief.net: “Sticky problem: atheists slam Mother Teresa stamp”

World Net Daily: “Atheists attack Mother Teresa”

To be fair, these are all very right-leaning websites that cater to their American Conservative audience, which is comprised of a strong Christian base, so it shouldn’t be surprising then that they have lumped one atheist group into the entire population of all atheists.  But, it doesn’t make it right.  And not all conservative blogs make this error, either:  The Christian Post reports on this with the headline of “Anti-Religion Group Chides USPS Over Mother Teresa Stamp.”  (But the author wastes no time marginalizing the atheists and agnostics as “freethinkers,” complete with snarky quotes around the word, in the first line of the story.)

A simple omission of the word “group” with regard to this story changes the tone and substance drastically.  It also removes much of the author’s credibility by revealing a very obvious bias off the bat.  And given how ridiculous the opposition to a Mother Teresa stamp is to just about everyone not part of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, it wouldn’t take much to show that they don’t have much credibility on these postage matters (given that they didn’t oppose MLK, Jr.’s stamp, apparently, because he was involved in civil rights and just-so-happened to be a minister).  But when it’s reduced to an attack on all atheists as a group, the retort fails as well.

When your opposition already makes themselves look ridiculous and marginalized, there’s no point in bringing yourself down with them.

(H/T Hot Air)

Time for Negotiations, Not Debates

Even the conservative pundits agree:

“Obama did well, got the better of GOP today,” the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb tweeted. “Fortunately, we got the better of him the last six months or so. And health care is dead.”

Politics as brutal warfare with the only real losers being the American people.  Instead of acting on behalf of their constituents, lawmakers vote according to party and personal agendas.  Goldfarb makes it clear that this is a simply a political game.  Us versus them.  Red versus blue.  Republican versus Democrat.  All in an effort to simply win the votes of the people, to regain power, and to continue that process over and over and over again.  Nevermind the fact that Obama won the debate today by simply pointing out facts and the GOP’s hypocrisy while Goldfarb’s idea of getting the better of the Democratic president is to act like children and just say no to anything and everything that he says or wants to do and then when Obama can’t pass legislation, the GOP win.

It would be one thing is the parties were disagreeing on some core issues but still finding common ground – in that case, their arguing would be productive and compromises would be reached that would please a strong majority of voters.  But these aren’t negotiations, these are debates.  In debate, one arguer wins, and one loses.  In proper negotiations, both parties win, essentially, accepting what they need and conceding some of what they want.

Unilateral opposition to a president is not governance.  It’s not a political ideology.  It’s emptiness disguised as substance. And people are eating it up.  It’s time the Republicans swallowed their collective massive pride (for what, I don’t know – their failed policies were a huge reason we’re in this mess right now and that’s fact) and started negotiating with Democrats instead of debating ideology.  (And yes, the Democrats have negotiated.  If you don’t think they have, take a look at the Senate HCR Bill and you’ll see that universal coverage, single-payer insurance, and the public option are nowhere to be found, for which progressives have clamored for years.)

Save the debating ideology for college and universities and let’s get some legislation passed.