NotesSo, what...? We enforce political quotas in science...? I'm sure there's some kind of bias around, but somehow I don't think it's that science is keeping Republicans out - I think it's that Republicans tend not to be all that scientificUnfurl
Notes"Senate hopeful Sue Lowdenās plan for Healthcare reform is to barter chickens for medical procedures. But you may be unsure how many chickens are required for your medical care. This handy calculator converts many common procedures into chickens so you wonāt look like an idiot at your next Doctorās Appointment. "Unfurl
Notes"With jaw-dropping, surreal, outrageous, unbelievable hypocrisy probably never before matched in scope and breadth, by the first week of March 2009, just over one month into the Obama presidency, Republicans were blaming Obama for the dire economic news. For eight years under Bush any bad news was Clinton's fault; just one month into Obama's presidency, Bush was innocent of all blame. We do not have a vocabulary that can capture the deep absurdity of this assault on reason."Unfurl
Notes"Your party ā the GOP ā and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, itās tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples ā by no means an exhaustive list ā of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred."Unfurl
Notes"Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.<br />
<br />
The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach."Unfurl
Notes"So my conclusions: The ignorance (willful or otherwise) is deep. The anger (justified or otherwise) is high. Teabagger solutions are silly at best and dangerous at worst. But what bothers me more is that our side has been so woefully inadequate at laying out these facts. These are not sophisticated concepts and the words can be small."Unfurl
Notes"As a candidate for his party's gubernatorial nomination, Cox has every right to pander to the Tea Party adherents many believe will play a decisive role in August's Republican primary. As Michigan's top law enforcement officer, he should know better than to pursue his specious claim that Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority."Unfurl
Notes"It's possible that if the Tea Partiers cleaned up their ranks--purged the birthers, publicly rebuked people like this guy, banned Hitler signs, loudly rejected any instances of racism--that they simply wouldn't have much of a movement left. Martin Luther King was trying to lead a black community that was demonstrably patriotic, and had, in the main, rejected political violence as a strategy. He could afford to be picky. In the case of the Tea Parties, it's possible that once you subtract the jackasses, you just don't have enough energy left."FeedUnfurl
Notes"For todayās G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan ā not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. Itās a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americansā economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. Itās a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side ā Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions ā are mainstream. And, as a result, itās a party that fundamentally doesnāt accept anyone elseās right to govern. "Unfurl
Notes"For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich."Unfurl
Notes"Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked. ... Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave arenāt hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill."Unfurl
Notes"The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.
Donāt hold your breath. As it is, Democrats donāt even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponentsā obstructionism.
Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it. "Unfurl
Notes"No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardiceāthe cynical exploitation of fear for political gain. ... It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate."Unfurl
Notes"Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click "send," call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. Itās your country."Unfurl
Notes"Democrats, at the time, didn't launch an assault against the Bush administration, and we didn't see Al Gore condemning the White House. It simply didn't occur to Democrats in 2001 to use the attempted mass murder of hundreds of Americans to undermine the presidency.
Eight years later, Dick Cheney believes his principal responsibility is to destroy President Obama -- the man Americans chose to clean up the messes Cheney left as a parting gift after eight years of abject failure. "Unfurl
Notes"President Obama doesnāt need to beat his chest to prove it, and ā unlike the last Administration ā we are not at war with a tactic (āterrorismā), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered."Unfurl
Notes"Do you contribute something worthwhile to the marketplace of ideas, or are you just a noisy asshat? Hereās one way to tell: how do you act when you are proven wrong about something? Do you learn from the experience and admit you were wrong ā or do you double down?"Unfurl
NotesI'd actually like to make this! "Held the last weekend every July, the Gilroy Garlic Festival serves up garlic ice cream every year. Here's their recipe"Unfurl
Notes"Republican leaders chose not to draft their own comprehensive bill, focusing instead on attacking Democrats' plans as too costly and bureaucratic. Some prominent Republicans now fear they are getting tagged as the "party of no," and they want the GOP to offer more solutions to the nation's health care problems."Unfurl
NotesIn case it's not clear: These nutters are complaining that government services weren't expansive enough to accommodate their protest of expansive government services. "Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didnāt, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekendās rally to protest government spending and government services. Seriously."Unfurl
Notes"This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurersā point of view ā they actually refer to it as āmedical costs.ā This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since thereās a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need ā not everyone agrees, but most do ā this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities."Unfurl
Notes"We all know that there's no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we're paying for them. There's no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. ... everything you own, it's all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can't even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives."Unfurl
Notes"Itās the American way that we judge people as individuals, not as groups. And by that standard we can say unequivocally that this particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past. "Unfurl
Notes"Thereās risk in confusing broadband and Internet. If the National Broadband Plan starts from the premise that the U.S. needs the innovation, increased productivity, new ideas and freedoms of expression that the Internet affords, then the Plan will be shaped around the Internet. If, instead, the Plan is premised on a need for broadband, it fails to address the ARRAās mandated objectives directly. More importantly, the premise that broadband is the primary goal entertains the remaking of the Internet in ways that could put its benefits at risk. The primary goal of the Plan should be broadband connections to the Internet."Unfurl
Notes"Weāve got what amounts to a reverse Nuremberg defense, where Bush administration officials are let off the hook because they were only giving orders. Iām not sure thatās such a great idea."Unfurl
Notes"no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."Unfurl
NotesIraq War protesters were called worse. And besides, this is damn funny. "There is not only something funny going on here, there is a story here. These supposed journalists and their networks (or publisher, in Sullivan's case) have rather seriously insulted the citizens who colorfully took to the streets to air respectable views in a most civil fashion. If they had any decency, Cooper et al. would apologize for their vile reference to sexual practices in the context of ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights."Unfurl
After Public Outcry, Florida Workforce Agency Dumps Plan To Give Superhero Capes To The Unemployed | Crooks and Liars
David Foster Wallace and the problem of being bored. - By Matt Feeney - Slate Magazine
Obama's demagogic, Stalinist, class-warring, no good, very bad speech - War Room - Salon.com
Pouty Republicans mad at partisan Obama - Joan Walsh - Salon.com
I hate my iPad: Can my tablet-loving Slate colleagues convince me I didn't just waste $600? - By John Swansburg - Slate Magazine
Theory of mind and the belief in God. - By Jesse Bering - Slate Magazine
Michael Ford: Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers
Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That's a problem. - By Daniel Sarewitz - Slate Magazine
Daily Kos: Bartlett: Ā Teabaggers Totally Ignorant About Taxes
The Tea Party's Rank Amateurism - Politics - The Atlantic
The Same Old Washington Blame Game | The White House
