Lots of liberals think the FCC's proposed Net Neutrality guidelines don't go far enough (see Sen. Al Franken for a good brief example), but the reality-free foaming at the mouth from senior Republicans and the usual radio gasbags is nothing short of astounding.
And given what I already think of these people and their willingness to ignore the truth if it means an excuse to rile up the base, that is really saying something.
__________
[Added] More on this from Roy Edroso.
... is this:
Josh has earned an AQ rating from the NRA - the Highest Rating Possible for a non-incumbent. Josh is not just a gun advocate on paper. He has a lifetime fishing and hunting license since 1995.
So apparently the good people of Oklahoma now have among their state senators a fifteen-year-old?
The second thing Josh Brecheen would like you to know about him is this:
Josh earns a 100% pro-life rating from Oklahomans for Life. Josh choice to run on the Republican ticket centers on this issue.
And not, one presumes, on making English the official language of the United States.
On a related note, one wonders how much attention to detail we can expect in the bill he will be proposing to direct the teaching of creationism in public schools. We have some hints here, because he has written a fancy op-ed to explain his beliefs, and PZ Myers has helpfully tracked it down and marked it up.
Even given my view of Oklahoma Republicans, it is truly jaw-dropping.
__________
P.S. Shudder: he also describes himself as a motivational speaker and he is now threatening offering to give it away for free, to the children!
If you liked that talk by Marcus Ranum I posted yesterday, you might also enjoy a discussion he had with Dan Geer, in March of last year. I thought it was utterly fascinating.
No way to embed, so you'll just have to head over to Rear Guard Security, look for "#5: Interview with Dan Geer," and do that right-click, Save As thing on the .mp3 link right below that. (Or just do that r-c, SA thing here.)
Dan's name may be familiar to you, from a kerfuffle during the early Pleistocene era of the Internet: he co-authored a paper in 2003 describing the monoculture of Microsoft as a threat to national security and was fired the day it was published. Not to worry -- he has since about the day after been gainfully and happily employed, the company that fired him is gone, and later versions of Windows reflect enough acknowledgment of his critique that he can confidently claim victory. (When you hear him speak in the podcast, you'll realize how modest he is, which makes the claim all the more significant.)
Marcus and Dan start by talking about cloud computing and what that means for security. They then branch off into a more broad discussion of how we have moved from a problem of worrying about the network being secure to today, where our biggest headaches are due to our endpoints not being secure. (Spoiler alert: Microsoft-driven systems? Still not completely fixt.) They also discuss the problems that have obtained by the reality of today's state of the art, where it is more expensive to delete files than it is to store them. Dan then draws some fascinating analogies to biological systems (evolution of course, but also considerations of (1) inherent limits on size, and (2) parasites. Part of the conversation is even philosophical. There is a question raised at the end which I shall not spoil. Suffice it to say that I thought pffft, of course when I first heard it, but the more I think about it, the more I'm not so sure.
All this is to say that it's not overly technical, and you don't need special knowledge to follow the discussion. If you can use a computer and/or a smart phone, you won't get lost, and come to that, if you do use those things, I think you should care about the issues Dan and Marcus consider. Finger-wagging aside, it's highly recommended, just for the pleasure of it.
Or, you know, not.
[Added] I guess we can unfade the ol' bumper sticker one notch, too, while we're at it, in line with the first couple of paragraphs of this.
DADT Repeal: A Tale of Four Senators
In the years to come, the story of the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" will come to be seen as the story of four senators: Obama, Reid, Lieberman, and McCain.
Obama, the one-term wunderkind who ascended to the presidency with astonishing speed and alacrity — and who then did the hardest thing: slowed himself down, shifted the spotlight back to the legislature, recognized that he was no longer the representative of one party but of a whole nation, and began to play what Andrew Sullivan has been calling "the long game." In two years, in the face of a uniformly cynical and hostile opposition, he has managed time and again to win political battles, any one of which can be called major: universal health care, banking regulation, fair pay for women, draw-down in Iraq and ramp-up in Afghanistan, the rescue of Detroit, the prevention of global economic collapse, the end of discrimination against immigrants with AIDS, same-sex benefits for government workers, two massive middle-class tax cuts, and, yes, the repeal of DADT. If, as suddenly seems distinctly possible, the new START treaty is passed this week, his place will be cemented as the shrewdest ex-senator in the White House since LBJ. And his record will be far more kindly viewed by history.
For his part, Harry Reid has quietly become one of the great Majority Leaders in the nation's history: Obama's victories are his, too, and in fact most of the heavy lifting is Reid's alone. And what Reid has done in the current lame-duck session will soon be legendary. The extension of the Bush tax cuts was a piece of brilliant political judo, at once extending tax breaks for the middle class, kneecapping the national GOP on one of its main talking points — Obama's "pro-tax liberalism" — and yanking the Senate GOP from beneath Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's feet. The tax-cut repeal lit a spark of revolt in the Tea Party wing of the caucus, and though Jim DeMint managed to keep it from catching fire, it's still smoldering. McConnell knows he has to deal with the devil on both sides of the aisle now — a fact only underlined by the defection of eight Republicans in support of DADT repeal on Saturday. He is considerably weaker than he could have guessed on the night of November 2.
(Thanks, Ocean.)
But only one notch, for now.
Remember, those are the style of a failed politician.
Oh. You mean you didn't know that as of Wednesday afternoon, non-Lower-48 time, Palin protegé Joe Miller still hasn't admitted he lost that election?
The Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unanimously on all counts against Joe Miller’s challenge of last month’s U.S. Senate election, saying Miller’s interpretation of the law would erode the integrity of Alaska’s election system.
“There are no remaining issues raised by Miller that prevent this election from being certified,” the Supreme Court justices declared in their 24-page ruling.
[...]
Miller didn’t agree to an interview after the Supreme Court ruling but e-mailed a statement saying he was weighing what his next move will be.
[...]
Miller has been challenging the results of the Nov. 2 election with the help of money from South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s political action committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund. Miller’s campaign spokesman has said they might attempt to take the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney said he was elated by the Supreme Court ruling and expects Beistline will let the election results be certified next week. “We also anticipate that Joe will continue to pursue his baseless claims in federal court until his money runs out,” Sweeney said.
(h/t: John Cole | pic. source)
A good post from a couple of weeks back, from Doctor Science on Obsidian Wings, reflecting on the Pew findings that only 6% of US scientists identify themselves as Republicans.
(h/t: Armchair Generalist)
... the caption contest. (And so what if he's the one holding the contest.)
NOW can we take Jon Kyl out back, smear him with honey, and tie him to an anthill?
The question is: what is slimier than a Senate Republican?
(h/t: TechniPol)
So, I was reading this CT post about the legal intricacies involved with Amazon booting Wikileaks from its servers, and I saw mention of a computer security guy named Markus Kuhn, and I thought that name sounded vaguely familiar, so I looked him up. Though he sounds like an impressive guy (ADE 651, anyone?), I realized he wasn't who I was thinking of. I was thinking of computer security guy Marcus Ranum. I don't know about Markus, but Marcus can sure make highly geeky stuff fascinating to listen to.
Here is a TEDx talk he gave in November of 2009, and here is how he introduces the video on his home page:
When TED invited me to do a talk, I was in a bit of a panic. The initial request was that I do a talk about Department of Homeland Security, based on my rather unsuccessful book "The Myth of Homeland Security." I explained that if TED is supposed to be forward-thinking and optimistic, it would probably be a bad idea to stand up and say "I told you so" and point and jeer. So I asked if I could do a sort of historical talk, instead. The idea behind this talk has been in the back of my mind for the better part of a decade, ever since I started looking closely at FTP, and wondering "if the guys who coded that knew it'd be around for this long, would they have done it differently?" As Ray Wylie Hubbard says: "the most important thing about songwriting is, when you finish a song, to ask yourself if you still want to be playing it 25 years later." As I look at computing, I see these kind of simple "tiny" mistakes all over the place - and they are constantly costing us insane amounts of effort to maintain and deal with. We have become curators. Curators in The Museum Of Bad Software.
It's about 22 minutes long, and though some of the terms at the beginning are necessarily jargon, you won't get lost if you're computer-savvy enough to surf the Web.
(Clicking the full-screen button there in the lower-right corner of the video may help if you want to see the slides more clearly.)
__________
More about TEDx on YouTube, their blog, and on the TED site itself.
More about Marcus Ranum on Wikipedia, and of course his own site. He also shoots pictures and other things. (Currently at the top of his home page looks like something stolen from me! ;) Trike forces are everywhere!)
I have not actually watched Mythbusters, but I don't need to to like this:
Hat tip to commenter Landru (#55) under a recent Bérubé post on Crooked Timber. That post is worth a read if you want some good news from the liberal arts world and/or the words Sokal hoax mean anything to you.
While looking up something related to links in that post, this Google Book Search result pleased me. I mean, not as funny as xkcd, but a minor lol.
Easy enough to do when they happen to other people. As with, for example, Prof. Dave Noon:
The End of Education
…in which I emerge briefly from the end-of-semester grading abattoir to note that I have detected a student plagiarizing from Conservapedia.
I’m now going to go roust a bear from hibernation and make him eat my kidneys.
Following up from the previous post …
… this, from HuffPo:
UPDATE: Fox News senior vice president for news Michael Clemente has responded to the study which found that his network's viewers are more misinformed about American political issues than any other channel. In a statement to the New York Times' Brian Stelter, Clemente disparaged the University of Maryland, where the study was done.
"The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with," Clemente said.
"For the record, the Princeton Review says the University of Maryland ranks among the 'Best Northeastern Colleges," Stelter notes. "It was No. 19 on the Review’s list of 'Best Party Schools.'"
Elitists.
Bet you can't guess what that title is about.
Hint: Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
You should click over, to see the specifics, though. Pretty amazing.
(h/t: @EricBoehlert)
Regarding the repeal of DADT:
I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage.
Bryan Fischer (yeah, that guy):
Rarely can you point to a moment in time when a nation consigned itself to the scrap heap of history.
You'll note if you follow the links that, admittedly, Fischer goes on at greater length. But not to worry. I'm sure Angry Johnny will have his choice of talk shows to go on tomorrow, to explain how horrible he thinks civil rights are.
__________
[Added] Also, from the first link above (and following up on an item mentioned earlier), you tell 'em, Harry:
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and a crucial proponent of the repeal, noted that some Republicans had indicated they might try to block Senate approval of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia because of their pique over the Senate action on the ban.
“How’s that’s for statesmanship?” Mr. Reid said.
Being on the left means perpetual dissatisfaction, as it should be. But important for the soul to savor victories when they come.
(h/t: @digby56)
(related)
[Added] Via @OpheliaBenson, NYT story on the repeal of DADT. Also, full roll call and interactive map here.
[Added2] Runner-up for tweet of the day here.
[Added3] Also in contention:
daveweigel Party right now on John McCain's lawn! #DADT
Not quite there yet, according to this article just posted to the NYT:
Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Advances
By a vote of 63 to 33, with six Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate acted to cut off debate on a measure that would let President Obama declare an end to the Clinton-era policy, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which allows gay members of the armed forces to serve only if they keep their sexual orientation a secret. The vote indicated that there was easily enough support to push the measure to final passage.
[...]
The Senate must take a second vote to approve the repeal and send it to President Obama for his signature.
I don't yet understand why that is. I'll add updates if it becomes clearer to me.
[Added] In a move low even by their standards, some Republicans in the Senate said yesterday that "the future of an arms treaty with Russia was endangered by Democratic efforts to repeal 'don’t ask don’t tell' at the end of the lame-duck session." Shameless scumbags.
[Added2] TPM is reporting that the second vote is scheduled for 3 pm and this time, it will only take a simple majority to finish the process. I really don't understand the Senate sometimes.
[Added3] CNN says, "Republicans can seek 30 hours of post-cloture debate, but it was not immediately clear whether they would pursue that."
[Added4] C-SPAN's live stream is here, and they're saying on that page that the vote is scheduled for 3 pm (EST). Right now, however, Angry Johnny is yelling about the new START treaty.
[Update 3:30 pm] Okay, they finally did it! DADT IS REPEALED.
What about Mongolian cat blogging? WITH WILD SNOW LEOPARD CUBS?
The NYT's Green blog tells me that Panthera (lions …
… and tigers and jaguars, and cheetahs and cougars and leopards, oh my!) is just getting started with their Cameras for Cats effort, and could use your help.
(P.S. Pretty good 404 page, too.)
Either that, or it's the best bit of wingnut unintentional hilarity I've read all week:
“It’s not enough that Marvel attacks conservatives values,” the post states, “now mythological Gods must be re-invented with black skin.”
Yes. How dare anyone make shit up about made-up shit?
And wait'll someone tells the Council of Conservative Citizens (yeah, them) that blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus probably wasn't … oh, never mind.
(h/t: Joe Vince (@MKE), via Roy Edroso | title: cf.)
[Added] Moar outrage!!!1!
The latest bit of hopeful news, from TPM, via Jack Stuef.
Of course, given earlier threats by Jim DeMint (R-SC) to demand full reading of other bills on the Senate floor, it's still not clear that the DADT repeal bill will get a chance to be voted on. The Party of Hell No could well be looking to run out the clock, and Brown and Murkowski might know that, and might just be trying to buy themselves some cred as "reasonable," knowing that they won't actually have to cast the vote they've said they will.
Cynical about Republicans? Moi?
I look forward to being proven wrong.
[Added] More from Greg Sargent on the time issue.
... you probably ought to read Glenn Greenwald's post, "Getting to Assange through Manning," and at least skim his earlier one, "The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention."
Presumption of innocence and freedom of the press are just empty slogans if they're only applied in the easy cases.
(h/t: Jack Stuef)
[Added] And remember, brave war-fighters, that you are fighting for America's freedoms!
The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said Tuesday.
When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.
As long as they can still hear Rush Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio …
Probably you heard about this already, but on Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives "voted 250 to 175 to repeal the 17-year Defense Department law that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in uniform."
Of course the hard part is the Senate, but Ed O'Keefe's post makes things sound hopeful; e.g.:
Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the new bill last week, believing it will earn broader Republican support after the Senate completes consideration of the New START Treaty and government spending. Forty-seven senators, including Reid, are cosponsoring the bill.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Wednesday she would join Republican colleagues Scott Brown (Mass.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in voting to end the ban if the Senate votes again on the bill.
The NYT has a complete roll call of the House vote, along with an interactive map, if you like. A quick summary: the 250 votes in favor of repeal came from 235 Democrats and 15 Republicans. The No votes came from 160 Republicans and 15 Democrats. Five Democrats and four Republicans did not vote.
Ben Dimiero, Media Matters for America:
In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."
The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."
This latest revelation comes after Media Matters uncovered an email sent by Sammon to Fox journalists at the peak of the health care reform debate, ordering them to avoid using the term "public option" and instead use variations of "government option." That email echoed advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn public opinion against health care reform.
There's a bunch more, including a wealth of on-air examples.
(h/t: Doghouse Riley)
When I first heard the news about Nigeria issuing an arrest warrant for Dick Cheney, I had a moment of hope, but then I thought about one second later, eh, just an Internets rumor. I mean, c'mon. Nigeria? That place that keeps sending us emails and so forth?
But I keep seeing mentions of this story, which makes me think … It Would Be Irresponsible NOT To Speculate, as they (used to!) like to say.
(note shadowy figure off to the left)
And now there's this, from Raw Story, via StrangeAppar8us/Rumproast:
Halliburton reportedly agrees to pay Nigeria $250 million to drop bribery charges against Cheney, firm
The massive industrial conglomerate Halliburton has reportedly offered to pay $250 million to settle charges against its former chief executive, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, in a multi-million dollar bribery case.
Nigeria filed charges against Cheney last week in an investigation of alleged bribery estimated at $180 million. Prosecutors named both Halliburton and KBR in the charges, as well as three European oil and engineering companies -- Technip SA, EniSpa, and Saipem Construction. Eleven Halliburton officials were arrested last month and freed on bail Nov. 29.
The charges allege that engineering contractor KBR, until 2007 a subsidiary of Halliburton, was among companies that paid bribes to secure a $6 billion contract for a natural gas plant. KBR pleaded guilty to the same bribes in a US court in 2009, and agreed to pay a $382 million fine. The Nigerian charges appear to stem from the US case -- though, in that trial, Cheney was never directly charged.
The $250 million figure would include a direct $130 million fine by the company and an agreement to repatriate another $120 million from Switzerland.
Representatives for Cheney and Halliburton met with Nigerian officials in London over the weekend.
[...]
I'm guessing Bigus Dickus approved of this and growled, "Just a cost of doing business."
And then shot a friend in the face, just to hear him apologize.
(x-posted)
[Added] The Wall Street Journal of all places is reporting the same story.
Below left: a graphic designed by Thomas Porostocky, used since 2008 (or 2007) as a logo for More Party Animals, a group seeking more choices besides Democrats versus Republicans.
Below right: a graphic "designed" by Dave Warren, used {since|up until} mid-December 2010 as a logo for No Labels, a group seeking more choices besides Democrats versus Republicans.
And now let us watch the babbling evolve over time.
In a NYT City Pages blog post timestamped "December 13, 2010, 6:13 pm," this:
Dave Warren, a 30-year veteran of Madison Avenue, said that he came up with the concept completely independently. Mr. Warren said that he decided to riff on the donkey and elephant using clip-art animal shapes that are available free of charge or copyright.
Wait. Before we get to the real hilarity … You can get paid … You can get a job on Madison Avenue surfing the Web and downloading clip art?
Please, continue.
Mr. Warren, who among other things did groundbreaking work for Absolut vodka, bristled at the suggestion that he had stolen the design.
“I do my own thinking, man,” he said. “Feel free to come to one of my classes at Parsons.”
He added: “I have a long and storied history on Madison Avenue. I’m not stupid enough to steal anybody’s work; I have too much faith to come up with my own ideas.”
As for Mr. Porostocky, Mr. Warren said, “Tell the other guy to Google my name.
Emph. added.
The post is also marked "Updated 12:38 a.m. Tuesday," with a note that the totally not at all stolen work was "removed from the No Labels Web site by early Tuesday."
In a later City Pages post timestamped "December 14, 2010, 10:42 am," this (emph. added):
The ad man, Dave Warren, said this morning that a designer he hired had grabbed the logo featuring red-white-and-blue animals from the Web site of the group More Party Animals and incorporated it in the design.
[...]
On Tuesday, Mr. Warren apologized to the designer of the More Party Animals logo, Thomas Porostocky, and accepted responsibility for the theft, writing in an e-mail message to Mr. Porostocky:
[...] I take full responsibility for it. [...]
Dave Warren sounds like a real politician, all right. When deny, deny just won't fly, blame a subordinate and then Accept Full Responsibility™.
Presumably, he will be announcing his candidacy any day now. Right after he finds a new home for that unnamed underling, under some bus somewhere.
Meantime, here is a new logo for Dave Warren:
(h/t: Jack Stuef | source for pants on fire, unsurprisingly | title: cf.)
P.S. By the way, neither of the City Pages posts reports that Dave Warren works for FLY Communications (or at least did through this morning), where he is (or at least was) "creative director." You have to go to Gothamist for that. Which you might want to do to see more of the intermediate babbling. (And then you can steal part of their slightly less blurry screen shot, too.)
P.P.S. We decided to Google Dave Warren, man. As of this moment, the top hit is for someone at a local teevee station working as a "weekend meteorologist." Which suddenly seems like an honorable position, for some strange reason.
After lo these many years, still one of my all-time favorite songs.
Don McArthur passes along some good news for those of us in the reality-based community.
GOP will just delay "don't ask, don't tell" repeal to death
Co-blogger Steve Kornacki is a bit more hopeful, but it looks like our last hopes for this year come down to, as Pareene puts it, "whether or not Susan Collins falls in line with her party or actually votes her supposed 'conscience,' and we all know how that joke turns out."
And we also have to count on the stalwart leadership of … Joe Lieberman, acting against John McCain's wishes {!), plus a belief that now that the tax-cuts deal has been made, the Republicans might this time keep a promise made. And we all know how that joke turns out, too.
Prediction: Holy Joe knuckles under in the Senate cloakroom, makes a public statement about "needing more study," which will be a lie no one will call him on, and then, Merry Christmas, gotta go!
I would really like to be wrong about this prediction.
(x-posted)
Following up on yesterday's post on the Republican Party's unique stance of AGW denialism, here's an excerpt from a post put up yesterday by Thomas Levenson, who in addition to running Inverse Square is now also a contributor to Balloon Juice.
Leap now from 1922 to 2010: are [Rep. Adrian] Smith [(R-Nebraska)] and [Rep. Eric] Cantor [(R-Virginia)] denouncing particular research grants because of the ethnic or religious affiliation of the researchers?
No.
Are they setting up the conditions in which the question of whether or not a given piece of research is “American” enough?
Yes. They are.
Is this dangerous?
Well, duh.
A last note, just to make myself clear: I don’t think that this latest witch hunt is (yet) a direct threat to people interested in inappropriate ideas. It does make us dumber, day by day. Pace every invocation of American exceptionalism, there is no particular reason, as readers of this blog know better than most, that the US of A will remain the undisputed king of all disciplines forever. There is some uncertainty, however, about how fast our competition will arrive, and how likely it will be that we slip beneath the top rank of scientific and technologically innovative national leaders.
And there, the answer is— if Smith and Cantor have their way—sooner and more grievously than we think.
I'd call TL's post an early warning worth paying attention to, and I'd encourage you to read all of "First They Came For The NSF..."
And I wonder if Chris Mooney is taking notes for Volume 2.
(x-posted)
He needs a title to go with this post:
Ayn Rand based for-profit college closes because… it couldn’t get federal aid.
(x-posted)
