Found the explanation at Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot – Over (also at Talking Points Memo):
Republican strategy on health care exposed
June 26, 2009
Leave a Comment » | 
Health care, Humor, Politics, Propaganda | Tagged: Health care, Politics, Propaganda, Republican Strategy | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Missouri Rep. Cynthia Davis: Poverty? Show me!
June 25, 2009The story writes its own ending. As I watched the story of Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis, I kept hearing the Muppet version of Scrooge, who, confronted by a plea for charity for orphans said: “What? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”
When I staffed the Senate, we prided ourselves on having people who knew a lot more than any reporter in town or any news organization with all its resources. When I staffed the Utah legislature, the members made sure they knew their stuff before they called for change, generally. Olberman, Stewart and Colbert sometimes appear to have corraled all the smart people outside of the White House. But what in the hell is Davis’s excuse?
Update: Welcome, visitors of July 2. Obviously, you’re linking from somewhere else — but my systems have not picked it up. Where are you coming from? Somebody tell, in comments, please.
4 Comments | Government, Human Rights, Humor, Politics, Poverty, Reason | Tagged: Ebenezer Scrooge, Free Lunch Programs, Olberman, Poverty, Rep. Cynthia Davis | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Clean energy bill needs your help
June 25, 2009Call your Congressman, the person who represents you in the U.S. House of Representatives, and urge a “yea” vote on the comprehensive clean energy bill.
You can check your representative at several places, or follow the instructions through RePower America, listed below the video from our old friend Al Gore.
Repower America said in an e-mail:
Clean energy bill needs our support
Any moment now, the House will be voting on the boldest attempt to rethink how we produce and use energy in this country. The bill’s passage is not assured. Call your Representative today.
- Call 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) and we’ll connect you to your Representative right after providing you with talking points. (We’re expecting high call volume, and if you are unable to be connected please use our secondary line, 866-590-0971.)
- When connected to your Representative’s office, just remember to tell them your name, that you’re a voter, and that you live in their district. Then ask them to “vote ‘yes’ on comprehensive clean energy legislation.”
They’d like you to report your contact, here.
What? You haven’t been following the debate? Here’s what the pro-pollution, give-all-your-money-to-Canada, Hugo Chavez, and the Saudis group hopes. Here’s where the anti-pollution, pro-frog and clean environment people say the proposed act is way too weak as it stands. Here’s the House Energy and Commerce Committee drafts and discussion of the bill. Consumer Reports analyzed the bill here (and said it can’t be passed into law fast enough despite its flaws).
Call now. Pass the word to your friends. Tell your children to call — their kids deserve better than the path we’re on now.
More information and discussion:
- David Corn writing at Mother Jones, says the Mick Jagger standard isn’t good enough (“You can’t always get what you want; but if you try, sometimes, you get what you need.”) And today, “When is a climate bill, not a climate bill.”
- Dallas Morning News notes Texans fight the bill, but note only job losses in oil and gas, without counting job gains in wind and solar
- Los Angeles Times covers the horse race, but they are from Henry Waxman’s backyard
- House Rules Committee Report on H. R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (743 pages)
- Summary of House amendments proposed, from the House Rules Committee (accessed June 26, 2009)
7 Comments | Citizenship, Climate change, Cost of Green, Energy, Environmental protection, Global warming, Government, Politics, pollution, Science, U.S. House of Representatives | Tagged: air pollution, Al Gore, Citizenship, Clean Energy Bill, Climate change, Cost of Green, Environmental protection, Global warming, Repower America, Science, U.S. House of Representatives | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Rick Perry’s education dilemma
June 25, 2009Betsy Oney teaches in Arlington, Texas. She’s a frontline soldier in the fight to educate our kids.
She also reads the newspapers and pays attention to what is going on at the highest levels in Texas government. From her view, she describes better than anyone else I’ve seen, the problem facing Texas Gov. Rick Perry right now, after the Texas State Senate rejected Perry’s nominee to head the State Board of Education, Don McLeroy.
Texas governor in a dilemma over education board pick
By BETSY ONEYSpecial to the Star-TelegramGov. Rick Perry is in something of a Catch-22.
It started two years ago when he appointed dentist Don McLeroy to chair the State Board of Education. McLeroy is described by his many supporters as a “good and decent man,” and of that we can be sure.
McLeroy’s appointment came after the 80th Legislature adjourned, so he had to be confirmed during this year’s session. The confirmation failed in the Senate.
McLeroy’s supporters blame that on the fact that he’s a Christian. Records show that this Senate, and the House Public Education Committee in a July 16 hearing, were concerned not that he’s Christian but that McLeroy politicized Texas children’s education and led the board and the Texas education system into the spotlight. And what Texans and Americans saw in that light was a fairly grotesque parade of a few people — a majority faction of the board led by McLeroy — who listened to ideology instead of experts and were intent on imposing an antiquated education system on Texas children.
From that same elected board, Perry now must decide on a new chairman who, like McLeroy, will serve without scrutiny until the next legislative session, in 2011.
Perry’s decision is his Catch-22.
He probably won’t consider a Democrat. That leaves nine Republican possibilities. Seven are the radical members responsible for politicizing children’s education. They voted in lock step on a range of issues that individually and collectively have been widely seen by educators and lawyers as anything from illegal to unconstitutional to damaging children. Nominating from that pool might yield a different management style than McLeroy offered, but the ideology, intent and backward direction would remain the same.
The two remaining Republicans are conservative, but not extremists. Both District 11’s Pat Hardy of Fort Worth and District 15’s Bob Craig of Lubbock are well-qualified and would lead Texas public education in the right direction. In contrast to the radical members, they would be responsive to the changing educational needs that the future demands as well as to the rich diversity of children in our population.
Although Hardy has been mentioned as a nominee by senators, she’s recommending Craig.
Craig, an attorney, is a logical choice. He’s served on the board since 2002 and before that served on the Lubbock school board for 14 years. Craig is a “good and decent man,” but in contrast to McLeroy, his voting record and conciliatory demeanor show him to be a rational, uniting public education supporter. He listens to educators and experts. He respects the opinions of others. He votes in the interest of all children.
It’s clear that Perry could not make a better choice than Bob Craig. The Catch-22 is that by appointing a nonextremist, Perry risks losing support from his biggest donors, the religious right.
These donors see benefit in turning public education into religious education at taxpayer expense. They see benefit in keeping critical thinking out of the classroom. Their money is essential in his campaign against Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison in the next gubernatorial primary election.
If Perry appoints from the pool of radical rights, the voting public will be alerted that he’s sacrificing our children’s education and Texas’ future for his own political interests. So he’ll lose votes.
Money and ideology vs. public’s interest and, ultimately, its confidence. What a dilemma! Stay tuned.
Betsy Oney of Fort Worth holds a master of education degree and is a master reading teacher (and English-as-a-second-language teacher) in the Arlington school district.
Can you tell Ms. Oney is literate? She tosses out “Catch-22” expecting us to know that that means! She has high expectations for her audience.
Oney’s discipline in Texas schools is one of those insulted by new standards brought down from some mountain by the Texas SBOE in the past year, ignoring the work of Ms. Oney’s colleagues and professionals in her field.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Robert Luhn via Glenn Branch.
3 Comments | Education, Education quality, Politics, State school boards, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: Betsy Oney, Education, education standards, Gov. Rick Perry, Politcs, Texas, Texas State Board of Education, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Maybe estimates of sea level increases are low; maybe climate change damage will be greater than expected
June 20, 2009Eternal Hope at Daily Kos wonders what happens if the conservative estimates of sea level rise — the ones you usually see cited in the press — turn out to be way too conservative. What happens if sea levels rise about double what some are estimating now?
If the severity and frequency of storms does not increase much, we may be able to accommodate the changes over time (though remember, some say we can do it easily).
How willing are the skeptics and denialists to tell cities and insurance actuaries that the fears of ocean-level increases are piffles?
Speaking of insurance: Texas has been hammered over the past 20 years by unseasonal and much more-severe-than-usual thunderstorms, ice storms, straightline winds, tornadoes and hurricanes. Home insurance rates skyrocketed. State regulators argue with insurance companies about whether rate increases are justified. Insurance companies cite claims for problems that did not exist earlier, and which may be blamed on climate change. (How much excess mold will occur due to warming?)
Sometimes the arguments erupt into lawsuits and regulatory action. One such argument drags on now, with up to a $1 billion in overcharges at stake. How much of the fight from the insurance companies comes from their fears of the effects of global warming?
4 Comments | Climate change, Disasters, Economics, Global warming, History, Politics, Texas | Tagged: Climate change, Global warming, Insurance, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Typewriter of the moment: Alistair Cooke for the BBC
June 19, 2009
Alistair Cooke's typewriter, displayed at BBC headquarters, Bush House, in London - Photo by Jeff Zycinski
Alas, our students now are too young to remember Alistair Cooke’s hosting of “Masterpiece Theater” on PBS, and of course, back then the BBC America service — if it existed — was available only to shortwave fanatics or people who traveled a lot to the British Isles.
Perhaps more than anyone else other than Winston Churchill, and maybe the Beatles, Alistair Cooke tied England and America together tightly in the 20th century. BBC’s other writers are good to brilliant, but even their obituary for Cooke (March 30, 2004) doesn’t quite do him justice:
For more than half a century, Alistair Cooke’s weekly broadcasts of Letter from America for BBC radio monitored the pulse of life in the United States and relayed its strengths and weaknesses to 50 countries.
His retirement from the show earlier this month after 58 years, due to ill health, brought a flood of tributes for his huge contributing to broadcasting.
Perhaps for Cooke, from Cooke’s broadcasts, we could develop a new variation of the Advanced Placement document-based question: Broadcast-based questions. Heaven knows his Letter From America provided profound material on American history:
- Cooke’s comments on the first U.S. manned orbital space flight, by John Glenn (later senator from Ohio) – February 1962
- Cooke’s account of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which he witnessed – June 1968
- Cooke on Watergate and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon – August 1974
- AP English? Cooke on Shaw’s observation that the US and the UK are “two nations divided by a common language” – a 1998 Letter on differences in language in the two nations
BBC's famous broadcaster Alistair Cooke, painted by June Mendoza (copyright Mendoza - http://www.junemendoza.co.uk)
3 Comments | Advanced Placement, DBQ sources, foreign affairs, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, History, History audio sources, Politics, Technology, Travel, Typewriters | Tagged: Alistair Cooke, BBC, DBQ sources, foreign affairs, freedom, History, Masterpiece Theater, Politics, Radio, Technology, Television, Travel, typewriter | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Gambling to make government work, in Cave Creek, Arizona
June 17, 2009It helps that it happened in a small Arizona town, in the desert, with a colorful name. You cannot imagine such a thing happening in Yonkers, New York, nor in West Bend, Wisconsin.
A deadlocked election for the Cave Creek city council came down to a draw from a deck of cards, a poker deck carefully shuffled by a robed judge.
Cave Creek, Arizona, Judge George Preston, shuffles cards to breal a deadlock between Thomas McGuire, left, and Adam Trenk. New York Times photo by Joshua Trent
We get the story from The New York Times:
Adam Trenk and Thomas McGuire, both in blue jeans and open-collar shirts, strode nervously into Town Hall with their posses. There stood the town judge. He selected a deck of cards from a Stetson hat and shuffled it — having removed the jokers — six times.
Mr. McGuire, 64, a retired science teacher and two-term incumbent on the Town Council, selected a card, the six of hearts, drawing approving oos and aws from his supporters.
Mr. Trenk, 25, a law student and newcomer to town, stepped forward. He lifted a card — a king of hearts — and the crowd roared. Cave Creek had finally selected its newest Council member.
“It’s a hell of a way to win — or lose — an election,” Mr. McGuire said. Still, it was only fitting, Mr. McGuire and others here said, that a town of 5,000 that prides itself on, and sometimes fights over, preserving its horse trails, ranches and other emblems of the Old West would cut cards to decide things. A transplant of 10 years from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., north of New York City, Mr. McGuire said he knew things were different here when not long after arriving he walked into a bar and found a horse inside.
Marshall Trimble, a cowboy singer, folklorist and community college professor who serves as Arizona’s official historian, said, “We are pretty tied to our roots here, at least we like to think so.”
Hans Zinnser, in the venerable Rats, Lice and History, relates the story of an eastern European town where such ties are broken by lice — the two candidates put their beards on a table, and a louse is placed between the men. The man whose beard the louse chooses is the winner.
Of course, this makes it difficult for women to participate in government fully.
Cave Creek is a typical cowboy, American town. Deadlocks in government can be resolved by a game of chance.
Government teachers, history teachers, go get this story and clip it — it’s a good bell ringer, if not a full lesson in democratic republican government.
So, as the state’s Constitution allows, a game of chance was called to break the deadlock. The two candidates agreed on a card game (alternatives from the past have included rolling dice and, on rare occasions, gunfights).
Mr. Trimble said a cutting of the cards or roll of the dice had decided ties a handful of times in Arizona local elections. Tie-breakers have also been tried in other states, including in recent years in Alaska and Minnesota, said Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for FairVote, a Washington group that monitors and advocates for fair elections.
Mr. Fidalgo said the group objected to random chance as the decider of election outcomes.
“Definitely not a democratic ideal, to say the least,” he said, suggesting, among other ideas, that the tied candidates engage in one more runoff.
That was ruled out here as too expensive, and besides, this was much more fun, as Mayor Vincent Francia made clear, clutching a microphone and serving as M.C.
“Originally we thought of settling this with a paintball fight but that involves skill, and skill is not allowed in this,” Mr. Francia said to laughter.
Did you ever think that the ability to shuffle a deck of cards would be a job skill for a judge? There’s a reason law students play poker in the coffee lounge, and all weekend!
There’s more. Go read the Times. This is also why the New York Times is a great paper, and why we cannot function without “mainstream media.” Who else could have brought us the story?
More resources:
- Story from KPHO Channel 5 News, in Phoenix, with link to a great video (how can you capture the video for classroom use?)
- AZ Central (Arizona Republic) story on the council meeting — approval of a 128,000 square-foot WalMart store was on the first agenda after the card shuffle decision
- Story from ABC affliate, Channel 15
- Politico report
- “Mathematics of a tied election,” from Cox News, 2000
- Lahood Productions’ 2004 election coverage — story of a deck of cards deciding an election in New Mexico in 1998
- Gateway to state election codes, from the National Center for State Courts
- Arizona election code; provision for breaking a tie by lot
4 Comments | Elections, Government, History, Politics | Tagged: Arizona, Cowboys, Elections, Game of Chance, Government, History, Politics, U.S. history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
President Obama on the necessity of science
June 16, 2009Many Americans took great pleasure in Barack Obama’s noting the importance of science, and the importance of heeding science, in his inaugural address.
In April he attended an annual meeting of the poobahs at the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s premiere science organizations and the backbone and guts of the science movement that drove American prosperity and security in the 20th century. Historians will want to note especially the history President Obama recounted in the first few minutes of the speech.
Can we use video for DBQs in AP courses yet? Here’s one to use.
Leave a Comment » | History, Politics, President Obama, Presidents, Science | Tagged: History, National Academy of Sciences, Politics, President Obama, Reason, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Real racism: Should we brace for protests?
June 16, 2009Here’s a story exposing a real case of racism, “Latest Republican racist e-mail.” Hillbuzz? Texas Darlin’? Are you going to go after this despicable display? Are you going to defend a color-blind society and anti-racism?
No, we didn’t really think so. Now that we’ve established what you really do, we’re just haggling over the price.
2 Comments | Politics, Racism, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Politics, Racism, Rampant stupidity, Republicans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas Darlin’ on Sotomayor: Still ugly
June 15, 2009I can’t bite my tongue and let idiots rage on unfairly and inaccurately about important matters.
Earlier I noted the difficulties with reality at Texas Darlin’. The warden of the blog dropped by and suggested I should join the discussion there if I had something to say. It always ends badly. Someone there says something plug ugly stupid, and I note the facts. My posts get edited, or censored.
Some post linked there, and I looked. I couldn’t resist. The owner and commenters are flailing around like a bass in the boat, trying to make a case that Sonia Sotomayor shouldn’t be a justice of the Supreme Court. They have convinced themselves that she’s a racist, she’s sexist, she got where she is solely because of affirmative action and the Great Cabal that Runs the World. And they are stuffing tinfoil in their ears now — it makes their hats leak, but it keeps them from hearing anything that might upset them.
I expect they’ll remove my posts soon. If you care, I’ve made some defense of Sonia Sotomayor, and I copied the posts below the fold. Texas Darlin’ inmates correspondents repeat every canard about Sotomayor you can imagine. And some you can’t imagine.
Texas Darlin’ is neither.
I am persuaded to do a series of posts on the nomination of Sotomayor. In the interim, here’s my attempt to square things at Texas Darlin’, below the fold.
7 Comments | Advise and Consent, Politics, President Obama, Racism, U.S. Supreme Court | Tagged: Advise and Consent, Affirmative Action, Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Law School, Nominations, Politics, Racism, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Recycling = Patriotism
June 14, 2009Once upon a time it was a patriotic action to recycle things.
Boy Scouts distributed posters urging recycling during World War II - National Scouting Museum via National Archives
Once upon a time the nation’s future hinged on the ability of Americans to conserve resources and energy sources, especially gasoline. So Americans, from the president to the lowliest boy, united to urge Americans to recycle rubber, metal, rags and paper. It was the patriotic thing to do.
Make it do or do without - poster encouraging recycling and conservation for World War II
Did the recycling make significant contributions to the resources necessary to win the war? A few argue that the value of the campaigns was uniting people toward a common goal. But there were some clear connections between recycling of some products and the resources delivered to soldiers at the front that aided their fighting.
In the Pacific, Japan cut off U.S. access to rubber in Indochina. Rubber from South America and Africa could be intercepted in shipping by German u-boats. Metal refining from ores required more energy than refining from scrap. Although the U.S. entered the war as the world’s leading petroleum exporting nation, gasoline and Diesel fuel supplies were precious for airplanes, tanks and other machines directly supporting the troops.
Recycling was patriotic in every possible meaning of the word.
Is it really a news flash? Recycling is still the patriotic thing to do.
Waster paper made the boxes in which blood plasma was shipped to battlefield hospitals and medics
What the hell? They’re pro-garbage? Who in the world pays for this campaign Milloy runs, Vladimir Putin? Vlad the Impaler?
Digg: http://digg.com/d1toaH
10 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Conservation, Cost of Green, Environmental protection, History, Natural resources, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Boy Scouts of America, Conservation, Cost of Green, Green Hell, Natural resources, Patriotism, Recycling | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The truth about Judge Sotomayor
June 11, 2009Nina Totenberg of NPR wins great respect as a reporter on the Supreme Court for a reason: She’s a great reporter.
Totenberg on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s alleged race bias:
As a judge, Sotomayor has ruled in 100 cases that involve questions of racial discrimination of one sort or another. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court advocate and founder of the leading Supreme Court blog, has read all of those decisions. He says that Sotomayor does not seem to put her thumb on the scale and has in fact, most of the time, ruled against those charging discrimination.
In only 1 of out 8 cases, he says, has she favored in some sense claims of discrimination.
“The fact that she so rarely upholds discrimination claims I think answers the idea that she is always angling for minorities,” he says.
Totenberg on Sotomayor’s statements about judge-made law and policy:
And if the New Haven case is a harbinger in one direction, there are other cases that point the other way too. Sotomayor, for example, dissented when her colleagues allowed the New York City Police Department to fire one of its officers for sending hate mail on his own time. While the hate mail was patently offensive, hateful and insulting, Sotomayor wrote, it did not interfere with the operations of the police department, and, she observed, under our Constitution, even a white bigot has the right to speak his mind.
In another case involving a black couple bumped from an American Airlines international flight, Sotomayor said their race discrimination claim was clearly trumped by an international treaty governing airline rules. It matters not, she said, that her ruling might mean airlines could discriminate on a wholesale basis and that there would be no legal recourse. The treaty’s language is clear and it is not for the courts to make policy, she said, adding that if policy is to be changed, Congress or federal agencies must do it.
White bigots ought to study more and flap less.
5 Comments | Advise and Consent, Barack Obama, History, Politics, President Obama, U.S. Senate, U.S. Supreme Court | Tagged: Advise and Consent, Civil Rights, First Amendment, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Judicial Bias, Politics, President Obama, Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Can carbon dioxide be classed as a pollutant?
June 10, 2009
U.S. Department of State slide explaining the greenhouse effect, 1992. National Archives.
Sure. Too much oxygen to a newborn baby can cause blindness; oxygen in that case is a pollutant. Certainly, if an essential gas like oxygen can be classed as a pollutant, since too much carbon dioxide can be deadly as an acute poison, it’s fair to class it as a pollutant when it appears where it should not appear, or when it appears in concentrations too great to be safe for what we need it to do, or when it is destructive.
The tougher question is, can Congress do anything about it?
Arguments about whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant distract and detract from, and delay the critical arguments about how to act to mitigate harmful effects of climate change and how to prevent the most disastrous effects, if possible.
Barry Rabe teaches at the University of Michigan and studies policies of government on climate change, and the policy making of government on climate change.
Take a look at some of his work, under the title, “Can Congress Govern the Climate?”
Full report in pdf, here: “Can Congress Govern the Climate?” Or download 0423climatechange_rabe
Common atmospheric pollutants, from Compound Interest. CO2 is a pollutant
See also:
- Rabe on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, on the costs of fighting climate change
- Rabe on the complexities of cap-and-trade pollution limiting policies
- Time Magazine story on the CO2 cloud that killed 2,000 people in Cameroon, in 1986
- David Suzuki Foundation, “Carbon dioxide, pollutant or plant food?” 2016
Tip of the old scrub brush to U Town Blog.
Help cut through the fog of disinformation:
3 Comments | Climate change, Global warming, Government, History, Politics | Tagged: Barry Rabe, Cap-and-Trade, Climate change, Congress, Global warming | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Bathtub reading on a warm June Sunday
June 7, 2009I thought everybody does serious reading in the bathtub, no?
- Scott Paeth, a serious theologian at DePaul University, talks about actually working to reduce the number of abortions, in comments after President Obama’s speech at the University of Notre Dame. Sometimes that would require doing things like sex education seriously, abandoning the failed “just say no” philosophy of misinforming kids about sex and babies. One of the great tragedies of Christianity: Paeth, a serious thinker on Christianity and ethics, gets far less readership than totalitarians like Neil Simpson. Sword over thought, war over peace, loud braying at the street corner over quiet work for God. Will it be so always?
- Jay Ambrose offered to come back to defend his odd, contrary-to-history-and-science views on DDT way back in 2007, but never did. Now Ambrose is repeating his errors of history and science on DDT, and expanding the errors to include climate change. Don’t these Scripps News outlets have fact checkers? Did the Society of Professional Journalists drop its ethics code?
- The Pima Air and Space Museum offers tours of the Boneyard!
The Pima Air & Space Museum offers exclusive bus tours of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARG), also known as the “Boneyard.” The facility is located adjacent to the Museum at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Seats are avaliable on a “first come first serve” basis.
See the photo at the bottom — when I lived and taught in Tucson, this was a constant source of fascination, and frankly, to us aviation fans, it still is.
- Explicit acknowledgment that the National Guard is a key component in our domestic response to emergencies.
- Honors to “Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development in the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, [as] the recipient of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s distinguished alumni award for 2009.” Real malaria fighters get real recognition on occasion. Jay Ambrose, you could do a feature on her work, yes?
- Big earthquakes in the Saudi deserts, did you hear? Neat photo, at Eruptions.
- Jeremy Grantham makes a grand case in economics that markets are not rational after all.
- Tim Jones at remote central discusses the bone with the mammoth carved on it (the Vero Beach Ice Age Engraving), considering how to tell whether it’s a hoax or not.
The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona; the Pima Air & Space Museum now offers bus tours of the 309th Maintenance and Regeneration Group's collection of scrapped and very historic airplanes
Can’t soak all day.
6 Comments | Airplanes, Archaeology, Fossils, Geography - Physical, geology, History, History museums, Hoaxes, Journalism, Museums, Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom, Research, Science, Social Studies | Tagged: Abortion, Airplanes, Archaeology, Aviation, blogging, Boneyard, Climate change, Davis-Monthan AFB, DDT, geography, geology, Journalism, Politics, Religion, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Rush Limbaugh’s ally against Obama — and oops!
June 6, 2009Cartoon from Lisa Benson at the Washington Post Writers Group, via the Orange County Register:
From the Washington Post Writers Group via Orange County Register
Wouldn’t that same caption work for Rush Limbaugh? How about for Newt Gingrich? Mitch McConnell?
I also note that, for a display in the U.S., the U.S. flag is on the wrong side.
Leave a Comment » | Barack Obama, Cartoons, Flag etiquette, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: Barack Obama, Cartoon, Lisa Benson, Osama bin Laden, Political Cartoon, U.S. Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 