February 2012
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Top 5 Stratfor Revelations →
Up to 12 Pakistani active-duty and retired officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew that Usama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad and were in regular contact with him. The Pakistani chief of staff is denying the report.
Dow Chemicals hired Stratfor to spy on activists in Agra who continue to protest over the Bhopal environmental disaster that blinded many workers and destroyed...
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“Watching Willard Romney and Rick Santorum lay clubs on each other over the past...”
– Charles P. Pierce
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Immortal worms defy aging →
Researchers from The University of Nottingham have demonstrated how a species of flatworm overcomes the aging process to be potentially immortal.
The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of a project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) and may shed light on the...
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“In recent elections one would have thought that homosexuality and abortion were...”
– Richard Rohr
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How Santorum misunderstands Kennedy’s speech on... →
This is quite different from the implausible scenario that Santorum conjures up of liberals barring the devout from holding office or from so much as mentioning their beliefs. Yet since the political mobilization of the religious right in the late 1970s, it has become increasingly common to hear charges that religion is somehow under threat—that Kennedy and his liberal heirs would create a...
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“Human relationships easily become possessive. Our hearts so much desire to be...”
– Henri Nouwen
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Why 2012 Is the Republicans Last Chance →
The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated...
“Just in the last week, angling for votes from Christ alone knows what...”
– Charles P. Pierce
GOP 2012: The Pro-Fiction Campaign →
The four candidates still vying for the nomination are pro-fiction to the core: Somehow the President who okayed the assassination of Osama bin Laden, sent drone attacks into Libya and kept Gitmo open is an apologetic pansy – soft on our enemies. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants and spent more money protecting the border than any of his predecessors – but he’s ignoring the issue of...
“I’m heartbroken by something else. I believe politics is a team sport....”
– Rick Perlstein
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave →
Indeed, and I’m working for a gigantic, immensely profitable company. Or for the staffing company that works for that company, anyway. Which is a nice arrangement, because temporary-staffing agencies keep the stink of unacceptable labor conditions off the companies whose names you know. When temps working at a Walmart warehouse sued for not getting paid for all their hours, and for then...
“The argument in favor of “new things” and even more “new new things” goes as...”
– Nassim Taleb
“All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party...”
– David Brooks
Yes, Virginia (and Dan and Wendy), Citizens United... →
So let’s recap briefly. Citizens United opened the door for incorporated organizations to make unlimited campaign expenditures underwritten by their own treasuries or by the unlimited donations of corporations, labor unions or individuals. That, in turn, led a lower court to rule that independent political committees—section 527 committees—can do the same. In a move not called...
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“In contrast, Romney and Santorum are proving their bona fides to conservatives...”
– Conor Friedersdorf
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“In recent decades the sciences have made vertiginous leaps in understanding,...”
– Steven Pinker
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To Get Out The Vote, Evangelicals Try Data Mining →
Dallas, an evangelical Christian, has since become a voter. He now runs United In Purpose, a nonprofit startup company that uses data mining to identify unregistered Christians.
The company persuaded wealthy Silicon Valley conservatives to help fund the creation of a database of as many adults in the U.S. as they can find. So far, UIP has added 180 million.
The company buys lists to...
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“The federal minimum wage of $7.25, adjusted for inflation, is $2.75 lower than...”
– Chris Hedges
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Scientific Study Shows That The Powerful and... →
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Can a pill take away the desire for religion? →
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“Digital information, unconstrained by packaging, is a continuing process more...”
– John Perry Barlow
College at Risk →
It is a pipe dream to imagine that every student can have the sort of experience that our richest colleges, at their best, still provide. But it is a nightmare society that affords the chance to learn and grow only to the wealthy, brilliant, or lucky few. Many remarkable teachers in America’s community colleges, unsung private colleges, and underfinanced public colleges live this truth...
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“Some 70 percent of the public supports raising the minimum wage. This is an...”
– Chris Hedges
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"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion" →
Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique — not like those “other” women — even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons. Anti-choice women often expect special treatment from clinic staff. Some demand an abortion immediately, wanting to skip important preliminaries such as taking a history or waiting for blood test...
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“How did Jesus market the church? By telling people that if they follow Him they...”
– How to market the church?
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Clarence Thomas Is a Long Shot for President, But... →
While Christie and Bush might be fine candidates, perhaps the Republicans should consider a more inspired and game-changing pick: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Far-fetched? Maybe. But a Thomas candidacy would energize Republicans in a way that few other Republicans can and would steal tremendous media attention from President Barack Obama.
Unlike the flip-flopping Mitt...
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“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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“At a time when the Watson name and the IBM image is being laundered by whiz...”
– IBM’s Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal
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College Degrees Are Valuable Even for Careers That... →
ALMOST a century ago, the United States decided to make high school nearly universal. Around the same time, much of Europe decided that universal high school was a waste. Not everybody, European intellectuals argued, should go to high school.
It’s clear who made the right decision. The educated American masses helped create the American century, as the economists Claudia Goldin and...
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“The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks...”
– wikileaks.org
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On Education, Santorum Flunks History →
In recent remarks, Santorum praises home schooling, claiming that with the rise of factories, Americans had to go to formal schools that were like factories. Public school is an anachronism, he says. But formal schooling is about as American a virtue as there is. Has Santorum read any American history?
In selling federal land to farmers, Thomas Jefferson and others insisted that some be...
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“It’s true that Romney and Santorum are more radically right-wing than...”
– Conor Friedersdorf
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Why Obama Needs to Change to Win →
To understand why, let’s look at Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama has famously cited him as a role model for how transformative a president can be. Well, what did he transform, and how did he do it? Here’s how: He planted an ideological flag. From the start, he relentlessly identified America’s malaise with a villain, one that had a name, or two names – liberalism, the Democratic...
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“Although the top rate for income taxes was 70 percent under Carter (where it had...”
– Myth: Carter ruined the economy; Reagan saved it
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Happy Centennial, Arizona! →
The upshot of this is threefold. First, it reminds us that contingent events matter. Absent the war, there would probably have been an Arizona territory eventually — the five big holding territories of the post-1848 west (Washington, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, and New Mexico) were all subdivided into multiple territories and eventual states — but it would quite likely have been the southern state...
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“…I keep running into what I call “Old Testament Christians” who seem to think it...”
– Regarding Old Testament “Texts of Terror”
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John Bolton dodges question from anti-war vet... →
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“Capitalism has no built-in moral code other than maximizing profits. Whatever...”
– Doug Harvey
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The Book: Its Future and Its Past →
Grafton described Martin Luther as a “media maven” who mastered the world of print and was able to use it as a “megaphone” in a way that made him unlike any other “heretic.” We also learned about the way Erasmus saw the reading of texts as a means of “polishing” one’s character.
Grafton then moved on to our current print revolution,...
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Republicans: More Education, Less Reality →
College-educated Republicans are more likely to deny scientific reality.
Only 6% of scientists are Republicans now, and only 9% view themselves as Conservative.