CapitalistImperialistPig

Glen Greenwald has a long amusing column on Howard Fineman, Mark Halperin, and Chris Matthews swooning and generally whipping themselves into an erotic lather over Fred Thompson. Thompson is the draft dodging, skirt chaising former Senator, lobbyist, and soon to be Republican Presidential candidate who until recently starred on some lawyer show. Now a life of politics, political lobbying, and acting doesn't exactly scream "tough guy" to me, but Ms. Fineman and her sisters obviously feel differently. "He's got to be tough! He played a tough guy on TV."

It was the best of Agencies, It was the worst of Agencies... There have always been two NASAs. Science NASA builds exquisite scientific instruments go to the farthest reaches of the Solar system and last ten times their design lifetimes, like the Pioneer space craft or the Mars rovers. The other NASA, which we might call bizarro NASA, or better, head-up-its-NASA, builds useless crap at immense cost, like the shuttle or the International Space Station. Both NASAs were probably gratified when Bush replaced some bean counter with current NASA head Michael Griffin. He was a NASA veteran and a PhD (Aeronautical Engineering). Today, I would guess, science NASA is bitterly disappointed. While driving to work this morning, I heard NPR's Steve Inskeep interview Griffin. It certainly didn't help my digestion. Kevin Vranes of Prometheus has a transcript. STEVE INSKEEP: One thing that’s been mentioned that NASA is perhaps not spending as much money as it could on is studying climate ...

Kevin Drum has a story on the tobacco lobby's attempts to claim that millions have died due to banning DDT. Why, you might ask? Because they were trying to discredit the World Health Organization just as it was mounting a big anti-tobacco campaign. Their basic premise is a lie, naturally: Is DDT a banned substance? Answer: for widespread agricultural use, which produces increased resistance in many insect populations, yes. For vector control (primarily to contain mosquito-borne malaria), no. For the last decade or so, however, a group of right-wing "sound science" advocates has been implying that the agricultural ban on DDT is really a blanket ban and that millions of poor Africans have died as a result. Why? DDT isn't patented and is only minimally profitable, so it's not as if the DDT industry is bothering to push this. So who is? Short answer: the tobacco industry. Surprise! Turns out that the DDT disinformation campaign was really an effort to discredit th...

Bush is not responsible for all the reverses freedom has seen in the last six years, but he has been a big factor. With the US now almost universally disliked as a symbol of repression, with most of our moral credibility down the toilet, it has been easy for Putin to install a quasi-fascist regime in Russia. Repression in the Muslim world has been greatly strengthened. Venezuela is now firmly on the path to repressive totalitarianism, and Bush's incompetent promotion of a coup against elected President Chavez did its part in setting the scene for subsequent outrages against freedom. It sickens me to see how much damage this foolish man and his criminal coterie have done to the country and the world. I just hope that a few more of them go to jail.

Via Brad DeLong , Gristmill provides a long list answers to the usual denialist arguments. A sample: Stages of Denial , Scientific Topics , Types of Argument , and Levels of Sophistication . Individual articles will appear under multiple headings and may even appear in multiple subcategories in the same heading. Stages of Denial There's nothing happening Inadequate evidence There is no evidence One record year is not global warming The temperature record is simply unreliable One hundred years is not enough Glaciers have always grown and receded Warming is due to the Urban Heat Island effect Mauna Loa is a volcano The scientists aren't even sure Contradictory evidence It's cold today in Wagga Wagga Antarctic ice is growing The satellites show cooling What about mid-century cooling? Global warming stopped in 1998 But the glaciers are not melting An...

According to this HuffPost story , Wolfowitz blamed the media for his forced resignation. Departing World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz in a radio interview broadcast Monday blamed an overheated atmosphere at the bank and in the media for forcing him to resign. ... Wolfowitz's departure ends a two-year run at the development bank that was marked by controversy from the start, given his previous role as a major architect of the Iraq war when he served as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon. Naturally he accepts no blame for his corrupt practices and general incompetence. But hey, I blamed the media for a lot so maybe I should give them credit here. Thanks media. You still owe us plenty.

Michael Moore has rarely been accused of being an even-handed critic, and the odds are that his new movie Sicko won't break new ground in that respect. I haven't seen it yet, but I think I will take a look when it comes. The New York Times has a critical look at a couple of its claims: Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba for treatment in the course of the film, which is scheduled to open in the United States next month, and he is apparently dumbfounded that they could get there what they couldn’t get here. “There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’ ” But hold on. Do they do it? Live longer than, or even as long as, we do? How could a poor developing country — where annual health care spending averages just $230 a person compared with $6,096 in the United States — co...