Vote tampering
It’s Already Stolen
October 18, 2008 By Greg Palast
and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out yesterday in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of “GOP vote tampering” on a massive scale.
10.15.08
Secret memos
CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
Waterboarding Got White House Nod
by Joby Warrick
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10.12.08
Never criticise the family
mxmail
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http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/10/israel-jewish-zionism-jews
Never criticise the family
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Published 02 October 2008
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10.10.08
McCain a lot sicker than we know?
McCain and Sarah Palin: Till Death Do Them Part? And If So, How Soon? Is McCain A Lot Sicker Than We Know? Read the rest of this entry »
10.07.08
Nader brings Maine voters to their feet
Nader’s Message Brings Maine Voters To Their Feet
The presidential candidate blasts the powers in Washington for the recent financial crisis.
by Kelley Bouchard
PORTLAND, Maine – Ralph Nader brought a Portland audience to its feet Monday night with his signature call to fight Wall Street greed, corporate crime and the military industrial complex.
09.25.08
Obama on evolution
Nature discusses the presidential race and the candidates, Nature, and Obama on ID:
…Contrast that with Obama’s statement on page 448, in which Nature asked him about the teaching of intelligent design in science classes. It is not easy to address students’ questions about evolution without falling prey to the false notion of ‘teaching the controversy’, as the Royal Society’s director of education discovered last week in a public-relations meltdown (see ‘Creation and classrooms’). But Obama could not be more clear: “I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny,” he wrote.
While it is commendable, if, no doubt, a progammed response, that Obama is wary of ID, he should also be aware that the view of evolution proposed by Darwinists and the big science orgs is equally limited. Obama has meet enough lying politics. Perhaps he can have the canny wisdom to see the lying politics of the ID lobby and the Darwin lobby.
It is important for a person in such a leadership position to understand, forced thereby no doubt to keep his mouth shut, the deception in Darwinism, and the dangers of Social Darwinism that spring from Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and the inadequacy of that theory.
The issue is very simple: we have very strong evidence for the fact of evolution, but we don’t understand its dynamics. Wrong views of its dynamics can cause social confusion due to the misapplication of such theories to culture. Real evolution is something far more complex than current science can understand. Further, the distortions of economic understanding created by Darwinism is something any president should be aware of. Economics doesn’t explain Darwinism, and vice versa.
One should note in passing that economic models (Kuttner’s book on this is essential reading) have severe limits and their own element of bogus science. Don’t ever be mesmerized by fancy math in this field, or the people who are smart-alecs who are expert in it. Milton Friedman was great on the math of free markets, and look at the result. That’s all you need to know to be smarter than all these experts who are ‘smarter’ than you.
We just learned that this week, with the ‘invisible hand’ meme.
The issue of anti-science in the Republican field over the last presidency is of critical importance, and a pro-science stance is indicated, Darwinism excepted, thus keeping in mind that it is better science to be skeptical of Darwinism, this flying in the face of the mantras of all these experts. The issue of Darwinism is not relevant, in any case, to the technological issue of science and culture, it being a luxury of the scientific worldview obsessed with total explanation and control of thought. If anything Darwinism is holding science back.
Scientists have no monopoly on human knowledge, and can’t even get evolutionary theory straight and live in a closed box created by ‘scientism’.
Obama needs to realize something about the big secret of evolution, the failed logic of Darwinism which is being suppressed, and not get thrown from Scylla to the Charybdis of the design camp.
Best of luck surviving this double whammy of propagandas. Letting public policy be influenced by Darwinism is a tragic error. Show some honest cunning in an endrun around these obsessive experts who will try to find any hint of heresy from Darwin dogma. Too bad, but you will have to apply what you learned from playing poker.
09.24.08
Nature’s inquisition number on natural selection: Obama
Nature’s issue on the election has this: US election: Questioning the candidates
Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools?
Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.
Asking the candidates views on science is general is fine, but this question is really the Darwinism loyalty test, and should never have been asked. Note how Obama sensibly declares his acceptance of the fact of evolution and doesn’t answer to natural selection. Sensible, and smarter than Nature, which is obviously a bastion of the Darwin cult.
Noone should be asked to support such a loaded question about natural selection in the name of science because it isn’t science.
09.23.08
In the next 24 hours…
In the next 24 hours, Congress could shape America’s financial well-being for decades. Make sure your voice is heard.
Except ye be born again….sermon to the ID gang
UD tries to defend itself, Presidential Politics on Uncommon Descent, and I will ‘betcha’ this is a response to yesterday’s post here:
http://darwiniana.com/2008/09/22/id-gang-enters-conservative-shitpile/
Many of you are wondering why the UD adminstration decided to take an aggressive stand promoting the McCain/Palin presidential ticket.
There are two reasons.
The first is that both Senator McCain and Governor Palin are on record supporting “teach the controversyâ€. Senator Obama is on the record against it. Our goal is not to vanquish the Darwinian narrative by legal chicanery. That’s a tactic our opponents employ. Our goal is to let young people in public schools hear both sides of the argument in a religiously neutral manner and thus stop the early indoctrination into the Darwinian narrative by presenting it in a vacuum devoid of criticism or alternative hypotheses…
I find this close to ridiculous. I would be delighted to see someone ‘teach the controversy’ but it is hard to see how voting for the current crop of conservative Republicans is relevant to that, even as the world is tumbling around us.
Face reality, folks there at UD, you are conservative hopeless cases.
‘To be born again’, btw, is not originally a Christian theme. It is an ancient chord of spiritual transformation rendered an absurdity in most evangelical churches and conversion mills.
Seems to me the UD gang should ‘be born again’, maybe even as ‘born again liberals’, to step forth from this charade of the politics of evolution.
Conservative tactics mixed up with the Darwin debate are completely counterproductive. Just at the point when public philosophy might step beyond Social Darwinism this aggressive take-over of the challenge to Darwinism with the tired and useless design argument mangled with conservative interest lobby conservatism is counterproductive. To say the least.
09.15.08
Secret funding
US Should Disclose its Funding of Opposition Groups in Bolivia and Other Latin American Countries Read the rest of this entry »
09.13.08
Obama and economy
via Mxmail
Amid a Painful Economic Meltdown, Will Obama Be Bold Enough to Win?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on September 13, 2008, Printed on September 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98495/
09.12.08
The fake ‘evolution’ debate between political lobbies
Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?
With about 70 billion stars and as many as 100 million life forms (at least here on Earth), the universe is a stunningly complex place. Did all of this matter evolve independently, or was it guided by a larger force – as proponents of intelligent design believe? With the debate raging in living rooms, classrooms and courtrooms, the stakes are high when it comes to determining intelligent design’s merit.
One can suggest anpther debate: Is the ID/Darwinism debate a false duality?
This cute website produces the typical canned evolution debate, complete with ‘qualified experts’. But in fact all we really see is the activity of two sets of political lobbies, the Discovery Institute and the NCSE et al.
It makes it obvious that ID is a set of canned ideas, while the NCSE (and no doubt Ayn Rand Institute) is equally Boilerplage Central for the science corner.
I might note that a ‘larger force’ is not necessarily by any means an ‘intelligent designer’.
World’s Verdict Will Be Harsh …
Published on Friday, September 12, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
The World’s Verdict Will Be Harsh if the US Rejects the Man It Yearns For
An America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse
by Jonathan Freedland
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09.10.08
Mocking Constitutional Rights
Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 by Consortiumnews.com
Mocking Constitutional Rights
by Nat Parry
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09.09.08
Palin’s creationist views a ‘threat to progress’
Palin’s creationist views would endanger U.S. progress
Arthur Caplan is chairman of the medical-ethics department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Palin and creationism
Sarah Palin’s Big Bad Creationism
By Nathan Schneider, AlterNet. Posted September 9, 2008.
People are whispering that McCain’s VP pick doesn’t believe in evolution. But how much would this really affect policy?
09.08.08
Pepper-gassed
Published on Monday, September 8, 2008 by TruthDig.com
Tyranny on Display at the Republican Convention
by Chris Hedges
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09.07.08
Palin unlikely to push evolution issue
Palin unlikely to push evolution issue
The vice presidential nominee faces scrutiny over issues like evolution.
By NICHOLE DOBO
Daily Record/Sunday News
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09.05.08
The evolution of creationism
sciftp mail
The evolution of creationism
By Christopher Caldwell
update: I have posted some commentary (from another post, yesterday) on this in a comment
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The Family
Robert Christgau on America’s Secret Fundamentalists
By Robert Christgau
Any believer in American democracy is obliged to come to terms with a wing of the citizenry few secular humanists have the wherewithal to think about—Christians. Not mainline modernists, so useful for validating progressive pieties when we godless need moral ballast, but the 75 million Americans whose Christianity takes such modifiers as the respectable evangelical, the unapologetic fundamentalist, the doctrinal Bible-believing, the thoughtful convinced and the emotional born-again. Especially the white ones, of course—even black churches that oppose abortion and homosexuality are aligned with the social gospel, while Latino Pentecostals and Korean Presbyterians generally gather in their own congregations. Anyway, secular humanists are inclined to cut African-Americans and immigrants some slack. White Middle Americans they have a problem with.
09.04.08
Going on an Imperial Bender
Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by TomDispatch.com
How the U.S. Garrisons the Planet and Doesn’t Even Notice
by Tom Engelhardt
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Minnesota ACLU Takes Legal Action
ACLU Renews Its Call for Investigation Into Civil Liberties Violations at RNC
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Charges Against Bush Administration
Obama Might Pursue Criminal Charges Against Bush Administration
Biden says criminal violations will be pursued
by Elana Schor
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
Who is Wrecking America?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Does the liberal-left have a clue? I sometimes think not.
Read the rest of this entry »
09.03.08
Can the Democrats get their act together on evolution?
The unease of scientists confronted with Palin on evolution is understandable, but what exactly is the stance that Democrats should take on the subject of evolution?
The question is probably egregious since truth will be casualty here, the more so since truth has been a casualty among scientists themselves.
Politicians need to be aware of the fact that, without any imputation of the design argument, Darwinian theory is severely flawed and incomplete, and that much of the blah blah in its public defense is a lot of hot air. It is important to consider this point, since defending selectionist Darwinism is a strategy that looks scientific, but in reality is a argument easily challenged by the critics of Darwinian theory.
The question is simple: we have strong evidence for the reality of evolution, but we have not arrived at any conclusive proof that natural selection is its driving mechanism.
Darwinists have set themselves and the rest of science up for a fall. Democrats in the general culture don’t have to be lemmings following the same path.
It may be the case that Darwinists have seized control of biology, but there is no reason they should do the same with politicians.
The problem is that we have no true public philosophy on the subject of evolution, and Darwinism/ID simply don’t foot the bill.
In any case, the Democrats ought to be wary of the confusion created by so-called ‘Darwin liberals’, and not make the conservative ideology of Social Darwinist Darwinism some kind of democratic/liberal shibboleth.
There is a huge gap here created by the domination of Scientism, next to the surge of fundamentalism. Neither of these perspectives can really get a handle on evolution.
The answer then is simple, in a kind of Kantian sense: the solution to the evolution question is still an unknown, and the politicization of the issue is therefore egregious and unnecessary.
The best stance for a politician is to step out of the lies of Darwinists and Creationists and simply declare (as Obama did with an abortion question) that they don’t know the answer.
Beware of the Scylla of the conservative designists, and the pseudo-liberalism of the Dawkins Darwinists.
Blogs such as Daily Kos, Alternet, and others, are misleading here. They have been taken over by the Dawkins generation, which is systematically digging the grave of science with this endless routine of Dawkins-style Darwinism.
Take a look at the eonic effect. The material is tailor-made for a public philosophy on the subject of evolution.
09.02.08
Blogzone 2: essays at …
New material at:
http://kantschallenge.net
http://axial-age.net
http://redfortyeight.com
http://gurdjieff-con.net
Darwin tainted by whiggishness
…From the back garden, Darwin would have looked out on the college’s main building, where his onetime mentor Robert Grant had become a professor of zoology. Grant had taught him basic field biology. But Darwin managed to avoid him for the three years he lived on Gower Street; apparently he didn’t want his career tainted by Grant’s radical beliefs—including an early brand of evolutionary thinking.
(nb. Play on ‘heart of darkness’ evidently intentional)
Phony Darwin liberals
UD complains of left-wing bias at Scienceblogs. OK, but isn’t the pot calling the kettle black here? The conservative cast of the ID-ists makes their thesis, apart from its other difficulties, beyond the pale for most ‘liberals’.
The irony here is that Darwinism is really a crypto-conservative ideology with built in echoes of classical liberalism. Conservatives should be glad these ‘leftwing’ biologists are dupes of a conservative ideology.
Meanwhile the term ‘left’ should properly refer to the real ‘left’, its usage having degraded at the hands of the generation of ‘neo-liberalism’.
Meanwhile, check out the blog 1848+ at http://redfortyeight.com, and today’s post, What’s the ultra far left?
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