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Sunday, June 18, 2006
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Cory Doctorow:
Last week, Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday program did a segment on politics and science, bringing on Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, and Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science. The former is a book that accuses the left of distorting science to fabricate the AIDS crisis, global climate change, the prohibition against stem cell research, and other well-known politically charged scientific crises. Mooney, the Washington correspondent for the excellent SEED magazine, which is the best science and policy magazine on the stands, is especially masterful in the debate.
Bethell has nothing going for him -- he's regurgitating throughly debunked pseudo-science ("the Earth actually cooled at the start of the 20th Century") and rather than let this turn into a "I'm right-No, I'm right" talk-show, Mooney just quietly, thoroughly and masterfully destroys Bethell. He is firm, concise and sharp, while Bethell is meandering, incoherent, and fuzzy. The MP3 is up as part of the Science Friday podcast -- great both for the content and for Mooney's excellent radio-show ninjitsu.
Show notes link, MP3 link
(Via Boing Boing.)
7:18:36 PM 
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Read this. Read the whole thing. Understand one segment of how the conservative machine works. This is just one piece of the pie. ... admitted to participating in money-laundering schemes by personally smuggling cash from South Korea into the United States. She also said she witnessed other cases in which bags of cash were carried into the United States and delivered ... returned from a trip ... “with $600,000 in cash which he had received from his father. ... Myself along with three or four other members that worked at Manhattan Center saw the cash in bags, shopping bags.” ... made sure that his steady flow of cash found its way into the pockets of key conservative operatives, especially when they were most in need, when they were facing financial crises. Read the whole thing.
Call and ask YOUR member of Congress why this is not investigated. Call and ask your newspaper, too. Of course, you risk sounding like a crazy person, trying to tell people what's going on with the Repubicans
(Via Seeing the Forest.)
7:17:23 PM
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On Friday, two U.S. troops were kidnapped at a checkpoint in Iraq. They remain missing. This morning on Fox News Sunday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow criticized the press for spending too much time covering their plight. Watch it:
Last week at a White House press briefing, Snow was asked for a reaction to the death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq reaching 2,500. Snow responded: “It’s a number.”
Transcript from Fox:
The thing is the way the war is being covered — and we’ve seen it right now, we have two U.S. servicemen, and god bless them, we hope they’re okay. We’re focusing on them and we forget that since Zarqawi was killed, hundreds of bad guys have been rounded up, there has been a lot of intelligence. The Iraqis have gone ahead mobilized 50,000 men going in the five Baghdad neighborhoods. There is a lot going on there.
(Via Think Progress.)
5:42:42 PM
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"Boner" Boehner's desire for a "rational debate" on Iraq is underscored by the memo he wrote to GOP members that Think Progress has obtained:
1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as “imperative.”
2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush’s policies in Iraq as “sheepish,” “weak,” and “prone to waver endlessly.”
3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush’s policies and hoping terrorist threats will “fade away on their own.”
Lovely the way this improves the "dialogue".
They have the document PDF'd in its entirety.
(Via Rising Hegemon.)
4:14:28 PM
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The first answer is the best.
12:11:33 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 7/1/2006; 9:39:25 AM.
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