what new podcasts am i listening to?

uh, because as a scientist, i listen to a lot of podcasts. a.lot. i'm also a podcast whore, so i accept any and all recommendations.

tv shows that work as podcasts:
meet the press - getting to see tom brokaw use his political savvy and experience to disembowel everyone across party lines (most recently eviscerating nancy pelosi about offshore drilling waffling and forcing a stammering tim pawlenty to defend sarah palin) is AWESOME.

real time with bill maher - is he a liberal apologist? well, yes. but he isn't the left-wing bill o'reilly. he doesn't invent facts, he's opinionated but insightful, and he's really funny.

economic and political recaps:
the takeaway (thanks young) - can be a little boring because it repeats itself multiple times, but its a nice bipartisan look at the daily news.

random fun podcasts:
the moth - really fun personal anecdotes running much shorter than this american life. by the way, has anyone seen this live in new york? does the podcast cherry pick the one interesting one from like 12 aspiring novelists reading excerpts from their crappy books, or is it worth attending?

ask the naked scientists - because who doesn't like having fun weird science factoids that you can use to confuse people at dinner parties?

By the way, unemployment continues to rise. downer!

what the heck happened to sarah palin

that made her switch colleges 6 times in 6 years?

palin bumps independents towards obama?

pleaaaaaaaaaase let this poll reflect reality. highlights:

A Gallup release today demonstrated that compared to an August average, McCain's support post-Palin has increased with white Republican women (+5 change in McCain). There has been no movement with Republican men (+1).

By contrast, Democrats and independents across gender lines move toward Obama post-Palin. This movement has mostly been larger than McCain's movement among Republican women (independent men: +7 Obama; independent women: +5; Democratic men and women: +8 each). In fact, Obama now leads with white independent women (46% Obama, 39% McCain).

TNR: Don't Believe the Hype

the new republic: mccain still a bush era republican:

McCain reiterated his interest in drilling for more oil--a strategy that, as noted in this space, wouldn't actually do much to reduce gas prices. He also vowed to cut taxes, failing to mention that most of the cuts would go to the very wealthy.

his suggestion that it would "make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance" is just plain wrong.

let me add that his endorsement of "holding schools accountable for poor performance" and giving families the choice to opt out of the public school system and choose charter schools is a continuation of No Child Left Behind. This policy is an unequivocal failure. It denigrates public schools by supporting a brain drain, and punishes rather than protects schools struggling in low-income areas. It even encourages teachers to cheat for their students to artificially raise test scores! (congrats to Freakonomics on catching that one). Its failure has been well documented for years, so, congratulations on yet another continuity of failed policy, John. I can't believe I had missed one.

mccain and palin: lovers of big oil

thomas friedman words it best:

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.

what does sarah palin say about john mccain?

ive been gone awhile, but after yesterday's display, i couldn't help myself. lets dispense with the tiring inaccuracices of sarah palin's speech quickly (its being discussed elsewhere)

- her claims to opposing federal earmarks are completely fictional (initially supported the 'bridge to nowhere', requested 27 billion dollars in earmarks)
- her portrait of obama as not authoring a single bill are laughable (authored 150 pieces of legislation in his first 2 years alone in the senate, including a prominent bipartisan bill to prevent access to dangerous weaponry by fringe groups)
- her claims of obama raising taxes are accurate, mostly because he would be raising them predominantly on the upper economic crust (who were well-represented in the RNC last night).

this is all being perfectly well documented, so no need to belabor it. so, what do i want to talk about?

can we now, once and for all, retire any portrait of john mccain as a reformer, a maverick, a straight talker who marches to the beat of his own drum? last night's speeches absolutely crystallized the mccain-palin willingness to use the same Rove-ian hatemongering scare tactics that were put so brilliantly on display in the 2004 and 2008 campaign. Rather than discuss a single piece of republican policy, palin and the former presidential hopefuls (huckabee, romney, guliani) focused on stirring up vitriol against the democratic candidate, using a combination of fear (mccain is the only one who can keep us safe from terrorists), xenophobia/racism (mccain doesnt believe in silly things like habeas corpus for prisoners), and absolutely sickening populist fanboyism (obama is a fancy elitist from a big city who doesn't care about common people). palin was perfectly willing to continue to paint herself and mccain as "bipartisan reformers," yet had no qualms blasting the senate majority leader harry reid, and claiming that his intense dislike of mccain was an actual recipe for success! does this not mark a stark departure from the begrudging bipartisan respect for mccain that the GOP was attempting to paint just days ago? from guliani yelling "islamic terrorism" and hurling out accusations of "how dare they question sarah palin's ability to be a politician and a mother" despite the fact that nobody was doing any such thing, to palin's condescension-laden speech, can there be any confusion as to who is running the mccain campaign?

the economist has famously now lamented, "bring back the real mccain!" Who now can honestly say that what we saw last night were not his true colors? who can watch palin channel dick cheney's fear-loving snarl and yet call mccain a maverick?

Yesterday I felt the same disgust that I felt when I first saw the swiftboat ads 4 years ago. I want to hope that the nomination of Barack Obama represents a shift in the political worldview of this country, but I can't shake the fear in my heart that the same negative, soulless propaganda that helped george bush 4 years ago will once again tug on the heartstrings of the american people. but I hope i'm wrong. I hope that democrats, republicans, and independents alike see this ticket for what it truly is:

- a socially neoconservative platform: staunchly pro-life, against family planning, for creationism in the schools, against legislation promoting equal work for equal pay (the employment non-discrimination act), against federal hate crimes legislation

- a failing socially conservative economic platform: repeated votes against investments in renewable energy (palin), making bush's tax cuts for the upper crust permanent, further investments in an oil based economy, against raising the minimum wage, continued spending of 10 billion dollars per month in iraq.

But even if you are a true republican or a true conservative who believes in either these social or economic values, I don't know how anyone could watch last night's performances and be inspired. So I'll just ask all of you to compare what you heard last night to Barack Obama's speech in Chicago in 2002, upon deployment of US troops in Iraq, and then truly think about whom you have decided to support.

---

I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.

I Don't Oppose All Wars

I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.

I don't oppose all wars. After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.

Opposed to Dumb, Rash Wars

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

On Saddam Hussein

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.

You Want a Fight, President Bush?

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

even funnier

90s flowchart.http://xkcd.com