Intelligence Falling

A very trenchant and funny send-up of Intelligent Design from the Onion.

I Blog, You Decide (again)

A cyncial ploy to please the conservative base or a cynical ploy to please the conservative base? From MSNBC:

Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.

Decent Exposure

Ryan Lizza reveals the most frequent "sources close to the White House."

Would a GWOT by any other name not spell defeat?

Kevin Drum has a good post summarizing the chain of events in the GSAVE vs. GWOT rhetorical smackdown.

Short story shorter: There were noises coming from the administration a couple of months ago indicating a possible change in strategy towards international terrorism. Then, silence for two months. Then, last week a New York Times article suggested that the administration would no longer be using the phrase "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) and would be replacing it with "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" (GSAVE). We were left to wonder whether this change in language reflected a real change in policy, or was a cynical rhetorical shift intended to put Republicans in a better position for mid-term elections (The political logic behind this second theory escapes me a bit.)

And wonder, and wonder and wonder.

So, where are we now? Well, yesterday Bush made it clear that he will have none of this "struggle" business. To paraphrase: We're at war against terror in the war on terror, fighting terror in a war against terrorism and those who would wage war with terror. Terrorism. War. War on Terrorism.

Again we're left to wonder, does this change in language, even if now retracted, reflect a change in the administration's thinking? And, how much was the President himself involved in the change (in language or thinking)?

This Times article answers those questions (again, I'm paraphrasing): We have no effing clue.

Vaccines and Autism

Linked? Nope, says "the writer who first told the thimerosal story in depth in the New York Times Magazine two and a half years ago":

Bobby Kennedy Jr. ...recently discovered a new cause....he accuses government vaccine scientists and their academic advisers of covering up what for him is an uncontestable fact: the causal link between a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal in vaccines and a massive increase in childhood autism in America.

...

...four perfectly good studies comparing large populations of kids have showed that thimerosal did not cause the increased reporting of autism.

...

The Institute of Medicine agreed that the special medical problems of some autistics deserve closer scrutiny. But like the Institute of Medicine, I doubt that vaccine damage will figure into the story. And in the meantime, lawsuits could do severe damage to the vaccination programs that protect all of us.

Nukes and Fetuses

There is a very interesting analysis of the Bush Administration's foreign policy in The New Republic this week, arguing that the administration's ideology prevents it from dealing effectively with nuclear proliferation. The gist:

...Indeed, of 15 scenarios discussed in a 2004 report by the Homeland Security Council--including terrorist attacks with chemical, biological, and radiological weapons--only a nuclear attack is certain to require years of recovery time. This leads to a simple conclusion: In the near term, the war on terrorism--whatever else it is--should first be a war on nuclear terrorism.

It has become all too clear, however, that this is a war the Bush administration is spectacularly ill-equipped to fight, handicapped as it is by a worldview that revolves around our enemies' intentions rather than their capabilities...The administration is consumed by the idea that the character of states is of primary importance to U.S. security. This ideology, this conservative fixation, explains why, for much of Bush's presidency, his administration focused on Iraq to the exclusion of North Korea and Iran...Indeed, an examination of the Bush administration's ideology shows that, not only has it made some bad decisions for U.S. security, but that it is constitutionally incapable of making the right ones.

Farther down, elaborating on this thesis:

Alas, the White House's state-centrism did not yield a focus on rogue states' capabilities, but rather on their intentions. Bush officials wanted not simply to defang enemy regimes, but to change them--to end them, as Wolfowitz said. This preference for regime change as post-September 11 strategy is the natural outgrowth of the conservative belief that the moral character of a state should determine how the United States engages it, or whether it does so at all. As Dick Cheney once put it, "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

I think there is a parallel here to the administration's approach to abortion. Any effective effort to reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States would almost surely have birth control as a key component. But aggressively promoting contraception is seen by this administration as a societal blessing on extramarital sex, a big no-no. So, as looking away from a rogue ruler's bad behavior (like being a tyrannical dictator) in order to prevent even worse behavior (like supplying a terrorist with a nuke) is anathema, so to is promoting one sort of bad behavior in young women (extramarital sex) for the sake of preventing one perceived as much worse (abortion.) The consequences: North Korea keeps popping out more nuclear bombs, while abortion clinics keep dismantling fetuses.

I'm convinced Bush is sincere in his belief that abortion is profoundly wrong, and I know he does not want to see a nuclear attack on American soil. In both cases, though, he has let a requirement for ideologically perfect means be the enemy of good ends.

Second. Best. Simile. Ever.

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

It's from a book called, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, which I highly recommend. The book is written from the perspective of an autistic teenager, and while this simile may not be generally applicable, it beautifully crystallizes the narrator's predicament.