"Senior administration official"

I'm really sick of statements made in press briefings being attributed to a "senior administration official". This is not a valid ground rule, and a press corps that was worth the First Amendment wouldn't have to think twice before disobeying it. What's McClellan going to do about it? Throw them out? Now that would be a story!

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

GOP market segmentation

The Republicans are expert at segmenting the market. They know that they can use diametrically opposed tactics and only political junkies will notice.

So, they will have one message for moderates ("compassionate conservatism"), another message for right-wing Protestants (Bob Jones U.), many different messages on Iraq (9/11, imminent threat, WMD, human rights, liberation, oil, power, democratic dominoes in the Middle East, protection of Israel, Inigo Montoya, ...), code words for the hardcore neo-confederates - you get the picture.

Rove and Co. will fire any bullet they can lay their hands on at Dean. Unelectable? A clear and present danger (to the United States of Neocon)? Dean can't be both, but they'll have the money, the doublethink, and the media shills to do both.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

Signing up with Howard Dean

I went to a Dean meet-up last week to recruit new blood for the Democratic Town Committee. Hey, they get me, I get them, we both win! Please, sign up and get active.

The danger of acquiescence is obvious.

Originally a comment on DailyKos.

Smug for the camera

Cokie Roberts is useless except as a prime example of smugness.

Originally a comment on Eschaton.

Rush to judgement

Rush is also applying his rehab lessons to politics: When liberals say something bad about conservatives, they're really telling us what they think of themselves. So, when Ted Kennedy says that Bush lied his way into the Iraq war, ol' Ted is really telling us that he would have lied in a similar circumstance.

I learned so much in such a short time.

deminva

The truth is that the frothing right wing is usually guilty of its own charges:

• Clinton's lust for power was nowhere near their own
• ditto his "lying"
• the way they play the race, gender, and ethnicity cards for cynical gain in hearings on judgeships
• being soft on terrorism (see Conason, Big Lies, ch. 12)
• running the government for the gravy train it can provide
• a complete and utter sense of entitlement about everything
• etc.

If rehab has made Rush just self-aware enough to see this, he'll be using this a lot. But really, "it takes one to know one" is the dumbest old saw I've ever heard.

If not, it takes someone who projects to know someone projects, and ...

Originally a comment on Eschaton.

Only a matter of dates

So, the Bush Administration is now promising us that they will real soon now have the evidence they should have had when taking us to war? Of all the incredible gall!

Originally a comment on Politics, Law, and Autism.

Science and belief

it might be worthwhile to take an interest in why science continues to be regarded by so many with mistrust.

I've thought about this for a long time, and I don't know the answer, but I have some ideas.

Science is hard. It takes effort to understand. Its beauty is subtle. It demands careful attention to details. Most people want easy, but they are jealous of any authority that tells them the intellectually easy way is wrong.

Science requires the suspension of belief, not disbelief, in favor of looking. But belief is a matter of choice for most people, rather than a matter of evidence. About evolution, my sixth grade teacher said, "It's not nice."

As if that mattered. Yet niceness did matter to her more than the evidence, and I think that perception or another matters most to most people.

So, does science need a change in PR? It's not enough to be right. It's not even persuasive. Does science need heroism and myth just as much as politics or religion does? Well, there hasn't been much of heroism or myth in science since July of 1969. (And, yes, I do realize that landing on the moon was really more about politics than it was about science.)

(Originally a response to this.)