Cutticcini's Profile Enlargement

The wingnut Virginian Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has had a setback in his witchhunt of Professor Michael Mann. Cuccinelli was asking for all documents from the University of Virginia concerning professor Mann's research while at UVa, to "investigate" any possible fraud committed by Professor Mann in his grants received to study climate change. A judge has ruled that Cuccinelli failed to show a sufficient “reason to believe” that UVa possessed any documents related to Mann that suggested a fraud occurred. Cuccinelli will continue harrassing UVa and Mann on the taxpayer's dime.

Cuccinelli is a climate change denier, who has also directed all state schools and colleges to remove sexual orientation references from their non-discrimination policies (in other words removed discrimination protection for gays and lesbians), and sued over the constitutionality of federal health care reform. All on the taxpayer's dime.

Cuccinelli is doing nothing more that using taxpayer money to fund a major profile enlargement, which is odd given his opposition to publicly funded healthcare.

What Does a GOP Apology Cost

By now everyone has heard of Joe Barton, ranking republican on the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce and his apology to BP.

However this allows us to calculate a handy base line.

Barton has received a total of $1,447,880 from oil and gas companies, and his apology consisted of 326 words.

The price of an apology from the ranking Republican on a Congressional Committee = $4440.00 per word.

Religion in Australian Politics

There is an opinion piece in today's Australian Financial Review by Geoffrey Barker, visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, about religion in Australian politics. It's behind a fire wall, and much of it relates to specific Australian examples, but some is of general interest and is excerpts are provided below.

It is time Australians paused to consider the possible adverse consequences of unleashing the politics of faith on the essentially secular activity that is democratic politics. They include intolerance, authoritarianism and poisonous social division.

Some religious teachings are doubtless important in informing some political views. But allowing political conflict to be expressed as clashes of secredly ordained beliefs rather than of socially acquired interests is a recipe for non-negotiable disputes that defy the necessary compromises of political life.

A democratic society should respect the faith-based commitments of citizens; it should respect their views of religious leaders on contentious issues like abortion, censorship and social justice. It should also respect the views of non-believers.

What it cannot do is concede that any faith group possesses a monopoly on truth and virtue and allow it to impose its attitudes on the entire society. Politics arises from diversity; to eliminate diversity is to legitimise authoritarianism.

It is not necessary to have religious convictions to be tolerant and compassionate and to observe high standards of moral responsibility. Indeed, so-called humanists (much maligned by religious authoritarians) can reasonably claim to have views grounded in logic and experience rather than in rules revealed by divine intervention.

Tolerance to opposing views, and the willingness to accommodate them, are defining characteristics of democratic politics that are anathema to religious fundamentalists.

[. . .]

Sadly many Australians seem willing to swallow uncritically the religious avowals of politicians. Yet it is hardly cynical to conclude such politicians often use religion opportunistically to advance their political careers.

Moreover, those seriously demanding spiritual virtues have absolutely no appeal to politicians pursuing personal glory and earthly power.

Rudd sells out Australia

Today the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, proved to full of hot air on climate change by setting a mandatory reduction in CO2 emissions target of a worthless 5% cut by 2020.

This abject failure of leadership is a stab in the back to all those who believed his (now obviously empty) rhetoric about needing leadership in tackling climate change.

They try and spin it by saying that it’s a large cut on a per capita basis. Well, yes, it would be, as Australia is ONE OF THE WORLDS BIGGEST CARBON POLLUTERS on a per capita basis – or more accurately Australian companies are amongst the worlds biggest polluters, which, given our small population makes us a large polluter on a per capita basis. This argument is like saying, "right, you pollute 50 tons and we pollute 500 tons. If you reduce your pollution by 50% or 25 tons, we'll reduce ours by 25 tons as well"!

So as we are amongst the biggest transgressors, we should take the biggest hit, shouldn’t we?

It’s the right thing to do.
It’s the fair thing to do.
It’s the moral thing to do.

But not in Rudd’s world, where the big polluters, who have been literally gouging massive profits for years, will be rewarded with low targets and billion dollar payouts as a reward for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to prepare for carbon emission limits which they have known for years were coming. Not only that, but he has reduced the threshold for polluters to qualify for free permits to pollute, making the permit system even less effective at initiating change in the practices of our worst polluters.

The leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull is probably slack-jawed in disbelief. That a Prime Minister should so comprehensively turn his back on those who voted for him and his platform of decisive action on climate change, to run into the arms of the only group in Australia that will not vote for him – big business. All Turnbull has to do now is sit tight and wait for the next election. After today, the odds of a single term government (a rarity in Australian politics) is suddenly on the cards.

More denialism from The Australian

The Australian newspaper is Australian media's version of Fox News. Still in denial about it's beloved conservative government losing the last election, the paper continues it's denial of global warming. Tim Lambert over at Deltoid has this story, and more on The Australian's denialist past.

New Energy Secretary is a Steve

President-elect Obama has announce his Energy Secretary will be physicist Steven Chu. Professor Chu is, apart from Professor of Physics at Stanford, and a Nobel laureate, a member of Project Steve. This is a list of scientists names Steve (or Stephanie, or Stephan, etc.) who accept that:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.

The Project is run by the NSCE as a parody of the creationist tactic of compiling lists of "scientists" (most of whom have no connection to biology or evolution) that 'dissent from evolution'. In response the NSCE created Project Steve in honour of Steven J. Gould.

Professor Steven Chu should not be confused with Professor Steve Steve, who is far too busy a panda to be Energy Secretary.

Currently Project Steve is approaching 1000 'Steve's'.

Are you a Steve (or Stephanie, or Stephan, etc.)?
Are you a scientist?
Do you agree with the statement above?
Then go to Project Steve and sign up.

And while you are at it, sign up to NSCE. They do great work.

Palienation 2012

Palin for 2012! No. Really.

I think almost everyone would want Governor Palin to run in 2012.

The religious right want her because she's their kind of gal, and while she is a woman, it's the Vice President and close advisers that make all the decisions, right?

The moderate Republicans would want her to run because 2012 is probably a lost cause (unless something drastic happens) and so why waste a good candidate. Also, it'll be a sop to the christian right and, when the palienation of moderate America is complete, they can tell the christian right "we did it your way, it didn't work. Now lets go back to the centre."

The Democrats would want her to run because if she did, President Obama wouldn't need to campaign!

So Palianation 2012? Yes we can!

The AntiPalin

Gogreen18. She's smart, articulate and an atheist. She's the AntiPalin! Check out her youtube site.

And remember, people who think like the people who tried to get her banned also vote. So Vote!


From Pharyngula.

A moderate in the hand is worth two religious rights in George's bush

The GOP are in serious trouble due to some major tactical errors. One rationale for bringing the terrible Sarah Palin on board is obvious, Senator McCain was simply too liberal for many of the religious right, and their support was crumbling. However, bringing in a sop for the religious right simply drove off the moderates. And that's the real problem.

To explain. Say the vote is approximately McCain 50 : Obama 50 and perhaps 20% of McCain's vote is the religious right (that's 10 of his 50). Then say he loses those votes because of his wildly liberal views. Those votes are lost. Gone. They'll not vote for anyone more liberal than Senator McCain. The count is then McCain 40 : Obama 50. Senator Obama gets a 10 point lead.

Now, say we introduce the Palin factor. Back come your religious right, fervoured up, hoping for a McCain/Palin win, and praying for a swift McCain death (I kid you not!) However, away goes the moderate end of the support, the 20% who stuck with Senator McCain but can't stomach the rantings of the religious right.

So where does that leave Senator McCain? back at 40:50 right? Wrong. The problem for the GOP is that, while the moderate vote is lost to McCain, the votes themselves aren't lost. Unlike the religious right, the moderates still vote - but for Senator Obama! The count is now McCain 40 : Obama 60 - a 20 point spread for the same number of votes lost.

The GOP needs to bring 2 religious right votes for every moderate they loose, and I don't think they can do it.

Stand tall moderates, you vote is worth two religious right votes!