Open Science Thread

Crazy Doc McLeroy, D.D.S., a man who was somehow appointed Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, shames the Lone Star state yet again by first explaining he 'believes that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion.' Followed by saying, "The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe." And then concludes -- and this is the fucking hilarious part --  his refusal to accept natural science and his focus on teaching creationism in Texas K-12 public school science classes is not based on his religious beliefs.

There was a time not long ago when cranks like this sounded pretty scary. Back then, in the darkest days of the Bush Administration, assorted delusional nuts and self promoting liars like Doc McLeroy and Company looked poised to take over the nation and place it under an antiscience, neoconservative, quasi-theocratic rule that was, as anyone with half a brain knew, destined to promptly collapse in ruin. But thankfully that threat now seems abated. Although they still have some power left, these poor deluded bastards resemble little more than a few rancid leftovers from an era in which red America grew to grotesque proportions feeding on the politics of raw fear, dominionism, and division.

I have some heartfelt advice for moderate conservatives, or anyone else, who harbors legitimate skepticism over items like climate change, evolutionary biology, etc: when you coddle and praise and appoint fundy clowns to high office who link the intensity of catastrophic hurricanes to  parades and who devoutly believe the universe is a few thousand years old, you should really, really, just pipe down or risk being associated with your lunatic fringe forever. Don't bother the rest of us with your whining, until such time as you jettison the freaky fundamentalist baggage that is dragging you and what's left of your credibility straight to the bottom of the shallow end of the gene pool. Because if you do, we're just going to have a field day with it and with you.

Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

In 1966 and early 1967, I served under the tutelage of Tom Hayden (and others) as a third-tier "outside agitator," helping to set up and give advice to campus chapters of Students for a Democratic Society in the days when community organizing was one of the group's key efforts. Hayden went on to become famous, or infamous in the view of some people, but he never lost his love for up-from-the-bottom politics.

On the anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's murder, Hayden wrote at Huffington Post:

Bobby and Barack:

[In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968], I watched from a New York townhouse the murder of a second Kennedy in five years. Martin Luther King already was gone, Vietnam and our cities were burning. I was in the midst of chaotic planning for anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic Convention coming in August.

I drifted off with friends to St. Patrick's Cathedral where Kennedy staffers let us through the doors late at night. After sitting a while in silence, I found myself as a member of a makeshift honor guard standing next to his simple coffin. I was wearing a green Cuban hat and weeping. The last political hope of the Sixties vision -- a movement-driven progressive government -- was finished, whether by chance or plot, it mattered little. The violence I had resisted under white racism in the South was seeping into my veins. Like many who took their rage even farther, I was hardening, and never dared again to recover my young idealism.

"Dad, don't you recognize anything of yourself in this movement?", asked an angry email from my son Troy, nearly forty years later. He was working 24/7 with his [now] wife Simone, for Barack Obama, spreading the boundless energy of the young and an artist's flair for silk-screens. How could I share your giddy utopianism, I wanted to respond, after the murders of the Sixties icons -- John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, all of whom I had known as a young man? If those killings were not enough, we suffered the Nixon and Reagan eras of counter-revolution aimed at what our generation had achieved. Then the war and sanctions and war again for control of the Persian Gulf. During the coming decades, I was limited every day by the sordid realities, as well as the occasional modest achievements, of electoral politics.

I didn't see him coming. When I heard of the young state senator with a background in community organizing who wanted to be president, I was at least sentient enough to be interested. When I read Dreams of My Father, I was taken aback by its depth. This young man apparently gave his first public speech, against South African apartheid, at an Occidental College rally organized by Students for Economic Democracy, the student branch of the Campaign for Economic Democracy [CED] which I chaired in 1979-82. The buds of curiosity quickened. Soon I was receiving emails from David Peck, an organizer of the Occidental rally, who now is coordinating Americans in Spain for Barack Obama.

One of Bobby Kennedy's qualities, or perhaps it was a quality of the times, was an easy and growing familiarity with the New Left. He evolved from 1961 to 1963 from viewing the Freedom Riders as a dangerous nuisance to a prophetic minority. By 1967, he even wanted to copy SDS community organizing projects -- a forerunner of Barack Obama's path -- as a template for a national war on poverty.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are SmokeyMonkey, ezdidit, vcmvo2, YatPundit and jlms qkw, with Got a Grip twirling in the editor's chair.

We offer two excellent action items tonight. jlms qkw requests that everyone write to a soldier in Free! Easy! (and no teeth) while Bendygirl urges us to prod our government to do the right thing in Aluminum Dust Burnt His Flesh and Muscle Tissue.

• Eric Zencey thoroughly analyzes and explains how important the recently obstructed Boxer substitute to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Act was, and why we have to keep fighting for a better bill in But remember: It's about more than climate change. (vcmvo2)
• mwmwm discusses their recent personality change in On becoming an apocalyptic zealot. (jlms qkw)
• Through the magic of Diary Rescue's unique timeline, mwmwm brings us another offering, the sad story of the end of a culture and nation in The War: Kiribati must not stand! (jlms qkw)
• Tony Barr PA09 reports on a grassroots climate crisis demonstration in Walking to Washington with Principals for Change. (ezdidit)

• relikx's first diary is a great essay on the history of US-Mexican relations and the impact of oil: Mexican-American Petroleo and the GOP Machine. (smokeymonkey)
• tjlord explains some aspects of markets in Commodity markets and supply/demand balance. (jlms qkw)

• Jeff Huber exposes the frivolous lies of Senator McCain's McPandering to AIPAC. (ezdidit)
• drational reports on the upcoming Military Commission Trials at Guantanamo, and asks Will McCain Benefit from Torture? (vcmvo2)
• We've gone beyond "sew them up and send them back" in Iraq, as cactusflinthead discusses in Medicated Military, updated. (YatPundit)

• iampunha gives us a fantastic educational review and patriotic tribute to June 6, 1944: D-Day. (YatPundit)
• dadanation summarizes a few months when the world seemed to move faster in 143 days in 1968 -- from the yippies to rfk's murder. (jlms qkw)
• RadMod evokes the sadness and the unfulfilled promise of RFK's run for the presidency in What we lost in the predawn, 40 years ago today... (vcmvo2)

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this Open Thread.

::

Blurb this Book

From the Senator who refuses to go away:

In a live interview on NewsChannel 7 Tuesday night – Craig, 62 - told Dee Sarton that he is in the process of writing a book on energy - that will also talk about his time in Congress – and the events of the past year.

"There will be a bit of what's happened in the last year, and the way it evolved," Craig said. "I think that's important for Idaho and those outside Idaho who are interested to know."

Hunter posited the following as the probable chapters:

Chapter 1: The various reasons why I am not gay.

Chapter 2: More reasons why I am not gay.

Chapter 3: A repetition of the previous reasons why I am not gay.

Chapter 4: Other people throughout history who were also not gay.

Chapter 5: My favorite Barbra Streisand songs.

Chapter 6: I am really, really not gay, damn it.

So have at it, creative Kossacks. What do you think Larry Craig will reveal? And while you're at it, blurb that book.

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