Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

Another gem from Ezra Klein:

In other words, America does not currently conceive of marriage in the way that Douthat and Tushnet would like it to conceive of marriage, and in the way it would need to conceive of marriage in order for there to be a good reason the institution can’t accommodate gays. So to oppose gay marriage, Douthat and Tushnet must first construct an alternative version of marriage, and then argue that if real marriage opens to gays, that’s another step away from the idealized marriage that would be closed to gays. It’s like partisans of VCRs opposing improvements to DVDs because they make the widespread resurrection of VHS unlikely.

This whole commentary is actually pretty amazing. Here’s another nugget of enlightened reason:

When you hold a position that you feel very deeply but can’t justify with persuasive facts or clear theory, it’s generally a signal that something is awry in the underlying position.

Amen.

Sadly, unless we successfully tackle this upsurge of anti-Muslim rhetoric from New York to California, to Tennessee to Connecticut and other places across our great land, it saddens me to think that the infamous lunatic terrorist known as Osama bin Laden may be in a cave somewhere in central Asia laughing at us—and perhaps even mockingly referring to our beloved country as the United States of Islamophobia.

This is depressing.

Five days before a 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the diabetes drug Avandia was linked to a 43% increase in heart attacks compared with other medications or placebos, a group of scientists and executives from the drug’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), gathered in a conference room at the offices of the Food and Drug Administration in White Oak, Md. The GSK goal: to convince regulators that the evidence that the company’s $3 billion-a-year blockbuster drug caused heart problems was inconclusive. To do that, the GSK officials focused not on heart-attack data but on a broader, less well defined category of heart problems called myocardial ischemia. The most recent studies of Avandia, the GSK officials told the FDA, had “yielded information that is inconsistent with an increased risk of myocardial ischemic events,” according to sealed court proceedings obtained by TIME.

What GSK didn’t tell the FDA was that on May 14, 2007, two days before the White Oak meet
was that on May 14, 2007, two days before the White Oak meeting, GSK’s Global Safety Board had noted that a new assessment of Avandia studies “strengthens the [cardiac-risk] signal observed in the [previous] analysis.” Or that eight days earlier, the company’s head of research and development, Moncef Slaoui, had sent an e-mail to its chief medical officer saying Avandia patients showed an “increased risk of ischemic event ranging from 30% to 43%!” Or that the day before the meeting, the company had produced a preliminary draft report that showed patients on Avandia had a 46% greater likelihood of heart attack than those in a control group.

Ezra Klein has a single-chart comparison of the Bush Administration’s tax plan and the Obama Administration’s tax plan. Fun reading. Enjoy.

From CarnalNation.com:

Some liberal politicians have extrapolated the theory of relativity to metaphorically justify their own political agendas. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of “curvature of space” to promote a broad legal right to abortion. As of June 2008, over 170 law review articles have cited this liberal application of the theory of relativity to legal arguments. Applications of the theory of relativity to change morality have also been common. Moreover, there is an unmistakable effort to censor or ostracize criticism of relativity.

Apparently, it is not enough to be against just evolution, now Conservation Douchebags are now against Einstein’s Theory of Relatively as well. 

Coked-up Stimulus Monkeys - Sen. Harry Reid’s plan to save Nevada, as described by Republican contender Sharron Angle.

Rep. Bob Inglis lost his Republican primary contest and is sort of angry about it.

Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven “demagoguery” that he believes will undermine the GOP’s long-term credibility. And he’s freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.

From Fox and Friends this morning:

[Chris] WALLACE: Congressman — a number of top economists say what we need is more economic stimulus.

[Representative (and Minority Leader who wants to be US Speaker of the House) John] BOEHNER: Well, I don’t need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people, because they’ve been asking the question now for 18 months, “where are the jobs?”

His answer perfectly describes what is wrong with this country.

Nice guys...very nice.

The Republican National Committee has invited conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart to participate in a private GOP fundraiser next month with party chairman Michael Steele.

Breitbart was behind an edited video clip of a former Department of Agriculture official that suggested Shirley Sherrod, who is black, denied a white farmer aid. The speech, when viewed in full, shows the opposite.

UPDATE:
Apparently, the Republicans have changed their mind on this one.

The Republican National Committee has cancelled a fundraiser with conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is under fire for promoting an edited video that falsely portrays former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod as having boasted about discriminating against a white farmer looking for her assistance.

This is a great piece on perspective.

By uncovering the roots of the Tea Party’s rhetoric, we can see it with a dose of perspective. America is still faced with great challenges, but our country is no closer to constitutional apocalypse now than it was then—and in most respects our country has gotten better since 1964, evolving just a bit closer to our ideals of liberty and equality.

This is from Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones:

On an intellectual level, I can sort of get this. If I were a conservative Christian I’d be unhappy with the increasing secularization of society and the 60s-era Supreme Court decisions that largely removed religion from the public square. If I were a white guy stuck in a sucky job and heard stories of blacks being given preference in promotions and school placements, I’d be pissed. If I were socially traditional and my school district insisted on a curriculum that endorsed tolerance of gay lifestyles, I’d be horrified. If I only heard the Fox News version of Climategate, it would seem like truly terrifying proof of a massive global conspiracy and fraud.

But on an emotional level, it just seems nuts.

This is how I feel every freakin’ day.

Rest in Peace, Sir.

Daniel Schorr, a longtime senior news analyst for NPR and a veteran Washington journalist who broke major stories at home and abroad during the Cold War and Watergate, has died. He was 93.

Schorr, who once described himself as a “living history book,” passed away Friday morning at a Washington hospital. He was able to bring to contemporary news commentary a deep sense of how governmental institutions and players operate, as well as the perspective gained from decades of watching history upfront.