Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/19/2008

• Declarations – WSJ.com – Annotated

  No surprise the Wall St. Journal is going to declare McCain more alive than he is, but the clips below are interesting for their insights into what, riffing off George Orwell, we might call:

  POLITICS AND THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE:

  tags: orwell, politics, usa, elections08

  • More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G’s. Hardworkin’ families are strainin’ and tryin’a get ahead. It’s not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say “mom and dad”: “our moms and dads who are struggling.” This is Mr. Bush’s former communications adviser Karen Hughes’s contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that’s too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it’s all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?
    • So true. It’s bad enough schools infantilize students, but now leaders are infantilizing adults,Thanks gobs, George Bush and Karen Hughes. We love ya. – post by cburell
  • There has never been a second’s debate among liberals, to use an old-fashioned word that may yet return to vogue, over Mrs. Palin: She was a dope and unqualified from the start. Conservatives and Republicans, on the other hand, continue to battle it out: Was her choice a success or a disaster? And if one holds negative views, should one say so? For conservatives in general, but certainly for writers, the answer is a variation on Edmund Burke: You owe your readers not your industry only but your judgment, and you betray instead of serve them if you sacrifice it to what may or may not be their opinion.
    • Love the quote from Burke.Reminds me of my “EDUBLOGGING WHILE ROME BURNS” post. – post by cburell
  • But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I’ve listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.
    • God, McCain and his boss Rick Davis must HATE intellectual conservatives for calling them out like this.And I call Davis “McCain’s boss” because I assume McCain’s new label for THINKING conservatives – what does he call them, the “Country Club set”? – is a talking point from Davis. I could be wrong. – post by cburell
  • But it’s unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn’t think aloud. She just . . . says things.
    • Another great zinger of a writer offended by the Palin phenomenon. We should start a wiki somewhere. – post by cburell
  • Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she’s not a big “egghead” but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? “I’m Joe Six-Pack”? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—”palling around with terrorists.” If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand.
  • This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.
    • A really interesting bit of psychologizing. – post by cburell
  • No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can’t be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush’s style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don’t, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing.
    • To read THIS in the Wall Street Journal, THE voice of American capitalism, is stunning. – post by cburell
  • In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.
    • Bravo. You do Orwell proud for pointing it out. William F. Buckley would be proud too.Conservatives CAN be intellectual, though their numbers are either dwindling or self-censoring. – post by cburell

  • I gather this week from conservative publications that those whose thoughts lead them to criticism in this area are to be shunned, and accused of the lowest motives. In one now-famous case, Christopher Buckley was shooed from the great magazine his father invented. In all this, the conservative intelligentsia are doing what they have done for five years. They bitterly attacked those who came to stand against the Bush administration. This was destructive. If they had stood for conservative principle and the full expression of views, instead of attempting to silence those who opposed mere party, their movement, and the party, would be in a better, and healthier, position.

    At any rate, come and get me, copper.

    • Again, bravo, my intelligent conservative friend.My question: where are the GOP candidates with the backbone or brains to represent THIS strain of conservatism? We didn’t see them in the GOP primary season. Romney, Huckabee, the whole gang seemed shallow. Ron Paul excluded. – post by cburell

Much more below the fold.  

• Republicans Rain Negative Automated Calls on Voters in Swing States – NYTimes.com

  Nice to see journalists on this one fact-checking the robocall contents, and correcting them when wrong or mis-leading.

  Sad that this is a thing to be excited about, when it’s supposed to be the role of journalism to identify lies as lies.

  It’s interesting to see the expanding use of technology in politics. From TV to websites to twitter to spam robocalls to YouTube, on and on. (And notice this article links to an Obama site to defend against the distortions in the robocalls.)

  tags: elections08, technology

  • Voters in North Carolina have received calls accusing Mr. Obama of opposing legislation aimed at protecting aborted fetuses that show signs of life, a position the call states is “at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.”

    “Please vote,” the call continues, “vote for candidates that share our values.”

    The 2003 measure in Illinois that Mr. Obama opposed was virtually identical to federal legislation that Mr. Bush signed into law in 2002 after it was overwhelmingly passed by Congress. But Mr. Obama and other opponents of the Illinois bill have said that the state already had a law protecting aborted fetuses born alive. The Illinois State Medical Society, which also opposed the legislation, said the bill would increase civil liability for doctors and interfere with their patient relationships.

• Obama, McCain campaign in conservative states – International Herald Tribune – Annotated

  Interesting on many fronts. Historical changes and lessons to learn from this: a black man winning traditionally poor, white, uneducated votes in southern states.

  The purse is color-blind, we learn?

  tags: elections08, racism, usa, progressive, history

  • McCain was campaigning Friday in Florida and on Saturday was moving on to North Carolina and Virginia. He lost his lead in polls in all three states during the past month.

    The Republican on Friday returned to what is likely to be his theme for the final days of the campaign, that Obama wants to “spread the wealth around” — part of a comment that Obama made to a voter who asked about his tax plan.

    • So this is the campaign’s new angle? We’ll “focus on the economy” by attacking and caricaturing Obama’s?

      Better than “paling around with terrorists,” but still…. – post by cburell

  • “When politicians talk about taking your money and spreading it around, you’d better hold onto your wallet,” McCain said at a rally in Miami.
    • That’s what many of us voters were saying when McCain AND Obama bailed out the banks by “spreading around” about a trillion dollars. – post by cburell

  • “Sen. Obama claims that he want to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes for the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don’t pay taxes. That’s not a tax cut; that’s welfare,” McCain said.

    Obama maintains he would cut taxes for 95 percent of earners while raising them for the richest Americans, those making more than $250,000 a year.

    • Thank goodness this campaign is almost over. – post by cburell
  • On the Democratic side, Obama was trying to stake out ground in traditionally Republican states, likely signaling that financial concerns are trumping any racial prejudices among white working-class voters. A recent AP-GfK poll showed that Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, has inched up among whites with no college education while McCain has lost significant ground.
    • Wow. – post by cburell
  • Four prominent newspapers, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times on Friday endorsed Obama.
    • The Chicago Tribune is typically Republican. Granted, Obama is from Illinois, but still. – post by cburell

• Racists for Obama? – Ben Smith – Politico.com

  Fascinating and hopeful.

  I’ve seen my own hometown, Chattanooga, Tennessee, change from a place in which interracail (black-white) couples would never be seen in working-class bars in the 1980s, to a place where precisely that was what I saw in the ’90s, with nobody staring or blinking.

  So hopeful.

  tags: elections08, economy, racism, culture, usa, obama

  • The notion that there might be “racists for Obama,” as one Democrat called them, comes against the backdrop of a country whose white voters largely accept the notion of a black president.

    “The economy is trumping racism,” said Kurt Schmoke, the dean of Howard University Law School and a former Baltimore mayor. “A lot of people who we might think wouldn’t vote their pocketbook because of race — now they are.”

• Creating Critical Voters: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google Reader- Student Blog Assignment | Beyond School – Annotated

  A screencast tutorial I made on how Diigo, Google News, and a Student Blog would be a kick-a*s way to encourage individualized student learning and critical thinking about current events and more.

  tags: diigo, education, web2.0, pbl

• Jonathan Martin’s Blog: Davis sketches out econ-heavy final 18 days – Politico.com – Annotated

  McCain’s campaign mgr tries to have his cake and eat it too, continuing negative campaigning while CLAIMING that the campaign is “about the economy.”

  tags: politics, elections08, mccain

  • Though the purpose of the call was to discuss potential voter fraud and the campaign and RNC continue to spend money on robo calls and mail on Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers, Davis said their focus in the next two weeks would primarily be on the economy.
    • So which is more important, the smear or the positive message? – post by cburell

• Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/13/2008 | Beyond School

  tags: no_tag

• How We Lost the War We Won : (Afghanistan) Rolling Stone – Annotated

  A fascinating and insightful piece of investigative journalism into the heartland of Taliban territory. Chilling at times, and troubling in what it shows about US prospects for “winning” the war.

  tags: terrorism, democracy, bush, 911

  • The Bush administration is placing its hopes on presidential
    elections in Afghanistan next year, but everyone I speak with in
    Kabul agrees that the elections will be a joke. “The Americans are
    gung-ho about elections,” a longtime nongovernmental official tells
    me. “But it will only exacerbate ethnic tensions.” In Pashtun areas
    controlled by the Taliban, registration would be virtually
    impossible, and voting would invoke a death sentence —
    effectively disenfranchising the country’s dominant ethnic group.
    “You can’t fix the insurgency with an election,” a senior U.N.
    official tells me. “It’s a socioeconomic phenomenon that goes well
    beyond the border of Afghanistan.” Real elections would require the
    cooperation of the Taliban — and that, in turn, would require
    negotiations with the Taliban. The war, in effect, is already
    lost.
  • Officials on the ground in Afghanistan say it is foolhardy to
    believe that the Americans can prevail where the Russians failed.
    At the height of the occupation, the Soviets had 120,000 of their
    own troops in Afghanistan, buttressed by roughly 300,000 Afghan
    troops. The Americans and their allies, by contrast, have 65,000
    troops on the ground, backed up by only 137,000 Afghan security
    forces — and they face a Taliban who enjoy the support of a
    well-funded and highly organized network of Islamic extremists.
    “The end for the Americans will be just like for the Russians,”
    says a former commander who served in the Taliban government. “The
    Americans will never succeed in containing the conflict. There will
    be more bleeding. It’s coming to the same situation as it did for
    the communist forces, who found themselves confined to the
    provincial capitals.”
    • It’s worth remembering that the US supported Afghan and Islamic “freedom fighters” against the Soviet occupiers, and among those with US/CIA support was Osama Bin Laden. – post by cburell
  • Simply put, it is too late for Bush’s “quiet surge” — or
    even for Barack Obama’s plan for a more robust reinforcement
    — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on the ground will
    only lead to more contact with the enemy, and more air support for
    troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will
    alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, the American
    government will be forced to the negotiating table, just as the
    Soviets were before them.
  • “The rise of the Taliban insurgency is not likely to be
    reversed,” says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar and the
    author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. “It will
    only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on the fence
    right now — or are even nominally allied with the government
    — are likely to shift their support to the Taliban in the
    coming years. What’s more, the direct U.S. military involvement in
    Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be
    tempting to attack the safe havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda
    across the border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario
    for the United States. Attacks by the U.S. would attract the
    support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would
    also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, the collapse of its
    military and the possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal.”
    • Anybody want to place bets on this scenario? – post by cburell

  • In the same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that
    he would never allow the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan.
    But they have already returned, and only negotiation with them can
    bring any hope of stability. Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan “are
    all theaters in the same overall struggle,” the president declared,
    linking his administration’s three greatest foreign-policy
    disasters in one broad vision. In the end, Bush said, we must have
    “faith in the power of freedom.”

    But the Taliban have their own faith, and so far, they are
    winning. On my last day in Kabul, a Western aid official reminds me
    of the words of a high-ranking Taliban leader, who recently
    explained why the United States will never prevail in
    Afghanistan.

    “You Westerners have your watches,” the leader observed. “But we
    Taliban have time.”

• Obama is the choice | ajc.com – Annotated

  Atlanta urges Obama.

  The unique point in this endorsement is the insight that McCain’s choice of (mostly) Bush’s _campaign managers_ and _tactics_ indicates a disturbing truth to the “McCain _is_ four more years of Bush” claim.

  I also appreciate their argument that GOP staffers from the Bush admin will continue to inhabit the White House more if McCain is elected than if Obama is.

  tags: elections08, obama, mccain

  • Naturally, both Obama and his opponent, U.S. Sen. John McCain, have promised to take the country in a new direction. Both are honorable men fully qualified and competent to be president.

    McCain, however, faces a hurdle in his claim to be an agent of change because he shares a political party with Bush. To offset that fact, McCain has wisely chosen to campaign on his reputation as a maverick, a reputation that he once fully deserved.

    However, in his current role as Republican nominee, McCain has yet to explain how most of his proposed policies and approaches differ from those of the current president. From deregulation of Wall Street and tax cuts that favor the richest 5 percent of Americans to a more aggressive foreign policy, McCain’s approach now reflects the same Republican orthodoxy that has governed this country since 2000. Time and again, he has been offered chances to explain how his philosophy differs from that of the current president, and he has not been able to do so.

    And it’s not just a matter of policies. A third term under another Republican president would inevitably be populated by much the same cast of GOP staffers, executives and bureaucrats that has run Washington for so long and with such disastrous results. McCain’s campaign staff illustrates that problem perfectly because it is populated by many of the same people who ran previous Bush campaigns. They are also still trying to run the same basic Republican playbook that the party has used since 1980.

    • Exactly. To me, it’s the most overlooked angle of this election: the campaign management team is a CHOICE of the candidate – an EXECUTIVE choice. From Palin to suspending the campaign grandstanding to the back-fired Joe the Plumber embarrassment to the mud-slinging and race-baiting, this campaign team has done a disgraceful job. But the buck stops with the candidate for a) choosing it, b) following its tactics, and c) not condemning them. – post by cburell

  • In fact, the competence of McCain’s campaign staff is itself cause to question the candidate’s executive abilities. To some degree, the rigors of creating and running a campaign organization can be a test of the skills needed to create and run an administration. And even many Republicans acknowledge that the McCain campaign has been poorly organized and erratic, lurching from one crisis to another without the sense of a strong hand at the tiller.

    Columnist William Kristol, a longtime McCain backer, calls the McCain campaign “close to being out–and–out dysfunctional,” concluding that “its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.”

    And of course, the most unfortunate evidence of that “strategic incoherence and operational incompetence” was McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a person utterly unprepared for the high post in question.

    • Exactly. – post by cburell
  • The contrast with the campaign run by Barack Obama could not be more stark. More than a year ago, when he was still a long shot without much money, Obama somehow managed to attract a staff talented and disciplined enough to defeat Hillary Clinton and the Clinton machine in the Democratic primaries. It has since gone on to demonstrate a great deal of political discipline, skill and innovation, running a 21st century campaign that appeals to 21st century America.
    • It’s a testimony to Obama’s executive abilities that his campaign team has been virtually invisible. Nobody talks about it, yet it has steadily and calmly piled victory on victory, against amazing odds, for two years now.

      And edtech folks must notice the “21st century campaign” language with a little thrill…. – post by cburell

• GOP ‘robo calls’ slam Obama in 10 swing states | National | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle

  McCain campaign hires the same firm that robo-slandered McCain in 2000?

  tags: elections08, mccain

  • MIAMI — Voters in at least 10 swing states are receiving hundreds of thousands of automated telephone calls — uniformly negative and sometimes misleading — that the Republican Party and the McCain campaign are financing this week as they struggle to keep more states from drifting into the Democratic column.

    Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has belittled such phone calls in the past: In the 2000 primaries, he was a target of misleading calls that included innuendo about his family, and blamed them in part for his loss to George W. Bush.

    This January, too, in South Carolina, McCain described the calls against him as “scurrilous stuff,” and his campaign set up a truth squad to debunk them.

    On Friday, a Democratic officeholder in Minnesota said he received one type of these so-called “robo calls” — this one featuring a live person — and tracked it back to a company owned by a prominent Republican consultant, Jeff Larson.

    According to news reports, Larson and his previous firm helped develop the phone calls in 2000 that targeted and were denounced by McCain.

• GOP Sen. Susan Collins decries anti-Obama robocalls – Los Angeles Times

  tags: elections08

  • Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, facing a tough reelection fight, urged GOP presidential contender John McCain on Friday to stop making automated calls into her state linking Democratic nominee Barack Obama to a 1960s radical.

    “These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics,” said Collins’ spokesman, Kevin Kelley. “Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately.”

    The so-called robocalls — which began Thursday, the day after the final presidential debate — refer to Obama’s ties to one-time Weather Underground leader William Ayers. They also are being made in other battleground states, including Nevada, Wisconsin and Virginia.

• Barack Obama for president – Los Angeles Times

  Another well-written and -reasoned editorial from a major publication. The entire thing is worth a read.

  tags: elections08, obama, mccain

  • The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.

    Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama’s early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama’s character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

    These are qualities American leadership has sorely lacked for close to a decade. The Constitution, more than two centuries old, now offers the world one of its more mature and certainly most stable governments, but our political culture is still struggling to shake off a brash and unseemly adolescence. In George W. Bush, the executive branch turned its back on an adult role in the nation and the world and retreated into self-absorbed unilateralism.

  • John McCain distinguished himself through much of the Bush presidency by speaking out against reckless and self-defeating policies. He earned The Times’ respect, and our endorsement in the California Republican primary, for his denunciation of torture, his readiness to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his willingness to buck his party on issues such as immigration reform. But the man known for his sense of honor and consistency has since announced that he wouldn’t vote for his own immigration bill, and he redefined “torture” in such a disingenuous way as to nearly embrace what he once abhorred.

    Indeed, the presidential campaign has rendered McCain nearly unrecognizable. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, as a short-term political tactic, brilliant. It was also irresponsible, as Palin is the most unqualified vice presidential nominee of a major party in living memory. The decision calls into question just what kind of thinking — if that’s the appropriate word — would drive the White House in a McCain presidency. Fortunately, the public has shown more discernment, and the early enthusiasm for Palin has given way to national ridicule of her candidacy and McCain’s judgment.

  • Obama’s selection also was telling. He might have scored a steeper bump in the polls by making a more dramatic choice than the capable and experienced Joe Biden. But for all the excitement of his own candidacy, Obama has offered more competence than drama.

    He is no lone rider. He is a consensus-builder, a leader. As a constitutional scholar, he has articulated a respect for the rule of law and the limited power of the executive that make him the best hope of restoring balance and process to the Justice Department. He is a Democrat, leaning further left than right, and that should be reflected in his nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a good thing; the court operates best when it is ideologically balanced. With its present alignment at seven justices named by Republicans and two by Democrats, it is due for a tug from the left.

  • We are not sanguine about Obama’s economic policies. He speaks with populist sweep about taxing oil companies to give middle-class families rebates that of course they would welcome, but would be far too small to stimulate the economy. His ideas on taxation do not stray far from those put forward by Democrats over the last several decades. His response to the most recent, and drastic, fallout of the sub- prime mortgage meltdown has been appropriately cautious; this is uncharted territory, and Obama is not a master of economic theory or practice.

    And that’s fine. Obama inspires confidence not so much in his grasp of Wall Street finance but in his acknowledgment of and comfort with his lack of expertise. He will not be one to forge far-reaching economic policy without sounding out the best thinkers and practitioners, and he has many at his disposal. He has won the backing of some on Wall Street not because he’s one of them but because they recognize his talent for extracting from a broad range of proposals a coherent and workable program.

    On paper, McCain presents the type of economic program The Times has repeatedly backed: One that would ease the tax burden on business and other high earners most likely to invest in the economy and hire new workers. But he has been disturbingly unfocused in his response to the current financial situation, rushing to “suspend” his campaign and take action (although just what action never became clear). Having little to contribute, he instead chose to exploit the crisis.

    We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama’s critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

• Creationists Launch First Strike against Evolution in Texas Science Standards « Texas Freedom Network

  Good summary of why Texas textbook decisions matter for the entire USA.

  tags: creationsim, science, evolution, religion, textbooks, politics

  • UPDATE: TFN Insider has been getting heavy traffic from folks looking to read more about the battle over teaching evolution in Texas public schools. Why does this debate over public school science curriculum standards matter outside Texas? Publishers will use the new standards to create new textbooks. Because Texas is such a large market for textbook sales, publishers typically craft their textbooks for this state and then sell those books to other schools across the country. So the results of this curriculum process could have consequences for far more than just the 4.6 million children in Texas public schools.

• Texas State Board of Education Puts Strident Anti-Evolution Critics on Science Standards Review Panel

  More evidence the USA is falling further behind Bulgaria in science literacy.

  tags: education, textbooks, science, politics, creationsim, evolution

  • AUSTIN

    – Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller today sharply criticized the inclusion of three strident evolution opponents, including two authors of an anti-evolution textbook, on a panel that will review proposed new science curriculum standards for

    Texas

    public schools. The inclusion of the two textbook authors raises serious questions about conflicts of interest and whether political agendas took priority over giving

    Texas

    students a 21^st-century science education, Miller said.

    “It’s simply stunning that any state board members would even consider appointing authors of an anti-evolution textbook to a panel of scientists,” she said. “Are they coming here to help write good science standards or to drum up a market for their lousy textbook?”

    The textbook, Explore Evolution, is intended for secondary schools and colleges, according to its

    U.S.

    distributor, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute in

    Seattle

    . Because of that, the State Board of Education could consider it for the state’s approved list of science textbooks in 2011.

    The two authors are Stephen Meyer, who is vice president of the Discovery Institute, and Ralph Seelke, a professor of the department of biology and earth sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. A third panel member, Charles Garner, is a professor of chemistry at

    Baylor

    University

    in

    Waco

    .

    All three are supporters of the anti-evolution concept “intelligent design”/creationism and have signed the Discovery Institute’s “Dissent from Darwinism” statement. In addition to their textbook, Meyer and Seelke testified in 2005 against evolution in hearings called by religious conservatives who controlled the Kansas State Board of Education.

    Texas

    state board members spanNCSE Resource — New Creationist Textbook On the Way (Again)

    What sells in Texas textbooks normally sells in the rest of the USA.

    tags: education, creationism, science, religion, evolution

    • A document recently received by NCSE outlines the Discovery Institute’s upcoming plans for its so-called teach the controversy strategy. In 2007, the Discovery Institute plans to release a “supplemental textbook” entitled Explore Evolution. According to the document, the textbook and auxiliary materials will teach the students the Discovery Institute’s talking points against evolution. These talking points will evidently include the standard list of long-refuted creationist claims promoted by the Discovery Institute, including the inadequacy of the fossil record, biological complexity as a challenge to evolutionary theory, the inexplicability of the Cambrian Explosion, and other common creationist tropes. Students will be taught these talking points via the supplemental textbook and associated slide shows, study guides, and videos, and will be tested on the talking points in Discovery Institute-prepared “quiz questions”.

  • CHICAGO TRIBUNE ENDORSEMENT: Chicago Tribune endorses Barack Obama for president — chicagotribune.com – Annotated

    More abandonment of the GOP from thinking (“elite”?) conservatives.

    The Tribune is a conservative paper. Will Palin lump it in with the NYTimes? Is FOX the only media outfit with any credit from the GOP base?

    tags: elections08, mccain, conservative, media

    • This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
    • The Tribune’s decisions then were driven by outrage at inept and corrupt business and political leaders.

      We see parallels today.

      The Republican Party, the party of limited government, has lost its way. The government ran a $237 billion surplus in 2000, the year before Bush took office — and recorded a $455 billion deficit in 2008. The Republicans lost control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2006 because, as we said at the time, they gave the nation rampant spending and Capitol Hill corruption. They abandoned their principles. They paid the price.

      We might have counted on John McCain to correct his party’s course. We like McCain. We endorsed him in the Republican primary in Illinois. In part because of his persuasion and resolve, the U.S. stands to win an unconditional victory in Iraq.

      It is, though, hard to figure John McCain these days. He argued that President Bush’s tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, but he now supports them. He promises a balanced budget by the end of his first term, but his tax cut plan would add an estimated $4.2 trillion in debt over 10 years. He has responded to the economic crisis with an angry, populist message and a misguided, $300 billion proposal to buy up bad mortgages.

      McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate–but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin’s exposure to the public. But it’s clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment’s notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

      • The last two points point to the importance of hiring campaign managers with whom you agree on principles, or else, _against_ whom your decisions can prevail. McCain lost when he let his managers make cynical decisions to energize the worst elements of the GOP – elements McCain previously and, in my view, rightly – spurned. He let them lead, and lead they did – to McCain’s probable defeat. – post by cburell

  • Friendly Atheist » How Much Money Does the Religious Right Take In?

    And we wonder why it’s so hard to teach _only_ real science or _reality-based_ sex education in our schools.

    Anybody have any figures on the coffers of the leading science or civil liberties advocacy organizations?

    tags: religion, christianity, usa, economics, science

    • 

  • Chris Rodda: PA High School Teacher Reportedly Showed Obsession To Students

    This type of teacher, who shows a film and _tells_ students it’s true, is the type of example we always hear in arguments that teachers should avoid politics in the classroom.

    But I would argue she’s not a teacher, but a preacher. She’s indoctrinating, based on her position of authority, and appealing to that authority to sell her point of view to her students.

    But team her with a team-teacher with an opposing viewpoint, and let those teachers debate the issues in front of students, town-hall style, and we have a different situation. Not perfect, but better.

    Simply avoiding the issues leaves students at the mercy of the preaching of their parents, the media, and the campaigns – none of which generally encourages skepticism and critical thinking from their audiences.

    tags: politics, education, elections08

    • A teacher in Mifflin County, PA has reportedly shown the fear mongering, anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession, recently distributed to 28 million swing state voters, to her class at Indian Valley High School, warning the students that if Barack Obama is elected, some of what they saw in the film would occur here in the U.S.

  • CNN Airs At Least 54 Misleading Segments On ACORN

    tags: media, politics, elections08

    • But only one of those segments mentioned both of the following two relevant points: 1) that the statutes of most of those states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they receive; and 2) that actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare. Indeed, in an October 10 press release, ACORN noted that “in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.” And in a 2007 report titled “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice stated, “[W]e are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast.” Of the 54 CNN segments addressing the allegations against ACORN, two mentioned only the former of those two points, while one mentioned just the latter.

  • Election by sound bite | Salon

    Joan Didion writes an intelligent analysis of how lacking our media – and its consumers – are in critical thinking.

    Interesting to teachers and schools, since all these voters are products of our schools, classrooms, teaching.

    tags: education, elections08, politics

    • We could argue over whether “intelligent design” should be taught in our schools as an alternative to evolution, and overlook the fact that the rankings of American schools have already dropped to twenty-first in the world in the teaching of science and twenty-fifth in the world in the teaching of math. We could argue over whether or not the McCain campaign had sufficiently vetted its candidate for vice-president, but take at face value the campaign’s description of that vetting as “an exhaustive process” including a “seventy-question survey.” Most people in those countries where they still teach math and science would not consider seventy questions a particularly taxing assignment, but we could forget this. Amnesia was our preferred state. In what had become our national coma we could forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and AIG and Washington Mutual and the 81,000 jobs a month and the fact that the national debt had been approaching $10.6 trillion even before Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke mentioned the imperative need to spend, which is to say to borrow, $700 billion for securities backed by bad mortgages, a maneuver likely to raise the debt another trillion dollars. (“We need this to be clean and quick,” Paulson told ABC.)

      We could forget the 70 percent of American eighth graders who do not now and never will read at eighth-grade levels, meaning they will never qualify to hold one of those jobs we no longer have. We could forget that we ourselves induced the coma, by indulging the government in its fantasy of absolute power, wielded absolutely. So general is this fantasy by now that we approach this election with no clear idea where bottom is: what damage has been done, what alliances have been formed and broken, what concealed reefs lie ahead. Whoever we elect president is about to find some of that out.

  • Baby, It’s Going to Be Cold Outside in Book Publishing | The New York Observer

    tags: publishing

    • Soon, though, people may find themselves compelled to be more wary. Only the most established agents will be able to convince publishers to take a chance on an unknown novelist or a historian whose chosen topic does not have the backing of a news peg. The swollen advances that have come to represent all that is reckless and sinful about the way the business is run will grow, not shrink. Authors without “platforms” will have a more difficult time finding agents willing to represent them. The biggest publishing house in the world, meanwhile, will be overhauled by a 40-year-old man who worked in printing until he was appointed to his post as CEO of Random House Inc. last spring.

      “Think of it like a supply chain,” said one publishing executive who would not speak for attribution. “If the newspapers have fewer ads, they’re running fewer book reviews, so therefore, for those books that don’t have a pre-established audience, there are fewer opportunities to appeal to the consumer. Therefore, there are fewer of those consumers going into the bookstore. The bookstore recognizes this, and they tell you your mid-list books aren’t doing shit, so they’re not gonna order them, or they’re just gonna order 100 copies. They can cut off those books, and then the publisher is faced with a tough decision—how am I gonna buy those books that I know I can only ship 100 copies of? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep doing it? Or am I gonna spend more [money] chasing established authors?”

  • Radiohead Publishers Reveal “In Rainbows” Numbers : Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

    Give it away in order to increase its sales?

    tags: publishing, web2.0

    • A year after its release sent shock waves through the music industry, the publisher of Radiohead’s In Rainbows has finally revealed some details about the success of the “pay-what-you-want” experiment. While exact figures have not yet been released, Warner Chappell confirmed that “Radiohead made more money before In Rainbows was physically released than they made in total on the previous album Hail To the Thief,” Music Ally reports. In all, there have been three million purchases of In Rainbows (including CDs, vinyls, box sets and digital sales) since the band began selling the album officially on New Year’s Day 2008. Warner Chappell didn’t reveal how much the band actually made total in the “pay-what-you-want” facet, but admitted more people downloaded the album for free than paid for it. Still, the three million in total sales — 100,000 of which came from the $80 box sets — is a hugely-successful number considering the album was both given away for free and that it was actually downloaded more times via Bit Torrent than free and legally through Radiohead’s own site.

  • BBC NEWS | Health | Internet use ‘good for the brain’

    “Silver surfers” get more stimulation than book readers.

    tags: science, psychology, research, brainresearch

    • “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

      The latest study was based on 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76. Half were experienced internet users, the rest were not.

      Compared with reading

      Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.

      Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

      However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning – but only in those who were experienced web users.

      Brain activity in web newcomers: similar for reading and internet use

      The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet’s wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

      However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.

      Professor Smith said: “A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older.”

  • Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business – Annotated

    A good overview of how web-based “free” is changing business dogma.

    tags: economics, web2.0, publishing