Sen. Claire McCaskill’s gift of Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is a gift that simply keeps on giving. Previously Akin alienated the GOP leadership and most of the known world with comments that, in cases of legitimate rape, women often do not get pregnant because “the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.” He also claimed that doctor routinely performed abortions on women who are not pregnant. Now, at a Tea Party meeting in Jefferson City, Missouri, Akin has said that that there is no science behind evolution. Akin sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Akin’s remarks not only leave doubt about his knowledge — or ability to understand – science but also what he considers “the thing” that he is supposed to do in Washington:
I don’t see it as even a matter of science because I don’t know that you can prove one or the other. That’s one of those things. We can talk about theology and all of those other things but I’m basically concerned about, you’ve got a choice between Claire McCaskill and myself. My job is to make the thing there. If we want to do theoretical stuff, we can do that, but I think I better stay on topic.
Of course, such comments could be used by some to disprove any evidence that we have evolved intellectually. Frankly, whenever I hear Akin speak recently I too begin to doubt evolution in the human species.
Notably, Akin sits on the committee with Rep. Paul Broun, the chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Broun made headlines this month with the following statement: at the 2012 Sportsman’s Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th, he said this:
God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
As many of you know, I have shown equal disregard for both of the main parties that hold a monopoly on power in the United States. Indeed, the low quality politicians that we see in both parties is the very danger of all monopolies — once protected from competition, the quality of a product declines. The political monopoly in this country is the ultimate example of that phenomenon. What we need is a Sherman Act for politics, starting with the eradication of the electoral college and the establishment of a new rule on general elections.
As for Republicans, I have many friends from that party who are intellectual and honest. These characters are destroying the credibility of their party which often appears anti-intellectual and anti-science.
Blouise, Read SWM’s 5:22pm comment. Those poor folks just don’t know what’s good for them! I know you won’t agree, but it’s dripping w/ maternalism.
Shanda,
Your posts are well reasoned and I’ve never noticed you being particularly fond of logical fallacies so, yes, I’d have to say you are a terrible troll. In the best way possible.
Gene H.
To be clear, I wasn’t addressing you Blouise.
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Harrumph … are you accusing me of not being a good troll?!
nick spinelli
SWM, May I translate your comment, thanks I will. “Those poor, white trash, crackers are too stupid to understand there is a free lunch.”
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Da*n, I missed that comment … where was it?
Akinoids conflated practically everything having to do with evolution together to the point they understand practically nothing about it.
McEvolution is the silly result.
Cosmology and physics deal with the early evolutionary dynamics explained via various hypotheses and theories:
These are generally placed within the many hypotheses and theories in Big Bang Cosmology.
There is a distinction in such evolutionary ideology where non-life, that is, the machines Professor Lithgow mentioned, become something more:
(Putting A Face On Machine Mutation). An atom or a molecule do not represent life of themselves, they are chemical, not biological, and thus cosmology is the discipline that specializes in big bang chemistry and/or physics.
Thus there is cosmological machine evolution from elements to molecules then onward and upward into planets, stars, and galaxies.
Distinct from any such evolution in terms of process, are life forms evolution which microbiologists deal with, i.e. the microbial world of proto-cells and microbes, as well as that great chasm between machines and life.
First comes single cell life which microbiologists specialize in, life that was on the Earth for perhaps billions of years prior to multi-cellular life.
The reason that microbiological evolution needs to be separate from multi-cellular biological evolution, is the machine – microbe gap that is not a concern of multi-cellular biological evolution.
They don’t do non-living machines, they only do living cells (bio means life or living things only).
Specialization into the different types of evolution works great, because they have discovered that single celled microbes “design” or “make the rules for” the multi-cellular realm (Microbial Hermeneutics – 2, at 15:20).
Professor Dr. Bassler expounds:
To be clear, I wasn’t addressing you Blouise.
The fallacy of the appeal to emotion(s) – specifically appeals to spite and flattery. You don’t see that from the trollish very often. Not.
SwM,
” … but just because one is from the working class does not mean that he or she favors policies that are favorable to the working class.”
I’m talking about a whole new class of politicians who aren’t interested in appealing to the millionaire mind set that at this point in time runs the screening process. Politicians who actually live with people who struggle without health insurance and who, perhaps never had good health insurance until they won office. I’m talking about politicians who were brick layers or office clerks or nurses or teachers or steel workers. I’m talking about politicians who come directly from the middle/middle or lower/middle class and are truly interested in and very familiar with the actual people they represent and the problems those people deal with on a daily basis.
Look … The Millionaire’s Party like the Ol’ Boy’s Party have had their run. It’s time for party leaders and interests groups to start recruiting from the working class … they’ll do it if we demand it … they’ll do it if they want to survive.
SWM, May I translate your comment, thanks I will. “Those poor, white trash, crackers are too stupid to understand there is a free lunch.”
Eric, Trying to reply to some of these questions which are loaded and ludicrous is impossible. “Resistance is futile.” Get w/ the program. There are people who are run off by the bullies here. A Freud guy is a recent example. Be prepared to run the gauntlet of bullies, or just walk away. A wise dude helped me understand the pathology here. I’m just paying it forward. Since you hate the duopoly as I do, I’m sympatico.
Dredd,
I guess I didn’t know I needed a quote to prove that both humans and microbes are alive and studied by biologists. I would’ve thought that anyone pontificating on biology would know those two facts. Consider me chastened for my baseless assumptions of competency.
So, now that I’ve established that at least one evolutionary biologist considers that studying the evolution of either humans and microbes to fall under the heading of “biological evolution,” where did you quote a scientist who said there was a difference between microbial evolution and biological? You can either copy and paste the quote, or alternately link to comment. Either would be less work than insulting me.
Consider this one last plea for an honest and direct answer. An answer that doesn’t try and put the burden of proof on the skeptic. One that doesn’t try and misdirect without answering. One that doesn’t serve as an excuse to try and drive traffic to your blog (hey I can hope).
But hey, if you want to keep telling me that I’m not worthy of reading your genius (while at the same time shamelessly linking to your blog), I guess that I can’t really stop you. I just would really like to know what on earth you think the distinction between evolution involving microbes and humans (both of which are alive and studied by biologists of all sorts, not just the evolutionary ones) isn’t the same thing as biological evolution (or evolution that involves living things).
The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh
By Matt Taibbi
October 12, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-vice-presidential-debate-joe-biden-was-right-to-laugh-20121012
I’ve never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night’s debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden’s dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.
But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called “objective” news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, “Come back when you’re serious.”
The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn’t even a real platform, it’s a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.
The essence of the whole campaign for me was crystalized in the debate exchange over Romney’s 20 percent tax-cut plan. ABC’s Martha Raddatz turned the questioning to Ryan:
MS. RADDATZ: Well, let’s talk about this 20 percent.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well – (chuckles) –
MS. RADDATZ: You have refused yet again to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics, or are you still working on it, and that’s why you won’t tell voters?
Here Ryan is presented with a simple yes-or-no answer. Since he doesn’t have the answer, he immediately starts slithering and equivocating:
REP. RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the –
“We want to have bipartisan agreements?” This coming from a Republican congressman? These guys would stall a bill to name a post office after Shirley Temple. Biden, absolutely properly, chuckled and said, “That’d be a first for a Republican congress.” Then Raddatz did exactly what any self-respecting journalist should do in that situation: she objected to being lied to, and yanked on the leash, forcing Ryan back to the question.
I’m convinced Raddatz wouldn’t have pounced on Ryan if he hadn’t trotted out this preposterous line about bipartisanism. Where does Ryan think we’ve all been living, Mars? It’s one thing to pull that on some crowd of unsuspecting voters that hasn’t followed politics that much and doesn’t know the history. But any professional political journalist knows enough to know the abject comedy of that line. Still, Ryan was banking on the moderator not getting in the way and just letting him dump his trash on audiences. Instead, she aggressively grabbed Ryan by his puppy-scruff and pushed him back into the mess of his own proposal:
MS. RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math? Do you know exactly what you’re doing?
So now the ball is in Ryan’s court. The answer he gives is astounding:
REP. RYAN: Look – look at what Mitt – look at what Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did. They worked together out of a framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked together to fix that. What we’re saying is here’s our framework: Lower tax rates 20 percent – we raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forgo about 1.1 trillion [dollars] in loopholes and deductions. And so what we’re saying is deny those loopholes and deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation –
Three things about this answer:
1) Ryan again here refuses to answer Raddatz’s yes-or-no question about specifics. So now we know the answer: there are no specifics.
2) In lieu of those nonexistent specifics, what Ryan basically says is that he and Romney will set the framework – “Lower taxes by 20 percent” – and then they’ll work out the specifics of how to get there with the Democrats in bipartisan fashion.
3) So essentially, Ryan has just admitted on national television that the Romney tax plan will be worked out after the election with the same Democrats from whom they are now, before the election, hiding any and all details.
So then, after that, there’s this exchange.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Can I translate?
REP. RYAN: – so we can lower tax rates across the board. Now, here’s why I’m saying this. What we’re saying is here’s a framework –
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I hope I’m going to get time to respond to this.
REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress –
MS. RADDATZ: I – you’ll get time.
REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful – look –
MS. RADDATZ: No specifics, yeah.
Raddatz did exactly the right thing. She asked a yes-or-no question, had a politician try to run the lamest kind of game on her – and when he was done, she called him on it, coming right back to the question and translating for viewers: “No specifics.”
Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running for president – for president! – promising an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without offering any details about how that’s going to be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn’t some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God’s sake.
If you’re going to offer an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without explaining how it’s getting paid for, hell, why stop there? Why not just offer everyone over 18 a 1965 Mustang? Why not promise every child a Zagnut and an Xbox, or compatible mates for every lonely single person?
Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can’t report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.
The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break, not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day, knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public. Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.
The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by what Romney and Ryan are doing – we should take professional offense that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and dishonest tactics.
I’ve never been a Joe Biden fan. After four years, I’m not the biggest Barack Obama fan, either (and I’ll get into why on that score later). But they’re at least credible as big-league politicians. So much of the Romney/Ryan plan is so absurdly junior league, it’s so far off-Broadway, it’s practically in New Jersey.
Paul Ryan, a leader in the most aggressively and mindlessly partisan Congress in history, preaching bipartisanship? A private-equity parasite, Mitt Romney, who wants to enact a massive tax cut and pay for it without touching his own personal fortune-guaranteeing deduction, the carried-interest tax break – which keeps his own taxes below 15 percent despite incomes above $20 million?
The Romney/Ryan platform makes sense, and is not laughable, in only one context: if you’re a multi-millionaire and you recognize that this is the only way to sell your agenda to mass audiences. But if you’re not one of those rooting gazillionaires, you should laugh, you should roll your eyes, and it doesn’t matter if you’re the Vice President or an ABC reporter or a toll operator. You should laugh, because this stuff is a joke, and we shouldn’t take it seriously.
Elaine,
“And agreement on an issue doesn’t necessarily imply groupthink. Some people appear to believe it does. We can arrive at the same/similar conclusions, positions, and opinions on issues individually.”
And people can be in agreement and have reached their conclusion by different lines of reasoning as well.
*******************
Gyges,
It may have been while you were otherwise occupied, but on the “does Dredd actually understand what he reads when he reads biology” question, Tony C and I have already (rather vigorously) tried to explain to him that no he does not understand what he reads on that subject. Because he doesn’t understand biology and microbiology in proper context, he often regurgitates a rather ridiculous form of Mitichlorian worship as if it were actual science when if fact it’s just science he completely doesn’t understand. A 21st Century fairy tale he tells himself (and others) where he’s used misunderstood science in place of magic to explain away certain things about the world he find unpalatable. You are fighting a losing battle. He’ll even try to tell you microbes practice science and religion if you ask him. Really. I’m not kidding in the slightest. He apparently saw the word “culture” and really got the wrong idea. The differences between microbes and complex multicellular life are lost on him. I finally just stopped reading any post of his that mentions biology in any form. Of course, feel free to explore the depths of his misconceptions as you are want but forewarning is the least I could do since we’ve previously discussion evolution and biology and I’ve always found you an reasonable actor properly informed on the subject.
Gyges 1, October 15, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Dredd,
Where exactly did you quote a scientist who said there was a difference between microbial evolution and biological?
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Like I said, you are a semantics freak. You could use that quote to argue against specialization or to no longer use the terms microbiology or cosmology.
It is akin to saying “I wanted to be a big lawyer so I gave up calling myself a criminal lawyer, corporate lawyer, civil lawyer, or appellate lawyer, and decided to call myself “a jack of all lawyering.”
Use you intellect because I don’t play silly word games.
You used your own authority with no citations to a scientist until after I pointed that out.
I cited scientists several times while you were fumbling over words in your own myopic context that engendered a false comment about what I had written.
You have not challenged the scientists, who are specialists in their respective fields, that I cited to. There were about ten of them or so.
I have no desire to interact in the manner you are, that is for Akinoids.
Akinoids have evolved, but I would not cite that evolution as an example of biological evolution, it is a product of social evolution, and it is very dangerous (The Most Dangerous Moment in Recorded History).
Koch Industries Warns 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans
By Rebecca Leber
Oct 15, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/15/1010581/koch-employee-votes/
More from the Tea Party:
Tea Party Leader In Mississippi Suggests ‘Our Country Might Have Been Better Off’ If Women Still Couldn’t Vote
The President of the Central Mississippi Tea Party, a woman named Janis Lane, believes that women are too “mean, hateful” and “diabolical” to vote, and likely should not have been given the right. In an interview with the Jackson Free Press, Lane told the interviewer, “I’m really going to set you back here. Probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote.” She went on: “Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I’d much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/15/1010941/mississippi-women-vote/
Off Topic:
Tea Party Group Launches Racist ‘Obama Phone’ Ad
By Ian Millhiser
Oct 15, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/15/1015701/tea-party-group-launches-racist-obamaphone-ad/
Late last month, conservative media lit up with a video of an African-American woman excitedly praising President Barack Obama because he supposedly gave racial minorities in Cleveland free telephones. The video received prominent placement on the pro-Romney Drudge Report and spawned a popular #Obamaphone hashtag on Twitter. Although there is indeed a federal program which provides low-income people with free or reduced-cost cell phones, it began in 2008 under President George W. Bush. The idea of providing subsidized phone service to low-income individuals originated with a program started under President Ronald Reagan.
Now, the “Obamaphone” woman is the star of an ad sponsored by the Tea Party Victory Fund suggesting President Obama’s policies have “enslaved Americans“:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqHPZteJ7rI&feature=player_embedded
It’s difficult to view this ad as anything other that an appeal to the visceral reaction its very enthusiastic star is likely to inspire in a certain kind of voter. The ad will run in three Ohio counties — Lucas, Summit, and Mahoning — all of which are predominantly white.
Dredd,
Where exactly did you quote a scientist who said there was a difference between microbial evolution and biological? But hey, if we want to have dueling science quotes, here’s one that explicitly says that both human and microbial evolution fall under the blanket of biological evolution:
“Darwin’s theory of evolution transformed biology, the science of life, from many disparate subjects into a single subject, which accounts for its profound significance. Instead of becoming a zooplankton ecologist, I therefor became a all-purpose evolutionist as a graduate student and have been studying the entire tangled bank ever since– from microbes to humans.”
From The Neighborhood Project: using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time , by David Sloan Wilson. Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Birmingham University.
Now, would you care to explain what this well known and respected evolutionary biologist gets wrong, and please provide some evidence other than your say-so.
Gyges 1, October 15, 2012 at 5:15 pm
“so in this context I mentioned biological evolution applies to multi-cellular biological evolution, and human social evolution is covered by sociology.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong. Microbes evolving are part of biological evolution as is anything involving human evolution. I know this because evolutionary biologists study microbes AND humans.
If you’re going to keep asserting they should be separated out, it’d sure help your credibility if you explained what the difference is and why it matters. Your hand wavy pseudo-science babble is unconvincing.
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You are a semantics freak who has utterly no concept of modern science.
You are smarter in your own mind, like other Akinoids, than the world recognized scientists I quote.
Eric Schwarz 1, October 15, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Rafflaw:
If you read my post more carefully, you will not that I said:
“The hate and disrespect coming out of Biden was too disturbing for me to watch.”
This is not a statement which neither requires proof, nor which can be proved. I was not comparing Biden to Ryan, Republicans, or anyone else. I simply stated that I personally found Biden offensive on that evening. This is a personal feeling which, as is the case with all personal feelings, is unprovable. You feel what you feel, it simply is.
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Not so.
It is quite common in criminal trials, where the utmost evidence is requited, to prove hate.
Otherwise there could be no hate crime convictions.
blouise, In Texas many white working class are very hostile to the exact policies that could be beneficial to them.