I normally skip about half of Steve Benen’s articles at The Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog; he’s a little too convinced of the rightness of his position for my taste, and suffers in comparison to Kevin Drum, who used to be the main blogger there. I still go there for Hilzoy, though, and once in a while Benen has an item I like. Like this one:  Deniers.

If the left and right disagreed on how best to address policy challenges, that would at least open the door to constructive dialog. But we’re still stuck in a political environment in which prominent conservative voices at high-profile conservative outlets a) don’t recognize the difference between climate and weather; b) find meaningless anecdotes compelling evidence of global trends; and c) are entirely comfortable delaying necessary solutions while an already-completed debate continues.

Via best of craigslist: Actor needed for emotional role – One day high pay:

Pay will be $500. The job will take roughly 2 hours at best.

This job is ideal for an actor looking to diversify their role base, or someone who genuinely likes to make children cry. Acting experience is a plus, but not necessary. Please inform me of any prior experience in this kind of situation.

Thanks to Hiro for the link.

What grrlscientist said (from …And Justice for All?):

This Supreme Court decision is ethically repugnant because it does nothing to protect the powerless, the poor and the disenfranchised in this country, which is what the Constitution was originally designed to do. This outrageous decision abandons innocent people who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, and worse, it will cause the deaths of innocent people at the hands of the government — in the name of each and every one of us. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. should be ashamed and all of us should be outraged.

The list of reasons to despise George W. Bush is long. But the presence of Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court, and decisions like this one, are a reminder that even though he’s gone, his toxic impact lives on.

From the Times:

Even Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has kept a defiant if low profile, made an unusual public concession. After insulting the huge crowds that poured into the street by dismissing them as “dust,” the president issued a statement on state television, according to The Associated Press:

“I only addressed those who made riot, set fires and attacked people. Every single Iranian is valuable. The government is at everyone’s service. We like everyone.”

I know it’s kind of sick, but I did laugh at this:

As usual with the Onion, it’s not just the idea. It’s how they follow through on it.

Sort of funny to me from a professional point of view.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/17/ahmadinijad-sucks-at.html

Based on CNN and BBC coverage, this seems like… well some kind of highly significant event:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8103577.stm

I’m not sure if this is going to end up in another revolution, bloodshed as the Ayatollah cracks down or will just blow over. Looks like the Ayatollah is at least pretending to listen to the will of the people.

Hilzoy continues to be one of my favorite bloggers. When she opens her mouth (blogfiguratively speaking), I listen. As I did when she wrote Fighting words.

No one — not liberals, not conservatives — should forget that their opponents are human beings.

onan pointed out this site: asian poses. It was funny, and odd. But then the jason who is really jason pointed out this youtube video of Ken Tanaka explaining how to speak fluent Japanese without saying anything:

That made me want to know more about Ken Tanaka, so I ended up watching his first videoblog entry:

And I was thinking, wow. This guy’s pretty interesting. Is he real?

Um, well:

More discussion at The Japanicity of Ken Tanaka and the Social Media Community of Youtube.

Is the Cookie Monster. coooookie!!!
And reportedly Happy Meals also work wonders.

Torture is effective at just one thing: providing false confessions and false information. Hmmm, I am sure we have a simple English word for verifiably false information… tip of my tongue… it’s a little word… politicians do it often…

As an aside: why is the pic of Ron Jeremy associated with that link? In the print edition of TIME, we get an actual photo of Mr. Super Duper Bad Guy™ Abu (Bobby) Jandal. Just saying.

I just came across this and wanted to share it.

http://gizmodo.com/5273192/canon-employees-are-forbidden-to-sit-down-walk-at-normal-pace

This is why we have labor laws and why people think ‘Maybe we should get organized.’ I’m a Nikon man myself, I hope their employees are doing better.

Interesting article from the LA Times’ Tom Hamburger and Petter Wallsten today: Obama walks a fine line over mining.

Although environmentalists had expected the new administration to put the brakes on mountaintop removal, Rahall and other mining advocates have pointed out that Obama did not promise to end the practice and was more open to it than his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

A review of Obama’s campaign statements show that he had expressed concern about the practice without promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, when asked about the impact of the mining on the state’s streams, he said he wanted “strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act,” adding: “I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment.”

And his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has said that the agency had “considerable concern regarding the environmental impact these projects would have on fragile habitats and streams.” She pledged that the agency would “use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment.”

Soon afterward, the agency in effect blocked six major pending mountaintop removal projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

But this month, after a series of White House meetings with coal companies and advocates including Rahall and Democratic West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, the EPA released the little-noticed letter giving the green light to at least two dozen projects.

“It was a big disappointment,” said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal. “It’s disturbing and surprising that this administration, headed by a president who has expressed concern about mountaintop removal, would let such a large number of permits go forward without explanation.”

So, I have another case where Obama-the-president falls short of the hope crafted by Obama-the-candidate. Obama clearly is head and shoulders above the Bush administration in the areas of environmental protection and paying attention to science, but that doesn’t mean he’s everything I could hope for. Bush routinely approved these mountaintop removals; Obama made a show of opposition, then let the coal industry (and the unions who delivered the presidency to him in Appalachia) call in their chits.

So, it makes me sad, and draws down a little further my store of goodwill. The man is, above all, a pragmatist, and pragmatically, as with torture prosecutions and gay marriage and decriminalization of marijuana, he has more to lose than to gain if he decides this issue the way I think he should. So that’s what we can expect going forward.

It makes me wonder: On issues like universal healthcare and global warming, how far out on a limb will he be willing to go, really? When push comes to shove, and it looks like those who supported him most ardently in 2008 have nowhere else to go, will the energy interests and the drug companies and the unions and whoever else is willing to push hard against any significant change succeed in pulling him back? Sometimes a compromise isn’t good enough. Sometimes you’re better off risking it all, even if the odds are against you, because what looks like the “safer” choice really isn’t safe.

At the end of the day, what does Obama stand for? What does he actually care about enough to spend this political capital that he’s so carefully hoarding? Anything? Or is the gaining of power really its own end? Is this just a smarter, outwardly friendlier version of the Mayberry Machiavellis?

I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.

Another item in my list of reasons to be disappointed in the Obama administration, and to fail to muster the True Believer zeal required to be fully onboard with supporting his agenda. As explained by Hilzoy, in Shameful:

We set up a system that gave people incentives to turn over people they claimed were foreign fighters, whether they were or not. We then dismantled all our normal procedures for separating combatants from non-combatants. It should not surprise anyone that we ended up detaining people who were innocent.

I have no problem with the government taking some reasonable period of time to try to identify another country that is willing to take detainees who cannot be returned to their own countries. But these detainees have been held for seven and a half years. That’s not a reasonable amount of time to tie up loose ends; it’s a tenth of a normal lifespan.

We screwed up. We should step up to the plate and do what’s right. Seven and a half years is too long.

That’s not change I can believe in. That’s continuing the worst aspects of the Bush administration.

For about 6 hours just now, you probably experienced trouble logging into lies.com if you are a registered user trying to log in. It looks like some lamely inadequate permissions by me made the site vulnerable to malicious manipulation by the script kiddies; I believe I’ve fixed that now. If you notice any problems still, please let me know.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Keith Olbermann makes good on his Hannity bet, sort of, by pledging to pay $10,000 to a veteran’s charity in honor of Mancow Muller, a conservative radio personality who apparently thought waterboarding was no big deal, and had it done to himself live on air. Josh Marshall talks about it in From Olbermann, including this part:

I must confess that when I see Hannity or the rest of these guys saying it’s no big deal and it’s not torture, I kind of figured they’re playing semantic games and essentially saying ‘I don’t care what we do to evil Muslim terrorist bad guys.’ Hang them from them toes, waterboard them, whatever, who cares? I don’t agree with that. It’s hideous. But I understand it. But here it turns out they’re just completely ignorant, just haven’t been paying attention. Just in the purest factual sense have no idea what they’re talking about.

I’d say that about sums it up.

Video:

I don’t know what Batteries Feel Included is, really, but I thought this was funny: Easy Solutions #1.

So, you’re in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn’t have sex with you anyway.

What you will need: 1 x knife, 1 x ring, access to a sunbed, the ability to grow a beard.

So yeah, it’s a really, really cool fossil, this 47-million-year-old proto primate named “Ida”:

But no, breathless media hype to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s not “the missing link! omg!” Even Google climbs aboard the hype train, courtesy of today’s doodle, linked to search?q=missing+link+found:

Um, no.

Unfortunately, there is evidence that the hypemeisters pushing this meme aren’t just lazy reporters, or bored geeks; it seems that the actual scientists behind the recent Ida paper are part of the problem, with one of them defending their approach thusly, as quoted in the New York Times:

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

No, you don’t. That’s what makes it science.

Interesting discussion of what’s actually interesting about Ida:

• Brian Switek: Poor, poor Ida, Or: “Overselling an Adapid”
• PZ Myers: Darwinius masillae
• Carl Zimmer: Darwinius: It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens, and it finds that slipper that’s been at large under the chaise lounge for several weeks…

Thanks to Ed Yong for the links, which I shamelessly stole from Darwinius changes everything.

Barack Obama, tool:

Awesome: Fake DHS “photography license” for fake no-photos laws.

Who knows if it’s legal to carry one of these — probably about as legal as taking away your camera and erasing your memory card for snapping a pic on the subway.

Mainly to annoy Clark, here’s another off-topic robot posting: Headthere: robots that let you be in two places at once.

I think this is real.