Rachel’s Musings

A few years ago, Senator McCain seemed like a moderate Republican who did the rare thing: think for himself. Apparently, I didn’t do a good job checking his record before reaching that judgment because he his voting record is clear: he’s against abortion and birth control and he’s been that way for decades. More importantly, he is voting the party line. An interesting article on McCain at AlterNet digs into his record. It is rather disturbing, especially since his pandering to women voters seems to be working despite his appallingly anti-feminist, anti-science record. Some choice votes summarized in the article:

He opposed legislation requiring that abstinence-only programs be medically accurate and based in science. He voted to abolish funding for birth control and gynecological care for low-income women, and against funding for public education on emergency contraception.
[...]
McCain has an equally dismal record on other issues central to women’s lives — pay equity, fighting workplace discrimination, and supporting programs that help working mothers and their families.
[...]
On civil rights issues, his record, again, is poor. He has voted in favor of banning affirmative action hiring for jobs funded by the federal government, and says he’s against policies that might result in “quotas” — an oft-repeated conservative excuse for not supporting policies that rectify systemic inequities.
[...]
McCain voted at least six times to reduce, eliminate or restrict health insurance programs for low-income children and pregnant women. In August 2007, he again voted against a bill to expand coverage of SCHIP.

Let’s hope we can get the word out on his record and prevent President McSame!

During my exchange with Pat Frank in the comments to my post on the climate crisis, he raised a question about CO₂’s pollutant status. When I researched the question, I found a write up by Weather Underground that recounted the history of that question: It stems from a campaign founded by Exxon. An article on the Doubt Makers by Michelle Nijhuis describes how industries, starting with tobacco, use a similar tactic to create doubt: The climate science models are just too unreliable, therefore we don’t really have to do anything.

     Continue reading this post » » »

Bella DePaulo wrote an interesting article on Huffington Post about single voters, especially single women voters. Among her findings:

In their values and their appraisals, single women are on the leading edge of where the country is already headed. Currently, for example, 77% of both married and unmarried women believe that the country is on the wrong track. But single women got there first. In November of 2006, 66% of single women, compared to just 54% of married women, thought that the country was headed in the wrong direction. Single women were on the vanguard in their disapproval of the Iraq War, too.

DePaulo suggests that voters who are single - “people who are divorced and widowed, along with those who have always been single” - are an attractive segment of the population, especially for the Democratic party. It remains to be seen if the Democrats notice us!      Continue reading this post » » »

I have been fascinated by Ken Miller, the evolutionary biologist who was one of the key witnesses at the Dover trial. Here is this brilliant defender of evolution. And then he’s a Catholic. I just don’t get it! I could maybe understand some New Age mumbo jumbo, but Catholic? Well, the Pew Forum interviewed another great scientist: Francis Collins who is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The people who brought use the DNA evidence for evolution. Collins is an evangelical Christian. The interview reflects my suspicion that combining Christian faith with science requires quite some mental acrobatics. And a good magic wand: the mystery wand.

Already as a child I had a visceral reaction to that wand. It seemed like whenever I asked too many detailed questions about contradictory things in the bible, I was told “well, God’s ways are mysterious.” Why didn’t God intervene in the Holocaust? Mystery wand waving: he probably had a good reason but as lowly humans can’t understand it. How can he let all this cruel stuff happen? More wand waving. I finally decided that God is either a total jerk or died in anguish over the horrible stuff we’re doing to his creation. Or, well, he just doesn’t exist.

Collins uses the wand when he talks about trying to figure out what the bible means. He rejects simple literal interpretation (at least that!) pointing out that the two creation stories, for example, contradict each other. Both of them are also contradicted by scientific evidence. But, no fear, we got the wand. We just don’t understand the meaning of Genesis! In Collins’ words: “why should we today insist that we know what it means, particularly when the interpretation chosen contradicts a wide variety of data that God has given us the chance to discover through science.” Phew! That was a close one: God gave us data that contradicts the story we think he also gave us. Both can’t be true, so we must just not get the story. Maybe a “day” means a few million years. Maybe. Or maybe it just doesn’t make sense because it was written by human beings several thousand years ago who had no clue about how it really happened. Now we have lots of data that helps us explain how things happened, so we don’t need that outdated story anymore. No God is needed for that explanation and the contradiction is resolved without causing a headache.

Yet, the puzzle remains: Why do these scientists, who I consider smarter than I am, cling to their Christian faith? It just doesn’t make any sense to me (and I don’t think that is a matter of intelligence)! I could understand if they’d say something like “I know it’s all made up. There isn’t really a god but there’s just something about going to church, about the rituals and the community, that I find very helpful in my life.” I can understand that. I get lost with those mental acrobatics that seem just such obvious self-deceptions that I cannot comprehend how someone can make those somersaults and keep a straight face. Maybe it’s an evolutionary adaptation of biologists…

We’ve all shaken our heads in awe at the gargantuan fortunes of the richest folks in the U.S. Bill Gates tops that list with $59 billion in net worth, give or take a few million, thanks to market fluctuation. He is the tip of the iceberg of (former) CEOs racking in the big bucks. United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies take an annual look at Executive Excess.

Some of their findings:

Back around 1980, big-time corporate CEOs in the United States took home just over 40 times the pay of average American workers. Today’s average American CEO from a Fortune 500 company makes 364 times an average worker’s pay and over 70 times the pay of a four-star Army general.

The highest earners in 2007? Private equity and hedge fund managers - the top 4 making more than $1.0 billion each, yes, that’s a B! Can someone explain to me how anybody can possibly deserve this much money? It’s disgusting!

I found this report while hunting down the income of oil company CEOs. UFE looked at those in 2006:

The top 15 U.S. Oil CEOs were paid an average of $32.7 million in 2005 while the average compensation for CEOs of large U.S. firms in all industries was $11.6 million.

This couldn’t possibly be the reason why our gas prices keep going up, now, could it? I am sure their record profits also play a factor. Of course, they blame it on our high demand for oil. I certainly agree that we are overconsuming but I am sure those CEOs don’t live in small, solar-powered houses…

Overall, all this points to the growing economic discrepancy in the United States and in the world. How long this is sustainable remains to be seen, however, that one of the top CEOs in 2006 was at Countrywide Financial should make us at least pause. All of this excess might come tumbling down like a house of cards…

Obama’s remarks about what is going on in working class America have created a wild-fire that the Clinton camp is trying to use to derail Obama’s campaign. I hope that someone is working on looking at the data that I would expect support his assessment. Michael Moore’s Roger and Me already showed the depressing Flint, Michigan that was left behind after General Motors closed plants there. Why do we think that people who had their jobs moved or downsized are not bitter? I’d be bitter! Well, angry, too.

There is some data that I want to look at in this context: the correlation between income and religion. The Pew Forum on Religion has published data of income by religious affiliation. Except for Jews and Hindus, religious affiliation decreases with income. Nationally, 50% of people who are affiliated with a religion make less than the median U.S. household income (or about $48,000 in 2006). But, apparently, it is not okay to talk about relationships like that. Instead of lambasting Obama, it is time to start a national dialog about how to ensure that we’re not loosing the middle class. Part of that discussion needs to include understanding why people are religious, think guns are important, and, most importantly, why they are antipathetic.

There’s now a blog devoted to Bitter Voters for Obama. Arianna Huffington has also weight in with the sad recommendation that McCain can go on vacation since Hillary is doing his work for him.