Call It A Comeback
Pretty small numbers and a low COH for last minute stuff.
Raised: 3560.01
Spent: 58567.38
COH: 24026.19
Spending on salary and mail–fairly frugal, but mailing are limited in size–if targeted well, that’s all right, but still not as much as one really needs to get their name recognition up. Hardest issue will be follow up mail since COH is at about one large mailing District wide.
So a few of you are sending me stuff–keep it up. I just can’t respond easily right now.
DC is good–I have an amazing room. About to head towards the Hill for dinner with a staffer friend. And then Drinking. A lot.
SEIU is angry and I still don’t have the whole story, but they are pulling resources that were going to supporting Stroger. They won’t pull the endorsement from what I hear, but they won’t be lifting a finger for him.
The first evidence is that Stroger signs didn’t go up at early voting places over the last few days.
Word is Rich will have the details in the morning fax–probably for subscribers.
I’ll have more later, but let me say that for progressives this should be the top local race they are concerned about and Claypool is the guy who deserves their support.
I’m not kidding either. While El Geraldo has been tramping around the world getting married to genocidal dicator’s daughters, it appears he’s been letting things slip around the District.
Exelon is seeking a renewal from the NRC for Dresden II and III reactors near Morris. In 2004 the Radiation Public Health Project pointed out evidence that Grundy County had seen increases in the incidence of child cancer rates in the mid to late 1990s and several people in the community approached their legislative leaders for help. The Tribune reported on the issue in a brief article in January of 2004.
Constituents approached Weller about the issue in an attempt to figure out the cause of the increases and try to determine if Exelon was at fault. Weller and staff ignored them.
So they kept trying to find help and it turns out Ed Markey of Massachusetts helped them out with a series of inquiries to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I’m trying to get ahold of his correspondence now, but Weller was absent.
The story turns more problematic today when we now know that Exelon had several tritium leaks that were never reported to state authorities and only informally reported to the NRC. The information we have now from Exelon indicates the tritium in the groundwater isn’t at unsafe levels though it is above typical levels for the area, but the information surrounding the tritium leaks is scarce.
These sorts of cases are very difficult to sort out–environmental exposure to cancer causing agents is fraught with difficulties. I’d say it is safe to say there isn’t enough evidence to determine the cause of the increased incidence in childhood cancers for the period, but it sure would be nice to have had someone looking into it–especially since Exelon wasn’t being forthecoming to the public. However, given the elevated incidence was known two years ago and constituents were asking for help, where was Jerry?
And why the hell did Ed Markey, a Congressman from Massachusetts have to go to bat for Jerry Weller’s constituents?
But don’t worry, now that it’s a big deal, Jerry’s on the scene. He’s now demanding action from Exelon to pay for the costs from the leaks.
Two years later after it made the news. Not only that, but Obama was ahead of him on the issue after he found out about it–and he wasn’t even in office in 2004. More later–I’m working on getting the Markey correspondence.
I have a very good thing to say about Joe Birkett
The trio aired their differences at a debate Wednesday sponsored by the City Club of Chicago. The issue exploded onto the national forefront last year when a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania high school from teaching the creationism theory in biology class as an alternative to evolution.
Birkett, of Wheaton, and Rauschenberger, of Elgin, agree each school district should be allowed to decide whether to teach intelligent design. Their running mates ? Riverside?s Judy Baar Topinka and Chicago?s Ron Gidwitz, respectively ? share that view.
The lieutenant governor hopefuls differ, however, on where to teach the concept, which holds that living organisms are so complex, a higher power must have created them.
If school systems opt to include intelligent design, Rauschenberger, a state senator, says it should be taught in science class as a viable explanation for how the universe began. He describes past scientific errors ? such as the now-disproved belief that dinosaurs were cold-blooded lizards ? as a reason for offering different views.
?I don?t think there?s anything wrong with science curriculum discussing alternatives to evolution,? he said. ?Evolution is not an immutable force, nor is it fully understood.?
Birkett, the DuPage County state?s attorney, said he supports Topinka?s stance that intelligent design should be taught only in religion or philosophy classes.
?This is an area where we are in agreement, although I am a conservative on many, many issues,? Birkett said. ?I do not believe the teaching of intelligent design should be available to science classes.?
Following the debate, Birkett, a practicing Catholic, observed the first day of Lent by having a priest in the audience mark his forehead with ashes. Though Birkett supports limitations on where the theory is taught, he says he does believe in intelligent design.
?I believe in God,? he said. ?I have faith and I?ve never doubted that we have a supreme being.?
And in a sense, Birkett is talking about lower case ID which essentially is faith that God created the universe and how he did it is a question to investigate. The difference with his position and Rauschenberger’s is that Birkett is not trying to introduce an element of faith into scientific investigation. This shouldn’t be surprising as the Catholic Church just released a strongly worded statements on the issue.
Benedict, previously as Ratzinger, had this to say:
“We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary — rather than mutually exclusive — realities.” (Cardinal Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall [Eerdmans, 1986, 1995], see especially pages 41-58)
Creationists attempt to make faith and science mutually exclusive when there is no reason to do so and even a very conservative Pope understands that well. That Birkett makes a similar argument isn’t because he is some atheist activist, it is because he doesn’t dismiss Christianity with a strong intellectual tradition of accepting scientific findings.
Rauschenberger instead tries to play amateur scientist and fails miserably. Not understanding specific details of the history of life doesn’t mean dismiss the overwhelming evidence of multiple nested hierarchies that demonstrate common descent. Those hierarchies exist within the fossil record, genetic trees, morphology, and phylogeny to name just a few.
Rauschenberger doesn’t attack the primary lines of evidence, instead he tries to deal with specific details that were wrong—but none of what he is talking about are falsification points for common descent through natural selection, genetic drift and other mechanisms scientists identify in the Modern Synthesis.
The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination; that populations evolve by changes in gene frequency brought about by random genetic drift, gene flow, and especially natural selection; that most adaptive genetic variants have individually slight phenotypic effects so that phenotypic changes are gradual (although some alleles with discrete effects may be advantageous, as in certain color polymorphisms); that diversification comes about by speciation, which normally entails the gradual evolution of reproductive isolation among populations; and that these processes, continued for sufficiently long, give rise to changes of such great magnitude as to warrant the designation of higher taxonomic levels (genera, families, and so forth).”
– Futuyma, D.J. in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates, 1986; p.12
Saying that science was wrong about a detail in the history of life, doesn’t address the basic evidence of evolution–it is a non sequitur that doesn’t address that whether dinosaurs were cold or warm blooded has little to do with our understanding of evolution as a whole. It’s sort of like saying that we had the wrong ancestor species for a modern species–so what? Unless it demonstrates something that violates the Modern Synthesis, the point is irrelevant to the current state of the science other than a detail to fix.
Worse, Rauschenberger seems to be confusing evolution with multiple theories of science. Biological evolution is deals with changes amongst living organisms and the history of life. It has nothing to do with the Big Bang and the origins of the universe, the creation of the Earth and Solar System, nor with the origin of life itself–evolution is after life is established. He wants to discuss intelligent design as some sort of grand theory that explains everything–which isn’t analagous to biological evolution. He isn’t just talking about changing biology curriculum, he is changing curriculum in biology, physics, chemistry, earth science, and on and on and on.
Beyond that, if one wants to introduce an alternative to any one of these theories one has to introduce a theory that fits the current evidence, is falsifiable and has not been falsifiable, and is more explanatory than biological evolution. If Rauschenberger would care to identify such a theory, he should feel free, but given the creationists at the Discovery Institute can, Steve’s got a hell of task in front of him.
The assumption of such an argument is that there are a large number of students who can’t pass a basic algebra class–the real problem with people like Somersby is that they don’t actually attempt to answer empirical questions like this and instead assume it to be true.
The are numerous problems with the assumption, the first being the girl in question had about a 50% attendance rate at school. When someone says they can’t pass something and haven’t attended school for 50% of the days, I have a very likely reason as to why they could not pass algebra that does involve some sort of innate inability to do so.
More problematic is that Somersby seems to think that algebra is some sort of rocket science that some people just can’t get. I know of no evidence supporting such a claim. Some students may have learning disabilities and those students generally can have accomodations made in such circumstances. Other students often have different levels of algebra they may take.
It’s not that I don’t care about Gabriela, it’s because I care about students in poverty that I insist they should pass algebra. Suggesting they cannot pass such a basic class is bullshit. Somerby tries to argue it’s all a fad and that such a requirement only makes sense for students going to college. Somerby tries to rely on his experience teaching, but he doesn’t seem to know much about what goes on in non-college track career education which often teaches algebra, though perhaps not in the standard format. If you want to take a trade in high school, you get algebra, and that’s as it should be.
Algebra and geometry aren’t just thought experiments, they are basic skills to working and living in the world.
The only argument that Somerby and others can try and make to support their claims is that there are thousands who are dropping out because of higher standards and their inability to meet those standards. I’ll give on one issue is that if their base level of education is too low from previous failures in a school, that means they may not have the skills to master algebra yet. The solution then is not to require algebra, it is to get them up to the appropriate skill level.
But most essential to Somerby’s argument is actual evidence that the drop-out rate is increasing or the high school completion rate is decreasing (and yes, they are different measures). As far as I am aware, the rates have been pretty steady since the 1980s indicating the ‘new standards’ aren’t creating a problem–they are instead being cited as a problem when someone uses anecdotes. Beyond that, many schools are increasing their graduation rates in recent years–though not dramatically so before someone like Somerby wants to bemoan the horribleness of requiring algebra, he ought to do what he implores everyone else in the world to do: Check his facts first.
Nothing about Gabriela’s case suggests that she wouldn’t have dropped out before there was a requirement to pass algebra–given her abyssmal attendance record, it seems likely she would have dropped out anyway.
Most disappointing is that Kevin says Bob has a point. Bob would have a point if he could show some evidence that either of his assumptions have support. Is there any evidence more students are dropping out and not graduating? Is there any evidence that large sections of students cannot pass a basic algebra or geometry class?
Furthermore, the question should not be whether students can pass something, it should be that whether when awarding a credential, is the skill something that should be expected that everyone getting the credential would benefit from in their life. In the case of algebra and geometry the answer is pretty simply yes.
And yes, this is an obsession of mine and it will continue.
The Tet Offensive was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese, but a victory in getting across the point that a long war of attrition was going to continue for as long as one could imagine.
With a full civil war on the verge in Iraq and everyone besides Fox News understanding the current situation is dire, one important point is being left out.
When South Vietnam was overrun, there was no fear it would be a failed state. The Soviet Union provided it with resources and ensured it was largely a functioning state—to the point it was able to invade Cambodia.
One thought in Iraq is that we can leave and just let the situation sort itself out, but the very real problem now that we are stuck in a war that shouldn’t have happened, and more importantly , when it did happen, the Administration created new levels of FUBAR, is that leaving may well mean Iraq turns into a failed state and a potential staging ground for terrorism and all sorts of pesky situations involving Iraqi neighborhs including Iran and Turkey which both might make land grabs if the Iraqi state was never to effectively be established.
The consequences to American security are far greater than in Vietnam. There leaving meant we simply worked to contain further expansion of the Soviet Bloc by using Thailand and other allies.
In this case, Iraq could fall completely apart and be divided up by neighbors or it could become a staging area for Al Qaeda. At the same time, there appears to be no effective means bring Iraq under control.
So what do you do? I have no idea at this point. After screwing up the initial security arrangements and continuing with delusional strategies based on delusional thinking it is increasingly clear that there are no effective means to stop the spiral of violence in Iraq. Setting benchmarks for withdrawal won’t seem to work given the chaos on the ground virtually guarantees that any benchmarks won’t be met and if they can’t be met, there is no real exit strategy.
The ignorance of the history of the nation and journalism continues.
The rise of objective journalism as some sort of ideal is a relatively new phenomenon and so this sort of statement drives me batty. I tend to think that general news organizations are best served by such a model, but that doesn’t mean that journalism is defined by that one model. The model when the country was created was a partisan press–one that was ugly and angry and chose sides. Blogs would have fit perfectly.
But more importantly, statements like this fundamentally miss the point that all forms of journalism don’t have to follow the objective model. Journalism includes opinion journalism, advocacy journalism, ideological journalism. They all have advantages and pitfalls, but the primary features all should share are a transparency of purpose (i.e. what model is being followed), factually accurate, and logically sound. In other words, it should be honest and it should make logical and factual statements and arguments.
Dobbs has clearly not been an objective journalist and he seems to be straightforward about that. So what’s the problem? If he makes a factual mistake or makes horribly illogical statements, he should be held to account, but he’s never been a strictly objective journalist as long as I’ve paid attention to him.
Atrios points out how statements by some journalists seem to show a basic cluelessness about their own profession–like have they viewed their own editorial page, but just as important such statements show an utter lack of understanding about the history of this country and the development of the press.
One can’t effectively analyze such publications as the New Republic without understanding how it was formed at the beginning of the 20th Century and how that related to the press at the time.
Political scientists often bemoan the lack of field specific knowledge of journalists (though acknowledging those journalists who do put the work in), but that’s minor compared to the problem of a lack of knowledge by some journalists of their own profession.
If you aren’t paying attention to these three races, you should be
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner
If you want to change your party, primaries matter and in these cases the three candidates provide a refreshing and vitally important challenge to the status quo.
Guttmacher covers state efforts
Never, ever should Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas do better than your state in such rankings, but Illinois lags behind all three.
I’d like to hear what the Governor and Judy would like to do about it–though I’m sure Brady and Oberweis view this as a good thing.
ArchPundit