Psyche, Science, and Society

No to RFK, Jr. at EPA?

Revere at Effect Measure joins those opposing Robert Kennedy, Jr. for head of EPA:

RFK, Jr. for EPA? Thumbs down

Lots of speculation about Obama’s appointments and perhaps the most science oriented one is Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Wired has a list of the rumored possibles, via Bloomberg:

Leading candidates for the position, reports Bloomberg News, include former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection head Kathleen McGinty; California Air Resources Board leader Mary Nichols; Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection leader Ian Bowles; Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius; New Jersey environmental commissioner Lisa Jackson; and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Brandon Keim, Wired)

I join my fellow SciBlings Orac, PalMD, Blake and Coturnix (and Wired’s Keim) in a big thumbs down on RFK, Jr. He may be the favorite of some in the environmental movement but he is not a favorite of scientists for a simple reason: his uninformed championing of the vaccination/autism case speaks poorly for his commitment to relying on scientific evidence. Scientists, like progressive Democrats, prefer to live in a reality-based world. Aas Wired’s Keim aptly put it:

Only Kennedy strikes me as weak. His environmental track record is excellent, but he’s clung to the vaccines-causing-autism hypothesis long after large-scale epidemiological studies have discredited it as anything but a statistically insignificant cause. America doesn’t need more political officials who skew science to fit personal beliefs. And perhaps more importantly, heading the EPA, with its thousands of employees and $7.2 billion budget, will be a far more difficult managerial task than negotiating environmental lawsuits.

The list of possible EPA candidates is pretty good, except for RFK, Jr. The Obama campaign needs to hear the reality-based community, not the ideologically based community.

1 comment November 7th, 2008

Watch election results and analysis here on Democracy Now!

Add comment November 4th, 2008

My wife made me canvass for Obama; here’s what I learned

Here is an article from the Christian Science Monitor giving a sense of what is at stake today, beyond the inevitably disappointing policy questions. We will be fighting Obama and the Congressional Democrats come January. But there is much to celebrate today, we hope:

My wife made me canvass for Obama; here’s what I learned
This election is not about major policies. It’s about hope.

By Jonathan Curley

Charlotte, N.C. - There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better “ground game” and superior campaign organization.

I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I’m not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.

Let me make it clear: I’m pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn’t run again.

I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I’m white, 55, I live in the South and I’m definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.

I am the dreaded swing voter.

So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.

At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn’t the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, “Who is it?”

“We’re from the Obama campaign,” we’d answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.

Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.

We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day’s work.

I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the “big things.”

It’s not about taxes. I’m pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.

It’s not about foreign policy. I think we’ll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don’t want us there anymore.

I don’t see either of the candidates as having all the answers.

I’ve learned that this election is about the heart of America. It’s about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It’s about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don’t know what it’s going to do for the Obama campaign, but it’s doing a lot for me.

Jonathan Curley is a banker. He voted for George H.W. Bush twice and George W. Bush once.

Add comment November 4th, 2008

Reasons to vote

Add comment November 3rd, 2008

Gre Palast: Vote for him - because he’s Black

Greg Palast expresses what many are thinking — vote for Obama, despite his pro-corporate policies, because he’s black and his election will signal a profound cultural transformation in this country. [Then, of course, on Wednesday, start organizing those social movements that will force him to do the right thing at least some of the time.]:

Vote for him - because he’s Black

by Greg Palast

No question, Mr. Bruce was my favorite teacher in junior high.

I went to this Loser-ville school in the San Fernando Valley. It was all Chicano kids and working class white losers like me. Everyone had to take ‘metal shop’ so we could work the bottom-end jobs in the Chevy plant.

My brain was dying - until Mr. Bruce showed up, the new science teacher. DOCTOR Bruce, actually - the only Ph.d teacher in the place.

At lunch hour, instead of hanging out in the teachers’ lunchroom, Mr. Bruce would invite me and my friends into his classroom. Over coffee made on a Bunsen burner, he would talk about topics from Einstein to Buddha while munching on this strange stuff called “organic” food.

He was simply like no adult I’d ever met - an exceptional guy who could make us dull-brained students sizzle.

My parents had him over for Sunday brunch and he talked about his work as a ‘honey-dipper’ in the Deep South where he grew up. The honey-dipper was the guy who hunted for lost glasses and whatever else was dropped in outhouse cesspools. Dr. Bruce said he enjoyed the work because it taught him pleasures of quiet grace, of dignified acceptance.

The kids were crazy about him, but not all the parents. Some called to complain about the school hiring him.

So he left. Months later, Mr. Bruce mailed me a letter from Japan where he’d taken a university post.

It’s odd, but it was only this year that I put it all together: his exclusion by the other teachers, his job as a honey-dipper, his need to escape America.

Dr. Bruce, of course, is Black.

So, I’m going to do something that Dr. Bruce would think little of. I’m going to vote for the Black man. Because he’s Black.

The truth is, I’m wary of Barack Obama. His cozy relations with the sub-prime loan sharks who funded his early campaign; his vote, at the behest of his big donor ADM corporation, for the horrific Bush energy bill.

But there’s one thing that overshadows policy positions, one thing he cannot change once in office: the color of his skin. The same as Mr. Bruce’s.

I’m going to say something that I know the Obama campaign will just hate; but that many others are feeling but won’t say out loud. We must vote for Barack Obama because he’s Black.

For four centuries, our nation has poisoned itself with the corrosive venom of racism. From the slave trade, to our still-segregated schools, to the Bush family stealing the White House by cynically, and sinfully, calling Florida Black voters felons; to the exile of a brilliant science teacher four decades ago.

The time has come to cleanse the wound that will not heal.

Add comment November 3rd, 2008

Californians, Vote No on Proposition 8!

And San Diego Republican Mayor has a Profile In Courage moment, explaining why he changed his mind and now supports gay marriage:

Add comment November 2nd, 2008

John McCain on Saturday Night Live

He’s much better here than any time during the campaign.

Opening Sketch:

Weekend Update:

Add comment November 2nd, 2008

Sarah Palin gets pranked

A Quebec comedy duo pranked Sarah Palin, convincing her she was speaking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy:

Add comment November 1st, 2008

Reisner and Behnke on WHYY discussing psychologists and interrogations

The American Psychological Association’s Ethics Director, Stephen Behnke, and APA Presidential Candidate Steven Reisner were on NPR station WHYY in Philadelphia on Thursday, discussing the involvement of psychologists in US national security interrogations.

You can listen to it here. Stephen Behke has the first 13 minutes, then Steven Reisner comes on.

Add comment November 1st, 2008