I’m not sure it matters what exactly Obama’s beliefs are on any particular subject, because of his tendency to let Congress do the work, without any real presidential guidance. Obama was less important to the final outcome of the health care bill than was Pelosi, Reid, or the least-liberal Democrats who had to be bribed to not defect. The only thing Obama provided was an initial impetus, mostly during his election campaign, and an implicit promise to not veto the result. The “stimulus” bill and other projects which will be seen as accomplishments of Obama’s presidency are similar, in that Obama is providing less guidance or direction than almost any of his predecessors did on their signature projects.

Here’s a video of Dinesh debating Steve Landsburg on the merits of religion:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/09/22/religion-on-trial-the-video/

Funny Katherine, most people argue that Overton window generally moves left. I do regard FDR as a constitution-violating extremist, and now the Republican party is trying to pose as defenders of Medicare! Nixon may be left of many Republicans today, he instituted price controls. I looked up the DW-NOMINATE data and showed he was a liberal/moderate Republican as a legislator here. His faction has arguably long dominated the Republican party.

Where D’Souza is concerned, what bugs me about the man is his intellectual dishonesty.

they have high IQs. that’s one reason they can say stupid things well. just because you find their opinions execrable or stupid doesn’t mean that they’re not intelligent. i don’t know about ingraham, but i know that coulter also exaggerates/shades her opinions and image for marketing purposes as well. stupid people can’t get it together to write books filled with stupid ideas, so intelligent people have to. if they have their name on the book, they’re often ghost-written by smarter people.

also, let me add that i’m sure b. h. obama has been influenced by anti-colonialist ideology.

My only contribution to the discussion on this is that since Newt Gingrich has a problem with anti-colonialist ideology, perhaps he should run for Governor-General.

lol.

It’s that sodding Overton window, and they keep moving it.

It’s so far to the right now I have to use a periscope to see out of it.

It’s getting harder and harder to do that.

The frightening thing about the noisiest (and dominant) wing of the contemporary right is the combination of extreme anger with almost equally extreme ignorance and delusion. For example, I’m not even a Constitutionalist at all, philosophically speaking, but I know enough to see that a lot of the Constitution-worshippers waving their little Constitutions don’t know much about it, beyond wild interpretations of a few cherry-picked passages.

The trick is figuring out who is using the Obamaphobe pose as a source of disingenuous outrage and who is merely stupid. We know D’Souza is very stupid (or do we? he’s only ever said stupid things, but maybe he’s just a stupendous liar for personal gain…this is my problem–I can’t tell who’s bluffing), but I wouldn’t have immediately guessed that the editors of Forbes were stupid or inept enough to lend their quasi-legitimacy with the blue-blazered segment of the Republican party to such an unhinged rant. Or are we at the point where the conservative base is so stupid that the best leverage smart conservatives have for electoral success is to pretend to be morons? What political world are we in where you have to be worried about raising your hand to say you believe in evolution? Anyway, it’s tricky, because you don’t even know who to bother to argue with. And there’s the genuine pity (or a feeling close to it, tinged with “but you deserved it”) I feel for mainstream conservatives, whose party is held in some kind of voluntary hostage state by its worst elements.

As for the cows— I saw Trudy Mackay present a similar pattern for a wide range of Drosophila traits–genetic architecture of the trait is predictive of its expressivity or phenotypic variation. It seemed intuitive but I’m not sure I can put my finger on exactly why that should be so. Possible the more pleiotropy involved in a trait the more developmentally plastic or environmentally responsive? I’m not sure why the number of genes involved should directly relate to trait physiology, but it makes a kind of fuzzy sense.

Way to go Mexico! At least we still have the fattest kids–they’re so cute when they’re all rolly-polly and wheezing. Where can I buy insulin futures?

http://www.mapfrappe.com