Brains in Fluxx

[elfs]

The only funny Iranian is a dead Iranian

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

Yaknow, I haven't heard Obama tell many jokes this election.

Antivaccination advocacy leads to measles epidemic in the UK

The UK is several years ahead of the United States in the shrillness and absurdity of anti-vaccination madness, and the consequences are now coming to roost. A measles epidemic is now breaking out in the UK school system, and there has been one death. Congratulations, anti-vaccine crazies: you've now managed to kill more kids than you've "saved," the latter number being exactly zero. (via Orac at Respectful Insolence )

Carly Fiorina praises John McCain for preserving women's access to birth control.

Good Grief, Carly Fiorina, the ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard released after her disastrous oversight of the Compaq merger, disses Obama's health-care plan on the grounds that it'll deprive women of "market choices" to things like birth control.

I don't know where Fiorina is coming from. Insurance policies are usually bought by companies, not individuals, so "individual choice" is somewhat irrelevant here. But is she really praising on behalf of a man opposed to birth control in all it's forms?. (via Matthew Yglesias)

Obama's a "snob" because he wants American kids to be smarter

File under WTF: Obama wants a better educational system that'll teach kids how to speak multiple languages, like most of the first-world education systems do. Apparently, the Weekly Standard thinks that makes him an elitist snob.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Fiorina? Wasn't she the one implicated in illegally wiretapping her business associates in order to gain various advantages over them? No wonder McCain wants her on his team... ...bodes ill for the rest of us.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would be her.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

She's the LAST person one should listen to when it comes to "market choices."

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

Antivaccination advocacy leads to measles epidemic in the UK

I read the linked page, I can't find any reference to Antivaccination Advocacy at all...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The article explicitly mentions the decline of MMR vaccinations in the UK over the past decade. That decline can be primarily attributed to the work of Andrew Wakefield (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/09/andrew_wakefields_legacy.php) who, without any evidence, raised the alarm that MMR caused autism.

His hypothesis has been debunked several times, yet the popular impression he left has caused many parents in the UK to opt out of the MMR vaccine. The result has been hundreds of needless illness and now one death.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, I haven't heard Obama tell many jokes this election.

The ones that he's told have been about either a)himself or b)his opponent's latest stupidity.

[(Anonymous)]

Just for clarity, there is no "anti vaccination" movement of note in the UK. The measles thing is about concerns over supposed side effects of a three in one vaccine, which the media has done little to nothing to quell and has even encouraged in its own way. Naturally this has scared some parents into refusing the vaccination for their kids.

Frankly I would be dubious of any reporting not coming from the BBC or actual British sources.