Author: Andrew Sullivan

“Scratching my head about Rita and the economy at the same time, I came across a revealing picture. Why are oil prices so high? Hurricanes? Iraq? Unrest in Nigeria maybe? Or could it be the fact that every single vehicle but one in this picture is an SUV or a truck?”

Armando did respond, but won’t correct. Here’s his post:

See, what Sully does not get is that Summers dismissed bias as an explanation for underrepresentation of women in the sciences offering this nonsensical theory of standard deviations as the explanation.
Frankly, what Summers did as President of Harvard is inexcusable.
Parsing his words for some innocent interpretation is beside the point.
I leave that exercise for Sully.
Summers himself has admitted and apologized for his error.

First off, Summers’ explicit topic was not “under-representation of women in the sciences.” It was, in his words, “the issue of women’s representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions.” I know these distinctions are little subtle for Armando, but most people of average intelligence and basic reading skills can make the distinction between all women in all sciences and tenured faculty at the very top of the higher education tree. Second, one of the three explanations that Summers posited was indeed, in his words, “patterns of discrimination in a search.” Does Summers “dismiss bias” as a factor? Again, in his own words, the considerations of innate congitive skills at the very top of the scientific field are “reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.” Whatever else that is, it isn’t a dismissal. It’s an attempt at a provocative analysis. Poor Armando. The notion of “standard deviation,” one of the most basic principles in statistics, is “nonsensical”? As one of my readers commented,

Are you out of your friggin’ mind? You expect one of the LostKosKidz to understand something like deviation from the mean? C’mon. Have you ever read one ounce of analysis over at the LostKosKidzKomedyKlub? It’s all based on the theory that, if our side screams real loud, we’ll win the argument. And the site gets so many hits because it has a comments section the commenters tries to outscream each other. Don’t stay up late for a correction.

Point taken. I’ll stay up late finishing a column instead.

The Congressional Republicans try and cut the budget by removing “attache positions in the Foreign Agricultural Service.” Er, try harder, guys. And get the math right, please.

A reader pushes the envelope:

Perhaps Benedict saw the success Rove and Co. had using gays as a divisive power-play issue and seeks to do the same with the Catholic Church? Prey upon Latin American and African distaste for homosexuality to gain influence there, keep the conservative Euro and American Catholics close at hand (you know, the rich white people) and rule in a dissentless bubble.
If so, let’s hope he’s watching what’s happening to that barrel of monkeys these days. The Catholic Church may very well have its own Katrina moment. Time will tell.

According to Bob Novak, the rich, white people in Aspen have already abandoned the Bush ship.

I’m not making this up but the Evergreen State College in Washington State has the geoduck as their athletic mascot. There’s even a “Geoduck Fight Song.” It goes like this:

Go, Geoducks go,
Through the mud and the sand,
let’s go.
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

Go, Geoducks go,
Stretch your necks when the tide
is low
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

Nothing whatever to do with penises. At all. Over to you, Wonkette!

National Review calls for the withdrawal of the nomination of Julie Myers to to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

OPERATION OFFSET: Sure, cut out the pork. But Kevin Drum has candidates for deeper savings. It’s easy, m-kay?

CHECKING ON ARMANDO: No correction yet, despite considerable dissent in the comments section. One emailer says: “His refusal to admit error, despite repeated demonstrations of his mistake, is not evidence of any liberal dishonesty. It’s evidence of his personal stubbornness, nothing more. I hope you will note that the left is already taking him to task for his inflammatory and incorrect remarks.” Glad to hear it. But Daily Kos is the biggest blog on the planet and it has published something demonstrably untrue. If Armando won’t correct, the site’s managers should. And if they don’t, they should be held accountable. We all make mistakes, blog hyperbole or sometimes sloppy language. Blogging makes that inevitable. I’m no exception. But the blogosphere’s credibility depends on correction. Why is Kos refusing to correct?

A big one, called a “geoduck”, pronounced “gooey-duck.” Rita’s wind swath, that is.

The National Hurricane Center creates a picture of what Rita’s “wind swaths” look like. In case it changes, here’s the image:

You know something has changed when Ann Coulter is attacking Bush:

Bush has already fulfilled all his campaign promises to liberals – and then some! He said he’d be a “compassionate conservative,” which liberals interpreted to mean that he would bend to their will, enact massive spending programs, and be nice to liberals. When Bush won the election, that sealed the deal. It meant the Democrats won.
Consequently, Bush has enacted massive new spending programs, obstinately refused to deal with illegal immigration, opposed all conservative Republicans in their primary races, and invited Teddy Kennedy over for movie night. He’s even sent his own father to socialize with aging porn star Bill Clinton.

I don’t even think she’s kidding. My prediction: we’ll get a fire-breathing far-right, minority judicial activist for the next nomination. Bush needs to polarize the country again to bolster his base. Right now, he’s actually uniting Americans – against him. Time to divide. And Karl Rove knows how.

Even National Review types are coming round. Pity it didn’t happen in 2000.