You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded.
To the question, “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, “Why not?”
Atheist: Natural Morals, Real Meaning, Credible Truth

05 November, 2005

Chain, Chain, Chain of Cheney Fools - New York Times

Chain, Chain, Chain of Cheney Fools - New York Times: "Scooter used to be Cheney's Cheney.

Now we've got Cheney's Cheney's Cheney.

This is not an improvement.

Once Scooter left, many people, including a lot of alarmed conservatives and moderate Republicans, were hoping that W. and Vice would throw open some White House windows to let the air and sun in, and climb out of that incestuous, secretive, vindictive, hallucinatory dark hole they've been bunkered in for five years.
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Maureen Dowd.

• More Columns by Maureen Dowd

But they like it in their paranoid paradise. One of the most confounding aspects of W.'s exceedingly confounding presidency is his apparent unwillingness to consider that anyone who ever worked for him - and was in any way responsible for any of the disasters now afflicting his administration - should be jettisoned.

This is not loyalty. This is myopia. Where is a meddling, power-intoxicated first lady when we need one? Maybe the clever Nancy Reagan should have a little talk with Laura Bush tonight at the dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla, and explain to her how to step in and fire overweening officials who are hurting your man.

Vice thumbed his nose yesterday at the notion that he should clean up his creepy laboratory when he promoted two Renfields who are part of the gang that got us into this mess.

Dick Cheney has appointed David Addington as his new chief of staff, an ideologue who is so fanatically secretive, so in love with the shadows, so belligerent and unyielding that he's known around town as the Keyser Soze of the usual suspects. At 48, Mr. Addington is a legend: he's worked his way up the G.O.P. scandal ladder from Iran-contra to Abu Ghraib.

Unlike Scooter, this lone-wolf lawyer doesn't reach out to journalists, even to use them as conduits or covers; he makes his boss look gregarious. He routinely declines to be interviewed or photographed.

Vice also appointed John Hannah as his national security adviser, a title also held by Scooter. Mr. Addington and Mr. Hannah often battled with the C.I.A. and State as the cabal pushed the case that Saddam was a direct threat to America, sabotaging Colin Powell's reputation when it 'helped' with his U.N. speech. Mr. Hannah was the contact for Ahmad Chalabi, who went around the C.I.A. to feed Vice's office the baloney intel and rosy scenarios that suckered the U.S. into war.

Mr. Addington has done his best to crown King Cheney. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Mr. Addington pushed an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that 'favors an extraordinarily powerful president.' He would go 'through every page of the federal budget in search of riders that could restrict executive authority.'

'He was a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects,' Mr. Milbank wrote. 'He was a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts. Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy.' And he helped stonewall the 9/11 commission.

The National Journal pointed out that Scooter had talked to Mr. Addington and Mr. Hannah about Joseph Wilson and his C.I.A. wife when he was seeking more information to discredit them in the press. Mr. Addington, the story said, 'was deeply immersed' in the White House damage-control campaign to deflect criticism about warped W.M.D. intelligence, and attended strategy sessions in 2003 on how to discredit Mr. Wilson.

'Further,' the magazine said, 'Addington played a leading role in 2004 on behalf of the Bush administration when it refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee documents from Libby's office on the alleged misuse of intelligence information regarding Iraq.'

Mr. Addington may as well have turned the documents over for safekeeping to Pat Roberts, because, as it turned out, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee didn't want to investigate anything.

Angry at the Scooter scandal, the Addington appointment and the Roberts stonewalling, Senate Democrats did something remarkable yesterday: they dimmed the lights, stamped their feet and shut down the Senate.

Tired of being in the dark, the Democrats put the Republicans in the dark. Childish, perhaps, but effective. Republicans screamed but grudgingly agreed to take a look at where the investigation stands. But even if the Senate starts investigating again, Mr. Addington, now promoted, will have even more authority not to cooperate.

It's the Cheney chain of command."

01 November, 2005

Who's on First? - New York Times

Who's on First? - New York Times: "October 29, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
Who's on First?
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

It was bracing to see the son of a New York doorman open the door on the mendacious Washington lair of the Lord of the Underground.

But this Irish priest of the law, Patrick Fitzgerald, neither Democrat nor Republican, was very strict, very precise. He wasn't totally gratifying in clearing up the murkiness of the case, yet strangely comforting in his quaint black-and-white notions of truth and honor (except when his wacky baseball metaphor seemed to veer toward a 'Who's on first?' tangle).

'This indictment's not about the propriety of the war,' he told reporters yesterday in his big Eliot Ness moment at the Justice Department. The indictment was simply about whether the son of an investment banker perjured himself before a grand jury and the F.B.I.

Scooter does seem like a big fat liar in the indictment. And not a clever one, since his deception hinged on, of all people, the popular monsignor of the trusted Sunday Church of Russert. Does Scooter hope to persuade a jury to believe him instead of Little Russ?

Good luck.

There is something grotesque about Scooter's hiding behind the press with his little conspiracy, given that he's part of an administration that despises the press and tried to make its work almost impossible.

Mr. Fitzgerald claims that Mr. Libby hurt national security by revealing the classified name of a C.I.A. officer. 'Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life,' he said.

He was not buying the arguments on the right that Mrs. Wilson was not really undercover or was under 'light' cover, or that blowing her cover did not hurt the C.I.A.

'I can say that for the people who work at the C.I.A. and work at other places, they have to expect that when they do their jobs that classified information will be protected,' he said, adding: 'They run a risk when they work for the C.I.A. that something bad could happen to them, but they have to make sure that they don't run the risk that something bad is going to happen to them from something done by their own fellow government employees.'

To protect a war spun from fantasy, the Bush team played dirty. Unfortunately for them, this time they Swift-boated an American whose job gave her legal protection from the business-as-usual smear campaign.

The back story of this indictment is about the ongoing Tong wars of the C.I.A., the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon: the fight over who lied us into war. The C.I.A., after all, is the agency that asked for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate how one of its own was outed by the White House.

The question Mr. Fitzgerald repeatedly declined to answer yesterday - Dick Cheney's poker face has finally met its match - was whether this stops at Scooter.

No one expects him to 'flip,' unless he finally gets the sort of fancy white-collar criminal lawyer that The Washington Post said he is searching for - like the ones who succeeded in getting Karl Rove off the hook, at least for now - and the lawyer tells Scooter to nail his boss to save himself.

But what we really want to know, now that we have the bare bones of who said what to whom in the indictment, is what they were all thinking there in that bunker and how that hothouse bred the idea that the way out of their Iraq problems was to slime their critics instead of addressing the criticism. What we really want to know, if Scooter testifies in the trial, and especially if he doesn't, is what Vice did to create the spidery atmosphere that led Scooter, who seemed like an interesting and decent guy, to let his zeal get the better of him.

Mr. Cheney, eager to be rid of the meddlesome Joe Wilson, got Valerie Wilson's name from the C.I.A. and passed it on to Scooter. He forced the C.I.A. to compromise one of its own, a sacrifice on the altar of faith-based intelligence.

Vice spent so much time lurking over at the C.I.A., trying to intimidate the analysts at Langley into twisting the intelligence about weapons, that he should have had one of his undisclosed locations there.

This administration's grand schemes always end up as the opposite. Officials say they're promoting national security when they're hurting it; they say they're squelching terrorists when they're breeding them; they say they're bringing stability to Iraq when the country's imploding. (The U.S. announced five more military deaths yesterday.)

And the most dangerous opposite of all: W. was listening to a surrogate father he shouldn't have been listening to, and not listening to his real father, who deserved to be listened to."

What Did Cheney Know, and When Did He Know It? - New York Times

From Jon Stewart...

"If only lies left semen stains..."

LOVED IT! :-)

09 October, 2005

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Rocket error dooms ice satellite's launch

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Rocket error dooms ice satellite's launch: "A new satellite to help provide insight into one of the more controversial environmental issues being faced today failed to reach orbit to begin its mission to monitor crucial changes in Earth's polar ice caps because its rocket booster's flight computer had a missing command."

I bet Bush and his cronies destroyed this to keep it proving global warming.

Survivors Sought in South Asia Earthquake - Yahoo! News

20 to 40 thousand dead in Pakistan. Where is Bush? Helping his "friends" in Pakistan? No movement. Indecisive. Clueless. Moron. Here is a chance to help, to show that hiding Osama is not worth it. What do we do but stand there and watch?

15 September, 2005

A Fatal Incuriosity - New York Times

A Fatal Incuriosity - New York Times: "The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It's too late."

What a moron. How can we get him impeached? As bad as Cheney is, I doubt he is as incompetent at Incurious George.

03 September, 2005

New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying - Yahoo! News

What a mess. I doubt anyone could have done better than Bush, but I bet the war in Iraq caused quite a few of the lives lost in New Orleans.

Impeach Bush!

From Maureen Dowd's column...
Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

14 August, 2005

Someone Tell the President the War Is Over - New York Times

Someone Tell the President the War Is Over - New York Times

I like this guy. Frank Rich...

"A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire. "

"Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr. Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr. Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."

"But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr. Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Mr. Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr. Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it."

"WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month."

08 May, 2005

Welcome to MichaelMoore.com!

Welcome to MichaelMoore.com!: "May 6th, 2005 6:37 pm
British memo indicates Bush made intelligence fit Iraq policy

By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott / Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.

'There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,' the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,' weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'"

I think it is time to start Impeachment investigations.

The Raw Story | Rep. calls for deeper inquiry into secret Iraq attack plan

The Raw Story | Rep. calls for deeper inquiry into secret Iraq attack plan: "Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan

RAW STORY

Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

Advertisement

In a letter, Conyers and other members say they are disappointed the mainstream media has not touched the revelations.

'Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a 'runaway bride' to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers,' Conyers writes. 'The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so.'

'The Times reports, based on a newly discovered document, that in 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting in which he expressed his support for 'regime change' through the use of force in Iraq and was warned by the nation's top lawyer that such an action would be illegal,' he adds. 'Blair also discussed the need for America to 'create' conditions to justify the war.'

The members say they are seeking an inquiry."

I have the outrage! Where is the media! REPORT IT!

03 May, 2005

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Swindler on a Gusher

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Swindler on a Gusher: "The Iraqis have thrown us another curveball.

Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.

Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?

Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?

The neocons' con man had been paid millions by the U.S. to tell the Bushies what they wanted to hear on Iraqi W.M.D. A year ago, the State Department and factions in the Pentagon turned on him after he began bashing America and using Saddam's secret files to discredit his enemies."

It goes on... where is the outrage?

20 April, 2005

Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day. | The Progressive magazine

Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day. | The Progressive magazine: "Rice Erases Terror Scoreboard

The Bush motto seems to be, if you can't beat terrorism, stop keeping score.

Condoleezza Rice, who has been getting all sorts of underserved praise in the mainstream media these days, just decided to deep-six the State Department's annual report on international terrorism, according to a story by Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder."

04 March, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts: The Coming End of the American Superpower

Paul Craig Roberts: The Coming End of the American Superpower

Here is a Regan administration official who thinks we are screwed. I agree with him. The falling dollar leading to loss of forgein banks using dollars leading to very high interest rates leading to housing market crash and so on.

27 February, 2005

MSNBC - Razzies tap Berry, 'Catwoman' as year's worst

MSNBC - Razzies tap Berry, 'Catwoman' as year's worst

Ha ha ha! This busted me up! Very funny. A clip from it:
"President Bush won the worst-actor award for his appearance in news and archival footage of Michael Moore’s satiric documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was voted worst supporting-actor for “Fahrenheit 9/11,” while Britney Spears’ fleeting cameo in the documentary brought her the worst supporting-actress award.

Razzies founder John Wilson said the prizes were not meant to mock Moore’s film, only the statements Bush and the others make while “putting their highly paid, highly skilled feet in their mouths repeatedly and sucking on them.”"

26 February, 2005

Seven Deadly Absurdities

Seven Deadly Absurdities

I had never liked No Child Left Behind act of Bush's and this site helped me consolidate my thoughts on the subject. I am sure there are others. This punishing schools for not performing seemed like a bad idea. Most schools and parents aren't willing to let schools slide as a whole and this act doesn't help at all. It is funny also how a Republican president who is so into minimalist government can want such an intrusive act into local government. It is more evidence of the incompetence of this administration, it sees a problem and thrashes out at it without thought or reasoning. That is what I see in almost every action it takes. Conspiracy people think Bush has darker, selfish motives that drives it... I don't think he is smart enough to have his own thoughts and can't direct the smart folks around him to keep things in control.

Impeach Bush!

17 February, 2005

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

Why does this matter?
"This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a "daily basis." They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, "inappropriate," whatever. Monika wasn't a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?"

13 February, 2005

How America Can Afford to Grow Older: A Vision for the Future

How America Can Afford to Grow Older: A Vision for the Future

AARP's Bill Novelli made a lot of sense in this speech on health care costs and social security. I was channel surfing and ran into him on CSPAN. Excellent speech.

Liberal Patriots

Liberal Patriots

I agree with this guy, where is the outrage about the FAA memos? I am! Condi was told about Al Qaeda, as these memos show by Clark. Did she lie? Clinton got impeached for lying about sex in the Oval Office, I think Bush should get impeached for lying about what he knew, what he told us about Iraq, his incompetence with Al Qaeda and Iraq and the rest of his foreign policies, if you want to call them that. Then there are his domestic policies. Different blog.

09 February, 2005

meat-eating leftist

meat-eating leftist

I like this site! I need to figure the ATOM thing or RSS and add it to my web page or this blog. Try the Freeway Blogger link. Some pretty funny freeway signs.

07 February, 2005

More anti-Bush ranting...

So, he wants us to borrow trillions and spend billions in interest to change Social Security into an investment instead of insurance. Does this make any kind of sense? If your investment happens to do better than basic Social Security, you win a little, but you don't "own" it. They still massively control how it is paid out. If it doesn't do so well. Oh well. Your "Social Security" benefit is reduce proportionally to how much you risked in investments. So how about spending the billion or so to make it solvent without the risk or making some investment brokers really really happy. We know how much we can trust those guys to maximize our returns. Where do the billions come from? Well, maybe a little increase in SS taxes now will mean a lot later. Oh, not a TAX INCREASE! God forbid!
I can't believe anyone is falling for this scheme. But then Bush got re-elected. That still boggles my mind.

06 February, 2005

Social Security: There Is No Crisis -

Social Security: There Is No Crisis -

This site is pretty clear on what is fake about the SS "crisis".

"The president is proposing to spend about 4.5 trillion dollars over 20 years to:

Change Social Security in a way which pays the average beneficiary less than is both promised under current law and payable under current projections for the next 75 years.

The cost of this is greater than the cost of fully funding the current program, such that under current projections benefits would not have to be cut at all relative to current law but instead would be fully payable."

29 January, 2005

Wired News: Scientists Clamor to Save Hubble

Wired News: Scientists Clamor to Save Hubble:

Peter thinks the Mars initiative by Bush is smoke to dismantle exploration in space. Science goes against Bush's religion. I am not sure I disagree!

"'The goal of the shuttle is not safety, it's mission success. That's like saying we can only go to Mars if there are six rescue ships available and no chance of launch problems, or Columbus saying, 'I'm willing to sail across the Atlantic only if you promise me there won't be any storms,'' Zubrin said.

Paolucci concurred. 'There's no political risk in saying you'll put a man on Mars in 30 years. It's so bold-sounding, but at the same time we're afraid to fly 350 miles to the Hubble to fix it? I won't use the word cowardly, but we're stepping away, we're retreating,' he said."

24 January, 2005

Religion Vs. Unity (washingtonpost.com)

Religion Vs. Unity (washingtonpost.com):

"Take this item: Even elected officials who are deeply religious sometimes have to make compromises and set their convictions aside to get results while in government.

The percentage of Americans agreeing with that statement fell 10 points -- to 74 percent -- from 2000 to the time of the Public Agenda survey, just before the 2004 elections. Those who never go to religious services favored compromise by 82 percent (down slightly from 85 percent four years ago). But for evangelicals and weekly service-goers, the support for compromise was down to 63 percent. This represents a decline in just four years of 16 points for evangelicals and 19 points for regular worshipers."

The beginning of the end... In twenty years, the EU will have to invade the US to save us from the fundementalist Christian government that has become the worst of tyrants. Kind of like Spain in the inquisition.

CNN.com - Report: Global warming approaching critical point - Jan 24, 2005

CNN.com - Report: Global warming approaching critical point - Jan 24, 2005

Fat chance current administration will listen. They don't care, understand or believe it.

20 January, 2005

I found an old rant from before blog (June 2002). It still holds true today. It's Allena's birthday and Bush got re-oathersized today. An up and down day. I asked her how she felt being this is the third time in her life she has had a birthday on a Bush's ignaugeration day. She said, ech.

Rant on Pledge of Allegiance

I am horrified by the furor about the "under god" ruling from the appeals court in San Francisco. A judge made a ruling. Now it is time to debate the issue, not all this ranting and raving and religious posturing.

I for one agree with the ruling. I don't think the "under god" phrase belongs in a pledge that people actually use in public government settings. I don't think it has to be removed from currency and public buildings, but don't make me say it when I don't believe it in part of a pledge that I do take seriously.

President Bush's statement the other day where he said something like "we need judges who understand that what we have was given to us by god" sent chills down my back. What the hell was that? Didn't we fight and scratch out our freedoms and keep them over the years through the blood and wisdom of our forefathers? I don't see "god's" hand in any of it. Didn't he swear to uphold the constitution? Isn't there some specific intent in the constitution to keep religion out of government?

Keep religion out of government and keep a professional attitude about this ruling. I'll fight for anyone in this country to be free to practice their religion, whatever it is. But I'll also fight to keep any religion out of my government, whatever it may be.

15 January, 2005

ESA - Cassini-Huygens

ESA - Cassini-Huygens

Huygens at Titan... very cool. Some good news for a change. I wish it has splashed down into some methane ocean but this is pretty good too. It was quite a feat, and we managed to not screw it up. I had this fear that NASA would send Cassini into Titan and have Huygens fly by accidentally due to a file naming error, kind of like when they sent the Mars probe too steeply into the Martian atmosphere because of a English to Metric conversion error. :-)
Cool pics coming in from the analysts! Take a look.

12 January, 2005

Yahoo! News - White House: Iraq Weapons Search Is Over

Yahoo! News - White House: Iraq Weapons Search Is Over: "White House: Iraq Weapons Search Is Over"

No shit. And nothing found. And the American people voted the guy responsible back into office. Boggles my mind. 1000+ Us dead and $220+ Billion for nothing but to get Saddam's hairy ass out of Baghdad.

It continues to piss me off!

09 January, 2005

I had the following comment on my "Intelligent" design post earlier...

"Tom where have you been looking to create an illusive existence of an introgressant cosmic universe without a supreme creator (atheist). I have many challenges for you, if you are willing to humble self and then prove to self if there really is or is not an intelligent creator. Using a little math. Examine the absolute necessary multiple combination of the equations of the ear- find the speed of sound approximately 600 mile an hour. Find the speed of electricity 186,000 miles per second. Now reason the multiple of combinations found in the equation of creating the ability to hear and all must be perfectly present in genes (a million more multiples) and reproduce to off spring of both male and female immediately."

It went on and on pretty incohearently and since it was no-reply, I couln't respond. Bill needs some more education... he has some facts at his fingertips but he doens't see the whole picture, hasn't had the education necessary to conceive of how phisyics, chemistry, and biology play together to give us the intelligence to have this disagreement. I am just an engineer 25 years out of college and even then it was easy for me to see and understand that life is amazing but doesn't require the hand of a creator to exist. Nature, from the largest and most energetic center of a galaxy down to the activities of a virus is both very complex in the interrelationships involved and very simple in how discrete processes work.
Yahoo! News - Bush Paints His Goals As 'Crises'
Bush and his crises management style of government. SS in crisis... will run out of money in 2055. Crisis. Trial lawyers killing health care... 2% of medical cost. Crisis. Democrat obstruction of judicial nominees... the blocking of 10 out of 229 nominees blocked by Democrats. Crisis. Just like Saddam being ready to launch chemical and biological weapons on the US, restarted nuclear program, and a collaborator with OBL on 9/11. Credibility of his "crisis" is getting low.

The 51% who voted for him will regret it... I am sure of it. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

08 January, 2005

Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Nice article on answering Creationist nonsense. Saw a bumper sticker today I like, but can't find now... Something like:
Evolution is a theorey
Intelligent Design is a fairy tale
bla bla bla....

I can't remember the bla bla bla part.... nuts, but I liked it. It is hard getting old.