GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Barnett met with The Eagle editorial board Tuesday and tried to clarify where he stands in the state school board evolution controversy.
"I believe in evolution," he said. And the physician says he has no problem reconciling evolution with his religious faith.
"I am not a kook," he added, objecting to any efforts to paint him as one.
He went on to say that some of his campaign comments, which have followed the "teach the controversy" rhetoric of intelligent design advocates, were merely meant to support open discussion in classrooms and letting kids make up their own minds.
His awkward straddle of this issue, though, shows how Barnett’s efforts to satisfy both GOP mods and conservatives is sometimes a stretch.
Watch an video excerpt of Barnett talking about evolution that is posted on our Opinion page.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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83 Comments
I was a little bit baffled at this. I mean, the man’s a physician. It’s impossible to take that much biology and not see how solid evolution is.Funny to watch him squirm a bit, though. I admit, I giggled at the “I am not a kook.”
Good for Barnett for sticking up for the truth. It was the right thing, although he knows he can lose votes over that.
Evolution is not solid as a theory that I’m aware. A theory must be able to be tested at every level in order to be proved true. One cannot do this with evolution or creationism as there are no so-called viable models from eons ago to test.
Both evolution and creationism are based on beliefs and generalizations. I’ve taken several university biology based courses, zoology, genetics, bio-chemistry, anatomy, physiology, comparative ananomty, anthropology, archaealogy and one thing that I’ve concluded through all those courses is that everyone has a theory.
Most of those theories either conflict or at least vary to make them quite unscientific. Having found Devonian era shark teeth and fish vertebrae in the same strata layer as human remains makes me wonder if all the upheaval in the formation of rock disguises so much that it is impossible to categorize anything with certainty.
Old carbon data methods were inherently flawed because of carbon’s wide variation of decay. Radiometric dating is even worse because it cannot deal with the unknown aging effects that occur with weathering (rain,wind) or natural shifts in ground alignment (earthquakes, avalanche,etc.)
Evolution wants it both ways. They claim that certain aspects of the theory derived when ooze existed in an atmosphere where no oxygen existed. Then when a biochemical reaction occurs that requires oxidation or the presence of oxygen, then the gap theory comes into play. That is, they don’t know, they just ad a gap of time of a few million or billion years.
It’s just too imprecise for my tastes. Now, you can have belief for creationism or evolution or a little bit of both, but you can hardly call it pure science.
This is what happens when you try to change your character and mold your beliefs to a new political straightjacket which you think you need in order to appeal to a vocal minority.
Joe Williams, you may have take several science courses in your life, but apparently you didn’t learn much of anything about science. A scientific theory is never “proven true”; it is just the best model of reality until evidence is produced that disproves it. The modern theory of evolution is the best explaination for the reality of the diversity of species on earth, both past an present. It has withstood the test of time. Creation is not a scientific theory at all, precisely because it could never be disproven any more than you could disprove that we were all created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster five minutes ago.
Dr. Barnett seems to have a reasonable position on the subject. His is an open-minded approach that stands in contrast to the arrogant, know it all position of most Darwinists and the unreasonable censoring of alternatives.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/another_great_intelligent_desi.html
Another Great Intelligent Design Debate On TVThis week on Think Tank (PBS): Intelligent Design vs. Evolution- Part two.
PBS doesn’t seem to think ID unworthy of discussion. I missed part one, but part two will air at 7:00 pm Sunday on KPTS here in Wichita. Watch, if you aren’t afraid of the light.
And read the transcript of part one. It will help dispel the misrepresentations of ID you see here.
Joe Bob,
I think you inadvertly assigned Joe Williams to what I wrote.
Perhaps you should go read the definition of theory and scientific method.
I wasn’t aware that metaphysics was involved in scientific method until your new definition. “model of reality until evidence is produced that disproves it.”
Model of reality? Oh really? Is that a new term for kind of true, but I haven’t or can’t check all the facts right now?
JM
I THINK Barnett just called you a “kook”. I concur.
Dang I wish I could see that video. Just reading about it I can almost smell the desperation. So early in his political career and Barmnett is trying to be all things to all people. He won’t be as good at that as Kathy Sebelius. Barnett should stick to medicine.
“carbon’s wide variation of decay.”
What? The rate of decay of C-14 is well-known and is constant. There has been no indication otherwise. Other isotope couples are also used to determine age - they are then brought together. This is especially important for things that are too old for carbon.
The evolution theory stands today. Soecifics of mechanisms are constantly being refines as is always the case in science. However, contrary to what you claim, the scientific method is applied to evolution.
Gee
Another “ridicule anyone who believes in god” thread from the Eagle. Everyone up for 150 posts?
Ben,
You mean carbon dating to be as accurate in the following example?
Radio-Carbon dating can be used for dates up to ~80,000 years ago. However, the error range increases drastically once you pass 50,000 years. Also, it is of little use in anything more recent than 5,000 years ago. (The item being tested must be organic based, and must be dead - tests on live mollusks showed an age of 2000 years).
2000 YEAR OLD LIVE MOLLUSKS!?!?
Right Ben… Riiiiggghhht!
forgot to post this: here’s the link Ben.
http://www.palaeos.com/Geochronology/radiometric_dating.htm
Sloppy thinking, Heckler.
It’s not ridicule “anyone who believes in god,” it’s ridicule anyone who believes in creationism.
While I’m certainly no Christian, I believe that there’s a profound philosophical difference between creationists and non-creationist Christians.
My hunch is that it’s like this: creationists are to Christianity as superstition is to faith.
Will - we know that if you feed an organism ‘old’ (by C-14) food that it will then test as old. I’d like to see a reference to your 2000-year-old live mollusks and what they were eating.
You are correct about the limit - that is why we then go to K/Ar, U/PB etc. Also I would note that there is a difference between accuracy and precision. If I say something is 40,000 +/- 2,000 years old I have assigned a range to my precision.
And yes, we know that for C-14 it must be organic. DOH!
The practical range for dating is in the order of a few hundred to about 40,000 years BP. Any further back than that and your standard deviations go way up. Also, C-14 years do not correlate with actual calendar years, since the amount of C-14 isotopes in the atmosphere has fluctuated in the past, and the dating method assumes it was constant. Tree ring data (dendrochronology) can be used to even out this inconsistency, however the oldest trees used for calibration are in the order to about 6,000 years old, so any further back than that and you can’t correct your dates (although there are reportedly some preserved huon pines in Tasmania that could take this right back to 30,000 years or so, if anyone wants to spend half their life time counting tree rings). Even if dates are corrected with tree ring data they are still not considered calendar years, but rather radiocarbon years. So a 40,000 year C-14 date and a 60,000 year thermoluminesence date could easily come from the same strata, right next to each other, and possibly reflect a date of anything between 30,000 and 70,000 calendar years depending on the standard deviations of your dates. Some Thermoluminesense dates that are in the order of 50,000 years +/- 25,000 years, which with a two standard deviation limit puts it anywhere between yesterday and 100,000 years ago.
Of course C-14 would never be of any use for dating dinosaur bearing deposits, unless you want everything to date to around 40,000 years!
WOW! THAT’S ACCURACY!
http://www.palaeos.com/Geochronology/radiometric_dating.htm
Can you imagine being a conservative candidate sitting in that room with the Eagle Opinion editors? Gives me the chills. The camp of the enemy.
Nervously hoping that they don’t dislike too much of what you say. And just hoping that they don’t decide to give you their vicious and now famous Kline treatment?
Incidentally, it is not an admission for Dr. Barnett to state he believes in evolution. Everyone believes in the evolution that can be observed, such as adaptive changes in microorganisms. It is when it is claimed that these micro- adaptive changes result in a horse from a microorganism that it becomes an issue.
Thanks for the link will - I think it still supports my claims - of course given statistical ‘precision’ errors:
We usually hear of Carbon 14 dating, which is very important in archaeology. The Christian Creationists have criticized it on the grounds that it is inaccurate. But these inaccuracies are the result of variation in the level of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere, and when this is worked out (through calibration with tree rings of the bristlecone pine, the oldest living organism) precise dates can be had.
The radioactive isotope Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. This has made it useful for measuring prehistory and events occurring within the past 35 to 50 thousand years.
will - thus the difference between accuracy and precision. When I scientifically determined the half-life on the groundwater contaminent TCE in Wichita’s groundwater I came up with something like 20 +/- 5 years. Thus if someone else determined 15 years or 25 years we would not be in dispute. My data were of limited precision; thus my determination was limited. However, I stand by its accuracy. It is about 2 decades; not the one year Coleman had claimed.
By the way, if anyone doing such age-dating claims too high precision he is in error.
pedant
Sloppy thinking right back at you.Not all people who believe God created earth believe he created it in six days.
And with all due respect to Ben, anyone who thinks that they know for a fact what happened over a million years ago on earth are deluded. There is an arrogance in parts of the scientific community borderding on something akin to religious fascism. If you don’t toe the line the “club” has determined to be valid you become persona nongrata.
Ben,What is the difference between calendar years and radiocarbon years? And what do you think is precise about 2,000 year old live mollusks?
You are misunderstanding “adaptive changes,” outlander.
Many university genetics courses study the genome of the Drosophila fruit fly. A classic experiment involving Drosophila is to introduce a mutagen in a controlled experiment and observe subsequent generations. Among the flies exposed to the mutagen, by generation 4 approximately 25% of the offspring display white eyes (Drosophila normally have red eyes). In this experiment fifth generation white-eyes are introduced to the control sample and their progeny are shown to be sterile.
Sterility here is obviously not evidence of adaptation, but it is fundamental evidence of selection at work. Namely, that given genetic mutation the effect of selection is to produce an animal that can no longer reproduce with its ancestor. This is the classical scientific definition of species: only members of the same species can produce non-sterile offspring.
By the way, have you had occasion to actually meet a scientist who claims that a horse can result from a microorganic mating within a handful of generations? If so, then I would suggest s/he’s more properly described as a creationist than a scientist.
As was noted many use the old value for half-life so have problems. As for the mollusks they don’t give a lot of detail. Suppose:
I find a mammoth frozen in the tundra and find it is 20,000 years old. I feed its meat to maggots for a period of time. Those maggots would then be “20,000 years old” by C-14 determination.
C-14 is produced in the atmosphere. It is then incorporated in plants by photosynthosis. That in turn is incorporated in animals via eating the plants and/or each other.
I suspect those mollusks reflect deep sediments in which they lived - it’s too bad the article didn’t give details.
Another common problem in anthropology: I date a plank in a hut at 20,000 years. Does that mean the hut os 20,000 years old? Maybe - maybe not. Suppose the plank had been cut yesterday from a 20,000 year old log. THAT is the age - of the log. Not the hut.
That is why we rely on multiple methods - not just one.
Another experiment that would give very anomolous results. Grow a plant in CO2 exclusively made by burning coal in a closed system. That plant to be very “old” even though alive.
It is not simple, never has been. None of us scientists claim that it is.
heckler - we scientists do not deny God. We just reject the literal interpretations of the young-earth people. As for your million year issue - we examine the evidence and conclude from that. Kind of like a forensics cop who did not witness the crime but reconstructs it from the evidence.
“The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological refinement and better understanding, the underlying assumptions have been strongly challenged, and warnings are out that radiocarbon may soon find itself in a crisis situation. Continuing use of the method depends on a fix-it-as-we-go approach, allowing for contamination here, fractionation there, and calibration whenever possible. It should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half has come to be accepted…. No matter how useful it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually the selected dates.”
Dr. Robert LeeAnthropological Journal of Canada1981
Carbon-14 dating is the standard method used by scientists to determine the age of certain fossilized remains. As scientists will often claim something to be millions or billions of years old (ages that do not conform to the Biblical account of the age of the earth), Christians are often left wondering about the accuracy of the carbon-14 method. The truth is, carbon-14 dating (or radiocarbon dating, as it’s also called) is not a precise dating method in many cases, due to faulty assumptions and other limitations on this method.
Carbon has a weight of twelve atomic mass units (AMU’s), and is the building block of all organic matter (plants and animals). A small percentage of carbon atoms have an atomic weight of 14 AMU’s. This is carbon-14. Carbon-14 is an unstable, radioactive isotope of carbon 12. As with any radioactive isotope, carbon-14 decays over time. The half-life of carbon 14 is approximate 5,730 years. That means if you took one pound of 100 percent carbon-14, in 5,730 years, you would only have half a pound left.
Carbon-14 is created in the upper atmosphere as nitrogen atoms are bombarded by cosmic radiation. For every one trillion carbon-12 atoms, you will find one carbon-14 atoms. The carbon-14 that results from the reaction caused by cosmic radiation quickly changes to carbon dioxide, just like normal carbon-12 would. Plants utilize, or “breath in” carbon dioxide, then ultimately release oxygen for animals to inhale. The carbon-14 dioxide is utilized by plants in the same way normal carbon dioxide is. This carbon-14 dioxide then ends up in humans and other animals as it moves up the food chain.
There is then a ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the bodies of plants, humans, and other animals that can fluctuate, but will be fixed at the time of death. After death, the carbon-14 would begin to decay at the rate stated above. In 1948, Dr. W.F. Libby introduced the carbon-14 dating method at the University of Chicago. The premise behind the method is to determine the ratio of carbon-14 left in organic matter, and by doing so, estimate how long ago death occurred by running the ratio backwards. The accuracy of this method, however, relies on several faulty assumptions.
First, for carbon-14 dating to be accurate, one must assume the rate of decay of carbon-14 has remained constant over the years. However, evidence indicates that the opposite is true. Experiments have been performed using the radioactive isotopes of uranium-238 and iron-57, and have shown that rates can and do vary. In fact, changing the environments surrounding the samples can alter decay rates.
The second faulty assumption is that the rate of carbon-14 formation has remained constant over the years. There are a few reasons to believe this assumption is erroneous. The industrial revolution greatly increased the amount of carbon-12 released into the atmosphere through the burning of coal. Also, the atomic bomb testing around 1950 caused a rise in neutrons, which increased carbon-14 concentrations. The great flood which Noah and family survived would have uprooted and/or buried entire forests. This would decrease the release of carbon-12 to the atmosphere through the decay of vegetation.
Third, for carbon-14 dating to be accurate, the concentrations of carbon-14 and carbon-12 must have remained constant in the atmosphere. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph, the flood provides another evidence that this is a faulty assumption. During the flood, subterranean water chambers that were under great pressure would have been breached. This would have resulted in an enormous amount of carbon-12 being released into the oceans and atmosphere. The effect would be not unlike opening a can of soda and having the carbon dioxide fizzing out. The water in these subterranean chambers would not have contained carbon-14, as the water was shielded from cosmic radiation. This would have upset the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12.
To make carbon-14 dating work, Dr. Libby also assumed that the amount of carbon-14 being presently produced had equaled the amount of carbon-12 – he assumed that they had reached a balance. The formation of carbon-14 increases with time, and at the time of creation was probably at or near zero. Since carbon-14 is radioactive, it begins to decay immediately as it’s formed. If you start with no carbon-14 in the atmosphere, it would take over 50,000 years for the amount being produced to reach equilibrium with the amount decaying. One of the reasons we know that the earth is less than 50,000 years old is because of the biblical record. Another reason we can know this is because the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is only 78% what it would be if the earth were old.
Finally, Dr. Libby and the evolutionist crowd have assumed that all plant and animal life utilize carbon-14 equally as they do carbon-12. To be grammatically crass, this ain’t necessarily so. Live mollusks off the Hawaiian coast have had their shells dated with the carbon-14 method. These test showed that the shells died 2000 years ago! This news came as quite a shock to the mollusks that had been using those shells until just recently.
Apologies for the lengthy post.
I’d like to see what else he had to say. As I said - there are limits and we must be aware of them. Contamination IS serious.
That is one reason I like to see the raw data published. When I did my analysis of TCE I also examined earlier work and found their flaws (particularly the one-year half-life claim). Discreoancies must be revealed; not hidden.
There is noting inherently inconsistent about believing in God, and subscribing to evolution as an accurate theory of the origin of life and all animals, including human beings. What IS inherently inconsistent is the attitude that creationism has a scientific basis and deserves to be taught in science classes.
“However, evidence indicates that the opposite is true. Experiments have been performed using the radioactive isotopes of uranium-238 and iron-57, and have shown that rates can and do vary. In fact, changing the environments surrounding the samples can alter decay rates.”
What evidence? Other than K-capture (potassium-argon) I know of no such case. Even in that one the effect is very small.
“The formation of carbon-14 increases with time, and at the time of creation was probably at or near zero. Since carbon-14 is radioactive, it begins to decay immediately as it’s formed. If you start with no carbon-14 in the atmosphere, it would take over 50,000 years for the amount being produced to reach equilibrium with the amount decaying”
Evidence? And evidence for the 78% claim?
One interesting situation today is that fossil-fuel produced CO2 is “old”. That will make ‘modern’ sample rather intereting in the future.
Creationism is a philosophical subject, not a “natural science.”
Will - I agree.
Creationism isn’t science, it’s foolishness. Evolution is our best guess. Something got the whole thing started (the Big Bang “singularity”) but that is not the “God” that some would like to make it. Read Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”
Ben
I don’t have a problem with good scientific methodology. I have a problem with people in the scientific community who come to a conclusion about something that happened 500 million years ago and then call those who may challenge them fools. I’m talking about the type of professional arrogance that occurs at the “top” in any given sector of science and academia where good science stops and the politics of being “right” take over.
An aside - Libby was on my Comittee many years ago at UCLA. A fascinating man but definitely an irascible cuss in his own way.
Ben,I’ll be back with your evidence later. Alas I must be off the internet right now, real life beckons!
But I’ll be back.
Getting back to the real topic of the thread…
I don’t have a problem with someone meshing the belief in evolution with the Bible. Isn’t that what the argument of Inherit the Wind came down to? When I was and if I still were a Christian, I believed this way, too.
The problem lies in the fact that Barnett appears to be back-pedaling. If what he is saying about his beliefs is true–and I believe he is being truthful–then that should have been made clear a long time ago. Take a stand and stick to it, as much as possible. If a stand includes a change of mind, say so.
Stop “politicking” and start being honest.
Ben
And to add to my previous post I have the same problem with people in various religious communities with the same problem. Their answer is the only possible correct one and questioning them makes you a fool.
The ’sloppy thinking’ shown here was on the part of Barnett, that he ‘believes’ in any scientific theory.
He needs to learn the difference between fact, theory, hypothesis, and belief. The first three require evidence. The last doesn’t.
The problem with using any dating method is that science uses process cycles to messure events. Radioactive decay is an example of a process cycle that can be used to determine events.
However, correlating process event cycles to man-made calendar years becomes problematic.
For one, we don’t know the conditions which the test sample endured. I mean, were there more gamma rays present? Did massive volcanic activity just occur causing millions of metric tons of organic life to become charcoal, thus eliminating any reliable dating.
Was the sample exposed to long term environment stress such as flood, fire, burial or any other number of things.
And of course, the equilibrium theory that concerns the presence of C14 in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere was constant at the time the sample took in c14, would plants older than the sample have been exposed to less or more c14.
No one knows and can’t know.
Will, I have a question.
Where did you get the Robert Lee quote?
Did you get it from the Anthropological Journal of Canada, or is it second hand from another source? I suspect that I already know the answer, and the answer is important. A common practice, particularly by creationists, is quote mining, a dishonest enterprise.
You are in a discussion with someone who evidently uses Carbon 14 data professionally (that is, someone who is already an expert).
Carbon 14, however, is hardly a linchpin to attack evolution or the idea/reality of an old earth anyway.
That’s why scientists quailify their precision with the term “estimate,” JM.
Yawn. Ben pointed this out above, in typically honest fashion. This is typical of both Ben and science, btw.
As a slight aside, I make an appeal to the reader’s common sense. Any scientist who proves evolution a hoax will be rightly rewarded a Nobel prize (a strong incentive). Any creationist who proves evolution true will earn both a Nobel and a shunning by his sect (a mixed incentive at best).
Who has a stronger incentive for rationality, the scientist or the creationist?
As far as I know, the only people who are willing to stake their reputations to “knowing” to the millenium the age of anything ancient are creationists.
Note:
When I am questioning Will about the source, I am not questioning WILL’s honesty or accusing Will of quotemining. I do potentially suspect the source if it was a secondary one from the internet.
I have been in a number of internet debates where I have had quotes from Stephen J. Gould (in particular) thrown at me as evidence that paleontologists are giving up on Darwinian evolution. The problem is, I have the primary references to to the quotes in question.
Of course, I do not have the primary quote from Robert Lee, who I had never heard of until Will referenced him.
Man! I’ve been gone for about a week and a half. When I come back to this blog, it has been swept through by Evangelicals?
This used to be a very leftist dominated blog. I’m suprised.
Although I disagree with both evolution and leftism, at least some fresh faces and other opinions are coming to light here. It was begining to be quite the “peaching to the Democrat choir” bore on here.
Yeah, I disagree with gravity, so I can empathize. Of course, for some damn reason my disagreement doesn’t keep my ass cheeks from dangling closer and closer to the pavement each passing year.
But I disagree with gravity. Strongly!!!
Hi, Joe Williams and welcome back.
Here’s the bet we made exactly one year ago today:
Joe W.–You’re on. Oct 15, 2006. If people can drive from the airport to downtown Baghdad without an armed escort, if the country has a stable elected gov’t, if the US has pulled more than half of its 140,000 troops out, and we’re not losing 1-2 soldiers a day, then I will be happy to pay you 50 US dollars.
If however, any of the above is not true, you owe me.
*****We lost 10 soldiers last Wednesday.
Joe—You can send your check to
Horace SantryPEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE CENTER of South Central Kansas1407 N. TopekaWichita, KS 67214-1107
I’ll be checking with Horace to see when he gets your check. The sooner you send it in, the sooner I’ll quit hounding you about it.
Thank you.
yeah, and i diagree strongly with quantum electroydynamics. i mean, who could believe that each photon follows all possible paths at once? obviously impossible.
The Eagle is trying too hard to make Barnett the winner, they need to stop.
Barnett is pandering to any and everyone .
If he wins, then I will have to question the elections since we started using electronic boxes.
Is Diebold in play in KS as well?
Pam-Another difference between Cons and Libs. If we Cons lose, then we lose. Maybe next year. If the Libs lose, then it’s cries of somebody must have cheated.CRYBABIES!
Joe? Joe?
Why do I get the feeling that the guy is avoiding me?
“Can you imagine being a conservative candidate sitting in that room with the Eagle Opinion editors? Gives me the chills. The camp of the enemy.”
Outlander,
I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might not want to be you, but this revelation says some pretty significant things about your position.
If someone who disagrees with you, they become an enemy — that is not a real good position to be in. Let me bestow upon you a clue: You have a lot of enemies.
This relatively simple definition of science comes from Hotlick, of all people:
“Evolution is our best guess.”
A “guess” (a theroy is more than a guess, but this is not too offensive of a layman term) that best explains the evidence at hand. I don’t see Hotlick as a liberal scholar, but he has a more reasonable position on evolution than you do. That fact has got to give you reason to pause, I would think any way.
What I would like for you to do, Outlander, is be honest about what drives your campaign against evolution. Clearly, it is your religious faith. If we were to compromise intellectual freedom for 8th century religion, can you tell me how your postition is much different from the islamofascists that you decry so much? How do you differ from them?
Maybe you don’t want to kill someone who has the audicity to ask for intellectual freedom, but I bet there are members of your tribe who would be willing to do that.
To me, having faith should not mean that one has to be imprisoned in 8th century propoganda. Surely, we can do better than this.
hotlick,
Keep your eye on the news, nationwide. More law suits over Ohio votes in 04 are being filed.
It’s the epitome of irony for a repuke to call liberals crybabies, after listening to the former whine for last 14 years.
no one alive today or tommorrow or forever will ever know if evolution or creation is true. why argue about it.
Actually, I was once a consevative candidate being interviewed by the WE editors. I didn’t get their endorsement but I had a very enjoyable time.
They asked fair, revelant questions and all in all a very cordial meeting.
I highly recomend that anyone run for office in this state before you die. It is a very good education!
I was interviewed by several local groups and filled out about 20 questionaires from others. The friendliest were the WE editors. The most antagonistic were the people from the NEA!
Hank
Im so tired of neo-cons calling liberals cry babies. Stop calling your self conservative. I know conservatives and your not, your a neo-con. Id rather be a democrat and be the party of progressives rather than a Republican, the party of Pedophiles.
capnamoron,I thought this was about Barnett and his beliefs.
it sounds like your reveling in the fact that we lost 10 good men. Tell us what your plan would be for Iraq.
Jacob-Just what is a neo-con? I’ve heard it used many times, but I really don’t know what that is.The “party of Pedophiles” part is just stupid and weak. I mean you might say the party of bigotry or Fasio-Christians and at least you would have something,(still wrong, but party of pedophiles?) If you are going to bring something, bring something worthy. Do I have to write your post for you?
Ictsux–
Everything I and George Galloway and the anti-war people said from the beginning turned out to be RIGHT. And everything you and the pro-war people said turned out to be wrong.
And three thousand good patriotic American soldiers have died for a pack of lies.
F*ck you very much.
We had 2 million people in the streets of America before this invasion and occupation took place–we were ridiculed, we were called appeasers and traitors, we were ignored by the media–in other words, business as usual for the us in the anti-war groups.
We wanted to stop exactly what is happening.
So don’t tell me what I think.
Steven: The part about the interview with the Eagle Editorial staff is supposed to be tongue in cheek. Sorry that my limited writing skills and/or your limited reading skills failed to connect on that. (the part about the ongoing smear campaign against Kline is not though)With regard to a campaign against evolution, that’s all in your head. I have stated many times that it is fine to teach Darwinian theory in schools. Just don’t tell my kid that a theory is the undisputed truth. It is a best guess.
If I do have a “campaign”, the objective is to point out the half-truths, misleading language, and general arrogance in those who, when asked critical questions about Darwinian evolutionary theory, impune the questioner instead of anwswering the question.
What motivates your scorn Steven? What are you afraid of my friend?
capnamoron:
still waiting, what is your plan? Fact is you have none. At this point it DOES NOT MATTER why we went to iraq. The fact is we are there and we should win it period. I am not for war and politicians should not run a war. You only have to go back to southeast asia to see the results of the elected officials running a war.You and your 2 million are the minority on this issue.
Let me guess, you would want to cut and run!
Hank - what office did you run for? Since I am out west I wonder if you were on my ballot?
ictsux - I agree, we are there and we must try to find a way to deal with it. However, IT DOES MATTER how we got into this quagmire. Those responsible have shown their arrogance/ignorance and are not the ones who can resolve this.
An analogy: Suppose I am facing serious surgery due to malpractice by my doctor. To I trust that same doctor to perform that surgery? I THINK NOT!
Hey Ben,
I doubt if I was on your ballot! I got beat in the republican primary two elections in a row. I ran for the 93rd distric state representative.
I wasn’t disapointed by the votes for my opponent but I was amazed and humbled by the amount of people that voted for me!
Hank
Goddard? Run against Koster?
ict
You are late to this forum. And here you are off topic to boot. I’ll forgive that as this thread has spun off topic.
Ict? FYI
Capn was attempting to collect on a year old bet he made with another moron who thinks we can win in Iraq if we just keep on keepin’ on. That particular “pollyanna” was Joe Williams. Joe assured us a year ago that Iraq would be pretty much a settled matter a year out……in other words well, NOW. Capn was not gloating over the death of our servicemen. He was trying to show that attitudes like Joe’s and yours are going to get MORE OF THEM KILLED.
“The most antagonistic were the people from the NEA!”
I was not aware that the NEA interviewed local candidates. Please explain.
Thanks, JR, excellent post and exactly right.
Ict–
1. People opposing the war are not now nor were they ever in the “minority.”
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Opposition among Americans to the war in Iraq has reached a new high, with only about a third of respondents saying they favor it, according to a poll released Monday.
Just 35 percent of 1,033 adults polled say they favor the war in Iraq; 61 percent say they oppose it — the highest opposition noted in any CNN poll since the conflict began more than three years ago.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/21/iraq.poll/index.html
A majority of Americans favored going to war with Iraq, but only with a UN COALITION. We never got a UN coalition, did we.
2. You notice how the right-wingers are not using that phrase “cut and run” so much these days? That’s because it’s perfectly obvious that the Republicans are going to cut and run without calling it cutting and running.
Iraq is just too much of a liability for the War Party these days.
You should really update your talking points, Ict. “Cut and run” is so last June. It’s like “a MUSHROOM CLOUD over an AMERICAN CITY!” It just doesn’t poll well anymore for your side anymore.
3. What’s my plan? Well, thanks for finally asking, sh*thead. Three years after you people ridiculed and impugned all of us who were RIGHT, you now have the brass to come back and say that WE don’t have a plan.
God, you people make me sick. I mean you’re really too, too much.
You’re like a man who whores around on his wife, gets AIDS and infects her with it and then says, “hey, what’s YOUR plan?”
An excellent plan was laid out by George McGovern in this month’s Harper’s magazine. Since it’s new, it hasn’t been archived yet, so you can’t find it online. Even Lexis-Nexis doesn’t have it up yet.
But it involves coalition building, training Iraqi troops, giving the democratically elected gov’t actual power, quit paying American companies billions to do nothing (see “Iraq for Sale” by Robert Greenwald), cease building all military bases (something like 100 at last count) and turn them over to the Iraqi government, and in short, actually allow the Iraqis to run their own country.
That would be a good start.
Yea, Carl!
That was my second attempt at ‘public service’! Carl Koster won the primary and lost in the general election.
Carl is a pretty good man, he would have made a good representative for our district.
Do you live in the 93rd?
Hank
Hey Apophis,
In all fairness I may have been a little anoying to them. It was the local NEA people, the teachers union. They use to interview candidates, anyway they pestered me for about an hour.
Hank
Hank……….did it occur to you to answer their questions about education? That is all they ask about.
94th. I ran the same time carl did. Our joke was that if we both got elected the leadership would banish us both to the hallway - we would both be thorns to leadership. My motto: “Punish Tom Sawyer. Send ben there for him to “lead”"
Carl and I had breakfast together before the primary, I think we both wished the other would win! If we had known the other was going to run we might not have tried.
I had been asked to run by the head of the Sedgwick County Republican party head. I wanted to win, I just didn’t want to go to Topeka!
Carl and I are still friends.
Hank
Apophis,
Saying all the NEA cares about is education is like saying all the afl/cio cares about is trucks.
They are a union. They have a liberal political agenda and never support the republicans.
Hank
Koster? Pronounced coo’-ster?
a shorter ‘O’ rox - in fact pronounced like the o in rox
Capn-The plan by McGovern you cite sounds like the plan the right thinking Americans want. What is with the hate? “You people make me sick”. The crap about the contractors is bogus, but we will ignore that part. McGovern has proven that he can get the support of the American electorate.
Thanks, Ben.
I know of others who pronounce it with oo, but it’s like Koch. There’s the long o and sound like the soft drink, there the one like Mayor Koch of NYC, and one of my best friends in high school’s name was pronounced as ‘cook.’
Radiocarbon dating is inaccurate. Living organisms tend to preferentially utilize the most common versions of elements, such as hydrogen 1 over hydrogen 2 or 3, carbon 12 over carbon 14 13, oxygen 16 over oxygen 15 and nitrogen 14 over 15. However, these differential isotope utilizations vary. For example,Floyd Landis was accused of taking artificial his testosterone had a higher ratio of C14 to C12 than was normal for human beings. Testosterone and other hormones are synthesized from foodstuffs. But they have varying isotope ratios. Plants from the tropics, for example, have higher C14 to C12 ratios than plants from temperate zones.
So, in an archeological dig, finding low C14 to C12 ratios can result in a conclusion that the studied matter is older than it is.
Frankly, I think it is much more important to teach kids experimental science: here are materials, what happens when you do various things to them? Because, the reality is, if evolution is true, the problem is there aren’t a lot of jobs out there for paleontologists. There ARE a lot of jobs out there for people who can perform economically-useful scientific experiments.
What’s with the hate, Hotlick?
Oh, gee, I dunno.
Maybe it has something with being called an “America hater,” a “terrorist lover,” a “coward,” an “appeaser,” someone who “loves the enemy more than his own country,” a “traitor,” “mentally ill,” “treasonous,” “Al Qaeda lover,” “clove cigarette smoking latte liberal,” “naysayer,” “Bush hater,” “bedwetting liberal,” “thumbsucking liberal,” “crybaby,” and “whiner.”
Maybe it’s just me, but can’t help but think of that as an insult.
Then after three years and three thousand American deaths proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “crybaby coward thumbsucking Al Qaeda loving liberals” were right all along about Iraq . . . then what do we get?
“Well, what’s YOUR plan?”
BTW, 40 percent of the money the Pentagon spends goes to American contractors who make money by spending money–it’s called “cost plus” accounting.
You’ll hear a lot more about the egregious fraud and corruption going on in Iraq when the Repukes are swept from power in the November elections.
Capn,
Your forgot to include cheese-eating surrender monkey.
Actually, JM, that one was reserved for the French. . .
And the Cap’n is right. I give John Murtha only limited credibility as a military expert because he stupidly voted for that obvious fiasco. Over time, us MERE BUFFOONS predicted (with heartbreaking accuracy) what actually came to pass.
Rage is right about Murtha, to a degree. But remember BuschCo sold the WMD scam. Now Congress should have directly accessed the CIA analysts to find out that they were not convinced Saddam had WMD’s, and Congress should have limited war actions to those approved by the UN. Not to give up our national sovereignty to protect ourselves, but to prevent a fraud-charged misadventure into ANOTHER COUNTRY THAT HAD SOVEREIGNTY RIGHTS.
Here’s the problem with “Islamofascist Terrorism”.Why do you think it exists, dear readers? Why isn’t Brazil or Mexico or Norway being attacked? Wake up. It is because these countries are not trying to control Middle Eastern nations’ oil resources. They aren’t trying setting up petroleum “banana republics”. Bin Laden could never destroy people like you and me, except by accident. What he and his followers were/are trying to do was/is wreck the Anglo-American Middle East oiligopoly. That’s not the same as murdering average working-class Americans. We let our administration propagandistically morph one into the other, because the oilogopolists knew that an honest reason presented for war to the American public would not pass the American public support test.
Some readers here think, “We just need to bomb and shoot the s**t out of the Iraqis, and we’ll WIN IN IRAQ. Like, the other BILLLION Muslims in the world will sit back and not do anything.
Clinton did some things that nobody liked. But, he’s been giving speeches. He’s a really smart guy. Bush was set up by hidden interests to be sold to “regular Americans” as a “regular guy”, which he is, according to his SAT of 1156, which in his day represented a ca. 115 IQ (the old SAT was an IQ test), i.e. in the range of high school teachers, not enough to be entrusted with the lives of people as a doctor, not enough to get into a good law school.
Bush is/is not leading the country. Basically, his presidency was set up to have smarter people surround him and run the nation, but he gets these ideas that he’s the “decider”. Do you want a high-school-teacher level of intelligence “deciding” history-changing events?
heartlander,
I wouldn’t go so far as to equate Bush to a high-school-teacher level.
On all else, I agree, in that our heavy-handededness in the Middle East (our presence and over-interest currently and the recent past, i.e. Saudi Arabia and others) has to do with oil.
This was so veiled or maybe even not as important as now as it was in the past to other administrations, that we didn’t notice it. While we common people were still discussing the end of the Cold War, they (politicians) were quietly looking at the ME for oil. We really need to wake up and pay more attention.
SCHOOL BOARD ENDORSEMENT:KENT RUNYAN
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2006/10/parsons_sun_endorses_runyan.php