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Open thread 6/17
- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted June 17, 2007 at 1:05 a.m.
- Filed under Open thread
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To my Father and all Fathers:Happy Father’s Day.
My Dad is the bestest guy I ever knew.
Scooter’s Sopranos Go to the Mattresseshttp://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/opinion/17rich.html?pagewanted=printBy FRANK RICH
AS a weary nation awaited the fade-out of “The Sopranos” last Sunday, the widow of the actual Mafia don John Gotti visited his tomb in Queens to observe the fifth anniversary of his death. Victoria Gotti was not pleased to find reporters lying in wait.
“It’s disgusting that people are still obsessed with Gotti and themob,” she told The Daily News. “They should be obsessed with that mob in Washington. They have 3,000 deaths on their hands.” She demanded to know if the president and vice president have relatives on the front lines. “Every time I watch the news and I hear of another death,” she said, “it sickens me.”
Far be it from me to cross any member of the Gotti family, but there’s nothing wrong with being obsessed with both mobs. Now that the approval rating for the entire Washington franchise, the president and Congress alike, has plummeted into the 20s, we need any distraction we can get; the Mafia is a welcome nostalgic escape from a gridlocked government at home and epic violence abroad.
But unlikely moral arbiter that Mrs. Gotti may be, she does have apoint. As the Iraq war careens toward a denouement as black,unresolved and terrifying as David Chase’s inspired “Sopranos” finale, the mob in the capital deserves at least equal attention. John Gotti, the last don, is dead. Mr. Chase’s series is over. But the deaths on the nightly news are coming as fast as ever.
True, the Washington mob isn’t as sexy as the Gotti or Soprano clans, but there is now a gripping nonfiction dramatization of its machinations available gratis on the Internet, no HBO subscription required. For this we can thank U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Scooter Libby trial. Judge Walton’s greatest move was not the 30-month sentence he gave Mr. Libby, a fall guy for higher-ups (and certain to be pardoned to protect their secrets). It wasinstead the judge’s decision to make public the testimonials written to the court by members of the Washington establishment pleading that a criminal convicted on four felony counts be set free.
Mr. Libby’s lawyers argued that these letters should remain lockedaway on the hilarious grounds that they might be “discussed, even mocked, by bloggers.” And apparently many of the correspondents assumed that their missives would remain private, just like all other documents pertaining to Mr. Libby’s former boss, Dick Cheney. The result is very little self-censorship among the authors and an epistolary gold mine for readers.
Among those contributing to the 373 pages of what thesmokinggun.com calls “Scooter Libby Love Letters” are self-identified liberals and Democrats, a few journalists (including a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) and a goodly sample of those who presided over the Iraq catastrophe or cheered it on. This is a documentary snapshot of the elite Washington mob of our time.
Like the scripts for “The Sopranos,” the letters are not without mordant laughs. Henry Kissinger writes a perfunctory two paragraphs, of which the one about Mr. Libby rather than himself seems an afterthought. James Carville co-signs a letter by Mary Matalin tediously detailing Mr. Libby’s devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an “undisclosed location.” One correspondent writes in astonishment that Mr. Libby once helped “a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat” dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Mr. Libby would “personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife.” Many praise Mr. Libby’s novel, “The Apprentice,” apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.
But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait theyprovide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As thepolitical historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself “only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon.” Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime – and I don’t mean only Americans – who didn’t see himself as saving the world from the enemy?
The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House’s prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).
Much has been said about the hypocrisy of those on the right,champions both of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and of unflinchingimmigration enforcement, who call for legal amnesty in Mr. Libby’scase. To thicken their exquisite bind, these selective sticklers for strict justice have been foiled in their usual drill of attacking the judge in the case as “liberal.” Judge Walton was initially appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and was elevated to his present job by the current President Bush; he was assigned as well to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the Bush-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. Such credentials notwithstanding, Judge Walton told the court on Thursday that he was alarmed by new correspondence and phone calls from the Libby mob since the sentencing “wishing bad things” on him and his family.
In Washington, however, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in bothparties; if all the city’s hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government. What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn’t on these letter writers’ radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn’t addressed (unless it’s ascribed to memory loss because Mr. Libby was so darn busy saving the world). Given that Mr. Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you’d think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there’s been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.
Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Mr. Libby is avictim, suffering “permanent damage” to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a “cakewalk” for America in Iraq. There’s a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too. In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend’s case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that “during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation,” Mr. Libby “was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi Army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient.”
History will prove no such thing; a “rapid” buildup of the Iraqi Army was and is a mirage, and the neocons’ chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Mr. Wolfowitz’s real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons’ chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Mr. Bremer’s incompetent execution of the American occupation.
Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphereand beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and warproponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive)”contagion effect” on the region and that Americans would be greeted “in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes.” (I guess it all depends on your definition of “boom boxes.”) In an open letter to President Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Judge Walton, likening Mr. Libby to a “fallen soldier” in the Iraq war. In Mr. Ajami’s view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Mr. Libby’s) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and “the ‘covertness’ of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established.” (The C.I.A. confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)
Mr. Ajami notes, accurately, that the trial was “about the Iraq warand its legitimacy” – an argument that could also be mustered bydefenders of Alger Hiss who felt his perjury trial was about the cold war. But it’s even more revealing that the only “casualty of a war” Mr. Ajami’s conscience prompts him to mention is Mr. Libby, a figurative casualty rather than a literal one.
No wonder Victoria Gotti denigrated “that mob in Washington.” When the godfathers of this war speak of never leaving “a fallen comrade” on the battlefield in Iraq, as Mr. Ajami writes of Mr. Libby, they are speaking first and foremost of one another. The soldiers still making the ultimate sacrifice for this gang’s hubristic folly will just have to fend for themselves.
How come I kept hearing the Goodfellas Clapton piano instrumental for Layla during that whole post?
By the way, that was a really long post.
The music seems fitting for the administration, doesn’t it? At least in the same way it was used for Goodfellas.
The New YorkerAnnals of National SecurityThe General’s ReportHow Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.by Seymour M. Hersh June 25, 2007
On the afternoon of May 6 2004, Army Major Genera Antonio M. Taguba was summone to meet, for the first time, wit Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and high senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before th Senate and the House Arme Services Committees, about abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq……………………. I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.”……….
Read the full story here.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=1
Wow!
Sy Hersch finally dropped the bomb.
He’s been talking about this story for about two years, and I was starting to wonder if he had anything provable.
Looks like he does.
C’mon, Hank. Tell us how American soldiers are morally INCAPABLE of committing war atrocities, how Kerry had to have been lying when he talked about atrocities in Vietnam.
BTW, with almost half the money spent in Iraq, a lot of these atrocities are no doubt being committed by people completely outside the chain of command.
Thanks, Mr. Bush!
Does that mean that when Hilliary Clinton gets in office, her theme song for her administration would be the “Imperial March” from Star Wars?
Hey Capn… You think Limbaugh will still call it nothing more than a Fraternity Party now??
Histor will judge one of GWB’s biggest blunders to be not finishing the job in Afghanistan before foolishly moving into Iraq.Bomb in Afghan capital kills at least 35 By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press WriterSun Jun 17, 10:26 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – An enormous bomb ripped through a police academy bus at Kabul’s busiest transportation hub Sunday, killing at least 35 people in the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
ADVERTISEMENTThe thunderous explosion in Kabul, which sheared the metal sidings and roof off the bus, leaving only a charred skeleton, represented a leap in scale from previous Taliban or al-Qaida bombings here, raising the specter of an increase in Iraq-style attacks in Afghanistan.
In the country’s south, a roadside explosion killed three soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition and their Afghan interpreter. The brief statement about the blast in Kandahar province did not disclose the soldiers’ nationalities. The three deaths bring to 84 the number of U.S. or NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, including at least 40 Americans.
In the Kabul explosion, at least 35 people were killed, including 22 policemen, said Ahmed Zia Aftali, head of the city’s military hospital. A victim said the bus had been filled with police instructors.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said a Taliban suicide bomber. The claim by Ahmadi, who called an Associated Press reporter by satellite phone from an undisclosed location, claim could not be verified. If true, it would be the fifth suicide attack in Afghanistan in three days.
Unidentifiable body parts littered the blast site 30 yards away. Hundreds of police and investigators — with some pulling bodies from the wreckage — ordered civilians to leave the area, an outdoor bus station normally teeming with people.
At a nearby hospital, a large blue plastic trash can overflowed with the bloodied shoes and sandals of victims.
“Never in my life have I heard such a sound,” said Ali Jawad, a 48-year-old selling phone cards nearby. “A big fireball followed. I saw blood and a decapitated man thrown out of the bus. Wounded people were shouting, ‘Help me, help me,’ and women and children were shouting and running in different directions.”
Jawad said the blast shocked him into forgetting about his 12-year-old son selling lottery cards nearby.
“I lay under the shadow of a tree when my son came over and asked if I was OK. It was such a shock that I even forgot that my son was there,” he said.
At least one person on the bus survived the 8:10 a.m. attack. Nasir Ahmad, 22, was sitting in the back of the bus when the blast went off. He said the bus had been filled with police instructors.
“There were between 30 to 40 police instructors in the bus,” Ahmad said from a hospital bed where he was recovering from wounds to his face and hands.
Despite the Taliban claim, officials were trying to determine if the explosion, which went off in the front of the bus, was caused by a suicide attacker or a bomb that had been planted.
A civilian bus also damaged in the blast was driving just in front of the police vehicle when the blast went off, and a police officer at the scene said the bus’ position likely prevented more civilian casualties.
“Most of the wounded are in serious condition,” said Fazel Rahim, a doctor from a nearby hospital whose hands and white coat were covered in blood. He said at least 35 were injured.
Afghan government officials, police and army soldiers are commonly targeted by insurgents trying to bring down the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
A police and army force that can provide security around the country on its own is essential to the U.S. and NATO strategy of handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan government one day, allowing Western forces to leave.
In May, a remote-control bomb hit an Afghan army bus in Kabul, killing the driver and wounding 29 people. In October, a bomb placed on a bicycle exploded as a police bus went by in Kabul, wounding 11. Last July, a remote-controlled bomb blew up near an Afghan army bus in downtown Kabul, wounding 39 people on board.
At least 307 Afghan police, army or intelligence personnel have been killed in violence so far this year through June 15, according to an AP tally of figures from the U.S., U.N., NATO and Afghan authorities.
Sunday’s attack is the deadliest by insurgents since the fall of the Taliban. In September 2002, 30 people were killed and 167 wounded in a Kabul car bombing. In February, a suicide bomber detonated explosives himself outside the main U.S. base at Bagram Air Field, killing 23 people, during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.
A Pakistani and a Japanese were filming the area before the explosion, so intelligence agents took them for questioning, said Asadullah. Among the wounded were Japanese aid workers passing through the traffic circle, said Koji Miyazaki from the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan.
So, I wonder if Republican is still faking a disability so that he can collect welfare benefits?
CF–
Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark.
Actually, while you were gone, ReplagiarCon had a melt-down and nic-switched and trolled a couple of regular post-ers (XXX and J M Walker).
Remember how you said you’d apologize if he swore he had never nic-switched, and he did and you did?
Okay, well, he lied because he is a f***ing liar, caught dead-to-rights in one lie after another.
He owes YOU and everybody else on this board a huge apology for being the worst troll ever.
At this point, we regulars are not responding to him in any way.
It’s the “walk on by” approach.
It seems to be working about as well as anything can with a narcisstic disruptor like JM-Eier-Uncle William-Right Angle-Republikhan-Republican.
He craves attention–even negative attention. He’s constantly trying to make the posts “all about him.”
“Walk on by” doesn’t give him what he wants.
Cheers.
It is not enough to just claim to walk on by, Capn’, you have to sing it – with feeling……….
“Foolish pride, is all that he has left, so let him hide, the tears and the sadness we gave him, when we said goodbye, walk on by and walk on by and walk by!”
CF2K,
My post (link below) has a link to Repuke’s post using J M Walker’s nic… and explains his lies about the levees.
http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/05/open_thread_28.html#comment-71041282
A new movie, produced by National Geographic,
‘”Arctic Tale” puts faces to global-warming threat’http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSHO77705720070617
Y’all,Much obliged for the updates regarding He Who Shall Not Be Named. CF2K was off enjoying himself in the Land of the Rising Sun (tremendously, by the way–Japan and the Japanese are just marvellous), and didn’t spend much time ’round these parts. Accordingly, he missed the episode cosmos mentions–which, however sounds perfectly in keeping with Republican’s general level of cravenness, rage, and dishonesty.
After last night’s tirade by Republican (since scrubbed by the editors) which declared that “Liberals are Hitlerites,” CF2K decided that Repubican had so completely discredited himself that any form of abuse was permitted. That is, Republican has shown himself to be unworthy of being treated as a person with feelings or dignity.
Hence the extremely aggressive and offensive series of insults delivered by CF2K on this and other threads. Those were, literally, the worst things I could think of to say about him; and based on they way he acts, Republican deserved to hear them.
You are a completely dishonorable person, Republican. Completely. Your willingness to act the way you act puts you beyond the pale. You literally are not worth talking or responding to. You are never right, usually wrong, and always, ALWAYS, dishonest in one way or another.
I hope my posting made you feel lousy. You deserve to feel lousy. All the time. Judging from the things you feel compelled to post, I’d say you already do.
That’s it. CF2K is now dead to Republican, for good.
“Liberals are Nazis” eh?
Dang, the editors should have let it stand. Let the world see what the once-proud right-wing is reduced to: futile, impotent, bloviating rage.
Here’s a quick quiz–
How many Republicans are running for office? How many are white males over 50? How many are Christian?
Answer: 10, 10, and 10
So much for the minorities being kept down on the “liberal plantation” bull-sh*t, huh?
Calling the Liberal left Hitlerites is entirely appropriate.
Like Hitler they have a tendency for Socialistic Policy along with dislike or even hatred of anything Judeo-Christian.
So, the name fits and sticks. :)
WW……………WW…….AAA…WW………….WW……AAAAA…..WW…..W….WW…..AA…..AA…..WW.WWW.WW……AAAAAAAA……WW……WW…….AA………AA
LL……………KK…..KKLL……………KK…KKLL……………KKKKLL……………KK…KKLLLLLLL……..KK…..KK
..OOOOO…….NN…….NN.OO….OO……NNN…..NNOO……OO…..NN..N…NN.OO….OO……NN…N..NN..OOOOO…….NN…….NN
BBBBB………YY………..YYBB….B……….YY…….YYBBBBBB………….YYYYYBB…..BB…………YYYBBBBBB…………..YYY
Capn sounds pretty good singing in falsetto.
I wonder if he sang “I feel pretty” for the Edwards “YouTube” song?
CF2K,
I’m not even sure referring to the troll as “him” is accurate. It has changed identities, spoofed identities, and lied so many times, there is no way I would believe what it told me about its gender.
The troll shall remain, until such time as there’s empirical proof otherwise, an “it.”
So says the profane one.
Bush Family Evil Empire—Scandal Du Jour: ABU GHRAIB TORTURE SCANDAL
NEW YORK (AFP) – A general who investigated US troops sexually humiliating Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison said in a report out Saturday that top Pentagon officials denied knowledge of lurid photographs of the acts.
Army Major General Antonio Taguba said he met with then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials and described to them some of the contents of a report he had prepared on the notorious prison.
But Rumsfeld testified before Congress the following day that he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Taguba told the New Yorker magazine in an interview.
“He’s trying to acquit himself and a lot of people who are lying to protect themselves,” the magazine quoted him as saying, referring to Rumsfeld’s May 7, 2004 testimony.
Taguba said that he described to Rumsfeld what he termed the “torture” of “a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum,” the magazine reported.He said that all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers were tried in courts-martial.
“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told the New Yorker, adding that his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors.
“These (military police) troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority,” he told the magazine.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070616/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryprison_070616234741
******
So there you have it, folks. Sodomizing people with objects up their rectums for freedom. We torture for freedom.
Remember, it’s not a war-crime when WE do it . . .
So, how many times do you want to court martial these guy Capn? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? What’s the number?
What does any of this have to do with Bush?
There a several heinous things that GI’s do and they usually do it of their own accord without any direction.
Capn just another smear tactician who hopes for a fecal cookie from his Hitlerite Butt buddies.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/15/bloggers.bush/
Even the conservatives are starting to hate Bush.
Finally, too late, they begin to understand that Bush only cares about two kinds of people: 1. the rich and 2. the filthy, stinking rich.
Conservative bloggers in full revolt over immigrationPOSTED: 7:22 p.m. EDT, June 15, 2007
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Different conservative blogs have different pet issues — government transparency, federal judges, Fred Thompson, to name a few.
But no issue in recent memory has united conservative bloggers like the debate over immigration. Their frustration has culminated in a full-scale revolt against the Bush administration and a Senate bill that activists say does little to solve the country’s border security problems.
It’s increasingly clear from Web postings and interviews with top conservative bloggers that the immigration bill has done serious damage to the president’s credibility among the conservative netroots, the grassroots bloggers on the Web.
Erick Erickson, managing editor of the popular conservative blog RedState.com, says he receives between 800 and 900 e-mails a day from readers, most of whom are “enraged” by the White House’s immigration efforts.
more at source
The further to the radical right the radicon bloggers and am radio spewers drag the debate, the more room there is for moderates to kick some radical behind in 2008.
Isnt it amazing that a lot of the right wing folks of today, that are called the “RED” States… would have been terrified at being called RED only few decades ago?? Remember when the old battle cry was “Better Dead than Red!!”
AND >>>
I think the old songwriter, Stephen Foster, might have had predictive glimpses of massive climate change:
“It rained all night, the day I left, the weather it was dry…Sun so hot, I froze to death,Susanna don’t you cry!!”
Nite all!! Happy Father’s Day!! Finally, one of my daughters remembered to call ME on Father’s Day!! LOL
Of course, Foster MIGHT have just got hold of some good Mountain Moonshine too… LOL
Where is this silent majority that favors amnesty that Randy cited? Why don’t they post their feelings, if they are lurking?
They are Vewy Vewy Qwiet, Phantom… Too Qwiet…
Not only that, they dont want to hear some tirade from the Wingnuts
The infamous E. G. Beck has another bogus graph. Stefan’s response to comment # 6 sums up the general situation.
‘Curve manipulation ‚Äì lesson 2′http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/curve-manipulation-lesson-2/“[Response: Indeed – I think one of the strongest indications that the science behind anthropogenic global warming is very solid by now, is the lack of quality and intellectual honesty of the counter-arguments and the lack of credibility of the skeptics personnel. …”
Gosh Cosmos, the lying hypocrite Republican thinks you and I are the same. I think he needs to take his VA supplied meds!;>
Methinks that He Who Shall Not Be Named has apparently not heeded the seriousness of being scrubbed by the Editors… Maybe the Editors need to find a way to block him entirely… Even “free speech” can be abused!!
OMG cosmos! Another article from Feal Science which is owned and operated by League of Women Voters against Bush!
Wow! Such impartial evaluation! :D
Sounds like the Jews must be genocidial, killing their genetic brothers!Jews Are The Genetic Brothers Of Palestinians, Syrians, And Lebanese
Science Daily — If a common heritage conferred peace, then perhaps the long history of conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved years ago. For, according to a new scientific study, Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, and they all share a common genetic lineage that stretches back thousands of years.
“Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham,” says Harry Ostrer, M.D., Director of the Human Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine, an author of the new study by an international team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Israel. “And all have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over 4,000 years,” he says.
The researchers analyzed the Y chromosome, which is usually passed unchanged from father to son, of more than 1,000 men worldwide. Throughout human history, alterations have occurred in the sequence of chemical bases that make up the DNA in this so-called male chromosome, leaving variations that can be pinpointed with modern genetic techniques. Related populations carry the same specific variations. In this way, scientists can track descendants of large populations and determine their common ancestors.
Specific regions of the Y chromosome were analyzed in 1,371 men from 29 worldwide populations, including Jews and non-Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe.
The study, published in the May 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a common set of genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and these signatures diverged significantly from non-Jewish men outside of this region. Consequently, Jews and Arabs share a common ancestor and are more closely related to one another than to non-Jews from other areas of the world.
The study also revealed that despite the complex history of Jewish migration in the Diaspora (the time since 556 B.C. when Jews migrated out of Palestine), Jewish communities have generally not intermixed with non-Jewish populations. If they had, then Jewish men from different regions of the world would not share the same genetic signatures in their Y chromosome.
“Because ancient Jewish law states that Jewish religious affiliation is assigned maternally, our study afforded the opportunity to assess the contribution of non-Jewish men to present-day Jewish genetic diversity,” says Michael Hammer, Ph.D., from the University of Arizona, Tucson, who is the lead author of the new study. “It was surprising to see how significant the Middle Eastern genetic signal was in Jewish men from different communities in the Diaspora,” he says.
The authors of this study are: Dr. Ostrer from NYU School of Medicine; Michael F. Hammer, Alan J. Redd, Elizabeth T. Wood, M. Roxane Bonner, Hamdi Jarjanazil, and Tanya Karafet from the University of Arizona, Tucson; Silvana Santachlara-Benerecetti, University of Pavia, Italy; Ariella Oppenheim, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Mark A. Jobling, University of Leicester, England; Trefor Jenkins, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Batsheva Bonne-Tamar, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by New York University Medical Center And School Of Medicine.
Walk on by…don’t look at the lying hypocrite ;>
Oh, you mean the Hitlerite comment eh Chas?
Yawn.
LMAO.
I wonder if the Fisters are going to run away again when nothing happens?
happy,
I doubt even strong meds would help.
Everbody… save a copy of Repuke’s 6:54 PM posthttp://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/open_thread_617.html#comment-72986174
and 7:31 PM post,http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/open_thread_617.html#comment-72987734
Check back in a day or so, to see if the Editor “liked” them.
Go cry some more cosmos.
Hey, a thought here!
Why not just discuss the issues instead of making all these silly little trolls to thrust hate remarks at me. :)
Cosmos — I’d be happy to keep those… but, I dont know HOW…
Blow it out your fleetwood, Republank – trolls get no respect on this blog.
Walk on by…………………….
I’m a walkin’ in the rain…;>
I happened across Fox News today for the first time in a long while. I was surprised at how its degerated into a TV version of the National Enquirer.
Sex, drugs, aliens, and other weird stuff.
Even Sean Hannity looked like some drugged out wacko with the pasty skin, fake hair, eye makeup, and pig jowls.
Keep up the good work Republicans!
We will have a landslide in ‘08!
Cosmos! Something for your religion.
http://break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html
Don’t worry! It’s all good!
:)
Ummm Happy?? Hannity ALWAYS looks like that… happens to vampires when they go out too early…
Chas.,
Associating vampires with Hannity does them a disservice. After all, some vampires are debonair and not entirely uncool. Not at all cut from the same cloth as Hannity and his ilk.
No, Hannity is a ZOMBIE, as are all the brain-dead, lockstep Bush apologists one is apt to encounter there and on FUX and right wing talk radio. The lack of imagination and obliviousness to their own vapidity and irrelevance is the giveaway that the right is, in fact, a tribe ‘o zombies.
One of the prosecutors in the Jo Co DA office is speaking out. I heard her last night. She left and is working for Morrison in Topeka now. She said Phill is ruining the DA’s office. She told many horror stories. A murderer was up for parole on Monday and no one from the DA’s office was there to represent the people of Johnson County. The attorney who should have been there was playing golf. She told of another case where the defendant was charged with 5 felonies and had no attorney (she called this a no brainer win) and Kline’s people let him plea down to a misdemeanor and time served. And Kline is calling that a win.
The only case he has won was that murder trial last week where the defendant’s mother testified against him. DUIs are being thrown out because evidence is lost. Criminal defense attorneys are lining up to get easy wins since the prosecutors are so incompetent. 20 of 32 attorneys in the DA’s office have left since January, some fired and some quit.
She said someone needs to file a FOIA and find out how much restitution has been collected and paid since January in Johnson County.
Here’s the best part: Phill is working 6 to 8 hours a week – for $143K a year.
lmbo,
Good stuff, that. If you can track down any sort of link / source from the former prosecutor, it would be mighty helpful. Yet another example of how Republicans love to rule but hate to govern.
Is anybody surprised that Philllllllllll Kline can’t handle more than one issue at a time? Can’t wait to see the voters of Johnson County throw the bum out come election time.
From the movie “Matewan,” a union agitator, Joe Kenehan gives a speech to miners that did not want to accept African Americans or immigrants into the union. He said, “You ain’t men to that coal company. You’re equipment. . . They use you til you wear out and then they get a new one. . . You think this man [African-American] is your enemy? This is a worker! Any union that would keep this man out ain’t a union, it’s a club . . . . They got you fighting white against colored, native against foreign, holler against holler.
“You all know there ain’t but two types of people, them that work and them that don’t. You work, they don’t. That’s all you got to know about the enemy. I know you all are brave men. I know that you could shoot it out with the company if you had to. The coal company don’t want this union, the state government don’t want it and the federal government don’t want it. All of them are just waiting for an excuse to come down here and crush us to nothing!
“Fellas, we’re in a hole full of coal gas here, the tiniest spark at the wrong time is gonna be the end of us. . . . We got to work together, together til they can’t get the coal out of the ground without us cause we’re a union. We are the workers.”
*****
That’s the thing about the RepubliCONs. Most of their big-shots have never WORKED a day in their lives.
Their idea of work is hiring a supervisor to get other people to work . . .
Chas,
You can save Repuke’s 6:54 PM posthttp://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/open_thread_617.html#comment-72986174and 7:31 PM post,http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/open_thread_617.html#comment-72987734and the entire thread, by clicking on your browser’s ‘File’ and ‘Save’ choices.
Or you can save just it’s posts, by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer over them, doing a ‘copy’, and then a ‘paste’ into an editor.
Joe Williams,
Thank you very much. Your link to “Got to admit this guy makes a very compelling argument without debating any details” proves my post upthread at,http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/open_thread_617.html#comment-72990992
Joe Williams, are you unable to find ANY credible scientists that can go head-to-head with these scientists?http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/extras/contributor-bios
And also all of these?http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
Or do you only have guys like “Posted by: mxwrestler Category: Humor Posted: 4 days ago”?
And your very false claim that the huge amount of peer-reviewed climate science done worldwide is only a “religion”?