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Your daily evidence for the fact of evolution in honor of science fans like Hank.
‘Chicken And Chips’ Theory Of Pacific Migration
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2008) — A new study of DNA from ancient and modern chickens has shed light on the controversy about the extent of pre-historic Polynesian contact with the Americas.
The study questions recent claims that chickens were first introduced into South America by Polynesians, before the arrival of Spanish chickens in the 15th century following Christopher Columbus.
It is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (July 28) by an international research group, including scientists from the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).
ACAD Director Professor Alan Cooper says there has been considerable debate about the existence and degree of contact between Polynesians and South Americans, with the presence of the sweet potato throughout the Pacific often used as evidence of early trading contacts.
More at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080729133618.htm
Well, here we go, in this week of August 3rd to 9th. Summer is waning although the Moon is waxing its way towards a full moon next weekend.
Teachers in USD 259 retrun to school on Thursday for beginning of inservice training. Students show up a week later for first day of school.
At Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, the National Baseball Congress just started. Incidentally free tickets for certain days/evenings this week are at Quik Trips, Wendys, etc. The NBC is the world series of semi-pro baseball although that term is passe’ since the teams are generally made up of amateur college baseball players.
But would you know anything significant is going on at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium … a world series of that level of baseball? Baseball teams visiting Wichita from across America and perhaps from other countries (I haven’t checked the schedule yet.)
You would think banners and colorful twirls would be flying from around the stadium. Some receptions for the baseball teams by the Wichita Visitors Bureau … but no, quiet as a mouse around the stadium.
Anyway, I’ve got to go to breakfast so be careful of the heat today.
Climate change “isn’t happening” say experts in Spain
Climate change isn’t happening was the main message of a course on the subject at the Universidad de Verano de Adeje (UVA) (Adeje summer university).
A team of experts in various aspects of the subject , with the exception of one, agreed with this tenet. The course was led by Jose Ramon Aravalo Sierra, Profesor of Ecology at the University of La Laguna, who refuted the usual claims that extreme weather conditions are already increasing, or that more forest fires were occurring.
Professor of Geography at the Madrid Complutense University, Maria Eugenia Perez, spoke about the actual temperature measurements around the globe. She recalled that most temperatures are recorded in urban areas where microclimates can be warmer, and the reduction of the number of stations at high latitudes since the collapse of the USSR, both of which could bias data upwards.
She also commented on the reliability of some data, and its short period of collection (some stations only for 50 years), but then showed that the general trend in the last 10 years has been slight cooling. This was after a cool period of around 1940-1970, which was followed by the rapid rise in temperatures to the end of the nineties which caused scientists to start thinking that global warming was happening. She warned against drawing conclusions about climate change from data sets of less than three sets of 30 years.
Two other eminent speakers, Chris Horner an American lawyer, and Gabriel Calzada, Professor of Economics at the University Rey Juan Carlos, spoke in strong terms against the Kyoto protocol, which both believed was not designed to reduce CO2 emissions, and was not in fact doing anything to reduce them.
Spain’s rapid growth in the period since 1990 has left the government with a problem to resolve as the growth of Spain’s emissions by 48% means it is virtually impossible for the it to meet its commitment to keep emissions growth to only 15%.
There was also a presentation by a journalist, Antonio Salazar, about the role of the media in popular hysteria about subjects such as climate change; and the final lecture was from Jose Maria Fernandez-Palacios, a Professor of Ecology at the University of La Laguna. He held a more conventional view that global warming was occurring and detailed the likely ecological consequences for the Canary Islands which is likely to involve a reduction in biodiversity.
http://www.tenerifenews.com/cms/front_content.php?client=1&lang=1&idcat=8&idart=8490
Good morning. Happy Sunday all.
I always appreciate JWink’s narratives.
More prominent folks are letting their thoughts on AGW hysteria be known. This one a physicist and NASA astronaut, particularly taking on Dr. Hansen.
Award-winning Astronaut Slams Hansen – Urges NASA to ‘Debunk the current hysteria’ over Warming
1 08 2008
In Science, Ignorance is Not Bliss
Cunningham writes:
“NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused” warming
“[James] Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him.”
BIO Note: Physicist Walter Cunningham, an award-winning NASA Apollo 7 Astronaut, was the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and Navy Astronaut Wings, the 1969 Haley Astronautics Award and named to Named to the International Space Hall of Fame. Cunningham is a member of the American Geophysical Union and fellow of the American Astronautical Society. He also worked as a scientist for the RAND Corporation prior to joining NASA. While with RAND, he worked on classified defense studies and problems of the earth’s magnetosphere. He has accumulated more than 4,500 hours of flying time, including more than 3,400 in jet aircraft and 263 hours in space.
Excerpts:
It doesn’t help that NASA scientist James Hansen was one of the early alarmists claiming humans caused global warming. Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him. [...] NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics. [...] I do see hopeful signs that some true believers are beginning to harbor doubts about AGW. Let’s hope that NASA can focus the global warming discussion back on scientific evidence before we perpetrate an economic disaster on ourselves.
[...] The fearmongers of global warming base their case on the correlation between CO2 and global temperature, even though we cannot be sure which is cause and which is effect. Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation. You might have to go back half a million years to match our current level of atmospheric CO2, but you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels. Even though CO2 is a relatively minor constituent of “greenhouse gases,” alarmists have made it the whipping boy for global warming (probably because they know how fruitless it would be to propose controlling other principal constituents, H2O, CH4, and N2O). Since human activity does contribute a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2, they blame us for global warming.
[...] The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that. That is why some studies claim CO2 levels are largely irrelevant to global warming. Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius. Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that a warmer average temperature would be even more beneficial for humans.
Full Text at link below:
http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html
TEACHERS’ UNION LIES
MANY PEOPLE hear only one side of the story of our public schools, because only the teachers’ unions have both the incentives and the millions of dollars required to produce sustained advertising campaigns about education. These campaigns intensify during an election year, so you can expect to hear more slick propaganda than usual from the unions this year.
These unions have fought bitterly against the testing of teachers or students to assess how the public schools are doing. The reason is simple: Such tests have repeatedly revealed the gross ignorance and incompetence of many teachers and the resulting failure of American students to come up to the standards in other countries, including some Third World countries.
However, now that tests have been mandated by law in many states and are strongly supported by public opinion, the teachers’ unions have come up with a new spin. They claim that they have no objections to testing students, but just want to have “standards” worked out first. What are these mysterious “standards” that have yet to be developed? People have been testing math and English for centuries.
What the teachers’ unions really want is to be able to put all sorts of non-academic mush into the tests, so as to reduce the failure rate and evade the need to teach academic skills.
Instead, they want to be able to continue using the students as guinea pigs for social engineering fads and using classrooms as indoctrination centers for political correctness.
A recent statistic in Time magazine showed that American students spend about as many hours in school annually as students in England, France and Germany. But the number of hours that American students spend on serious subjects like history, science and math is only about half what the students in these other countries spend on these kinds of subjects.
Is it any wonder that our students have consistently been outperformed on international tests, not only by students in these three countries, but even by students from poor countries like Slovenia and Thailand? When teachers’ union ads come on the TV screen, with some saccharine-sweet spokesperson emoting about how much they are “concerned” about children and about education, ask yourself: Where were all these concerned people when our schools were being systematically dumbed down over the past generation?
With American parents and voters increasingly concerned about the actual outcomes of the kind of education provided in our public schools, the education establishment in general and the teachers’ unions in particular have responded verbally, rather than by teaching the basics. If the public is concerned about outcomes, then the education establishment’s answer is to create the phrase “outcomes-based education” — with the outcomes being defined in mushy, non-academic terms.
You want accountability? Then they will use the word “accountability” over and over again — all the while continuing to keep the schools and the teachers immune from any adverse consequences for failure. Indeed, every failure is used as a reason why more money is needed. The teachers’ unions — and the politicians beholden to them for campaign contributions and votes, like Al Gore — call this “investing” in the education of our young people. It makes a blank check for failure sound noble.
The supreme chutzpah of the teachers’ unions is their claim that voucher schools are not “accountable” because there are no education establishment bureaucrats micro-managing them or snarling them in red tape. Is your local grocery store unaccountable because there are no bureaucrats telling them how much detergent to sell or what kinds of cheese to stock? On the contrary, it is accountable to you, because you will take your business elsewhere if they don’t do their job right. That is precisely the kind of accountability that voucher schools have — and that public schools do not have.
Another scare tactic of the teachers’ unions is to claim that vouchers will require more money, draining money not only from the public schools but also from police and fire departments. In reality, vouchers never pay as much as the public schools spend per pupil. When students leave the public schools, the total costs of education go down, not up. But lies are the norm in propaganda.
Unfortunately, years of dumbed-down education may have left many people without the intellectual equipment to see through the self-serving propaganda of the teachers’ unions.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com –
Well,
I’m one of the only posters here who actually HAS a kid in the schools.
The major problem with the schools?
Con tinkering in the form of george bush’s “no child left behind”.
Teachers are forced to teach for tests. Students who cannot pass the tests get pigeon holed.
Cons don’t like or want public education anyway. They are invited to keep their damned hands off it.
Con’s would love public eduction is mass mandatory prayer was a part of it.
IF the proposed school bond issue still had any life I think the strike vote yesterday killed it. Maybe our education leaders will be able to see they are in a box and then work on that out-of-the-box thinking so badly needed to provide leadership and solutions that truly impact our children and their educational needs in a positive way.
In Science, Ignorance is Not Bliss.
I can certainly agree with that.
That’s precisely why an acerbically political op-ed by an aging astronaut doesn’t tell us much one way or the other. Yeah, I respect his Master’s in physics, for what it’s worth. Why didn’t he use any that knowledge in his article?
Instead, he repeats the same criticisms that have been posted here ad naseum (hell, even I know the Little Ice Age was a local phenomenon–duh!)
At one point he does refer to an actual atmospheric scientist who resigned from NASA (What are Ferenc Miskolczi’s credentials?) in his bromide, who apparently disagrees with the current consensus (that’s fine: let him convince his colleagues) and, cutting through all the usual political blog blather (which says pretty much nothing and adds nothing), here is the abstract of the paper in question, pubilshed in the journal of the Hungarian Meteorlogical Service.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18874011
The long standing misinterpretation of the classic semi-infinite Eddington solution has been resolved. Compared to the semi-infinite model, the finite semi-transparent model predicts much smaller ground surface temperature and a larger surface air temperature.
My understanding is that atmospheres thin out of an extended period, but “semi-infinite” is, mathematically at least, nonsense. Whatever.
Here’s the actual paper.
http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Miskolczi%20-%20Idojaras%202007%20Jan-March.pdf
Knock yerselves out.
By the way, Ray Pierre at Realclimate’s take:
[Response: This paper is more nonsense of a piece with the unpublished MS by Gerlich and Tseuschner, though with the difference that this one is published in an obscure Hungarian weather journal rather than not being published at all. The main use of this paper is as an exercise in “spot the errors” for a grad student in radiative transfer. We could comment on it, but on the whole it’s more worthwhile to spend time commenting on things that have passed review in the more major journals and don’t have such obvious flaws (even if they nonetheless have flaws). –raypierre]
realclimate.org/index.php?p=538#comment-83167
Who Fact Checks the Fack Checkers?
Does Snopes review and correct Factcheck? Does Factcheck review and correct Snope?
How will we know what the truth is?
I have a favor from the gay community. Please, start making an issue of the unhealthy demands of thinness in your gay males. Being healthy is great. Working out and eating so little that underweight and muscular to the point of 0 body fat is NOT healthy, I don’t care how sexy you find it.
I’m watching friends and loved ones who think it is perfectly fine to be underweight in order to look good. and yeah you can call us fatties and all that, but the problem is not with us.
How do we know what the Truth is?
-Do we believe what’s on the Internet news sites or history sites?
-Do we believe what’s in Newspapers or Magazines?
-How about those old dusty hard copy Books in the Library or on that shelf in your basement or garage, do you believe what they tell you?
-Do we believe what People tell us? Or what People write to us?
-Or maybe we believe what the nightly News reporters on TV tell us? They look nice and honest afterall.
-News on the Radio? Do we believe that?
-Do we believe Politicians, what they say, even if they said and/or did something ELSE in the past(or we think they did or said something ELSE in the past)?
How do we know what the Truth is?
How will we know what the truth is?
Multiple lines of independent verification, converging on the same conclusions.
How do you that John McCain and Barack Obama really exist? Have you seen either of them in person?
Guess what, though: factcheck and snopes can get it wrong. Anyone can get it wrong. Caveat viewor—no matter what the source.
One can reasonably avoid getting hoodwinked, though, by checking the veracity of the information yourself. It’s really not that hard to spot bullshit–unless you’ve been uncrtically swallong it for years.
Then you find yourself believing things like Saddam Hussein planned 9-11 and had weapons of mass destruction.
Pyyhagorean theorem:
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
Riemann aside, that must be true, at least to the extent that the basic axioms of mathematics are accepted as so.
It’s not subject to opinion.
History is constantly being rewritten you know. Especially in this electronic age, where records are easily “pasted over”.
How do we know what the Truth is?
“What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.
This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs–to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.
In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was
necessary.”
George Orwell, 1984
I thought we were always at war with Eurasia.
Ah Rage, your approach would take some level of intelligence, ability to research and reason,the ability to question one’s own assumptions and bias, and the ability to get to the original sources of information.
And the sources of information are constantly changing. Not only do web pages change, but different versions of different textbooks change, people change their stories, etc….
No Rage Iran is our enemy and Iraq is our friend.
It’s always been that way.
And Russia too, they’ve always been our friend.
We should continue to improve our friendly relations and talk to them often.
Just remember:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
One would HOPE that math is always easy to prove truthful, but that could CHANGE.
Trillions of additional Dollars promised to those who vote for someone, will also allow the Government to balance the budget.
And the sources of information are constantly changing. Not only do web pages change, but different versions of different textbooks change, people change their stories, etc….
But there’s too much from too many sources, too much archived, and too many human memories involved. As for the alterable past, well, they’d better get started:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch
http://www.archive.org/index.php
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
And of course, we still have libraries with quaint things like old books, magazines, newspapers, and of course, microfilm:
http://www.rumromanismrebellion.net/images/Tucson_Citizen_gorilla_rape_joke.pdf
“Then you find yourself believing things like Saddam Hussein planned 9-11 and had weapons of mass destruction.”
You’re a pretty deep thinker, Rage!
Not only, do you have the wrong answer, the premise of your implied question is wrong!
LOL
Heh, well, here’s a question: Did Lincoln really say this:
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Abraham_Lincoln
For all who denigrate public education in America by comparing scores with nations such as Japan and Germany and Great Britain, there’s one issue the CONs choose to ignore:
In all those nations, el-hi education is a task of central government. In America, it’s a matter of (ahem) faith that el-hi educations be administered by more than 15,000 local school boards.
Now, just how successful do you think McDonald’s would be if it had 15,000 different menus? Bangor, Maine would have McLobster and Moss Point, Mississippi would have McGrits and El Paso would feature McMenudo.
How do you think World War II would’ve turned out if FDR said, “Okay. All you 15,000 communities go to work and figure out for yourselves what you can do to win this war!”
If America had listened to the CONs, Wendall Wilke’s profile would be on the face of a
dimeDeutchmarque.Did Abraham Lincoln come to Kansas for several wintery days in December, 1859? Did Abe Lincoln say later, “If I went West, I think I would go to Kansas”?
True on both questions.
I suppose it’s possible that if Lincoln had not been caught up in running for President in 1860, under that right set of circumstances, Abraham Lincoln might have become the first Governor of Kansas.
M.Hawk: Are you saying you favor a “one world education system” headquartered in Washington? In this system, our students would be currently known as the “George Bush youth.”
Somehow I don’t believe this is what you want.
They still have the site preserved in Leavenworth where Mr. Lincoln at the time, made his speech. It’s crappy looking, and weeded over, but it’s along the banks of the Mighty Mo, and is a part of Bleeding Kansas history as well as the first city of Kansas’ history.
In fact, it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act that motivated ole Abe to re-enter national politics.
But I think they offered Lincoln Washington State or Oregon to run as territorial gov.. I don’t think it was Kansas.
Further to a post by Phantom yesterday. I gleaned a few other facts about our northern neighbour. Their Federal government spends $230 billion to run a country of 33 million or about the same budget for our prison system. Their ruling party spent only $18 million to win the last national election. The Australians have about the same results with about the same reltive activity and costs. Along with Mexico and the Netherlands they DO have the lowest business taxes yet finish in the top 5 spots in math, science, literacy, welfare and health care with less per capita overall taxation than this side of the border. Chicago is a little bit bigger than Toronto and whereas the former has 5-800 hundred murders a year, the latter around seventy. They seem to either be tougher on crime or have a way round it we haven’t discovered. Now gay marriages is OK and so is grass for personal and medical usage. Damn socialists! To be really impressed check out the Nordic countries……especially per capita donations for foreign aid and charity.
Must be all that (world) defense and nation building expenses we incur.
“JWink” asks –
“M.Hawk: Are you saying you favor a “one world education system” headquartered in Washington?”
“One world”?!
Not quite.
But if the “Other Word” is whuppin’ our butts, perhaps we should consider alternative to some 15,000 school boards across the country doin’ all sorts of different things.
It’s been a while since I looked it up, but when I was in the ad biz the average phone book in America changed 20% every year!” That means, on a statistical basis, the phone book changes 100% every five years.
That means kids moving from state-to-state, from school district to school district…. That tells me there should be some consistency in el-hi education across America. Do you have a better approach to the problem?
Share it with us all.
We are a mobile society and there should be some sort of organizational plan to expect a kid who’s in 3rd Grade in South Carolina might expect to more-or-less be able to join the 3rd Grade in Idaho and come with the same basic skill-sets and knowledge.
Try doing that with 15,000 independent school boards calling the shots on the basis of local political pressures.
I think the McDonald’s analogy stands.
Got a problem with that?
From what I understand, school boards elsewhere decide on distribution of money to where it is needed, and either state, prefecture, shire or provincial governments actually set the cirriculum and provide the monies to attain national guidelines. So a kid in Yorkshire would be able to transfer to a school in Wales, etc., etc.
MonkeyHawk, USD 259 grade schools teach core subjects so each grade school will be teaching page (blank) on this day. Seems our school district has enough children whose family moved during the night the only way they can ensure the students pass the tests required by NCLB is to be sure no matter where those students attend after the nighttime move they are on the same page as the school previously attended. It doesn’t matter nearly as much if we hold some students back, whether we are accomplishing positive educational goals for most students as whether or not an adequate number can pass those tests.
Have “those” tests required by NCLB proven to be benchmarks that ensure quality education?
Beber writes:
“Con’s would love public eduction is mass mandatory prayer was a part of it.”
Capn writes:
“All church shootings are done by CONS”
Remarkable. Both these people make grand generaliztaions based on their own hatred without a SHRED of evidence. Yet, they both state their extreme opinion as fact.
beber…care to back up your irrational statement? Or are you going to admit that both you and capn are so jaded by your hatred that you make things up?
There goes search and seizure protection.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080801/tc_pcworld/149303
There goes search and seizure protection.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080801/tc_pcworld/149303
Oh well, I wasn’t using my Fourth Amendment freedoms anyway. . . .
Yawn, who cares? Reasonable searches and seizures? Probable cause? The rule of law?
That’s all sooo pre-9/11 mentality.
http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/index.php
A SEARING INDICTMENT
Famed prosecutor and #1 New York Times bestselling author Vincent Bugliosi has written the most powerful, explosive, and thought-provoking book of his storied career. As a prosecutor dedicated to seeking justice, he delivers a non-partisan argument, free from party lines, based upon hard facts and pure objectivity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAFozFn4kU
“We are a mobile society and there should be some sort of organizational plan to expect a kid who’s in 3rd Grade in South Carolina might expect to more-or-less be able to join the 3rd Grade in Idaho and come with the same basic skill-sets and knowledge.”
They can keep their prized individualism by having school districts, but provide standards and the methodology to ensure each school achieves those standards. Is that the present testing procedures or is there some other way to measure success? Hold not just teachers – but administrators responsible for achieving the national standards.
But forget the term NCLB. That measurement assures failure because not all children are the same. I don’t know where society went wrong on that one. We are all created equal, but the “state” does not have to keep us that way. Provide a second measurement for those “under achievers” sometimes called “high risk” today. Establish standards for raising the bar for these at risk students, but don’t expect NC to be LB.
NCLB sets up school districts for failure. Example is high turnover school districts. Military personnel, from all walks in life, move their children every three or four years to all walks in life. Leavenworth, Manhattan, or Junction City
have NCLB standards for each grade level. The curriculum is geared for progressive learning as students advance up. Each summer, however, the district has students enroll from far-flung places where the educational standards or achievement was not up to the par. It becomes very difficult to place these children and expect them to keep up, when there was no standard elsewhere, or the pursuit of the standard was subpar..
Set national goals and standards, and require schools to meet them ($). But also allow for educating the less fortunate and slower learning children who are already behind, and standardize their progress.
I posted about the book not to promote it but that in order to make an informed decision or conclusion you should be informed. Bugliosi is not arguing for the impeachment of Bush. He is arguing for the criminal prosecution of G.W. Bush after leaving office.
He is presenting the case in the book and it does give the evidence for such a prosecution.
Hopefully he did a better job then the authors of “the case for impeachment of George Walker Bush” did.
WHERE IS MARY CARUSO!
LOL I was mowing the grass when my wife came home today. She shook her head and I movtion “what?”. She smiled and pointed to my head, I was wearing my Bush/Cheney 04 hat. I am thinking of doing a test of wearing it everywhere I go to see what kind of reaction I get.
PMom, she was going away on vacation. I don’t know that she told us when she would return.
criminal prosecution … after he leaves office.
It won’t happen. It should. Presidents and those who represent us as elected officials should KNOW they are accountable and not above the law.
Eighteen pro-lifers participating in the Maryland Face the Truth Tour were arrested without warning by Hartford County State Troopers in the city of Bel Air, MD on Friday. Twenty patrol cars arrested and hauled away pro-lifers standing quietly on public property beside a highway, holding pro-life signs, some graphic. They were not told what they were being charged with, nor were they read their rights. Two suffered medical problems from tight handcuffs. They were all held overnight, except for 2 minors, and eventually charged with loitering, failure to obey a lawful order, and disorderly conduct.
So much for free speech in Maryland. Now any complaint about a traffic problem can be used to stop a pro-life demonstration.
“lindainks55″ asks –
“Have “those” tests required by NCLB proven to be benchmarks that ensure quality education?”
Probably not.
But it’s a start.
I think NCLB has proven to be a STOP to all that is good about public education. But then wasn’t that the intent — make schools fail so vouchers can be attractive? Easier to push the religious right agenda that way. Education has suffered along with about every other area you could mention under this most miserable administration.
Better news for public education will return beginning January 20, 2009. Obama has some good ideas and clearly recognizes the failures of NCLB. McCain is malleable. A larger Democratic majority in Congress is icing on the cake.
Evidently, this is what you Repubicans think of as a candidate who sounds “Presidential.” To non-zombies, that would be “incoherent.”
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/what-happened.html
In response to an easily understood question, Senator McCain barely can get the words “race card” out, or any other words, for that matter. And THIS is the man you want to inflict on us as President?
The debates should be interesting. Even if the media does what it can to carry some water for Ol’ “whichever way the wind blows” Mc Vane.
Lindainks,
Mc (weather) Vane / Mc Vain indeed IS malleable, but only if there’s some gain in it for him. If it doesn’t benefit him directly, he’s not interested. As we saw with his marriage to Beer Girl, hooking up with an heiress probably is why (in his words) “I’ve never understood economics.”
I read several op ed pieces about the McCain camp plan to make Obama seem like a celebrity. Most of them wondered how asking “why do you guys like this guy so much?” would work in the long run. Seemed like the consensus of opinion was that pointing out Obama is inspiring, popular, young, energetic, intelligent, well-liked and respected wasn’t playing into anything positive for the old man. ;-)
I sure agree about the debates, CF! With the two of them on the stage the contrast will be remarkable. I’m in favor of keeping the cameras on Mccain, the microphones open and at his mouth so he can be his own undoing.
Paris Hilton mom calls McCain ad “waste of money”
Kathy Hilton, the mother of the blond socialite-actress, lambasted the Republican presidential candidate’s advertisement in a blog posted on the political Web site Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com).
“It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign,” Hilton wrote.
“It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States,” she wrote.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKN0344419420080803
Tropical depression forms in Gulf of Mexico
Much of U.S. offshore oil production is in the likely path of the storm, which could also threaten Gulf Coast refineries.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0340960520080803
lindainks55,
Given what is going to happen to McVain in real time at Obama’s hands, it makes sense that he’s pushing as hard as possible for as many “town hall” (sic) meetings as possible. That way, the first time we see the two on stage together isn’t in the highly charged atmosphere of a nationally televised debate.
And of course, the media will be right at McVain’s side making excuses for whatever gaffe he commits, and “contextualizing” Obama’s successes to preserve the necessary fiction that there really is a contest between the two.
And there is no reason for Obama to offer up a big audience for McCain. If he can’t get his own BIG audience that’s just too bad.
lindainks55,
No shit. Last week’s episode of “When McVain Attacks!” smacked of an aging diva throwing a hissy fit. He’s been a would-be celebrity whore for decades. Too bad for him that he peaked in 2000.
“They seem to either be tougher on crime or have a way round it we haven’t discovered. Now gay marriages is OK and so is grass for personal and medical usage. Damn socialists!”
Well, there ya go!
Our northern neighbors are too busy loving their person of choice and mellowing out on a little BC bud to bother with killing each other.
Do ya think there’s any connection to the great Asian food one can get in Canada with the great BC bud that’s available?
just sayin’….
Make Love Not War sure seems to have been taken to heart by Canadians. It’s sure as hell working better for them all the way around.
“CF2K” notes –
“Last week’s episode of “When McVain Attacks!” smacked of an aging diva throwing a hissy fit.”
I’ve read a bunch of screeds from right-wingnuts who are pissing their
diaperspanties because Obama has the audacity to inspire people to a new approach for governing the United States of America.The CONs hope against hope that they can pull off a John Sidney McCain the Third (for Shrub’s 3rd term) administraion. And McC*nt is bending over
backwardsforward to appease the Republic Party base of crooks and liars.The Eagle’s photo of Christian Smith diving across the finish line is interesting…why? Because there are runners ahead of him in the picture.
Who came up with this? You cannot have runners ahead of the guy who is diving to win the race. Off with the photogs lense!!
MaxGrobnik
How will we know what the truth is?
======================================
Just about the same question ask about 2,000 years ago.
“what is truth” Pontius Pilate
Monkeyhawk,
Yeah, McShame really has jumped the shark. The only thing he could do to stay in the race was to go negative, and the way in which he chose to do so was jaw-droppingly, well, stupid. If one reads his ads as a commentary on how he views independent voters, I’d say he has cemented his “elitist” credentials.
Judging from the ads he continues to dump onto YouTube, he’s campaigning to be the head honcho of “Idiocracy” rather than for the Presidency of the United States of America.
Still, though, I fret. H.L. Mencken, in particular, haunts me. “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” and all that.
Osama Obama is a fancied up motivational speaker. Not all people who speak well know how to lead or direct something as complicated as a country.
Obama has no executive experience and little life experience when it comes to show he knows how to direct or lead a complicated structure of people, places and things. He is a very unknown quantity.
It appears to me that the Obama followers are the same ones who get taken in by time share profiteers and motivational speakers. In this case, there is no redress or money back nor can you sell the property to recoup your losses. You are stuck with Obama just like a time share.
Democratic Party Finishes Drafting Platform
The platform drafting committee of the Democratic Party finished composing their blueprint of the most important issues to their Party today. The document includes many of Hillary Clinton’s policies, particularly on health care reform stressing universal coverage for all–something she emphasized during her primary campaign.
Wording was changed from the working draft to include Clinton’s stance on the issue after supporters of hers urged the committee to do so. The draft will now read, “As affordable coverage is made available, individuals should purchase health insurance. While there are differing approaches within the party about how best to achieve the commitment of universal coverage, we stand united to achieve this fundamental objective through the legislative process.”
During the primary, one of the biggest differences between Clinton and Barack Obama was that she believed in mandates obligating people to buy health insurance, while Obama was opposed to such enforcement. Clinton often went after her opponent saying his plan would leave millions uninsured.
Today’s session went through more domestic policy issues for the Party including reversing President Bush’s tax cuts. Chris Jennings, former top health care policy advisor to President Clinton asked for language to be strengthened in that section to make clear Senator Obama’s commitment to not raise taxes for anyone making less than 250,000 dollars a year.
During the rest of the session, like yesterday, members were in almost total agreement. Issues included comprehensive immigration reform, improved emergency response to natural disasters, protecting children and seniors, campaign finance reform, reproductive rights and defending Roe vs. Wade, amongst others. Committee members also pledged to uphold the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. The Party emphasized that the gun show loophole had to be closed and stressed gun holders to act responsibly, but wanted to make sure to protect every Americans’ constitutional right.
The draft reads, “We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation’s founding commitment to liberty under law. We reject illegal wire-tapping of American citizens…We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of ‘inherent’ presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years.”
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/08/03/democratic-party-finishes-drafting-platform/
How Good Are Experienced Presidents?
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Info/experience.html
Poor parkay and his poor rights. Too bad he doesn’t appreciate other’s rights.
lindainks55
Posted August 3, 2008 at 6:55 pm | Permalink
How Good Are Experienced Presidents?
—————————————–
This isn’t the 19th century, this is the 21st century where things are much more complicated and decisions sometimes must be made in seconds, not days, weeks or months like the 19th century.
Executive experience, like being a Governor, or a high ranking officer in the military, or head of a corporation.
When one manages over a large group of people, places and things, they gain insight into what it takes to lead and how to manage. Without that experience, everything is a crap shoot.
Being a good speaker and popular are not qualifications to be President. I don’t want to risk the country’s health and wealth on someone who hasn’t lead more than a boy scout troop size of people.
Well, Regular I guess your one vote gets to go for whomever you choose, just like mine! If you think crashing planes and being a victim of war is experience valuable to the presidency I guess your vote goes to McCain. I know he doesn’t have the experience I find valuable for the office!
From my link (above):
The most experienced President was James Buchanan, with Lyndon Johnson and Jerry Ford getting the silver and bronze medals, respectively. Chester A. Arthur had a mere 1.5 years experience before he was elevated to the Presidency upon the assignation of President Garfield. If experience and greatness correlate, one would expect the top half of the table (the most experienced Presidents) to be mostly green (good) and the bottom half (inexperienced) to be mostly red (bad). If there is no correlation, the red and green should be random. Indeed, the latter seems to be the case. The top half in terms of experience (above the gray bar) has 11 bad Presidents and 10 good ones, essentially no correlation between greatness and experience. If you don’t like this result and want to try for a better one, just get the spreadsheet and start weighting the columns. Undoubtedly you will be able to get a different result if you try hard enough. But the point remains, the Presidents with a lot of experience have not been more outstanding than those with little experience.
lindainks55
Posted August 3, 2008 at 7:28 pm | Permalink
Well, Regular I guess your one vote gets to go for whomever you choose, just like mine! If you think crashing planes and being a victim of war is experience valuable to the presidency I guess your vote goes to McCain.
————————————
Again with more arm flailing. Referring to the plane crashes is just more flaming retarded rhetoric from the left. It’s pointless.
If you would have asked me nicely and asked me if McCain has the proper executive experience, I would have said no, but neither does Obama.
The only thing we have left then are political ideology and agendas. I believe McCain’s agenda and ideology more in line to mine than Obama’s.
Obama is a pure hard left liberal. His changing his spots during a Presidential campaign does not convince me.
Again with the 19th century Presidents. This is not the 19th century, this is the 21st century. Presidents back then were concerned about what the stable man was going to feed their carriage horse or who was going to be Ambassador that could speak French. The world is much more complicated today. The 19th century had it’s own unique challenges, but nothing like there is today.
Hey STEVE are you any relation to Joann?
Lyndon Johnson and Jerry Ford were 19th century? While I personally have always thought Johnson was out of step with the world — in fact I think the two worst presidents in our country’s history have come from the same state — I didn’t know it was because he was from such a loooooong time ago. I did respect Jerry Ford.
Silly to make that 19th century claim without looking at the evidence presented at the link, don’t you think?
lindainks55
Posted August 3, 2008 at 7:38 pm | Permalink
Lyndon Johnson and Jerry Ford were 19th century? While I personally have always thought Johnson was out of step with the world — in fact I think the two worst presidents in our country’s history have come from the same state — I didn’t know it was because he was from such a loooooong time ago. I did respect Jerry Ford.
Silly to make that 19th century claim without looking at the evidence presented at the link, don’t you think
———————-
You also threw in more 19th century Presidents, now didn’t you.
Sorry, but you don’t get to weasel out of the argument that easily, when you throw in irrelevant data.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was a crook, period. Everyone in Texas knew he was a crook and most in Washington D.C. suspected he was a crook. He would sell his own mother-in-law for a chance at political gain.
Gerald Ford was never elected, but selected. I didn’t mind Gerald Ford, thought he made a mediocre President though.
Back to the original point about Obama having zero executive experience. He still doesn’t have executive experience, so your irrelevant comparisons aren’t helping you promote your argument about Obama.
Seems after all our spinning in circles we’ve come full-circle back to — we will each use our one vote for the candidate of our choice, huh? Why do any of us continue this day after day?
Will you be as glad as I will be when it is finally finished? I have confidence we’ll each (speaking for our merry group of posters) find something else to be very opinionated about. ;-)
If you’ve never been to Lake Tahoe, I highly recommend a visit. The highs barely touched 80, and it got down to 40 every night. And the water was a cool comfortable 70.
What a shocker to come home to 108 today.
And the whitewater rafting was the highlight of the week. =)
God bless the USA and her incredible natural resources.
“If you’ve never been to Lake Tahoe, I highly recommend a visit.”
Tahoe is on my short list of most beautiful places. Been there a few times. Last year we rented a place in Incline Village in August. Had a fire in the fireplace every night! The hot tub was nice, until you had to get out and walk inside!
Bears were a big problem.
Did you notice the road markers for snowplows in winter? 4-5 feet of snow in a storm is not unusual. You gotta love snow and skiing to stay around in winter. But if anyone was looking for a great spot for that old fashion snowed in big family Christmas complete with sleighs it’s a good spot. Home of Bonanza!
The lake is amazing. Deep, beautiful blue. There is another lake further up, which is smaller, but very deep. So deep they found old 70 foot trees in the bottom. Evidence of a drasitc climate change eons ago. Probably GW by cavemen or dinasour farts.
You’re right, Am…
We built a fire outside in the firepit every night – the kids made s’mores. mmmmm.
And we saw nary a bear – much to the dismay of my children.
Obama Asks Panel to Restore Votes
Senator Barack Obama has asked the credentials committee of the Democratic Party to give full voting rights to delegates from Florida and Michigan at the national convention in Denver.
The request is likely to be granted because it comes from Mr. Obama, the all-but-certain nominee, who now controls the party apparatus.
After Florida and Michigan held early primaries in violation of party rules, the party punished them by saying their delegations would not be seated at the convention. In May, the rules committee agreed to let the delegates have half a vote each.
Mr. Obama’s request is likely to cause consternation among party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar. Restoring full voting rights will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the primary calendar next election.
The credentials committee is scheduled to meet Aug. 24, the day before the convention begins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/us/politics/04delegates.html?ref=politics
Phantom/Linda:My previous post seems to have gone off somewhere into the ether. Anyway, I had a problem about the Conservative Party spending only $18 million to get elected, a figure I did not believe but there is a law that a party can only spend 70 cents per registered voter and no one candidate more than $60,000. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation gives EQUAL FREE air time to duly registered parties, what they call a mandate to-wards the electorate process, as do the Ozzies and the Brits. Think about it, this means that the Prime Minister of Canada spent only $60,000.00 to get elected! I betcha the media here would panic if this ever got out.
They were walking in the traffic!!!!
Eighteen anti-abortion protesters were arrested yesterday after they marched among cars stopped at red lights in Harford County and refused to disperse, state police said.
Motorists called police about 4:30 p.m. to report that 30 to 50 people holding large signs and pictures were walking in traffic at an intersection on Route 24 just north of Interstate 95. Two troopers responding to the calls asked the protesters to disperse after they could not produce a permit to demonstrate, state police spokesman Greg Shipley said.
An hour later, 20 members of the same group marched again at the intersection, Shipley said.
Sixteen adults and two juveniles were arrested. Shipley said they were charged with disorderly conduct, failure to obey a lawful order and willfully obstructing the flow of traffic.
By Josh Mitchell
August 2, 2008
http://www.baltimoresun.com/services/newspaper/printedition/saturday/maryland/bal-md.protest02aug02,0,1856849.story
Yet Parkay’s source said: Hauled away pro-lifers standing quietly on public property beside a highway.
Sounds like a lying source…..
Would you expect anything different, DavidB??
Good night; Good luck; God bless —-
Whatever you conceive God to be!!
Blessings ALL!!
Blessed be!!
It’s a pretty known fact that once a muslim converts into a christian they are singled out and killed. Why do non of the muslims seem to care that Obama is now claiming to be Christian? Why has there not been any threats on his life? Why? IMO that one is pretty obvious. To me anyhow. And it scares the poop out of me that so many of you think so highly of him.
A muslim can become a united states citizen! That’s how they do it! They get our trust, and then they do something awful! It’s all part of there very laid out plan.
Sorry if I’ve offended anyone,but I just can’t sit around and be quiet about this anymore. The US is my country. It’s my home, and this man who is running for President scares me. He really honestly scares me. And I’m not a biggot. His color doesn’t matter, but him being muslim does, and it should matter to YOU too!
RWNB — Obama is not a muslim… Muslims can be Americans… the same way you are… if you were born here, that is… Anybody can become an American, if they go through the citizenship process… religion has nothing to do with citizenship here in this great nation…
Get over yourself, you freak!!
sursum says: “…the Prime Minister of Canada spent only $60,000.00 to get elected! I betcha the media here would panic if this ever got out.”
—–
That would be ANOTHER benefit to true campaign finance reform — castrating the media! Canada is so far beyond America in so many ways. I don’t know if we can catch up!
“The most experienced President was James Buchanan”
Our first gay president. Google him.
The farmer writes, “Our first gay president. Google him”….but is she just being hopeful?
http://lindholm.jp/chinf_buc.html
“It might be more helpful to separate the “Was Buchanan gay?” question into two parts. One, did he love men instead of women, and two, did he in fact follow his passions. The answer to the second question would seem to be “no.” His fiancee, Ann Coleman was of course exactly the sort of girl that a good-looking, brilliant, young lawyer would try to marry. She was rich, she was beautiful. Her family, owning a musket-making concern, was one of the wealthiest families in Pennsylvania. Aside from Ann Coleman, Mr. Buchanan went after several other women. He wrote to Mrs. Francis Preston Blair on June 3, 1837 that before the next year “I expect to be married & have the cares of a family resting upon my shoulders” (p. 225) Notably, he wrote this to Blair a year after he had started lodging with King! Also, not to put too fine a point on it, whether Buchanan loved King or not, it seems unlikely that two reserved, upper-class men, one of whom continued to date women, would boink each other in the ass. These were, after all, the days before daily showers and Vaseline.”
and; http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/2458.html
“Nevertheless, the staff at Wheatland never mentions King. Asked directly “was Buchanan gay?” a staff member replies, “He most definitely was not,” and points to a portrait of Ann Coleman on the wall as evidence. Buchanan was in fact engaged to Coleman, the daughter of a wealthy ironmaker, for several weeks in the late summer and autumn of 1819. He showed so little interest in her, however, that rumormongers in Lancaster suggested he was only in love with her fortune.”
too complicated for me. CU
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