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You're right. Our police would never resort to violence during a protest.

Nor would the government would never abuse the court system.

What really bothers me is how the current American administration marches forward with their "principles" despite a vast quantity of evidence that suggests they are wrong.

Texas is the leader in the US for wind power(1), and sill making more.
They are one of the biggest renewable energy states(2); if not the largest.
Giving that, I think the power plant is not getting in the way of renewable energy.

(1) http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0926-09.htm
(2) http://www.infinitepower.org/index.html

CO2 isn't a pollutant - (Bornstein, Seth; Bush Administration: Carbon Dioxide Not a Pollutant; Common Dreams, Portland, Maine USA; August 29, 2003 by the Knight Ridder News Service http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0829-02.htm .) so your point is really mute. New Environmental regulations call for NOx scrubbers - tighter particulate controls, and less opacity on new coal units put into operation. These new controls have doubled the cost to generate with coal. Add a carbon tax onto to the mix , like most extremist want to, and you will soon be paying $0.20 per Kwh instead of the $0.10 per kwh you are enjoying now. The point is - Solar and wind are nowhere ready to replace the energy demands that we face in te next decade. The solution calls for the electrical industry to build conventional coal power plants to meet the current need. The electrical industry is researching various cleaner methods to use coal such as coal gasification. Hydro and Wind are being invested in to meet some of the needs, unfortunately they are an intermittent resource and can typically only be counted on for a 30% capacity factor (or less) for generation. That means that for 100 Mw of installed capacity you will average about 30 Mwh of generation. Some hours you may get 100 MwH - and other times none. If you are truly sold on solar - get off the grid and grab you some solar cells - its been done before. It will cost you more per KwH and you will live a lifestyle that is very diminished as compared to what you are living now

You echo my point. The ACLU is an organization that mostly sticks to liberal issues!

If defending liberty is "liberal", why do conservatives hate liberty so much? And no, I did not echo your point, you incompetent boob. The NRA is far larger and far richer than the ACLU, is devoted purely to gun rights, yet does jack to provide legal assistance to gun owners like Maye or Randy Weaver. WTF?

And then you really echo my point.

Sorry, my bad. Your comment was so dumb that I mentally added a few words so it would make sense. When groups sue to block development projects, they do so based on laws like the Endangered Species Act, which is based on the commerce clause. And what environmental suits has the ACLU been involved in, exactly? Google for "environmental suit ACLU" turns up stuff like the group looking into possible law enforcement abuse or a SLAPP suit.

Instead, you've conjured up this lie that "commerce" is everything to get a practical end.

Straw man.

Oh! Thank God they wouldn't have us boarding planes like this!

This link may add some clarity: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm

I could appreciate that conclusion except it flies in the face of the facts.

After I resigned and took time off I switched to Tea as the source of my caffeine, and drank an average of about 3-4 cups per day. I was drinking Tea as the symptoms as the systems subsided and went away.

I drank only ONE can of diet Dr. Pepper and it brought the symptoms back within 30 minutes. I can and have repeated that "test" to see if the sensitivity remains. After 15 years it sill does.

Currently I drink about 4-5 cups of Green Tea each day and never experience the symptoms.

Concerning the claim that Rumsfeld was never at R.G.Serle I offer these URLs, which says otherwise:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript. aspx?transcriptid=3427
and this one which states he was the HEAD of the company... ...
He even took out a few years from 1977 to 1985 to make a living, and a very good living I might add, as the very successful head of G.D. Serle & Company
http://www.cfr.org/publication/6001/meeting_with_s ecretary_of_defense_donald_h_rumsfeld.html
and the 1985 Congressional Record: https://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp

Searle was being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for attempting to defraud the FDA into approving artificial aspartame as a safe artificial sweetener when lab tests proved it was a neurotoxic, carcinogenic drug. He was able to pull political strings to get Searle out of legal trouble and influenced President Reagan's appointment of Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner to politically approve the sale of aspartame in 1981--over the objections of FDA scientists, independent researchers and consumer safety advocates. Monsanto bought Searle for $2.7 billion in 1985, and the Searle family walked away with about $1 billion. Rumsfeld's take was about $12 million.

OR
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0612/15/sit room.01.html
When he was CEO of a company, he took a company over, G.D. Serle, a pharmaceutical company, that was -- it was dying. And he fired people, he reorganized it, he turned it around, he brought synergies in ...

Now we know what the "synergies" were... his own people planted at the FDA to push approval of Aspartame through.

Several soft drink companies and Nutrasweet were taken to court in April of 2004 but I haven't heard how the case is going.

Then, there is this little bit of info about bird flu and Rumsfeld
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0312-06.ht m

I don't know about a reasonable downside, but I could see people using this judgment as ammunition against people calling for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Especially if they start talking about the "George Soros funded political machine" or whatever else is hot these days.

Gore didn't win Florida, the SCOTUS put a stop to that.

He did, however, poll more votes than Bush. http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

If Katherine Harris had executed her legally required duty to conduct a recount of the entire state of Florida, Gore would have won Florida. But she didn't and she got a nice seat in congress as her reward for breaking the law.

Not sure what you point is, but did you know that some theories suggest that global warming could trigger the next ice age. Here are some links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1083419,00.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8398.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm

mysteriously disappearing honey bees?
Here's the argument from the highly biased source you linked to:

Test 1: Spring-sown oilseed rape, October 2003

Nationwide tests found that biotech oilseed rape sown in the spring could be more harmful to many groups of wildlife than their conventional equivalent. There were fewer butterflies among modified crops, due to there being less weeds. Verdict: GM fails.


I'm sorry, but reducing weeds means GM passes, that was it's goal. There's nothing mysterious in observing that a product designed to reduce weeds does in fact reduce weeds. That the "researchers" declare a reduction in weeds an assault on wildlife is their issue. Gimme a break and stop the crying.


People who hear about the use of lead and arsenic in paint and wallpaper often wonder how people could be so stupid as to have that kind of thing in their homes. The answer is that printers and painters overstepped their knowledge and embraced new toys that made them money.

Sorry, the above is technophobia defended by anecdote. In the 40's DDT powder was used directly on people's skin to get rid of lice and other nasties. Yes, turns out DDT was harmful, but it saved a lot of lives in the use they applied it to. It was the best option available with what we knew at the time. Waiting until we know everything means waiting forever since we never can know everything. When we've studied a new technology closely and find the known benefits outweigh the costs then we go ahead. That's called technological progress. Oh, and "don't eat paint", seems to be just good old fashioned common sense.

plenty of studies that GM crops are harmful to wildlife

Wow, that's the most retarded thing I've read all week.

Weeds have already been given pesticide resistance through regular polenation and natural selection. This is bad enough because it defeats the purpose and there are plenty of studies that GM crops are harmful to wildlife, including mysteriously disappearing honey bees.

Newer concerns are better written and documented here by a Monsanto whistle blower. We already know that the industry was sloppy because unapproved GM crops have contaminated the US rice supply. It may be that the people who worried about GM crops were right and evidence of genes crossing species is just one of the many things they feared. Genetic sequencing is new and bound to bring big surprises.

It's good practice to keep an open mind but be careful until you know things are safe. A couple of historical examples show how caution works and what industry does when it's not careful. People who hear about the use of lead and arsenic in paint and wallpaper often wonder how people could be so stupid as to have that kind of thing in their homes. The answer is that printers and painters overstepped their knowledge and embraced new toys that made them money. At the opposite end of the of caution is Rontgen, the discover of Xrays. He was very careful to shield all of his sources with lead bricks because he did not know what his newly created rays would do to him. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not die of cancer. People continued to expose themselves needlessly for half a century before sane practices were finally codified.

''The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda'', U.S. President George W Bush told reporters Thursday, is ''because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda''.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0619-04.ht m

"THE PRESIDENT: We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th. What the Vice President said was, is that he has been involved with al Qaeda. And al Zarqawi, al Qaeda operative, was in Baghdad. He's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat. He's a man who is still running loose, involved with the poisons network, involved with Ansar al-Islam. There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20 030917-7.html

"We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20 021007-8.html

So, there are many many quotes insisting there was a link to Al-Qaeda. Which there wasn't. Thank you for playing, though.

another unfortunate thing about alzheimers is it could often
be misdiagnosed. Since we don't test for CJD in this country,
we will never know :(

I wonder if the occurence of Alzheimer's is lower in countries that
do test (like England).

Both diseases are awful, but it appears there is some relationship:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0107-07.htm

No company should surrender private communications to the government without a warrant. And if they do, the public can sued them.

"Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow. Alastair Thompson, writing for scoop.co of New Zealand, explored whether or not the 2002 U.S. mid-term elections were fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by Republican-affiliated companies. The scoop investigation concluded that: The state where the biggest upset occurred, Georgia, is also the state that ran its election with the most electronic voting machines. Those machines were supplied by Diebold." From Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
by Bob Fitrakis.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

More: " (Bev) Harris writes that the hacked documents expose how the mainstream media reversed their call projecting Al Gore as winner of Florida after someone subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush. Hours later, the votes were returned. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now Diebold, reads: I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded. Another hacked internal memo, written by Talbot Iredale, Senior VP of Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, documents unauthorized replacement votes in Volusia County.

Harris also uncovered a revealing 87-page CBS news report and noted, According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia was directly responsible to calling the election for Bush. The first person to call the election for Bush was Fox election analyst John Ellis, who had the advantage of conferring with his prominent cousins George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush."

And: "Documents illustrate that the Reagan and Bush administration supported computer manipulation in both Noriegas rise to power in Panama and in Marcos attempt to retain power in the Philippines."

Two words: crooked casino.

... for this is something along the lines of: "Hey, if we recognise them as journalists, and give them equal access, maybe they'll regurgitate the same junk we feed the mass media."

Please excuse my cynicism of an organisation (i.e. the CIA) that relies on disinformation, propaganda, and psychological warfare, and uses the mass media and journalists to spread it.

Hey, I know! Let's cut U.S. farm subsidies to the levels farmers get in Australia and New Zealand. Surely American farmers aren't so incompetent that even with the advantage of cheap Mexican immigrant labor they can't compete on an even footing with Australians, right?

With respect, you seem to be under the false impression that US Farm subsidies actually go to American farmers in the first place. I'm not an expert (and stand to be corrected), but after a few minutes of anecdotal looking around, it seems to me that they don't. eg. [1] [2]

So in other words, American farmers probably could shoulder a massive cut in American farm subsidies. Ironically, they might even benefit from it.

13,000 sq mi of stinking nasty rotting ponds? SURE - who wants to live next to THAT? It will have to be decentralised in order to maintain high(er) ER/EI, so imagine several dozen of these nasty things attracting mosquitoes and all that other smell and bother in and around every city in the USA - and we're talking HUGE areas. If you spread it out to the top 1300 cities (and once you're around #800, you're talking small towns) each one would have to have a 10 sq mi body of water that REEEEKS, and many of these places are smaller than 10 sq mi in size.

So, ratchet it up to the top 130 cities - and now we're talking 100 square miles of open stinking water. If you apportion it by USE, it gets worse, then you're talking about a few cities and their giant airports (JFK, EWR, ORD, SFO, LAX, DFW, DVR, DUL, BOS, ATL, QHO) requiring fuel. In fact, of the top 450, the bottom 390 only use 6% of the traffic, and I would suspect none (or very very little) of that is in jet fuel. So, if we divvy it up among the top 50, we're talking 260 sq miles of swampy yuck-ness PER TOP 50 AIRPORT. Now, let's look at the New York Area, where we have 3 of the top 50 airports: EWR, JFK, and LGA. So, 3 x 260 = 780 sq miles. Note: the PHYSICAL LAND AREA OF NEW YORK CITY ALONE is only 303.3 sq mi... So, in order to feed these three airports we need a NEARBY BILGE POND that is 3X the size of the 5 boroughs? No. Way. And then, you have to deal with the proximity of Philadelphia, Baltimore Washington, etc. Look, NJ stinks bad enough - squandering that much insanely expensive real-estate to build a mechanical swamp - Simply Isn't Going to Happen.

so, you are asking "What will happen?"

This is what will happen: JP fuel will get increasingly expensive. The airline industry will contract, along with the rest of the economy. In the next 30 years it will become what it was before WW2: something only the rich / gov't / military could afford to do.

Don't like it? Tough shit. Developing ponds to fuel the automated fighter-planes and bombers of the future will be hard enough - the war machine will get first dibs on energy. The rest of us can go choke.

Just because BOEING is involved doesn't mean it's for You, The Mindless Consumer. This is for the military, very likely to invade Canada in 20 years and steal the tar sands like they're trying to steal Iraq's oil now. Get used to Resource Wars. It's the future of an unsustainable system of industrial consumerism.

RS

Continuing the Great American tradition of testing new weaponry on the battle-field. I wonder how many people will be unintenionally harmed in this experiment, this time.

It's no wonder most humans are terrified of America right now.. and that includes many Americans themselves: they might agree however, that it's better than testing on your own people.

Armitage's comments to Woodward were in mid-June, not July.

15 days after Libby leaked it to Armitage, presumably. He certainly leaked it to everybody else, and we know Armitage and Libby met to discuss "the Wilson problem" and how to undermine his credibility.

Hence, the leaking.

Remember that the Wilsons lied about the entire thing that started this whole process in the first place.

Er, I don't think you know what you're talking about. Joe Wilson was vindicated on every substantial point. The stuff I'm sure you think he lied about is stuff he never claimed in the first place. (There's been a substantial conservative movement to discredit Wilson, and the press has played along.)

The British Government's own investigation into the connection confirmed the US claims on Iraq seeking nuclear material.

No, it didn't. Both the US and the UK claims were based, ultimately, on the same Italian forgeries. To the extent that they're both repeating flawed information from the same source, they can't corroborate each other.

as well that he lied about how his trip was arranged, by denying his wife's involvement in sending him there.

He's never lied about it. By the time his wife was involved - in an advisory capacity - they'd already made the decision to send him. He's never changed his story on that issue, conservative misinformation aside.

even their investigative reporter Christopher Hitchens came to the same conclusion.

Oh, sure, a right-wing drunk desperate to find support for the war in Iraq. There's a credible source.

What I find most hilarious about Hitch's attempt to refute Wilson's claims is that, at no point in his article, does he actually quote Wilson making any claims. Not surprising, since the conservative noise machine's tactic here has been to refute strawmen charactures of what Wilson has been saying all along.

As for yellowcake in Niger, it's important to remember that even the Bush administration has admitted that statements about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger "should never have been included" in Bush's State of the Union Address. Britain's "Butler Report", which is often held to support that conclusion, doesn't actually offer any evidence to support it. Indeed, the conclusions of the Butler report are based on the Italian forgeries.

There's not a single source supporting the Niger-uranium claim that doesn't come back to those forged documents, which made quite the circuit of American, British, and Italian intelligence services. And why would Iraq seek yellowcake from Niger? They already had their own.

The Plame affair, unfortunately, has been such a target of misinformation that it's no surprise you're so poorly informed about it. It's important to remember that, as long as you stick to what Wilson actually claimed - and not conservative strawmen - he was proven right on every point.

"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.

Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) -- a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction -- and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."

Chance of desired outcome: 21.7%

Correct infrmation does not matter when the boss has an agenda. The CIA gave Bush a report that predicted failure in Iraq and it's consequences. The computer can do the same, but it won't do any good. The neo-cons had a plan and activated it.

You betcha! The bottom of the well is our designated free speech zone!.

Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. Why don't you move there and report back to us your findings? Seriously though, it is not just "warming" that has me concerned, but it's secondary effects (runaway greenhouse effect not withstanding). When I look at the declining health of the oceans, the disappearance of honeybees, the loss in the bird population (we are actually seeing a lot of extinction of species right now), it is an alarming trend. I think these phenomena are indicative of the poor health of our planet and I fear humanity is too arrogant, ignorant, and complacent to actually do anything about it.

I think that post 9/11 there is an obsession with security that has gone way over the top and is now endangering US economic interests itself. There was a recent survey in which the US was rated the most unfriendly country to visitors. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1121-02.ht m I have met many visitors who love the USA and have been vacationing here every year or two saying that the process to visit has become miserable and that now they are reconsidering coming here. People don't like being treated like criminals - we so often forget that. Now even the old grandmother is treated like a criminal. We suspect all visitors of perhaps wanting to permanently stay in the US even if they come very rich countries themselves and even if they have great jobs. I met some rich lawyers who were treated as possible future illegals - needless to say they are thinking of new countries to spend their cash in.

The discussion on further limiting visits to the USA by visa waiver countries further makes a bad situation worse. US economic growth will suffer. It will no longer be seen as a great place to do business. Again I have seen this first hand. Not long ago the US was considered the place to be for a high tech business. Now people aren't sure its worth the hassle. If we turn the USA into a fortress, it may end up being a poor one. Ironically economic weakness in the long term will make the US much more vulnerable to attack than a lack of short term security measures. This thing also reminds me how other countries like the UK and Australia are poaching the best international students. Those students are a big reason for the economic and cultural vibrancy of the US. We are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs because we are so fixated on protecting the goose.

Yep.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/11/179 5/

I suspect that the mountain of electronic junk could be recycled better with our inductrial technology than with chiness peasants...

Lazy much? Google "cheney iraq 911":

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.c gi/4/5151 : "The vice president has asserted long-standing links between the former Iraqi president and Osama Bin Laden's Islamist militant network."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0616-01.ht m : "The Bush administration has long claimed links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, and cited them as one reason for last year's invasion of Iraq.
On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that the Iraqi dictator ``had long established ties with al-Qaida.''"

Check out a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiNtpIpD6k About 20 seconds before the end Cheney is quoted on Meet the Press talking about an alleged meeting between Iraqi intelligence and Al-Qaida 5 months before 9/11.

And finally: http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_War_+_ Peace.htm : "FACT CHECK: The Washington Post reported Oct. 6 that Cheney often "skated close to the line in ways that may have certainly left that impression on viewers," especially by repeatedly citing the possibility that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official, a theory disputed by the 9/11 Commission."

The US, right now, is the biggest CO2 emitter among the industrialised nations (even 'per capita'; so it's not just that the US is the biggest one, just because it has a bigger population that Germany, France and the UK combined).

China may have already passed the US.

This is total GHG emissions, of course -- not per capita. Luxembourg (of all places) leads the per capita list, with the US in second, and Canada a close third.

Say something indiscreet in public? Mysteriously you'd lose your job and no matter how hard you tried you just couldn't get past an interview for even the most unskilled job.

That's already happening with the no-fly list. A Princeton professor who gave a televised speech criticizing Bush's constitutional overreach found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. A guy who wrote a book called "Bush's Brain" about Karl Rove found himself on the no-fly list afterwards. 20 Wisconsin peace activists suddenly found themselves on the no-fly list .

The no-fly list is even being used to harass opposition political party members. Senator Ted Kennedy suddenly found himself on the no-fly list and had a lot of trouble getting himself off the list. The head of the TSA had to call him personally and promise to take him off the list before his troubles ended. In the same article, it talks about employees of the ACLU also ending up on the list.

Giving the government more secret and anonymous "lists" to deny people rights is not an invitation to abuse, it's a guarantee of it. The fact that systems like this from previous fascist governments are being implemented in modern-day America is one reason that people are arguing that America is on a well-planned transition to fascism.

Except that's the whole point of the list. Giving us something to fight back against government oppression. The US government is waging a war on it's own citizens, to the point where it has the highest proportion of it's population imprisoned of any country in the world. The cops are not necessarily the good guys.

For my favorite Palast article -- the title is classic -- see here.

for him to provide proof,

On December 7, 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,000 page document outlining what it claimed was evidence of its weapons of mass destruction capabilities. Much of the report was recycled from previous declarations (after all, if you've said you destroyed something you can't very well provide any new information) though some clarifications of previous declarations was also provided. The UN used this declaration to assist the inspectors which were in the country (see below) to verify Iraq's claims.

Further, as soon as the report came out, and before anyone had even looked at it, Donald Rumsfeld was saying the entire report was a bunch of lies.

Hey, here's an idea. Instead of shooting your mouth off and saying someone is lying, how about at least putting on a show of opening the documents and then lie about someone else lying.

let inspectors do their inspecting,

Straight from Hans Blix's report from February 14, 2003:

Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidencethat the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.

A bit further down the page we find:

More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened using our own laboratory analytical capabilities at the Baghdad Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declarations.

The only thing Hans' report does say is that not all of the destroyed material that Iraq claimed it had destroyed twelve years prior could be verified to have been destroyed. However, the inspectors continuing to work with the Iraqi officials to verify this claim.

And this is what Blix himself had to say in 2003 about Saddam's declarations:

"With this long period, I'm inclined to think that the Iraqi statement that they destroyed all the biological and chemical weapons, which they had in the summer of 1991 may well be the truth," Blix told CNN television.

Common Dreams link

Further, it was the U.S. who didn't want the inspectors to continue their inspections because they weren't finding anything, even after the U.S. gave them specific locations to look at, and so were afraid that the longer the inspections went on without finding anything, the more public opinion would turn against their already conceived plans to invade and occupy Iraq.

of dismantling the weapons he did have at the time of the agreement.

He did not have any of the weapons despite Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld repeatedly stating, "We know he has them and we know where they are." If we knew where those weapons were, why didn't we provide that information to the UN inspectors who were on the ground looking for those weapons? Iraq's declaration showed that they had destroyed their wmd stockpiles and construction capabilities as directed to by previous UN resolutions and in those few cases where there were discrepancies, was working with the UN inspectors to clarify the questions. Continuing to state a lie enough times does not make it a fact.

Are we done now with the propaganda? It's not like poll after poll hasn't shown that people who watch Fox Noise are the most ill-informed people in the nation. You didn't need to offer proof of the validity of those polls.

The checks from the government are an equalizer. As is the graduated income tax. As is the substanstial college debt because my parents are wealthy enough so I can't get much need based aid, but not so wealthy that they can afford to pay a dime. As is the anticipated failure of the social security system when it is my retirement time.

Maybe you are older and things were different for you, but times have changed and $$$ doesn't go as far as it used to. Also, bare in mind undeserving individuals who can pull in $300,000 or more per year.

I recognize that globally everyone in the US is extremely lucky. But the widening economic inequality gap in this country isn't inspiring, and my claim is that the middle class is fooling themselves when they believe that they are better than the poor.

Also, happiness, not money, is what is truly important. But money remains a fact of life.

Now, what are your problems?

> Alavi is charged with one count of violating trade restrictions that prohibit exporting any goods or services to Iran.
> He faces up to 21 months in prison if convicted.

Wow, tough sentencing.

Well, at least our other deterrents kept him away from drugs. http://www.commondreams.org/views/050900-101.htm

And its good to know that export of nuclear secrets is an infraction of about the same magnitude as carrying an illegal firearm. http://www.davidyannetti.com/PracticeAreas/Weapons -Charges.asp

Even if you want to cast doubt on his story, how about Khalid El-Masri? The guy who was detained in Macedonia for having a the same name as a terrorist, kidnapped using "extraordinary rendition," held for months and then dumped on a desolate road in Albania (too embarrasing to release him with an apology or any acknowledgement of their mistake).

This debacle resulted in a lawsuit and a costly souring of German-US relations. He was cleared of all charges and by all accounts it was a mistake. Are you going to defend that mistake too? This wasn't some "No-fly" list inconvenience of a few hours, this involved torture and violations of international extradition laws.

Oh, really?

And this is just one example I got from Google after five seconds (the time it took to type "peaceful anti-bush protesters arrested" into the search box), too.

Fortunatly the charges against the guy arrested for wearing the t-shirt were dropped and the guard who filed the complaint was fired. Here's an account of the follow up. It is very biased in favor of the guard. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0308-08.ht m It also mentions that the t-shirt guy had a "confrontation" at Macy's but does not say what it was about or why the supposed instructions to the guard were to have the guy remove the t-shirt or leave the mall. Frankly it sounds like to me the guard was being a jerk and needed to be fired.

No, they're not just guesses. If they were, you'd have a point, but the amount of C14 is measured from samples of known age. Counting down ice cores and tree rings allows scientists to create a catalog of what the atmosphere's C14 levels looked like over the years. You say they're just guesses, but in reality, quite a lot of work goes into standardizing the data. As I said before, though, there are other methods that are even better because they are able to self-check for problems like the ones you describe.

Sure, scientists can look at what historically has been, but remember, an ape, a tree, and ice absorb C14 from the air. Each specimen will breath in a different amount of air giving a different original amount of C-14 So, even though hours of research have gone into it, they truly are little more than just assumptions. If you'd like some evidence to back this up, here it is: "Radio-carbon dating is a method of obtaining age estimates on organic materials. The word "estimates" is used because there is a significant amount of uncertainty in these measurements.......The C-14:C-12 atmospheric ratio is known to vary over time and it is not at all certain that the curve is "well behaved."" Here's the Source

I've said this before in these discussions and I'll probably say it again but, please show your work. Don't take it personally, but the assertion you just made is far too handwavy to be taken at face value, and as far as I know, quantum mechanics gives us no theoretical reason for this to be true in the temperature regimes you're talking about. As far as I can recall (and I don't have copy of Dalrymple with me, so please forgive me from working from memory), changes of over 1000 degrees C don't seem to alter C14's decay constant. I seriously doubt that a few degrees C are going to do it under normal Earth conditions. If you have some numbers to show, I'd be interested.

I'm sorry for the confusion here, what I meant by decay was non-radioactive decay. "In early September, British researchers reported that warmer temperatures were causing the soil to heat up and dramatically increasing rates of decay. The temperate forests and fields of the United Kingdom are becoming, in essence, semitropical." Here's the Source I was simply trying to point out that the earth is constantly changing and we can not just assume that processes are always occurring at the same rates. And since science is based on observation (look at the scientific method), observation is necessary to prove something. In this case, since the half-life of C-14 has been CALCULATED to be AROUND 5700 years, we can't actually observe the full length decay and thereby can't prove that it doesn't fluctuate over time.

It should be noted that ad hominem isn't Latin for, "That was a mean thing to say!" I suggest that if you'd prefer that your physics be taken seriously, start doing some calculations and stop inventing physical laws that don't exist. I was already a bit grouchy when you responded to me, and you did so by essentially calling thousands of scientists incompetent, stupid, or frauds. You can't seriously think that the objections that you're bringing up have gone unnoticed by the scientific community until now, can you? Obviously not, so they must either be too thick headed or incompetent to understand them, or the entire community of atomic physicists is involved in a conspiracy to defraud us. I'll leave it to you to decide which one you were suggesting.

Actually, for those latin scholars out there, Ad Hominem literally means "To the Man" it is when an argument is focused on a person rather than their argument and it's considered a logical fallacy. Radiometric

I am not sure if it was a formal strategy. I am willing to believe the guy when he said he made the commercial without any formal campaign support.

But, whether or not it was a "formal" strategy isn't what I am surprised in. I am surprised that you act so 'shocked' by the entire episode. This is an ELECTION campaign. You play to win. You go for the throat. Politics is a zero-sum game and Presidential Politics are the biggest game of all. The fact is, 12 months before the first ballot is cast, Clinton and Obama are fighting like cats and dogs. And, I love it!

And, no, I am not a Republican. I am a Democrat. I want my Democrats to be battle-tested and ready for political war when it comes time for the General Election. This kind of action is just the kind of activity you should expect in an election. I want blood in the water now, so the nominee is ready for any assault in the General Election. Remember when Karl Rove had his lackeys in South Carolina basically emasculated John McCain during the 2000 Republican Primary? Remember when the Swift Boat group basically destroyed Kerry's election campaign before the Democratic Convention? These people are running for the most powerful position on Earth. Going back to the formation of the United States, there have been formal AND informal attacks when running for political office. 'Push' polling has been happening ever since the invention of the telephone. Opponents of Grover Cleveland used to spread rumors that he was the son of an unmarried couple (a huge offense in those days). Sometimes, these attacks are organized by a campaign, other times, it is a missile coming from some fringe group.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can hear everyone talking about how Senator Obama has promised to "change the ways" of Washington. Well, whether or not he had anything to do with the ad, the fact is, unless he gets down in the mud, his campaign won't win.

For the record, I am kind of impressed by Senator Obama, but, I am withholding my support until later -- and, since I live in Pennsylvania, it really doesn't matter who I like as the Primary will be decided when Pennsylvania votes.

You obviously think everyone is an idiot.

Some people don't have time to read 8 hours of fucking news every day to meet your standards.

One should take in all sources of news and make up their own minds.

1) He lied when he claimed he was sent to Africa under the direction of VP Cheney's office. That's the whole reason reporters started digging into this in the first place because it didn't make sense that Cheney would send a war critic to verify WMD claims. It turned out that it was his wife, not Cheney, who sent him.

Did you even read the original Wilson article? Look at the paragraph in question, Wilson is pretty careful in saying how this came about.

"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. "

It's basically Cheney who completely misconstrues what he wrote, so he can avoid addressing the real issue. "I never met the man." Of course, you never met the man Mr Vice President. "I never sent him." Of course, you never sent the man Mr Vice President. Wilson never said otherwise, please read the actual paragraph.

It turned out that it was his wife, not Cheney, who sent him.

Yes, she threw his name in the ring, and yes she even recommended him again when she got an email about it. But she wasn't in charge of this operation. She wasn't the actual person that led this operation. She didn't "send him". And without Dick Cheney's repeated visits to the CIA headquarters, there would never have been the impetus to send the man in the first place. You guys are just grasping at straws. And again, Wilson is not a known political whack job that used to work for Clinton. He got to be Ambassador because of Bush Senior, and he was actually demoted during the Clinton years. That's another reason why this story of yours doesn't fit.

...that the French had an aversion to things normal people like! Apparently they like stuff besides snails, frog's legs, and French military defeats!

Must I conclude from you half baked wrong arguments you are still pissed about being wrong about Irak?

In the name of France, and all the french people, I say "We're sorry."

Sorry for being right. Sorry for your not-so-funny comment. Sorry your life seem to be so miserable you need to hide it behind ill conceived contempt for the french.

And believe us, if is there something the french are immune to, it is contempt... You see, arrogance is so much in our DNA and culture you'll need talent to even attract anything from us but smiling frowns of pity for the average disdainful comment. (I'm not speaking of your above abysmal comment, of course. Please, check your facts and have some brain examination for a possible Hydrocephalus affliction)

You see, it's like a game, for us. The Brittish know that we like to argument for the sake of argument... And the other's utter humiliation. Not so dissimilar from Tauromachy. We, the french, take some fact, and go against the official trend saying something we know is true. (Note the we know is true part. It's important). And somehow, there is always some braindead macho man coming up with his "My own is longer than your's" challenge to defy us on our own grounds. And then, of course, the braindead monkey ridiculizes himself. Of course, even after admitting some semantic miscalculation, the victim can't still accept being in the bad end of an international joke, apparently everyone knowing it even before the beginning of the invasion.

And then, after all the efforts we put together, using our intelligence services, working night and day, trying not to spill the joke and contain our laughter, sending our most talented orators, having half the world agreeing with our viewpoint when you painfully put together your supporters, the only biting, acid, venomous answer you have is "Hey, I was told they eat frogs, Muah ah ah!" ???

WTF???

-- Yours truly, France, (very, very, very disappointed)

I should watch it. They don't like it when you write about it either.

Not only is there no real punishment for these corporations, the linked article is itself an indicator of a deeper problem: it is carefully written so as to avoid painting any of the businesses as illegal actors where adequate, democratically-arrived-at remedies ought to be applied. There is no simple and clear declaration akin to what one /. poster wrote: "The recording companies are illegally paying off radio broadcast networks to get exposure for their music." nor anything as short and simple as the /. headline in this thread, "Major Broadcasters Hit With $12M Payola Fine".

I'm not trying to suggest this is new; during the run-up to the Iraq war the stenographers at the New York Times repeated government propaganda to far worse effect (Common Dreams, PDF excerpt). I'm saying that we do ourselves a disservice by letting our contempt dull our shock because we need to point out when corporate leaders behave illegally and we need to tell the corporate reporters when punishment is minimized ($12M is referred to as a "large cash settlement" despite no single payout greater than $4M) and buried (the list of corporate settlements is buried in the piece).

it's unlikely this would fly far in the US.

It might fly far enough to keep you in court for four years. In 2000, Ralph Nader's presidential campaign created a parody of the MasterCard "priceless" ads, which had been parodied in several other places previously without a peep from MasterCard. When the Nader ads came out, however, the company atttempted to block stop them from airing, though this was denied. (Interestingly, with the rather small campaign warchest Nader had, the ads probably got more notice than they ever would have if they just aired.) They also sued the Nader campaign and eventually lost... in 2004.

Here is a random assortment of links about the story:

http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2004/03/nader_w ins_pric.html

http://www.commondreams.org/views/091300-102.htm

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/packets002050.shtml

Let me pile on with the others who have said, yes you can. There are numerous cases where anti-abortion groups wanted to run ads on television showing dead fetuses and such but were denied by the stations in question. The groups claimed discrimination and other things but the courts consistently have held that television stations and such do not have to run the ads.

Here are cases involving billboard companies refusing to run ads because of their content:

North Georgia
Crawford Texas
Hollywood
Times Square

I know for a fact that Lamar Advertising refused to run ads in my area from anti-Bush people during the last campaign.

Here's a story from last year (2006) when CBS refused to run two ads during the Super Bowl. One was for PETA and the other was anti-Bush. Link

So yes, you can deny someone advertisement on a whim just like a restaurant has the right to refuse someone service for any reason they so choose.

re reichstag: I'm aware of that (but definitely not knowledgeable enough on that one to say who I think really planned/set it with certainty)

re what you believe: true, perhaps I shouldn't assume so much, however your responses, (including ones with wrong information) were a little telling...

re witnesses: there are MANY. ask yourself why firefighters and emergency workers are under gag orders? read the testimonies given by the firefighters which are only in the public after a long delayed response to a foi request (again why?) which describe flash flash flash like a controlled demolition, bombs, explosions, charge sequences etc etc. they are fairly explicit. actually research it and you'll find hundreds of people, including many high level people (even some ex bush administration people) stating it was an inside job or disputing key points of the official theories. To say there are no whistle blowers is to prove you have not done enough research, there are hundreds if not thousands. They just get ignored by the media, and usually fired or punished in some other way.

On top of this, it is highly likely in my opinion that many key witnesses (most of whom where unlikely to know what they were working on until too late due to compartmentalization) were killed on the day of 9/11. An example of this is the "passengers" on the "pentagon plane". I'm still unsure that there was a plane, and if there was, I'm unsure that it was the plane we are told it was, but either way, it is very likely those listed on board are dead. The reason I say this is because of who they are: many were military or military contractor people, working at places such as Raytheon and Boeing, on things like remote controlling planes and so forth, most likely unaware of what the intended use of their work was (although they probably would have worked it out afterwards). Another example of a likely whistle blower who died that day is John O'Neill, I'll let you look up who he was and how he died. Pay attention to who got him his last job, who found and identified him and what he was doing at the time of death.

re planting explosives: are you aware the company running security for the WTC was stratasec/securacom, link (contract expired ON THE DAY of 9/11 according to some sources) who also ran security for both one of the airlines involved in 9/11 (united) and one of the airports involved (dulles). And who was on the board at this company? the president's BROTHER Marvin. Now if anyone honestly believes thats just a list of complete coincidences, and there is nothing suspicious about it at all... well I wont finish that sentence except to say dont go betting on any horses, I dont think you understand odds.

So let's posit the possibility that the Bush family was involved (a high likelyhood if there was an inside job). This would give them 1) some control and much influence over all federal agencies and military groups through the Pres. and ex Pres., which would make a lot of things much easier. 2) Inside access to at least one airport, 2 planes and ALL WTC buildings involved. of course it also helped them greatly in the coverup, with bush all but completely blocking a real investigation (which still has not occurred, lookup The "9/11 Omission Commission"), and more relevantly, It gave them unrestricted access to the twin towers, as long as they could disguise what they were doing to the occupants.

Now here comes something a lot of "skeptics" don't seem to get: We DON'T know exactly what they used to demolish those towers. while it is beneficial to be able to come up with a likely scenario for the purposes of convincing skeptics, really, as long as you know the official theory for how they collapsed is impossible, the only alternative we have that fits the data is that they were demolished with some sort of explosive devices. This could be as conventional as