Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Challenge U.S. on Scientific Distortions
rocketjam writes "The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization which includes 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement accusing the Bush administration of distorting scientific fact and supressing findings to fit administration policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry. They also issued a 37-page report detailing the accusations. Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, called the report biased and said he was troubled that some very prestigious scientists had signed the statement. Numerous complaints from the scientific community about the administration's scientific policy-making prompted the The Union of Concerned Scientists to begin investigating the issue last summer. As an example, the group noted the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control on lead poisoning had been prepared to recommend strengthening regulations due to new findings on lead toxicity, but had their recommendation rejected by the administration and two panel members replaced by individuals with ties to the lead industry." Other articles: Sydney Morning Herald, New York Times, The Guardian.
Actually, they've been working on the report for over a year and released it as soon as they were finished. They didn't expect it to take this long. It's in the article.
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)
On their website is also a form to "sign" the statement yourself if you have an advanced degree in a scientific or technical field or are a graduate student pursuing one. Please read the report, though, before signing on.
Union of Concerned Scientists ...
"Citizens and Scientists For Enviromental Solutions"
This isn't and random independant group, it is a enviromental activism group. They selected the elegant name to try to cover up the fact that they are a simple lobby group.
Dude
Are you serious? You really think Star Wars works? What are the "successful tests" you refer to - the ones where the missile had an attached radio beacon?
Jeesh, my guess is you are either not a scientist, or if so, work on an SDI related project.
Do you really trust "successful test results" from an admministration that showed us "conclusive evidence of Weapons of Mass Desctruction".
I think, therefore I thought.
Here's one on wired. I saw that one before the headline here. As for who to believe, I'm inclined to go with twenty Nobel laureates and 40 other scientists over one Whitehouse full of politicians. No matter what your opinion on politics, don't forget to get out and vote this year and let them know how you feel about this and other issues.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Finding a few examples of supposed censorship and distortions means Bush = Evil? .
The fact that this story's other references are all noted liberal newspapers and opponents of the Bush Adminstration shows what a leftist propaganda site Slashdot is.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Danish Government Committee Exposes Union of Concerned Scientists
Written By: Neil Hrab
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: February 1, 2004
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
_____
Best-selling author Michael Crichton recently observed that environmentalism
is a kind of pseudo-religion. He's right. Environmentalists have their own
holy day (Earth Day, April 22), their saints (Rachel Carson, Jacques
Cousteau), demon (George W. Bush), and Garden of Eden (Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge). They also have their own Grand Inquisitor--the Union of
Concerned Scientists.
The Union's job is to hunt down heretics who desert the true faith. One of
those is a Danish academic named Bjorn Lomborg. The green witch-hunters have
been after him for the past three years.
Skeptic Attacked, Vindicated
Lomborg, a statistician, was once a member of Greenpeace and believer in the
green religion. But he began to doubt its articles of faith as he studied
the facts about the environment. Eventually Lomborg reviewed all the latest
research and compiled his findings in a 540-page book, The Skeptical
Environmentalist, published in 2001.
Before long, the green version of the Inquisition began to hound Lomborg.
Savage reviews of his book appeared in newspapers and journals, claiming the
book was based on a "lie." The Union of Concerned Scientists helped mobilize
some of Lomborg's detractors.
In Denmark, his enemies formally attacked his scholarship. In January 2003,
the oddly named "Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty," a creation of
the government-funded Danish Research Agency, sprang into action. Its
verdict: Lomborg was "guilty" of "plagiarization" and "fabricating data."
Lomborg's "optimistic view of the world" made it impossible for scientists
to credit his findings. The greens asserted Lomborg tailored his book's
conclusions to fit his belief that the global environment was in no danger
of collapse. "[Lomborg's] values regularly taint his conclusions," said one
American reviewer, writing at the request of the Union.
But Lomborg has had the last laugh. On December 17, the Danish Ministry of
Science overturned the January ruling. It found the Committee's judgment
"completely void of argumentation."
Calling the Kettle Black
Those who charge that Lomborg's research is clouded by bias would do well to
look at their own history. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a strident
political advocacy group conveniently based in the shade of Harvard at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, typically interprets science to fit its politics.
In the 1980s it claimed President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI) would never work. A Union spokesman said it would cost
taxpayers $1 trillion to put 2,400 armed satellites in orbit to shield the
U.S. against a Soviet missile attack. Persistent criticism finally forced
the group to revise its figures downward--to 800 satellites, then 300, and
finally 162.
In 1984 the Union dropped all pretense to science or neutrality. Popular
science writer Carl Sagan organized a 15-city tour by UCS members to bolster
Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale, an opponent of "Star Wars,"
in his unsuccessful campaign against Reagan. In 1988, the Union and other
"peace" groups opposed research on what's now called the "stealth bomber,"
claiming it would make war with the Soviet empire more likely. The Union
lost that fight, too.
In 1992 the Union issued a "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity." This
petition is no different from the jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown,
and other members of the environmental clerisy. None dare quarrel with their
dark vision of the future. The Warning speaks of "vast human misery" and a
planet left "irretrievably mutilated." Mankind "may so alter the living
world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know
The scientists signing the letter do not represent the Union of Concerned Scientists. They are an independent group who are merely endorsing the UCS report. Furthermore, they include scientists who are not particularly left-wing, such as H-bomb designer Richard Garwin and physicist Norman Ramsey, both of whom served as advisers to Republican administrations. According to this news item, organizations opposing the Bush administration policy include: the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Association of American Medical Colleges. The opposition isn't coming from the left fringe; it is mainstream.
Yeah, the national institues of health also have stated to confrences of developmental scientest that any reseach showing that, single parent families of families with working mothers, are just as stable as the "normal" 2 parent 1 income house holds, will not be funded. This happened at a confrence on child development. My mother an her collegues were shocked at this announcement. I, of course, didnt care, I am only an astrophysics student, then Bush announces his Mars push and Hubble is gone and all the astronomy probes that were planed for the next ten years are in jepordy. So yes this adiministration has a very poor record of distrorting facts and ignoring scientific goals.
PS All that NSF funding has been going to projects that benefit DARPA and Homeland Security not fundamental science.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
Meanwhile, a completely offtopic nonsensical Bush hating rant is +4 Interesting.
Good stuff here.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Here is some already formatted HTML you can copy into your email client (preferably Mozilla). Remember to remove the blank spaces Slashdot puts in URLs.
U.S. government corruption: Two Stories
Killing and destroying property
N.Y. Times editorial:
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15DOWD.
Lying about scientific facts
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/science/18CND-R
The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,11511
Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00
Union of Concerned Scientists:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsir
Your comment about CFC's would be laughable if your post were not modded so high. Raw chlorine does not get into the upper atmosphere and is not stable enough to do damage. CFC's are very unique. The CFC ban is one of the few absolute scientific environmental succeses of our lifetime. The scientists involved made predictions based on courses of action, the politicians followed their advice, and the ozone hole is behaving as predicted given the ban.
In conclusion, GFY.
A scientist.
"The strongest conspiracy is the conspiracy of the stupid"
I'm posting this message from the NIH right now. This year, our IT budget was cut to (not by) a third. We still have all the same problems to handle, but now we have to do it with two thirds less money.
Now if I could just get them to drop the Windows based email and servers and move over to *BSD/Linux/OSX, we'd be able to meet our budget problem. I'm doing my part, one computer at a time. =-)
Plant a tree in a developing country.
There are two separate ideas that fall under the name "evolution." The first is the basic idea of one thing evolving into another-- there are a number of examples that we have watched happen right before our eyes. The common example is the English moth, biston betularia-- whose population was 95% soot-colored after heavy industry in the late 1800s, but was primarily light-colored in the years prior.
The second is the theory that evolution is responsible for everybody being here. This isn't provable, but it seems to be the best no-magical-stuff explanation we have right now. This is where you're right-- evolution-as-creation is a theory.
The idea that evolution happens is a solid fact. We just don't know if it's the only thing at work that could have led to people. (or other various animals and plants)
Gore doesn't have a stellar academic record either, it's perhaps even a bit worse than Bush's (Bush at least completed grad school).
Gore made multiple C's at Harvard, also at least one D (in a science class, no less). Even worse, his grad school record from Vanderbilt is miserable... he received failing grades in five out of eight classes in the divinity school over the course of three semesters, and also failed to make it through Vanderbilt's law school (though he apparently left voluntarily to run for congress).
You can read it all in the Widipedia... text of Gore's page is here
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/RSI _final_fullreport.pdf
Yeah, all those "successful" SDI tests, right? Now the problem becomes convincing any potential adversaries that they need to tell us when and where they plan to attack, and, oh yes.... would they mind terribly putting a radar beacon on any incoming warheads?
First of all it was not a radar beacon, and it wasn't tracked by the interceptor, it was used to supplement the remote tracking part of the system (which was not finished yet).
In another post I linked to this article. Do some extra research if you like.
Tracking a missile is not nearly as hard as controlling an interceptor - that was the part the system did not "cheat" at.
I would suggest that you check up on the science behind these tests... I cannot believe the ignorance that is being modded up on slashdot (not that it is your fault, this was not given a lot of coverage).
Cheers,
Justin
The most likely reason we are only now seeing large numbers of melanomas is that people used to die of other things before the melanoma had a chance to appear. Our cells have natural defense mechanisms from DNA damage caused by UV rays, but these are not 100% perfect and mutations can occur. Most of these are benign. However, as we age, the mutations accumulate, and eventually you can get unlucky and have a harmful mutation.
Also, the practice of lounging half-naked in the sun for days on end in relatively new. In the olden days, people wore clothes when they worked outside, not swimsuits.
The link between UV rays and DNA damage is so well-documented that research scientists use it in the lab: they use UV light to fragment DNA or randomly introduce mutations into cells they are studying. Get any basic biochemistry or cell biology book to check my facts if you want.
Yes, we need some sunlight, but not nearly as much as most of us get. In the opinion of this fairly skeptical scientist, the link between sun exposure and melanoma is very strong. I wear my sunscreen.
HA! If only it were that HIGH... Fact is, many slashdot readers probably fit the definition...
From The Heritage Foundation:
Like fairness, "rich" is a subjective term, but the most common definition of "rich" in Washington is someone in the top 20 percent (or quintile) of income. Many Americans in this quintile hardly would qualify as rich, though, since the cutoff in 1999 for the top 20 percent of tax returns is $79,375 of household income.
Keep in mind that that is HOUSEHOLD income...
-bs
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
Actually, measurements of carbon dioxide emissions taken from ice bubbles in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets show a huge increase in the ppm from pre-Industrial Revolution to now. From the Industrial Revolution to 1958, the ppm grew from 280 ppm to 315 ppm. From 1958 until now the ppm has grown from 315 to over 350 ppm in 1987 (1). Can that increase be justified by increased natural carbon dioxide production or could it be more closely tied to human production?
In case you aren't counting, from sometime in the 1700's to 1958, carbon monoxide rose 35 ppm. It took just 29 years for the same amount of increase to take place.
(1) U. Siegenthaler and H. Oeschger, "Biospherice CO2 Emissions during the Past 200 Years Reconstructed by Deconvolution of Ice Core Data," Tellus, vol. 39B (1987): 140-154
Whether or not being a Nobel Lauriate somehow makes one immune to politics or completely unbiased (it certainly doesn't, but I doubt that it's possible to explain here why that is the case to someone that believes otherwise), the Union of Concerned Scientists is certainly a political organization. It was founded in 1969 by a group of MIT professors that wanted to protest the Vietnam war and has morphed into an environmental group with positions tha are considered progressive (in the US, at least). If you have any doubts about the claim that the UCS is political, or that it is progressive, I would suggest reading:
Unfortunately, you may have to wait a few days, first, as their site has been ./'ed
John Marburger actually isn't a politician, at least not by training. He was a physicist in the field of QEX (quantum electrodynamics - i.e. lasers, atoms, etc.). He was actually on my PhD defense committee during the brief time he returned to being a professor after serving as the president of the university for a number of years. The man is not a politician who knows nothing about science. He was actually a respected scientest before going into politics.
On the other hand, he's been in administration or politics now a long time, so acting like a politician is perhaps unavoidable. In addition, he has no choice but to toe the party line, so it's impossible to know what he really thinks.
What science are you in?
Physics is my primary field.
I came to realise that there are different kinds of science. Social scientists tend to find their own truths and fight over it. Truth in this sense is not absolute, it depends on the proponent.
Q.E.D. I'm afraid, with this caveat: I used the word truth in the colloquial sense, not the scientific sense. Thus when I said truth I meant something akin to fact. The syntax and grammer of English is not suitable for making the distinction casually unfortunately. You must choose between sounding like an verbose, overacademic pompous ass, or colloquial brevity and reasonable grammar. I try to steer a course down the middle. I often fail.
In the sense that the word "truth" might be used in a mathmatically technical sense the social sciences contain little to no truth at all, although they proudly stand on what they claim to be a mathmatically scientific foundation. That foundation is made up of mathmatical aether filled aerogel.
When you begin fighting over untestable, nonabsolute "truth," you are not discussing science at all. You are discussing religion.
Natural sciences, however, are much more focussed on the one truth which can be proved either by formal methods (which themselves are known to be correct) or by facts.
And there is even a name for this: Science.
If a nobel laureate (of the natural sciences) says that someone is twisting the truth, then it should make you think. If 20 nobel laureates do so, then even more.
Over the course of my liftime I have often been in the habit of hanging out with Nobel Laureates and nominees for periods of time, although far less so in my dottage than in my youth. Now I tend to hang out with their writings far more. I think that most of them would agree substantially with my post, and I think my post supports the point of view that the Bush administration is twisting the truth.
As did Clinton's, Big Bush's, Reagan's, Carter's, Ford's, Nixon's, LBJ's and Kennedy's.
Those are the ones with which I can claim some personal familitarty. I can rely on literature to assure me the practice is not entirely contemporary, but accelerting. Rapidly.
KFG
60. The number od scientists who signed is 60. The level of 'research' required to unearth this (sentence #1 of the linked article) suggests just how much people here buy into the scientific method.
-In 1980 UCS predicted that the earth would soon run out of fossil fuels. "It is now abundantly clear," the group wrote, "that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages." Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.
s immons.html
Oil reserves show every sign of increasing?
You might want to look
here: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
here: http://www.peakoil.org/
or here: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061203_
Here
Here are their main findings:
1.There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being.
2. There is strong documentation of a wideranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda.
3. There is evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about "sensitive" topics.
4. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented.
I must say that I'm *shocked* (*shocked*!) that anyone could suppose the Bush administration has ever been anything less than completely forthright about anything with the American public (cough, IRAQ, cough). I mean, they've never stretched or distorted facts to fit their preconceptions before, ever. Really!
The Nobel laureates who signed the statement were
Philip W. Anderson Physics, 1977
David Baltimore, 1975 Physiology or Medicine
Paul Berg, 1980, Chemistry
Jerome Friedman, 1990 Physics
Walter Kohn, 1998 Chemistry
Leon Lederman, 1988 Physics
Mario Molina, 1995 Chemistry
F. Sherwood Rowland, 1995 Chemistry
J. Robert Schrieffer, 1972, Physics
Richard Smalley, 1996 Chemistry
Harold E. Varmus, 1989, Physiology or Medicine
Steven Weinberg, 1979, Physics
Funny, I don't see Arafat on that list of signatories. I don't see Carter, either. It really shows how narrow minded these "scientists' are. Not a single literature or peace laureate was mentioned in the Union's press release.
Uh, try 6-7 Billion tons of carbon released globally each year here and here .
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Be careful here. Science is not set up to prove things. Science is only set to disprove things. Sure, you can make a conjecture and a prediction about how things will occur, but that is not science. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and never FALSIFIED. Just because it has never been falsified does not mean it WILL be.
It may seem like I'm picking nits, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding that almost everyone has about science. It does not PROVE things, it DISPROVES them. What you are left with in the end gives you a *reasonable* idea of how things are.
>Do you have any numbers to describe how much CO2
> is released into the atmosphere by humans every
> year?
Yes. Humans release 6-7 Gt of Carbon (that's gigatons) (and that means almost 30 gigatons/petagrams of CO2) every year.
>Do you have any numbers to describe how much CO2
>is released into the atmosphere by nature every >year?
What number do you want? The _NET_ ecosystem uptake of carbon is about 1 gigaton per year. The _NET_ ocean uptake of carbon is about 2 gigatons per year. 6 GtC - 1 - 2 = 3 GtC per year. The _increase_ in CO2 concentrations is therefore about 3 GtC per year, or about 1.4 ppm per year.
Other numbers: "Net primary productivity" (which doesn't include decomposition) is about 60 Gt per year. "Gross primary productivity" (which is respiration in of plants, but not respiration out) is on the order of several hundred GtC per year. But if you think about it, what goes in must come out, almost exactly. The difference is due to things like: disequilibrium (because of human emissions, more CO2 will go into the ocean from the atmosphere than vice versa), and changing conditions (higher CO2 concentrations means slightly more plant growth than usual, and it takes a few decades for decay to catch up, changing human land use).
If you want to see nice experiments, look at the Keeling carbon dioxide graph. You can see the seasonality of CO2 levels as the northern hemisphere "breathes in" in spring, and "breathes out" in fall. You can see the human effect: the curve overlaying that. (You can also measure historical CO2 levels in ice cores: 200 to 280 ppm for 400,000 years. 280 ppm to 370 ppm in the last 150 years.
http://www.2think.org/keeling_curve.shtml
>Now you have to compare the two. Which one is >larger? Is the smaller one of significant size >compared to the larger one?
So, my person opinion is that anyone who questions the FACT that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is due to human emissions is an ignorant troll (sort of like people who question evolution). People who question whether or not human emissions _can_ cause I consider to be wrong. People who question whether human-induced warming in the future will be disastrous I consider almost reasonable... (my personal belief is that there will almost certainly be measurable human induced warming, and that there is a significant likelihood that the warming will be deleterious to humans - not end of the world, but not real happy, either).
-Marcus
Random example off the top of my head: an American citizen is held without being charged with a crime, without trial or bail, for eight months. Wait, let me guess. It doesn't count, because he's a brown American.
I think that those ginormous tax cuts for the extraordinarily wealthy may have had some effect on the debt. Just maybe. That, and the $100bn+ adventure in Iraq.
*cough* Abstinence-only education *cough*. When they require teaching abstinence, and disallow teaching anything else, that makes it 'abstinence-only'. Get it?
If you're going to talk smack, can you at least talk the kind of smack that can't be refuted with five minutes of Googling?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Judging by Table 5 here, it would appear that at least in 2000, the top 5% (the floor for which was $128,336 in adjusted gross income) collected about 35% of the income but paid 56% of the income taxes, which amounts to 56% of the total income tax take. I'm not sure how you define "middle class," but I think it's traditionally well below the $128,000 mark.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If you read the article that you cited, you'll notice that Gore wasn't making a "grandiose attempt to take political advantage of the internet's popularity". He didn't write the code, and never claimed he did. But if it wasn't for Gore the internet would probably still be ARPANET. Nothing obnoxious there.
I just don't think doing a grade check is a valid way to prove how intelligent someone is. There's lots of "book smart" people who aren't that bright in regular life. That was my point.
I'm not a Bush hater or a Gore fan. You're being overly defensive. Paranoid I think it's called. Do you listen to Limbaugh a lot?
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
0) Remember there is a difference between CO2 mass and carbon. The 6 Gtons is carbon. Much of the mass in your calculation (which is too high by a factor of 10 btw - consult e.g. a diving handbook) is in oxygen.
1) There is a difference between the GROSS carbon production by the biosphere, and the NET production. In general the biosphere "produces" something like 100 Gton carbon a year, BUT it also absorbs that same amount in growing things. The carbon emissions from fossil fuels is IN ADDITION to the normal processes; it has the effect of disturbing the equilibrium, because it doesn't get absorbed. You have to understand that if the full 100 Gton/yr of carbon went into the atmosphere and wasn't absorbed, the Earth would look like Venus very quickly.
Current, undisputed, data show that atmospheric CO2 levels have doubled in the past 100 years . Isotopic analysis of the C (i.e. C-12 vs C-14 levels) show that virtually all of this carbon comes from fossil fuels (the C-14 has decayed, so the carbon has been buried for a LONG time).
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I personally find his statement that he "took the initiative in creating the internet" to be a grandiose attempt to take political advantage of the internet's popularity... He certainly was a supporter of the idea, but wrote none of the code, developed none of the protocols... he's trying to take credit for the hard work of a lot of scientists and engineers... I personally think that's obnoxious.
Then it's equally obnoxious for Bush to take credit for the liberation of Iraq, after all, he didn't coordinate the troop movements, go on any patrols, or capture Saddam himself, right? He's just trying to claim credit for the hard work (literal blood, sweat, and tears) of a lot of soldiers.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
http://webexhibits.org/bush/
Thirty years of satellite observations, computer advances and improvements in theory go into current thinking that didn't figure in 1975. That said, nothing I saw in the article seems particularly alarmist or ideological.
The period of concern over "global cooling" was brief and driven by intuition. Pretty much as soon as they started doing the numbers, most of the serious physicists who were to be the founders of physical climatology agreed that greenhouse warming was probably a bigger concern. See Science, vol 193 pp 447 ff, Aug 6, 1976 , pretty much right after the Newsweek article.
mt
Being at MIT, I have a bone to pick with this chap...
I guess I would have to say that I know some of this from data I have personally obtained and analysed. I have seen the warming trends in several ice cores and coral samples I've looked at.
I have also tried my hand at modeling, and I'd have to say that despite everything, we really do have a decent understanding of things like radiative transfer. We make some pretty serious approximations when it comes to cloud models and ocean transport, but the radiative forcing is decently well-known.
Can you provide a model that reproduces the observed warming trend given the observed increase in CO2, but where the warming ISN'T from the CO2 and associated radiative forcing?
There is an OBSERVED (historical as well as current data) correlation between CO2 levels and temperature. We know that we are causing CO2 levels to increase (Keeling curve). Models can explain the correlation rather well. Given those three items, what would you, good scientist that you are, conclude?
I understand you're being a good scientist who's always willing to admit that you don't know something, but come on - some scientific conclusions are more reliable than others.
I agree about the president influencing the economy bit, but...
Regarding the deficit:
1) The president has almost full control over the budget. He can veto anything he doesn't like. BUSH CAN VETO SPENDING BILLS AND BRING BACK THE DEFICIT. but he doesn't. Also US deficits were of trivial quantity until the Reagan administration. There were no large deficits before that even with a democrat congress.
2) Okay. Now that would be nice. I wish the Republicans in power NOW (not 4 years ago) would learn how to cut spending. They haven't - even if you discount the ridiculous rise in military spending.
3) Again. I wish Bush would sign a bill like that.
4) And every economist in the world said that's not a realistic possibility. How many lies does Bush have to say before you stop believing him?
5) If the government gave me ONE MILLION DOLLARS that would be MERE CRUMBS compared to what is spent on other things. And although I would love that, its still a stupid govenment policy.
Tax raises are not inevitable. But for god's sakes you have to reduce spending to avoid them! And I laugh at your Democrat comment... Bush Sr raised taxes.
And just for note - I am not a Democrat. If the Republicans would revert to being a party of small government I would go back to them. Otherwise, I vote against them.
------ Warning! You are too close!
We've already linked Saddam to terrorism many times over; for you to be ignorant of his historical actions paints a poor picture of your knowledge. From him gassing his citizens, to wholesale murder of dissidents, to invading his neighbors, this dictator's done it all, all under the apathetic eye of the UN. "Stop, or I shall have to say Stop again!"
terrorism
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
How do any of the things you mention there fall under that category? Yes, Saddam is a very very bad man. But he has no credible ties to any currently active terrorist organisation that I've seen yet (maybe you can point them out). And don't give me that "oh, he traded with someone who also traded with al qaeda" BS. Six degrees of separation make us all terrorists if you start thinking that way.
How is this relevant? If you were to take out everyone as evil as saddam, you'd have to go well past what the US is capable of launching militarily. The world is just not a nice place. It might have been justified to take down Saddam, but it was selective. There are most likely better ways to spend money than on the iraqi war.
Might I also remind you who it was that sold those chemical and biological agents to Saddam in the first place, well past the point when it became obvious saddam was all about evil? Oh, what a coincidence, the same countries who knew that saddam had weapons. Well, ofcourse they did, they should know what they sold.
The word "evolution" subsumes both a process and the observable data to support it. Evolution is a proposed mechanism of changes in organisms over time. It is a fact THAT this change occurs, but the role of mutation, dominance of adaptive traits, etc., can only be said to have very strong support.
I think that you're confusing evolution, the observable fact, with natural selection, the underlying theory.
Ask the *Civilian* survivors of the firebombing of Dresden if they were terrorised, or the cars with families in them that enter the wrong checkpoint in Iraq. It's not unheard of for civilians to be killed in a "low intensity" war such as the one in Iraq, in fact it's quite common.
"Among the statement signers are: Philip W. Anderson*, David Baltimore*, Paul Berg*, Lewis Branscomb, Thomas Eisner*, Jerome Friedman, Richard Garwin*, Walter Kohn*, Neal Lane, Leon Lederman*, Mario Molina, W.K.H. Panofsky*, F. Sherwood Rowland, J. Robert Schrieffer*, Richard Smalley, Harold E. Varmus*, Steven Weinberg*, E.O. Wilson*.
* National Medal of Science, Nobel laureate"
Ha, good one! But you forget that this is a report and that was a petition. The former needs only the signatures of the participants, while the latter needs the signatures of as many people as possible.
These two accounts are in the same vein.
With its liberal bias, the group could be composed entirely of Democrats.
Are you suggesting that Republicans are not smart enough to have ever won the National Medal of Science or the Nobel Prize? Why don't you get them to release their views?
RTFA. There are many Republicans among the signataries who were senior directors/advisors under Nixon/Reagan/Papa Bush.
He got the prize for the Oslo peace accord. And yes he deserves it. U obviously believe the US/Isreali gov lies. Maybe once he was a terrorist but so was Nelson Mandela.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I found many more documents on that. It seems many people talk about that everywhere in the World except in the US.
:)
Amazing how people from foreign countries know usually better on the way the US works economically than most US citizens do
Here is the best document I found:
Click here.
Many more thanks to Google:
Click here.