December 7, 2009 archive

Docudharma Times Monday December 7




Monday’s Headlines:

U.S. Forecasts Smaller Loss From Bailout of Banks

Copenhagen emissions targets ‘not enough to avert catastrophic warming’

Millions’ worth of gear left in Iraq

U.S. sees homegrown Muslim extremism as rising threat

Was Russian secret service behind leak of climate-change emails?

Turkey’s moves towards Iran concerning United States

New Tamil group People’s Liberation Army vows to start a fresh war

Ahead of Copenhagen climate talks, India softens its carbon stance

Boy who survived 1988 Halabja chemical attack reunited with mother

New Iraqi election law approved

The secrets of Tutankhamun’s decaying tomb

Southern Sudan politicians arrested in Khartoum

Evo Morales routs rivals to win second term in Bolivian elections

Good Lord, what a bunch of jackasses

What a bunch of jackasses.  

These people are not only incredibly stupid, they think we’re even more stupid than they are.

And they might be right.

Check this shit out:

US says bin Laden sometimes slips into Afghanistan

Oh REEEEEAAALLY?  

Let’s see how this is working here.  The Pentagon crook Robert Gates has decided that in spite of a majority of Americans “lacking the resolve” to “perservere” and “win at all costs” in Afghanistan, has decided to have some stupid lackey tell us that hey, you know, sometimes Osama bin Laden actually crosses the border and ENTERS Afghanistan.

He could be there right now!   He could be!  I mean, prove that he’s not!  I’ll bet you five bucks he’s there right now!   And and and if he does, and we’re bombing Afghanistan when he walks into it, he might walk into one of our bombs and and and then he’d be, like, dead!  ‘Cause we’d blow him up!  

What a childish bunch of douchebags.

Do they have any evidence of this?

No.

Is there any intelligence that might actually support such speculation?

No.

Is this anything other than a wild guess?

No.

Is it pure unadulterated bullshit?

Yes.

I could just as easily get up on a podium in front of the press and swear that I’m pretty sure Ken Lay is alive and well and living in a Penthouse suite in Reno.  Have I actually seen him?  No.   Do I have any evidnece he’s there?   No.   Then why would I say such a thing?   Because he could be there.   It’s possible!


Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, Jones replied, “The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.”

Yeah, and sometimes he’s at the Taco Bell in Kandahar.  I mean, why not?  He could be.   That’s a “guess”, too, right up there with his “best guess”.   What makes one “guess” better than another “guess?”

Jones did not comment on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden’s apparent border crossings.

That’s because he doesn’t have any intelligence.  Of any kind.  The kind in your brain that makes you smart, or the kind that gives you information.

Gates told ABC’s “This Week” that “we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is,” although he agreed that his likely location is North Waziristan.

Yeah, and who told you that, Gates?  The Osama fairy?  

Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones broke new ground by saying publicly that the al-Qaida chief may at times have slipped back into Afghanistan.

Oh good, they believe it.   Well my son believes that Santa Claus lives on the North Pole, and I think that both are about as likely.

I quit believing in Santa Claus when I was eight years old, and I quit believing in the Osama Bin Boogeyman a few years ago, too.  Both are myths designed to manipulate people into behaving certain ways.  My son will jump through all KINDS of hoops when I tell him stories about Santa Claus.   It feel kinda guilty, but we do it to everybody, right?

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made a somewhat similar, if less specific, remark Sunday about bin Laden’s movements. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden “moves back and forth.”

Yeah, and he does pilates every morning, too.  And brushes his teeth with the bones of a dead secretary from 9/11.  

Have you seen that movie “Idiocracy”?   This country is actually turning into that.

“Squirrel!!”

What to do?

A Stars Hollow Gazette

Recently I’ve had a lot of people ask me what course of action I would take.

Most of them are hopelessly compromised sellouts looking to justify craven capitulation because, frankly, they can’t stand to look at their own cowardly face in the morning mirror.

You do what you need to do to eat and provide for your family.  Please don’t bother trying to convince me your shit sandwich is anything but two slices of bread wrapped around a turd.

I’m not Navin Johnson.  I know a hole in the ground when I see one.

“But that’s not constructive criticism ek”, you whine.

Why do you care for my approval anyway?

Oh, I get it.  You want something from me.  My money.  My vote.  The ability to walk among decent people without having them spit on you like the soul-whore liar you are.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being an honest sex worker.  Most of them are decent people who provide the service they sell.  They should have a union.

But there is something different about being a confidence man, a professional betrayer.

One of the reasons I got out of journalism at a young age is professors at J-school telling me that any lie was acceptable to get a source to talk.

Yet I am a proud and successful politician because I deliver what I promise and I’m not afraid of fights because I know what’s right and have the people behind me.

In a local way of course, but it’s all the Village Number Six.

Are you a Number or a Free Man?

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

The Change; Hope

CdPnkHplss

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe.  President Barack Obama once knew this.  He lived this veracity.  Indeed, candidate Obama’s audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope.  When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized.  People came to expect the country was in for a change.   Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.  

The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation.  Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building.  Lives are lost.  Limbs crushed.  With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens.  Hope suffers.  Hearts are hurt.

CRU Frauds Destroy Environental Movement Credibility

The Globe and Mail reports that the cover-up is usually worse than the crime. University of East Anglia CRU climate scientist Mike Hulme worries that denying the academic dishonesty and shabby efforts of fellow climate scientists to destroy CRU data will “set back climate science back twenty years”. Phee-yew! And that’s criticism from inside the tent.

The first thing I did this morning was grab a bucket and scoop the water out of the bathtub and pour it by hand in the washing machine. My wife ordinarily does this and has, cheerfully, for years. She’s the heavy-lifter environmentalist chez kidneystones. The temperature inside our new home in Tokyo right now in December is about 55 degrees. The windows are open to let in the sunshine. I’m wearing a turtleneck and a warm-up jacket as I type. We don’t own a car, don’t own an air-conditioner and turn on the electric heat in winter only when a hat and extra sweater won’t suffice. We recycle assiduously whenever we can. In short: we’re into environmentalism.

We defend environmentalism easily. The savings from recycling water appear on our water bill. We have hard data we share willingly with neighbors. The work I do in the social sciences includes history of science. That, too, I publish and share. Good work withstands scrutiny. A few people I respect, however, are currently making the case that science cannot withstand scrutiny and that breaking into computers to get access to data matters more than what is discovered.

The break-ins are very likely part of a larger effort to discredit climate science. Why? Because climate science appears to be pure bullshit and there appears to be clear evidence of collusion to control access to core data. For years, climate science skeptics, critics, deniers: call them what you will, have petitioned the CRU for access to the raw data. They were stone-walled at every turn. Fact or fiction?

Prof. Jones wrote that climate skeptics “have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send it to anyone.”

How can anyone defend Jones? We shouldn’t need to remind anyone of the Bush efforts to conceal WH email, or the challenges critics of the war have faced trying to get information about who knew what and when. Real questions exist about the core samples and the methodology underpinning climate science claims.

Rather than bring the data to the light of day, climate scientists threatened to destroy or delete their work. Had Jones and company simply allowed all-comers access to the core data underpinning their claims there would have been no ‘criminal’ hack. Why wouldn’t Jones and company let others see their core work? The only plausible explanation, IMHO, is Jones et al knew their work would not stand up to aggressive examination.

When so-called ‘progressives’ defend stonewalling, data-deletion, and academic dis-honesty, environmentalists know that there’s even more reason to bring the facts, all of them, to the public. The cover-up and the CRU fraud both stink.  

Which is it

I mean you are after all uncounted secret US “intelligence” agencies.  The NSA, the CIA, Naval, Marine, Army, Air Force, NSO supposedly all under the umbrella of Homeboy Stupidity.  You all suck apparently.

Pique the Geek 20091206: Botulinum Toxin (Botox)

Botox is in the news all of the time because of its use as wrinkle reducer, but it has many more uses than that, and a very long history.  The proper name is botulinum toxin, and is a neurotoxin produced by the common soil bacterium Clostridium botulinum.  This bacterium is an obligate anaerobe, meaning that it is poisoned by oxygen.

As a matter of fact, many bacteria of this genus are obligate anaerobes, and more than one are causes of human and animal disease.  In addition, they are also spore formers, which is the mechanism that they use to survive times when they are exposed to oxygen.

To buhdydharma… I DO understand…

Buhdydharma has asked for our help.  Some of us are unable to help financially, others are able.  But, after reading his essay, this part of it struck me:

I cannot express to you the psychological blow it was for me, after decades of taking perhaps excessive pride in having worked my way up from nothing to a position of relative success, to be suddenly crippled and unable to support myself.

I can fully understand, and buhdy, you aren’t the only one who has found themselves in this situation…

Yes, I am hanging out here. :) (If that’s OK.)

Hey guys –

So I understand that some of you are kind of worried about the GBCW that I posted on Dkos yesterday (well, early this morning), and I’ve had a few requests from DD folks to just delete that diary, take a break from The Kos, and then come back when I’m ready.

Yeah. I’m not going to do that. Here’s why:

When I deleted last night’s rant, it was really just the final straw for me. I cried a lot but, today, I don’t regret my decision at all. It was a good, solid decision for me to make, actually, and it frees me up to explore other ways that I can write without all the name-calling bullshit attached to it. I mean, I’d like to start posting here regularly, and maybe a few other places, too. And I’ll probably start up my own website at some point.

I’m 40, ya know? I’m too old for that kind of drama. I don’t want it anymore.

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