George Mason misspoke. He was (of course) a slaveholder, and he could not have included his slaves amongst those that he described as "the whole of the people."
He also refused to sign the Constitution. One of three at the Constitutional Convention that did so.
"Instead, In 2015, Florida sued the Federal government along with 23 other states “over a plan to reduce carbon emissions nationally, claiming the law will increase electric rates.” Yeah, right, because free sunshine and wind are more expensive than pricey coal and natural gas."
I thought these guys believed in the free market. Put the two out on the free market and let the cheaper one win. Oh, but...
A good reason to keep your phone OFF (that is, not connected to internet or towers) unless you are actually using it (making a call or expecting one shortly). This is what I do, and not only for this reason.
Thanks, Juan, for watching this and giving me the run-down. I've had it with listening to the administration liars on the various talk and "news" shows, we just skip over them hoping for something better later on. I've had it with Kelleyanne, Sean and now this guy.
I have better things to do in the few years remaining to me than listen to liars.
Correction: Jeanette Rankin was one of 50 members of the House and 56 members of Congress to vote against US entry into WW I, according to her article in Wikipedia. Jeanette Rankin lost her next election. She eventually was re-elected to Congress just in time to cast the sole vote against the entry of the US into WW II, after which she lost the next election (to Mike Mansfield) and did not run again.
The article linked to saying that "climate denial has failed" seems actually to show the opposite, in that the polls cited say that the number of Americans (at least) who think it's a big problem has declined significantly.
What I don't understand is why the picture accompanying this article on the main blog page and in the still that you see on the video before playing it seems to be of Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto who became notorious when he was caught on video smoking crack:
The report was highly misleading. The 18% increase (for example) is 18% of a very small number since most people die of things other than colon cancer.
By contrast, according to NBC News last night, the increased risk of smoking, I don't recall if it was a pack a day but something like that, is 2000%. Even on a very small number (nonsmokers don't often contract lung cancer) that's a huge increase and is one of the several reasons why a lifelong smoking habit is one of the leading preventable causes of death.
Bush & Co. were planning to take out Saddam Hussein from Day 1 of his administration. 9/11 was just an excuse. It was obvious to those of us who were paying attention that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. His was a completely secular regime whose enemy was Islamic fundamentalism. Yet you couldn't convince the Very Serious People of this fact.
Juan, I have a suggestion. The first sentence of each of your bullets is a "myth" that you then argue against in the rest of the bullet. I suggest distinguishing the myth from your rebuttal by some typographical convention, e.g., boldfacing the myth (and remarking on it at the beginning of the article) and leaving the rebuttal in plain text.
"And, with Iraq currently in a state of armed conflict, certain violent acts that are forbidden during peacetime become permitted under international law, so IS lawyers could claim that peacetime rules no longer apply."
From WikiPedia's article on 'chutzpah':
Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan".
Whether it is an impact crater or an uplift can be easily answered by looking at the geology. An uplift will show layers exposed in a particular order, with the lower layers towards the center and the higher ones at the periphery. An impact crater would have a very different profile and in particular should have shocked rocks near the center. I'm pretty sure that the geologists have looked closely at this, so one would have to go with their conclusion, which would be the uplift and not the impact crater.
I'm an astronomer, by the way. I've met Phil at astronomical meetings. He's good.
"Why such a facility would not have blast walls up and restrictions on vehicular traffic baffles me and tells you that the MoI in Iraq is not very good, which is why it has lost like 40% of the country this summer."
@Travis Bickle, yes, he was a tenured professor who resigned his tenured position at one university so as to accept this position at UIUC, according to this article:
At the end of the article it notes that the AAUP is already aware of this situation and has issued a statement. I would not be surprised if further action is taken (or maybe I should put it that I would be surprised if additional action is not taken by the AAUP).
There is also a petition in support of Prof. Salaita, noted at the end of the article. Here is the link:
"that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, "
Breaking (yesterday) news (see New York Times) indicates that the period after "Happiness" may be a comma, as in the other phrases in this passage. The PBS Newshour's last piece yesterday discusses this with the scholar who did the research and published this result.
...not to mention the fact that (a) Hobby Lobby's pension plans are invested in corporations that provide exactly the contraceptive methods that they claim to object to and (b) Until recently, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plan offered those same methods that they say they object to; they only dropped that coverage a few years ago and approximately contemporaneously to the time they filed their lawsuit.
I was surprised that the clip from Juan Cole was missing from the video he posted. It was actually in the second half of the piece, and can be found here (courtesy of my wife):
There would have been no chance for the Supremes to dabble in politics as they did had Nader not run his, and I repeat a correct adjective, narcissistic presidential bid. Yes, the Supremes did a terrible, political thing (and it appears that Sandra Day O'Connor has repented to some degree), but without Nader, it would not have happened.
So don't blame the Supremes primarily. Blame Nader first, because he gave the Supremes the opportunity to misbehave.
"Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW I, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations."
This is a bit confusing. I meant to say:
"Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW II, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations, as happened after WW I."
I wouldn't disagree with "Bill", and it is exactly what I was thinking. WW II ended with a generous peace that did not try to exact huge pounds of flesh from the Germans, but instead tried to bring that (devastated) nation back in. Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW I, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations.
I would have mentioned the better outcome from WW II, but I would have thought it obvious.
Just the fact of occupation (as also in Japan, BTW) doesn't mean that the peace after WW II wasn't much better and more generously managed by the allied powers than it was after WW I.
What if the outcome of WW I had been managed more like the outcome of WW II was? Would there ever have been a WW II?
Once Nazism arose it was probably one of those "very few".
However, a more generous peace at the end of the First World War might have avoided the Second by preventing the punitive measures that led to an impossible political situation in Germany in the 1920s, which in turn led to the rise of the Nazis.
Eschewing the tendency to rush into conflicts militarily does not necessarily mean isolationism. We'd be (and have been) much more effective using our power to provide humanitarian relief than deciding on military action as a first resort.
I'd love to have a Chevy Volt; but I live in rural Vermont on a dirt road up a mountain, and during winter and mud season I would not be able to get around. I need an all wheel drive or 4-wheel drive Chevy Volt.
Muhammad at least was a historical person. On the other hand, there may not have been a historical Jesus. For example, Richard Carrier is a proponent of this view:
If the WikiPedia date of birth is correct, he would have been 15 or 16. Perhaps the "five" in the CEII statement is a typo, and it should be "fifteen".
Given that both the statement of the CEII and the WikiPedia article are hastily written, it's not clear which (if either) is correct. I have heard the 2002 emigration date from other independent sources.
...not to mention the absolutely silly idea that the Al-Qaeda religious fanatics were in cahoots with their sworn enemy, the very secular Saddam Hussein. I tried to explain this at the time to Bill Hobby (former Lieutenant Governor of Texas) but he had totally bought into this stupid idea.
Given that 32% of these contributions go to religion, it would appear that the GOP is waging a war against religion in general, and against Christianity in particular (since most of the 32% is likely Christian).
Juan, your third paragraph is incomplete. Last sentence terminates in the middle:
"But is it true that Obama’s foreign policy is ‘blowing up in our faces?’ And how could that have been prevented? Rembember, Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, began calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down on Feb 1, 2011. . It is hard to see Romney"
Some people think that there was no historical Jesus at all; that the figure of Jesus was possibly a mish-mash of reports of various people, or made up by midrash on the Hebrew Bible, or made up from the many various murdered-and-resurrected savior/god figures from the ancient world, or some combination of these. For example,
No, Volcker was the one who reigned in inflation. He was called in to end the high inflation because of the inflation caused by the aftermath of the Vietnam war (again, not paid for). Please do not spread untruths.
And don't try to spin this. I lived through this, and I know what happened.
Even if Israel tried to invade Iran (not a contiguous state), that invasion would fail. Just look at the size of the populations. Israel isn't invading Iran now, for obvious reasons. What makes anyone think that Iran "having the bomb" would discourage them from invading Iran any more than they are already discouraged from doing this?
I was thinking after I read Juan's main article and while I was watching Norm Coleman defend Romney against Nick Burns, an experienced diplomat that I have always found to be truthful, that the Republican Party has now jumped the shark.
On the acceptance of lies by the public, it seems that people are more willing to accept lies by their own political parties than by the other political party (no surprise). Here's what Dan Ariely said in a recent interview on the Diane Rehm show:
The Chinese dictionary website even knows the company by name. You can get the characters and the pronunciation by typing the pinyin 'huawei' into the box. There are two results, one of which is the company name.
P.S. I note that the Chinese dictionary also has a pronunciation tool, that can ge accessed by clicking on the >> icon next to the characters and mousing over to the "speaker" icon.
where they have downloadable apps that will pronounce each syllable for you. It won't get you the tones (for that you need the characters) but unless you know Chinese anyway, the tones won't make any difference to you. The WikiPedia article seems confused about the tones, giving different tones in different parts of the article (and, it seems, wrong tones in 3 out of four cases).
I was thinking that this might be what you meant (I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Pittsburgh). Still, it was kind of strange to see this. Does the Western part of the state have a significant Muslim population?
I had a problem with someone posting article changes on my WikiPedia article that were not true. I'd change them back, and then it would be repeated. I eventually complained to one of the super-editors of WikiPedia, who protected the page and prevented further vandalism.
Try the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page.
Partly this result is due to an inappropriate election system. Probably many (most?) of the people who voted for Sabahi and for the liberal Muslim candidate would have preferred either of these to the two who came out on top. Some form of preference voting, in which the voters rank the candidates in order of preference, or just vote "yes" for those candidates they approve of and "no" for those they don't would have given more satisfactory results.
The second of these is probably the simplest to implement and from a voting theory point of view (Arrow's theorem) probably the one least likely to produce problematic results. All of these systems have the advantage that a runoff would almost certainly not be required. In approval voting, for example, the candidate who got the most "yes" votes would win...an exact tie is very improbable.
I wasn't sure whether it was assault and battery, but one of the individuals who knew about it (and may have participated in it) and is a lawyer says that it was (the cutting of the hair in particular would be battery).
Marie Burns has a good article about this. Note the difference between Romney and G. W. Bush.
Mitt's non-apology apology gets nowhere. He excuses it as "hi-jinks".
Hi-jinks, my ass. What he did was to bully this kid, and commit assault. It doesn't matter from that point of view whether he thought the kid was gay or not. It was still bullying. It was still assault. And it tells us just what sort of person Mitt was. And his excuse shows us just what sort of person he is now.
Of course, those that were there in the 60s know full well that homophobia was alive and kicking then as now.
I have never trusted FaceBook and I have never had an account, except that someone unknown created a FaceBook account for me without my permission; I did not have control of the account because obviously I did not have the password. The account was based on my WikiPedia entry. For all I know, FaceBook itself created this account (I have no evidence of this, but how else do you explain this?)
I complained multiple times, and eventually they deleted the account.
I still do not trust FaceBook and I will never establish an account with them.
Juan, when you say "The odds of an American being struck by lightning in any given year are roughly one in a million," I hope you mean "any individual American." If that's what you mean (and it would mean that approximately 300 Americans are hit struck by lightning every year, not implausible), then what you meant is OK. But if you meant "any random American," then the two figures aren't compatible.
I just happened to listen to a recent interview, in which it was pointed out that nuclear is not a good choice for carbon reduction. The reason is that it is very, very expensive. The same amount of money, used in other ways, would be much more effective at reducing greenhouse gases.
Archie Bunker's solution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lDb0Dn8OXE
And some suggestions from the Netherlands:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dutch-tv-nra-guns_us_59db1b36e4b0f6eed3514c55?utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=main_fb&utm_medium=facebook&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
George Mason misspoke. He was (of course) a slaveholder, and he could not have included his slaves amongst those that he described as "the whole of the people."
He also refused to sign the Constitution. One of three at the Constitutional Convention that did so.
From the New York Times today: "I Want 'Allah Akbar' Back"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/opinion/manhattan-truck-attack-akbar-terrorism.html
"Instead, In 2015, Florida sued the Federal government along with 23 other states “over a plan to reduce carbon emissions nationally, claiming the law will increase electric rates.” Yeah, right, because free sunshine and wind are more expensive than pricey coal and natural gas."
I thought these guys believed in the free market. Put the two out on the free market and let the cheaper one win. Oh, but...
Incomplete sentence: "Three years after it announced its caliphate in Mosul, it is now dealing..."
Used to be Mar-a-Lago.
A good reason to keep your phone OFF (that is, not connected to internet or towers) unless you are actually using it (making a call or expecting one shortly). This is what I do, and not only for this reason.
Thanks, Juan, for watching this and giving me the run-down. I've had it with listening to the administration liars on the various talk and "news" shows, we just skip over them hoping for something better later on. I've had it with Kelleyanne, Sean and now this guy.
I have better things to do in the few years remaining to me than listen to liars.
And Trump wants NASA to stop investigating climate change. Game over.
Correction: Jeanette Rankin was one of 50 members of the House and 56 members of Congress to vote against US entry into WW I, according to her article in Wikipedia. Jeanette Rankin lost her next election. She eventually was re-elected to Congress just in time to cast the sole vote against the entry of the US into WW II, after which she lost the next election (to Mike Mansfield) and did not run again.
The article linked to saying that "climate denial has failed" seems actually to show the opposite, in that the polls cited say that the number of Americans (at least) who think it's a big problem has declined significantly.
"The top 400 taxpayers filed 0.0003 of the nation’s 147.4 million tax returns but reported 1.17 percent of the nation’s total income."
I think that should be "0.0003 percent", otherwise the numbers don't come out right.
You'll have to pry my iPhone from my cold, dead fingers!
What I don't understand is why the picture accompanying this article on the main blog page and in the still that you see on the video before playing it seems to be of Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto who became notorious when he was caught on video smoking crack:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Ford
This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the subject of the article, and I didn't see any face resembling his in the video when scanned it.
The report was highly misleading. The 18% increase (for example) is 18% of a very small number since most people die of things other than colon cancer.
By contrast, according to NBC News last night, the increased risk of smoking, I don't recall if it was a pack a day but something like that, is 2000%. Even on a very small number (nonsmokers don't often contract lung cancer) that's a huge increase and is one of the several reasons why a lifelong smoking habit is one of the leading preventable causes of death.
Bush & Co. were planning to take out Saddam Hussein from Day 1 of his administration. 9/11 was just an excuse. It was obvious to those of us who were paying attention that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. His was a completely secular regime whose enemy was Islamic fundamentalism. Yet you couldn't convince the Very Serious People of this fact.
Boy, as the son of a clergyman, I wish that people would not use "reverend" as a noun. It's an adjective, as in "The Reverend Mr. Jones".
Probably a lost cause, though.
https://www.facebook.com/andyborowitz?fref=nf
Andy Borowitz: "The end of the Patriot Act means that if the NSA wants all our personal info it will have to log onto Facebook."
"This is not the first time Israeli policies towards PNF players."
This sentence no verb.
"Daesh killed embers of the Albu Mahall"
'embers'? Do you mean 'members'?
Note: He is by training an aerospace engineer, not a scientist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon
There's another Harvard-Smithsonian employee (actually a scientist) involved in his work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy
In my opinion the paper discussed in that article should have been retracted.
Juan, I have a suggestion. The first sentence of each of your bullets is a "myth" that you then argue against in the rest of the bullet. I suggest distinguishing the myth from your rebuttal by some typographical convention, e.g., boldfacing the myth (and remarking on it at the beginning of the article) and leaving the rebuttal in plain text.
"And, with Iraq currently in a state of armed conflict, certain violent acts that are forbidden during peacetime become permitted under international law, so IS lawyers could claim that peacetime rules no longer apply."
From WikiPedia's article on 'chutzpah':
Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan".
Whether it is an impact crater or an uplift can be easily answered by looking at the geology. An uplift will show layers exposed in a particular order, with the lower layers towards the center and the higher ones at the periphery. An impact crater would have a very different profile and in particular should have shocked rocks near the center. I'm pretty sure that the geologists have looked closely at this, so one would have to go with their conclusion, which would be the uplift and not the impact crater.
I'm an astronomer, by the way. I've met Phil at astronomical meetings. He's good.
Nuri al-Maliki: Forgotten, but not gone.
"Why such a facility would not have blast walls up and restrictions on vehicular traffic baffles me and tells you that the MoI in Iraq is not very good, which is why it has lost like 40% of the country this summer."
Juan, I am at a loss. What is 'Mol'?
@Travis Bickle, yes, he was a tenured professor who resigned his tenured position at one university so as to accept this position at UIUC, according to this article:
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/07/return_of_the_blacklist_cowardice_and_censorship_at_the_university_of_illinois/
At the end of the article it notes that the AAUP is already aware of this situation and has issued a statement. I would not be surprised if further action is taken (or maybe I should put it that I would be surprised if additional action is not taken by the AAUP).
There is also a petition in support of Prof. Salaita, noted at the end of the article. Here is the link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/phyllis-m-wise-we-demand-corrective-action-on-the-scandalous-firing-of-palestinian-american-professor-dr-steven-salaita?share_id=mcfJRvcjlY&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition
Is the AAUP on this case? Sounds like they should be.
This came to my attention today. Indeed, we are being subjected to very slick propaganda.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/israelgaza-conflict-the-secret-report-that-helps-israelis-to-hide-facts-9630765.html
"it has even nabbed singer Willy Nelson in Texas"
'Willy'-->'Willie'
Juan, the third-from-last paragraph is nearly the same as the next-to-last paragraph. Don't know where this came in.
"that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, "
Breaking (yesterday) news (see New York Times) indicates that the period after "Happiness" may be a comma, as in the other phrases in this passage. The PBS Newshour's last piece yesterday discusses this with the scholar who did the research and published this result.
FWIW.
"They said it was particular invalid with retard to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria."
'retard'-->'regard'
...not to mention the fact that (a) Hobby Lobby's pension plans are invested in corporations that provide exactly the contraceptive methods that they claim to object to and (b) Until recently, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plan offered those same methods that they say they object to; they only dropped that coverage a few years ago and approximately contemporaneously to the time they filed their lawsuit.
"US fracked oil is almost irrelevant when the world is producing 91 million barrels a day and appears to want 100 barrels a day."
I think you meant that sentence to end "100 million barrels a day."
"He also picked up the remnants of the Ottoman-trained officer corps to constitute his new military, almost all of the Sunnis"
'the'-->'them'
"Kurds speak and Indo-European language related to English."
'and'-->'an'
Two relevant cartoons from the Daily Kos:
http://images.dailykos.com/images/82451/lightbox/1187ckCOMIC-ye-olde-inter-nets-1.png?1399421066
http://images.dailykos.com/images/83712/lightbox/1188ckCOMIC-ye-olde-inter-nets-2.png?1400024891
Bill
Juan,
The article says:
"King angrily tweeted his disgust:"
I was expecting to see the tweet after the colon, but it seems to be missing.
Write to ABC News' "This Week" and complain about their featuring this lying hypocrite.
I was surprised that the clip from Juan Cole was missing from the video he posted. It was actually in the second half of the piece, and can be found here (courtesy of my wife):
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-5-2014/breaking-up-bad---mo-mullah--mo-problems
There would have been no chance for the Supremes to dabble in politics as they did had Nader not run his, and I repeat a correct adjective, narcissistic presidential bid. Yes, the Supremes did a terrible, political thing (and it appears that Sandra Day O'Connor has repented to some degree), but without Nader, it would not have happened.
So don't blame the Supremes primarily. Blame Nader first, because he gave the Supremes the opportunity to misbehave.
I wrote:
"Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW I, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations."
This is a bit confusing. I meant to say:
"Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW II, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations, as happened after WW I."
I wouldn't disagree with "Bill", and it is exactly what I was thinking. WW II ended with a generous peace that did not try to exact huge pounds of flesh from the Germans, but instead tried to bring that (devastated) nation back in. Yes, it was occupied, but the goal was always to make it part of the world, instead of punishing it for the fact that it lost WW I, and exacting revenge in the form of punitive reparations.
I would have mentioned the better outcome from WW II, but I would have thought it obvious.
Just the fact of occupation (as also in Japan, BTW) doesn't mean that the peace after WW II wasn't much better and more generously managed by the allied powers than it was after WW I.
What if the outcome of WW I had been managed more like the outcome of WW II was? Would there ever have been a WW II?
That is my point.
Once Nazism arose it was probably one of those "very few".
However, a more generous peace at the end of the First World War might have avoided the Second by preventing the punitive measures that led to an impossible political situation in Germany in the 1920s, which in turn led to the rise of the Nazis.
"Some people think war is the answer to every problem. It isn’t even the answer to most problems."
This is entirely too generous to war. War is in fact the answer to very few, if any problems.
BTW, the plural of 'reindeer' is 'reindeer'.
Indeed.
See here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/07/1260869/-Animal-Nuz-177?detail=hide#
Fantastic! I came to love Brubeck and sitar and tabla in college, and to see these combined is a big treat.
Eschewing the tendency to rush into conflicts militarily does not necessarily mean isolationism. We'd be (and have been) much more effective using our power to provide humanitarian relief than deciding on military action as a first resort.
I'd love to have a Chevy Volt; but I live in rural Vermont on a dirt road up a mountain, and during winter and mud season I would not be able to get around. I need an all wheel drive or 4-wheel drive Chevy Volt.
Typo:
'minorit' ..> 'minority'
Muhammad at least was a historical person. On the other hand, there may not have been a historical Jesus. For example, Richard Carrier is a proponent of this view:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/jesus.html
And for an opposing view, Bart Ehrman believes that there was a historical Jesus:
http://www.bartdehrman.com/
Both of these are respected scholars.
If the WikiPedia date of birth is correct, he would have been 15 or 16. Perhaps the "five" in the CEII statement is a typo, and it should be "fifteen".
"Tamerlan Tsarnayev had been living in the USA since he was five years old. He studied engineering at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston."
This is inconsistent with the information that the family emigrated to the U.S. in 2002. See for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_and_Tamerlan_Tsarnaev
Given that both the statement of the CEII and the WikiPedia article are hastily written, it's not clear which (if either) is correct. I have heard the 2002 emigration date from other independent sources.
Salon today (3/19) published a powerful letter from a dying Iraq veteran. Read it here:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/dying_iraq_war_vets_angry_message_to_bush_cheney/
...not to mention the absolutely silly idea that the Al-Qaeda religious fanatics were in cahoots with their sworn enemy, the very secular Saddam Hussein. I tried to explain this at the time to Bill Hobby (former Lieutenant Governor of Texas) but he had totally bought into this stupid idea.
Don't hold back, Juan! Tell us how you really feel!
"A break on Iranian influence in Afghanistan was removed. "
Did you mean to write 'brake'?
Given that 32% of these contributions go to religion, it would appear that the GOP is waging a war against religion in general, and against Christianity in particular (since most of the 32% is likely Christian).
I understand that it was closer to $400 M.
Juan, your third paragraph is incomplete. Last sentence terminates in the middle:
"But is it true that Obama’s foreign policy is ‘blowing up in our faces?’ And how could that have been prevented? Rembember, Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, began calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down on Feb 1, 2011. . It is hard to see Romney"
As aluminum doesn't rust, I don't see why BPA would be used on the inside of soda cans to keep them from rusting!
It's not implausible that Jesus was influenced by Buddhism (if he existed).
http://www.amazon.com/Influenced-Buddhism-Comparative-Thoughts-Gautama/dp/1602062811
As usual, WikiPedia provides a better review of this theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
Some people think that there was no historical Jesus at all; that the figure of Jesus was possibly a mish-mash of reports of various people, or made up by midrash on the Hebrew Bible, or made up from the many various murdered-and-resurrected savior/god figures from the ancient world, or some combination of these. For example,
http://richardcarrier.info/
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/
In this context, a web acquaintance of mine pointed out that if the present King of France can be bald, certainly Jesus can have a wife.
No, Volcker was the one who reigned in inflation. He was called in to end the high inflation because of the inflation caused by the aftermath of the Vietnam war (again, not paid for). Please do not spread untruths.
And don't try to spin this. I lived through this, and I know what happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker
Even if Israel tried to invade Iran (not a contiguous state), that invasion would fail. Just look at the size of the populations. Israel isn't invading Iran now, for obvious reasons. What makes anyone think that Iran "having the bomb" would discourage them from invading Iran any more than they are already discouraged from doing this?
I was thinking after I read Juan's main article and while I was watching Norm Coleman defend Romney against Nick Burns, an experienced diplomat that I have always found to be truthful, that the Republican Party has now jumped the shark.
My heart bleeds for the poor, downtrodden millionaires.
On the acceptance of lies by the public, it seems that people are more willing to accept lies by their own political parties than by the other political party (no surprise). Here's what Dan Ariely said in a recent interview on the Diane Rehm show:
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-08-13/dan-ariely-honest-truth-about-dishonesty-how-we-lie-everyone-especially-ourselves
"There is no go evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program"
I think you may have meant "no good evidence"
The Chinese dictionary website even knows the company by name. You can get the characters and the pronunciation by typing the pinyin 'huawei' into the box. There are two results, one of which is the company name.
P.S. I note that the Chinese dictionary also has a pronunciation tool, that can ge accessed by clicking on the >> icon next to the characters and mousing over to the "speaker" icon.
On the pronunciation of pinyin Chinese words: Go to
http://chinesepod.com/tools/pronunciation
where they have downloadable apps that will pronounce each syllable for you. It won't get you the tones (for that you need the characters) but unless you know Chinese anyway, the tones won't make any difference to you. The WikiPedia article seems confused about the tones, giving different tones in different parts of the article (and, it seems, wrong tones in 3 out of four cases).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei
as reported by pasting the characters into my favorite online Chinese dictionary:
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=%E5%8D%8E%E4%B8%BA
I was thinking that this might be what you meant (I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Pittsburgh). Still, it was kind of strange to see this. Does the Western part of the state have a significant Muslim population?
Interesting article, but having grown up near Philadelphia, I am puzzled that you should call Pennsylvania a "midwestern" state.
I had a problem with someone posting article changes on my WikiPedia article that were not true. I'd change them back, and then it would be repeated. I eventually complained to one of the super-editors of WikiPedia, who protected the page and prevented further vandalism.
Try the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page.
Partly this result is due to an inappropriate election system. Probably many (most?) of the people who voted for Sabahi and for the liberal Muslim candidate would have preferred either of these to the two who came out on top. Some form of preference voting, in which the voters rank the candidates in order of preference, or just vote "yes" for those candidates they approve of and "no" for those they don't would have given more satisfactory results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
The second of these is probably the simplest to implement and from a voting theory point of view (Arrow's theorem) probably the one least likely to produce problematic results. All of these systems have the advantage that a runoff would almost certainly not be required. In approval voting, for example, the candidate who got the most "yes" votes would win...an exact tie is very improbable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
I always put 'human' on the census (and other) forms in answer to these obnoxious questions. These categories are as you say meaningless.
I wasn't sure whether it was assault and battery, but one of the individuals who knew about it (and may have participated in it) and is a lawyer says that it was (the cutting of the hair in particular would be battery).
Marie Burns has a good article about this. Note the difference between Romney and G. W. Bush.
http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/05/the-essential-mitt-romney-2/
Mitt's non-apology apology gets nowhere. He excuses it as "hi-jinks".
Hi-jinks, my ass. What he did was to bully this kid, and commit assault. It doesn't matter from that point of view whether he thought the kid was gay or not. It was still bullying. It was still assault. And it tells us just what sort of person Mitt was. And his excuse shows us just what sort of person he is now.
Of course, those that were there in the 60s know full well that homophobia was alive and kicking then as now.
For another, very clever (daytime) solution, google
soda bottle light bulb
Not only does it recycle old light soda bottles but it brings light into a house that otherwise would not have it.
Article in the Times today is relevant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/why-facebook-is-after-your-kids.html?ref=magazine
I have never trusted FaceBook and I have never had an account, except that someone unknown created a FaceBook account for me without my permission; I did not have control of the account because obviously I did not have the password. The account was based on my WikiPedia entry. For all I know, FaceBook itself created this account (I have no evidence of this, but how else do you explain this?)
I complained multiple times, and eventually they deleted the account.
I still do not trust FaceBook and I will never establish an account with them.
Juan, when you say "The odds of an American being struck by lightning in any given year are roughly one in a million," I hope you mean "any individual American." If that's what you mean (and it would mean that approximately 300 Americans are hit struck by lightning every year, not implausible), then what you meant is OK. But if you meant "any random American," then the two figures aren't compatible.
I just happened to listen to a recent interview, in which it was pointed out that nuclear is not a good choice for carbon reduction. The reason is that it is very, very expensive. The same amount of money, used in other ways, would be much more effective at reducing greenhouse gases.
Typo: 'cousing'-->'cousin'
Juan, don't tell Bush not to vacation in Barcelona!
@don smith,
The "Need to Know" pieces will hit the web at their website, if they have not already done so.
Yes, indeed, the whole show is already there:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/video/video-need-to-know-august-20-2010/3044/
Bill