Slowly But Surely...Americans Wise Up

Ok but the fear machine has been on idle of late, and that has always been his "ace in the hole"

yes, and the implications of that are a bit frightening.

This is the ultimate tragedy of this administration. These ignorant fools have allowed others to grab what should have been out future.


New York Times
Editorial
The Duplicate Dog
Published: August 5, 2005

The cloning of a dog by South Korean scientists is notable mostly for its display of virtuosity and persistence by the research team. Over the past decade, researchers around the world have cloned a number of mammals, including sheep, mice, cows, goats and pigs. But dogs' reproductive physiology was just too idiosyncratic for easy manipulation. So when a South Korean team announced this week that it had cloned an Afghan puppy, the feat evoked awe and admiration from other researcher

It wasn't easy. A team of about 15 people worked for nearly three years to extract eggs and implant more than 1,000 cloned canine embryos in surrogate mother dogs. They got only three pregnancies, and only one dog that survived into healthy puppyhood. Although the work demonstrated that dogs could indeed be cloned, that's a horrendously poor success rate. Some dog lovers may be salivating for the chance to clone a favored canine, but that prospect seems far off given the arduous nature of the task. An American company, Genetic Savings & Clone, has spent seven years and $19 million in a quest - fruitless so far - to clone a dog.
The Korean team hopes that cloned dogs may someday be used to study the progression of diseases that are similar in dogs and humans and the use of stem cells to cure them. Conservationists hope that cloning may help them preserve some rare dog species from extinction.

But the larger lesson here is that the Koreans are truly a force to be reckoned with in cloning and stem cell research. This team was the first to clone human embryos and extract stem cells from them, and now it is the first to clone a dog, perhaps the most difficult feat in mammalian cloning. The center of gravity in cloning and stem cell research may be shifting abroad while American efforts are slowed by taboos and financing restrictions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05fri2.html?

Here is another example

New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist

Design for Confusion

By Paul Krugman
Published: August 5, 2005

I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.

Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.
Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."
"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."
Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.
You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.
The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.
There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?
Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.
Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.
Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians have a deep hatred for Darwinism. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed the theory of evolution for the Columbine school shootings. But sheer political power hasn't been enough to get creationism into the school curriculum. The theory of evolution has overwhelming scientific support, and the country isn't ready - yet - to teach religious doctrine in public schools.
But what if creationists do to evolutionary theory what corporate interests did to global warming: create a widespread impression that the scientific consensus has shaky foundations?
Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone. But intelligent design, which spreads doubt about evolution without being too overtly religious, may succeed where creation science failed.
The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05krugman.html

Is the American electorate dumb, or just slow?
They voted him president twice.
As the saying goes
Fool me once shame on you.
Fool me twice shame on me.

At this point the only way to stop the bleeding,figuratively speaking, is by vote in 06

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/bushvideos/v/bushfoolme.htm

You should vote in every election. As the saying used to go (in The Democratic Territory of Chicago) vote early and vote often. The main thing here being that a person should get out and vote. Perhaps if the Democrats stopped moaning and groaning long enough they would be able to get themselves to the polling places and make the difference they keep crying about. Face it honey, it won't happen by standing 2 blocks away on a stump of wood screaming at the passersby about what is wrong with the nation. Each of us who is a citizen of The United States has both a right and a responsibility to vote.


As for the supposed chaos and disarray; I have yet to see evidence of it and actually have seen a wonderful improvement and return to common values during the last 4 years.

What common values have you seen return, sturgis?

Morality for one thing, honesty for another. There is also the decent way of thinking about our nation. No, clearly not everybody is doing this and it is a slow process but the changes are beginning and that puts a smile on my face. Just knowing when I awaken in the morning that a man who believes in this country is in charge, a man who has integrity and decency and helps me to breathe easier and sleep more soundly.

Sturgis
Do you include the attack and the quagmire that is Iraq in your common values.

au1929

What attack? We went into Iraq with the belief that there was a need to be there. All evidence, which even the Democrats believed at the time, showed that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction there. In the months since we have been trying to help the nation of Iraq rebuild and regroup. It is a heavily fractured nation with people of many different backgrounds and will not be an easy job; however, it can be done if we use some of that American perseverance which helped make The United States a united country.

As to the quagmire, it is just a temporary setback, it is nowhere near to even resembling a quagmire, which will be alleviated and repaired over the coming months. Every repair has moments where things may seem hopeless; and yet, if you stick with it and continue working on the repairs, eventually things turn around and a beautiful end product is revealed.

Put it away....you've had enough for today.

In what measurable way has morality increased? Honesty increased? And decent thinking about our country increased?

In what way do you feel the man in charge has shown more integrity and decency?

Oh my... Sturgis, I gotta tell you, every peaceful wink you get at night is in direct conflict with every toss and turn I make as a result of our country being led by a nutcase, IMHO, who doesn't have the wherewithal of knowing his behind from his elbow. I think a few too many cranial cells were damaged during the drinking stage of his life to hold our future in the palms of his, and his God's, hands.

My children are scared. The things they mention remind me of the things we used to say in the late 60s when we were scared too. We had no faith in our leadership. Neither do our youth, or at least not the ones I have contact with. It's almost as if I've transplanted myself back into the days of Viet Nam when we were fighting against the 'evil enemy' that wanted to take us over.

I have never been a political activist, but I became one last November. I will do everything I can to ensure that the theocratic campaigns of the far right are defeated and control of the White House and Congress is taken away from the lunatics. We need to search for a moderate who isn't looking for a boogie-man around every corner. Jim Jeffords is my hero. I see in him a Vermonter who is true to his spirit, his independent sense of morality, and who stood up for what he believed was moral and just. That was NOT GWB and his cronies.

The fact that you sleep well with GWB in the White House makes me nervous. Even though I left Vt before Bernie Sanders went to Washington, my family voted mostly Republican (although I'm an avowed Libertarian) and I grew up with fond memories of Winston Prouty and George Aiken in Congress. Those were the days, eh?

To think we have come from a day when morality, honesty and decency meant treating each other with respect and dignity to a day when you can define it as blowing the bejesus out of everyone who doesn't want to be 'just like us' makes me *very* nervous.

Sweet dreams.

Oh, come on... You don't really believe this wasn't a smokescreen from the beginning do you? I grew up in Vt too and we aren't really that gullible. The most pathetic, even tragic, outcome of the events leading up to the attack was the discredit done to Colin Powell and the pablum he forcefed to the UN.

Rebuild and regroup? Ok, let's assume for a minute they wanted to regroup (rebuilding would not have been necessary without our input). You say, 'it can be done if we persevere'. What makes you so sure they want a democracy? Because we want them to want one? Maybe their idea of regrouping was something else altogether.

Quagmire? You call this a quagmire? I call it chaos with The Great White Hope of The United States shoving it's idea of 'good' down the throats of those who we think are 'evil'.

Perseverance to a beautiful end product, eh? I'm glad you have your dreams, sturgis.

To quote from the CNN poll on Bush that Bear posted at the start of this thread.

"The portion of respondents who consider Bush honest has dropped slightly from January, when 53 percent described him that way while 45 percent did not. Now, people are just about evenly split on that issue -- with 48 percent saying he is honest and 50 percent saying he is not."

while i'm glad that you are a happy person, i gotta tell ya that i fully disagree that bush is all that moral, all that honest or that he has much personal integrity and decency.

frankly, in view of the country's current status, on all fronts, i find him to be the worst president of my lifetime. and not just because of the war in iraq.