How Dare They?

Chutzpah: audacity, effrontery, nerve, cojones etc. G.W. Bush accuses Democrats of playing politics in trying to determine the truth about why 8 US Attorneys were fired, especially after the Bush administration has given several different reasons for the firings. This from an administration that has made the use of politics an ARTFORM in obtaining power, keeping power and in "running" government. Should we laugh or cry?

G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney slam Democrats for not supporting the troops. This from two guys (both of whom refused to fight in Vietnam) who basically mislead us into a stupid unwinable war with too few troops that were not equipped with personal armor or vehicle armor and still are not to this very day. These two men are directly responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

These men want Democrats to "join" them in doing the peoples business. Quite a change in tune from the last six years when Democrats were basically treated as though they were not around in Congress. Does anyone accept the notion that oversight of the excutive branch might be doing the peoples business?

D. J. Dionne asks why are the principles that the Republicans held so dear during the Clinton administration no longer operative? The Pew poll results released last week indicate that people no longer support the Republican "resurgence" of the last decade. And, G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney are likely the reason.

# 10,000

10,000th visitor at 10:55 PM from West Hartford, Connecticut. They evidently came to see the picture of the mass of Ascaris worms published quite some time ago. Nice.

Today I also had visitors from Spain, Canada, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Sweden, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Egypt, Slovakia and the Russian Federation.

Someone spent an hour and 43 minutes looking through 30 pages. What's that all about? Maybe they forgot to shut down their browser.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Rosina (Joyce DiDonato), Count Almaviva (Juan Diego Flórez) and Figaro (Peter Mattei) onstage at the Met.

I'm listening to the Barber of Seville by Gioacchino Rossini on NCPR. I'm not a big opera fan but I definitely like this opera. Who isn't familiar with Largo al Factotum performed below by Tito Gobbi.

World TB Day - How We Are Doing?

Today is World TB Day. It commemorates March 24, 1882, the day Robert Koch presented his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculsosis as the cause of Tuberculosis. Koch received the Nobel Prize for this discovering in 1905.

TB is very prevalent worldwide and almost 3 million persons a year die from the disease (when including those dually infected with HIV). TB has been treatable with drugs up until a drug resistant M. tuberculosis strain appeared some years ago. Now the health care system has to catch up in combating the new TB strain.

10,000th Visitor

This blog should have its 10,000th visitor sometime later today or maybe tomorrow as weekends are usually pretty slow. It's nice to know people read this blog, although I don't really understand why. It's really a pretty eclectic mix of comments and rants. My original idea was to make this blog specifically about goings on in the Adirondacks. But, thankfully, this is a pretty sleepy area of the country as far as interesting material for commentary. We can only hope it stays that way. I like to comment on national politics, science and religion. Of course, politics and religion are usually not polite topics for conversation, at least at the dinner table. The 10,000th visitor will win....well nothing.... other than my heartfelt thanks for stopping by.

BTW...if you do want more coverage of Adirondack and North Country issues definitely visit Adirondack Almanack.

Democrats Can't Handle the Truth

That's why people in the Bush administration have to lie. Here's AG Gonzales several days ago:

I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on … That’s basically what I knew as attorney general.

Now new email communications show that he was involved.

Several documents released by the Justice Department tonight, including Gonzales's appointment calendar, show that the attorney general and his deputy, Paul McNulty, participated in an hour-long meeting about the firings on Nov. 27. Another e-mail provided new evidence the White House was involved in the firings.

See, this is why Bush advisors can't appear before Congress under oath and with a transcript being taken. If that happened, they'd have to tell the truth. Democrats can't handle the truth so I guess they are doing us a favor.

Does anyone believe that Rove and Miers would tell the truth before Congressional committees if they were not first sworn in? Is anyone that gullible?

Universal Health Care

Is Universal Health Care coming to the USA in the near future? I sure do support it. I could retire tomorrow if I had free healthcare. Tomorrow, in Las Vegas, a forum called "A New Leadership on Health Care" will be held. Most of the Democrat candidates for president will be there to tell us what their ideas are for the future of health care in the USA.

We have 47 million people in the USA without health insurance. Over 1/4 of those uncovered individuals live in families that make between $25,000 -49,999 a year. Nine million children are uninsured.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden have single payer national health insurance, Great Britain and Spain have national health services and France and Germany have highly-regulated, universal, multi-payer health insurance systems. Yet the richest, most powerful nation on Earth can't do the same?

The USA ranks 40th in infant mortality rate! Cuba has a slightly better infant mortality rate than does the USA! Yet we spend almost twice as much per person on health care as do most developed nations.

G.W. Bush: His legacy

What has G.W. Bush done to the Republican party? A year after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the number of people willing to identify themselves as Republicans started dropping. Why is that? Is it because of the non-stop intolerant cultural differences many Republicans like to preach? The mismanagement of the so-called "War on Terror"? Or have Republicans realized that you can't cut taxes and continue to pay billions of dollars a month to run a war in Iraq. Just take a look at the little cost of the war in Iraq clock in the upper right corner of this blog. See how many seconds it takes to spend what you make in a year. It's good that many Republicans are coming to realize what a disaster this President has been for their party and our country.

James Randi: A Great Skeptic

James Randi (The Amazing Randi) is a "magician" and the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi has a standing offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove, in a controlled setting, that they have extraordinary or supernatural powers. Below you can watch Randi expose James Hydrick, Gung Fu man extraordinarie. Hydrick has cool hair, huh?



Click "here" to watch YouTube videos of other people James Randi has exposed.

Wellness Fair: An Opportunity for Critical Thinking

Here is the letter I wrote to the Editor of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. It was published yesterday. It concerns an article that was published a few days ago.

Well over 120 years ago in Saranac Lake, NY, Dr. E. L. Trudeau was carrying on experiments using the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. Trudeau was utilizing a technique in the relatively new field of microbiology called the scientific method. Dr. Trudeau did these experiments at a time when a large number of physicians in the USA did not believe in the germ theory of disease. There is no question that he was a man ahead of his time.

Fast forward to the year 2007. Saranac Lake High School Wellness Class students organize a Wellness fair that includes “Chakra” readings. The front page of our newspaper features a picture of a Chakra practioner (?) dangling a charm (?) over a persons body to give them a reading (?). Chakras are an ancient Eastern wellness belief based on energy systems throughout a body. We can only hope that this opportunity was used to educate students about the scientific method. The scientific method is based on gathering observable, empirical, measurable evidence that is subjected to principles of reasoning.

Maybe Chakra is what our system of medicine has been lacking. If so, what is the measurable evidence that Chakra techniques can measure energy systems? What experiments are being done to show that these techniques are actually effective in accomplishing their goals? These are serious questions that can enhance a student’s capacity to think critically.

The National Institutes of Health actually has a center dedicated to investigating alternative and complementary medicine. It’s called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Yes, they are doing studies on “Energy Medicine”. Unfortunately, putative energy fields (such as Chakra) have thus far defied measurement by reproducible methods.

It is of concern that we as a nation are becoming less and less knowledgeable about the natural world. How can people make intelligent decisions in today’s world without an understanding of science? Students should be taught to distinguish between real science and pseudoscience.

Maybe I'll be accused of not being open minded. But being open minded means being open to all ideas, which I think I am. It refers to someone who considers ideas based on their merits and rejects ideas that do not appear to be rational. Being open minded does not mean you cannot reject bad ideas. If you believe all ideas without any basis or proof, you are just being credulous. I think our students should be taught to be skeptical. They should be taught to examine claims in an objective, scientific manner. Skepticism is all about testing ideas for their validity.

Psycho Dad

You might have guessed that I was a "Married with Children" fan. I especially liked "Psycho Dad".

White House Advisors Testify

Pres. Bush will allow Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify before Congress (concerning US Attorney firings) but in private, not under oath and no transcript can be kept. Why would they need these conditions? Obviously, because they don't want the public to see how they dodge questions or tell lies. Considering the lies (misstatements, mischaracterizations) already told by members of this administration, it would be a waste of everyones time if these two testified without being sworn. Are you willing to give Bush and/or his advisors the benefit of the doubt?

President Clinton allowed 31 of his aides to testify before Congress on 47 different occasions. What do you think Republicans were saying when Bill Clinton claimed executive privilege?

The White House has to claim executive privilege here because they know that more investigations of the executive branch are coming down the pike. Investigations that they fear much more than "Purgegate".

Leonidas

I saw the movie and I liked it a lot.

A Magic Man Done It

Understanding Islam

I'm going to attempt to read the Qur'an (or at least expert interpretations of it) in hopes of better understanding Islam. Qur'an means something like to read or recite in Arabic. It has 114 chapters called suras, some are long and some are only a sentence or two long. I'm certain I won't understand the Qur'an just as I find the Old Testament somewhat difficult to understand. So I guess I will be forced to search the Internet for sources that can help me better understand what I read. The translated titles of some of the chapters is somewhat different. For example, the cow; the women; the dinner table; the ant; the spider etc. I'm guessing I won't get through the whole thing (it's about as long as the New Test Testament) and I am certain I won't understand it because even scholars of Islam have difficulty interpreting it.

What do followers of Islam believe? They believe in one God, Angels, Prophets, the Qur'an (they also believe that the Torah and Bible were revealed by God), Judgement day and Heaven and Hell. Leave out the Qur'an and it sounds kind of like Christianity. Followers of Islam, like Christians, also have fallen into cults and sects.

There is way too much false information out there about Islam. Did you know the Qur'an only mentions "suicide" once (4:29)? And that suicide is forbidden. But just as Christians believe that martyrs are rewarded so too do followers of Islam. Much of the misunderstanding of Islam is due to confusing the Hadith, a collection of the traditons and sayings of Muhammad, with the Qur'an.

Timeline Iraq War

Monday March 19 marks four years of war in Iraq. If you need to be reminded about how we got there and what has happened over the last four years go to this timeline at Think Progess.

College Professors are All Liberals

Not Prof. Mike S. Adams, Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington. Here's Dr. Mike defending Ann Coulter and her "faggot" comment.

But enough about what Ann ought not to do. Here’s what she should do immediately:

1. Start a website called “Global War on Fags” today.

2. Begin writing essays calling for the cleansing and purification of society via the mass murder of homosexuals.

3. Distribute videos on the website showing the actual murders of homosexuals.

4. Circulate instructions on how to bomb gay bath houses in San Francisco.

5. Circulate a “battle dispatch” to give people specific information on America’s most notorious bath houses.

6. Apply for a job at Kent State University.

At first, the cries for Ann Coulter’s imprisonment will be loud. But once Kent State gets wind of the story (and possession of her job application) a happy ending will soon be in sight (not incite). In fact, I predict that Ann will soon be a professor at Kent State University with good retirement benefits, a health plan, and tenure.

Read the whole thing here.

I don't really get the Kent State reference unless Dr. Mike wrote a column about how those dirty hippy demonstrators at Kent State deserved to be killed back in 1970.

Here is the last sentence of the "mission statement" of Dr. Mike's department at UNC-Wilmington:

The department seeks to increase knowledge of human society from a global perspective and to enhance understanding of the various multicultural segments of American Society.

Oops!

I forgot to celebrate my blogging anniversary. Two years on March 10th. Over 800 posts, almost 10,000 visitors. Thanks for reading.

Why Progressives are Angry

Paul Waldman explains it pretty well here.

Happy Pi Day

I almost forgot. Happy Pi day everyone! Go here to see one million digits of Pi.