Bush Economy and You

I made the comment yesterday afternoon, in the presence of a staunch Republican, that incomes are down because of Bush and Republicans (policies). The person immediately became indignant and course claimed that was not true. Republicans have been 'in charge' of our country since the year 2000. An article in this week's Time Magazine called "Why Voters (and Politicians) are Anxious" provides the following statistics (since 2001):

Number of nonfarm jobs: up 2.3%

Gross domestic product: up 11.5%

Business worker productivity: up 18.4%

Domestic corporate profits: up 72%

Median household income: down 0.5%

Yeah the economy is going great guns. But not for you (at least most of you).

Bush Hatred

Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, thinks that Bush hatred has gotten out of hand. First of all, this is guy that Slate has given an honesty of score of c minus. It seems he has written stuff without providing proper credit.

In his column, Jacoby goes on to provide several instances of 'Bush Hatred'.

His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the ``interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a ``fraud" that Bush ``cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another ( Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a ``lying bastard," a ``filth spewer," an ``evil maniac," a ``fuehrer," and a ``terrorist" guilty of ``blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.

Has Bush presided over an American gulag? Well, if a gulag is a place where political prisoners are kept, maybe he has. We will never know whether some of the prisoners are political or not because they are not allowed access to the courts.

Is Bush a latter day Mussolini? Mussolini was a fascist, fascists have various characteristics. This website claims Bush has the characteristics of a fascist and provides examples.

I don't know if Bush was ever personally emeshed in OBL financial dealings but there certainly are unanswered questions about family connections with the bin Ladens.



There certainly are valid reasons why many Democrats and most progressives dislike G.W. Bush:

1. We question whether he was validly elected in 2000.
2. Given that he was, we question why he governs like he was elected by a vast majority.
3. He is a divider, not a uniter. He squandered worldwide goodwill towards the USA after 9/11. Worse, he continues to use 9/11 for political purposes.
4. He is not being held accountable and is incapable of admiting that he may have EVER made a mistake.
5. He is incompetent (Iraq War, Katrina).
6. He lies (we can go into the Plame affair here)
7. He believes he needs to take away protected rights to guarantee our safety.
8. The economy. Federal spending. Federal borrowing. Falling incomes, increased poverty.
9. Keeping us an oil dependent state.
10. His disbelief of science.

So yes Mr. Jacoby, maybe there are actual reasons people in the USA are increasingly becoming disillusioned with your hero G.W. Bush.

Science Buildings

Proposed new science building in China. Inspired by the cell with mitochonria.



Proposed new science building in the USA. Just, joking but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened.

Zipa Dee Doo Dah

No Democrats Allowed

You would think there might be one Democrat in NYC available for the 9/11 memorial service, but I guess not.

THE BEST WAR EVER

Voters need to wake up.

September 11, 2001

Sunday Herald:

Britain gave President Bush a categorical warning to expect multiple airline hijackings by the al-Qaeda network a month before the September 11 attacks which killed nearly 3000 people and triggered the international war against terrorism.

Newsweek:

unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

Independent/UK:

Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil.

NYT:

Egyptian Pres Hosni Mubarak says in interview that Egyptian intelligence warned American officials approximately week before September 11 terrorist attacks

Telegraph:

The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation.

Village Voice:

In June 2001, German intelligence warned the U.S., Britain, and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack; Russian president Vladimir Putin publicly stated that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the U.S. in the summer of 2001 that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets; In late summer 2001, Jordanian intelligence intercepted a message stating that a major attack was being planned inside the U.S. and that aircraft would be used

Inscrutable bunny

He's a great house bunny now and spends alot of time out of his cage.

My Favorite Place in NY - Crown Point

Looking at the barracks through the gate of the fort.



The officers and elisted mens barracks. The museum was openned so I learned that the armory and unfinished elisted barracks that were once here were made of red brick. Thus, when the fort was abandoned the locals tore the buildings down and used the bricks to build homes and chimneys.



The Crown Point truss span bridge looking towards Vermont.



The Crown Point bridge from the ramparts of the fort. Notice the collection of restored Parkard automobiles in the parking lot.

Monty Python

Classic!

Suppressed Science and Escharotic agents

One thing I really enjoy doing when I attend a scientific conference is getting together with my nerdy science buddies from graduate school and laughing over a few beers about how good we are at suppressing cures for cancer etc. We got into science so we could make discoveries that could change the world and then hide them from everyone. It really is quite hillarious.

What am I ranting about? A letter to the editor in todays Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Rather than link to it, let me post the entire letter (actually I will link also in case you think I made this up).

Recently, Ms. Marcia Van Horn of Beltsville, Md., commenting on “Taking your medicine at the point of a gun,” quite properly notes that it is somewhat inflammatory. On the other hand, her statement that “we have not wasted billions of dollars on cancer research with little to show for it” cannot go unchallenged. The fact is that 30 years of expensive cancer research has resulted in very little change in cancer death rates.

There is plenty of evidence that successful cancer treatments have been suppressed. Daniel Haley’s book, “Politics in Healing,” financed by a former member of Congress frustrated in his attempts to promote alternative medicine in the National Institutes of Health, contains information about multiple suppressions. My book, “Suppressed Science,” provides the results of my independent research on this subject.

Haley devotes 35 pages to the Hoxey cancer treatment which Cherrix went to Mexico to obtain. He notes that in 1957, the Hoxey Clinic in Dallas, Texas was forced to close after 20 years of offering treatments for cancer, found effective by two juries, because the Texas Legislature had been induced to pass a law stating that no doctor could work for a non-doctor. Previously, in 1954, a committee of 10 independent physicians from nine states made an intensive two-day study of the clinic, its patient records and its techniques and concluded that his treatment was “superior to such conventional methods of treatment as X-ray, radium and surgery.” His standard fee for lifetime treatment in the 1950s was said to be $400 with no charge for the poor, about 25 percent of his patients.

It is a fact that many people are not adequately informed about alternative medical treatments. Daniel Haley and I have been independently trying to replace misinformation with the facts regarding some of them. He has suggested that people will need to get “pitchfork mad” in order to affect change.

People not only need to know the facts about effective alternative medical treatments, but they also need access to them and the right to utilize them if desired.

George Washington’s surgeon general wanted freedom of choice in medical care enshrined in our Constitution. We should at least have it enacted into law.

Jack Phillips

Saranac Lake

First of all, who is Jack Phillips. He is the author of a book called "Suppressed Science" published by the American Free Press. Mr. Phillips, a rocket scientist (no really!) evidently believes that the US government and the NIH are in cahoots in hiding cancer cures among other cool scientific discoveries such as dowsing.

Mr. Phillips is evidently a fan of the Hoxey (sic) cancer treatment. John Hoxsey was an Illinois coal miner in the 1920's before he promoted himself as a healer. Hoxsey admitedly had some success in treating surface cancers with what we now call an escharotic agent. He basically dissolved them away using red paste containing antimony sulfide, bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and zinc chloride; sometimes by a yellow powder containing arsenic and antimony sulfides, various plant substances, talc, and what Hoxsey called yellow precipitate. You can go here to find out more about escharotic agents and why they are not used today.

In any case, despite what Mr. Phillips claims, there is a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health where you can apply for grant funds to do research on alternative medicine, including (unfortunately) faith healing. It's highly unlikely anyone is hiding anything and if you can't get your work published, there is probably a reason for it.

Todays Lesson

Never mix alkali metals and water.

Nazi Appeasers?

From Bill in Portland Maine: Are you one of those people that have been accused of being like the nazi appeasers of WWII? I wonder what was worse - being a nazi appeaser or a nazi supporter?

How Bout Those Anti-Bush Republicans

Todd Gitlin has a few questions for you republicans that have had a sudden change of heart about G.W. Bush and of course, I whole heartedly agree. So you are up for re-election, the Iraq War isn't going so well, and your constituents are asking hard questions. As a good Republican supporter of Bush, what are you to do?

It's morally mandatory, a matter of intellectual decency, to demand of Bush's erstwhile Koolaid sippers that they look into themselves, into their willed credulity and their wild ideology, and ask how they could for so long have overlooked the idiocy, corruption, ignorance, fatuousness, bullying, and fantasizing that now strike them as obvious. "Whoops, sorry about that" won't do.

At least the idiot Santorum says "screw my constituents, I'm doing what I think is right". There is a bit to admire there. But you other guys, explain to us how you could have been so wrong for so long.

Biology Lecture

An example

Professors - Don't Get YouTubed

Seems students are posting You Tube videos of their professors online. There is disagreement on whether this is legal or not. To be safe, it's probably best to always be professional during lectures. There is not much you can do about being boring, unfunny etc.

The Economy is Doing Great

Not only is the war in Iraq going great, so is the economy. See the graphic: median household incomes, 1999-2005 (from Census Bureau). Ask most any Republican congressman.



UPDATE: Turns out this map is wrong. That's what I get for believing a newspaper though. The correct figures can be found here. Kevin Drum provides an analysis here. Still lots and lots of red ink.

Donald Rumsfeld - Morally and Intellectually Confused

So by now everyone has probably heard that our Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thinks that if you are a critic of the Iraq War, you are nothing more than a nazi appeaser. You are just like Neville Chamberlain unthinkingly shaking Hitlers hand while not realizingl the threat on the horizon.



As Frank Rich says in his NYT editorial:

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia.

Remember, the above handshake took place after Saddam had gassed the Kurds.

No matter how the ABC TV network> wants to skew history, it was Donald Rumsfeld and his boss that were asleep at the switch on 9/11. I sure hope people remember that come this November.

Small Arms - USA Export Success

The United States still rules with respect to the export of small arms. Graphic from todays NYT.

Labor Day and George Carlin

I don't know if George Carlin said this in relation to Labor Day or not, but he should have.

"And one reason we enjoy it is that we're good at it. You know why we're good at it? Because we get alot of practice. This country is only 200 years old, and already we've had ten major wars. We average a major war every twenty years, So we're good at it!

And it's just as well we are, because we're not very good at anything else. Can't build a decent car anymore. Can't make a TV set, a cell phone, or a VCR. Got no steel industry left. No textiles. Can't educate our young people. Can't get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit outta your country, all right. We can bomb the shit outta your country!

If You're Brown, You're Goin Down."