[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Poseidon

It is hard to believe even with the prenup he is getting 2K a month, plus 25K for lawyer fees!

That's nothing. She's worth tens of millions. He was very well taken care of for the past ten years. She picked him up on the beach when he was 20 and she was 43. I don't believe she ever intended to marry him but somehow or other they ended up married about three years after she picked him up. She had promised his mother that when she was through with him, he would have enough money for school and a new house anywhere in the U.S. She had to ask his mother's permission to take him to the U.S.

The amazing thing is that she claims she didn't know he was gay. That's hard to believe. I met them nine years ago when she was just "getting her groove on" and it seemed obvious that he was gay then.

Well, at least she doesn't have to wait to exhale any longer.

[schrocat]

"He who must not be named" is Cheney.

Rove is "Scabbers"...IMO

[Poseidon]

Originally Posted by schrocat

"He who must not be named" is Cheney.

Rove is "Scabbers"...IMO

[Ninong]

"FAILED TOTALLY!"


"It failed totally," Belka said at a panel discussion on nation-building at an international forum in Sweden. "Many mistakes, major mistakes, have been committed." -- Prime Minister Marek Belka of Poland, whose country has been a close U.S. ally since the invasion of Iraq.



http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ation_building

[schrocat]

Stop the presses. WOT--the War on Terrorism may still be alive. The counter terrorism community is abuzz over the President's comments yesterday at a principals meeting of the Homeland Security Council. Bush reportedly said he was not in favor of the new term, Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE). In fact, he said, "no one checked with me". That comment brought an uncomfortable silence to the assembled group of pooh bahs. The President insisted it was still a war as far as he is concerned...

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/2/17540/01106

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

In fact, he said, "no one checked with me".

He was busy reading My Pet Goat and they didn't want to bother him with minor semantic details. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will now have to explain it to him.

[Ninong]

Schrocat,

Did you see where Dubya wants creation science taught in public schools as an alternative to science?



The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the world's largest organization of science educators, said they were "stunned and disappointed" that President Bush endorsed the teaching of intelligent design earlier this week, inviting Biblical creationism into American science classrooms.

They issued this release today, calling intelligent design "pseudoscience."

"We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president's top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science. Intelligent design has no place in the science classroom," said Gerry Wheeler, NSTA Executive Director.

Monday, Knight Ridder news service reported that the President favors the teaching of intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

"It is simply not fair to present pseudoscience to students in the science classroom," said NSTA President Mike Padilla. "Nonscientific viewpoints have little value in increasing students' knowledge of the natural world."

NSTA strongly supports the premise that evolution is a major unifying concept in science and should be included in the K-12 education frameworks and curricula. This position is consistent with that of the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other scientific and educational organizations.

The Arlington, VA-based National Science Teachers Association is the largest professional organization in the world promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. NSTA's current membership includes more than 55,000 science teachers, science supervisors, administrators, scientists, business and industry representatives, and others involved in science education.

[schrocat]

Monday, Knight Ridder news service reported that the President favors the teaching of intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

What f'n debate?



ID would greatly increase our schools test scores in science,... that's about it.


Q: "Why is the sky blue?"

Public School Answer: "Because God wanted it to be blue"

Private School\Home School Answer: "Light interacting with atmospheric gas, blue spectrum dominates, Rayleigh effect".


Please Mr President, nothing would help my kids college placement better than ID being brought on as an equal to evolution in the public school system...

That being said, I will defend your right to teach it in the Sunday School of your choice.

Bring it on!


BTW Did we ever debate ID?
Probably not.
I'd remember the smoking crater.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Stop the presses. WOT--the War on Terrorism may still be alive. The counter terrorism community is abuzz over the President's comments yesterday at a principals meeting of the Homeland Security Council. Bush reportedly said he was not in favor of the new term, Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE). In fact, he said, "no one checked with me". That comment brought an uncomfortable silence to the assembled group of pooh bahs. The President insisted it was still a war as far as he is concerned...

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/2/17540/01106

From now on they are going to have to inform him of these decisions before they are implemented. It's downright embarrassing that he has to hear about these things from the media.

President Makes It Clear Phrase Is 'War on Terror'

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: August 4, 2005
GRAPEVINE, Tex., Aug. 3 - President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."

In a speech here, Mr. Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the "global struggle against violent extremism," the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials in recent weeks after internal deliberations about the best way to communicate how the United States views the challenge it is facing.


Here's Ana's take on it:

Of course, the big news to come out of yesterday's speech to the "American Legislative Exchange Council" was that "struggles against extremism" are for pussies. This president likes war, this is a war, he's gonna call it a war every chance he gets.

A brief recap of the speech: "We're at war," he said. Then he reminded us, "We're at war against an enemy." And in case people weren't listening, he said, "Make no mistake about it, this is a war." Then he outlined what we're going to do "to win this war on terror," explaining that "part of winning this war on terror is to remind others of what's at stake." But who is the war against? It's been 2 seconds so you may have forgotten. Ah: "This war is against killers who hide, and then they show up and kill innocent life." Feeling vengeful yet? Because "Iraq is the latest battlefield in the war on terror." Of course, there are consequences: Those "who have lost their lives...in this war on terror have died in a noble cause." Bush then revealed what he, personally, is doing for the cause: "We got a big task in Washington, D.C., and that's to remember the stakes of the war on terror."

That sort of sounds like the easy part, but if calling it a "war" helps you to remember that people are dying, well, please, by all means...

[Ninong]

Maybe they decided to flip-flop back to using the War-on-Terror terminology instead of the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism because a couple of media sources have just pointed out that Bush and Cheney criticized John Kerry during the campaign for calling it a struggle instead of a war. Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney hammered Kerry for allegedly being reluctant to use the phrase "war on terror."

In The New York Sun's August 1 article, staff reporter Josh Gerstein wrote that the Bush administration's new term "global struggle against violent extremism" might signal a rethinking on its part that more closely resembles the way Kerry had conceptualized anti-terrorism efforts during the campaign. Gerstein wrote: "During the hard-fought presidential race, President Bush and Vice President Cheney hammered Mr. Kerry for allegedly being reluctant to use the phrase "war on terror" to describe the conflict facing America in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks." The Sun also reported that "some of Mr. Kerry's backers contend the recent move to recalibrate the rhetoric of top administration officials away from the 'global war on terror' and toward a 'global struggle against violent extremism' amounts to a quiet vindication of the four-term Democratic senator."

The August 8 issue of The Weekly Standard stated: "It sounds for all the world as if the Bush administration wants to fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, and--dare we say it?--more sensitive war on terror. And if you think you've heard that language before, you're right. It came from John Kerry last fall."

But major newspapers have yet to note that the Bush administration's re-christening of the "war on terror" conflicts directly with Bush's 2004 campaign rhetoric.

[schrocat]

The report of Bush making these "nobody told me" comments to a room of deathly silent military brass and underlings reminds me of eeriely similar situations at an old job of mine.

After the meeting, and a subtle reality check of our notes and emails we would realize the uninformed manager was being...how do I phrase this...untruthful.

I sincerly hope the military has learned their lesson from this, and fall on their swords properly like the CIA did over their flawed intelligence assesments in Niger.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

BTW Did we ever debate ID?
Probably not.
I'd remember the smoking crater.

If you mean here on Reefland, the answer is sort of. WG took on that chiroquacker dude, remember? The thread was hilarious but I think I closed it because it was getting nasty.

We had a lot of fun with the fundies on Reef Central before we got the entire forum shut down. Now you can't discuss religion, politics or current events there. All you can do is post pictures of your puppies and stuff like that.

It was so much fun getting the fundies to explain how it never rained on earth until the flood and how the flood covered the entire earth with rainwater to the tops of the highest mountain peaks and how Noah squeezed all those animals into that little boat even though he was what, 800 or 900 years old at the time? These are the same guys who can't figure the volume of water in their reeftanks so don't go around asking them to calculate the rainfall rate required to put 29,000 feet of freshwater on the entire surface of the earth in 40 days. But I digress, as usual.

BTW, it looks like Dubya is taking his cues on evolution from the new & improved Vatican version and not from his official Science Adviser to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology, Dr. John H. Marburger, III, who said just six months ago that "intelligent design is not a scientific theory."

Pope Benedict XVI had his pal Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, write a piece for the New York Times recently in which he said that evolution as "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection" is not true. "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science." He said he wanted to correct the idea that Darwinism is compatible with Christian faith. This is ridiculous. Papa Ratzi is now claiming that JPII never gave unqualified acceptance to evolution when he actually did. The only caveat was that one had to believe that God was the primary cause. So as long as you placed God before the beginning of time, anything that followed was OK. Sort of like Stephen Hawking's earlier writings. Now, all of a sudden, they're having problems accepting the mechanisms of evolution. Before you know it, they'll be back in the business of writing approved astronomy texts that prove that the earth is the center of the universe and the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament. That version makes it a lot easier to explain to the little kids where heaven is.

This is exactly the direction that the right-wing whackos want to take the entire country. That's why they're insisting that new Supreme Court nominees must believe in "biblical truth." "Biblical truth" covers a lot of hidden agenda. No more environmental protection problems because the rapture is almost upon us. No need to worry about conserving natural resources for the same reason. Go ahead, buy that new gigantic SUV that gets 12 miles per gallon. Dr. Frist loves his. No need for any endangered species act because God gave man dominion over the animals to do with as he pleased. Our foreign policy as far as Israel is concerned would be designed to ensure the fulfillment of the prophesies of the Book of Revelation.

P.S. -- Speaking of Bill "Cat Killer" Frist, did you see where he's NOT invited to speak at the upcoming whacko convention? They're upset about his latest flip-flop on embryonic stem cell research. They invited little recovering alcoholic Tom DeLay instead.

P.P.S. -- "We've never known what the GOP would do if they controlled all three branches of government, and now we do: record deficits, wars without end, rampant corruption, isolation from the world community, invasion of privacy and a looming theocracy. Happy?" -- reply posted by a reader on a blog earlier today.

[Ninong]

Only 42% of Americans approve of Bush's overall job performance.

Only 38% approve of his handling of Iraq.

Only 48% think he's honest, 50% say he's not.

And 56% view his confidence as arrogance.

All of these numbers are substantially below where they were just a few months ago: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050805/...p_ipsos_poll_3

[Ninong]

Newsweek's poll, released today, shows only 34% of Americans approving of the way Bush is handling the war in Iraq: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8849936/site/newsweek/

That's four points lower than the AP-Ipsos poll quoted in the above post.

P.S. -- According to Karl Rove, all those Americans who disapprove are liberals who hate our freedom.

[Ninong]

Bush and Rumsfeld keep insisting that we didn't know for sure if Osama bin Laden was really at Tora Bora. We paid the Northern Alliance to help us catch him there and bin Laden and the Taliban guys paid the Northern Alliance to allow them to escape to Pakistan. They collected from both sides.

Now the CIA commander on the ground at Tora Bora is writing a tell-all book in which he charges that we knew for certain that Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora but that he escaped because the Pentagon refused to provide sufficient support troops to prevent his escape. His new book, once it clears security approval, will contradict everything the administration has been saying about Tora Bora. And this is coming from the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora.

President Bush said it's all just Monday-morning quarterbacking. He still insists that U.S. commanders did not know if Osama bin Laden was there. The CIA commander contradicts him and says that the CIA and the U.S. military commanders on the ground knew for certain that bin Laden was at Tora Bora.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek/

[Ninong]

This one's no better than the AP-Ipsos or the Newsweek polls. It's the USAToday/CNN/Gallup poll.

54% say it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

56% say things are going badly for the U.S. in Iraq.

57% say the War in Iraq has NOT made the U.S. safer from terrorism.

Bush's approval numbers (or should we say disapproval numbers) are comparable to the two earlier polls. They stink! I hope he's enjoying his vacation in Texas.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/08/bush.poll/

[WHOSYOURDADDY]

Originally Posted by Ninong

This one's no better than the AP-Ipsos or the Newsweek polls. It's the USAToday/CNN/Gallop poll.

54% say it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

56% say things are going badly for the U.S. in Iraq.

57% say the War in Iraq has NOT made the U.S. safer from terrorism.

Bush's approval numbers (or should we say disapproval numbers) are comparable to the two earlier polls. They stink! I hope he's enjoying his vacation in Texas.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/08/bush.poll/

How do you come up with 167% on a poll?

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by WHOSYOURDADDY

How do you come up with 167% on a poll?

Those are separate questions. There are several other questions in that poll. Check out the link.

[WHOSYOURDADDY]

You left the impression that they were the same poll - just clearifing error in your post.

As far as polls - they mean absolutely nothing (it depends on how the question is phrased and demographics of those being polled) in order to obtain the results the pollers are looking for or who is paying for the poll results, I can pull the polls that do not agree with your liberal polls.

Prime examples, if you went by the polls that you use as accurate - Gore or Kerry would be president today but as we know that is not the case.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by WHOSYOURDADDY

You left the impression that they were the same poll - just clearifing error in your post.

If you're talking about the three questions that I posted last, they were in the same poll. If you read the article, that should clarify things for you.

Prime examples, if you went by the polls that you use as accurate

I'm reporting the published results. You can draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that the majority of Americans are not satisfied with the way the president is doing his job.