Right Wing Nut House

The radioactive Mullahs in Iran have apparently rejected the latest offer from the EU 3 of Germany, France, and Great Britain to halt their uranium conversion efforts:

Iran announced Saturday that it would reject a proposal by three European countries aimed at ending the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program.

A Foreign Ministry statement announcing the decision came as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in as Iran’s new president.

President Ahmadinejad’s new government now faces a decision about whether to proceed with Iran’s announced plan to continue with a uranium conversion process that Tehran suspended a year ago, a step that the West has said may lead to it seeking sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council.

Newly minted President Ahmadinejad appears to be having a problem focusing on reality. This from his innauguration speech:

“We want peace and justice for all and they are the integral part of our foreign policy,” he said, addressing senior Iranian officials and foreign ambassadors at the ceremony. “I stress on these two principles so that countries which use the instrument of threat against our nation know that our people will never give up its right to justice.”

“I don’t know why some countries do not want to understand that the Iranian people will never give in to pressure,” he added. “When people see such attitude, resistance grows in them and achieving a national right becomes an ideal.”

John F. Kennedy, he’s not.

It would be interesting if some enterprising reporter would ask the terrorist what his definition of “justice” is? As a member of the elite Qods or “Jerusalem Force,” a brigade of the feared Revolutionary Guards based in western Iran that specialized in assasinating “enemies of the revolution” who lived overseas, Iran’s new President may have a little different take on what “justice” really means.

Couple these statements with the bizzare press conference last week featuring this exchange between reporters and Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi about Iran starting up their uranium enrichment (UCF) processes:

Reporter: What will the scope of the (UCF) activity in Esfahan be at the beginning? Will it have full or partial capacity?

Asefi: No. I know it is of no interest to you.

What is going on?

I’ve already speculated here that given all we know about Iran’s new President, it’s possible that the Guardian Council has determined that confrontation with the west is inevitable and as a result, is becoming much more insular in its outlook. Without much coverage in the western press, the Revolutionary Guards (who are under the direct control of Guardian Council leader Ayatollah Khamenei) have been on a rampage since Ahmadinejad’s election, rounding up dissidents, cracking down on freedom of the press and assembly, and supressing any hint of protest against the regime. Some of the reformist elements have responded by becoming violent themselves. A recent outbreak of anti-government protests in the western part of Iran recently was ruthlessly put down by 100,000 troops.

Iran is going to go ahead with its uranium enrichment programs because it sees no other choice. The regime is in trouble at home and will now seek to build an atomic bomb to rally support to the government. It worked for Musharaf in Pakistan as the dictator almost bankrupted the country to build the bomb. The Mullahs may see a rekindling of nationalistic pride as the only alternative to being booted out.

With the news today that a vaccine has been developed to counter Bird Flu, the race now begins to produce enough of the drug to immunize those most at risk during a possible pandemic:

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said that although the vaccine that had undergone preliminary tests could be used on an emergency basis if a pandemic developed, it would still be several months before that vaccine was tested further and, if licensed, offered to the public.

“It’s good news,” Dr. Fauci said. “We have a vaccine.”

But he cautioned: “We don’t have all the vaccine we need to meet the possible demand. The critical issue now is, can we make enough vaccine, given the well-known inability of the vaccine industry to make enough vaccine?”

That shot by Dr. Fauci may be out of line. The vaccine industry has the ability to make enough doses. The problem has been both industry and government short sightedness:

The fact of the matter is that, compared to manufacturing drugs or other types of vaccine, producing flu vaccine is an exceedingly high-risk, low-profit, labor-intensive enterprise. Pharmaceutical companies have dumped the product because, in the words of a recent Washington Post article, it “has simply become too much trouble.” Liability costs, real or potential, comprise only part of an economic equation which also includes such factors as government regulation (including price controls), market unpredictability and production challenges unique to flu vaccines.

As the Times article points out, part of the problem is that vaccines need to be incubated using live chicken eggs.

Because the vaccine is made in chicken eggs, “a potential major stumbling block” to successful mass production is the number of eggs farmers can supply manufacturers, Dr. Fauci said.

If manufacturers can overcome such hurdles, the new vaccine could go far in averting a possible pandemic of human influenza, Dr. Fauci said.

Other problems that need to be overcome before the vaccine can be mass marketed include more human trials to determine dosage levels as well as tests to make sure the drug is safe for young children and adults over 65 years of age. This most recent round of tests was performed on healthy adult volunteers under 65.

Under normal circumstances, we’re still probably 3 to 5 years from having a viable vaccine. However, given the urgency of the situation, the drug could be used in an emergency to immunize those most at risk.

Ordinarily in a flu outbreak, at risk individuals would include the very old, the very young, and those whose immune system has been damaged due to diseases like AIDS. Also at high risk for infection are the health professionals who would be treating flu victims. If enough doses could be found to immunize these groups, the death toll for a pandemic could go down significantly.

The question being asked by governments and international health officials is are we going to be given enough time? Given the nature of the crisis, it’s going to be a race between our ability to defend against infection and the virus’s ability to mutate.

At least now we appear to be on the same lap as the bug.

It happens every year. A gigantic spasm of anti-Americanism breaks out all over the world on August 6th as people gather in every major city to condemn the use by the United States of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

And yet, there is no similar day set aside by the world to remember other tragedies of that war - tragedies that when taken together reveal that our incineration of Hiroshima was a godsend to both the American people and millions of people across Asia.

The city of Hiroshima was rebuilt as a “Peace City.” A large part of the city has been given over to remembrances of August 6, 1945. There are arches, monuments, a museum, and a Peace Bell.

Dedicated in 1964, the Peace Bell has become a focal point for the annual gathering of remembrance. Tens of thousands of people gather in Peace Park to hear the ringing of the bell at 8:15 AM, the time the bomb exploded. There follows a minute of silence.

I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are thinking of when that bell tolls?

Are they thinking about the 2200 Americans who were killed on December 7, 1941? Are they thinking of the sailors from the Oklahoma and other ships who were strafed by machine gun fire from Japanese airplanes as they fought for their lives trying to swim in the oil choked and flaming water.

When the bell tolls are they thinking of the Batan Death March where tens of thousands of Americans were shot, beaten to death, bayoneted, and left to die after collapsing due to the heat and exhaustion?

Any prisoner found with Japanese souvenirs was executed immediately, because the Japanese believed the soldier must have killed a Japanese soldier in order to get it. Many soldiers had found these items, such as money and shaving mirrors. Their own personal property was usually stolen as well.

Any troops who fell behind were executed. Japanese troops beat soldiers randomly, and denied the POWs food and water for many days. One of their tortures was known as the sun treatment. The Philippines in April is very hot. Therefore, the POWs were forced to sit in the sun without any shade, helmets, or water. Anyone who dared ask for water was executed. On the rare occasion they were given any food, it was only a handful of contaminated rice. When the prisoners were allowed to sleep for a few hours at night, they were packed into enclosures so tight that they could barely move. Those who lived collapsed on the dead bodies of their comrades.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 230,000 prisoners of war who died while in Japanese custody?

One in three died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese, starved to death, worked to death, beaten to death, dead of loathsome epidemic diseases that the Japanese would not treat. From the beginning, what the Japanese did to their prisoners, body and soul, was humanly appalling. Even so, the prisoners stayed and took it. For them the stakes were: try to escape, with the chances of suffering and dying almost a hundred percent, or stay with what turned out to be a two-to-one chance of surviving.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 80,000 women who were raped and more than 350,000 massacred in Nanking, China in 1937?

Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.

To this day the Japanese government has refused to apologize for these and other World War II atrocities, and a significant sector of Japanese society denies that they took place at all.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the estimated 200,000 Korean, Filipino, and other Asian women the Japanese army used as “comfort women?”

During World War II the Japanese Imperial Forces Ministries, the Foreign Office, the secret police, the military and naval police and local ‘recruiters’ ran a highly organised prostitution network to supply the military brothels with Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino women. It should be added that this trafficking also included Dutch women from PoW camps, Eurasian and Indonesian females. It is important to note, too, that this trafficking was carried out by official Imperial Edict and was an established policy known and approved by such as convicted Class A war criminal and General Vice-Minister of War, Yashijiro Umezu.

Women, some as young as twelve when their ordeal began, endured years of coercion, violence, abduction, rape and wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese.

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the 15,000,000 Chinese civilians killed during the unprovoked war brought about Japan’s greed and militarism?

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the thousands of infants that Japanese soldiers used to impale on their bayonets just to amuse themselves?

When the bell tolls, are they thinking of the thousands of American soldiers killed after Japanese soldiers pretended to surrender only to pull the pin on a grenade and kill themselves and their erstwhile American captors?

If we’re going to remember the victims of Hiroshima, then we damn well should be remembering the victims of Japanese militarism. It was at least as odious an ideology as fascism. And the brutality it engendered in its soldiers had no parallel in modern history.

The arguments for and against dropping the bomb have been raging for decades. Each new bit of evidence that comes out changes few minds. My own view is that anyone who thinks the Japanese were ready to surrender before August 6, 1945 is sadly mistaken. My belief was buttressed recently by this excellent article in the Weekly Standard by Richard B. Frank that details some Japanese intercepts which make it clear that the militarists were bound and determined to fight to the bitter end.

At the time the bomb was dropped, there was hardly a stick or a stone left standing in any major city in Japan. The militarists were determined to resist any additional bombing campaign - a campaign that had already claimed the lives of as many as 1.5 million Japanese civilians. As for the Navy’s idea of blockading Japan and starving the island nation into surrender, that too would have killed millions of additional Japanese as well as failing to bring the Japanese government to heel.

As for an invasion, it’s been correctly pointed out that the Navy was extremely reluctant to participate in a venture that would have allowed it’s fleet to be exposed to as many as 10,000 suicide planes from the mainland of Japan. It’s problematic whether an invasion even would have been attempted much less succeed.

But what nobody can argue is that while the war raged, thousands of civilians in dozens of country were dying every day at the hands of the Japanese army. Despite all the protestations about why the US used the bomb, no one can refute this one simple point; dropping the atomic bomb saved lives.

The bell is silent now. It will remain so for another year. Do you think by this time next year the world would have begun to put our actions at the end of World War II into some kind of perspective? Or do you think that’s asking too much?

I’m late to this blog swarm but I feel I just have to put my two cents in the pot regarding this extraordinarily stupid ruling by the NCAA that will ban Native American mascots for “March Madness” next year:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments, a ruling the president of Florida State University called “outrageous and insulting.”

The NCAA’s executive committee said the organization, which governs college sports, is limiting the prohibition to tournaments it controls. It doesn’t have the power to institute an outright ban, said University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, chairman of the committee.

Effective immediately, nicknames or mascots that are determined to be “hostile or abusive” can’t be shown on uniforms or other team-related clothing, Harrison said. He wasn’t specific about which nicknames or logos would be affected.

I’m totally with Jeff Goldstein on this:

The problem is, decisions like this are more than simply insulting, because they strengthen the political hand of prononents of identity politics, which in turn weakens individual rights and drives the PC culture that leads to the kind of balkinization and clash of cultures we’re now beginning to see all over Western Europe.

Quite a sad day for America, and another embarrassment to come out of our increasingly gutless academy.

My question for the NCAA is why stop at Native Americans? There are a whole host of mascots and symbols out there that are incredibly insulting and demeaning. Try these on for size:

FIGHTING IRISH OF NOTRE DAME

Anyone who thinks that picture of the leprechan with his fists balled up as if ready to fight isn’t an ethnic caricture, think again. It was a common cartoon as recently as the 1930’s to portray the Irish as drunken sots who loved to fight and always got into brawls. Besides, looking at my beloved Irish’s mascot, I detect that the little guy may have had a wee too much of a nip of the “crature.” Then again, because I’m Irish, maybe I’m just looking in a mirror.

USC TROJANS

Have you ever seen a more demeaning characterization of condoms in your life than the “Trojan” sitting on the horse? I must say, the least they could do is take the element of beastiality out of their mascot presentation. And have you noticed when the “Trojan” rides around the LA Collesium how he’s always waving that sword? Doesn’t that look just a little bit too phallic?

Imagine what would happen if the NCAA were to ban all the sexually demeaning mascots out there! Say Goodbye to the Washington “Huskies” and the Arizona State “Wildcats.”

OKLAHOMA SOONERS

Making a mascot of the famous Oklahoma “Sooner” is a travesty of AntiAmericanism. The “Sooner” was a nickname given to people with the true American spirit who were involved in the Oklahoma land rush in 1889. Thousands of people lined up at a starting point waiting for the signal to begin a mad rush to claim a portion of millions of acres of land. Then, when the cannon boomed…

The riders on horseback burst ahead of the droves of land seekers, but as they spread across the horizon they were discouraged to see that covered wagons and even men on foot had already occupied many prime places. As many as nine out of ten of these settlers had jumped the gun, earning themselves the name “Sooners”.

HOW DARE THEY! To demean the all-American traits of exhibiting initiative, imagination, and being a real “go-getter” is an affront to all of us who value what makes America great. Yes, they sort of violated the rules but we Americans know instinctively that unless you bend the rules a little, you’ll never get ahead in this country. Just look at Ken Lay.

BOSTON CELTICS

While we’re banning college mascots, how about going after the pros? The shamrock is an insult to every living Celt who treasures their past.

At one time, the Celts ruled an empire that stretched from the Black Sea to England. And yet they reduce that glorious past to a representation of one tiny Island in the Atlantic Ocean? Ridiculous.

BTW…if there are any living Celts out there please let me know. Since there are so many idiots in Europe who think we should give all that land back to our own Native Americans, maybe we can wangle a few million acres from some of those Euro-twits by laying a solid guilt trip on them for stealing Celtic lands.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

Hah! Patriots? In Massachussetts? Are you kidding me?

Is there any bluer state than the deep, dark, blue of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? I think serious consideration should be given by the NFL to yank that moniker from the two time Super Bowl champs and replace it with something more appropriate. Like the New England Chowderheads or how about the Boston Baked Beans?

To insult our patriot past by comparing the moonbats in Massachusetts with the brave fellows who endured Valley Forge, threw the British Army back 3 times at Bunker Hill, and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor towards the noble goal of human liberty is unconscionably demeaning to today’s patrtiots. The moonbats today don’t even go to Valley Forge unless it’s in their heated RV. And the only thing they’re willing to pledge their fortunes to is the ACLU or Moveon.Org.

Mithras, who runs the liberal site Fables of Reconstruction , posted what he terms “A Conservative Blog Taxonomy.” It’s actually a very clever idea. And given that I’m a shameless and inveterate thief when it comes to harvesting ideas to feed this personal demon of a blog, I thought it might be interesting to duplicate the moonbat’s efforts and see what I could come up with in creating a “Moonbat Blog Taxonomy.”

Now taxonomy is generally defined in biology as an “orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships.” This posed something of a problem since there’s no such thing as “natural relationships” when it comes to moonbats. In fact, there’s nothing natural at all about liberals in that you have to make a preternatural effort day in and day out to exhibit that amount of cluelessness regarding the world around you as it actually exists.

Be that as it may, in researching the subject, I arrived at a solution to my dilemma; categorize the sites using as a benchmark how far the blog deviates from the real world and descends into conspiratorial fantasy.

I discovered that the more forcefully the denizens of these sites bragged about being a member of the “Reality Based Community” the farther they actually were from existing on the same plane of the universe as the rest of us. Some maintain a passing familiarity with reality - as if reality were like walking past a beautiful woman and getting a tantalizing whiff of an exotic perfume. Others have had reality slap them upside the head and still deny the evidence of it with their own eyes and ears.

A “Reality Quotient” (RQ) will be assigned each site in order to rank their moonbattiness. A rank of “5″ indicates a firm foothold on reality. A rank of “1″ indicates a trip back to planet earth is in order.

KEVIN DRUM

Kevin Drum’s blog The Political Animal swings wildly between well written analyses of politics, the economy, and current events and a snivelling, simpering condenscension that grates on the mind like a fingernail run across a blackboard grates on the ears. His famous “A Few Wee Questions” for hawks on the Iraq war became the source of much hilarity on the right as well as conservative blog fodder for weeks. Not above letting his Bush hatred cloud his judgement.

RQ: 4.5

TALKLEFT

I’ve always found Jeralyn Merrit’s Talkleft to be island of reason in a sea of liberal idiocy.

When you think about it, that’s not saying much.

Merrit’s a smart, savvy attorney who knows criminal law but whose political judgement is, shall we say, wanting…As in “wanting one iota of political horsesense.” Like all other lefty bloggers, her posts on the Gannon/Guckert imbroglio got to be like watching an epileptic rolling around on the floor having a fit. Everyone else in the vicinity was wondering what the big deal was.

RQ: 4.1

WONKETTE

I’ve never understood the fascination with Wonkette AKA Anna Marie Cox. Maybe it’s the three names which make her sound mysterious. Maybe it’s the penis jokes which make her sound slutty. It can’t be her personal appearance. She looks like a pushing 40, pre-middle aged, dumpy, lumpy, policy maven.

She believes she can elevate snark to the level of political discourse as she gossips her way through the bedrooms, board rooms, and dining rooms of Washington. What passes for “information” is really just a regurgitation of news clippings and other blog posts with a smattering of innocuous, inane commentary. Not ill informed, just colorless with tepid attempts at humor. No insight. No original thinking. Dull, drab, almost humorless, and totally without redeeming value. In short, a waste of time and bandwidth.

RQ: 4.0

MYDD

The duo of Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers at MyDD are perhaps the biggest purveyors of Democratic spin in the blogosphere. A paid consultant for the Dean campaign, Armstrong has a knack for being more wrong about more things political than any other big blogger I’ve seen. His analysis is shallow and trite. His writing is, well, boring. Vomiting up Democratic talking points on everything from the WoT to the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair, I have yet to see an orginal position taken in opposition to anything the Democrats have done.

RQ: 3.6

ESCHATON

Atrios AKA Duncan Black runs the site Eschaton. I’d call Mr. Black a snake in the grass but that would be insulting snakes, grass, and the sun that gives life to both of them. A true leftist lickspittle his “community” is the most vulgar, most obscenely obnoxious group of party hacks around. Black has been known to sic his minions on bloggers who displease him. A real class act.

RQ: 3.1

OLIVER WILLIS

If there was ever a more irrelvant hysteric on the left side of the sphere than Oliver Willis I haven’t discovered him yet. Famous for putting a “countdown” clock at the top of his blog counting the days that Brit Hume hadn’t resigned for , as Oliver put it so rationally: ” Hume intentionally manipulated the words of the 32nd president, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazenly false falsehood.” After about a month, Mr. Willis removed the clock from his blog but not before several conservative bloggers razzed him hilariously.

Willis’ conspiracy mongering about everything from the 2004 election to Jeff Gannon reveals a pathological resistence to reality that makes him one of the top 5 cluebats on the left.

RQ: 2.4

AMERICABLOG

Even just typing the name makes me feel unclean. John Aravosis of Americablog is a walking argument for internet regulation (too bad I adamantly oppose it). The nauseating way in which he “outed” Jeff Gannon by publishing nude pictures of the quasi-journalist along with the suggestion that Gannon may have been a gay escort at one time, sickened decent people everywhere. The fact that he was cheered on by other lefty bloggers tells you all you need to know about the hypocrisy that drips from the snarling lips of the radical lefties.

The “conspiracy” pushed by Aravosis had Gannon sleeping with every male in the White House including the President. The fact that even the White House press corps let out a collective yawn at the whole affair proves that not only was there nothing to the story, but that some harmless twit of a conservative writer who wanted to hide his identity was unceremoniously outed by people with no integrity and no honor.

RQ: 1.4

THE HUFFINGTON POST

There are so many loons, goons, and poltroons who write for Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post that you all you have to do to find someone totally disconnected from reality is close your eyes, point, and click. It’s hard to say whether the B-list celebrities or C-list journalists who write for the site are more irrelevant. And Arianna herself presides over these mountebanks like a Queen of Tarts, jostling with the dozen or so posters for the honor of being named “Conservative Cannon Fodder for a Day.” There is no site out side of the Democratic Underground whose writers are more regularly nor more completely fisked.

RQ: 1.1

DAILY KOS

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga AKA Kos, AKA “Screw ‘em” Kos is possibly the worst thing to happen to the Democratic party since George McGovern. His ability to raise money from his legions of conspiracy mongering, paranoid readers makes him absolutely indispensible to the party’s infrastructure. Just recently, he almost singlehandedly took an unkown attorney and Iraqi War vet Paul “Two-faced” Hackett and, by raising nearly a half a million dollars in a fortnight, put him within spitting distance of winning the special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District.

What makes Kos such a ball and chain for the Democratic party is that despite his ability to raise money, the fantastical conspiracies given prominence on his site regarding Bush, the war, elections, Gannon/Guckert, Rove (again and again), Cheney, Haliburton, and on and on - give the party a patina of psychosis that leaves conservatives laughing and rational Democrats scratching their heads. His “0 for 16″ record when supporting a Democratic candidate also prove he’s a loser. If he couldn’t raise money, he’d be out of business since a political consultant is only as good as his won-loss record. And without the conspiritorial nature of his site, he’d lose half of his considerable readership. They’d simply pack up and go someplace that will feed their constant paranoia that the world is against them.

RQ: 0.4

DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND

I actually have a soft spot in my heart for the inmates at the Democratic Underground. Let’s face it; the internet just wouldn’t be the same without them. It’s become a matter of course for me that whenever I’ve got writer’s block, I visit the DU and, within 5 minutes, find something so outrageous, so far beyond the pale, that my dilemma regarding what to write about disappears in a flash. I wear their disapprobation like a badge of honor.

Perhaps one illustration of their complete disconnect from reality is in order. Following the tsunami tragedy last December, a comment thread at the site started to speculate that, in fact, secret US government tests in the ocean caused the giant waves. The comments got loonier and loonier as the DU’ers speculated that the earth itself was falling apart:

Since we know that the atmosphere has become contaminated by all the atomic testing, space stuff, electronic stuff, earth pollutants, etc., is it logical to wonder if: Perhaps the “bones” of our earth where this earthquake spawned have also been affected?

You just can’t make this stuff up.

For DU’ers, every election is stolen, every setback by Democrats is the result of a plot by Karl Rove, and everything else is Haliburton’s fault. In short, when looking for sanity at the Democratic Underground, it’s best to remember the sign that Dante Alighieri saw at the gates of hell in his poem “The Divine Comedy:

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

RQ: ARE YOU KIDDING?

As promised, I will not say another word about the ID vs. Evolution debate. I wll however, publish in its entirety, a comment left by my blogbuddy, fellow “24″ fanatic, and Wide Awakes comrade The Maryhunter.

His is a muscular Christianity. He’s also a scientist. And besides that, goddamnit, he’s a helluva writer and makes some sense on this issue.

Thank you Rick, for launching this valuable debate, and the other commentators. I especially thank folks like Jay, Thomas (really spot on, Tom!), Cap’n Wolff, and my colleague Bergbikr, who held firm and argued their reasonable points against the buffets and spitting from those who dismiss ID as kookish at best, and scientific blasphemy at worst.

I am a molecular biologist, an honorary medical geneticist, and a dedicated Roman Catholic, who sees Genesis stories as just that: valuable myths told to Man by God about his origins, the right story at the right time. (Plenty of other cultures have their parallel creation stories, and all in context.) What has unfolded as Scientific Objectivity vis a vis Man’s growing capacity to understand his own vast domain called Universe has, basically since the enlightenment (give or take), increasingly striven to deny God a role in this Universe other than perhaps a silent observer. (Though Darwin and Einstein, the two fathers of 20th Century science, were fierce believers, if I’m not mistaken.)

To deny God a role in Creation is, for a Believer, illogical. And, there are ever so many believers out there… so what to do? Simply find that all believers must be illogical? Are we all wrong, because there is no “objective” proof of God’s existence? (Yea, and I’d like to see some objective proof for String Theory, or it’s latest mathematical enabler, Membrane Theory.) Or shall we believers simply hush up, go underground, pretend there is no God when it comes to Science?

Methinks we who care about this issue should, as Bergbikr suggests, go read Teilhard. Me also thinks, as Rick does, that biomedical science is clearly the very backbone of our economy ca. 21st Century.

However, as a scientist I see utterly no threat from ID. The argument that fundamentalist zealots will undermine science education is hogwash. Science is about being excited by your world and wanting to learn more. Both my children are terribly fascinated with their world, as my wife and I were as kids, and we both read plenty of Bible Stories as children… as ours do now.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Believer that I have faith in Mankind’s power to put the puzzle together in the ways that are necessary to cure cancers, better understand what genetics are behind predisposition to heart disease and stroke, help the Parkinson patient to walk again, create bioprocessors far faster than silicon chips, engineer crops to feed a hungry third world (if the freaking moonbats will let us do it, that is!).

And improbable as it may seem to some, I guarantee it’s true that none of this future technological glory will be threatened or precluded by a belief that God Himself intervened with that last, crucial step that got those monkeys to figure out that the bone was a tool, after all. Because that’s what I see this whole argument is about, after all: becoming human. And human pride.

Do I resent those who have summarily dismissed me and my brethren as ignoramii? Not really. The intellectual challenge is fun (more so when free of insults, but no matter). Rather, I am cheered to imagine God smiling down, watching with love and pride as we little humans, with all our egos, pick around His wondrous creation and piece the puzzle together, in between bickering.

I’m also pleased to know of so many biologists, physicians, chemists, engineers, and mathematicians who are Believers and even still don’t let it get in the way of their goal: to be the very best they can be at pushing back the frontiers of the Scientific Enterprise.

God, how I hate this war.

Even though I still believe that it was right decision to liberate Iraq. Even though I still support the reconstruction efforts going on in that tragic, bloody, terrorist infested, miserable strip of land where the killing goes on and on. And even though I still support the President and his announced policy of bringing democracy to Iraq in the belief that the autocratic and dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the Middle East will come crashing down as ordinary people realize that ultimate power rests in their hands.

After saying all of that, I now believe it’s time to bring to account those who through their brutish and beastial treatment of prisoners, have besmirched the name and reputation of the United States and brought shame and ignominy to their comrades in arms and their fellow citizens.

This piece in the Washington Post, based on eyewitness accounts, classified documents, and interviews with investigators, paints a picture so at odds with what America should stand for - even in a brutal war for survival - that it should give all of us who still support this war and its objectives pause to reflect on a fundamental question: Is this really what we want our soldiers doing in our names to protect us?

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

What this article makes crystal clear is that these methods of interrogation are not the product of the sick imaginings of a few sadistic soldiers. They did not spring into being in a vacuum. What the reports make unambiguously clear is that the soldiers believed the interrogation techniques were approved - approved at the highest levels in their chain of command.

The implications of this are too horrible to contemplate. It means that these are not the “isolated incidents” that I and most others who have been defending our detention policies over these many months have been excusing. It also means that there have been deliberate and systematic violations of both US law and the Geneva Conventions in the interrogations of prisoners.

And it means that those responsible for these policies must be brought to justice. Not just the perpetrators of the torture, but those who formulated and approved whatever guidelines the soldiers were using to justify these barbarous and unholy acts.

No matter where it leads. No matter who is involved. Justice must be done in order to restore some honor to the good name of the United States and its military. To do less dishonors the memory of those who have already died in this war as well as all those who we ask to put their lives on the line in order to protect us.

My own role as an enabler of this behavior has been unconscionable. By turning a blind eye to previous intimations of this organized and approved assault on simple human decency, I have, in a small but significant way, empowered those who have cynically used my support for the war and the President’s policies to literally get away with murder.

No longer. I am not going to give the benefit of doubt to an out of control interrogation process that treats human beings - even terrorists - as beasts to be beaten and murdered and pass it off as national policy. I didn’t sign on for that. I’m sure you didn’t either.

It’s one thing to be hard in war. It’s one thing to be pitiless in the prosecution of it. But its quite another thing to violate all tenets of civilized behavior in acheiving your objectives. Even in war, the ends cannot justify the means. If you believe that it does, then ask yourself what kind of country you will have at the end of it? Will it be the kind of country you can live in with pride? Or will history itself remember us with scorn and derision for abandoning the very principals we were fighting to protect.

There may be extreme circumstances where torture is justified. This incident wasn’t one of them. And if, as I now believe, these violations occur routinely and as part of a sanctioned interrogation process, then it is past time for a thorough, impartial, and independent investigation of the facilities where we house the prisoners, the soldiers and intelligence agents who carry out the questioning of detainees, and the interrogation policies and procedures formulated by the military and civilian elements in our government.

If the only way to make such an investigative body truly independent would be to allow international representation then reluctantly, I would have to agree with that stipulation. What’s at stake here is the very soul of America and in a larger sense, the values for which we in the west are fighting to preserve. And while I doubt such a body could remain above the political fray given the explosive nature of the subject matter and the division in our national polity, it must nevertheless go forward. Let the American people and indeed, the rest of the world decide who is playing politics and who is seeking the truth.

John Cole, who has been out front on this issue since reports of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners first began to surface, sums up the problems:

I really want to believe that this is just a few rogue soldiers in all of these cases, but the evidence keeps pointing back to approved interrogation techniques (and in fairness, much of this went well beyond approved methods), a sense of ‘anything goes’ because of the muddled legal status of the detainees, a general disregard in the chain of command, a chain of evidence linking policies to different detainment centers, willing participation by clandestine services working in concert** with military intelligence officers and being given free reign with prisoners and junior level enlisted men, and it stinks. It smells like institutional rot, and at the very least a pattern of negligence and callous disregard, something even the military appears willing to admit.

I’m forced to agree with Mr. Cole that what we’re looking at is nothing less than an institutional problem in the military. I cannot believe that all of these soldiers and CIA agents are members of some sadistic cult. They simply must be enabled by a culture that either approves of these methods or turns a blind eye during the practice of them. Either way, it’s high time we tear the whole rotten system down and put something else in its place. Anything - even turning the detainees over to civilian control - would be preferrable to this canker on the body politic that, if it continues to fester, will prevent us from winning this war and at the same time, inure us as a people to the brutality practiced by our sons and daughters in our name.

UPDATE

Attention trolls: I have an extremely thin skin on this issue. Any personal attacks, any off topic comments, any gloating, anything that I don’t much care for will be deleted and the commenter banned. You can disagree with what I’ve written. If you can’t do it in a civil manner, don’t bother to comment.

It’s my blog. If you disagree with this policy. Get your own damn site.

First of all, let me apologize to regular readers of this site who might have disagreed with me in this debate. It’s just that being called “ignorant” or “close minded” with regards to an unproven, unpublished, non-peer reviewed, and discredited concept gets under my sometimes rather thin skin.

If I went out of bounds (and I did), I’m sorry.

The reason for my passion on this issue has to do with the future of the United States. In the next 20 years, the world will experience a revolution the likes of which it has never imagined. I’m talking about the coming bio-tech revolution and the absolute necessity for the United States to lead the way in creating and developing products and processes that will transform not only the economies of the world but probably the human animal itself.

Glen Reynolds passion for nanotechnology is not some geeky obsession. Mr. Reynolds recognizes the awesome potential of marrying the physical with the metaphysical; of combining man and machine in ways that will affect the quality of life for everyone. Imagine molecule sized robots killing cancer cells or purging the body of free radicals. The life prolonging potential for some of these innovations could mean a doubling of the average life span for your infant child today.

And what about other bio-products like artificial blood or the growing of vital organs, or of limbs, or of new spinal columns that would allow the crippled to walk. This isn’t science fiction. There are legions of scientists and bio-engineers at work on these and thousands of other products as you read this. How about bacteria that “eats” air pollution or genetically engineered plants that are so hardy, they can grow in the driest places on earth?

The only limit to this revolution will be our imaginations. But in order to take part, our children need to understand modern biology. And modern biology is based on Darwinian evolution.

Wanting to teach your child intelligent design is fine. There’s nothing wrong with believing in ID concepts. But in order to participate in the coming world wide revolution, we must not only learn what German, Japanese, British, and Chinese students are learning, we must urge our children to out perform them. Despite protestations to the contrary, the purpose of ID is to supplant evolution as a narrative for origins. Whatever we don’t understand or have yet to find fossil evidence for, must be the result of the “designer’s” hand guiding evolution toward a specific goal.

I’m well aware of the shortcomings of evolution as a total, rational explanation for both the origin of life and subsequent changes in species. The problem is an incomplete picture. We’ve been looking at the process for less than 150 years. Discovery is agonizingly slow as scientists in the field painstakingly sift through the sand, gravel, and dust of 4.5 billion years of life searching for that one in 100 million living thing that died at the right place at the right time under the right circumstances and that allowed it’s skeletal impression to be left on a rock in some remote corner of the planet where bulldozers have yet to make a mark.

Of course there are gaps in our knowledge. Given the circumstances, expecting anything else would be unreasonable.

And yet, ID enthusiasts take these gaps in our knowledge as evidence that the entire theory should be discredited. This is wrong. Smarter and more capable people than I have debunked the main theses of ID and shown that randomness and evolution go hand in hand. To posit anything else is to deny nature itself. In many ways, ID is an anthropomorphic answer to questions that nature doesn’t even bother to ask. “It just happened” could go on a bumper sticker and slapped on every tree and bush and plant and animal on earth. Terribly unsatisfying, yes. But no more so than not knowing whether the next card drawn when I play blackjack is going to be a king or a two.

Lastly, why teach the controversy? Millions of people believe that we never walked on the moon, that NASA faked it. Should we teach that controversy? What possible good would it do to teach a biology course where every time the teacher brought up origins, they’d have to point to the unseen hand of a mythical “designer” as a catalyst for the random combination of amino acids and proteins that gave birth to the first primitive forms of life? It just doesn’t make any sense.

The world is wondrous enough without Intelligent Design. To my way of thinking, there’s no reason to go out of our way to invent answers to questions that the lord, in his own good time, will help us answer ourselves.

The Kossaks are declaring victory.

Jerome Armstrong wants Hackett to run for statewide office.

Chris Bowers calls Hackett’s loss “tidal.”

The moonbats at the Democratic Underground want (yes…you guessed it) A RECOUNT!

And I need an aspirin. Reading lefty blogs usually leaves me with indigestion. This morning, they’ve imparted so much spin to this insignificant race in Ohio that I’ve got a pounding headache. In fact, I haven’t seen this much spinning since the last time I got drunk back in ‘95 and nearly threw up at a hoity-toity New Years Eve party.

The combination of rich moonbats (it was a charity event at a country club in very Democratic Madison, Wisconsin) and unwashed, college age, post modern feminists who defined incongruity by trying to be elegant in their formal dresses despite the fact that armpit shaving was unknown to them, caused the 7 glasses of champagne I imbibed to rumble uncomfortably in my gut. I was saved from embarrassment by a kindly old widow who, seeing my discomfort, led me outdoors to the 18th green where I gratefully gulped the fresh, clean, Wisconsin night air. The bemused widow must have been the only other conservative in attendance and saw the look on my face when the MC introduced the dinner speaker as “a tireless fighter of the fascists who control our country.”

I get the same kind of nausea reading the desperate wishful thinking emanating from liberal websites who are crowing this morning that BushitlerMcChimpyHaliburton is finally…finally on the run:

” A New Wind is Blowing”

No spin - the GOP is on the run.

Tidal

Tonight’s results exceeded my wildest expectations. Don’t get me wrong - I would have been overjoyed had Hackett won. But I am still thrilled, and his tremendous showing in an incredibly red district should buoy the hopes of Democrats everywhere. Tomorrow, we can begin the important task of dissecting the Hackett campaign’s operations in fine detail, to figure out what contributed most to its success - to see what results this extraordinary lab experiment yielded.

OH-02: What a Ride

So the state GOP avoids a “devastating blow”, but only by the hair on their chinny chin chin. OH-02 saw the resurgance of the Democratic Party, the GOP had to spend $500K they hadn’t otherwise planned on spending, and a Democratic star is born (next stop for Hackett — statewide elected office). So much for “burying” Hackett…

Bleeechhh!

Perhaps the “Reality Based Community” should sip something whose effects would be a little less psychedelic and face some cold, hard facts.

First, the reason why the lefties had to start a blogswarm and the rationale for the admittedly excellent job done by liberal websites in raising money for their candidate was because the National Democratic Party couldn’t life a finger to help him. This from July 7, less than a month ago:

Meanwhile, Hackett’s campaign staff was at its office in Batavia, meeting with representatives of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, seeking help in what they know is an uphill campaign.

David Woodruff, a spokesman for the Hackett campaign, said Wednesday that Democratic officials said they would help the Hackett campaign recruit volunteers, but made no commitment to having paid staff in the 2nd District or helping raise money.

“We didn’t ask them to give us $3 million,” said Woodruff. “We talked about how we can win without spending $3 million.

“They said they’d do everything they can to get us volunteer help. I don’t know what other help they are going to be able to give.”

The Democratic committee, through spokeswoman Sarah Steinberg, won’t even confirm that its representatives met with the Hackett campaign

In the only congressional race taking place this summer, the National Democratic Party, thanks to the idiocy of one Howard Dean and his complete ineptness at raising money, was reduced to offering to help recruit volunteers.

If the liberals consider this a victory…BRING IT ON!

Meanwhile, the Republicans barely broke a sweat in defeating Hackett. Despite a relatively unattractive candidate and a scandal in Ohio that is tarring Republicans with the malfeasance of an unpopular governor, the Republicans still won. If not a comfortable victory, a victory nonetheless.

A look at the numbers tells an even more significant story. Hackett received 54,500 votes while his opponent Jean Schmidt received about 59,000. The liberals are crowing at the “huge” turnout. That turnout represents about 20% of the electorate which isn’t even considered “average” for a special election of this nature. In other words, despite massive coverage by the MSM and lefty blogs, Hackett got a little more than 50% of the total vote achieved by retiring Congressman Portman’s opponent last November. In that race, more than 310,000 votes were cast with the Democrat receiving about 90,000 votes.

Clearly, the Democrats did a very good job at getting their people to the polls. The massive amount of money raised by liberal blogs in the last fortnight went to a typically well organized “Get out the Vote” campaign. In the end, the Democrats succeeded in getting twice the number of their people to the polls than Republicans did. Schmidt’s total vote was about 25% of Portman’s vote compared to last November’s results. Thus, the same percentage of Republicans voted for Schmidt as voted for Portman when comparing turnout with 2004. The Democrats simply did a better job of getting their people to the polls.

The closeness of the race will allow the liberals to delude themselves for a while. They’ll try to dissect Hackett’s campaign and attempt to glean whatever “secrets for success” they may think they find in it. This will be a worthless exercise because the reasons for Hackett’s close loss had much to do with the fact that the election did indeed take place in a vacuum. All the political hot air in the country was sucked into Ohio’s 2nd Congressional district for this special election. The blogswarm, the fundraising, the mutually reinforcing pats on the back during the entire process, all taking place under the glare of the MSM, eventually came to naught. In the end, the Republican emerged triumphant.

And let’s not forget the loons at the Democratic Underground. Like the drunk relative you hide in the broom closet at family gatherings, someone in the Democratic Party is going to have to stand up and say “either quit drinking the kool-ade or leave:”

I write this as it appears increasingly certain that this race will qualify for a free recount under Ohio law (0.5% margin). Even if it doesn’t the national party of the losing candidate (probably Hackett) should pay for one. Turns out I was wrong here. Margin was 52 to 48 but I still would investigate a recount.

Someone in the national Democratic Party better give these moonbats a civics lesson. When the votes are counted and your candidate loses it’s considered bad form to demand a recount regardless of what the margin your candidate loses by. It’s just not funny anymore. It’s psychotic. And if the Democrats don’t think that this kind of stupidity isn’t hurting them as a party then they’re sticking their heads in the sand. The American people don’t like sore losers. And that’s what the base of the Democratic party is being perceived as.

I haven’t seen any headlines yet or reaction from conservatives. I’ll be updating this post throughout the day.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has her usual excellent round-up of early postings on the election. Check back with her during the day as I’m sure she’ll be updating.

The Captian makes a similar point that I made:

In the end, it doesn’t matter much, because in 2006 this district simply won’t get the national attention it drew here. The Democrats will not have the resources to dedicate to this one single seat that they did in an off year special election. Without the overwhelming focus on this rock-solid conservative seat, it will revert to a fairly easy GOP race next year — especially if the Democrats foul the atmosphere with a slew of pointless lawsuits.

Polipundit has this:

Polipundit pointed out that “this is a one-time result because of freak circumstances” including that “Paul Hackett ran commercials in which President Bush seemed to endorse him.” It will be interesting to watch the media coverage of the election result and to see if ANYONE in the MSM presents the fact that Hackett ran one of the most misleading ads that I have ever seen, which did appear to show him aligning himself with the President and in support of the effort in Iraq.

I predict this is the way the Dems will run next year. Flag waving patriotism in TV ads extolling the bravery and unselfishness of our troops while trashing the war and the President on the stump. Should be fascinating to watch…

This is just too stupid to be true:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss ”intelligent design” alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

”I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. ”You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

Alright then, I’ve got a few more “ideas” that students should probably be exposed to as long as we’re talking about filling their heads with a bunch of nonsense like ID:.

1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?

2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune). The Ojibwa’s believe it…I did too until I was about 5 years old.

3. NASA really didn’t go to the moon. The moon walk was done on a Hollywood sound stage.

4. A stitch in time saves nine. Try it, Mr. President. It’s true.

5. The invention of the microwave oven is the result of back engineering alien technology found in the rubble of a spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1945…or was it 1948? The date doesn’t matter. What matters is many, many people believe it. (This info surprised the actual inventor of the microwave oven Percy L. Spencer)

6. Gerry Thomas, who recently passed away, invented the TV Dinner. Hell, the MSM believed it, why not teach it?

One can go on and on.

Who the devil cares if some people believe that “Intelligent Design” is the “correct” interpretation for the massive amount of fossil and anthropological evidence showing how human beings evolved? If it were up to you Mr. President and the right wing idiotarians who are pushing this “theory” humans would still believe that the earth was the center of the universe and that stars were fixed in the sky in a series of crystal spheres. That’s what the overwhelming majority of people believed as recently as 500 years ago.

The damage you and the idiotarians are doing to the minds of our young people is unconscionable. And it’s got to stop. So take your idiotic theory and shove it where the sun don’t shine and leave science to the rationalists. We’ll leave faith based issues to experts like you.

UPDATE

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

My, my some commenters seem to be in a snit…or is it sniff? I will reprint my reply to those who wish to tell me that ID is science, or that evolution is “only” a theory, or that we haven’t found any transitional fossiles, or that I’m a godless heathen who will burn in hellfire for all eternity, etc.

1. Anyone who says that ID is “science” is a loon.

When the rest of the world embraces ID with the same fervor that the zealots in this country do, come back and talk to me. Until then…shut your yaps.

UPDATE II

The question that reappears over and over again in the comments from ID supporters is “What’s wrong with teaching both and letting the kids decide?”

With that kind of logic, we could teach both the Steady State Theory of the cosmos as well as the Big Bang and let 15 year old kids try to work out the most complex and elegant set of mathmatical equations ever dreamed by the mind of man?

And when we teach Newton’s Laws, should we also teach what theories they replaced? And when teaching Einstein, perhaps we should also teach the theories of light that his ideas replaced. There are “thought experiments” that you can do to prove Einstein’s theories on the dual properties of light. But there were 18th and 19th century experiments that perfectly reasonable scientists could duplicate that proved that light was something entirely different than what Einstien proved it was.

Why not let the kids decide? Because it’s not up to them to “decide” the merits of something that by all accounts, is barely understood by the people who are teaching the subject!

Newton’s laws were almost perfect and worked very well - except they didn’t explain the orbit of Mercury. For hundreds of years, this anamoly with Mercury’s orbit was one of the great mysteries of science. It took Einstein’s theories to fill in Newton’s holes, including Mercury’s orbit, and thus built upon Newton’s work.

Intelligent Design would not build upon Darwin or any other evolutionists work. It would make a mockery of it. The capriciousness of the evolutionary process is “how we got here from there.” Just because the fossile record is incomplete - and given that less than 1/10 of 1% of all living things will die and not only fossilize, but also remain intact so that we can find and study them - doesn’t mean a damn thing. All it means is that we have to keep digging - literally.

In the future, look to the evolutionary biologists as they unlock the secrets in our DNA. That’s where the big news on origins will probably come from in the future.