On this date in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sold its first customer vehicle. Ford is the only worldwide automotive company to survive both the great depression and the current economic downturn without government assistance.
1903 Ford Model A
After attacking Darwinism to a degree that children are now taught creationism in school the next line of attack is History. Never mind facts, never mind that you can’t succeed in a world based on scientific knowledge without that
knowledge. No one says science shouldn’t be critically acclaimed, but Texan children will be suffering an education that leads straight back to the pre-scientific era.
The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state’s education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.
Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state’s history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America’s moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue. (read all)
I’m afraid they won’t stop there. What’s next?
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Ralph Peters is very certain about what he “knows,” and completely oblivious that he knows nothing.
All Peters “knows” is that some mythical “very senior military leader” answered “yes,” when asked if Bergdahl was a deserter. This was Ralph Peters looking in the mirror and hearing voices again. I “know” this because I asked a really smart neighbor about it, and he said “yes.”
So here we have Bill O’Reilly, who proudly proclaims that he has been to Afghanistan, but who has never served in the military, and Ralph Peters, who admits on this video that he has no combat experience, trashing the mental state a young man actually serving in the military, in a war zone. Naturally, they have no facts to back up their assertions that Bergdahl is “crazy” or “out of his mind,” but they don’t mind making it up as they go.
Here’s what the military has to say about Bergdahl being a deserter:
Appalled at Peters’ original comment, CNN’s Rick Sanchez reported yesterday that Bergdahl is not a deserter. “Is the military saying that he’s a deserter in any way? We have checked. No, not at all,” Sanchez said.
NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski also reported yesterday that “senior Pentagon and military officials have ruled that out entirely, they say there is no evidence that he is a deserter.” Miklaszewski added that “they also point out that remarks like that are not the least bit helpful and in fact could endanger Pfc Bergdahl.” (Emphasis added)
The important thing to remember is that Ralph Peters is getting his exposure on Fox “News,” which has no relationship with truth or integrity.
Whatever happened to “Support the Troops?” Or even “innocent until proven guilty?”
The previous post on Ralph Peters’ insanity is here.
UPDATE: Rep Eric Mass (D-NY), who is a retired Navy Commander, is demanding that Fox News fire Bill O’Reilly and Ralph Peters for their comments about Pfc Bergdahl.
“Words cannot express how furious I am at Fox News, Lt. Col Ralph Peters and Bill O’Reilly for suggesting that we should leave a prisoner of war behind and allow him to be executed by the Taliban to save us the trouble of trying to intervene” said Congressman Eric Massa. “Last night I joined with a bipartisan group of 22 other Congressional veterans in demanding an immediate apology to the family of PFC Bergdahl from Fox News, but I don’t think that goes far enough. I want to see Mr. Peters and Mr. O’Reilly fired immediately for their inexcusable attacks on a prisoner of war. Their comments aid and abet our enemies during a time of war and the burden is on Fox News to prove that they reject this by taking the tangible action of issuing an apology and firing both of them.”
You can read the whole letter here (PDF).
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Chris Matthews smacks down Rep Campbell of California HARD, saying Campbell is “playing to the crazies,” and forces him to admit that he believes President Obama is an American citizen.
Let’s play some fuckin’ Hardball!
HT: houseofroberts, thanks a lot for the tip!
Is there anything more fascinating and beautiful than to see Nature at work?This is why I love all kinds of scientific stuff it helps me keep the importance of my species in perspective.
You can vote here.
No picture, I do not want to bias the vote.
Hitting hard at the ridiculous arguments against health care reform…
The comedian singled out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who was quoted as saying “I had a friend of mine in Florida who lost a friend in Canada because the government decided he was too old for a certain kind of procedure.”
Black didn’t buy McConnell’s story. “Your anti-health care anecdote is a friend of a friend? That’s not even enough proof for an urban legend. I have a friend of a friend who brought home a dog from Mexico then he shaves it. It turns out someone had stolen its kidney and replaced it with a polaroid picture of my tooth brush up Richard Gere’s ass. Go figure. If you can’t give me any evidence then at least do the honorable thing and confuse me,” joked Black.
It’s amazing to me how the people who have great access to health care and insurance don’t seem to think there’s a problem…
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HT: To redditor carsonbiz for posting this youtube.
Hermínio da Palma Inácio
Hermínio da Palma Inácio was the leader of the first hijacking of a commercial aircraft. On the 10th of November 1961, five man and one woman boarded the TAP Super-Constellation called Mouzinho de Albuquerque carrying in their hand luggage 100 000 pamphlets protesting against the Portuguese dictator Oliveira Salazar and urging the people to rise for democracy. Half an hour after take-off, Palma Inácio stormed in to the cockpit and with a revolver threatened the flight crew to follow his orders.
As the flight continued to Lisbon the crew told that there wasn’t enough fuel to return to Morocco, but Palma Inácio was an experience aircraft mechanic and had a license for commercial flight, so he checked the records and confirmed that the plane had been fueled in Casablanca. When arriving to Portela Airport, permission was asked to land, and just before touchdown, the pilot initiated a go-around at low altitude. The plane was depressurized and by the emergency windows the leaflets were thrown over Lisbon and Faro.
He then allowed the plane to return to Morocco, apologized to the passengers, presented all the ladies onboard with a rose, and then vanished.
Hermínio da Palma Inácio died on July 14th, 2009.
FOX has millions of viewers who agree with whatever it broadcasts. They display a lynch-mob mentality: trial by media, then hanging. Their group-think gives them comfort in that “majority rules” absolves each individual from individual responsibility.
If you don’t understand the enemy, you cannot defeat it. The mob will always need a leader; one who feeds its fears and provides weak victims as sacrifices. Notice how often its spokespersons portray their opponents as weak?
Those who negotiate are weak. Those who compromise are weak. Those who resort to violence first and ask questions later are strong. This is primal. This is mob-think. This is what is left of the Republican Party. This is Fox’s viewing audience.
*©One not in possession of a brain.
Word thought up by Wayne A. Schneider. 
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The short answer for this is, yes. Most definitely. We’re talking about a substance which has been experimented with by at least a majority of Americans. And yet, we have no way to regulate its production, ensure its safety — was it grown in toxic soil, or sprayed with toxic pesticides? And ensure that any disputes over transactions involving marijuana have no legal recourse, forcing such disputes to be settled through criminal means.
The New York Times has a discussion on this very subject online today featuring the opinions of:
Some highlights:
First from Roger Roffman:
Will more people use marijuana and become dependent if marijuana is decriminalized? Probably not. A number of U.S. studies tell us decriminalization would not likely have an effect on the rates of marijuana use by adults or adolescents.
What if marijuana is legalized? No one can say for certain. Using one country’s reform example to estimate what would happen in another is very risky. How countries differ (cultural, social, political, economic) makes a big difference.
However, the Dutch “coffee shops” example might give us a little insight. The de facto legalization policy in the Netherlands did not, in itself, affect rates of marijuana use among adults or young people. But rates of use among young people increased when the number of coffee shops increased and the age of legal access was 16. Then these rates declined when the numbers of coffee shops was reduced and the age of legal access became 18.
<snip>
However, our debates need more honesty. Those favoring liberalizing marijuana policy ought to stop inferring that marijuana is harmless; it is not. Those who believe possession should remain a crime need to acknowledge that most adult occasional users are not harmed, and should be prepared to defend with data the belief that criminalizing possession is the best way to avoid harm.
From Wayne Hall:
What effect would marijuana legalization have on dependence?
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If we mean replacing imprisonment with a fine as the penalty for using marijuana then legalization would have little effect on dependence. Evaluations of this policy in 11 U.S. states in the 1970s and 1980s found little or no effect on rates of use among adolescents and adults.
And finally, some words from Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief:
Perhaps the biggest objection to legalization is the “message” it would send to our kids. Bulletin: Our children have never had greater access to marijuana; it’s easier for them to score pot than a six-pack of Coors. No system of regulated legalization would be complete without rigorous enforcement of criminal laws banning the furnishing of any drug to a minor.
Let’s make policy that helps, not handcuffs, those who suffer ill effects of marijuana or other drugs, a policy that crushes the illegal market — the cause of so much violence and harm to users and non-users alike.
Still, the path to the Moon was not entirely free of tragety. The crew of Apollo 1 suffered a horrendous fate on January 7, 1967 when their spacecraft experienced a flash fire in an oxygen enriched atmosphere of intensly inflammible materials during a practice run. “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger B. Chaffee were the first victums of the race to the moon. Let us honor them as well as Armstrong and Aldrin who first set foot there.
Wonder if Peters has a yellow ribbon magnet on his SUV.
Amazing. This jerk (Ralph Peters) starts with “we should wait for all the facts,” and then proceeds to call Bowe Bergdahl deserter and a liar, and says that as far as he’s concerned, “the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” leaving hanging in the air the implication that if the Taliban kills Bergdahl, it would be just fine with him.
Here’s Cenk on The Young Turks showing Mr Peters saying that the prisoners at Gitmo should be killed:
Mr Peters, I think you’re an un-American death-fetishist asshole. But we’ll wait for all the facts…
UPDATE: Our Mr Peters (sorry, I won’t call him by his military rank after he called for the death of Pfc Bergdhl) is more of a loose cannon than we knew. The Wonk Room has a lovely piece regarding Peters’ ideas for dealing with the Somali pirates:
Attack their harbors with land, sea and air power. Kill pirates, sink their vessels (including those dual-use fishing boats) and wreck their support infrastructure. The clans behind the pirates must feel sufficient pain to rein in their young thugs. The price for piracy should be stunning.
And we don’t need to stay to rebuild Somalia. End the fix-it fetish now. We need to leave while their boats are still burning down to the waterline.
Also, Matthew Yglesias posted a video of Mr Peters’ “unhinged rant” about the DHS memo regarding rightwing extremism:
Rock on, dude.
I think we now have enough evidence to say quite conclusively that Peters is in fact an un-American death-fetishist asshole.
Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.
“It’s certainly biological,” Hasenauer said. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.
“It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”
Ew.
Well, the results are in. Apparently, the long blob of goo is marine algae.
“We got the results back from the lab today,” said Ed Meggert of the Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks. “It was marine algae.”
Still, ew.
Walter Cronkite had a few things to say about the United States getting involved in a war in Iraq, and the consequences that might follow…
At a Drew University forum, Cronkite said he feared the war would not go smoothly, ripped the “arrogance” of Bush and his administration and wondered whether the new U.S. doctrine of “pre-emptive war” might lead to unintended, dire consequences.
“Every little country in the world that has a border conflict with another little country … they now have a great example from the United States,” Cronkite, 86, said in response to a question from Drew’s president, former Gov. Thomas Kean. [...]
While many are confident the United States would easily oust Saddam Hussein, Cronkite said he isn’t so sure. “The military is always more confident than circumstances show they should be,” he said.
Cronkite speculated that the refusal of many traditional allies, such as France, to join the war effort signaled something deeper, and more ominous, than a mere foreign policy disagreement.
“The arrogance of our spokespeople, even the president himself, has been exceptional, and it seems to me they have taken great umbrage at that,” Cronkite said. “We have told them what they must do. It is a pretty dark doctrine.”
Cronkite chided Congress for not looking closely enough at the war and attempting to ascertain a viable estimate of its eventual cost, particularly in light of Bush’s commitment to tax cuts.
“We are going to be in such a fix when this war is over, or before this war is over … our grandchildren’s grandchildren are going to be paying for this war,” Cronkite said.
“I look at our future as, I’m sorry, being very, very dark. Let’s see our cards as we rise to meet the difficulties that lie ahead,” he added, in a play on Bush’s dismissive remarks about France.
But Cronkite, who spent many days and nights on battlefields and in campgrounds with U.S. forces, also spoke of supporting the troops.
“The time has come to put all of our, perhaps distaste, aside, and give our full support to the troops involved. That is the duty we owe our soldiers who had no role in deciding this course of action,” Cronkite said.
We are still in Iraq, and we are in that fix — which will only get worse and worse…
The sad thing is that had Mr Cronkite still been the anchor of CBS News, and he’d said this on the air, he would have been viciously smeared by the frothing at the mouth war-mongerers, and fired without a second thought.
I found another fine post by our bloggy friend, Medjhiesco. His place is called Story Time. Enjoy…
Or Ethical Morality. It has always bothered me that these things, taken separately or together (though I have a difficult time doing so) have been the bailiwick of organizations and schools of thought, which claim, divine prominence. At least here in the Western world. Why must these things come from outside, dictated by external authority? I know the Church has spent centuries building the case for this and ramming it down the throats of society with many claims of hellfire and damnation. It doesn’t say much for
humanity that they have accepted this without one shred of proof. Not to mention many exhibitions of proof to the contrary. It has been my observation that when something is true, it finds its way into our reality whether we humans want to accept it or not. Nor does it matter to the truth if mankind believes it or not. Nor does the irony of it escape me.
An example of this is the present move to ban gay marriage contracts. I can understand why the religious organizations might find ways of taking offense so if they want to keep their dogma from blessing, sanctifying or whatever these unions, that is their right. But the last time I checked we had a nation where Church and State are separate. Freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion. The legal process of entering into a contract is one of the core building blocks of democracy. Not that long ago other types of people were prevented from doing this and these egregious wrongs have slowly but surely been corrected. Women can now participate, as can blacks, Hispanics, Asians. It wasn’t that long ago that society felt it immoral for people of different races to intermarry. This whole magilla is just more of the same blind prejudice. It is evidence that morality and ethics are not divinely inspired and enforced. Just as it is evidence that people are so very selective about what they believe to be God’s will. If they were truly interested in the moral fiber of this country they would be more concerned about the fact that about half of all marriages end in divorce (What God has joined, let no man sunder) than the idea of a tiny number of people wanting to exercise their civil rights by making a contract between them that allows tax breaks, rights of certain legal powers (next of kin) and trying to provide a stable home atmosphere.
This happens when responsibility for either morals or ethics is not personal. It opens the door for such silliness as; everyone else is doing it or if I want to be accepted by (insert whatever group you want) I have to subscribe to their tenets. It is compounded when the sources of these morals and ethics have split in so many ways that it is impossible to find much continuity in the original concepts. Sort of like being a Democrat. There is no source so people make it up as they go along, picking and choosing from the limited and ambiguous guidelines to make things work for them. Usually in the short term. And the groups that are supposed to have the true skinny either change their tune to pander to the childish needs of the moment or fall back on the inflexible dogma that made the mess possible in the first place. This what happens when people abdicate their personal responsibilities. Christianity made this particular bed and it is slowly coming around that it is a most uncomfortable and useless one.
Part of the problem today is communication. As the song said…”Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.” It has only been in the last century that information of all sorts was made available for mass consumption. And only in the past decade or so that it has surpassed human capability to process. Prior to the printing press, people had to depend on their local padre to tell them what was in the Bible. This kept a nice captive audience. For local news it was minstrels and merchants who traveled and dispersed news that didn’t come through the Church. A very slow process and easily contained and controlled. That the bulk of humanity in Europe was illiterate helped as well. Don’t worry, chilluns, we will tell you everything you need to know. Which isn’t much.
So enter the printing press. And Martin Luther. Now Martin was not the first to try and reform the Church. He was just luckier because he came along just after Gutenberg came up with the printing press. With information beginning to flow people were exposed to more ideas and the novel concept of thinking began to show its ugly head among the masses. It was the beginning of the end for the nice closed system the Church had built, an end that is finally coming to fruition now 500 years later. The main difficulty today is that nothing has risen to replace the old way, which is why we have this void of morality and ethics today. Organized religion is still fighting to retain old patterns that can never work in this modern age rather than searching for ways to make it grow. They are battling to keep Christianity a child when it is time for it to become an adult. Instead of embracing all of the writings of the early Christian era, they insist it isn’t needed. They don’t see that something has to not only be allowed to grow, it must be nurtured and encouraged to do so. Maybe mankind in the 5th century wasn’t ready for more of the information.
Fruit Bat
I could have picked another picture, but really… Der Spiegel has a really funny and interesting pub quiz on it’s English page. Enjoy!
