2 poignant stories tonight from MSN (Love & Laughter: the best medicine ever!)
 

I've always believed in never going to bed angry or upset and to do whatever a person can, to make things better for each other and everyone involved.

Story one: >>> LINK

Mr. & Mrs. Yeager (Gordon and Norma) - married for 72 years - died in a hospital holding hands together in the ICU after their fatal traffic crash near home. You'll have to read the article, but this is no doubt the sweetest love story ever shared, to the best of my recollection. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this, but this is what I'm holding out for - a love that is sheer devotion to each other, through thick and thin, for the lifespan of the entire relationship, to go up in flames together, because I couldn't go on without the other person (the love of my life, if I had one).

I'm sure it will touch your heart like it did mine. :stillheart:



Story two: >>> LINK

Kevin Cotter (a 38 y,o, from Arizona) wrote a best seller which is due out tomorrow in book stores - turned his heartbreak into healing joy for himself and others, with the help of those who have loved him and encouraged him on past his pain. The cover of the book is a photo of him in his ex-wife's bridal gown, out it the snowy woods, posing with his rifle. LOLOL!

I hope this brings laughter to your heart tonight like it did mine. :)

:moonstars:

*night night*

So there are some reports that Muammar al-Gadhafi is dead and others saying he is captured and wounded.

Okay I think it's looking like dead.

I saw that, if he is dead, I so hope the US had nothing to do with it. I think we should stay away from being assassins. :|

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44971257...ica/?GT1=43001

'We have been waiting for this moment': Libya confirms Gadhafi is dead
Al-Arabiya TV says it will broadcast photo of blooded deposed leader

SIRTE, Libya — Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, the Libyan prime minister confirmed Thursday, following news of his capture and reports of his death.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Jibril told a news conference.

The ousted dictator died of wounds suffered in his capture near his hometown of Sirte, according to a senior National Transitional Council military official and a government minister.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

The military official, Abdel Majid Mlegta, told Reuters that Gadhafi was taken at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy that NATO warplanes had attacked.

"There was a lot of firing against his group and he died," said Mlegta.

But Libyan television showed images on Thursday of troops surrounding two large drainage pipes under a highway where it said toppled leader Gadhafi was found.

NATO said its aircraft fired on a convoy near Sirte earlier, but would not confirm reports that Gadhafi had been a passenger.

"We are checking and assessing the situation,"' a NATO official said. "Clearly these are very significant developments, which will take time to confirm. If it is true, then this is truly a historic day for the people of Libya.''

AFP news agency provided a photograph that appeared to show a wounded or dead Gadhafi. The image has not been independently verified.

NBC's Adrienne Mong, reporting from Sirte, saw a massive convoy heading West toward Misrata. Gadhafi's body was rumored to be in the convoy, she reported, but NBC could not confirm that.

Rebels also said they had captured Gadhafi's son, Mo'tassim, alive in Sirte, Arab news channels Al Jazeera TV and Al-Arabiya reported.

The White House was saying little Thursday morning about developments as it waited for official confirmation from Libya. Past reports of Gadhafi family deaths or captures have proven incorrect.

Even before official U.S. confirmation of Gadhafi's fate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., reacting to reports that Gadhafi was dead, hailed "an end to the first phase of the Libyan revolution." The U.S. and Europe "must now deepen our support of the Libyan people," McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

Military official Mlegta reported Gadhafi's death after Libyan interim government fighters took Sirte on Thursday, extinguishing the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the former leader.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gadhafi forces "which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte," the AP reported.

Mlegta said Gadhafi was taken away by ambulance after NATO's attack.

Gadhafi's head of armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr, was killed during the attack, NTC's Mlegta said. Ahmed Ibrahim, a cousin and adviser of Gadhafi, was captured along with former government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, he added.

A Libyan government fighter gave an apparently different account of Gadhafi's capture to the one provided by Mlegta. The unnamed fighter claimed Gadhafi was hiding in a hole, shouting, "Don't shoot, don't shoot," when he was caught.

Not to worry. It was the British and the French, not the Americans.

cheers
Aj

Not much better, but some. Thank you!

I know its way shallow of me, but it always bugs me when the French can take the moral high road over us.

Well this snipet from HuffPo says it was NATO, which means we were all in it.


"Al Jazeera and Libyan state television are reporting that the Libyan dictator has been killed during a gunbattle in Sirte. A senior National Transitional Council official, Abdel Majid, told Reuters by telephone that Gaddafi has died of wounds suffered during his capture in Sirte. Reuters reports that he was wounded in both legs as he "tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked."

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/201...nd-killed.html

SIRTE, Libya - Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for 42 years until he was ousted by his own people in an uprising that turned into a bloody civil war, was killed Thursday by revolutionary fighters overwhelming his hometown, Sirte, the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

The 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and the establishment of greater democracy.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli. Interim government officials said one of Gadhafi's sons, Muatassim, was also killed in Sirte and that another, Seif al-Islam, was captured wounded with a gunshot to the leg.

Footage aired on Al-Jazeera television showed Gadhafi was captured wounded but alive in Sirte. The goateed, balding Gadhafi is seen in a bloodsoaked shirt, and his face is bloodied. Standing upright, he is shoved along by a crowd of fighters on a Sirte roadside, chanting "God is great."

Gadhafi appears to struggle against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters push him onto the hood of a pickup truck. "We want him alive. We want him alive," one man shouts before Gadhahi is dragged away, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.

Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi's lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head.

His death decisively ends a regime that had turned Libya into an international pariah and ran the oil-rich nation by the whims and brutality of its notoriously eccentric leader. Libya now enters a new era, but its turmoil may not be over. The former rebels who now rule are disorganized and face rebuilding a country stripped of institutions. They have already shown signs of infighting, with divisions between geographical areas and Islamist and more secular ideologies.

A picture began to emerge of Gadhafi's last hours, though accounts still held contradictions.

Most accounts agreed Gadhafi had been holed up with heavily armed supporters in the last few buildings held by regime loyalists in his Mediterranean coastal hometown of Sirte, furiously battling advancing revolutionary fighters.

At one point, a convoy tried to flee and was hit by NATO airstrikes, carried out by French warplanes. France's Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said the 80-vehicle convoy was carrying Gadhafi and was trying to escape the city. The strikes stopped the convoy but did not destroy it, and then revolutionary fighters moved in on the vehicle carrying Gadhafi himself.

Fathi Bashaga, spokesman for the Misrata military council, whose forces were involved in the Sirte siege, said fighters encircled the convoy and exchanged fire with several of the vehicles. In one, they found Gadhafi, wounded in the neck, and took him to an ambulance. "What do you want?" Gadhafi said to the approaching revolutionaries, Bashaga said, citing witnesses.

Gadhafi bled to death from his wounds a half-hour later, he said.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who was part of the medical team that accompanied the body in the ambulance and examined it, said Gadhafi died from two bullet wounds, to the head and chest.

"You can't imagine my happiness today. I can't describe my happiness," he told The Associated Press. "The tyranny is gone. Now the Libyan people can rest."

Gadhafi's body was then paraded through the streets of the nearby city of Misrata on top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain," according to footage aired on Al-Arabiya television. The fighters who killed Gadhafi are believed to have come from Misrata, a city that suffered a brutal weeks-long siege by Gadhafi's forces during the eight-month long civil war.

Celebratory gunfire and cries of "God is Great" rang out across the capital Tripoli. Cars honked their horns and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.

Libya's new leaders had said they would declare the country's "liberation" after the fall of Sirte.

The death of Gadhafi — and the death and capture of his two most powerful sons — adds greater solidity to that declaration.

It rules out a scenario that some had feared — that he might flee deeper into Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign against Libya's rulers. Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told AP that Muatassim Gadhafi, his father's former national security adviser, was killed in Sirte. The justice miniister said Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, had been wounded in the leg and was being held in a hospital in the city of Zlitan, northwest of Sirte.

Sirte's fall caps weeks of heavy, street-by-street battles as revolutionary fighters besieged the city. Despite the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya's new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid.

By Tuesday, fighters said they had squeezed Gadhafi's forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square yards but were still coming under heavy fire from surrounding buildings.

In an illustration of how heavy the fighting has been, it took the anti-Gadhafi fighters two days to capture a single residential building.

Reporters watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. Thursday and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the battle, about five carloads of Gadhafi loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway that leads out of the city. But they were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gadhafi forces "which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte."

The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Gadhafi.

One fighter who said he was at the battle told AP Television News that the final fight took place at an opulent compound for visiting dignitaries built by Gadhafi's regime. Adel Busamir said the convoy tried to break out but after being hit it turned back and re-entered the compound. Several hundred fighters assaulted.

"We found him there," Busamir said. "We saw them beating him (Gadhafi) and someone shot him with a 9mm pistol ... then they took him away."

Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV that a wounded Gadhafi "tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down."

"I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed," he said.

After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any hiding Gadhafi fighters. At least 16 were captured, along with cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Gadhafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

In the central quarter where Thursday's final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Gadhafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.

They chanted "God is great" while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution's flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Gadhafi's fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.

"Our forces control the last neighborhood in Sirte," Hassan Draoua, a member of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, told The Associated Press in Tripoli. "The city has been liberated."

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/201...#ixzz1bLt4jAdi

I'm curious, now that it appears that all the French did was force the convoy to stop but that Gaddafi's actual demise came at the hands of Libyans, does that change the calculation at all?

Cheers
Aj

He was in power 42 years. The US bombed him for 36 of those 42 through Republican and Democratic Presidents.....well we bombed him except for that 10 years W Bush was the pResident....W said he was a 'reformed terrorist'.

The people are rising up all over the world and winning. It gives me hope we can win in the 'free democratic country' called the USA. It's a good day.

Occupy Wall Street all over the US and the world.

I do have a different gut feeling about OWS. It really might turn into something world wide that will effect change. But until the US has public finance of elections ONLY, we have a hell of a long way to go.

The Libyan people did the final deed taking him out. Never thought he would stand trial.

There are pictures of his dead body all over the internet and TV. That is just gross and I wish people would stop showing it. When they say he is dead, I believe it. I don't want to look at his bloody corpse.

3.9 earthquake- Berkeley, CA
 

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...c71667366.html

Oh, yeah.... felt this one! BART track now being looked at for damage. I certainly felt a jolt!!!

I can't find where we bombed Libya for 36 years. I did several searches trying to find where we were bombing Libya for 36 years and could find nothing. I found several incidents over the period between 1970 and 2006 but nothing that would suggest that we were bombing him pretty much continuously over that time.

The incidents I found were:

Gulf of Sidra incident #1 in 1981-- dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Action in Sidra gulf March 1986 -- US Navy conducting exercises in international waters near Libya. Libyans fire missiles at US ships. US ships fire back at Libyans. No civilian casualties. President Reagan.

Bombing of Tripoli April 1986 -- US aircraft bomb Tripoli in retaliation for bombing of a nightclub in Germany frequented by US military personnel. President Reagan

Gulf of Sidra incident #2 in 1989 -- another dogfight between US Navy fighters and Libyan air force. President Bush the Elder

I can find nothing earlier than 1981, nothing later than 1989 until we get to the present. So nothing under Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton or Bush the Younger. I can find only one actual air strike against Libya and that's the 1986 incident. The other three incidents all seem to be acts of aggression started by the Libyans. Gaddafi had claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra was Libyan territorial waters. The recognized territorial limit is 12 nautical miles. Libya claimed that their territory extended out 60 nautical miles. The Libyan military attacked the US Navy in international waters. By all rights of international law and convention, even our military is allowed to defend itself when attacked.

Now, I was in the military for three of those working crypto at the NSA at Ft Meade for the 1986 and 1989 actions. The bombing was an act of retaliation, the two dogfights were acts of aggression on the part of the Libyans.

Now, one more point lest someone claim that we had no business being in waters anywhere *near* Libya. This was the 1980s. The Cold War was still on. We *know* that one Russian war plan called for starving NATO for oil by closing off the Persian Gulf and seizing all the nations surrounding them if allied with the West. It would have been an act of military negligence for us *not* to hold exercises in an area we were going to have to try to keep the Russians out of. (NATO without oil wouldn't last a week against what the Red Army had planned for Western Europe.) At any rate, if we had incurred into their territory that would be one thing but they attacked our ships in international waters.

I understand (but disagree with) the rush to think that if there's someone more culpable for an international incident that it *must* be either the United States or some other Western nation if the US can't be blamed but that's simply not always the case.

Cheers
Aj

Lest it be lost, congratulations to the Libyan people for being once and for all done with their dictator. Well done! I hope they create some kind of a republic. I hope that they can keep it.

Cheers
Aj

I dunno.......how about we think about bombing as something different than those big ass possible UFO bombers flying over northern Africa and think about drones that the US military has been using for more years than will make civilians feel comfortable.

Daddy Bush killed whatshisface's girl child in a tent somewhere in that northern desert.

Let us who have served, not contribute to the whitewashing of war. Find a US government that has not been involved in trying to get rid of whateveris the spelling of his name since he took power. Please name me a US government ....other than that assfuckingmonkey who occupied the White House for 10 years bedfore Obama......that was not involved in a lone or NATO action that wanted to change the government of Lybia.

Don't rely on what the mainstream media tells you is happening.......

we only have to use Occupy Wallstreet as the example of media ignoring what is going on....media changing the truth for what money says is true........

this is not about culpalibilty (sp) ..........blame is always available to everyone involved

As a non-violent person who believes in rule of law, I do not see today as a "victory". A regime change maybe for a short while, through killing.

\

the reality of revolution is rarely pretty......death is a common trait....I will only turn the other cheek so far..........then.........mofo......you die and I will deal with my karma

personal responsiblity for my part in some fucking evil bastard's death

Ghandi used ALL tools available to him........just as MLK did in his time

I believe in the rule of law. If Gaddafi could be removed by the rule of law, he wouldn't have been a dictator. It may not be a victory but it isn't a loss either. I understand where you're coming from but I just can't shed a tear for Gaddafi, nor can I blame the Libyan people for rising up and overthrowing him. Whatever comes next and I really hope it is some kind of constitutional republic , it won't be Gaddafi and his sons. Given the circumstances it has turned out pretty well. Gaddafi had already proven, by his own orders to his own military, that he was completely comfortable with killing any number of his own people. I think it's okay to kill the person who is trying to kill you. If people *want* to martyr themselves, that's fine but they shouldn’t' *have* to martyr themselves.

Cheers
Aj

You know me, Toughy. I say we continue to think of bombing as bombing so that we know what we're talking about. Look, I agree with you that the media has gigantic blind spots and the strangest idea of what 'news' is. But I also think that the time when we could pretend that words just mean whatever we might want them to for ideological or partisan ends. The other side does it. They do it to our detriment. So job growth isn't job growth when the government has a hand in it. Tax cuts for the rich aren't tax cuts for the rich if we call them something else. The two issues might seem completely unrelated but I think they are linked. If we're going to insist that Republicans are full of it when they claim that there's no global warming or that tax cuts raise revenues then we're going to have to hold ourselves to the same standard. Otherwise we're hypocrites. I don't want us to be hypocrites. It's not particularly convenient but I think that our country is in enough trouble that we need to inject some hard reality into the discussion, even if that means that we can't just make it up as we go along because it's easier to make our ideological point or tip the partisan balance of power.

So bombing is when someone drops ordnance on something else. Shelling is when someone uses artillery to achieve the same ends.

I also think that the historical record counts. Again, the other side is wholesale pulling things out of a hat to boost their ideological and partisan ends. They are claiming that the men who wrote the Constitution were all fundamentalist Christians but they weren't. If we are going to call them out on making up history, I think we have to not make it up ourselves. Otherwise, we have no ground upon which to stand. Oh, I'm sure we could claim that because we're making it up as we go for good and pure ideological and partisan reasons and they are doing it for malevolent ones, I don't think that's going to convince anyone. I pretty certain that they think they're the ones who are doing it for a higher good.

So if we say that, for instance, we bombed Libya for 36 years doesn't that mean we should actually be able to point to incidents--specific incidents? Shouldn't we also recognize that since every *other* navy in the world is going to defend itself if threatened by fighters in international waters, ours is going to do the same? Shouldn't we also recognize that a dogfight is not bombing?

I think it was Reagan since it was 1986.

Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford. Bill Clinton.

Actually, I typically get my information from a variety of sources. You really going to do the "if you weren't listening to the mainstream media" thing with me, my friend? I'm not parroting what one might hear on the mainstream media. Rather, I'm working off of my own readings, my own memories, my library and the sources of information I *do* use. Juan Cole, who is no one's war monger, is one of my favorite sources. The BBC always does a pretty good job as does Al Jazeera.

Cheers
Aj

How about some good news?!
 

Red Bank, New Jersey (state of my birth): Jon Bon Jovi and his wife just opened up a gourmet restaurant that is "pay what you can".

No one turned away if they can't pay & those that can, can leave what they can afford in envelopes on the table. Those that can't pay, can wait tables, bus tables-if they can help out but it is not mandatory.

No prices on the menu. The restaurant is a beautifully renovated 1100 sq. Foot building.

Name of restaurant: Soul Kitchen.

If you live near there, please patronize to help support this wonderfully giving concept.

PS: Why don't more people with lots of $$$ do this type of giving back to the community?

Here’s an article out today about a new climate change study conducted to prove that global warming exists and that scientists are right, have been right, and continue to be right.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-...b_1021171.html

To me the real news here is not in the actual story content, but in the fact that it is a news story at all. The real news is that we are still in a place where we have to deal with global climate warming denial. It’s like refusing to accept evolution or insisting the earth revolves around the sun. But it has much more dire consequence. If you insist the earth is 6000 years old and a white haired dude in the sky created it in 6 days and made woman from man’s rib well it’s just weird and mildly offensive in a misogynistic sort of way, but has no real impact on the rest of us unless you try to get it taught in schools not as bible study but as literal and scientific fact.

Keeping everyone stuck in a place of consistently trying to prove that the earth is one hurting planet as a direct result of our actions instead of putting all of our collective effort into coming up with ways to alleviate some of the pressure on the environment may ultimately lead to the demise of the human race as we know it. That seems serious to me, but it doesn’t get the kind of attention that one would assume impending doom would.

I know I said that believing in literal interpretations of the bible and in a 6000 year old earth and the refusal to accept evolution doesn’t impact the rest of us the way consistent denial of environmental issues does but it is subtly dangerous in that it is part of the mindset that allows relatively intelligent people to sit on the fence about serious issues that have real concrete scientific proof.

It is the reason why I am so upset when I see people rejecting science in favor of spirituality as though they were mutually exclusive.

Anyway reading about this study this morning prompted me to find an old article I had read about why anti-science ideology is bad for America and I thought I would post it here.


Why Anti-Science Ideology is Bad for America

Anti-science ideology isn’t completely new in the U.S. — there is a dismaying history of irrational, pseudoscientific, or downright anti-scientific thinking and political culture here. But it seems to be gaining momentum — even as it runs counter to America’s scientific and technological strengths. Such strengths, in fact, underpin our economic and political strengths.

I’m not talking about honest scientific skepticism and questioning – indeed, that is the very basis of good science. I’m talking about a disturbing combination of two factors: political cowardice hiding behind scientific skepticism; and political pandering to special interests by rejecting science, knowledge, and reason in favor of ideology, religion, or narrow economic self-interest.

Sadly and with few brave exceptions, some politicians are active and aggressive at using false, misleading, or discredited science, or explicitly ignoring good science, in setting public policy to support ideology. History tells us this never leads to a good outcome. The Soviets let Lysenkoist ideology pollute their biological and genetic sciences in the 1930s, and they’ve never recovered. We saw it with the long, successful effort of the tobacco industry and their allies to confuse the public and delay regulations to protect public health, leading to millions of unnecessary cancer deaths. We saw it with the veto by Richard Nixon of the Clean Water Act (overridden with the help of some brave and influential Republican senators). And we see it now, in full flower, on the issue of climate change.

Here is what the science conclusively tells us: climate change is real, it is already underway, and it is largely due to human activities. These findings are acknowledged by every single major scientific organization in the areas of climate, meteorology, geology, physics, chemistry, atmospheric science, and hydrology, as well as every single National Academy of Sciences, including our own, created by Abraham Lincoln as an independent non-governmental organization to provide the best scientific advice to the government.

To quote from an open letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published in the leading journal Science:

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial — scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

By pretending that the science is bad, some politicians are trying to avoid the truly difficult policy debates that are their responsibility. And they are simultaneously using claims of budget problems to destroy the nation’s climate research capabilities and stop efforts to improve the science. For example, cuts in NOAA’s budget aimed at eliminating anything “climate” related are likely to lead to a gap in satellite coverage of extreme weather events — precisely the satellites that provided the data our meteorologists used to generate advances warnings for the extreme tornadoes and recent Hurricane Irene. For every $1 saved by delaying replacement satellites, society will face an estimated $3 to $5 in higher costs in the form of damages, injuries, deaths, and efforts to obtain data using other approaches — this is a false savings solely due to anti-climate ideology. And because of inaction on climate policy, uncontrolled climate changes are already beginning to impose serious costs on our economies: reductions in crop yields, extra impacts from extreme storm events, drought costs, and more.

Things have gotten so bad that the highly respected scientific journal Nature called these actions “fundamentally anti-science” and an example of “willful ignorance,” and said:

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long.”

The problem is, in part, that acting to reduce the risks of human-caused climate change could lead to policies that are inconvenient for powerful vested economic interests. We thus see a very well-endowed carbon-fuel industry willing to spend vast sums of money to confuse the public, support politicians and organizations whose influence they can buy, malign scientists who speak out, and create alternative “science” that is rejected over and over by independent review and analysis. Rather than have an honest, albeit difficult policy debate about what should be done about climate change, they postpone that debate by trying to discredit the science.

There are some modest signs of a return to rationality and scientific integrity. In recent days, one candidate for President, John Huntsman of Utah, has spoken out on the need for integrity of science. He told ABC’s “This Week”:

“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

He went on to call on the Republican Party to stop being antithetical to science: “I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.” Ironically, this shouldn’t be news: Huntsman’s comments are only newsworthy in the context of the extreme anti-science positions taken by his colleagues.

It is time to reassert scientific integrity, logic, reason, and the scientific method in public policy. The public may have disagreements about matters of policy, but our elected representatives must not misuse, hide, or misrepresent science in service of political wars and ideological positions.
Dr. Peter Gleick



Climate Study Does Not Placate Skeptics
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

As we noted on the blog on Thursday, a new study designed to address critiques of climate science by skeptics has confirmed that “global warming is real” and the world’s average land temperature has risen by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-1950s.
The findings, released by a group of scientists and statisticians at the University of California known as the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, were welcomed by climate scientists and advocates of climate policy action, who had been hoping that skeptics would finally have to cry uncle.
Not so fast.
At least one of those skeptics, Anthony Watts, had written in March on his climate-themed blog, Watts Up With That, “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But neither Mr. Watts nor other longtime critics of climate science reached by The Times seemed satisfied with the report.

Thank you. I hope that people will begin to wake up. Those of us who care about things like climate change, the biological roots of homosexuality, women's health, or any of a number of other issues *need* science. We need it when it's convenient (when we're arguing that humans *are* impacting the climate) and we need it when it's inconvenient (when biologists try to get people to understand that humans are just a large-brained, relatively hairless, African primate). Either climate change is happening or it isn't. If it isn't happening then there's nothing to worry about it. If it *is* happening (and it is) then the discussion should move from 'well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't' to 'since it is happening, what do we do about it?' The climate change deniers, particularly those of a conservative ideological bent, have been stalling. Whether they are stalling knowingly or unknowingly is beyond my ability to discern and doesn't really matter. They're stalling and have been for 20 years now. All the while the clock has been ticking.

If you are, like me, a person on and of the Left, please consider that if you aren't willing to deal with the rules of science when it's inconvenient then you have no leg upon which to stand when you criticize George Bush or the Republican party for being deliberately scientifically ignorant. One thing I would like to impress upon people is that the phrase 'it's only a theory' drives scientists up a wall. Theory doesn't mean guess. A theory is a model. That model is based upon hypothesis which make predictions can be tested or observed or both. So when someone talks about the 'theory of evolution' or the 'theory of gravity' they are not talking about 'the guess that evolution happens' or 'the guess that objects in a gravitational field behave a certain way'. They are talking about 'the model by which we explain why there are rabbits and humans and fruit flies and redwood trees' or 'the model by which we explain *how* objects behave in a gravitational field (Newton's) *and* why objects behave in certain ways in the presence of such a field (Einstein)'. These are not guesses, they are explanatory frameworks.

To me, time is getting short. There's enough simultaneous crisis facing our country any one of which would be a major headache for prior generations of Americans. We have to deal with pretty much all of them in parallel. It is long past time we stopped ceding so much ground to those who would like to hide their heads in the sands, hand wave the dangers away or blame the victims instead of the perpetrators. Long. Past. Time.

Either those of us interested in building a sustainable, more just, more literate society get our act together or our adversaries will get their act together ahead of us. I think that they have made clear what their plans are for the country. I don't want to live in the kind of America envisioned by Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain. Do you?


Cheers
Aj

I keep looking for that article I read talking about covert and overt military actions in Libya over the last 40 or so years. Haven't found it but will keep looking. Certainly, you can say we did not 'officially' partake in military actions against Libya except on occasion, however I don't believe it. We certainly sanctioned Libya for most of those years in terms of trade. I get my info from a variety of sources also and that's probably why I can't find the article.....laughin...I will keep looking.

It's kind of like how we were enforcing 'no fly zones' in Iraq since the first Iraq War........nobody would admit it yet it was happening.

It's just fascinating to me how the Republicans are reacting to this.

AND Obama says ALL troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.

[QUOTE=Toughy;443090]I keep looking for that article I read talking about covert and overt military actions in Libya over the last 40 or so years. Haven't found it but will keep looking. Certainly, you can say we did not 'officially' partake in military actions against Libya except on occasion, however I don't believe it. We certainly sanctioned Libya for most of those years in terms of trade. I get my info from a variety of sources also and that's probably why I can't find the article.....laughin...I will keep looking.

It's kind of like how we were enforcing 'no fly zones' in Iraq since the first Iraq War........nobody would admit it yet it was happening.

It's just fascinating to me how the Republicans are reacting to this.

AND Obama says ALL troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.[/QUOTE]

Kind of interesting to consider why this is so-

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-Iraq-554130/1

Obama won't keep troops in Iraq past 2011
The Associated Press is reporting that the Obama administration is giving up plans to keep a residual force of several thousand U.S. troops in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline at the end of the this year, citing unnamed sources.

"A senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy," reports the AP.

The United States and Iraq have a signed agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops at the end of 2011.

In recent months, U.S. and Iraqi officials have discussed a revised agreement that would keep some American troops on the ground to train Iraqi forces.

Now that idea appears to be off, reports AP. The deal breaker: Iraq's refusal to grant American troops immunity in Iraqi courts.

"The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability."



Also from Associated Press:

The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.

In recent months, Washington has been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces. A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday that no final decision has been reached about the U.S. training relationship with the Iraqi government.

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Throughout the discussions, Iraqi leaders have adamantly refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, and the Americans have refused to stay without it. Iraq's leadership has been split on whether it wanted American forces to stay. Some argued the further training and U.S. help was vital, particularly to protect Iraq's airspace and gather security intelligence. But others have deeply opposed any American troop presence, including Shiite militiamen who have threatened attacks on any American forces who remain. ...

The Strategic Framework Agreement allows for other forms of military cooperation besides U.S. troops on the ground. Signed at the same time as the security accord mandating the departure deadlines, it provides outlines for the U.S.-Iraqi relationship in such areas as economic, cultural and security cooperation.

Iraqi lawmakers excel at last-minute agreements. But with little wiggle room on the immunity issue and the U.S. military needing to move equipment out as soon as possible, a last-minute change between now and December 31 seems almost out of the question.

Regardless of whether U.S. troops are here or not, there will be a massive American diplomatic presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

The U.S. Embassy will still have a handful of U.S. Marines for protection and 157 U.S. military personnel in charge of facilitating weapons sales to Iraq. Those are standard functions at most American embassies around the world and would be considered part of the regular embassy staff.

Toughy;

So are you saying that we should treat the situation 'as if' it were true that we've been bombing Libya for 36 of the last 42 years because it could be possible that we have been, even though there's no evidence for it? If that's the case then why on Earth should anyone get exercised when someone on the right says something along these lines. "Now, I can't find any evidence that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a biblical literalist and pro-Goldwater Republican who believed that in small government and lower corporate taxes, but let's say that he was. Since he *was* these things, he wouldn't support the Occupy Wall Street movement." Is it true? No. But the Republican party would like to talk about King as if it *were* true and so they assert, for the sake of the discussion, that is *is* true whether there is evidence for it or not. Or, perhaps even closer to what you are saying is this gem from the current Republican party hit parade: "okay, you claim there is ample evidence for climate change. I have no counter evidence. But I reject that what you claim is evidence is actually evidence. Evidence only counts if it shows that climate change isn't happening. Any evidence to the contrary, is just proof that there's no evidence either way, which means that there is evidence that it isn't happening." Because that's pretty close to what you're doing above, my friend.

It may come out, one day, that we were involved in covert actions in Libya but I doubt it. I doubt it for a number of reasons:

1) From 1970 to 1989 Libya was a Soviet client state. While we had conflicts with Libya we did not have conflicts with them that would have provoked the USSR into believing their interests were being challenged. Since Libya was one of the primary suppliers of oil to the Soviet Union, we were going to watch our steps and the Soviets were going to keep a lid on the Libyans. We also had limited trade with ALL Soviet client states because we didn't want to prop them up.

2) If anyone here ever spent time at the CIA I apologize for what comes next. The CIA is and has been pretty incompetent particularly in human intelligence since the late 50s. During the *entire* Cold War the CIA never managed to penetrate the Kremlin. Never. At all. Not even close. Our human intelligence efforts in the Middle East, the Near East and nations surrounding the southern Mediterranean (northern Africa) have never been even as good as what we had in Eastern Europe and we *sucked* in Eastern Europe! We couldn’t develop assets in countries where the CIA had people who had cultural knowledge. We certainly didn't develop any assets in places like Libya. Ever.

3) While the CIA sucked, the KGB was all over the CIA. They managed to put moles high up in the CIA and the FBI and the Brits MI-6. There's a reason why the CIA stopped trying to run covert ops in Europe by the mid-60s and it was because every time they cultivated some spy or dropped some operatives into a country behind the Iron Curtain those people got picked up time and time again because the CIA was leaky like a colander! We couldn't have pulled off a decent operation in a Soviet client state if our lives depending upon it! We certainly didn't have any assets that could have done anything in Libya that would have been at all effective.

Yes, Toughy, we did sanction Libya after they blew up a disco in Germany and then, as an encore, blew up a Pan Am plane while it was 30,000 feet in the air. That seems reasonable to me.

What do you mean nobody would admit it was happening? It was all over the news! The only people who didn't know that there was a no-fly zone happening were people who weren't paying attention. Every time the Iraqis locked on to an American aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, that radar got destroyed and there was a news story on all the networks that night. Every time the Iraqis tried to challenge the no-fly zone and sent up a helicopter or one of their remaining fighters and had it shot down, there was a news article. So who wasn't admitting that the no-fly zone was in effect? I remember constant articles in left-leaning magazines about the no-fly zone throughout the nineties so I'm not sure why you think there was a cover up. The US government admitted that there was a no-fly zone. The United Nations kept reauthorizing the no-fly zone. NATO kept supporting the no-fly zone. The Saudi Arabians kept allowing the US to use air bases in that nation in order to enforce the no-fly zone which, as it turns out, was one of the things that Osama bin Laden mentioned in his 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States.

Yes, because the Status Of Forces Agreement dictates that it should be so. Once hostilities have ended, we can't be in any country that doesn't consent to have us there. If Iraq will only allow US troops on their land under specific conditions (as is their right) and we reject those conditions (as is our right) then there's no agreement and our troops can't stay. If we try to keep them there despite what the host country has stated it wants, then that is an act of war. Before anyone says anything, there will be Marines at the embassy. These do not count because there are Marines at *every* embassy. These are not 'troops in Iraq' they are 'Marines on embassy duty'. And yes, I know that they're keeping a bunch of contractors in-country. These are not troops, they are mercenaries. When they put the uniform back on, I'll dignify them by counting them amongst our troops but until then, they are mercenaries who are loyal to whomever is signing the cheque.

Cheers
Aj

It's Good News that Hawk With Nail in Head Is Eating, Rescue Group Says

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/red...ry?id=14778708

I am so happy to see that this hawk was found and is now getting care! I so hope the jerk that did this caught!

Sad but good
 

Aj my sister friend.........

It's hard to have a conversation with you sometimes. I completely understand your need to dissect and your need for exactitude; you are a scientist and that is your nature. Those things serve science, but they make back and forth dialogue between people difficult.

The average American has no idea about US foreign (and domestic) policy, about NATO, about the UN, about any of our treaties and alliances or the importance of those things. Just look at the Tea Party and the Republican debates and your blood should run cold and scared. That was my point about no-fly zones in Iraq. Most Americans did NOT know. Michelle Bachman said recently that it wasn't enough the Obama got us into Libya, he is now taking us to Africa (she said this about Somalia).

I believe that every President (except Bush 43) was involved in some kind of military/civilian/spy covert shenanigans in Libya. Maybe it was not planes dropping bombs, but none the less some kind of crap was going on. Libya has oil.

I am reminded of my time in the military during Vietnam. The US military was not (involved) in Cambodia, Laos or Thailand.........big FAT SNORT.......we were and had been since at least the early 50's.

Companies like Blackwater did not spring up like magic. They have been around a long time and the CIA has used them effectively (sometimes not) for decades. The CIA and drugs and arms are generally unprovable facts, with some exceptions. The CIA gets it's money to operate from somewhere and it's not all the US government. Evidence of the CIA (and it's covert operators) actions is difficult to find....for a reason. You surely know the story of how crack cocaine came to Oakland and the rest of the country? Surely you know the opium trade is linked to them?

As to the KGB.....I figure we (and UK, France, Germany) were up their butt as much as they were up ours. I happen to believe the CIA (and it's friends) are not stupid and have been successful over the years, much in the same way as the KGB has been successful.

The need for proof is how covert operations always have deniablity. No proof, well it didn't happen. Our government also relies on the average american's stupidity and ignorance of our history and current events. Watch this hand while the other one is stealing your chickens.

I would love to talk about these issues. I hinted it would be better served around my firepit with a bowl of good bud, than being dissected line by line, paragraph by paragraph. I look forward to that day my friend.

You're misreading me here, Toughy. My desire for exactitude has less to do with my being a scientist and more with my being a leftist. I grew up raised by liberal people who taught us that poverty was an *empirical* question and that racism was an *empirical* question. We were taught that we had to have our facts in order because they assumed--not without justification--that if white people were going to be moved to change the laws because of some deep love of black people, then there would never have been racial discrimination in the first place. So instead, we had to make an argument that discrimination was *actually* happening in the *actual* world and not just in the minds of black people. Those lessons stuck with me. The right-wing may be able to win based upon myths and lies but the left will get nothing done and make no improvements--and for any foreseeable future it's *us* on the Left, folks we can expect no help from the right-wing for at least another generation--without being on the side of truth.

I think we on the left are in a frustrating box of our own making. No better example can be had than global warming. It's happening. It's clear that it's happening and yet, we have a media and intellectual climate that cannot deal with the fact that ~40% of the American populace believe it isn't. Instead of dealing with the false belief as media, popular and intellectual culture all treat the false beliefs as if they might be true and that there is no way of knowing who might be right. It doesn't matter if that is not true, we act as if it were.

What you are saying about the ignorance of the American people isn't an excuse for us asserting things that aren't true, Toughy. How are we going to stand against the right-wing, which has discovered to our detriment that they can lie, on camera, about the fact that the Sun rises in the East and get away with it now? If we don't speak the truth (because people don't know it or might not know it or because we've been suckered into believing that there's no truth) and the right-wing doesn't speak the truth (because it does not serve their ideological agenda to do so) then who will tell the people the truth? Why should they believe us when we are no more interested in accuracy than those on the other side? Why should they trust us if we don't care enough to get it right even when we're only talking to ourselves?

Do I try to use scientific tools in political contexts? Yes, because the tools are powerful. It is extremely potent to ask form a working hypothesis, ask questions designed to see if the real world agrees, and then base explanations off of those observations. But I'm not doing it for scientific reasons, I'm doing it for purely political ones. Look, if the United States has been doing X for 40 years I want to know about it. I also want to look any right-wing apologist for that action (if one exists) square in the eye and be able to say "dead bodies don't lie" and have them not be able to say "well, maybe they're not dead. Or maybe they died some other way just because a bomb was dropped and they were under it when it exploded doesn't mean that they died because of the bomb". Right now, that's where we are, Toughy. Both sides of the American political body are pretty unconcerned about what is *really* happening. They care about that which is happening which fits their narrative and ideological spin but it doesn't matter if it *actually* happened.

Do right-wingers care if Obama was actually born in the United States? No, they don't. The myth that he was born outside of the US serves an ideological purpose and nothing more. They wouldn't *mind* if it were true but the truth of the statement is beside the point. Does it matter to most people of the Left if the United States was bombing Libya? Probably not. What matters is that saying the US bombed that nation for 40 years fits the ideological preferences of the Left and so whether or not it happened is quite beside the point. Everyone likes being right so no one would object if it turned out they were but it doesn't matter if it actually happened.

Caring about whether or not things actually happened probably makes me a dinosaur but I prefer that than to find myself indulging in behavior I think has caused more damage to the United States than ten thousand Bernie Madoffs. If we were still a culture that cared if something *actually* happened then the Bernie Madoffs wouldn't have so many apologists in our country.

Do you think that promoting myths will help that? Do you think that we of the Left should *exploit* ignorance that for our own partisan ends or try to alleviate that ignorance through education? I prefer the latter. I don't trust my side enough to believe that our noble lies are any better than the other side's noble lies. While the right-wing may believe that the ignorance of the average voter is there to be exploited, I think that it is one of the tasks of the left--whether we want it to be our job or not--to alleviate that ignorance. We have a long road back to the day when politicians will once again fear being caught out in either a lie or a gross inaccuracy. We have to take that road, though, my friend because whether or not there is a functioning civilization in one hundred years probably depends upon our ability to do so.


Cheers
Aj

Another day, another closeted GOP pol
 

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem....php?ref=fpblg

This is getting so common it's hardly news anymore. If news is man-bites-dog, then 'conservative, anti-gay GOP politician caught in gay hypocrisy' is a dog-bites-man story if ever there was one. That said, I do love seeing these headlines. They amuse me.

Cheers
Aj

Even when you're on camera saying it, you haven't really said it
 

So Michelle (no, my husband isn't gay) Bachmann is now claiming that even though she's on camera saying something doesn't mean she actually said it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1028552.html

It just keeps getting better and better. It used to be that you had to be careful what you said on camera because you couldn't deny it. Now you can say "I hate puppies" and then turn around 2 seconds later and claim "I never said I hate puppies" and get away with it.

Cheers
Aj

Okay, the GOP has officially jumped the shark
 

When Pat Robertson thinks you've gone to far to the right, you *know* you've jumped the shark. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/20...me.php?ref=fpb

Cheers
Aj

One step closer to full-blown cybernetics
 

Scientists at DARPA have created a prosthetic arm controlled by a brain-interface computer! The arm has 27 degrees of movement freedom (not quite as good as a natural arm but damn good nevertheless) and has sensors that communicate temperature, pressure, contact and vibration. In other words, it's an *arm*!

cheers
Aj