Mike's Blog

"You just can''t make this shit up"

That was Watertiger's comment on this.  Absolutly amazing. Brownie has started a disaster preparedness consulting firm.  Let's see, I know almost nothing about car repair, maybe I should start a firm helping people set up car repair shops. But I'm not qualified to do that, I've never run one and screwed it up.

Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm
Fri Nov 25, 5:25 AM ET

DENVER - Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job. (link)

Michael Behe vs Monty Python

Monty Python vs Michael Behe interviewed by Eric Rothschild in the Dover Pennsylvania case in October this year. I read parts of the court transcript in the links in the article and all of what I read is pretty much as below. Amazing.

Monty Python

Q: You say you have a new theory about the brontosaurus.
A: Can I just say here, Chris, for one moment, that I have a new theory about the brontosaurus.
Q: Exactly. Well, what is it? …
A: Oh, what is my theory?
Q: Yes.
A: Oh, what is my theory, that it is. Well, Chris, you may well ask me what is my theory.
Q: I am asking.
A: Good for you. My word, yes. Well, Chris, what is it that it is—this theory of mine. Well, this is what it is—my theory that I have, that is to say, which is mine, is mine.
Q: Yes, I know it's yours. What is it?
A: Where? Oh, what is my theory? This is it. My theory that belongs to me is as follows. This is how it goes. The next thing I'm going to say is my theory. Ready?
Q: Yes.

A:...This theory goes as follows and begins now. All brontosauruses are thin at one end; much, much thicker in the middle; and then thin again at the far end.

Michael Behe cross-examined by Eric Rothshild

Q: Please describe the mechanism that intelligent design proposes for how complex biological structures arose.
A: Well, the word "mechanism" can be used in many ways. … When I was referring to intelligent design, I meant that we can perceive that in the process by which a complex biological structure arose, we can infer that intelligence was involved. …
Q: What is the mechanism that intelligent design proposes?
A: And I wonder, could—am I permitted to know what I replied to your question the first time?
Q: I don't think I got a reply, so I'm asking you. You've made this claim here (reading): "Intelligent design theory focuses exclusively on the proposed mechanism of how complex biological structures arose." And I want to know, what is the mechanism that intelligent design proposes for how complex biological structures arose?
A: Again, it does not propose a mechanism in the sense of a step-by-step description of how those structures arose. But it can infer that in the mechanism, in the process by which these structures arose, an intelligent cause was involved.

The interrogation goes on like this for pages and pages. Like the theorist in the Monty Python sketch, Behe throws up a blizzard of babble: process, intelligent activity, important facts. What process? What activity? What facts? He never explains. He says the designer "took steps" to create complex biological systems, but ID can't specify the steps. Does ID tell us who designed life? No, he answers. Does it tell us how? No. Does it tell us when? No. How would the designer create a bacterial flagellum? It would "somehow cause the plan to, you know, go into effect,". . . (link)

Pat Robertson's head will now explode

Just think of all the foreign aid the US could get if Pat Robertson threatened to assassinate EVERY leader in the world.

Venezuela to Provide Discount Oil to Mass.
By MARK JEWELL The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; 10:58 PM
QUINCY, Mass. -- Thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents will receive discounted home heating oil this winter under an agreement signed Tuesday with Venezuela, whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration.

A subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices. It will be distributed by two nonprofit organizations, Citizens Energy Corp. and the Mass Energy Consumer Alliance.

The agreement gives President Hugo Chavez's government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. residents at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so and Congress has failed to expand aid in response to rising oil prices . . . (link via Beautiful Horizons)

A Bush Family Thanksgiving

This is  great. I'll have this in mind now whenever I see pictures of today's White House Thanksgiving dinner.

Scenes From A Bush Thanksgiving
Dubya pouts, Cheney scowls, no one brings pie -- and why is Rove looking at Barb that way

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

. . . Barbara rules. Owns the house, despite how she hasn't lived here in over 13 years. Laura can only look at her in numb awe, her own stiff skirt pleats appearing humble and small in comparison to Barb's massive teal dress ensemble, so epic and balloon-like it would seem to envelope all it comes near, like a giant ocean algae bloom, a massive amoeba, a cloud of righteous know-it-allness that makes easy mockery of Laura's little beige blouse of meek sexless humility. Barb is a force of nature, commanding the staff and chatting up the various heads of state and smiling at everyone with that glassy omnivorous stare. They all hate her.

George Sr. notices this, of course, from his usual place back beside the old bookcase that hasn't been perused in five years, sips his gin fizz and chuckles softly at the scene, thinkin' about golf, thinkin' about how long ago it all seems since his reign of tepid ineptitude, but thinkin', also, about how history will be much kinder to him now that his son has run the country into a blood-drenched wall. He-he-he. He'll drink to that.. . .
(link via Dependable Renagade)

The new look of blue

Little Shurb's not doing too well :-)

Here a map of Bush's disapproval rating state by state. via dKos,he aslo has a link to the data files.

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"When in doubt, make shit up"

Much more succinctly stated.  AMERICAblog posted this and a link to the same article I had on the Jean Schmidt shenanigans.


                  When in doubt, make shit up                   
                  by John in DC - 11/22/2005 08:55:00 PM                   
                  
                  Rep. Jean Schmidt, the lady who beat Paul Hackett in Ohio, the one who read a letter calling Murtha a coward.  Well, seems she simply made it all up.

Though there is something poetic in defending a war based on a lie with, uh, lies. (link)

Well only 63% of Americans agree with Murtha

And just because 63% (quite a few points more than a 'mandate') of the Americans polled agree with Murtha I guess is a good enough reason for the Rethug's to block even voting on it.  Election time is coming for them and the bill is going to come due for this kind of arrogance.

. .
Sixty three percent of those surveyed were in favor of bringing US troops home from Iraq in the next year, up two percent from August, while 35 percent thought they should be kept in large numbers until a democracy is established, down one point from August. . . .(link)

"Well, I'm quoting some words and he said some words, it's just that the words I'm quoting are different words - they're still words just not the same words, what's the big deal

The Rethuglicans have been so incredibly slimy in this is hard to believe the evil. (Well, maybe not, it's just that I keep thinking they can't get any worse and they keep piling on the lies and spin).  Rep. Murtha was attempting to get a bill in that called for the withdrawal of troops as soon as was "practical". There was an immediate bill presented by the GOP that called for "immediate" withdrawl. Everyone including Murtha of course voted against that as an immediate withdrawl is not practical. (well almost everyone, there were 3 who voted for it in the 400 odd votes against it.)

Plus a freshman Rep. attack dog puts words in the mouth of someone she "quotes" calling a democractic Representative a coward.

Schmidt in war of words
Rookie lawmaker's 'coward' remarks ricochet

By Malia Rulon
Enquirer Washington Bureau

Rookie lawmaker's 'coward' remarks ricochet
WASHINGTON - Three days after Rep. Jean Schmidt was booed off the House floor for saying that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do," the Ohioan she quoted disputed the comments.

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt, and he would never call a fellow Marine a coward.... (link)

dKos says it more clearly

Bill O'Reilly supports and endorses a terroist attack against San Francisco

ACTION: It's time to sinclair Bill O'Reilly

by GOPhuckYourself

Fri Nov 11, 2005 at 10:11:24 PM PDT

As many here and in other blogs have noted, Bill O'Reilly crossed the line by endorsing an al Qaeda terrorist attack against the United States of America.

It is time to do to Bill O'Reilly what the blogosphere successfully did to the Sinclair Broadcast Group - hit 'em in the wallet.  We must notify O'Reilly's sponsors that they are, in fact, sponsoring a radio program that has stated its support of a terrorist attack against the United States. . .(link)

Clarifcation of Pat Robertson's 'message'

Great clarification of what Pat Robertson is really saying to the people in Dover PA by PZ Meyers.

. . .The message is clear, it's not hard to figure it out…Christianity is like an extortion racket, see, and if you don't cough up, well, Lew here might have a little accident with your car, or your house, or your little girl. And then Mr Big wouldn't be able to do nothin' for you. He doesn't mean nothing by it, he likes you, see, but if you don't show him a little respect, you can't expect him to trouble himself with your worries, OK? Me and Vinnie'll be by tomorrow, and you will have that little donation ready.