BHS

I've posted before on my preference for what Shady has suggested, so rather than go into detail I'd just like to add that a viable global government will have to include the peoples of the world's great democracies, and so by default will have to be democratic. It's only reasonable that the genesis of such a new global order be restricted to peoples who have already assimilated to what a mature democracy demands of it's citizens, and then proceed from there to extend the franchise as warranted by circumstances. The tricky bit will be getting the Americans on board. Being directly confrontational about global issues will never work with them. If their cherished Constitution is to be superceded, it has to be seen to be superceded by a set of rules and a new ruling body that average Americans are agreeable to. It also helps if their Constitution, based on 200+ years of hard-fought history, isn't reduced at the outset to the same status as whatever Muammar Gaddafi dreamed up in the early seventies. (Yeah, I know. The rules that created current UN mess were largely their doing, so in a way they deserve to be put on a level with Libya. But that was the 1940's and two major world conflagrations had occurred within two generations. The world knows better now.)

How do you come to that conclusion? Technically, you have to score with the same size ball, on a goal that's 10 times smaller. Referencing one or two odd examples doesn't enforce your premise. Even with the attaboy, I still have to quibble. Such is the depth and perversity of my argumentativeness. But I know you'll forgive me. I went and looked up the FIFA and NBA standards. A standard FIFA soccer net is 8'x24' square and a standard NBA basketball net is 18" in diameter. Doing the math, a basketball goal is approximately 1/108th the size of a soccer goal, not 1/10th. Just so we're all clear. I wouldn't want that order of magnitude to go overlooked and unmentioned.

So, global warming is a more pressing threat than even nuclear annihilation, but it doesn't spell the end of the world. Okay, just wanted to be clear on your particular worldview. Because their are plenty of people from the global warming crowd who are certain that the humanity (and in many cases the whole planet) is doomed, so much so that the word "misanthropy" is starting to pop up in eco-infidel circles. *snip* My apologies gc. My defence of jbg was unwarranted, though I still stand by the statements I made with regard to my own views. jbg brings up an interesting point that I hadn't considered.

Perhaps rude was hyperbolic. How about schoolmarmish? (I know, like who am I to talk?)

Not to encourage Newbie's flagrant double posting, but if you read the Fox report they're simply relating a news story. It's not like they did the research and arrived at the conclusion themselves, or even that they support the conclusion.

I don't even know why I'm doing this. Oh yeah, it's because I'm a argumentative bastard. 1) Describing a soccer match as 90 minutes of virtually uninterrupted action ignores that fact that 95% of that "action" is a bunch of guys standing around watching two or three guys kick the ball back and forth amongst themselves in the midfield. Whoopee. 2) While I agree that physical abnormality is almost a prerequisite for all of North America's most popular sports, I take exception to your second point on the grounds that you appear to be saying that soccer players are on average more skillful and athletic than basketball players. See my point number 1 and contrast it to the fact that basketball requires a high degree of manual dexterity, accuracy and physical endurance from most of it's players. You are correct that some freaks of nature have an such advantage that they are able to play without meeting the general standards required of the less freakish, but that doesn't equate to some sort of general comparison between the sports wherein soccer players are somehow more skillful or atheletic in the mean.

link Where is the outrage? Governments wage genocide against their own people in the name of disarmament without the merest wimper from the UN talk-shop currently advocating disarmament. Illustrating once again that the UN isn't so much a model for responsible world government as it is a forum for trying to reign in the United States by way of "concensus".

A little off topic (or maybe not) but would this apply to AA?

Your reasoning here is faulty, and your comparison is inapt. Your seeming suggestion is that pointing out that an older hypothesis was incorrect, is seen by your opponent to be a valid argument that newer hypothesis concerning the same phenomenon must also be incorrect. This is illogical and that's not the point jbg or anyone else is making. What he's attacking isn' the conclusion but the method of arriving at that conclusion, which in this case is "scientific concensus". Which, as you've pointed out (rather rudely I thought, as if strict discipline was a defining feature of conversations on a political webforum), is the topic of this thread.

Another useless anecdote tossed out as though it has relavence to global warming. It does not. If you are going to relate these tidbits as part of your attack on the reality of globa warming you should do a little research. However, I guess truth and accuracy isn't the goal of the denial campaign. Hold on a second. Aren't you the guy who's decided that global warming is the end of the world and the most pressing issue that humanity faces? Why isn't a previous case of unwarranted panic useful to this conversation? Other than it has the tendancy of making you personally look like an irrational hysteric. And accusing people of failing to do research and thereby denying the truth is pretty weak coming from an individual who's entire argument rests on unquestioning adherence to "concensus". Furthermore, jbg adds an interesting element to the conversation: the whole proposition of the global warming religion is that humanity's activities have had an unintended but drastic effect on global climate. Unintended, because there was no way to know what effect carbon dioxide loading would have on global climate when we began burning fossil fuels in vastly increased quantities. (My argument has been, and continues to be - see below - that we still do not know what that effect amounts to.) Now, people who are alarmed by the possibility that humanity has caused serious damage to the world's climatic systems propose direct anthropogenic tampering with the climate to "fix" the problem, without any regard to how their "solutions" very likely have their own unintended negative consequences. I'd say that's a fairly serious topic that requires some thought and discussion. But you chose instead to dismiss his entire post out of hand, because it makes you look bad by relating true and relative facts from the history of climate alarmism and earlier proposed anthropogenic solutions that would have made today's situation worse. * * * Our earlier posts dealt with the NAS' reports from 2001 and 2005, and you pointed out that the 2005 report more or less falls in line with your argument that the concensus side has won and that the argument is over. Fair enough - I can't very well argue that the NAS' conclusions in 2005 are wrong without throwing out their earlier conclusions. However, I'd like to ask you to answer for me how it came to be that the questions posed in 2001 came to be answered by 2005. The 2005 doesn't go into scientific reasoning for why the uncertainties have been eliminated. In fact, the 2005 report looks more like a fact-free political sop to progressive transnational cooperation than it does a genuine attempt to clarify the situation by updating previously held positions. So, where did the uncertainties of 2001 go? Further, I'd like you to spend a few minutes reviewing this other interesting article I've dug up from the dinosaur days of 2001, by researchers at Harvard. Way back then they seemed to be adding non-renewable fuel to the fires of uncertainty. Have the problems they identify been subsequently solved by anything other than "scientific concensus"? I'd appreciate a link.

My advice? Gets some guns and take some hostages. It's the only way they'll listen.* *A joke. For entertainment purposes only. Any real-world following of humourous instructions to perpetrate violence for the sake of a political cause occur soley at the discretion of the perpetrator and do not reflect the author's true intentions.

Uh, that's "one" of his palaces, not his house. And I'm pretty sure Israel knows how far they can go with this sort of thing. Wrong. Israel has a long and consistant history of bargaining for kidnapped personnel. Prisoner exchanges happened numerous times throughout the intifadas. As likely as not this kidnapping was perpetrated with the hope of forcing another such exchange.

Oh, come on. What sort of a reply is that? I just posted three big juicy paragraphs that I feel neatly make my case for me. The least you could do is hack out some feeble ad hominem against the Academy, if you feel that tackling the relevance of the uncertainties presented in those paragraphs is too much for you.

Every woman I know who has had an abortion was come away with regrets, some deeper than others. Abortion is not the guilt-free shedding of lifeless tissue that the pro-choice crowd like to portray it as. A woman who has an abortion early in her life and has difficulty conceiving later on can suffer tremendously for "what might have been". You can argue that an unwanted child would have caused more suffering for the mother than what she puts herself through in hindsight, but that's entirely speculative. The pain I'm talking about is real and lasting. Maybe the government could start by tapping their phones and looking into their bank records. Too rough? (Actually, I don't know where the term "crack down" in your post finds it's genesis. I'm a little curious about that.)

My claim was that I had read the reports in question and had come away with the impression that the authors were less than convinced about certainty of anthropogenic warming being the primary driver of global warming. The link I provided was not to any of the reports in question, but to a review of the IPCC Third Assessment Report commissioned by the American government, written with a consise clarity that would be impossible for me to replicate with my meager education. I direct your attention to the following paragraphs: And further, to the following paragraph that appears about a page and a half later in the report:

Well, she is now the Queen of the UK, yes, but the Canadian Head of State is the Queen of Canada - totally different, though it is the same person. While I agree that one ethnicity should not be considered of greater importance than another, I suppose I'd just make it clear that Canada is no longer a British dominion - or, to put it another way, a dominion of the British Crown. The country is now the dominion of the Canadian Crown. What would be interesting is if the Turks and Caicos islands came under Canadian jurisdiction - they'd be the first Canadian Crown dependencies, and would become one of two dominions of the Queen of Canada (rather like how New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Niue are dominions of the Queen of New Zealand). This answers a number of questions I've had about the Canadian monarchy, but I'm still a little puzzled as to when the change occurred between Dominion of the British Crown and Dominion of the Canadian Crown. Is there a specific piece of legislation in either Canada or Britain where this happens? I haven't read the Charter through, but it's not clear to me that that is the turning point.

Wow. That was a short thread. I guess Gerry doesn't have any rebuttal for my comments.

Before you accuse me of putting words into your mouth you should take more care in considering which words you choose to use. The word "cronies" implies close friendship and acceptance. Not everyone who works for the government falls into this category, and certainly not the life bureaucrats who've taken it upon themselves to leak state secrets to the press. The fact is that you referred to government employees in a manner that could only reasonably be expected to be read as the administration's inner circle, and refered to them in a derogatory way in a post that was intended to be derogatory toward that inner circle.

It takes little effort to blab everything you hear to the world without regard for the broader ramifications. It takes impossibly large amounts of effort to keep secrets in as enormous an organisation as the federal government. In the newspaper's case, the efforts of a single individual are showcased as the efforts of an entire organisation; in the government's case, the efforts of a single individual destroy the efforts of the entire organisation. You're comparing apples and oranges. Apples and anti-apples, really.

Sounds quote reasonable but who gets to write and approve the warnings? I am sure anti-abortionists would like add full color photos of late term absortions. Pro-abortion would likely stick the medical facts but would underplay the risks. Beyond the physical risks, there are also long term psychological effects that should at least be acknowleged as well.

Oh, go on, please do enlighten us with suitable alternatives rich in fact and lively wit. ***Please, please, please, let him say Maureen Dowd or Robert Fisk***

Your arguments are logical and anthropologically/biologically correct. It's a mistake to think that the anti-abortion side arrives at their conclusion logically or scientifically. Most people who oppose abortion do so because they find the notion detestable on it's face without regard for whether or not abortion is intellectually reasonable. The broader question is this: should government have a say in restricting optional surgery? If no, should government have a say in restricting any medical treatment at all? Why is access to pharmaceuticals legally restricted? Not just addictive chemical compounds, but medical equipment and non-addictive creams and lotions are restricted too. If your answer to the last question is something along the lines of, "Because those things can be harmful if they aren't properly administered" then why can't the government at least caution prospective aborters about the long-term consequences of the procedure?

And the goalposts get up and move themselves further downfield, resulting in yet another 3rd and ten. And then you accuse the Bushies of making up excuses. BUSH LIED! about WMD. Well, maybe not, but in his not lying he could of at least been honest. What a rat that guy is.

Especially ironic, if you believe the theory that he behaved as he did right up until the end because he actually believed that he had WMD.

Why do you assume that everyone who works for the Government is a Bush crony? Was Valerie Plame a Bush crony? Was Mary McCarthy?