WIP

It did for me many years ago! It was these self-righteous Christians who don't practice what they preach that started me down the road to questioning the existence or the merit of this god of theirs. It's a waste of time talking to fundamentalists that make decisions on how the universe works based on their own intuitions, but according to the physicists that study quantum mechanics, it's impossible for a state of nothingness to exist in the first place! We live in a Universe where force properties are transmitted through space by "virtual particle pairs" that briefly pop into existence, only to come back together and annihilate each other, disappearing back into the space-time fabric......it doesn't make sense in our everyday world, but these are the laws of physics that have made possible the invention of lasers and integrated circuits that make computers possible....so that creationists can tell us that nothing exists without a cause! Fundamentalists don't believe in faith any more than atheists do. Otherwise they would apply faith in their understanding of God, instead of trying to use empirical evidence to prove that they don't need faith to believe in God. So, you're right! Many fundamentalists like Albert Moehler express their respect for anti-religious atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, while the atheist evangelists Dawkins and Harris, who want to eradicate religion, say that they have more respect for fundamentalists than for the liberal or progressive religionists that want to keep their religious faith separate from science. And both sides of fundamentalism share contempt for believers and atheists that aren't interested in joining their winner-take-all religious war!

Where is your theory of how the universe and life began? In case you don't know it, making a claim to us that you know WHO made the Universe and created life does not tell us HOW either the Universe or life is made.

And how much have those natural ocean cycles been affected by the decline in sea ice in the Arctic? If the Arctic, which has lost half of its ice since 1950, starts having ice-free summers in five years, what excuses will your experts have for that: Sea ice has declined dramatically during the short Arctic summers in recent years, with some experts now projecting that the ice cover will be essentially gone in as little as five years. Just a few years ago, no one thought a summer ice-free Arctic could happen before 2060. The warming Arctic and melting sea ice is a planetary-scale change since the Arctic Ocean covers 14 million sq km, an area almost as big as Russia. The Arctic and Antarctic polar regions are key drivers of Earth's weather and climate. The rapid defrosting of the Arctic has already altered the climate system, researchers now agree. IPS previously broke the story revealing that the snow and cold in the eastern United States and Europe during the winter of 2009-10 was likely the result of the loss of Arctic sea ice. The same thing has happened this year. ........... The result: the Arctic stays warm and mid-latitude regions become colder and receive more snow for much of the winter. Last December was the coldest south Florida has experienced in more than a century of record-keeping. How current is your source? It doesn't say on that page when it was written, and it's not up to date if it says that the Arctic has been in a positive Arctic Oscillation during the past three winters -- since the last three winters have seen high pressure systems in the Arctic driving storms at us, not what they are calling a low pressure system, which would keep the cold contained up there.

Whenever there's a major snowstorm somewhere in the vicinity of a FoxNews crew, you can count on some dumbass like Sean Hannity or Steve Ducey telling us that big snowstorm = no global warming. Well, the fact that we may have had some cold weather lately, has to be weighed against the fact that storms in the Arctic are pushing their cold air down on us, and having the end result that the Arctic is becoming warmer than is normal during wintertime: Arctic Defrost Dumping Snow on U.S. and Europe UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - The world's northern freezer is on rapid defrost as large volumes of warm water are pouring into the Arctic Ocean, speeding the melt of sea ice, according to a new study. Surface temperatures in parts of the Arctic have been 21 degrees C above normal for more than a month in recent weeks. "Boats were still in the water during the first week of January," said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, referring to southern Baffin Island, some 2,000 km north of Montreal. This is a region that receives just four or five hours of weak sunlight during the long winter. Temperatures normally range from -25 to -35 degrees C but were above zero on some days in January. "It's impossible for many people in parts of the eastern Arctic to safely get on the ice to hunt much-needed food for their families - for the second winter in a row," Phillips said in a report. The warming and melting of the Arctic is happening much faster than expected and new data reveals that huge volumes of warmer water from the North Atlantic are now flowing into and warming up the Arctic Ocean, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. "In the past hundred years the waters in the Fram Strait have warmed about two degrees C," says co-author Thomas Marchitto, of Colorado University's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. The Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard (Spitsbergen) is the major connection between the Arctic Ocean and the world ocean. An international team of researchers analysed marine sediments and found that temperatures of the northward inflowing Atlantic water varied by just a few tenths of a degree Celsius during the past 2,000 years. However, in the last hundred years temperatures have shot up by two degrees C. "What's happening here is very unusual compared to the last 2,000 years," Marchitto told IPS. The Arctic Ice Cap is half the size today as it was back in the 1950's when nuclear subs and U.N. sponsored scientific research started there. Warmer than normal Arctic winters are likely to have a more devastating effect on sea ice loss than the warmer summers.

Do you realize that mountain glaciers like the Himalayas are more often than not, insulated by surrounding layers of rubble and gravel etc.? This fact is not pointed out in such a short newspaper article that may have been intended to deceive the public. If most glaciers and sea ice are melting around the world, it doesn't prove much to find one in the Himalayas or New Zealand, from what I've heard, that are not melting.

I've noticed this many times as my opinions on global warming started changing a few years ago. The so called "skeptics" know that most of their intended audience isn't going to bother reading past the headline, and just go with what the "expert" on their side has to say.

And that's not going to happen as long as we are expanding tar sands development and pumping more oil to the U.S. That's what's driving our dollar up; we've become a petrostate no different than Saudi Arabia. And petrostates end up with oil as the only game in town, as manufacturing is driven into the ground. Free trade has allowed corporations to go to the cheapest labour available, and allowing oil to push our dollar up will gut what's left of the rest of the Canadian economy! A Venezuelan Oil Minister to OPEC said back in the 80's that "oil is the devil's shit"; every country that becomes a major oil exporter soon learns the wisdom of that phrase when oil becomes the only game in town.

This topic won't go away because there's always purveyors of the latest version of the Watchmaker Argument, and a crowd of believers who believe it actually explains something! The people who believe it stay in the churches that claim they've got the answers to everything; and those of us who realized early in life that they are full of it, quietly walked out the back door and either left religion entirely, or may have ended up in one that wasn't such an insult to the intelligence of anyone seeking answers that didn't demand going to war with scientific evidence all the time.

Don't lie about what I've written! Especially after you're source materials are proven to be full of lies and misrepresentations. I provided the links to Munich RE, the largest re-insurer in the World, which has published several reports linking climate change with rising storm and disaster costs around the world...did you even notice them? You didn't respond, and just went on to the next liar in the lineup of the 'climate change skeptic' movement. And they reach those conclusions based on average totals, not trying to break down the percentage cause of alcohol and drug impairment for each, individual accident....which is what you are trying to pull over our eyes with your demand that the Queensland Floods be broken down to provide what the damage costs would be with and without adding the increasing greenhouse effect of rising CO2 and methane levels. The latest response from the Australian Government regarding the losses, is to impose a tax, and double down on coal by cutting the budgets for green energy . The "let's wait and see" attitude means Australia can expect more of the same in its future. If you're aware that that 1.2 billion number was preliminary, and not including total losses that would include loss of economic activity (destroyed farms, flooded mines etc.) why wasn't your expert (Pielke) aware of this before he made the claim on his blog that there have been worse floods in the past, and this is just part of the natural cycle in Australia? Face it; your expert is a lying sack of shit, no different than the scientists and experts who lend their support to creationist groups and cigarette manufacturers in the past. Many of these scientists, like Fred Sykes and Fred Singer (pioneers of this so called climate skeptic movement) hired out their services to tobacco industry front groups and the SDI missile defense initiative of Ronald Reagan, before the late 80's. They are science mercenaries, who provide a footnote with a PHD for any cause that seeks scientific legitimacy. See: Merchants Of Doubt The Pielke's are no different! Instead of wasting my time going to their links, I'll just assume it's more lies and disinformation intended to fool the average reader, or bolster the faith of the anti-climate change crowd that's motivated by a belief in freemarket fundamentalism, and puts economic ideology ahead of scientific fact. Prove it! Pielke has lied and misrepresented James Hansen's work, which is pointed out in the SourceWatch article. The climate change skeptic scientists cannot be accorded any legitimacy up front because of their past records of using their expertise to mislead the public, and the simple fact that public understanding of science depends so much on the consensus of experts in a field of research, means that these heretics who swim upstream against the vast majority of colleagues regarding climate change, 2nd hand tobacco smoke, evolution by natural selection, the effectiveness of missile defense, or any other issue, means that they have the clear burden of proof, and have to do more than pick at the theories and hypotheses accepted by the majority in their fields -- they have to propose their own hypotheses to explain scientific data for the purpose of developing alternative theories....and this is what the "merchants of doubt" fail to do! All they are interested in doing is to raise the level of confusion on any given subject that they are hired to work on.

Tim, can't you figure it out yet? Raising risk factors cannot be itemized to specific degree of effects when there is a disaster...or an accident. Consider the case of risk factors and car accidents: Do you, or do you not agree that speeding, taking drugs or alcohol, or lack of sleep, are all significant factors in the number of, and severity of car accidents? If not, there's no hope because you'll be arguing against all of the evidence produced from police reports and insurance data. If you do agree that these are significant risk factors, that does not mean that each of the three can be applied by percentage to every accident that occurs....that is just too stupid to waste any more time with. But, this is exactly what you're asking for when you say you want the specific percentage that warming played in the Queensland floods! How closely did you read your own article? That chart that Pielke uses to estimate flood damages at 1.2 billion isn't worth the paper it was written on now that the Government estimates damages at over 6 billion dollars. And it says we have to go back to over a hundred years ago to find worse floods....assuming they were doing accurate measurements back then: Compared with the current disaster, there have been even bigger floods in the past: in 1841 and 1893 when flood waters topped 8.35 meters, some 3.9 m above the latest peak. It doesn't claim that the 1974 floods were worse; but that's neither here nor there since the point that we're trying to make is as basic as climate is about longterm averaging of weather, not each specific weather event! And the conclusions drawn from man-made forcing of climate through raising greenhouse gases is consistently that we can expect more floods, more droughts, more heatwaves, and even heavier snowstorms in the winter in some places! Also, note that in your link to Pielke Jr. he quotes sources that do not match his own conclusions: This is not to deny that climate change is a real concern: few continue to believe that only positive outcomes will arise from the continued heating of the planet. The latest research, however, just published in the international journal Environmental Research Letters by Ryan Crompton, Roger Pielke Jr. and John McAneney suggests that it may be centuries until we can be confident that climate change is influencing disaster losses. If we truly wish to reduce the scale of future disasters in Australia, we need risk-informed land planning policies with risks appropriately priced by an active insurance market. So, Pielke quotes the typical equivocating bullshit! Maybe there's global warming but we'll have to wait centuries to find out! What kind of advice is this? Again, you are trying to focus on individual storms, without acknowledging the overall trends. Pielke is a lying piece of shit on par with the handful of scientists who collect cheques from creationist groups by denying the theory of evolution. Just like the so called "intelligent design" scientists, Pielke has a history of selectively presenting his own, and other climate research to confuse and mislead the public, including misrepresenting the research and conclusions of the majority of climatologists who started seeing a strong link between global warming and human activity over 20 years ago SourceWatch Pielke Sr. doesn't far much better, since he claimed the oceans started cooling in 2004, and hasn't opened his mouth about it since! Climate Progress And you were complaining about unprovable assertions! What do you call that? I dealt with this claim of "global warming obsession" causing the floods yesterday, which was made by an Australian global warming skeptic (your likely source), and his claim that the concern over the droughts, caused the lack of preparation for the floods is still total bullshit, because the forcing factors involved in raising global temperatures (increased uptake of water vapour etc.) are increasing climate volatility; which means preparing for an increasingly volatile climate requires preparing for both floods and droughts...which was the point made in the government report that dishonest climate skeptic selectively quoted from. The 2050 report may have put more emphasis on droughts because it was written during a period of declining precipitation with no end in sight; but they still noted the risk of floods and cyclones, which that lying skeptic writer deliberately omitted! Now, if these are the kind of people that you are reading, you are going to find the conclusions you want to accept, but you are not going to find anything remotely connected to the truth, because these skeptic writers, including the few professional scientists like Pielke, have dishonest intentions from the start, and seek to mislead, not educate the public.

You tossed off that statement like it was commonly established fact, not hyperbole! And eviscerate! What exactly did you eviscerate? I didn't bother with your assertion that I need itemize how much of the Queensland flood damage can be attributed to rising CO2 levels, because it's a ridiculous question to begin with. One natural disaster cannot be broken down and itemized; the point is that increasingly unstable weather; more severe droughts and floods, have been long-standing predictions of what to expect from rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. And I already dealt with the issue of proof in a response to Gosthack. As previously mentioned, if major insurance underwriters are identifying climate change as part of their rising costs of coverage, take it out with them! They get payed to keep actuarial tables for this stuff, I don't. The insurance carriers are bailing out of disaster insurance coverage in many locales, because the disasters are getting worse and more expensive to cover claims for. I never heard of Tim Flannery before...I suppose he's important in Australia! Anyway, in the article you linked, he talks about increasing droughts in Southern Australia....which is not where Queensland is! Find some info on Australia, and their weather cycles, since the climate appears different in different regions of the country. Would it be asking too much for you to provide a link to your "many other sources?" Okay, so I put Google to work on your search terms and do the heavy lifting for you. What I found were three articles similar to this one (the other two likely quoted from the same sources) Did Australia's obsession with global warming contribute to the Brisbane floods? But might there be another, so far overlooked, contributing factor to the floods? Might the politics of environmentalism itself – the contemporary obsession with global warming as the greatest threat to mankind – have exacerbated the impact of the flooding in Brisbane? It seems possible that Aussie politicians’ and officials’ deeply held conviction that the main problem we face today is increased heat, droughts and a lack of rainfall caused them to take their eye off the ball in Brisbane, and to be unprepared for something as relatively normal as very heavy rainfall. It is worth looking at a document called ClimateSmart 2050, which was published in 2007 by the Queensland government. It outlines Queensland’s priorities for the next four decades (up to 2050) and promises to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent during that timeframe. The most striking thing about the document is its assumption that the main problem facing this part of Australia, along with most of the rest of the world, is essentially dryness brought about by global warming. It argues that “the world is experiencing accelerating climate change as a result of human activities”, which is giving rise to “worse droughts, hotter temperatures and rising sea levels”. We are witnessing “a tendency for less rainfall with more droughts”, the document confidently asserted. So this "Brendan O'Neil" says that the Queensland Government focused solely on droughts, rather than floods, because of bad advice from environmentalists who claimed that all of the emphasis in on dryness, not the risk of too much rain. Since I do not take the word of strangers I've never heard of, I did a little sourcing to check out his claims about this Government Report - Climate Smart 2050 On page 15 of the 48 page report, I find this heading: Climate change projections for Queensland....where I can check out whatever future climate projections they are expecting for the future. Right under the subheading, I find this first paragraph: The world is experiencing accelerated climate change as a result of human activities, resulting in worse droughts, hotter temperatures, increased cyclone and severe storm activity and intensity, and rising sea levels. Now, do you notice something odd here? Compare the last sentence with the quote this Liveleaks article takes from the report. Notice that he included "worse droughts, "hotter temperatures", "rising sea levels", but omitted INCREASED CYCLONE AND SEVERE STORM ACTIVITY AND INTENSITY. The real story about the climate research selected for the report is that they forecast Australia's overall climate will get dryer, but as mentioned umpteen million times, increased volatility means that when there are storms and floods, they will come with much greater intensity....just like Queensland is experiencing this year. And that's why this dishonest AGW denier's conclusions about where the Goverment went wrong just fall apart: The Queensland government’s belief that water conservation should be a key priority in this speedily warming world of ours appears to have led to the situation where local dams were allowed to get dangerously full. So in recent weeks, the Wivenhoe dam was running at 150 per cent to 180 per cent capacity, which means that the authorities had to start releasing water from the dam at the same time that the rain-caused flash floods were hitting Brisbane’s river system – effectively contributing to the deluge. It is surely worth asking, at least, whether Queensland officialdom’s embrace of the ideology of climate change, its fervent belief in future manmade drought and thus the need to store as much water as possible, made it unprepared for the current flooding of the Brisbane area. Now, in light of the fact that adjusting to a warming world means trying to adjust to increasing volatility, the above conclusion isn't worth a roll of toilet paper. Up until this winter, the Government may have had good reason to be worried about droughts and compensating by storing more water. When things change and non-stop heavy rain hits for days on end, it's easy to use 20/20 hindsight; but that same writer would have been crapping about the Government's lack of preparation for a drought if there was no rain this winter! All this extra reading just informs me that climate change skeptic writers in Australia are the same lying sacks of shit as the ones here in Canada, the United States, England and elsewhere!

I'm still waiting for evidence for your claim that environmentalists said it would never rain in Australia again.

You do realize that the exception doesn't prove the rule, right? When the world's largest re-insurer - Munich RE says that 2010 is a record year for disaster claims, and sees climate change as the primary reasonfor the rising costs, not just random weather events, or population growth, then that has to be taken seriously, since Munich RE has been keeping track of claims data for more than 150 years. Munich Re June press release September press release Which is what has happened in Australia, where the number of claims have ended up with insurers telling the government to pick up the bill.

Up till now, she has been the strongest candidate of the religious right, which is one of the three branches of Ronald Reagan's "three legged stool" that consisted of religious conservatives, fiscal libertarians and military hawks. Reagan was able to get the Moral Majority and conservative religious leaders to get active in the Republican Party (before the 80's, these people largely ignored the dirty business of politics), and tie it together with ramped up military spending and tax cuts. After Reagan's time, the three legs of the conservative stool haven't always shared the same interests; so keeping them all happy is a big challenge for Republican candidates trying to ride the beast, and stay in office....like John McCain for example. There is apparently a growing disconnect in the Republican Party between real libertarians who take budget-cutting seriously, and the warhawks who want to keep shoveling money at defense contractors. Some, like Rand Paul, appear to have been bought off already, but there seems to be at least a few who take their rhetoric seriously and want serious budget cutting at the Pentagon also: New York Daily News Palin is trying to play for both crowds in this controversy without having to take a stand. That's not going to possible if a block of new Republicans refuse to be bought off by defense contractors. And, many evangelicals have become disillusioned with the sleaze of associating with people who are primarily motivated by greed, and are going back into isolation mode, reducing the clout of the religious right. In the long run, there is no "mainstream Republican," because it all depends on which group of the coalition is exerting the most influence and control. If John McCain was even standing where he was when he ran for president in 2000, he wouldn't even qualify as a Republican candidate today! He'd just be a Democratic warhawk. Over the course of modern U.S. political history, it's been the Republican administrations that have blown holes in the deficits and national debt. During Reagan's tenure, libertarian advisers coined the expression "starve the beast," when dealing with the size of government. They felt that it was futile and too unpopular to cut domestic spending directly, so the solution was to lower taxes to levels that could not pay for government, and stand back while it disintegrates through lack of funding. The Republicans opposed both Social Security and Medicare for example, but have never had the guts to make cuts to them themselves. Now, they are looking at a possible scenario where a gutless Democratic president will do their dirty work for them, and end up doing both because he can't or won't take on the Military. And at the same time, Barack Obama is still following the discredited strategy that 'tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves?' For all of the carping, and the pretenses that there is an actual political debate going on, Barack Obama is a Republican president.

Bob, I don't follow this Israel/Palestine issue very closely, and I've been under the assumption that ever since the Peace Talks started decades ago that Israel recognized the right of Palestinians to have their own independent state....until last night! I heard during a debate on a public radio program (can't recall which) that no Israeli government has ever accepted the Two State Solution, even in theory, and the pro-Israel commentator didn't dispute the assertion. So, is this true? And, if Israel doesn't recognize the right to a Palestinian state, then what right does Israel have to live in peace?

SOURCE? You don't get to make up your own facts. More heat in the atmosphere = more moisture available. For the last 20 years, climate modelers have been sure of one thing - that increased warming would lead to more extreme weather - worse floods and worse droughts. Find whoever said "it would never rain again in Australia."

I found an interview with William Hartung, author of "Prophets Of War" about the power and influence on government that this one, lone defense contractor has: Yahoo Finance They, and no doubt every other contractor, works through lobbying and a revolving door policy similar to Wall Street Banks, where their executives move back and forth from the company to the Administration and back. That way they have government policy fine-tuned to their corporate needs....just like Goldman Sachs. But re: the question of why America is willing to grind down its own infrastructure (including education) to keep funneling money into Defense, up until now, they've been able to get away with it by adding to the National Debt. Eventually they will destroy the Empire if they keep adding to defense budgets; but it's not a given that America will reign in its massive military in time. Past empires have collapsed under the weight of supporting large armies and colonies, there's no sign yet that America will pull back from the brink of collapse either.

You must have been anticipating this story from Australia: Tax To Pay For Floods-Cleanup In Australia Apparently the bill for the estimated 6 billion dollars in flood damage is going to be payed for by a "one-off" income tax....they better hope this doesn't become permanent! During the last ten years, Australia was dominated by Conservative governments that pandered to their Coal Industry, which was running the typical third party campaign of disinformation to make Australians more skeptical about climate change. Now, Australians have an up close example of the costs of not addressing the problem of increasing greenhouse gases.

Up front, I have to say that there are probably more grey-haired Christian male terrorists than any other type in the World. The reason why our demographic is not usually called terrorists, is because wealthy westerners who engage in, or support policies of economic colonization in the Third World are not our terrorist problem....but they are the "terrorist" problem for many of the world's inhabitants who have had governments imposed on them, while having their land bought up by foreign interests. In Russia recently, they had a suicide bombing in an airport that killed dozens of people; and the Putin/Medvedev Government is doing the same talk about terrorism and security that goes on here. Fact is terrorism is asymmetrical warfare tactic. If a powerful foreign despot sets up lackey dictator governments for the purpose of stealing oil and other natural resources, revolution and civil war is soon to follow. If that avenue is closed, as the Russians have done in Chechnya and other territories in the Caucasus Mountains, by invading and brutally suppressing resistance to occupation, then it shouldn't come as such a surprise that revenge-seeking nihilists can be recruited to take the war inside the enemy camp to bring the war to their homes. Even without these factors, there may always be the risk of the odd terrorist attack; but if a society is deliberately sowing the seeds of resentment in foreign lands, then the threat of terrorism is part of doing business.

If you want a quick, elevator explanation for Sarah Palin's career, you are going to be forever flummoxed if you are just looking at politics. Palin's influence cannot be explained without considering that she is the first Pentacostal to appear on a WhiteHouse ticket, and claim to have an "anointing" of the holy spirit. Back during the 2008 Election, one of the most influential behind-the-scenes men in the Christian Right - J. Lee Grady - editor of Charisma Magazine, wrote this rapturous editorial about the addition of Palin by the McCain Campaign: Talk about a role model. Palin’s life is a prophecy to America. She doesn’t have to preach against abortion. She and her family, even with their flaws, are the embodiment of the compassionate pro-life values America desperately needs to adopt. When McCain announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate, I was reminded of the biblical story of Deborah, the Old Testament prophet who rallied God’s people to victory at a time when ancient Israel was being terrorized by foreign invaders. Deborah’s gender didn’t stop her from amassing an army; she inspired the people in a way no man could. She and her defense minister, Barak, headed to the front lines and watched God do a miracle on the battlefield. In her song in Judges 5:7, Deborah declares: “The peasantry ceased, they ceased in Israel, until I, Deborah, arose, until I arose, a mother in Israel” (NASB). Sometimes it takes a true mother to rally the troops. I hope that Palin, a woman who believes in prayer and is filled with the Holy Ghost, will take her hockey stick and smash the glass ceiling in American politics once and for all. http://fireinmybones.com/index.php?col=091008~Sarah%20Palin%20and%20the%20Deborah%20Anointing Now, if you're a shrewd, poll-driven Republican with goals of achieving high political office, and you read something like this, which was one of the most forwarded emails of 2008, you are not going to criticize Sarah Palin, or try to run against her head on even if you think she's a total dumbass, and would take the Party down. If you're a rightwing media hack, it's the same thing! You have to pretend to take her rambling word-salad speeches seriously, or you get swamped with hatemail and demands that you be taken off the air. And the rest of the followers in the media see the crowds at her book-signings, and the red carpet treatment she gets from conservative circles, and they think that maybe she does actually have a thought in her head. But, the wolves are now circling and looking for the chance to steal her base because of the mess she made with her Tucson speech. If Pentacostals decide that she is not an anointed prophetess of God, her political and media career is over.

We're just reminiscing for old time's sake, since Mamma Grizzly's 15 minutes are almost up, thanks to her stupid notion of going on the attack in the wake of the Tucson shootings. Now her fans are complaining that the lamestream media is ignoring her. That's because candidates for office can't be taken at face value when it comes to their messages. And how does anyone trust what Donald Trump has to say. His statements about OPEC are worthless -- either he's clueless about the decline in OPEC oil reserves, or he's playing along with populist rhetoric. Same with China -- he's complaining about unfair trade, but I don't hear him criticize U.S. manufacturers who outsourced their production to China. He can flap his gums about China all he wants, but the more U.S. debt China owns, the less leverage they have to use against China, no matter who's president!

Her rejection of altruism makes no sense, except as a way to justify her own selfishness and vanity. And in light of modern research on other animals, particularly our primate relatives, altruism is an intrinsic part of being human, and essential for any healthy society to function.

So, your solution is let's profile everyone who looks like an Arab? How about get the hell out of Afghanistan, and stop giving unqualified support to the Netanyahu Government in Israel....that would do more to reduce the odds of your plane getting blown up, than hassling everyone who looks like an Arab!

I went to the source, and the only one I strongly disagreed with having on a loathsome list was Christine O'Donnell. Yes, she's clueless, and has no business running for public office, but I got the vibe that she's just a nice girl in way over her head. Of course that may have something to do with a comparison with the succubi that populate the top ranks of Republican women: Palin, Jan Brewer, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachman (now how the hell did they miss putting her on the list?)