Bush tells top scientists they're "conspiracy theorists"

[maggrwaggr]

If you don't swallow Bush's lies, you're a conspiracy theorist. Doesn't matter if you're a nobel-prize winning scientist.

By EMILY JOHNS
McClatchy Newspapers
February 18, 2004

http://www.abqtrib.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=SCIENTISTS-02-18-04&cat=AS

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials ignored expert assessments from three national laboratories in concluding Iraq was seeking to acquire aluminum tubes to make nuclear weapons, a group of scientists charged Wednesday.

The administration also has dropped highly qualified, independent scientists from scientific advisory committees on issues such as child lead poisoning, environmental health and drug abuse, replacing them with figures tied to regulated industries, the Union of Concerned Scientists said Wednesday.

Sixty scientists signed the statement, including 20 Nobel laureates, accusing the administration of suppressing, distorting and undermining the integrity of scientific analyses in policymaking. The group, organized by the scientific watchdog group, laid out its allegations in a 37-page report.

Dr. John Marburger III, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, called the report "disappointing" and likened it to "a conspiracy theory report."

[opihimoimoi]

1. Arrogance breeds impunity/ These Pub idiots are NUTz

They will rue the day.

They have violated the public trust.

They are self interest and not objective at all.

They are greedy abd selfish.

[maggrwaggr]

2. and all we hear on the news all day is "gay marriage"

Ugh. I am sick of this country.

[Malva Zebrina]

34. hang in there

it is amazingly resilient. I believe that.

[CHIMO]

3. The Emperor's

New Mind

[oasis]

4. Chimpy never ceases to amaze. (eom)

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Marburger is the disappointment here

He should no better as a scientist to make an ad hominem attack on this very distinguished group of critics without addressing the substance of their criticisms. Very unprofessional in my opinion, but just par for the course in the Bush* mis-administration.

[rasputin1952]

6. I'm starting to wonder if this president is ever...

near reality?

Whatever the case, if it is not part of their agenda, it is dismissed, regardless of the source. Pretty soon, bush will announce he is a member of the Flat Earth Society, and has proof the sun revolves around the earth. Marching steadily backward, this admin will be the destruction of all we have learned; back to the stone age where people would be happy in caves and find solace in a single thought a day.

It is sad to see such an ignorant man in office; it is sadder still to see him so proud of his ignorance.

O8)

[Union Thug]

51. Near Reality?

He's a born again christian. Therefore, his brushes with reality are limited to his trips to the toilet.

[9215]

7. But in reality

these scientists are being disloyal.

[dbt]

8. Why do you suppose there are so many "conspiracy theorists?"

Couldn't have anything to do with the growing number of conspiracies under the BFEE, could it?

"If there's that much smoke, there has to be some fire."

:tinfoilhat:
dbt

[Athame]

9. Can't you just see Bill Clinton shaking his head?

Do you ever wonder what he really thinks of this administration?

I feel like we are well and truly lost in the Twilight Zone.

[Az]

10. There was a time before when science was silenced

We called it the Dark Ages. Welcome back.

[plaguepuppy]

20. Actually there was a more recent time

Under Hitler some very strange pseudo-science was pursued, even to the point of impeding the war effort. Late in the war Hitler was sending scientific teams to the Arctic to try to confirm a theory that we live on the inside of a hollow sphere (honest, you really couldn't make this stuff up).

He was also very into the occult, stuff on the boundry between pseudo-science and the uglier side of the occult. Another of his pet theories was something about "cosmic fire and ice," with the fascist armies representing the forces of cosmic fire. Because of this he unfortunately concluded that they would not need a lot of warm clothes for the invasion of Russia.

"In Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergiers book "The Morning of Magicians" (1960) the authors point towards a black magical explaination for the Nazi rise to power and their mechanisms. Roughly a quarter of their book delves deep into the "Absolute Elsewhere," an unproven neverland where occult methodology and pseudoscientific theory held sway. The Hitlerian pronouncement that there is a "Nordic and National Socialist science which is opposed to Jewish-Liberal science" acts as the logic for the practice of such pseudoscientific practices.

Nazi thought excluded psychoanalysis and rejected relativity as "Jewish science." As Freud and Einstein were made to flee Hitler's Europe, the secrets of the atomic weapons were placed directly into the hands of the Allies and out the those of Axis. The Nazi sciences forsaked Newton's physics and replaced them with a cosmic force called vril, the geology of "the hollow earth", and the cosmology of Hans Horbiger's "Welteislehre", a doctrine of eternal ice.

Horbiger's physics are said to have been taken from an intuitive flash he experienced late in the nineteenth century. "... As a young engineer," he wrote, "I was watching one day some molten steel poured on wet ground covered with snow: the ground exploded after some delay and with great violence." The conflict of opposites, fire and ice, was a theme that inspired Horbiger and resonated for German nationalists as it recurs in the Icelandic Eddas, the sourcebooks of Teutonic mythology. In the setting of Iceland and even of Europe the theory can hold some cosmic grounds -- but if we examine it in a place like South East Asia, the ideas behind Horbiger's cosmology grow suspect. This did not, of course, deter the Nazis."


http://www.technoccult.net/mt/archives/000152.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

36. But they didn't have the Internet

It is true that Bu$hler and the Flat Earthers would like to take us back to the dark ages but the genie is out of the bottle. Now millions of people have access to unprecedented amounts of information. Not only is the truth out there, it's all over the place and it is no longer possible for Bu$hler to suppress it.

[diamond14]

46. asscroft spoke of 'evil chemistry' AND 'evil biology' just the other

day....

a real 'middle ages' 'witch-burning' sort of feeling comes out of those remarks spoken by a UNITED STATES JUSTICE OFFICIAL....

then there was laura bush* again last week...claiming the Democrats are on a 'witch hunt'....

IMO, these religiously-insane right-wing fanatics are clustering in their crisco prayer meetings way too much on Government time/payroll...it's starting to reflect in their language and it's an inbreeding of ideas and culture....

be afraid...be very afraid....

[jus_the_facts]

11. This should warrant the impeachment and incarceration for life.....

...of this entire admisitration....for allowing this kind of ignorance and total disregard for scientific studies and the enviornment to be perpetrated by these morans as :tinfoilhat: is crimes against humanity as a whole....yet we squabble about religion...marriage and terra alerts....all the while continuing to allow and take part in funding the polluting decay and destruction of our planet and our own extinction as a result. :evilfrown:

[maggrwaggr]

14. yup. My disgust knows no bounds

just when I thought I couldn't get any more disgusted .....

[bagnana]

12. Unbridled arrogance

Just when I didn't think I could despise this administration more, I read something like this. How could anyone, ANYONE reading about how this administration has attempted to mould science to fit its political agenda, doubt that it did the same with the intelligence leading to the war? It boggles the mind. They are such brazen liars.

[jus_the_facts]

13. LINK to those *conspirators* website..Union of Concerned Scientists......

.....this is FAR from :tinfoilhat: what this site talks about are THE most important issues we face as a species on this earth...yet they're being dismissed as conspiracy theory....we ARE doomed!

http://www2.ucsusa.org/global_security/index.cfm

[Oilwellian]

17. Excellent link

Thanks! :D

[jus_the_facts]

18. I thought so too.....

....surprises me this isn't being discussed more.

[scarface2004]

15. i don t need no stinking science.....

bush thinks dinosaurs are a myth, the man is a frikking jeanyus!

[plaguepuppy]

22. Badgers? We don't need no steekin badgers!

And actually they do smell pretty bad...

[loudnclear]

16. Some more text for those "flyers" you DUers will be handing out....I hope!

We cannot rest one moment. We must do everything we can to save the sould of this nation.

[Octafish]

19. Interesting choice of language

The term is used to label a person as a pyschopath. Gee. Speak the obvious and get labeled a nut, or "conspiracy nut." With the limited IQ of Bush, it's a question whether he understands "Conspiracy Theorist" as right-wing code for truth-speaker. Gore Vidal defined CT as "Unspeakable Truth." You know Bush will never go there.

[bvar22]

21. Just another silly focus group...

... like all those stupid people insisting that Iraq was not a threat! Boy, they are gonna feel REAL STUPID when Jesus comes down and takes me and Pat Robertson up to heaven where we'll get GOLDEN THRONES and all the rest of the stupid people in heaven will have to sit in the dirt. They'll be sorry then!

[neebob]

28. There's dirt in heaven?!

Surely there'll be some grass to sit on.

[Bucky]

39. I'll bet Rove has dirt on heaven. That's how Bush got God's endorsement

First they screw w/ the CIA, then w/ God. These clowns got some balls, if not brains.

[jus_the_facts]

23. kick....

:nuke:

[Mari333]

24. Pentagon tells BU$H YOU are a moron

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153530,00.html

[jus_the_facts]

27. THE PENTAGON is taking it seriously...they're a major cause.....

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.


.....go figure! :evilfrown:

[Hekate]

50. This scenario fits in with their End-Days religion

We've discussed this before at DU (and maybe it's further down this thread & I just have not yet gotten to it). This report and its suppression actually fit within their religious world-view (or next-world-view), as hard as that is for a rational person to understand.

Ask my next-door neighbor: he believes that signs and prophecies are all pointing to the Second Coming of Christ. But first, misery and hell on earth will have to prevail for a long time, maybe centuries. I'm a little unclear on the timeline, as it is emphatically not my cosmology, but more can be found by googling for Christian Reconstructionism.

Their religion is the primary reason that the environment of the Earth is so imperiled in their hands. THEY DON'T CARE. GOD IS COMING. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH IS A GOOD THING. :scared:

Oh, forgot to mention one more thing: the Second Coming will be hastened by Israel regaining all the territories mentioned in the Bible as having once belonged to Israel.

Hekate

[TankLV]

25. But religious "beliefs" are fact. Riiiiiiight.

Who ya gonna believe, your lying eyes and ears or what I tell you to believe?

[proud patriot]

26. you're not fooling anyone bushie BOY !

we see through your deceit .

WEAK !

[ComerPerro]

29. Just like how he calls people who point out his past lies

"Revisionist historians"

This guy is a sick fucking asshole, and he is one arrogant motherfucking son of a bitch.

How is it that people who are so stupid can become so arrogant?

Isn't excessive pride a sin?

[jus_the_facts]

31. here's the link to the Union of Concerned *tin foil hat* Scientists...

....their concerns go against the BFEE's corporate interests....the true horsemen of the Appocalypse! :evilfrown:

http://www2.ucsusa.org/global_security/index.cfm

[diamond14]

49. Gandhi speaks of 'Seven Social Sins'.....

1. Politics without Principles
2. Wealth without Work
3. Commerce without Morality
4. Pleasures without Conscience
5. Education without Character
6. Science without Humanity
7. Worship without Sacrifice


the Bible speaks of the 7 Capital Sins
1. Pride
2. Avarice/Greed
3. Gluttony
4. Envy
5. Rath/Anger
6. Lust
7. Sloth

[jus_the_facts]

53. Which only proves that we never learn from history.....

....these characteristics we have been known to possess for eons yet we seem doomed to repeat history instead of learning from it...that ignorance is still so prevelent...there's no excuse! :eyes:

[Kinkistyle]

30. Science is EVIL -- unless it helps build bigger bombs! nt

[blurp]

32. Science is not about winning the Nobel prize

Yes, Bush is an idiot. But the truth of something is not determined by whether or not someone with a Nobel prize believes it.


http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html


Aliens Cause Global Warming

A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003



My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.

I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be a very good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[rocktop15]

33. Ignorance Is Bliss.

I think if the media covered stories such as this, then people would a WHOLE lot more skeptical of Bush and Company. I'd like to credit Michael Moore for helping me break into politics. I'm only 18 but read these forums everyday. I've convinced five of my conservative friends to either A) Vote Kerry or B)Not vote at all. Those were five votes that were going to go to Bush.....not any more. I'm, honestly, scared as to what could happen in the nexty four years if he is reelected. I'd also be scared at the fact that the PEOPLE would reelect him! Like I said before, ignorance is bliss.

[jus_the_facts]

37. the bias in they way science is used in policy is why we're screwed.....

.....the science for all the applications for making money from oil is still regarded as the ONLY science worth listening too according to repukes....the EARTH SCIENCES tell of the desolate future we face as a result of their industrial science...and government is the only way to ensure the enviornmental sciences are adhered too...keeping the sciences separated has caused it to not be taken seriously...well the suppression of science as a whole with religion is the most effective....amazing people accept science when it makes their lives easier...when it shows them the truth of the repercussions of their actions it's dismissed and ignored as lies. :evilfrown:

[blurp]

38. Environmental scientists are just as guilty

.the EARTH SCIENCES tell of the desolate future we face as a result of their industrial science...and government is the only way to ensure the environmental sciences are adhered too...

Read this letter:


"SIR – As co-author of the review of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” in Nature and of a critique of its chapter on biodiversity published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, I must be one of the green heretics you refer to in your one-sided leader (“Defending science”, February 2nd). You are smearing the vast majority of the scientific community. You say that the four senior scientists who attacked Bjorn Lomborg's polemic in Scientific American were “weak on substance”. To show you how absurd this is, Professor Tom Lovejoy, who wrote the piece on biodiversity, is a senior ecologist and biodiversity adviser with the World Bank, and a leading authority on tropical ecology. Your attempt to discredit him is sordid and reflects your conservative ideological agenda.

I have not the space here to debunk the vast amounts of disinformation in Mr Lomborg's book. Its fatal flaw is to ignore the connection between environmental indicators and the condition of the underlying ecosystems upon which our survival (and that of all life) depends. Mr Lomborg says nothing about the fraying of marine and terrestrial food webs, the extent, loss and chemical alteration of wetlands, the effects of invasive species, etc.

I will conclude with a quotation from an article that appeared in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish Sunday paper:

Ove Nathan, former president of the University of Copenhagen, thinks it totally unlikely that such a thing as a scientific conspiracy against Bjorn Lomborg should exist. “There is no scientific periodical that outshines or is more critically edited than Nature, Science and Scientific American. In science they speak with almost the same authority as the Bible of Christianity and the Koran of Islam. If all three periodicals pass the same severe judgment upon Lomborg, I personally would take it for gospel truth.”

Jeffrey Harvey
Netherlands Institute of Ecology
Heteren, Netherlands



Incredible! The attitude of this "scientist" are completely at odds with the methods of science. The argument from authority has no place in science. We don't cite credentials, we cite experiments. We don't ask people to have faith in science periodicals the way people have faith in the bible and Koran. We ask that people believe based on evidence, not faith.

It takes much more than the label "scientist" to be confident that the person so-called is using the methods of science in their judgments.

[DrWeird]

40. Of course authority has a place.

"we cite experiments"

Yes, experiments that are published in peer-reviewed articles. And when we cite experiments we're working under the assumption that said articles are well reviewed, since we are in a way citing the reviewers. And Nature and Science are the best of the best.

Lomborg's a hack.

[blurp]

41. Apparently that's a bad assumption

Yes, experiments that are published in peer-reviewed articles. And when we cite experiments we're working under the assumption that said articles are well reviewed, since we are in a way citing the reviewers.

Well, that letter was from one such reviewer. His attitude is totally at odds with the methods of science. How can we trust his judgment? He is practically begging us to treat science like religion. He points to authorities to support his claims. He asks us to treat science journals as sources of dogma.

That's a religious approach. It's not a scientific approach.

Scientists aren't priests. The journal Nature should not be treated like the word of god.

And Nature and Science are the best of the best.

Lomborg's a hack.

In what church did you learn that?

[DrWeird]

42. Name a better scientific journal.

Of the dozen or so I read on a weekly basis, Nature and Science are as professional as any. So I'd ask your opinion on why Nature and Science are not well reviewed.


"His attitude is totally at odds with the methods of science."

As a scientist myself, I wholly disagree.



"How can we trust his judgment?" By his track record. In order to be a reviewer, you have to be a leader in the field yourself. So this guy has published probably hundreds of papers himself, each one of which has been reviewed by his peers.

"He is practically begging us to treat science like religion."

That is ridiculous hyperbole. You're taking a quote out of context and using it as hyperbole.

"In what church did you learn that?"

What may I ask is your field of expertise? So far you've defended Bush, Lomborg, and cut and pasted a speech from a hack science fiction author. I'm half expecting you to start ranting about chem trails.

[blurp]

43. "Scientific" mere anthropological exercise?

"Science" isn't just that what people that call themselves "scientists" do. If that were the case than the study of science would be anthropology. Instead, it's a way of thinking and it implies certain standards that are much more rigorous than most people are willing to tolerate. It uses these tougher standards as a check against myth, wishful thinking, and prejudice.

I get the impression from your comments that you've actually spent very little time considering the question of legitimate belief and how science works to establish or reduce support for certain hypotheses. You seem to believe that science is whatever scientists say it is.

This is suggested by your statement "as a scientist, I wholly disagree", as if only people labeled "scientist" are qualified to say what science is. I think the question of "what is scientific" goes beyond anthropology. It goes beyond the development of technology. It goes beyond the number of papers you write. Rereading that I'm shocked you'd even thought that was relevant.

You then go on to ask what my field of expertise is. As a scientist, why should it matter to you? I could say "philosophy of science". Would you change your mind? SHOULD my credentials matter?

Science doesn't care about credentials. When people start debating credentials, that's politics, not science. When people compare the journal Nature to the Bible, that's religion, not science.

Science works to the extent that it is independent of all those things.

I urge you to seriously think about what it is that allows certain assertions be called scientific.

Hint: it has nothing to do with the number of papers someone has published.

[w4rma]

45. Michael Crichton is a suspense, mystery and science ***fiction*** author.

http://www.hycyber.com/SF/crichton_michael.html

fiction
Pronunciation: 'fikshun
Definition:

1. {n} a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact
2. {n} a deliberately false or improbable account

Synonyms: fable, fabrication
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/fiction

[hatrack]

52. Oh, THAT Michael Crichton?

Gosh, my bad! I take it all back!

The Larsen A Ice Shelf did NOT collapse in 1995, the Larsen B Ice Shelf did NOT collapse in 2002, and Arctic sea ice has, in fact, NOT thinned 40% since 1960.

The melt rate of the Quelccaya Glacier in Peru has NOT accelerated 1000% since 1995, the entire black spruce forest formerly covering the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska has NOT died in the last ten years thanks to a doubling of the reproductive cycle of the spruce bark beetle (due to warmer winters), and, in interior Alaska, roads are NOT buckling, houses are NOT collapsing, and thousands of square miles of tundra are NOT melting down into enormous swamps.

Tropical oceans have NOT grown markedly saltier since the 1970s and (in a remarkable coincidence) polar oceans have, in fact, NOT grown notably fresher during the same time period.

Somewhere between 15 and 20 thousand residents of northern Europe did, in fact, NOT die last summer in the worst heat wave in living memory, which did NOT push temperatures in Switzerland past 112, in France to 114 and in Portugal to 117F.

Half of the glaciers in the Spanish Pyrenees have, in fact NOT vanished since 1980.

Woody vegetation is NOT moving rapidly north beyond the recorded tree lines in permafrost regimes in Alaska and Arctic Canada, and robins have NOT appeared for the first time at Point Barrow, Alaska.

Adult polar bears in Arctic Canada are NOT (on average) 200 pounds lighter than they were in 1980.

Glaciers in Glacier National Park are NOT disappearing, and the snows of Kilimanjaro are NOT melting.

Mont Blanc was NOT closed last year to hikers, due to avalanches of stone that did NOT fall, loosened from rapidly NON-melting glaciers and ice sheets.

Because, you see, all of these events (and hundreds more like them) were just part of a SCIENTIFIC CONSPIRACY!!!! All of these reports were faked by scientific conspirators!!!

How do I know this? Easy - MICHAEL CRICHTON said so - so THERE!!!

[jus_the_facts]

58. Indeed.....he definitely knows his stuff......

....he bases all his work on ongoing scientific research....he takes into concideration the repercussions of the industrial sciences and technology...something they're notorious for not doing...like in his last book "Prey" it embellishes the possible outcome of our delving into nanotechnology and how science can go horribly wrong...that just because we can do something....doesn't always mean we should!

[Aries]

35. This puts an interesting spin on "conspiracy theories"

If:

mainstream science = conspiracy theory

and (for example):
LIHOP/MIHOP 9/11 theories = conspiracy theory

does that mean
LIHOP/MIHOP = mainstream science?

Of course there's a logical fallacy in there but it would certainly be a valid talking point on "Hardball".

[w4rma]

44. The logical fallacy.

If:

mainstream science is a subset of all conspiracy theories

and (for example):
LIHOP/MIHOP 9/11 theories are a subset of all conspiracy theories

does that mean
LIHOP/MIHOP = mainstream science?

I do agree that that it would be a valid talking point on "Hardball".

[Hekate]

Careful Chimpy, you'll sail right off the edge of the Earth!

Flat-earther, flat head, no brains ...rrrrrrrhrrrrgh... One of his cousins was put into orbit after Sputnik; I think it's time for Dubya to follow suit.

Dubya wants everyone to pray every day. Believe me, I do: Please God, please God, help us get him outta here.

Hekate

[Hekate]

47. Careful Chimpy, you'll sail right off the edge of the Earth!

Flat-earther, flat head, no brains ...rrrrrrrhrrrrgh... One of his cousins was put into orbit after Sputnik; I think it's time for Dubya to follow suit.

Dubya wants everyone to pray every day. Believe me, I do: Please God, please God, help us get him outta here.

Hekate

[leesa]

48. Well, it WAS a conspiracy contrived to drag us into war with Iraq.

I think that should be crystal clear to just about everyone now.

[PrinceofMorning]

54. Credibility gap

This is actually good news. 55% of Americans have some doubt about the illegal resident's ability to tell the truth (Newsweek poll); calling twenty Nobel Prize winners conspiracy theorists isn't going to help him in that regard.

We've reached the point where the disconnect between what the repugs say, and what actually happens in the real world, is so glaring that most Americans are noticing it. You can't spin away the fact that the budget is in the toilet, that there are no WMD in Iraq, and that any number of other Bush claims just aren't true. This is just another nail in the coffin - denial isn't going to help.

[newyawker99]

59. Hi PrinceofMorning!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Wickerman]

55. If I were a scientist I would consider a Bush* rebuke a high compliment-

the moran in thief's only experience with science is chemistry - chemicals in the coke he's snorted and the alcohol he continues to swill.

[LoneStarLiberal]

56. The Subtext of the Cultural Cold War

This latest round across the bow of the SS Flat Earth is music to my ears.

I work in a research environment at a public university and I am consistently alarmed at the anti-scientific, pro-corporate policies enacted by the Bush administration when it comes to public review and public policy.

The Republicans successfully integrated all of the odious old one-party Southern Democratic tools into their arsenal as they took over the Solid South. One of the most effective tools in the one-party Democratic South was the concept of culture war.

Through culture war, a gigantic bait-and-switch if there ever was one, the rich Anglo land owners and imported business elites (aka those like the Bush family) kept the working class Anglos constantly distracted by harping on all the nasty issues of the day (segregation, civil rights, economics, and education) in the subtle code of the "culture war": States' rights were being trampled, the big bad Federal guvmint' was trying to tell the good folks of the South how to run their lives, and by God, if you give those black folks a vote then the next thing you'll see is them taking your job and your place in college.

These days the language of the culture war is more subtle, but the scope is no longer limited to coddling racism in the South. The party is no longer the Democratic Party, but the subtle rhetorical code is much the same: Who is the Federal government to tell the good folks of Georgia that they have to use the word "evolution?" Who says that re-directing the Missouri River will be bad? How can all those agri-business dollars...err...I mean industry-subsidized reports be wrong?

Sadly, I could go on for hours on this topic. Suffice to say, the contemporary Republican Party has embraced the subtext of the culture war and used it to widen the culture war into nothing less than a full-blown Cold War, a domestic Cold War of race, economics, the environment, education, and science.

Folks, this is exactly why we need to vote for our party's nominee. Granted, that person might only be a shift of a few degrees toward the left in this cultural Cold War, but a few degrees can mean the difference between beginning to break our fossil fuel jones and mainlining more American lives and resources into the petroleum industry; it can mean the difference between the structure and rigor of science as a guiding principle of policy formation versus the comfortable ignorance of letting the people with control of the corporate resources run things; it can mean the difference between educating our children versus raising them to be subservient and ignorant of the world around them.

Kerry or Edwards might not be the leaders to take us in all these directions, but right now we have to STOP the direction we're going in before we can think about moving in the right direction. And John Kerry or John Edwards can stop this insane devolution that is the Republican juggernaut assaulting modernity in the cultural Cold War we are currently losing.

[lostnfound]

57. Like a 10 year old flunking his science test, taunts teacher 'nanananana'

..you can't hurt me, and you're ugly too..

Really. This is so laughable.

[adriennel]

60. can the conspiracy theorists

form a club with the "activist judges"? :crazy:

it's all in the terminology. now please excuse me,I need to "manufacture" some web content.