j_b

I certainly didn't buy into that propaganda but being perennially fact challenged hasn't stopped you before. Note also that many progressives knew exactly what the questions were about Obama but didn't have a choice since the corporate media chose which candidates were "electable"

that's rich to read Bushista dead-enders comment about "tools" who voted for change.

Kevbone doesn't believe in half the conspiracy theories you two knuckle-draggers believe in (this thread being the latest illustration of your sick mind), so spare us your drivel about the intelligence of others.

is that a threat, tough-guy? I figure if Chaoda can toss around death threats here with impunity, then what's a little poke in the jaw, eh? death threats? where? I think you are lying again to try justifying your being a thug.

I also doubt they "feared an FOI request". More like they were fed up of being harassed by ideological nitwits who know squat about climate.

what the hell are talking about? Give a complete reference to your info and not denialist distortion, please. Anyway, oodles of data have been lost and/or discarded in all fields.

"The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. The scientific process depends on open access to methodology, data, and a rigorous peer-review process. The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process."

I doubt very much that any of these people didn't vote for Obama.

An Open Letter to Congress From US Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails by Climate Experts As U.S. scientists with substantial expertise on climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems, our built environment and human well-being, we want to assure policy makers and the public of the integrity of the underlying scientific research and the need for urgent action to reduce heat-trapping emissions. In the last few weeks, opponents of taking action on climate change have misrepresented both the content and the significance of stolen emails to obscure public understanding of climate science and the scientific process. We would like to set the record straight. The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. The scientific process depends on open access to methodology, data, and a rigorous peer-review process. The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process. As the recent letter to Congress from 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, states: “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. … If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced.” These “multiple independent lines of evidence” are drawn from numerous public and private research centers all across the United States and beyond, including several independent analyses of surface temperature data. Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust. We urge you to take account of this as you make decisions on climate policy. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/04-8

Progressive Leaders Pan Obama's Decision for More War in Afghanistan -- 10 Reactions 1. Tom Hayden writes for The Nation: "It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision to escalate the stalemate, which risks his domestic agenda, his Democratic base, and possibly even his presidency." 2. Laura Flanders writes on GritTV, "...for those who’d thought they’d voted for the death of the Bush Doctrine. Sorry. Bush/Cheney live on in the new president’s embrace of the idea that the U.S. has a right, not only to respond to attacks, but also to deploy men and women in anticipation of them." 3. Jim Hightower used his most recent column to warn: "Obama has been taken over by the military industrial hawks and national security theorists who play war games with other people's lives and money. I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader who would reject the same old interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war. But his newly announced Afghan policy shows he is not that leader." Hightower says that just because we've lost Obama on this issue, it's not over; that we as citizens... "...have both a moral and patriotic duty to reach out to others to inform, organize and mobilize our grassroots objections, taking common sense to high places. Also, look to leaders in Congress who are standing up against Obama's war and finally beginning to reassert the legislative branch's constitutional responsibility to oversee and direct military policy. For example, Rep. Jim McGovern is pushing for a specific, congressionally mandated exit strategy; Rep. Barbara Lee wants to use Congress' control of the public purse strings to stop Obama's escalation; and Rep. David Obey is calling for a war tax on the richest Americans to put any escalation on-budget, rather than on a credit card for China to finance and future generations to pay." 4. Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford compares Obama's delivery to how George Bush might have given the speech: "Barack Obama's oratorical skills have turned on him, revealing, as George Bush’s low-grade delivery never could, the perfect incoherence of the current American imperial project in South Asia. Bush’s verbal eccentricities served to muddy his entire message, leaving the observer wondering what was more ridiculous, the speechmaker or the speech. There is no such confusion when Obama is on the mic. His flawless delivery of superbly structured sentences provides no distractions, requiring the brain to examine the content – the policy in question – on its actual merits. The conclusion comes quickly: the U.S. imperial enterprise in Afghanistan and Pakistan is doomed, as well as evil. "The president’s speech to West Point cadets was a stream of non sequiturs so devoid of logic as to cast doubt on the sanity of the authors. '[T]hese additional American and international troops,' said the president, 'will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.' "Obama claims that the faster an additional 30,000 Americans pour into Afghanistan, the quicker will come the time when they will leave. More occupation means less occupation, you see? This breakneck intensification of the U.S. occupation is necessary, Obama explains, because 'We have no interest in occupying your country.'" 5. Foreign Policy in Focus's Phyllis Bennis demolished Obama's attempt to discourage comparisons to Vietnam: "Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speech’s internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnson’s Great Society programs, and the threat to Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis." 6. New America Media's Andrew Lam also addressed the Afghanistan-Vietnam parallel: "On the eve of the second wave of a U.S. invasion in Afghanistan, I wish to tell the American media, as well as President Obama, that the Vietnam syndrome cannot be kicked through acts of war. That only through a view that’s rooted in people, rooted in human kindness, and not historical vehemence, would a country open itself up and stop being a haunting metaphor. That not until human basic needs are addressed and human dignity upheld can we truly pacify our enemies and bring about human liberty. And that more soldiers and bombs and droids in the sky will never appease the haunting ghosts of the past. Quite the opposite. We are in the process of creating more ghosts to haunt future generations." 7. Glenn Greenwald, writing on Salon, addresses Obama's supporters who are going along with his decision to escalate the troops: "The most bizarre defense of Obama's escalation is also one of the most common: since he promised during the campaign to escalate in Afghanistan, it's unfair to criticize him for it now -- as though policies which are advocated during a campaign are subsequently immunized from criticism. For those invoking this defense: in 2004, Bush ran for re-election by vowing to prosecute the war in Iraq, keep Guantanamo open, and "reform" privatize Social Security. When he won and then did those things (or tried to), did you refrain from criticizing those policies on the grounds that he promised to do them during the campaign? I highly doubt it." more: 10 reactions to Obama's speech

Gee, a murderous police state is clearly less juicy of a story than a gang of fat harvesting murderers. Especially, when they don't provide the details of executions.

Yeltsin is famous according to the list but Bulgakov, Mikalkov, Nabokov, Soljenitsin, .. are missing. forgive me it was the first link the google gave. plus i'm partially german. No sweat, I just wanted to show how much I appreciate Slavic culture. Anyway it'd be difficult to argue that Yeltsin isn't famous

let's recall that this paper hasn't been published in the peer-reviewed literature, irrespective of the writer's other work on glacial chronology.

right, senate conservatives that represent 34% of the US population can effectively block any new legislation. Let's congratulate ourselves that a small dead-ender minority can effectively be obstructionist at a time we need to be taking major decisions.

YES, when I step out my front door the earth does look flat, so it must be true!

[video:youtube]t9Io9leGqIg

[video:youtube]97qHPAFrHXk

Yeltsin is famous according to the list but Bulgakov, Mikalkov, Nabokov, Soljenitsin, .. are missing.

Has anyone noticed that after such brilliant display of logical thinking (claiming the science is invalid and a vast conspiracy on the basis of e-mails taken out of context) almost nobody calls them "skeptics" anymore (the "denialist fringe" says Nature). I predict this is going to be payback time as in scientists aren't anymore going to take the smears and the abuse from a bunch of ideologue nitwits that couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.

just look at it this way folks: anthropogenic climate change denialists have come out for the conspiracy nutjobs they really are. At this stage of the game, they have little to lose since some emission controls are likely to result from Copenhagen.

yes, it's a vast communist conspiracy. The commies have taken over all climatology departments and labs, and the scientific societies and academies worldwide that have all expressed their support for global warming science. In fact, science itself is likely a communist plot as is obvious in theories claiming that the earth isn't flat, isn't at the center of the universe, that we descended from apes, that cfc's are to be blamed for stratospheric ozone depletion, that smoking and asbestos cause cancer, etc ..

A Nature editorial answers the latest deniers' farce: The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial 'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe. This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country's much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails. [..] If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden. [..] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html

The Taliban had unfortunately largely won against the Northern Alliance and there were as little conflicts as at any time during the previous 30 years since the soviet educated elites started to send women to school. unfortunately since you are not saying anything specific, we won't be able to check your argument (that is, if you have one)

Here's your fuccen stimulus package. are you pretending you were for an effective stimulus package instead of tax cuts? can you change the size of your pic so that no scrolling is necessary?

it not going up in flames is no reliable gauge of how the situation changed. Neither Iraq was going up in flames under Saddam nor was Afghanistan under the Taliban. It will not appear to be (in our media) the total shithole that it appeared to be 2 years ago as long as we pay off the former guerrillas. Greenwald's take: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/02/obama/index.html